From /tmp/sf.15692 Tue Mar 30 18:16:27 1993 Xref: lysator.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:27 rec.arts.books:7731 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!uunet!spool.mu.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu.!wex From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Subject: LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA by Gore Vidal Message-ID: <9301181843.AA04197@presto.ig.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.misc Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1993 04:28:37 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 50 LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA by Gore Vidal A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1993 Evelyn C. Leeper Coincidentally, both this and THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB (which I was thinking of as "the two Jesus books I was waiting for") arrived at the library on the same day. Actually, with DEUS X, which I am also reviewing in conjunction with this, they make an interesting trilogy. DEUS X is about the Father, THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB is about the Son, and this is about the Holy Ghost. Well, *a* ghost anyway. To be precise, a hologram from the late 1990s appears to (Saint) Timothy in the First century and tells him of his mission. A computer hacker in the 1990s is destroying the texts of the Gospels and, using the same time-travel technology the hologram is using, is destroying the originals so that even hard-copy texts aren't preserved. To preserve Christianity, Timothy must write a gospel and conceal it so it will survive, hidden from the hacker's eyes, to be discovered in the 1990s and renew the Christian religion. And in his spare time, could Timothy go back in time and host the coverage of the Crucifixion for the television networks? The book is designed as a social and spiritual commentary rather than as hard science fiction, so perhaps it is needlessly picky to observe that the time travels aspects of LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA are not always consistent or rational: surely if the hacker can go back in time to erase Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, he can do the same to Timothy when that book appears. And why do the various travelers recruiting Timothy remember the other gospels if the hacker *is* erasing them from their very beginnings? But in his "modernized" re-telling of the early days of Christianity, Vidal lets the barbs fly. What really got the Romans upset was Jesus taking over the money-changers in the Temple and lowering the prime rate. Jesus's brother James is trying to set up a rival religion from Paul--who never actually met Jesus but preaches a heck of a sermon and tap dances at the same time. (His other activities are even more outrageous.) Unabashedly irreverent, LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA is not for everyone (Vidal seems to be at times taking THE SATANIC VERSES for inspiration, and there will undoubtedly be those who take offense), but I'm nominating this for the Hugo. %T Live from Golgotha %A Gore Vidal %C New York %D 1992 %I Random House %O hardback, US$22 %G ISBN 0-679-41611-0 %P 229pp Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | ecl@mtgzy.att.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Aug 29 15:23:48 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!eru.mt.luth.se!newsfeed.luth.se!news.luth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!surfnet.nl!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: agapow@lx3.cs.latrobe.edu.au (p-m agapow) Subject: Postview: "Live From Golgotha" by Gore Vidal Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=paul-michael agapow Lines: 50 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Biologists X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 20:16:53 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 50 The Gospel According to St Benny Hill : "Live From Golgotha" by Gore Vidal Review Copyright 1996 paul-michael agapow The Hacker, a super information terrorist, is systematically corrupting every copy of the Gospels. Worse still this is actually changing history as we know it. The aged St Timothy is visited by a hologram of St Paul (due to the kind assistance of a 20th century media conglomerate) and is asked to write down and conceal a copy of the gospels. Timothy is confused. The actions of Hacker seem to be altering his own memories and anyway, he has no direct experience of the reportedly unphotogenic Christ. With multiple parties running interference and juggling contracts, he prepares to for a live broadcast of the crucifixion. To be blunt: this is no "Towing Jehovah." Neither is it "Stranger in a Strange Land." Hell, it's not even "Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier." "Live From Golgotha" is a broad satire, "broad" being used in the same sense as when fat people are called "big boned." The apostles cavort endlessly in polyamorous couplings, with the whole church coming across as some bisexual mutual support society. St Timothy frets endlessly about his penis while his wife becomes addicted to cable TV. Jesus' halitosis and weight problem present network directors with a problem. The disciplines roll from town to town in a sort of travelling medicine show, extorting money from the gullible. The question is not whether you find this offensive but whether it is entertaining, and it's not. This sort of cluttered broadside might be construed as an iconoclastic and outrageous parody, but that would be an overestimate of its cleverness. There are portions that are certainly amusing -- intellectual cafe society in Palestine, Shirley MacLaine travelling back to a previous reincarnation -- but basically it's far too scattergun to work. The plot is also fairly nonsensical. Far from being a logical chain of events, it just happens. An interesting idea laid waste to and not recommended. A house burnt down to the stumps on the Sid and Nancy scale. %A Gore Vidal %B Live From Golgotha %I Abacus %C New York %D 1993 %G ISBN 0-349-10478-6 %P 248pp %O paperback, Aus$14.95 paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse "There is no adventure, there is no romance, there is only trouble and desire." From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Jun 25 13:40:26 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!Cabal.CESspool!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!howland.erols.net!worldfeed.gte.net!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!ai-lab!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION by Gore Vidal Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 24 Jun 1998 15:30:36 -0400 Organization: Software Agents Group Lines: 103 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1942 THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION by Gore Vidal Random House, ISBN 0-375-50121-5, 1998, 260pp, US$23 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1998 Evelyn C. Leeper Just as with Vidal's earlier LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA, I will be nominating this for a Hugo. Which is to say that, just as with LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA, I will be throwing away a vote, because the chances of enough nominating fans 1) reading THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, and 2) considering it as eligible for the Hugo, is vanishingly small. But hope springs eternal they say... Just to clear one thing up: THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION is definitely science fiction. There is time travel, there is alternate history, there is cloning of a sort, and there is transplantation of personality into, well, robots (for lack of a better term). There is also sex, hence the rather outre cover which is supposed to parody the typical romance novel cover rather than seriously place this in that genre, though I think reversing the two figures would have been even better. One does have the feeling that the artist at least read the book, though. T. is a thirteen-year-old student at St. Albans when he is summoned to the Smithsonian on April 7, 1939. War clouds are gathering, and he apparently is the one person who can save the world. But first he must meet the inhabitants of the Smithsonian, including all the Presidents and First Ladies as well as various anthropological representatives, all of whom come to life after hours a la the Twilight Zone episode. While he can't convince anyone to use his bomb that will destroy buildings but not people -- politicos and the military prefer things the other way around -- he also has some ideas for how to get the world out of its current crisis, which he foresees as leading to total nuclear war. It isn't giving anything away to say that T. *does* change history, but that things don't turn out exactly as planned. Vidal does a lot of hand-waving about the various time paradoxes involved, but no more than many other authors. He also spends a fair amount of time having the various Presidents give their views on the world situation, what got them into it, and what they should do about it. As an observer of American historical thought, Vidal shows us the differences in philosophy among the Presidents: the isolationists, the expansionists, and so on. Decisions are not made in a vacuum in this book, but as the result of argument and discussion among the various philosophies. One is reminded of the musical "1776." Another reviewer has said that Vidal's work is "all style, no substance, and a pretty boring read," contains a "long droning narrative on the essence of time," and postulates an unlikely alternate history. Let me respond to this. So? I find the concepts of "all style" and "pretty boring" a bit contradictory, but in matters of taste there can be no argument, as they say, so let me just say that if you haven't liked Vidal in the past you're unlikely to like him here. He concentrates as much on *how* he says something as on *what* he says. This certainly sets his work apart from much of the alternate history which is being written today. This is probably the crux of the dispute here, in fact. If you want to read this strictly as an alternate history novel, well, yes, you might say there is not enough of what happens to change this or cause that. But I tend to dislike that sort of novel, often full of detailed descriptions of battles, but with nothing of either characterization or literary style. I love to wallow in Vidal's excesses of style! I also found Vidal's narrative on the essence of time not boring at all, but an interesting explication, if not completely scientifically rigorous. It was at least as sensible as Kage Baker's in THE GARDEN OF IDEN. As for the fact that "a lot of it is the kid talking with dummies," as I said, I found the main character's discussions with the ex- Presidents, and the discussions among the ex-Presidents and other characters, to be one of the book's strong points. If you'd rather think of it as having somehow downloaded their personalities into androids, maybe that will help. It's an artificial set-up, true, but no more so than finding God's corpse in James Morrow's TOWING JEHOVAH or having Dr. Frankenstein's creation as a baseball player in Michael Bishop's BRITTLE INNINGS. I don't demand hyperrealism of my alternate histories. The last person to do that well was Robert Sobel. What I look for is an alternate history that tries to say something about us. At Intersection in 1995, Harry Turtledove said that alternate history doesn't have to be believable to be good; there can be a "gonzo" story that was still good, and that in any case, we do not write about alternate worlds--we write about our world, and alternate history gives us a different mirror. I find enough content in what Vidal is trying to say in THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION that I am willing to overlook the question of strict plausibility. I highly recommend this book to fans of time travel, alternate history, or sharp commentary on United States history. %T The Smithsonian Institution %A Gore Vidal %C New York %D 1998 %I Random House %O hardback, US$23 %G ISBN 0-375-50121-5 %P 260pp Evelyn C. Leeper | eleeper@lucent.com +1 732 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824 "I am so small I can barely be seen. How can this great love be inside me?" "Look at your eyes. They are small but they see enormous things." --Rumi