Ted Chiang, Exhalation ****

Ted Chiang writes science fiction stories that address fundamental issues about the human condition, such as free will, our responsibilities to others, and the meaning of truth. His stories are noticeably thoughtful and surprisingly, refreshingly, optimistic. His writing has an analytical tone, even when describing emotional topics; the narrative details often feel like a thin veneer over the philosophical questions. The title story, for instance, is about the implications of living in a universe that began with ridiculously low entropy. Pretty abstract, no?

William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea *** 1/2

I'm giving The Outlaw Sea the same rating as I did the first time I read it, but the impressions I took from it were different. The first time I felt that Langewiesche effectively laid out the complexities of  international shipping; this time I found the discussion superficial. This time I was struck by how the chapter about shipbreaking in India lays out a case that environmental regulation is a form of cultural imperialism. ("The question I want to ask the environmentalists is if you should want to die first of starvation or pollution.") Reading it, I was reminded of Strangers in Their Own Land, where Louisianans are against environmental regulation intended to help them.

One thing that didn't change between readings: Langewiesche does an excellent job of pulling together all of the complex details to create a dramatic narrative. Each chapter has a shipwreck at its center, and they are all exciting.

Patrick O'Brian, 21 ***

O'Brian was writing this book, The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey, when he died in 2000.  He reached the middle of Chapter 3 in what would inevitably have been ten chapters. The book consists of a corrected typescript and handwritten pages on facing sides, with the last five or six pages handwritten only.

The prose of the first two chapters doesn't flow as well as it does in O'Brian's finished works. I've often said it would be interesting to study how O'Brian manages his distinctive style, and this draft would be a fine contribution to that study.

And so I come to the end of the Aubrey - Maturin series :-(.

Robert Coover, Going for a Beer ** 1/2

A career retrospective should highlight the traits you like best about the author in question. Going for a Beer actually had the opposite effect on me: reading it made me realize how much I have overrated Coover in my memory. Looking back at my reviews of his books (such as here, here, and here), I see that I've always recognized his weaknesses. When I thought of him, though, I always remembered his energetic, entertaining, and humorous prose style.

It probably demonstrates the strength of first impressions. The first thing I ever read of Coover's was "The Babysitter," whose "destabilizing brilliance" is particularly eye-opening when you come across it in an anthology of more traditional stories. It is also a distillation of everything Coover does best: combine multiple perspectives, blur reality and fantasy, and show the impact of popular culture.

Nearly all of Coover's stories are extensions of fairy tales or famous films: Snow White after the death of the evil queen, the Invisible Man falling in love with an Invisible Woman, the missing sex scene from Casablanca, the forest where the animals from Aesop's fables all live together. He makes explicit the implicit themes of sex and death in these stories. Coover's ideas are often clever, but he beats them into the ground rather than building on them. His humor is often sophomoric, with lots of sex and farting.

"The Babysitter" still holds up, and a handful of other stories also showed what Coover is capable of. I particularly enjoyed "The Return of the Dark Children," about Hamelin after the Pied Piper leads all the children away, although it lacks a satisfactory conclusion. Most of the stories, though, I found too long and too self-satisfied.

Patrick O'Brian, Blue at the Mizzen ***

The Surprise, lying well out in the channel with Gibraltar half a mile away on her starboard quarter, lying at a single anchor with her head to the freshening northwest breeze, piped all hands at four bells in the afternoon watch...

It's nearly the last time I'll read a book that eases me into the story like so. Blue at the Mizzen is the twentieth and last complete book in the Aubrey-Maturin series. It is also the first to take place after the end of the Napoleonic Wars that provided the raison d'etre for the story and its characters.

Given this momentous change and the fact that O'Brian planned for Blue at the Mizzen to be the last book, you might expect an elegiac tone and some wrapping up. The first few chapters do indeed address the consequences of the peace -- out of work sailors, few chances from promotion or prizes, an economic recession in England -- but Aubrey and Maturin are off on a new adventure soon enough. They sail for Chile to support the independence movement, pausing along the way for Maturin to propose to the widow of an African governor.

There are times in the later chapters when O'Brian's distinctive prose style seems to falter, where the time jumps feel confused. Other sections are typically lovely and skillful. The action has no sense of finality about it, although (spoiler alert) it does end with Aubrey becoming an admiral. Will we learn the outcome of Stephen's proposal in the final unfinished book?