After killing Joy, John is a robot. That is actually what it says in the book.1 Even though the narrator suddenly turned into an automaton, he is still capable of writing down his thoughts and experiences. Rummel has a tendency not to think his metaphors through.
So John places Joy’s corpse in his car, where its existence would be plainly visible, as well as a shovel. He is going to dig her grave himself, on their weapons-training range for maximum symbolism points. Disposing of the body is yet another crime in addition to the murder. It should be noted that he also fills the car’s gas tank using fuel he had in a can, which is not legal either.
Rummel probably thinks that the burial scene is emotional, but there is no feeling in it at all. Even if there were, the readers would not shed any tears, because it is Joy who is being put to rest.
John drives to the airport and picks up Joy’s airplane tickets. Either this airport has a habit of delivering the tickets to customer’s houses (in an era long before the Internet) or John bought tickets to China in Joy’s name so that nobody suspects anything when she’s gone.2 Afterwards, John throws all of Joy’s belongings (except her car) into the bay. So all that jewelry she bought in Third World countries was for naught.
The next day, John wakes up and sees that he neglected to pack Joy’s toothbrush into the suitcases that he threw into San Francisco Bay, thus leading to this just classic line:
Her toothbrush! Joy! Joooy! The sledgehammer of stark realization finally smashed into me. I’D KILLED JOY! (page 325)
O bathos, thy name is Rudolph Rummel!
Yet again, John tells us that he still loved Joy to the very end. The Sue-dometer is being triggered from beyond the grave.
So John puts his rifle to his head and intends to join his @#$%-buddy in death, but then, in the very next sentence, comes to his senses enough to decide not to kill himself. No explanation is given for this sudden shift, even though people who are in such an emotionally compromised state that they consider suicide generally do not simply back out of it once they have their finger on the trigger.
Then, John decides to finish the mission, not because he is the only one left, but entirely for Joy’s sake. He doesn’t even care anymore, and just like the readers, only wants to get this over with.
He calls Hands the next day. He doesn’t bother to tell him that Joy is dead, which, once it becomes apparent that she isn’t coming back, should cast some suspicion on him. Unfortunately, this scene is pointless and Hands does nothing.
It turns out that each of our reduced heroes wrote letters to the other, which were only to be opened if one of them died before the mission was complete.3 John describes Joy’s letter as “so beautiful, so sweet.”4 To think that those words are even in the same sentence as Joy Phim! The letter also specifies that Joy wanted to be cremated, meaning that John read this after he had buried her, not knowing what she had wanted. He exhumes her, and “cremates” her by dousing her body in gasolene. Even more disturbingly, he kisses her now likely rotten corpse before the act.
I refilled her grave and marked it again with the bougainvillea plant. It may have been her temporary home, but it was now holy to me. (page 326)
That sound you hear is me throwing up in my mouth.
Weeks pass, with John crying himself to sleep every night. It would be one thing for him to grieve over the loss of a loved one, except that that loved one was a demonstrable psychopath. After this has gone on for far too long, John gets the news he was waiting for. A Chinese flight crashes, leaving no survivors. So of course, John takes advantage of this tragedy by telling Hands (no, I don’t know where Dolphy and Sal have gone) that Joy died in the crash. Remember, this occurred several weeks after Joy actually died. Wouldn’t Hands be a little suspicious about Joy spending weeks on a business trip in Asia?5 At no point had John implied that she would take that long. Amazingly, nobody will search airline records and discover that Joy Phim was never on any such flight. That would implicate Rummel’s Self-Insert, so he can’t have that. Even before the Internet, this could still be done, so come on.
Hands goes to John’s place and confides in him that he also loved her. That makes two posthumous Sue-dometer activations.
John buys an urn, fills it with soil to make the deception more believable, then invites Hands, Dolphy and Sal to a private memorial service. Apparently, memorial services revolve around altars to the deceased. Yes, an actual altar. There are no words.
Rather inexplicably, one word of the funeral’s description is set in a monospaced font. None of the rest of the book is. I have tried in vain to discover the reason for this.
The next few paragraphs are a description of the contents of the protagonists’ scrapbook, making a desperate attempt to appear that they changed world history for the better.
After the others leave, John stares at Joy’s urn for hours. This is bordering on an unhealthy obsession.
I thought of all that she had done, and I knew that her soul would eventually meet with those of the lives she had saved. (page 328)
If that is true, then there truly is no benevolent God.
After a line break, John soliloquizes to Joy’s urn. The first thing we learn through his Infodump is that Norman Thomas lost his bid for the presidency in a landslide, because elections are only ever won in landslides in Rummel’s fantasy world. He also says that Germany is a stable democracy6 and that Japan is a partial democracy, albeit with some ways to go before being truly democratic.7 Russia is not only now democratic, but is projected to become a superpower anyway, even without the war. Considering Russia’s political situation, it makes even less sense for it to be a stable democracy than even Taishō-era Japan.
Of course, there is now magically no nationalism (except in China) and everyone is happy. The westernmost parts of China gained independence in 1910— yes, before their intervention. Remember this during the next book.
Because there is no nationalism, a United Nations-esque organization was founded called the “United Democracies”, which apparently has vastly more power than the UN and is a proto-One World Government, with no objections. That’s kind of a silly name, and since the real-world UN doesn’t exist, there is nothing to prevent this new organization from picking that name instead.
Despite all this, there are still genocides in Africa, explicitly committed by the native Africans. What is this I don’t even…
All in all, this is a really lazy way out. Instead of actually showing the readers how the world has improved thanks to the protagonist, Rummel literally just tells us everything in a concluding speech. And most of this has the potential to actually be interesting, but the formation of the UN-analog and the decolonization process are both glossed over in about a sentence each. That sums up this book in a nutshell, really: interesting idea ruined by rushed execution.
After another line break, we learn that John is retiring from business and giving Dolphy, Hands and Sal the absurd sum of $200 million each as a severance package. I don’t know if Rummel is aware that a severance package is only given to those who are laid off. Because it is inconceivable that anybody other than our heroes run the Tor Import & Export Company, which is unimportant now anyway. It served as nothing more than a plot device, to be discarded when it ran out of use.
John uses the rest of his money to create… Tor’s groupies. This time, he names the organization after Joy, of course. If there was anybody who deserved the honor less, John and Joy probably killed them. She also gets a chair named after her at Harvard, despite the minor problem that she was never a professor. Somehow, Hands pulled some strings, but it was never mentioned that he was affiliated with Harvard before. Wasn’t he a high school dropout? These characters are so neglected that their own creator doesn’t even remember their backstories.
There is one more line break, after which we are told secondhand that Hands and the others found out about the time travel. This shocking revelation is glossed over by the equally vacuous reveal that apparently, they knew all along, because Dolphy is a fan of science fiction, never mind that science fiction as a genre didn’t really exist until Hugo Gernsback’s pulp magazines, first published in the 1920s and 1930s. Even though they deduced this long before, they had never gone to our so-called heroes about it. It would have been much more interesting if one of them had discovered that their bosses were time travelers long before, and confronted them about this while the interventions were going on. Then, maybe, John and Joy would be forced to tell them everything and give them the same Hobson’s choice that John received at the beginning. But of course, since that would provide conflict and suspense, it didn’t happen. It’s a real shame that Dolphy, Hands, and Sal exist, but serve no purpose to the story. They were the only interesting characters in the book.
Lastly, John reveals that he bought a mausoleum for his and Joy’s remains, and listed Joy as his wife, even though they were never officially married while she was alive, and one cannot marry a dead person.
When he finishes this Infodump, John commits suicide. I am not making this up. Here’s the quote:
“Now, my love, all is done. I signed a million documents. I purchased all the apartments in this building and helped the tenants move out of them and find new homes. The mission is over. It is time for me to join you. I have moved your ashes to the crypt and I will be with you in day or so, our souls forever commingled. I have left a will to ensure this will be done.
“Now I’m ready. The flames are approaching, and the smoke is almost too thick to see through. I can hardly breathe. In minutes I will lay down on the bed where I always slept with you. I will hold your photograph on my heart and on top of it, this account of our wonderful life together and our successful mission. It has kept me alive until now.
“I’m so sorry you died believing I hated you. I did not. I always loved you. Now, my sweetheart, my wife, we will be together again. You will know my love again. I’m coming.” (page 331)
What. The. Fuck. I can’t even describe how stupid and pointless this is.
Dying in a fire must be a truly terrible way to go.8
And with that, the chapter ends.
The book is not finished just yet. There is still an epilogue.
The year skips to 2001, starting with the inaugural address of the President of the United States. So apparently, there are still multiple nations in this world. In the address, the president states that the US will begin military disarmament. However, this is apparently not something that the “United Democracies” demanded. Now, disarmament is one of those things that, while completely admirable, only works if everybody does it. Otherwise, it’s just a tactical blunder— and I say this as an anti-war world federalist.
The scene then cuts to Harry Gavino, the manager of John and Joy’s mausoleum. One thing I’ve noticed while reading this book is that Rummel gives names to every character, no matter how minor. Gavino, at least, has some lines. He is showing his replacement around, just as an excuse for Rummel to describe the site in lavish detail. Even his Sues’ final resting place is perfect. It even has electric lighting! Seriously.
Joy’s knife is prominently displayed, but nobody comments on this.
To show how different the new universe is from ours, the manager’s replacement knows nothing of the significance of the Titanic. He assumes it was a cruise that John and Joy had gone on.
This is the epitaph:
Joy Phim-Banks—1936 John Banks—1938
THEY LOVED MANKIND
AND EACH OTHER
but
POWER KILLS. (page 333)
Since nobody knows the true circumstances of the deaths, the manager and his replacement are puzzled by the final line. Meaning that despite all their Sueishness and questionable activities, John and Joy go down in history as heroes.
The epilogue is still not finished. There is also a poem on the mausoleum wall:
Souls do not disintegrate and die;
Years pass and yet they do not fade away.
Memories are like a distant star
Pouring forth its light across the void.
All our tears and laughter do not lie;
Though we pass like dreams, our spirits stay,
Held fast by love, which is just what we are,
Yet in a form that cannot be destroyed. (page 334)
The manager’s replacement notices the rose in the vase, which looks new. He asks about this, and the manager tells him that he doesn’t replace the roses. He doesn’t know how there is always a fresh one there. You mean to tell me, Rummel, that John’s love for Joy somehow magically keeps the rose from decaying?
AREOING RABG QUAIHR GQUIRW QIUWHRG FQIUW FEQIWURBHGF
OH COME ON! JOHN KILLED JOY AFTER SHE DID SOMETHING SO SOCIOPATHIC THAT NOT EVEN HE COULD DEFEND HER ACTIONS ANYMORE! DON’T TELL ME THAT’S TRUE LOVE.
Okay, I have calmed down enough now to finish the spork.
The manager says that he doesn’t know how new objects keep showing up in the crypt, but just shrugs it off. I will assume that Tor’s New Groupies know about the tomb, or something, and keep putting stuff in there. And with the manager’s replacement saluting our heroes’ urn, the epilogue ends.
Now the story it at a close, but Rummel still wrote a two-page afterword, wherein he explains his reasons for writing the story and all. He claims that the democratic peace theory has been proven, though in actual fact it is hotly disputed, and claims that politicians listen to him. This is just him thinking that he is more influential than he really is, and implying that the Iraq War was inspired by his theory. (Hey, it was 2004 when the book was written, so the morality of that war will not be discussed in the comments. Understand?)
He even goes so far as to claim that his book should be used as a teaching tool to help people understand the twentieth century! Of course, the book is so obscure and poorly written that the author actually had to post it in its entirety, for free, on his website just to get people to read it. So that plan has failed. And with Rummel trying to justify his use of Very Special Flashback Sequences, the afterword ends. Now the book is truly over.
If Rummel can give his final thoughts, then so can I. While reading this book, the one constant I noticed again and again was the utter waste of potential. Instead of scenes of action-packed political intrigue and suspense, there’s pages upon pages of the heroes being flirtatious and all major plot points are summarized in a single page. Instead of the heroes being reluctant to compromise their own principles by killing people, one of them is a sociopath while the other one just lets himself be strung along. Instead of discussion of whether it is moral to try to change history, that is just taken as a given with the flimsiest justifications for events. And though the story tries at the end to say that Joy was wrong, everything before the last two chapters presents her as being always correct (as opposed to that idiot, John) such that her descent into villainy does not really mean anything. And that is the greatest tragedy of this book.
Footnotes
1 So, was Rossum’s Universal Robots still written in the new universe? If not, the in-universe readers of John’s diary will have no idea what he is talking about here. And since the play was written as an allegory of fascism, I find it a bit hard to believe that it would still be written in this (allegedly) vastly more peaceful world.
2 Before you ask, the police never come to John’s house for questioning, suggesting that either the Police Are Useless, or everyone just forgot about Joy. A fitting end for a Sue, I say.
3 Just so you know, this book was written before How I Met Your Mother even aired, so Rummel did not rip off a sitcom, surprisingly.
4 page 325
5 Instead, his response to the news is simply “Oh no!”, just as melodramatically as John’s earlier outburst, and definitely not in the tone of voice used by those informed of a death.
6 Before the hyperinflation, so was the Weimar Republic. This proves nothing.
7 Again, this was true in the real-world Taishō era. What’s that they say about counting chickens?
8 Yes, John set his house on fire, presumably right after he finished that diary. So how does the document survive the burning building?
Juracan on 5 October 2013, 21:01 said:
Well that was fun. I can’t say I know of another story in which the Sues get themselves killed.
Wait, you said ‘next book’ earlier. How is there a next book if the protagonists are dead?
Brendan Rizzo on 5 October 2013, 21:03 said:
How d’you think? Reset button. This particular reset is so contrived that it’s obvious that Rummel did not intend for there to be sequels, yet he wrote them anyway. I may go on to spork the next book when I have the time.
Tim on 5 October 2013, 21:12 said:
No no, look at it. The flames are approaching. He lit the fire before he even started writing it, and the fire is only just now reaching him. In fact, I think he’s supposed to have written the entire book in the time it took the fire to get to him.
swenson on 5 October 2013, 22:07 said:
I rather feel like throwing a party, in fact.
Hang on, hang on, I think I can pull myself together… nope.
Let me guess. Is it because the backwards Africans just won’t accept the benevolent rule of Europeans?
Sorry, I’ve been in contact with a lot of stupid racism lately, so I’ve found myself reacting strongly to anything that even smells of it.
Yay!
And I cannot wait to discover what the reset button is. You are doing the next book, you know. You are. >:(
Lone Wolf on 13 October 2013, 14:27 said:
and claims that politicians listen to him.
If politicians listen to Rummel, then our world is truly doomed.
And I cannot wait to discover what the reset button is.
The ending to this book actually does give some closure, but Rummel had to spoil even this by writing a ridiculous plethora of sequels. Seriously, this man is really bad as a writer.
Let me guess. Is it because the backwards Africans just won’t accept the benevolent rule of Europeans?
Or because European powers just Left Too Soon ™.
The most inept thing about it all is Rummel’s utterly ridiculous concept of history. He seems to subscribe to a villainous version of Great Man History, according to which any collapse of noble liberal democraties is caused sorely by a small handful of Evil People who want to destroy these democraties. Once you kill these people off, everything is just fine.
Ziggy on 13 October 2013, 23:34 said:
No no, look at it. The flames are approaching. He lit the fire before he even started writing it, and the fire is only just now reaching him. In fact, I think he’s supposed to have written the entire book in the time it took the fire to get to him.
If that’s really the case, then honestly this whole spork is kind of unfair. It’s easy to explain away continuity errors, inconsistent characterization, and logical fallacies if you take into account the fact that the person who wrote it was dying of smoke inhalation and was only moments away from dying a horrific death by fire. Frankly, I’m impressed that he spelled all of the words correctly; if it was me I would be too panicked to worry about that sort of thing.
If politicians listen to Rummel, then our world is truly doomed.
Maybe it’s one of those things where Rummel keeps talking and talking and TALKING while politicians smile blankly and wonder if they would survive the 4-story drop if they jumped out the window right then.
Ziggy on 13 October 2013, 23:43 said:
Incidentally, the Iraq War bit was pretty neat. Rummel might be a rubbish historian but even he has to be able to figure out that the Iraq War began before his book was published, so it’s clear at least to me that he was trying to hint that he himself is also a time traveler like John and orchestrated the whole thing himself. It would have been more impressive if he had chosen a different war though; if he had claimed credit for World War 2 or the Boxer Rebellion or something, in the same glib manner…
Tim on 14 October 2013, 03:10 said:
I think given it’s John plus the length of the book, he probably lit the fire a couple of blocks away after murdering the duty firemen.
Lone Wolf on 14 October 2013, 03:48 said:
Well, not every narrative from the first person should be presumed as written by this person afterwards.
Brendan Rizzo on 14 October 2013, 05:56 said:
To be honest with you, and to retain my sanity, I think that this was genuinely supposed to be John’s diary, and so only the final chapter was written while the house was on fire, the rest being written beforehand. But whatever makes sense, I suppose.
Epke on 14 October 2013, 07:23 said:
At long last! Yes! Brendan, have some champagne (or whatever this cheap stuff is) and be happy it’s over.
He made 9/11 sound like a grocery list, so no surprise here. Rummel expects us to love his psychopaths just as much as he does, and it faaaaails.
“Dear John. Kill Hal, Sands and Dolphy – they know too much. Stop ordering milk, because you don’t drink it, water my plants and cremate my body.
Love
Joy
P.S. Put the teeth of our targets in my urn.”
So he went with time-travel over everything else in the genre? And they all bought it? What the f-
Did anyone else laugh at John’s final scene there? It was just so… bad.
Nicholas Gordon wrote that, according to his website. Is he credited?
Brendan Rizzo on 14 October 2013, 09:35 said:
I’m certainly glad it’s over, particularly since I had this part done last week, but it got delayed in being posted because it turns out that I broke I rule that I didn’t know we had. But I can’t partake in champagne with you. Not for another six months, anyway.
On the other hand, at least that means that I’ve begun writing a review of a work I actually like. Prepare to see that within a few days.
No. He isn’t. Who would’ve thought Rummel was a plagiarist? An academic like him should know how bad that is. My respect for him has dropped even further.
Tim on 14 October 2013, 12:27 said:
Yeah, but that’s what I was talking about last chapter when I mentioned the framing story being impossibly stupid. I really do think Rummel never intended it to be anything but a diary and then thought “Oh, this will make it EXTRA sad!” and never thought about the volume of writing John would have to have done before the fire got him.
swenson on 14 October 2013, 12:28 said:
There is some truth to this. I don’t think I could write nearly as coherently either, were I about to burn to death. I’d be more interested in spending several hours, you know, not dying. Because I wouldn’t burn myself to death for Joy in the first place.
Tim on 14 October 2013, 12:45 said:
Oh, also, the fact that he keeps mentioning what Joy did in past tense means a large part of this definitely was written after he killed her. For example, start of chapter 41:
That was what made me think it was supposed to have all been written at the same time.
Lone Wolf on 15 October 2013, 08:16 said:
Well, I’ve read first-person narrated books that end up with the narrator being in such dire straits that he likely would not have the chance to actually narrate it to anyone. Unavoidable quirk of wanting to tell a story with a very unhappy end for a first-person narrator.
Asahel on 15 October 2013, 08:45 said:
Right, but that’s not really a problem. Having a first person story even end up with the narrator dead before his/her story could realistically be told isn’t too bad — we can always imagine we’ve been let in on their internal monologue. The trouble here is that the conceit of this story is that the first person narrator has been writing it in a situation that would be implausible at best.
Brendan Rizzo on 15 October 2013, 12:06 said:
So, are you all saying that I shouldn’t have sporked this then?
Lone Wolf on 15 October 2013, 12:39 said:
Of course not, the spork was great. John managing to write all this is just Gameplay and Story segregation.
Lone Wolf on 15 October 2013, 12:41 said:
In fact, I actually think that Rummel is the most deserved recent spork target.
Fireshark on 20 October 2013, 14:34 said:
Just thought I’d leave this here.
swenson on 20 October 2013, 15:25 said:
That is rather beautiful.
Brendan Rizzo on 20 October 2013, 18:43 said:
That’s just hilarious. It’s even more hilarious that Friedman apparently did not intend that as a parody.
Tim on 20 October 2013, 19:01 said:
I think he did at least intend it to be facetious: it’s more ridiculous how much effort Wikipedia puts into debunking something that was never that serious to begin with.
goldedge on 27 October 2013, 08:35 said:
Except for me, because I despise them both equally but, in different ways.