"We" - by Yevgeny Zamyatin

I've only just closed the last page of this fascinating book. I feel as breathless as D-503, the journalist and main character of the story, as he searches for his grip on his reality. What a ride.

The story is chronicled by D-503, a cipher of the One State. He is happily obedient as worker-mathematician, toiling for the Benefactor. But by the meddling in his head of a woman, I-330, he becomes ill with a "soul" that torments him with feelings, laughter, confusion...love.

But she's no ordinary cipher, of course. She has designs. And D-503 finds himself dragged toward his own destruction by the ring in his nose. Has he replaced one dictator for another?

Zamyatin was no stranger to Totalitarianism. This novel emerges from the time of revolutionary Petrograd. It took the Czechs to manage getting it to print. He'd been arrested and exiled from Russia, arrested and internally exiled (when they couldn't keep him out), and put before a judge again who kicked him back out. All for his revolutionary writing.

The claim has been made that Zamyatin is the inventor of the Dystopia, and that might possibly be true in fiction, This book is rife with "cliche" plot twists and turns, but at its time of writing, it hadn't become cliche yet. It was pioneering.

The novel does often read almost as a stream-of-consciousness tale, and at times I truly struggled to tell the difference between D-503's imaginings and what seemed to be reality. Which isn't exactly a departure from what D-503 himself experiences, so I found this forgivable. I've been told the translation can make an astounding difference as to language, tone, and effect, and so I'll share that I read the translation by Natasha Randall, and I found it to be poetically breathtaking.

I struggled for some time to find a tea companion for this novel that truly fits. And I discovered a wonderful new tea at the same time; one I find particularly true to the flavor of "We". Numi's "Golden Chai"-- http://www.amazon.com/Numi-Golden-Spiced-Assam-18-Count/dp/B000FFS91M --is a beautifully delicate balance of traditional chai with a clearly defined ginger overtone that complements the tragic, but septically clean, life of Zamyatin's ciphers with living at the mercy of the One State.

Try both, the book and the tea, and let me know what you think!

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

A sleepy village in rural England loses contact with the world for an entire day. Strange and mysterious, yes, but alarming? Not so much, for a bunch of proper British folks who wake up and manage to go about their day; cold, but determined. However, a few weeks later, all the females of childbearing age find themselves pregnant, virgin or otherwise. And the babies all share the same feature: golden eyes. And as time goes on, the village discovers that's not all the children share.

The novel is a classic from 1957. It's a little tricky to get hold of, but well worth the effort. It's one of my personal favorites, written at a time when Science Fiction writers were coming into their own. Wyndham is a little ahead of his time as he writes of moral implications and cultural effects. His style is straight-forward and charming, with little mind to the science of the happening, and more on the results in the lives of people.

The title is intriguing! The immediate association, I think, is "Cuckoo" as though "Nuts", or "Wacko", and it certainly fits. However, as a bird, the cuckoo often lays its eggs in another bird's nest...

And the perfect tea companion to this tale of surrogacy is Irish Breakfast Tea: http://shopstashtea.com/050320.html . The tea is also a little tricky to get hold of, but well worth the effort. It's a black tea, strong like English Breakfast, but with an undertaste of malt that comes along after the initial taste to really deepen the experience. Cream and sweetener make this almost a dessert.

The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

viv·i·sec·tion

(vĭv'ĭ-sěk'shən, vĭv'ĭ-sěk'-) n. The act or practice of cutting into or otherwise injuring living animals, especially for the purpose of scientific research.

"The Island of Dr. Moreau" is the fourth in a long list of novels by Herbert George Wells. Wells's voice is as strong in this as any many of his early books; full of meaty imaginings and the kind of view into humanity that makes one wince (see: vivisection, above).

In the story, a shipwrecked man named Edward Prendick journals his experiences as he's stranded on an island with an odd sort of right-hand man and Dr. Moreau, a man of science and questionable sanity. But the three are not the only island inhabitants; animal-human creatures Prendick calls the "Beast-Men" populate the ravines and shadows. How these Beast-Men have come to be is told best by Wells (pick up a copy of the book, if you haven't read it!).

It's been theorized that in "The Island of Dr. Moreau" Wells has made Dr. Moreau God, and drawn parallel religious lines along that theme throughout. But I think that's a too-easy answer. Certainly, Moreau thinks of himself as a kind of god, but Prendick makes no such leap. He falls into some posturing as such, when it becomes a matter of life or death, but is well aware of what's going on, and why.

In fact Prendick ponders on deeper questions later in the book. He's a man who struggles to return to life-as-it-were before he'd glimpsed into something of the truth. He sees fellow man with a kind of veil lifted, and intimates a wondering at the base of our existence. Who are we? And who are we without God?

But nothing deepens the experience of reading a good novel as much as sipping tea while doing so. And my personal recommendation of tea for such a writer as H.G.Wells is Yorkshire Gold: http://www.englishteastore.com/yogo40teaba.html . It's a stout tea, full of body like coffee, but smooth and without bitterness. Did I mention it's stout? One bag will brew 6-8 cups of tea. I brew mine through a coffeepot, couldn't be easier. Add some sweetener and bit of cream, and you've got one terrific taste of Wells-in-a-tea.