Month: April 2007

Review: Samurai William by Giles Milton
(Review published Sunday, June 09, 2002, reviewed by Alex Meehan)

In 1598, an English man named William Adams set sail for Japan as pilot of a Dutch expedition with five ships and 100 men. Lured by the thought of lucrative silk and spice trades, the Europeans hoped to make their fortune and return with enough cash to secure their futures.

However the journey proved extremely difficult, and when Adams eventually landed in Japan in 1600 after 20 months at sea, four ships had been lost and just 24 crew had survived. Those that did make it were suffering from scurvy and dysentery — only six could stand and several died the week after they arrived.

Giles Milton’s Samurai William is the story of this epic voyage to Japan and the subsequent events that took place during Adams’s 20-year stay in the country, with a special focus on his spectacular rise in stature in the court of the feudal Shogun, or ruler of Japan, Lord Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Milton’s account of the trip makes for unsettling reading. Sailors of this period did not yet know that fresh fruit prevented scurvy, and so many died painfully on long sea journeys.

Standard rations consisted of salted meat and biscuits which were frequently infested with weevils. This was bulked up with whatever fresh food could be gathered en route, although boiled rats and mice also featured when stores ran low.

In 1600, there were no reliable maps of the Pacific and the Far East, and navigational techniques were still extremely rudimentary. As a result, the route taken by Adams’s expedition involved sailing down the coast of Africa, across the Atlantic, through the Magellan Straits and across the Pacific to Hawaii before finally reaching Japan.

Europeans had arrived in Japan some time previously — most notably Jesuit missionaries intent on converting the natives to Catholicism. The Jesuits had told the ruling Shogun that all of Europe was united in Roman Catholicism under the authority of the Pope, and that all rulers in Europe deferred to him.

Needless to say, the priests weren’t too impressed when the Dutch and English Protestants aboard Adams’s boat arrived, and tried to have them crucified. But Shogun Ieyasu was intrigued by the tales of political division which Adams told, and invited him to court to educate him in European politics as well as shipbuilding and navigational techniques.

Much to the displeasure of the religious orders in Japan, Adams rose in stature to become a trusted confidant of Ieyesu and he was eventually honoured with the title of Samurai and Hatamoto, or Lord, complete with country estate and retainers.

After 13 years as the only Englishman in Japan, Adams was longing for the company of his countrymen. But he was horrified when the next batch of English seamen eventually arrived — he thought them smelly, bad mannered and uncouth; they in turn thought Adams had gone native.

He had adopted the local customs of bathing daily, as well as washing and oiling his hair. He dressed in silk kimonos, had a large retinue of servants and carried the signature daisho, or twin swords, of the Japanese ruling samurai class. Most shockingly, he had married and had children by a local Lord’s daughter, despite having a wife and daughter back home in London.

By contrast the newcomers had been on a ship for two years without a wash, had lived on rats, were suffering from scurvy and were intent on boozing and whoring once they hit dry land.

While Milton’s book purports to be about William Adams, it would probably be more accurate to describe it as an intensely readable account of the first trading missions to Japan.

Much space is given to documenting other voyages to the region at the time, key among them the Dutch East India Company’s efforts to establish trading bases around the Far East.

Much of the book is constructed from the records and logs left by the sea captains and pilots of the day, and so also provides an intriguing insight into the workings of feudal Japan and the attitudes of European travellers to this unique island nation.

Adams’s story was the inspiration for James Clavell’s epic novel Shogun, and the subsequent 1970s TV series of the same name starring Richard Chamberlain. It’s easy to see why, as it is a fascinating tale.

Giles Milton has managed to provide a complex history lesson in the form of an engaging narrative. Anyone interested in the mysteries of the East or in the cultural make-up of the inscrutable Japanese will find this an engaging read.

Prey by Michael Crichton, Harper Collins, €17.35
(Review published Sunday, January 12, 2003, The Sunday Business Post, review by Alex Meehan.)

When Jurassic Park became one of the biggest hits of the 1990s, scientists bemoaned the fact that the story’s nightmare scenario of the return of the dinosaurs set back the image of genetic engineering by ten years.

With Michael Crichton’s latest techno-thriller, Prey, those in the know are already levelling the same accusations. The plot follows a tried and trusted Crichton formula — meddling scientists have opened a technological can of worms in the misguided pursuit of profit.

This time however, instead of giant dinosaurs running amok, microscopic nanotechnology robots have escaped from a secure research laboratory in the Nevada desert and are threatening to engulf the world.

The story centres on an out-of-work Silicon Valley programmer, Jack Forman, and begins by detailing his marital difficulties with wife Julia. She works for the mysterious Xymos Corporation, and has started putting in odd hours.

Jack suspects she is having an affair and so jumps at the chance to work for Xymos himself, troubleshooting a state of the art computer system using software he originally helped design.

The meat of the story takes place at the Xymos facility in the remote desert, where it emerges that ground-breaking research into the use of nanotechnology to create remote controlled spy technology has gone horribly wrong.

Millions of microscopic nanobots have escaped the facility and are lying in wait for their creators outside the safety of the lab. Jack, along with the usual mix of scientist types, is trapped inside and is faced with the problem of killing off the nanobots before it’s too late.

Nanotechnology is still in its infancy as a technology, but the premise is that machines can be made so small that they could, for example, be used inside the human body for medical purposes.

Prey explores the idea that such atom-sized machines could be controlled using computer software, replicating the characteristics of animals, most notably predators and prey.

But the nanobots in Prey start to reproduce like bacteria and create man-sized swarms, and also develop the ability to evolve. The swarms appear and disappear at will and can float through keyholes and under doors, but most worrying of all is that they start to eat living things in order to reproduce.

For Jack Forman, a potential solution comes in the form of interpreting the programming behind the techno-bugs. They act like animals, so if you know how animals act you can fool the swarm. At least for a while.

Prey isn’t an awful read, it’s just not as good as you expect from someone like Crichton. It has its high points — his descriptions of characters working against the clock help to build tension, while the plot development at the beginning is well handled.

But the characters are mostly one-dimensional stereotypes with little engaging depth. Lengthy sections recall phone conversations and most of the time the plot is as transparent as a mediocre airport novel.

In addition, large tracts of text are given over to lengthy explanations of the technology involved in this type of research, as well as the philosophical implications of its use. While this is a clunky technique that interrupts the flow of the book, it has also left Crichton open to criticism for other reasons.

The specialist website Nanotechnology Now said in its review of Prey that the science was “not just wrong, it’s stupid”.

This would be forgivable in the name of a good plot, but sadly Prey does not read like the latest offering of an experienced and extremely successful author. It would make a fine lightweight holiday read, but don’t expect to be blown away.

Interestingly, the movie version of this book is already in pre-production and should be in cinemas by 2004. Unlike Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs though, swarms of semi-invisible nanobots don’t immediately spring to mind as ideal silver screen baddies.

While researching a story today, I fell victim to the narcissistic temptation to search for myself on the net (my name that is, not a sense of spiritual purpose) and one of the responses was this story – this is the first piece I had published in 1996 as paid journalism.

Ahh, the good old days, when the Irish Times would let me past the front desk!

 

Dalkey fears goats starved to death
By ALEX MEEHAN

EFFORTS are under way to determine the cause of the death of 20 goats on Dalkey Island, Co Dublin, amid suspicions that they have starved.

Only a male and a female remain of the historic herd that first started grazing on the island more than 200 years ago.

A vet attached to Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown council believes the animals were probably killed by an infection, according to Mr Donal O’Neill, senior administrative officer with Dun Laoghaire parks department.

But there is local speculation that the goat herd may have starved to death. “It was a very dry summer last year, and there isn’t much vegetation on the island,” one local man said. “There are also a lot of rabbits and birds. A herd of 22 goats is quite a strain on an island that small. I think they starved to death.”

According to local people, the goats were being kept alive by sympathisers sailing out and leaving hay on the island.

The council says that, because the goats are wild, they were left to themselves more or less. “Some of them have died, yes. We have a vet that goes over every fortnight and he was there last week and they were fine. Some had died of natural causes, like old age, but that’s normal,” said Mr O’Neill.

A diver swimming in the area earlier this week reported seeing the bodies of several dead goats floating in the water.

“When this was reported, we sent the vet over again to check and most of the goats were dead. There are two left, a male and a female,” said Mr O’Neill.

A council vet has taken samples from the dead animals for analysis. It has no plans to introduce more goats to the island.

Ms Therese Cunningham, of the Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said she was distressed and concerned about the deaths.

“The goats have been a feature of Dalkey’s heritage for many years.

The goats have been on the island since the Martello tower was built in Napoleonic times. They were originally put there to provide milk for soldiers garrisoned at the tower.

Taken from http://www.ireland.com . . .