Destination Elsewhere: The 10,000 Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow
"But you still know about doors, don't you? Because there are ten thousand stories about ten thousand doors, and we know them as well as we know our names. They lead to Faerie, to Valhalla, Atlantis and Lemuria, Heaven and Hell, to all the directions a compass could never take you, to ELSEWHERE."
This is the fifth book I've read from the 2020 Hugo list, and the first one that I would have voted for over the winning "A Memory Called Empire". That one is a mystery involving Byzantine interplanetary intrigue. The 10,000 Doors touched my soul and made me cry.
January is a girl being brought up in the early 20th Century, in the emotionally distant home of a wealthy guardian while her father explores distant corners of a world not yet completely plundered by colonists. And there are doors to other worlds. Doors that foment leakage between worlds and that cause changes vital to humanity's cultural development. Doors to outer and inner space.
January is also a spirited, willful girl with a thirst for adventure, and therefore considered by society to be someone who needs to be "broken" for her own good, and taught to ignore nonsense and see only what her sensible betters see.
I cried a lot. But they're cathartic tears. Most of the time.
On Darwin's Shoulders: Genetics and the Origin of Species, by Theodosius Dobzhansky
Gene mutation, chromosome changes, restriction of the population size, natural selection, and development of isolating mechanisms are the known common denominators of many, if not all, evolutionary histories. Different phylogenetic lines vary, however, in that one or the other of these evolutionary agents may become limiting at different stages of the process. Polyploidy, self-fertilization, apogamy, and asexual reproduction create very special conditions, to which some references have been made in the foregoing chapters.
Interesting that I happened to read "Genetics and the Origin of Species" (part of the Great Books set, and scheduled to be read about now for a decade as part of that project) and "The 10,000 Doors of January" (put on the library's hold list earlier this year because Hugo nomination) at the same time. The poetry and science complement each other nicely.
Dobzhansky follows and builds on Darwinian evolution by exploring causes and effects of change at the genetic level, and how groups of organisms change or don't, in response to mutations and genetic alteration within their number. I have no idea whether Alix E. Harrow was influenced by this or any other genetic evolutionary theory, but her philosophy of the effects of Doors on the world is strikingly similar to Dobzhansky on mutations. Doors can be called social mutation material, maybe.
Recommended, because it's a lot easier to read and understand than most of the Great Books science volumes.
America the Banal: USA, by John Dos Pasos
In the morning the rancher, a tall ruddy man named Thomas, with a resonant voice, went over to the barn and offered him work for a few days at the price of his board and lodging. They were kind to him, and had a pretty daughter named Mona that he kinder fell in love with. She was a plump rosycheeked girl, strong as a boy and afraid of nothing. She punched him and wrestled with him; and, particularly after he'd gotten fattened up a little and rested, he could hardly sleep nights for thinking of her.
This book, actually a trilogy, spans most or all of the continental United States over three decades of the early 20th Century, interweaving like the Game of Thrones novels from the perspective of several characters of various backgrounds as they travel, make or fail to make fortunes, struggle for the rights of workers, fight in or avoid WWI, and experience amoral capitalism in the aftermath of victory.
Between the chapters involving the characters are biographical sketches of real historical figures like Thorstein Veblen, Joe Hill, and the Wright Brothers, sections of period news headlines and song lyrics, and first person stream of consciousness vignettes under the headline "The Camera Eye".
The main effect is one of a socialist's critical panorama of America. I found most of the barely interlocking plots forgettable, cliched and lacking the sense of an ending.