The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov is a Hugo and Nebula award winner. Written in 1972 during a period of his life when Mr. Asimov wasn’t writing much science fiction, The Gods Themselves was originally released as three separate stories. Each story deals with a new found energy source that seems to provide the answer to mankind’s growing need for energy. The source comes from a parallel universe.

The first story starts the book out well enough, with the discovery of the energy source and the theory of a parallel universe and the attempt by one man to discredit another man who gets all the credit for finding the energy source.

The second of the three stories deals with this rather odd parallel universe, where three child-like semi-solid aliens learn of their true place in their universe as they mature. This story makes a good attempt at immersing the reader in a totally alien universe, but somehow I just couldn’t quite care for these creatures as much as the author intended.

The final story takes place on the moon with a search for an energy source that can be used on the moon. If I haven’t made any of this sound exciting it is because it isn’t. Nothing in the book grabs the reader in a way that makes you not want to put the book down, nor are any of the ideas interesting enough to sustain an entire 300 page novel. Combine that with about a third of the entire book (the second story) that reads like a juvenile and you have the makings of another mediocre Hugo and Nebula award winner.

Rating: 6 out of 10.

The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin has it all. Even though it is subtitled A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, the subtitle doesn’t do the book justice. The topics this book covers may seem wide ranging but all make sense to the bigger picture the book attempts to paint. Those topics include:

• The story of a secret meeting of 7 powerful men in 1910 on Jekyll Island to draft the basic plan for what would become the Federal Reserve
• The intentional role that government bailouts play in the business of banking
• Some notable bailouts in the 1970s
• Government intervention in the mortgage industry
• The abandonment of the gold standard and the reason for the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (the reason was to establish world socialism)
• The IMF/World Bank acting to bailout nations around the globe
• A history of money, including the types of money and gold as the basis for money
• Fiat money and fractional money and the history of problems with each
• A brief history of banking
• How the Federal Reserve creates money from nothing as debt but does not create the interest to pay back on that debt
• How the House of Rothschild dominated the world of banking and the method by which they do so
• How the sinking of the Lusitania was set up to trigger the United States joining England and France in fighting World War I
• How the Bolshevik (Russian) revolution was not a spontaneous uprising of the masses but rather was planned, financed, and orchestrated by outsiders
• The early monetary systems in use by the American Colonies and our Founding Father’s establishment of the powers to issue money by the government
• The history of the first three central banks in the United States and how they failed
• The role of money and trade in the American Civil War
• The rise of J.P. Morgan
• The details of the passage of the Federal Reserve Act
• The rise of Woodrow Wilson to power as President
• The stock market bubble in the 1920s and the great depression of the 1930s
• The national debt
• The need to find a credible global threat in the form of environmentalism as a substitute for war
• Scenarios of what could happen in a banking collapse and how individuals can prepare for these scenarios
• Is M-1 subtractive or accumulative?

Throughout the course of the book, the author presents seven reasons to abolish the Federal Reserve. Those are:

• It is incapable of achieving its stated objective of stabilizing our economy.
• It is a cartel operating against the public interest.
• It is a lender who does nothing to earn its money, meaning it charges interest for waving the magic wand called fiat money.
• It generates inflation, our most unfair tax.
• It is used to fund wars.
• It destabilizes the economy. It is the height of egotistical folly for “experts” to think that they can outsmart or do better than the free market, which is the combined, interactive decisions of hundreds of millions of people all acting in response to their own best judgment.
• It is an instrument of totalitarianism. It is the starting point for creating extreme swings in the business cycle, which in bust phases of the cycle provides an excuse for increasing government power.

I told you this book has it all. I debated writing much more about this book, but nothing else I write seems to do the book justice, other than the fact that I give it my highest possible rating.

Rating: 10 out of 10.

Writing a review of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand turned out to be more difficult that I would have thought. This is my third draft. How do you review one of the longest novels ever written, which also happens to be cited as second only to the Bible in lists of books that changed people’s lives? I am going to take the easy way out and start with the nitpicks:

• The breakup of James and Cherryl Taggart’s marriage devolved into immature and unrealistic circumstances.
• Dagny Taggart is portayed as a strong character who takes charge of running a railroad company when no one else believes it can be done. But when she arrives in Atlantis, her attitude turns into that of a little girl which reminded me of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
• John Galt’s speech is like the Energizer Bunny. It keeps going and going. Anyone listening to the three hour radio address would have turned off the radio after 10 minutes.

Those three things are it for the nitpicks, which for a book that is over 1,000 pages long means that the rest of it is pretty good.

While Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction, the point of the novel is to explore the themes of the author’s philosophy of Objectivism. Ever since I first learned of Ayn Rand and objectivism, I had wanted to read Atlas Shrugged. But in the 20 years between learning what objectivism is and the time I finally got around to reading Atlas Shrugged, the book could not possibly change my life simply because my life had already been changed to what the effect of the book would have been. I have believed in objectivism for 20 years, so reading a novel about it could not possibly change my life.

Even though the novel was published in 1957, it is extremely relevant to today’s current political climate. I read Atlas Shrugged in September 2008. In the novel, I was reading fictionalized accounts of the government nationalizing the railroad industry and gaining more and more control over the economy. In the newspapers, I was reading about the government nationalizing institutions such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG and using Wall Street company collapses as an excuse to gain more and more control over the economy. The warnings of the consequences of the growth and abuses of government powers that people have stated for as long as man has been ruled continue to hold truth today. Atlas Shrugged presents a realistic example of how a nation founded on the principles of freedom and democracy can lead itself into socialism and what the consequences of those actions are.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

My immediate thought after completing The Eye of the World, Book One of The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan is how closely many of the characters and places equate to ones from The Lord of the Rings. Rand is Frodo, Moiraine is Gandalf, Emond’s Field is the Shire, Trollocs are Orcs, Myrddraal are the Nazgûl, Ba’alzamon is Sauron, and I could go on. But putting aside the obvious and I’m sure intentional influence of The Lord of the Rings, The Eye of the World holds its own as a rather good fantasy novel. The similarities to The Lord of the Rings do not become immediately apparent while reading the book and only seem more similar when thinking about the book in hindsight. These similarities in no way distract from the enjoyment of the book.

The pacing of the narrative fit very well within the 800 pages of the book. There was never a time where the story felt as if it dragged. Critical plot elements of the story and character details are spread out enough to keep it interesting, and the action in the story and peril the characters faced never seemed to stop. The most enjoyable part of the book occurrs near the middle, when the characters ended up being split into three different groups and the adventures of two of the main characters took on a Huck Finn/Tom Sawyer type of feel.

Even though I enjoyed this book and do plan on reading the next book in The Wheel of Time series at some point, The Eye of the World lacks that particular je ne sais quoi which separates a good book from a truly great book. Two aspects of the book prevent it from being great. First is the over use of the supernatural within the story. Once the reader begins to realize that anything can happen, no matter how fantastic it is, it makes the story seem less realistic. Second, the characters never quite make that leap to the point where the reader deeply and truly cares about them. I don’t think there was ever a point where if a character had died, I would have had a strong reaction. Despite these two shortcomings, The Eye of the World is a very enjoyable book.

Rating: 8 out of 10.