My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

I discovered P.G. Wodehouse in my late teens.  It was a happy encounter.

Wodehouse's writing is a triumph of levity over gravity.  That is about the most profound thing about his works - the rest is entertaining fluff.  But what fabulous entertaining fluff it is.

If Wodehouse is remembered for anything, it is for his Wooster and Jeeves stories.  My Man Jeeves contains eight short stories, four of which feature Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves (the other four feature Reggie Pepper).  These are the earliest of the Wooster and Jeeves stories.  

Bertie is a man of independent means but with little commonsense.  He spends most of his time thinking about betting on horses and buying clothes.  Jeeves, on the other hand, has oceans of commonsense as well as vast reservoirs of experience and an impeccable sartorial taste.  The tales are usually about how Jeeves rescues Bertie from preposterous social situations, bad gambling decisions and fashion faux pas.  And that is about as deep as it gets.

The obvious joy about reading the Wooster and Jeeves stories is discovering how Bertie is dropped into trouble (and trouble, it seems, comes looking for him) and how Jeeves extricates him from it.  There is always a happy ending, and Bertie is always grateful for Jeeves' help.  A subtler joy is Wodehouse's lightness of touch.  Bertie, who is usually the narrator, tells his tales in the breeziest of manners.  His choice of phrase is a delight - for example, he describes an empty-headed friend as "unclouded".  As a result, the pages just roll by.

Entertaining, surprising and always comical, Wodehouse is a must read.

Whipping Star by Frank Herbert

Welcome to the worlds of the ConSentiency.  

In the far-flung future, humans and number of other sentient species have created a galaxy-spanning democracy. Citizens can travel instantaneously from planet to planet through jumpdoors, a technology provided by mysterious entities called Calebans.

The ConSentiency is so efficient at passing laws that a special force called the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab) has been created to throw spanners in the legislative machinery to slow it down - for everyone's sake.  Jorj X. McKie is a Saboteur Extraordinary - one of BuSab's elite operatives.

But something is happening to the Calebans.  They are disappearing one by one, and each disappearance is accompanied by millions of deaths and cases of spontaneous insanity among the citizenry of the ConSentiency.  Now there is only one Caleban left, and it is being slowly tortured to death.  If it dies, it could mean the death of billions throughout the galaxy.  It is up to Jorj X. McKie to rescue the Caleban, but his hands are tied by the constraints of the law.  Can the Saboteur Extraordinary find the loopholes he needs to save the day?

Frank Herbert has a knack for creating believable fictional worlds and taking their internal logic to dizzying extremes.  In Whipping Star, we have interaction between humans and numerous sentient species.  They share similar psychologies, but each one has its own emphases.  As a result, the interplay between the various characters has to accommodate their differences whilst furthering the plot.  In particular, McKie has to decipher the utterly alien modes of thought of the last Caleban in order to save it.  Likewise, he has to deal with one or two psychotic bad guys.  In addition, there is the bureaucracy and its laws to contend with, and Herbert uses their complexities to add an additional layer of intrigue and frustration to the tale.

Whipping Star is a sci-fi ripping yarn: it is full of action, techno-babble and psycho-babble.  As is usual with Herbert, this book has its fair share of 'generous mouths' and characters 'swallowing in a dry throat'.  But it is all done with gusto.  If you want something that takes you out of yourself and gives your imagination a good workout, you can do a lot worse than spending time with Frank Herbert.