Among the Lilies, a novel by Stan Rice, part three. The taste of bread and true love

Stan Rice has just published another novel, Among the Lilies, the first novel in the trilogy Under the Sun. The central character is Elah, who is the scribe who writes the things that King Solomon takes the credit for: Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, as well as many other Old Testament writings.

The summary from Kindle is:

Elah, the narrator, is a servant in one of King Solomon’s harems. While this sounds like the best job in the world, Elah’s work is way below his mind. He spends all the time he can thinking and writing about what, if anything, God is doing under the sun. But then he meets and loves Henna, the only black woman in Jerusalem. She is confined to her stepfather’s walled garden. Elah risks his life to meet Henna in the garden.

While in a cavalcade to the cedar forests of Lebanon, which he intends to cut down to make his palace, The King (who resembles Elvis) elevates Elah to the position of chief scribe. When The King sees Henna, he decides to add her to his stable of wives. Meanwhile Gomer, who becomes the woman in charge of the royal kitchens and is an expert in poisonous wild plants, is not at all pleased. She wants Elah for herself, and doesn’t she try to do something about it. But she cannot keep Elah from meeting Henna again. His quest fails.

Elah becomes a leader of revolutionary forces against The King. Elah finally finds Henna in the muddy eroded landscape that used to be the forests of Lebanon. The King captures Elah and offers him the choice between death and not quite being dead.

Is true love like fine wine, or maybe whiskey? Or like exquisite candies? In Rice’s novel, true love turns out to be more like fragrant bread.

Gomer is the little woman who bakes the bread and eventually becomes the Head Baker. She wants Eli as her husband and will stop at nothing to get him—even while he still pines for Henna. Elah resists Gomer, until she sacrifices herself to save his life. Eli guards Gomer’s secret: she is a runaway Hittite slave. Eli realizes that Gomer’s love is what he really wants. This love story is as good as the love between Elah and Henna.

Even when Elah says that what he really wants is to die, since he cannot have Henna, Gomer is his ally. She knows desert wildflowers, and Elah has to trust her that she knows the difference between regular lilies and the visually-similar death lilies.

One of Elah’s tasks as head scribe is to find all Israelite folk stories and write them down. These stories, once organized, become much of the Old Testament: the stories of Lot, Barack, Gideon, Jotham, and Samson. Gomer is his comrade in collecting these stories. When Eli is banned from Jerusalem, he joins the rebel general Jeroboam, whom the Israelite people support. Gomer joins him.

But at the end temptation to have Henna is Elah’s downfall. The fact that Henna wants Eli is totally irrelevant to Solomon, who just smiles as she spits in his face.

Creativity in Hypothesis Generation: A Story about Leaves

A hypothesis needs to be testable. It does not need to be right. Almost any statement you could make, if testable, is a hypothesis. Silly hypotheses, which are very likely to be wrong, are a waste of time, but that is the only thing wrong with them.

Sometimes scientists focus on their own narrow research so much that they cannot dig themselves out of it unless they have a great deal of creativity. There are many examples of creative scientists. Today I give you Tom Givnish, now at the University of Wisconsin.

Some plants have mottled leaves. That is, their chlorophyll is patchily distributed in the leaf, rather than being a solid shade of green. An explanation for this is not possible within just the realm of photosynthetic physiology. You have probably seen a lot of mottled leaves. They may have patches or lines of white rather than being a solid green. Plant breeders cherish these plants, because they are decorative and people like to plant them in their yards. But occasionally you will see a stem with solid green leaves emerge on a plant that “is supposed to be” mottled. These are the stems that the horticulturalist cuts off and throws away.

But why should a plant out in nature have mottled leaves? Givnish came up with a creative answer. We cannot know if it is true unless we rerun the clock of evolution and watch mottled leaves evolve, or prevent them from evolving. But we can analyze their patterns and suggest believable answers. This is what Givnish did in an article in Functional Ecology in 1990.

He noticed that leaves that were evergreen in an otherwise deciduous environment are more likely to be mottled than other leaves. In particular, plants with mottled leaves are frequently evergreen plants near the ground in deciduous forests. Givnish used examples from North America, but I saw an example in a forest in Alsace, France: the Italian arum Arum italicum.

One thing that is strikingly obvious about evergreen herbs in a deciduous forest is that it is almost impossible for them to hide. They would therefore be an almost irresistible target for any herbivores in the forest (that had not migrated or hibernated). Givnish suggests that the plants, by producing mottled leaves, are hiding. It is camouflage.

It might seem easier for the leaves to just die back to the ground, the way most of the perennial herbs of the forest floor do. But there is an advantage to the plant to have leaves that are active in the winter and early spring. On the rare (and increasingly less rare) days that are warm in the winter or early spring, these plants can carry out a lot of photosynthesis in the bright sunlight that is not yet blocked by tree leaves that may not open for weeks or even months. In spring ephemerals, almost their entire year’s worth of food production is in the early spring before the tree leaves expand. How much more so with an evergreen plant on the forest floor.

Leaf mottling, by breaking up the line of vision that might make the leaves obvious, might make poor-sighted herbivores less likely to eat them. This is the same principle on which the camouflage of soldiers and hunters is based.

The Angst of Creativity; or, How Louisa May Alcott Solved the Creation/Evolution Problem

In Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Josephine March (Jo) wanted more than anything to be a fiction writer, no matter how hard she had to work at it or how little it paid. Jo is by far the most interesting of the four sisters in this book I find otherwise uninteresting. The only novel less interesting is Pilgrim’s Progress, which was the favorite novel of all four of the sisters. But Jo rocks!

When Jo was in her writing mood, everybody knew it. Here is the quote from chapter XXVII:

“Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and "fall into a vortex" as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Her "scribbling suit" consisted of a black woolen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally, to ask, with interest, "Does genius burn, Jo?" They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on; in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew; and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew; and not until the red bow was seen gayly erect upon the gifted brow, did any one dare address Jo.”

I understand what Jo (probably based on Alcott’s own experiences) felt. When I am writing, the experience consumes me, and when I re-read what I wrote, the feelings come back. It feels even better than sex.

But it is also frustrating. Everyone assumes the writer is in complete control, but this is not true. Once the writer creates the character and his/her world, there are certain rules and patterns that must be followed; even the creator cannot violate them. The creator must follow the laws of nature, that is, the nature s/he created.

And this is also true of God the Creator, whatever this might mean. Once the Big Bang happened, and the physical constants (such as gravitation) were established, the Creator could not violate them. Once the solar system formed, whatever happened next was pretty much constrained to the operation of natural laws. That is, once S/He created the world, S/He had to let evolution take its course. From this viewpoint, creation and evolution are the same thing.

Historical contingencies, otherwise known as chance events, appear to come to the rescue. Things happen for no apparent reason, and change the whole course of evolution. One could not have predicted that cyanobacteria would move into larger cells, but once they did, the whole evolutionary history of plants opened up. It didn’t have to be that way. One some other Earth, something else might have happened. But one can, in fact, question whether chance events can actually occur.

So God the Creator, if there is one, is trapped within His story. It must be very frustrating. Just ask Jo March.

Among the Lilies, a novel by Stan Rice, part two. What was Solomon thinking anyway?

Stan Rice has just published another novel, Among the Lilies, the first novel in the trilogy Under the Sun. The central character is Elah, who is the scribe who writes the things that King Solomon takes the credit for: Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, as well as many other Old Testament writings.

The summary from Kindle is:

Elah, the narrator, is a servant in one of King Solomon’s harems. While this sounds like the best job in the world, Elah’s work is way below his mind. He spends all the time he can thinking and writing about what, if anything, God is doing under the sun. But then he meets and loves Henna, the only black woman in Jerusalem. She is confined to her stepfather’s walled garden. Elah risks his life to meet Henna in the garden.

While in a cavalcade to the cedar forests of Lebanon, which he intends to cut down to make his palace, The King (who resembles Elvis) elevates Elah to the position of chief scribe. When The King sees Henna, he decides to add her to his stable of wives. Meanwhile Gomer, who becomes the woman in charge of the royal kitchens and is an expert in poisonous wild plants, is not at all pleased. She wants Elah for herself, and doesn’t she try to do something about it. But she cannot keep Elah from meeting Henna again. His quest fails.

Elah becomes a leader of revolutionary forces against The King. Elah finally finds Henna in the muddy eroded landscape that used to be the forests of Lebanon. The King captures Elah and offers him the choice between death and not quite being dead.

A thousand sex partners? What was Solomon thinking anyway? Three hundred were wives, with inheritance rights, and seven hundred were well-paid concubines. Obviously Solomon could not love all of those women, though he probably fantasized that he could. Was he simply a sex maniac?

King Solomon is, in this novel, the most narcissistic man who ever lived. He names everything after himself. He aspires to build a huge Temple, and an even bigger Palace. Rice models him after Elvis Presley who is, of course, The King.

Rice brings up the possibility that Solomon was the consummate politician. He had total dictatorial control over the Kingdom of Israel, so much so that the people tolerated high taxes and having to dedicate a month of labor every year to governmental, or to Solomon’s personal, projects. And perhaps Solomon was using his many marriages to consolidate his political power. Any provincial families who became restless and questioned Solomon’s absolute authority found that they could do nothing: they had already married their daughters into Solomon’s family!

Even the Temple was a political stunt. At the dedication ceremony, Solomon makes a long speech, mostly about himself. And there is a sign on the Temple: Your Tax Money at Work!

One of Solomon’s children is Prince Rehoboam, who is modeled after Machiavelli’s The Prince. He is as powerful and ruthless as Solomon, only he does not understand that true power comes from creating the appearance of altruism. Rehoboam fails because he does not know that even an absolute dictator needs to have the people like him.

Among the Lilies, a novel by Stan Rice, part one. The subversive writer in King Solomon’s court

Stan Rice has just published another novel, Among the Lilies, the first novel in the trilogy Under the Sun. The central character is Elah, who is the scribe who writes the things that King Solomon takes the credit for: Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, as well as many other Old Testament writings.

The summary from Kindle is:

Elah, the narrator, is a servant in one of King Solomon’s harems. While this sounds like the best job in the world, Elah’s work is way below his mind. He spends all the time he can thinking and writing about what, if anything, God is doing under the sun. But then he meets and loves Henna, the only black woman in Jerusalem. She is confined to her stepfather’s walled garden. Elah risks his life to meet Henna in the garden.

While in a cavalcade to the cedar forests of Lebanon, which he intends to cut down to make his palace, The King (who resembles Elvis) elevates Elah to the position of chief scribe. When The King sees Henna, he decides to add her to his stable of wives. Meanwhile Gomer, who becomes the woman in charge of the royal kitchens and is an expert in poisonous wild plants, is not at all pleased. She wants Elah for herself, and doesn’t she try to do something about it. But she cannot keep Elah from meeting Henna again. His quest fails.

Elah becomes a leader of revolutionary forces against The King. Elah finally finds Henna in the muddy eroded landscape that used to be the forests of Lebanon. The King captures Elah and offers him the choice between death and not quite being dead.

Rice has published this novel himself rather than looking for a commercial publisher because the fiction market is totally flooded with novels based on the Bible. The difference between most (or all?) of those novels and Rice’s is that the others are all either sand-and-sandal stories (reverent re-tellings of children’s Bible stories for adults), such as The Robe, an old novel by Lloyd C. Douglas; or creative derivations of them, such as The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd. None of them appear to be critical re-tellings from an agnostic, even cynical, viewpoint like Rice’s novel. No agent, editor, or reader would be able to find Among the Lilies in this veritable ocean of Bible fan-literature.

Elah is a servant in one of Solomon’s dozens of stables of wives, concubines, and sex slaves, where he is surrounded by temptations he cannot touch. The concubines are all beautiful, but the wives are faded and fat. And they think they can sing. Elah thought he had the worst job in the world, but it was at least a job.

But Elah has prospects. He is a good writer. At least, if anyone would want to read what he wrote, which was mostly deep and depressing things (the origin of the Biblical Ecclesiastes). His friend Eli is good with numbers. Someday, they fantasize, they will be Chief Scribe and Chief Steward.

Then Elah meets Henna, a black thunderbolt, the only sub-Saharan African woman in Jerusalem. She is beautiful and, like Elah, a good writer. An instant bond forms and Elah stops at nothing to find her again, which he does. This is what he wants: a partner not just of the body but of the mind and spirit. They exchange love notes, which have become the Song of Songs, Biblical passages seldom read in modern churches because of their explicit sexuality.

Elah and Eli succeed in their quests for importance in Solomon’s court. But Elah’s pursuit of Henna comes to a halt when Solomon decides he wants to marry her. Time and time again Elah almost meets up with her, until they get caught. At the end, when Elah and Henna are very briefly reunited, Elah gets to choose between being a living dog and a dead lion—words that he had written. This ending will make you wonder, just how far would you go in the pursuit of true love?

Tails of Evolution: Unnatural Selections, a story collection by Stan Rice, story six. A Taste of Honey

 

Stan Rice has published a collection of short stories, Tails of Evolution. Rice is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Evolution, Life of Earth, and popular articles about evolution. Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

            What you don’t know about evolution can kill you.

In these stories, Stan Rice introduces us to people who would never have imagined that evolution had any impact on their lives. A young fundamentalist Christian woman, out of place at a university, discovers that love can evolve. A creationist discovers half-fish half-amphibians in a swamp in Oklahoma. Two young Englishmen find themselves actors on the stage of Darwinian sexual selection. A fundamentalist bases his faith on hearing a devil bird. A young preacher finds a hidden city that is based on Darwinism. A food scientist discovers a tribe of Homo ergaster pre-humans in the cliffs of Madagascar. Darwin meets Lincoln, who was born on the same day in 1809. And a young man discovers that love is the most combustible thing in the universe.

The taste of an unusual honey from Madagascar jolted Isaac, a food chemist, into making a trip to track down the source of the mysterious flavor. He discovers a secret forest up in the tsingy limestone blade mountains that is left over from a couple of million years in the past. He also finds a tribe of Homo ergaster (also called erectus), a species of human ancestors left over from the past.

This being fiction, it is inevitable that Isaac falls in love with one of the ergaster women and couples with her. (Can they have children? This fascinating evolutionary question will remain forever without an answer.) But, this being fiction, Isaac has to return to his Homo sapiens world, from which he feels forever alienated.

Could a secret population of pre-humans survive somewhere in the world?

At Last, Getting Back At Evolution

Evolution has given apes, including humans, many astonishing advantages. But it has also taken some things away. Unlike monkeys, apes do not have tails. Evolution has taken our tails away from us.

For most mammal species, a long tail is very helpful in maintaining equilibrium, by counterbalancing the displacement of weight during motion, whether swinging from branches or walking. We humans have learned to walk just fine without tails, but there are some people who have equilibrium problems and cannot easily walk straight. I am one of those people.

Never fear, technology comes to the rescue. Japanese researchers have designed a prosthetic tail, about a meter long, with artificial vertebrae. I understand you strap it on with a belt. It can counterbalance movement in any direction and keep the person who wears it from falling over, or so it is claimed. I understand the tail is covered with a furry skin so it looks more natural.

I wonder what ever made researchers think that people would ever want to wear an artificial tail. Maybe they should sell it with a matching collar, so that if I get one, my wife can hold me on a leash. But most of us would prefer looking like we have equilibrium problems, while we use canes, than to wear tails. Stephen Vincent Benét wrote short story in which a humanoid cat conducted an orchestra by twitching his tail; others have written similar stories.

Every evolutionary change has costs and benefits. And if we try to make an artificial adjustment to what evolution has given us, it is difficult and expensive. And embarrassing too.