30 Days to a Better Man, Day 4: increase your testosterone

The article on The Art of Manliness website has two lists: the first tells you why low T is bad for us dudes, and the benefits of having good loose testosterone floating through our systems. The second list is what we can do to increase it. The challenge is to pick three of those things and do them today. 

Not smoking was kind of a cop-out. I don't smoke anything but pipes and cigars anyway, and then only on a biweekly or semi-monthly basis. Therefore, the three things I decided to do today were: 

• get at least 8 hours of sleep tonight (easy)
• eat a serving of good fat (as if I needed an excuse to eat olives and nuts)
• meditate for 10 minutes

I started going back to the gym recently, and I happen to be going today. I'll probably do some resistance training while I'm there. I took the liberty of looking ahead at the upcoming challenges and I noticed that Day 26 is "Take the Marine Corps Fitness Test." Part of that test is doing pull-ups, so I'm going to try to get in shape for those. (Maybe I'll finally be able to do more than one stinking pull-up by the time this is over.) So I'll do some resistance training at the gym, including pull-ups (or attempted pull-ups).

So there you go! Five things I'm doing today to increase my testosterone. I expect that, by the end of the day, I'll be ready to go deep-sea fishing or run with the bulls. More likely I'll have the energy and pep and pickup to add five thousand more words to Novel #3 (which I'm trying to finish before Miss H gets home on Sunday, so she can read it). At the very least, more T should help me grow this dang beard out before I head to Hokkaido in February.

Wish me luck...  

the fastest man alive

Hats off to "Fearless" Felix!

Felix Baumgartner, the intrepid Austrian skydiver and daredevil, has departed a bare patch of weathered asphalt at an airport in Roswell, New Mexico. He is sitting in a tiny capsule attached to a gossamer balloon 700 feet high. He is clad in what resembles a full-blown spacesuit. Readouts and checklists surround him. A vast crew of people, including Baumgartner's friends and family, watch from the ground. In about an hour and forty-five minutes, he will reach an altitude of 120,000 feet. He is attempting to break the record for the fastest speed attained by a human being in free-fall: 690 miles an hour, or Mach 1. That's right...the speed of sound. In so doing, he will break three other records: the highest skydive, the longest free-fall, and the highest manned flight in a balloon.

Watch it live, here. Godspeed, Mr. Baumgartner.

recommended reading

I'm supposed to be working on the novel right now, but I've got writer's block. Trying to link up an entirely new wodge of characterization and action with a previously-written chunk of exposition is harder than I thought it'd be. Plus I'm trying to figure out how to get my protagonists into the bad guy's fortress without, say, going up to the front door and knocking (which Main Character No. 1 was planning to do). Dramatic writing is tough sometimes, you know?

So instead I'll give you a book review. Or rather, I'll break with tradition and give you an author review.

I just finished reading Transgalactic by A.E. van Vogt, which was not a single story, but several: two novels from the Mutant Mage series (The Empire of the Atom and The Wizard of Linn), a couple of stories from The War Against the Rull series, and Mission to the Stars, a stand-alone novel. So instead of reviewing each and every tale, I'll just tell you about A.E. van Vogt and his writing, and how they struck me.

Now, in any discussion of writing, there's two bits of writer-lingo you need to know: "planning" and "pantsing." I had never heard of these terms before I entered the blogsphere. I never even bothered to ask anyone what they meant. The sentiment was there, and the context, and I gradually deciphered both. "Pantsing," as near as I can tell, means wading into your story without only the most meager idea of what you're about—flying by the seat of your pants, as it were. Perhaps you've got a skimpy outline (or no outline at all), but you've done no preparation, taken no notes, nothing. You just dive right in and see where the story goes. "Planning," as you've already guessed, is the exact opposite: taking time to meticulously plan your story, outline it, map it, shape it, mold it, develop your characters, create a detailed setting, and set the story down accordingly.

Van Vogt and I are pretty similar. We're pantsers, mostly. Van Vogt would get an idea, knock out a beginning, look it over, nod, and continue on with it. He never bothered to go through beforehand and outline everything. I can tell van Vogt pantsed because of what he usually wound up doing to his stories: he retconned them into full-length novels and even novel series (what he called "fix-ups"). A lot of the early tales he wrote about bands of intrepid spacemen coming across nasty monsters in the middle of space were collated and grouped into one single tale, The Voyage of the Space Beagle. The same thing happened with the stories which make up The War Against the Rull.

This didn't happen with everything van Vogt wrote. He did some pretty good stand-alone novels, like Slan in 1940. (Well, he was going to write a sequel, but the poor sap was stricken with Alzheimer's disease and died before he could finish the first draft. His wife and Kevin J. Anderson went ahead and finished it, though, and it was published in 2007 as Slan Hunter.)

It's interesting to see this kind of approach in science fiction. I mean, traditionally, sci-fi writers are not only writing for fun and profit, but to make some kind of commentary on the human condition. All you have to do is read the first chapter of Starship Troopers (I'm twelve chapters in, actually) and you'll see just how strongly Robert A. Heinlein felt about duty, military service, war, and patriotism.

With van Vogt it's more subtle. He's not quite so blatant in his advancement of anthropic commentary, but there are certain facets of human civilization which deeply interest him, and they manifest strongly in his work. He had a thing for totalitarianism. Dictatorships and monarchies fascinated him to the point that some considered him a closet apologist. The Empire of the Atom and The Wizard of Linn revolve around a technologically advanced but culturally retarded civilization based on Earth, thousands of years after nuclear apocalypse and interplanetary war have almost annihilated the human race. Humankind lives in great cities and primitive villages, worships "the atomic gods" in huge temples, and governs itself with a tenuous and iron-fisted oligo-monarchy closely resembling the Roman Empire. Ancient spaceships from Earth's golden age still remain, but no one knows how they work; temple scientists are still able to operate the great machines, but their basic principles are lost to the ages. When colonies on Venus and Mars rebel against the ruling Earth government, the Lord Leader embarks thousands of spearmen, archers and horse cavalry in the giant spaceships. They fly to the other planets, and fight primitive wars on their hostile surfaces. Dissenters and rebels are uniformly executed; political rivals are sabotaged, betrayed, poisoned, exiled; and there is no end to the scheming, backstabbing, backbiting, and guile of the ruling families of the Empire of Linn.

Unto this chaos is born Clane, a mutant (his mother strayed too near one of the temples wherein the atomic gods were worshipped). His deformities prevent him from ever attaining the seat of power; indeed, he would have been killed outright had he not been the grandson of the Lord Leader himself. Instead, Joquin, a clever adviser to the Lord Leader, takes the young Clane under his wing, and fosters the boy's genius-level intellect. When the Lord Leader dies and a war of succession breaks out, Clane remains safely in the background, pursuing scholarly and scientific studies. Clane is too smart for his own good, but is able to disguise his gifts beneath mutation and shyness. He discovers the science behind the atomic machinery in the temples and aboard the spaceships, and then divines something else even more sinister: humanity was not wiped out by a nuclear war, but an alien race powerful beyond belief. What's worse, this alien race is rebuilding, rearming, and will soon return to claim Earth and her colonies. Clane, and Clane alone, can stop them, if he can ward off intrigue, betrayal, scheming, conspiracy, and barbarian invasions long enough to weaponize the technology of the ancients.

The series is sort of like I, Claudius meets The War of the Worlds. And it is freakin' awesome.

These were van Vogt's interests: power struggles, imperialism, totalitarian states, dictatorial societies, and political intrigue (with a good dash of exobiology thrown in). Such makes for engaging reading, particularly in the context of science fiction. Van Vogt's style is pleasant as well: he never minces words or proselytizes. He is direct, and just descriptive enough to give you the essential details (and let your imagination do the rest). There is poetry in his prose (particularly in delineating the cold beauty and vastness of space). He is a master of suspense, and can throw in quite a few twists and turns in a plot, leaving you unsure of what disaster or obstacle will overwhelm his characters next.

I have a soft spot for van Vogt. For one, he was unappreciated in his time: he won few awards, his critics were many and vocal, and he was overshadowed by the more famous names in the biz. I expect my lot will be the same (in fact, I prefer it that way).

But more importantly, I think both Arthur Elton van Vogt and A.T. Post write for the same reasons: not to make a point, not to silence critics, not to bewail the follies of the human race...just for fun. I know what I like and I write about it. So there.

I'd recommend the man to anyone who had some free time to be wowed in. 

recommended reading

Some changes have occurred.

I've picked up some new reading material in preparation for my (eventual) departure to East Asia—a lot of new reading material, actually.

Also, I need to tell you what I've gotten through lately.

First, I've dropped The Dinosaur Heresies. No offense to the good Dr. Bakker, but I had to prioritize. A weighty scientific volume might make good reference material or even some didactic bedtime reading, but I'm really delaying the rest of my reading list by committing to it. Plus...well, I hesitate to admit it, but compared to the other stuff I could be reading, Heresies is just a little bit dull. Bakker is witty, light-hearted, and occasionally sardonic, which puts him head and shoulders above such stuffy characters as Charles Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould, but the fact remains that he's writing a book about why dinosaurs are more avian than reptilian. Compared to something like Starship Troopers or Black Hawk Down, with explosions and gunfire and war machines and whatnot, paleontology goes flat.

(I won't even really need to brush up on the avian-reptilian dinosaur debate until I sit down to write the sixth book in my series, where I introduce the reptilian-avian character. Remember this, children. You can reference this post when I get accused of retroactive continuity.)

That having been decided, I launched myself into one of my more recent acquisitions, something I picked up at the used bookstore earlier this summer and had never heard of before: David Houston's Alien Perspective.

And this is the cool part: the copy I bought has been signed by the author.

Pretty nifty, eh? Even if I've never heard of the dude, it's nice to know he made enough of a name for himself to sign somebody's book. It's something else for me to strive for, as long as science fiction as I know it doesn't go by the wayside by the time I get published.

Ahem...

Alien Perspective has one of the neatest and most unique plots I've come across in a SF novel, despite being packaged as just another five-dollar paperback. It concerns not one, but two alien ships—exploratory vessels sent from a dying planet to seek out new worlds to colonize. Well, they did—except one of them picked up a greyish, gooey parasite that stifles and kills everything it comes in contact with. After a few deaths, the first ship gracefully decides to commit suicide and render itself a harmless, drifting hulk. The problem is, some of the precocious alien children on board decide they're too young to die, lock the adults out of the command center, and take control of the ship. Not knowing what to do about the parasite, the alien children elect to land on the closest inhabited planet and ask for help.

The closest inhabited planet just happens to be called "Earth."

It was a supremely suspenseful story. The taglines and synopsis I read on the back cover totally belied the pace of the book. The aliens don't even land on Earth until three-quarters of the way through the book. The first 75 percent of Alien Perspective is split between two points-of-view: that of Himi, the alien captain of the second exploratory vessel, who is trying to figure out why the first vessel didn't rendezvous with him as planned; and human astrophysicist William Reid and his colleagues, who are trying to figure out who the aliens are and what they want. Complications arise in the form of Senator Copalin, known as "The Black Blot" for his habit of slashing funds to any program he deems "unnecessary" (Reid's project is at the top of the list); and Leon Hillary, an eccentric millionaire and the leader of the Alienites, a cult which fervently believes that the incoming aliens are our divine creators.

A suitably entertaining tale of intrigue, mystery, adventure, trials, errors, and unseen perils ensues.

For myself, I was somewhat let down at the end. Perhaps I've grown too accustomed to reading James Rollins, whose adventure novels are jam-packed with explosions, monsters, sinister third parties, and imminent catastrophes. By comparison, Houston's book proceeded rather calmly. That being said, there was enough to hold my interest. Alien Perspective reminded me why I love good old-fashioned science fiction: the breathtaking beauty of space is undiminished; the physiology and culture of alien nations is speculated upon; amazing technological marvels abound (both above the Earth's surface and upon it); and I can confidently say, without spoiling the ending, that a rapport is established between human and alien at the end. I never fail to find such themes refreshing. At its heart, Alien Perspective is classic, true-to-form sci-fi: ordinary people battling extraordinary obstacles with advanced technology, backed by the power of logic and reason. 

Satisfied?

All right, here's a list of new works I've acquired over the past few months. Some of them I bought; others I dug out of boxes. Some of these I've mentioned here before, but I want to list them again, since I'll be taking them to Korea with me and I'll undoubtedly review them later.

To begin, some classic fiction:

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding 
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  
• Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean
• Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden
• The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna
  

Next, some sci-fi, both well-known and unknown:

•  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
• I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
• Transgalactic by A.E. van Vogt
  
• Into the Storm (Destroyermen, Book One) by Taylor Anderson
• The Seventh Carrier by Peter Albano
• Winged Pharaoh by Joan Grant
• Phaid the Gambler by Mick Farren

And finally, some promising nonfiction:

• Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux
• The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux
• Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King
• The Great Shark Hunt (The Gonzo  Papers, Vol. 1) by Hunter S. Thompson

This should be adequate literary sustenance to nourish my mind on bus rides, international flights, and subway trains, not to mention my tiny apartment in Seoul on those quiet weekday evenings. I can't wait.

To be clear, I read Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies in high school. That was almost ten years ago, though. I feel the need to reacquaint myself with these works in a more, ah, enlightened frame of mind.

The Sand Pebbles is the newest addition to the list. I found it in a box which my parents were planning to take to the thrift store (??!?!!). It looks incredible, and I can tell it's infecting me with an obsession with all things naval and Chinese. The book concerns Jake Holman, a young sailor, who is assigned to the aging gunboat San Pablo on the Yangtze River...right before the Kuomintang begins the Northern Expedition of 1926, which will eventually lead to the fall of the Beiyang Government and the unification of China.

Sounds kind of tame, right?

It isn't.

China explodes into war. Racial tensions and anti-foreign sentiment boils over, and Jake (who has been gradually forming a mostly positive opinion of the country) is now ordered, along with the San Pablo, to battle his way upriver and rescue two white Catholic missionaries from an oncoming horde of Nationalists. In the midst of this madness, Jake must contend with his shipmates (who believe him to be a Jonah, and would like nothing better than to throw him overboard) and his own heart (which has fallen for the missionary's pretty daughter).

The story is a sweeping historical epic, which beautifully and masterfully encompasses the political, cultural and social landscape of China in the mid-1920s, as seen through the eyes of a down-home American boy. It also skewers the superstition and ignorance of the uneducated; exalts the loyalty and determination of lower-class Chinese over the bigotry of the Westerner; and divulges triumph and tragedy, despair and hope, honor and depravity in a single stroke.

It was made into a 1966 movie with Steve McQueen, but the book looks like it's going to be better. Books always are.

Riding the Iron Rooster is another latecomer. I picked it up for two bucks in a used bookstore in San Diego. It was written by one of my favorite travel authors (perhaps my very favorite), Paul Theroux. Where most travel writers wax poetic, florid, or downright sappy, Theroux remains delightfully crotchety. He hates people. He loves trains. So he rides trains, venerates trains (and the lands they pass through) and denigrates the passengers. Riding the Iron Rooster is an account of Theroux's passage through China, as part of a larger train trip through Asia (which he recounted in The Great Railway Bazaar, a book I read and loved). Just the title gets me going. Riding trains is fascinating and fun even in a familiar setting, but throw in the mysterious, misty, mountainous terrain of China, a country thousands of years old, with food and customs as otherworldly as can be, and—

—ooh, I've got goosebumps.

See what I mean? I'm getting China on the brain. Next thing you know I'll be forgiving the Chinese for being dirty Communists and sucking up all our national debt and limiting their poor citizens to one child per couple and being greedy, callous, polluted, industrialized buggers in general.

Anyway, that's the list. If you see anything on there you're curious about, drop me a line and I'll give you the skinny. I heartily encourage you to Google (or better yet, Amazon) some of these and see if they're worth checking into. I'm sure you'll find something you like.

One last thing:

Now that I'm done with Alien Perspective, I'm quite stumped as to what I should read next. I did Moby-Dick, followed it up with a few works of science fiction, took a short detour into scientific discourse, and then tripped lightly back into SF.

Where next? Suggestions, please.

recommended reading

There's some serious catching-up in order.

Therefore, I won't tell you about what I'm reading right now. I'm taking a break and just doing some stuff for business and pleasure. I'm busting through a couple of sci-fi anthologies (The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes I and IIB), which I hope will help me write better sci-fi, and also are a damn lot of fun. I might even tell you about some of the stories I've read, if you behave yourselves.

In addition to that, I'm slowly plowing through Dr. Robert Bakker's paradigm shifter The Dinosaur Heresies, in which the scruffy, courageous maverick first put forth his controversial theory that dinosaurs were not pea-brained, slow-moving, swamp-dwelling sluggards, but were dynamic, lively, active, agile, bird-like and intelligent. This bombshell challenged hundreds of years of universally accepted scientific thought on the terrible lizards. Bakker's discoveries, though initially criticized, withstood all tests and vitriol. Today, when we think "dinosaurs," we imagine the terrifyingly smart and agile Velociraptors from the film Jurassic Park. We have Bakker to thank for that (even though the paleontological consultant to Spielberg's film was Jack Horner, Bakker's bitter enemy, who believed that T-Rex was a scavenger [?!?!?!?]).

I haven't enlightened you about what I've already read, though, and that's why we're here. I have to review a couple of works I completed after finishing Moby-Dick a few months back.

I didn't waste any time sitting on my laurels after conquering Melville's leviathan. I was over at Miss H's place when I spotted Elie Wiesel's seminal work Night on her bookshelf. I asked to borrow it, and before the day was out, I had finished and returned it. It's a little book, but filled with the scope of human tragedy, suffering, cruelty and horror.

I could speak of how Elie and hundreds of other Romanian Jews were removed from their villages by brutal Hungarian policemen, cudgeled into lines, and marched away from their only home...

The last glimpse Elie had of his mother and sister as they were led into the gates of Auschwitz...

The loss of Elie's faith as he witnessed the hanging of a twelve-year-old boy...

How even the rabbis were reduced to blank, staring, godless husks by the horrors of starvation, torture, and brutality...

The long, cold, desperate flight from one camp to another as Allied armies drew near, and how the Jewish prisoners were forced to run through the snow and the darkness, and any who straggled or fell were shot...

...but that would probably spoil the book for you, so I won't.

Wiesel is on the second row up from the floor, seventh from left.

I'll just say this: more than any other work I've ever reviewed—fiction or nonfiction, printed or televised—Night brought home the horrors of the Holocaust most grimly and truthfully. It's a literal punch to the gut. For once it's no surprise that a particular work won the Nobel Peace Prize.

And now on to more cheerful territory...
Have you ever wondered if maybe the scientists were wrong, and the interior of the world wasn't just a mass of molten rock, but was hollow and cool and airy and possibly filled with prehistoric beasts?

Well, even if you haven't, Edgar Rice Burroughs sure did. And he wrote At the Earth's Core just to show the world what he thought.

There are definite fringe benefits to being friends with a scientist. Make a sponge of your mind and you'll soak up a lot of mental detritus. As an added perk, your scientist chum may even let you give his gizmo the first test ride.

Such is the case with David Innes, the wealthy heir to a mining empire who, attempting to make a good show of his father's business enterprise, invests in the invention of his scientist friend, Abner Perry. The invention is the "iron mole" a sort of segmented steel worm with a huge drill on the front, which Perry insists will increase efficiency one million percent. As the principle investor, Innes is given the privilege of riding shotgun in the device while Abner takes it on the maiden voyage.

Everything goes downhill from there, so to speak.

The giant iron mole burrows into the ground like a...like a...well, like giant iron mole. Alarmed, Professor Perry tries to turn the beast aside and regain the surface; but no such luck. Both men strain at the helm until they're blue in the face, but the mole cannot be turned; it's heading straight down at a tremendous rate. Perry and Innes give themselves up for lost, resigning themselves to falling into the Earth's molten mantle and perishing in the blaze.

...but they don't.

Five hundred miles down the mole suddenly bursts out of the ground again. A fresh, cool breeze streams through the cracks. The Professor has collapsed from heat and exhaustion, but Innes is able to crack open the hatch and look outside.

He sees trees. Hills. A beach. An ocean. And a horizon which curves up instead of down. He can see mountains and oceans in the distance, turned on their ends, as though he was seeing from above.

Gradually, the men figure it out. They're standing on the inside of a huge sphere.

They are inside the Earth.

The Earth, it turns out, is hollow. And what's more, it's inhabited.

Welcome to Pellucidar, the savage land at the Earth's core.

All the better to massage you with, my sweet!

Perry and Innes are soon drawn into a millennia-long conflict between the primitive humans who reside in Pellucidar and the vicious Mahars, telepathic reptilian monsters who keep humans as draft animals...and livestock. Along the way they encounter sabertooth cats, dinosaurs, sea monsters, and all manner of nasties, dwelling in a land of eternal sunlight.

At the Earth's Core was first published serially in 1914, and released in book form in 1922. Since then, it has attained a small cult following, but remains largely obscure, probably due to more well-known stories like Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Nonetheless, it's an astounding tale. The concept is intriguing, if totally bogus. (Hey, that's why they call it science fiction, right?) First off, there's no way there'd be eternal sunlightg at the center of the planet, weird electrical phenomena notwithstanding. Second, gravity's pull would be considerably less at the center of the Earth, but it would still pull you toward the center. You could not "walk about" on the inside curve of a chamber inside the globe unless the planet was spinning a lot faster, like a centrifuge. Third, the air would be so dense 500 miles down that it'd be tantamount to breathing water. Human lungs would collapse.

But I didn't come here to pick the science apart. I came to tell you how awesome the story was. And it was awesome. Burroughs sure knows how to write a gripping fight scene (and there's a boatload of fight scenes). The plot rapidly becomes more complex and convoluted as human traitors, mindless monsters, and a ravishing love interest make their appearance. There are desperate scrapes, close shaves, narrow escapes, rousing victories, moments of unbridled joy and plenty of stark, quivering terror. And at the end, there is a very human feeling.

Everything that makes good, rousing science fiction, in my opinion.

You might have a little trouble getting into it, as Burroughs does have what critics called a "stilted, florid style"...but it's nowhere near as bad as Jules Verne. You'll do fine.

And finally, as an interesting sidenote...

In At the Earth's Core, the Mahars (those evil reptilian beings) employ the thuggish gorilla-esque Sagoths to do their dirty work for them, rounding up slaves and enforcing the rules. At the Earth's Core had an enormous influence on another of my favorite authors, H.P. Lovecraft. In Lovecraft's book At the Mountains of Madness, he introduced the shoggoths, huge, slimy, amorphous blobs, also the servants of a master race. These were inspired in name and function by the Sagoths of Burroughs's story. Shoggoths have proven as influential to other writers as the Sagoths were for Lovecraft: the beastly things have appeared in countless works of fiction, sci-fi and horror over the decades. One of these works, notably, was Robert Bloch's Notebook Found in a Deserted House, which is widely accepted to be one of the cardinal inspirations for the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project.

That concludes this edition of "Six Degrees of (Literary) Separation."

Is he bursting out of the hillside in a mindless rage? Or did he lose his toboggan?

Until next time...

a samurai looks at swordsmanship

Let's talk about The Book of Five Rings, renowned 17th-century swordsman Miyamoto Musashi's thoroughgoing text on swordsmanship.

First off, I finished it. It was only five scrolls, for crying out loud. Musashi groups his discussion into four separate topics: an overview of the science of his own brand of martial arts, the Earth Scroll; an in-depth discussion of the techniques in his school, the Water Scroll; essays and views on combat and battle, the Fire Scroll; and a brief look at the techniques of other schools, the Wind Scroll. There is also a fifth and final scroll, the Emptiness Scroll, where he wraps everything up. Each scroll is broken up into further sections, each headed by mysterious or bluntly bellicose subtitles.
It was an unusual but enlightening read. As you might expect, I particularly enjoyed the Fire Scroll, dealing with combat. In that scroll, there were subheadings like "Moving Shadows," where Musashi delineates how to guess an opponent's intent from the way he holds his sword at rest; "Knocking the Heart Out," in which Musashi emphasizes the importance of defeating an enemy by taking away his will to fight at a critical moment; "Stomping a Sword," wherein Musashi metaphorically states that it is vital to "get the jump on" your opponent in everything; "Being Like a Rock Wall," where Musashi discusses in two sentences the concept of becoming "immovable and untouchable"; and "Becoming New," in which Musashi suggests that, if your current state and tactics are proving ineffectual in combat, you should "become new," change tactics, change your mood, and begin anew. It was some seriously cool stuff.

Musashi's discussion of other schools in the Wind Scroll was reasonable, but it did get a little wearing after a time. Musashi had some problems with some other schools' principles and he unloaded them all here.

The Earth Scroll was just an overview, but it laid out Musashi's code and stategies in an intriguing manner.

The Water Scroll was about as interesting as the Fire Scroll, for here Musashi discussed things like stance, and technique, and strikes, and sword blows, all unique to his science. From it, I gained perhaps the most telling insight into Musashi's views on martial arts. It's difficult for me to express just what a revelation it was to read this book. I said it was unusual, because I've never read any works by Eastern writers before. The Japanese devotion to honor and adherence to Shinto beliefs manifested themselves strongly. And Musashi is an extremely direct and succinct writer. The book is only 86 pages long, and Musashi never spends more than a page discoursing on a particular topic. He simply conveys his message, speaking of death and killing in a uniquely matter-of-fact way.

At the end of every discussion, he closes with an exhortation to his readers, reminding them to study hard and meditate on what he has written. It's always a variation on the same theme:

"This must be considered carefully."

"This should be worked out thoroughly."

"This should be given careful consideration."

"This should be examined thoroughly."

"This calls for careful examination."

I couldn't help but be reminded of my old college professors who were nice enough to give all the inattentive sap-heads in their classes (like yours truly) hints about what would be on the next exam.

"If it's in bold print, it's more than likely going to be on the exam!"

"I'd be writing this down if I were you; this sounds like an exam question right here!"

"This calls for careful examination, people!"

In the end, I finished the book with an ineffable sense of awe. It really shouldn't have been that remarkable. All I'd done was read a longish treatise on swordsmanship by a scabrous samurai who'd been dead for hundreds of years. But somehow, when I shut the book, I was overwhelmed by a sense of temporal displacement. I felt as though I'd just sat through a lecture by a stern, middle-aged, armored, sword-wielding, veteran samurai, who'd stared me down like I was a knee-knocking enlisted man on a training camp parade ground, and he was my commanding officer. I felt as though I'd received, through those intervening centuries, a motivational speech on how not only to excel at martial arts, but to better myself as a person. Musashi's writings, paradoxically steeped in spiritualism and logic, intended as they were not only for men-at-arms but all martial arts practitioners everywhere, had been just that powerful.

I felt more alive after reading that book. I felt like going out and running for five miles, doing a thousand push-ups, then picking up a wooden sword and laying about some straw dummies. I felt like striving, as Musashi had urged me, to intrinsically and subconsciously master the Two-Skies style of swordsmanship.

The story doesn't end there, though. There's a second book included with Musashi's in the edition of The Book of Five Rings which I purchased. It's Yagyū Munenori's Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War. Kind of a mouthful, ain't it?

Munenori was a contemporary of Musashi's, though I don't know if the two ever met. Munenori's life was more rooted in government and politics. He became an instructor of swordsmanship to the shoguns after the Tokugawa Shogunate was established, and he later became the head of the secret service too, or something. All the same, he was also a fearsome warrior and also wrote on the subject of swordsmanship and military philosophy. His book is organized into three sections, reflecting Munenori's three views of swordsmanship: "The Killing Sword," "The Life-Giving Sword," and "No Sword."

I have some problems with Munenori that I don't have with Musashi. First of all, his record is more spotty. Musashi, by all accounts, was never defeated in the more than 60 duels he fought; no such statistics exist for Munenori. Furthermore, ol' Yagyū strikes me as being less than proletarian; he was appointed to his positions by virtue of his shogun father's prestige, and never went wandering about Japan as Miyamoto did, fighting sword duels and honing his science. I got the impression he was less experienced and more bureaucratic. Last, and most vexing of all, Munenori's writing style is not as direct, and quite a bit more airy and abstract in nature.

Take a look at these two examples and see what you think. The first is an excerpt from Musashi's writings in the Water Scroll:

Stabbing the Heart. Stabbing the heart is used when fighting in a place where there is no room for slashing, either overhead or to the sides, so you stab your opponent. To make your opponent's sword miss you, the idea is to turn the ridge of your sword directly toward your opponent, drawing it back so that the tip of the sword does not go off-kilter, and thrusting it into the opponent's chest. The move is especially for use when you are tired out, or when your sword will not cut. It is imperative to be able to discern expertly.

Now try a little Munenori. This is from "The Killing Sword" (I haven't gotten any further than that yet):

Mood and Will. The mind with a specific inward attitude and intensive concentration of thought is called will. Will being within, what emanates outwardly is called mood. To give an illustration, the will is like the master of the house, while the mood is like a servant. The will is within, employing the mood. If the mood rushes out too much, you will stumble. You should have your will restrain your mood, so that it does not hurry. In the context of martial arts, lowering the center of gravity can be called will. Facing off to kill or be killed can be called the mood. Lower your center of gravity securely, and do not let your mood become hurried or aggressive. It is essential to control your mood by means of your will, calming down so that your will is not drawn by your mood.

See what I mean? Musashi's style leaves me thinking Boy, wouldn't want to meet him up a dark alley. Munenori's style leaves me thinking Uh, what?

While I believe that I understand what Munenori is talking about—willing yourself to remain calm in battle, so that you don't get careless and make a mistake—he discusses things in an abstract and even flaky manner that irritates me, especially after experiencing Musashi's directness.

Perhaps I'm prejudiced in favor of Miyamoto Musashi. The man was just wicked cool. Spine-tingling images form in your head when you read about some of the moves and techniques in The Book of Five Rings. Musashi was a master of the two-sword style, fighting with both a regular-length katana and a shorter wakizashi. I borrowed this fighting style for one of the protagonists in my novel, the one reincarnated from Musashi himself.

I wasn't lying before: legend has it that Musashi remained undefeated to the end of his days. Sure, some witnesses claimed he cheated on occasion, either attacking when his opponents weren't ready or using a longer weapon than theirs...but the fact remains that, at the end of the day, Musashi was left standing. That's no small feat for that day and age. Yagyū Munenori just doesn't have that same kind of hero appeal that rogues like Musashi, Wild Bill Hickok, and other larger-than-life historical figures do. All the same, I am enjoying both Musashi's and Munenori's writings. Like I said, I've never read anything by any Oriental writers before, and doing so for the first time has been a cultural thrill ride. It's fascinating to speculate on the events of these men's lives that shaped their beliefs about war and military science so strongly...and also to wonder at the wisdom contained within their writings that reverberates with contemporary Westerners like me even to this day.