Title: Aquariums in Pyongyang
Author: Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot
Genre: Biography
Year Published: 2001
Rating: 7 / 10

Everyone believes that concentration camps cannot exist anymore. How could a person be so cruel to another? Especially to ones country man? In this book the story takes place in North Korea under the rule of Kim Jong-il between 1970 to 1992. A rich Japanese family originally from Korea decide to make their way to North Korea during the 70's to become good Communists. After living there for a number of years in relative luxury, they get accused of some crime and sent to prison. As the custom is, your whole family is sent off, parents, children, grandparents. The grandmother is the one who convinced the whole family to go, even though the grandfather had several very successful casinos and they were very well of in Japan. They gave up their entire fortune to the North Korean government and integrated themselves into their new life. Most of the story takes place in a concentration camp called Yodok, where the family is imprisoned for the next 10 years. The accounts of their time there are hair raising and chilling. One keeps asking “How can anyone do this to another person? Children? Whole families?” Their life consists of trying to survive, not get beaten to death and meet work quotas so that they can live another day. They are constantly reminded how fortunate they are to be given another chance, that the great Kim Jong-il has given them a second chance, the redeem themselves and maybe one day be given the honour of rejoining society.

This book is scary mainly for the parallels between it and George Orwell's 1984. It seems like the North Korean government is using those political ideologies as their doctrine. From people spying on each other, to worshiping Kim Jong-il as a god. In a country where the government over exaggerates their factories outputs, to total control of the media. One should read 1984 before this book, to truly understand how frightening Kangs account is. Another frightening parallel is of this and Stalins Gulags and Hitlers Concentration Camps. Both places housed the undesirables. In Yodok, it was divided up into two different categories, the redeemable and not. The non-redeemable would never be allowed to leave, as their fate was sealed. Everyone there become an unperson, no one in the outside world knew what happened to them, not even the family or friends that got spared their fate. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" would have been an appropriates camp title, or as Hitlers Auschwitz's had "Arbeit Macht Frei" or "Work Will Make You Free".

A third of the population is in danger of starving right now, people disappear and are never seen again, the economy is crumbling. So the real question is, does the world help this country? If the UN sends food does that not only keep the problem going? Should the world not eliminate the problem and work from there? But once again we are faced with the issue of trying to re-educate an entire population who believe that Kim-Jong-il is the god, and the rest of the world are to blame for the problems they are seeing right now. Every ounce of blame is passed onto the rest of the world while the tyrannical government becomes the saviors and the defender of the free.

This book is a very easy read. It's not a long book and it's written in a way that should appeal to anyone. I would highly recommend this book as an insight into North Korea, a government which has absolute control and to get a glimpse of what it must have been like in Russian gulags and Germany's concentration camps.

Title: Childhood's End
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Genre: Science Fiction
Year Published: 1953
Rating: 8 / 10

And the copy I have is the above one, first printing!!! WHOOT.
I ended up reading this book because of The Sentinel. Reading the short story, Guardian Angel will give you a good idea whether or not you would want to read this book. I ended up really enjoying it in the end, even though the book was not written as well as some other of Clarke's books. Most books of this type always leave you hanging too much in the end, letting you decide what may have happened and the final outcome of the story is. But in this book, I felt he left the story off just at the right place, giving you enough conclusion to the story and human civilization. The ending of the book is where the genius of Clarke really comes out. I highly recommend this book, it is a quick read, nothing too heavy, a great Sunday afternoon type of novel.

The idea of having a supreme beings come to earth and virtually take over is not an new one. The main difference is in this book we find out that they are just doing a job for another higher power. The Overlords as they become to be known slowly help mold our world into accepting them as they are. Since superstitions in so deeply embedded into our psyche, the Overlords realize that they will have to be very delicate of humanities fear center. The story describes that the Overlords have been seen once before by humans, not physically, but by some deep embedded memory, thus the need for secrecy and the need to remove superstitions, specifically the devil. For what we have called evil and been frightened of, would in the end watch over us, as humanity as we know it dies. As we find out, the Overlords are here to over see the evolution of Homo-Sapiens, into a higher being. The book goes into and begins to describe how truly marvelous and strange the universe can be, and how in our current state could never hope to understand it. The example given is a nearly two dimensional being living on a flat surface trying to understand the third dimension. The story ends as all the children under the age of 15 begin to evolve further than anyone had ever imagined. All of a sudden, they stop being human, they develop incredible powers, make rivers run backwards, and the moon spin. The rest of humanity does not take this well, having all the worlds children taken from them, knowing that they are the last, that death is at hand. The children begin to exhibit stranger and stranger behaviors, slowly becoming one being made up of many cells and finally evolve, leaving the Earth behind, taking all of it's energy with it and joining the Overmind. As we discover in the end, the Overlords are jealous of us, and of the many other races they have supervised during this evolutionary stage. Despite their technology which to the humans seemed god like, they are stuck, never to transcend their current state.

One interesting aspect was the Overlords willingness to partake in their function. Their acceptance of a higher power instructing them what to do, and knowing they cannot evolve to the same level. Watching an Earth, transcend from barbaric animals into the same being that governs and controls the Overlords must have been a difficult thing to watch. But time after time as this evolutionary step has happened, they study it, they watch trying to understand how they can be next. Our childhood ended, but they seem to be stuck for ever, as adolescent teens.

Title: The Sentinel Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Genre: Science Fiction
Year Published:
Rating: 8/10

Rescue Party
This book takes place on a space ship sent to a solar system that is about to go nova. The reader discovers that this is SOL and these are the last few hours of Earth, before it gets destroyed by it's life giver. As the aliens explore this dieing planet, the discover that there is no one left. It has been abandoned with scientific devices pointed into the heavens. As the explorers leave, they decide to follow the line of sight on the scientific instruments still on the ground. On their way, they discover the last of the human race, in hundreds of spaceships traveling through the stars. The most interesting part of this story is the last paragraph, where is insinuates the rise of man once again, and causing grate grief in the universe. A quick and pleasant read.

Guardian Angel
Excellent short story, because of this I stopped reading The Sentinel and began to read Childhood's End right away.
Breaking Strain
Surprisingly this story is very anti-climatic. I was expecting a lot more conflict, more deep down dilemma. The story didn't draw me into it, I didn't feel for the two people inside who knowingly were going to die, or one of them.

The Sentinel

Jupiter V

Refugee

The Wind from the Sun

A Meeting with Medusa
Life on Jupiter? why not… excellent short story, who says you need Earth type environment for life.

The Songs of Distant Earth
Well, this was just 3 pages or so, but it did get me a little interested in the book. I did buy a copy of it recently so I could read it if I wanted to. But after reading the summery, it has moved down the list a tad.