ALT.SF4M Book Reviews for all & the Road • ***@l**.****t.net 14/03/1996 00:00:000 UTC SHORT REVIEWS -- (Note: These are not necessarily new books... just books I've recently read & been impressed with one way or another.) _L. RON HUBBARD, MESSIAH OR MADMAN?_ by Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard Jr. Truly amazing and scary examination of L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology, and the people who follow its beliefs. Details the early history of the Church, its international activities by its "Sea Org", the abuse of not only its detractors but even its followers, and the mind of its creator Hubbard. (Why does he look so mellow in all those pictures....? He was *stoned out of his mind*!) From the "gulag" of the RPF to the bad space opera of the "OT III Incident", a open expose of the Church by Corydon, an ex-member. They're out there, and getting stronger. Read this before it becomes illegal. _A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FUTURE_ by W. Warren Wagar Look! It's the 21st Century, and the U.S. and the Soviet Union fight a nuclear war (with antimatter bombs created by nanotech) that kills almost everyone in the Northern Hemisphere off, saving the world for a True Socialist Democracy of Third-World rainforest people, led by the political musings of a SUNY at Binghamton grad student. Duh. At least humanity ends up going to the stars, after all those Bad Imperialists die. Weird pseudo-revisionist "One World, One People" future history that gets points for at least trying. _REALITY ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE_ by Walter Truett Anderson At first I thought this was going to be one of those books that criticizes modern culture in that sort of college-intellectual "creating spaces of consciousness"-type crap. Surprise! While it does cover the concept of deconstructionism, it's actually a pretty cool examination of what people believe, why the believe it, and how thinking about what they believe changes them and their beliefs. Lots of good stuff about politics and religion, democracy and absolutism, and why the Greens and the rebos are both full of shit. _THE TWILIGHT OF SOVEREIGNTY_ by Walter B. Wriston Another seriously cool book that should be on _everyone's_ required reading list. Examines how the current proliferation of instant communication by fax, e-mail, cellular telephone etc. is eliminating not only the political boundaries that used to control people but also the hierarchical structures of companies, putting everyone on an "equal basis". The effect of the information revolution, in instant communication and the volume of data accessible by the average person, is to create a more democratic, equal, freer world. A must read, if you don't want to feel like a Philistine in five years. _SMILE PRETTY AND SAY JESUS_ by Hunter James The last days of PTL, the televangelist empire of Jim and Tammy Bakker, were easily as strange as the first... from Jim Bakker's lies and half-truths about his exploits with Jessica Hahn to their still-faithful followers who believe their leader was taken down by a major conspiracy. While James tries to be sympathetic, he never really advocates what Jim and Tammy sold and manages to show the absurdity of the situation while remaining neutral. Most of the book is taken up by the author's exploits with one of Bakker's still-faithful, a man who firmly believes that Jerry Fallwell is taking over PTL as part of a Satanic plot between the Druids and the Illuminati to establish a one-world government for the Pope and his "walking computer". More fun than a week's worth of the 700 Club. _CALL IT CONSPIRACY_ by Larry Abraham This is what you've been waiting for, if you've been waiting for the Great Expose of the International Communist Conspiracy. (I haven't, but I read it anyway.) Remember the crazy general from "Dr. Strangelove" who sets off World War III in order to protect "our precious bodily fluids"? Abrahams is a real-life version of him, and while this book doesn't cover flouridation of water it drags in just about every other neo-conservative cliche there is. Secret bankers funded the Russian Revolution and have not only started every war & depression this century but profited handsomely from them! Liberal presidents hand over the control of America to the Communistic one-world UN! Don't expect cheap laughs here... these guys are SERIOUS!! Actually finishes up with a section on how only the return of Jesus and That Old Time Religion can save us from the Godless Commies. "Call it Conspiracy"? Let's not and say we did. _DEEP ECOLOGY_ by Bill Devall and George Sessions I want to call this book "naive", but that somehow doesn't go far enough to describe how I feel about it. Written by the folks who brought you Earth First! and ecoterrorism, _Deep Ecology_ actually spends an entire chapter denouncing the New Agers for being too willing to co-exist with technology. Somehow, they figure we could all go back to a pastoral hunter/gatherer existance with no problem; to them, even mere agriculture is an unnecessary burden on Gaia. They also spend a lot of time denouncing science in general, believing that we could do geology (for example) by lying on a hillside and "thinking like a glacier". Preservation of the environment is admirable... but as far as this group is concerned, the whole concept of "civilization" was a bad idea from the beginning. Their philosophy can be summed up by their quote from a poem (yes,it's one of THOSE books) by Gary Snyder: "We could live on this Earth without clothes or tools!" _You_ first. _WHAT TO DO WHEN THE RUSSIANS COME_ by Robert Conquest and Jon Manchip White Subtitled "A Survivor's Guide", this book (written in 1984) supposedly shows how the Evil Soviet Bloc will "soon" engulf the Free World, and what you can expect and must "plan" for. HOW this would be accomplished is dismissed in a few paragraphs (a limited nuclear strike or just plain wussing out on America's part are the most likely plans) so the writers can get straight down to the "good stuff". Advises once the Occupation has begun you should run to a free country... if there ARE any! (Da-da-dunnnn!) Stalin-era gulag stories are then cooked into a thin gruel and served up with nuggets of cheesy right-wing hysteria. Evidently not only will we have a totalitarian government complete with concentration camps for the Christians and brainwashing for the kiddies, but they'll also ban sunny days while they're at it. Gives several pages of what to expect, sorted by "profession, opinion and habit"... evidently anarchists, Maoists, Birchers and the military will have it especially hard, while "poison pens", sadists & criminals will prosper. In typical melodramatic tones the book finishes up with the advice to "burn this book" if/when the Commies do invade. Me, I'd be tempted to be REALLY prepared and do it right away. _MASTERS OF DECEPTION_ by Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner Newsday strikes me sometimes as just one step above USA Today, and their "cyberspace" reporting can be just as bad. They tend towards informative descriptions of how to read alt.tv.melrose-place, hand-wringing about porn on Internet, and gratuitous use of the phrase "Information Superhighway". Jousha Quittner is their reporter for this area, and he and his wife have written a suprisingly readable (if fluffy) account of the "Hacker Wars" between the groups LOD and MOD. It does what needs to be done, while leaving out most of the "confusing" technical stuff that I suppose you could dig up in Phrack if you really wanted to. Fluff, but enjoyable fluff. _MEDIA VIRUS_ by Douglas Rushkoff Recently responsible for the superficial "examination" of "cyberculture" called _Cyberia_, Rushkoff now takes on the trendy concept of the "media virus", and again, style wins out over substance. Po-mo dogma about "memes" and "deconstructionism" is scattered throughout the book, along with an entire chapter on MTV but only 3 small lines on Rush Limbaugh. Missing the forest for all those damn trees, _Media Virus_ ignores the more subtle memetic content of "mainstream" media ("shopping = sex", "marry and reproduce", "beer = fun", "be a good consumer") and instead concentrates almost exclusively on the "subversive" content of children's shows, alternative media, music videos and, of course, the 'Net. In a manner reminiscent of the Sixties counterculture book _The Greening of America_, Generation X is presented as a group of socially conscious Zen activists who don't need to think through their oppostition to the Old Order... they just *know* they're right. And, of course, they're at the head of the Revolution that's just a couple years away, but they don't have to do anything because suddenly we'll all wake up and realize how right they were *all along*! Yawn. In short, 316 pages of twaddle that would have worked better as a "Mondo 2000" or "Wired" article... and would have been about 1/10 as long. -- "...You know, folks... it's the level of INFORMED PUBLIC DISCOURSE that makes this democracy what it is..." --Tom Tomorrow