Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

At long last, I've finished the Hunger Games trilogy. At the end of catching Fire, Katniss is rescued from the Quell by the rebels in District 13, and we find her adjusting to her new life and role there in Mockingjay. District 13 has survived in part by becoming very regimented and militaristic. Each citizen there has a schedule printed on their wrist each morning by the master computer program, and they must follow it, or risk censure and punishment. Katniss has been given a lot of leeway at first because of her celebrity status and obvious mental issues after her ordeal, but soon she will be expected to toe the line and make herself useful to the rebel cause again.

Peeta, unfortunately, was left behind when Katniss was rescued, and he has been tortured and brainwashed by the government in the Capitol. He retains enough of his sanity to sneak a message to District 13 about an impending bombing during one of President Snow's propaganda broadcasts, though the rest of the things he is forced to say get him labeled a traitor by the rebels. Katniss eventually decides to step up and assume her role as the Mockingjay, the symbol of the rebellion, and one of her conditions for doing so is that Peeta will be spared, if ever he is rescued or captured. Most of Katniss' other allies within the Capitol have been tortured and executed, but she is determined not to lose Peeta.

There's still some unresolved tension in the air about whether Katniss will decide she loves Gale or Peeta more, and she agonizes over her every decision concerning them through much of the novel. I'm not real fond of whiny little protagonists, and her angst nearly pushes me into hoping that Collins will simply kill her off in the end.

There's an underlying theme in this novel regarding terrorism vs. freedom fighting. Some of the tactics proposed by the people in District 13 command and weapons development are ripped directly from Al Qaeda, making you wonder who the good guys are in Mockingjay. We already know that the Capitol doesn't hesitate to sacrifice children to maintain its rule, so there really aren't any surprises there.

Without spoiling anything, I think that Collins does a nice job of avoiding the usual cast of characters roundup - the "where are they now" - by the simple expedient of killing off just about everyone that we've come to know through the trilogy. Not much of a happily ever after, but after Catching Fire, we pretty well should have abandoned that hope. This trilogy provides a good YA read, and people who aren't normally into apocalyptic science fiction may like it, too.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

So, all is not peaches and cream, sweetness and light for Katniss and Peeta as they return to District 12, victors in the Hunger Games (subtitle: There's no such thing as happily ever after?). Though they are given beautiful homes to live in, and their families are taken care of, they're not content, and neither are all of the districts. It seems that Katniss unwittingly became a symbol for those who chafe under the rule of the Capitol, and the unrest is beginning.

President Snow pays her a visit to warn her that she mustn't encourage the rebels in any way, threatening harm to her family and her...maybe boyfriend...Gale. When the rebels don't settle down, despite her best efforts to calm things - she's really clueless, and it turns out that her handlers are in cahoots with the rebels, themselves - Snow gets really nasty.

Every twenty five years, there is a special Hunger Games event, called The Quell (from quelling the rebellion?). This time it is announced that the games will be played by previous victors, one male, one female, from each district. Since Katniss is the only living female victor from district 12, guess who gets to play? Snow can arrange to kill off Katniss in the games and deprive the rebels of their mascot. I wonder why the danger of creating a motivational martyr doesn't occur to him?

So, once more unto the breach, dear friends, for Katniss and Peeta. But they're not alone this time, and have acquired some unlikely allies with interesting skills among the other former victors. Things don't work out exactly as Snow had hoped, and when it's over, he's got an all out war on his hands.

Ok, this is a fast and amusing read, but not terribly deep.

Some things that bother me a bit have to do with the world-building Collins has done, or not done, in this series. The whole setup with the Capitol dominating all of the districts through threat of violence, and keeping them all starving, despite the obviously high tech gadgets, medicine and so forth available within the story (convenient to the story line), just doesn't make sense from an economic point of view. It has a bit of a gulag-like tone. I'm not sure just how you sustain a level of industry and high tech seventy five years after a rebellion that gives the people in the capitol access to synthetic limbs indistinguishable from the real thing, regeneration of tissue from wounds, force fields, the ability to manipulate the environment within the Arena to the extent of having a volcano wipe out a group of tributes, not to mention genetic engineering, all sustained on the backs of low tech slave labor.

Read the books, but keep your critical functions turned down.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I've been hearing great things about Suzanne Collins' trilogy for a long time. My daughter, who is not a big SF fan, read and enjoyed it, and her brother-in-law loved it, and loaned me the books. While they were sitting on my nightstand, my wife read and loved the first two, and my neighbor's wife called and asked to borrow the second book, having finished the first late one night. So, it was with a considerable sense of anticipation that I picked up The Hunger Games, and began to read.

It's been a long time since I read any post-apocalyptic fiction, as it went out of fashion in the 80s, when the threat of nuclear war finally fell off our national mental radar. The Hunger Games appears to be set in a post-U.S. world, where the country is now divided into 12 districts, under the control of a central government. It used to be 13, but the 13th rebelled a while back, and was utterly annihilated. I wondered a bit at the choice of 13 districts, whether it was modeled on the original 13 colonies, was picked as an unlucky number, or had something to do with the number at the Last Supper, with the 13th being the betrayer.

Life is not uniformly good in the twelve districts, as some have more resources than others, and as part of their "contract" with the government, each district must pay a "tribute" of two children, chosen by lottery, each year for The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games are what I thought the tv show, Survivor, was going to be more like when I heard the concept, except that in the games, the last person surviving wins, and anything, including murder, is encouraged.

Katniss lives in the twelfth district, a poor area, and has spent much of her childhood hunting and scavenging to help feed her baby sister and utterly clueless mother. She's good with a snare and a bow, and has spent a lot of time in the wild areas near her home. When her sister's name is drawn in the lottery to participate in the slaughter, Katniss volunteers to go in her place.

In my opinion, there's really nothing surprising in this book. Katniss' trials in the games are well-written and convey her sense of desperation and fear, but the outcome is never really in doubt. There's a bit of the David and Goliath thing going, as she's a little scrawny and underfed due to her history, while the tributes from the more prosperous districts are bigger, stronger, faster, and have spent their lives training to fight. We all love to see an underdog win, and perhaps that's the appeal of this book.

There are, however, some political rumblings scattered throughout the book that bode well for the next couple of sequels. Not everyone is happy with the way the government is running things, and I think it likely that Katniss may become either a symbol or a leader for a revolution. We'll see how Collins handles it.

The Language of God, by Francis Collins

Having enjoyed Francis Collins' other book, The Language of Life, so much, I thought this one was sure to be quite good, as well. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite what I was expecting. Collins borrows quite frequently from the apologetics of C.S. Lewis, which I happen to have read and possess copies of in my library, so if I wanted to listen to the "usual suspects", I'd just go to the source.


Collins came to faith a bit late in life, and had some issues reconciling contemporary Christian doctrine, especially that of the Young Earth creationists and the Intelligent Design proponents, with his background in science and genetics. Much of the book describes his personal quest to do this. If you're a scientist trying to figure out spiritual principals, or a christian fundamentalist struggling with scientific dogma, this book may help a bit.

One of the key things to bear in mind is that the Bible was never intended to be a science textbook. Its authority is supreme in spiritual matters, but it really doesn't address things like atomic structure or the universal gravitic constant. Interestingly enough, in Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, he mentions that certain prominent scientists in history, such as Newton and Bacon, believed that the bible contained a wealth of scientific knowledge, if only it could be decoded. Brown dances around this point cleverly by expounding on Noetic science in his novel, wherein humans are able to affect changes on the world around them soleley by the power of their minds. But, I digress.

Some quotes from Collins:

"...I found it difficult to imagine that there could be a real conflict between scientific truth and spiritual truth. Truth is truth. Truth cannot disprove truth."

"The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshiped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful - and it cannot be at war with itself."

"...If God is truly Almighty, He will hardly be threatened by our puny efforts to understand the workings of His natural world. And as seekers, we may well discover from science many interesting answers to the question 'How does life work?'. What we cannot discover, through science alone, are the answers to the questions, 'Why is there life anyway?' and 'Why am I here?'".

He quotes Lewis frequently, as in this bit of his views on Man and evolution, "...in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say 'I' and 'me,' which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgements of truth, beauty and goodness."

Whatever your position, this book should make you scratch your head and think a bit.

The Language of Life, by Francis S. Collins

I was just browsing the New Books section at the library and saw this book, decided it sounded interesting. I wasn't wrong. Collins is the former head of the Human Genome Project, so he's seen the field of genetics explode over the last few decades, providing him with unrivaled insights into the past, present and future of the intersection of genetics and medicine. Given some of his discussions of hemophilia in the book, one could rightfully say he's on the bleeding edge of this technology.


Mundanely enough, Collins says that the single most important source of information about your future health is to be found...in your family health history! "Family health history turns out to be the strongest of all currently measurable risk factors for many common conditions..."

Collins mentions the science fiction film, GATTACA, when he's discussing the potential of newborn genetic screening. Strangely enough, I've never watched that film, and it suddenly dawned on me as I was reading The Language of Life that the title of the film is a genetic code, containing the letters for the four DNA bases, Guanine, Adenine, Cytosine and Thymine. Insert forehead smack here. Interestingly, he says it's estimated that 60 to 70 percent of one's adult body weight is determined by genes, so if a child is born with a predisposition to obesity, parents could adjust the child's diet so as to avoid the all too commonly seen childhood obesity later on.

It's even possible to do a genetic scan earlier than at birth, with a process called PGD (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis). This isn't practical for naturally conceived children, but for parents undergoing IVF (in-vitro fertilization) procedures. At the eight-cell stage of division, it's possible to remove one cell without affection future development of the embryo, and to then perform a genetic scan. Of course, there are ethical questions raised about what we do with this information, but if it was used to inform the parents or the child, itself, of possible future medical issues, rather than as a go/no go decision point to abort the fetus, I don't think most people would have an ethical problem with it, any more than performing an amniocentesis is done today.

There are actually several readily available commercial genetic screening tests at this time, which can scan for some of the most common genetic risk factors. They're a little spendy, but what's it worth to know that you're at a higher risk for a specific disease than the general population and to be able to take preventative steps? Some of the more common diseases for which genetic risk factors are well-identified are heart disease, breast cancer, colon cancer, sickle cell anemia, and diabetes.

Collins describes the three types of genes that have a role in preventing cancer; any of which can pose a cancer risk when they're defective. There are the oncogenes, which code for proteins that normally promote cell growth. The oncogenes' growth signals are ordinarily tightly regulated, occuring only in the right conditions. A mutation in this type of gene, however, can remove the restraints from the growth signal, causing cell growth to go out of control, like a Toyota on the highway. There are also cancer genes called tumor suppressors, whose function, as you might suspect, is to act as a brake on cell growth when it's time for cells to stop growing. One of these genes, called p53, actually stops the process of cell replication if it determines that the DNA in those cells has been damaged. A third type of cancer gene is one that performs like a DNA spell-checker. If there are defects in the genetic code, it will create repair enzymes to fix the code.

Collins says that most of the mutations in a cancer cell are not hereditary, but are acquired during a person's lifetime. Just the error rate in copying 6 billion base pairs of DNA in the 400 trillion cells within the human body causes most of these mutations, without taking into account any envirommental effects. That most of us go through life without being afflicted with cancer is the result of the work of the cancer-preventing genes.

Knowing how these and other genes do their work has proven key in the treatment of a number of diseases. This knowledge has helped doctors and pharmaceutical companies develop drugs that treat the causes of some diseases at a genetic level, or by stimulating production or suppression of proteins that are lacking or in too much abundance. It has helped avoid some adverse drug reactions - what was the figure he used? - there are 100,000 deaths a year in the U.S. alone from adverse drug reactions!

The areas where genetics is a little less sure are that of personality, spirituality, intelligence, and sexuality. In his section on researching the causes of male infidelity, Collins mentions one fun fact you can use to astonish your friends. Among North American voles, "Prairie voles make lifelong monogamous pair bonds, while their close relatives, the montane and meadow voles, do not, indulging instead in a series of one-night stands." So Tiger does have an excuse; he wasn't under his own vole-ition.

In total, this book is fascinating reading for the layperson. Collins does a great job of explaining a horrendously complex subject in simple words and sentences.