I am down to five SF authors now, until I eventually begin a new project. I finished my "required" reading by June 9th, freeing up most of the month for other books.
June began with a collection of Robert Silverberg stories, a volume which also receives this month's coveted "Cover of the Month" Award. The artist and author simply need to present themselves at my house and receive free martinis! Take advantage of this exciting offer while it lasts!
There are 13 stories in the collection, a foreword by Silverberg, and he also introduces each story. There are two first class tales included, and several others that approach masterpiece status. I highly recommend "A Long Night's Vigil In The Temple," an excellent tale of a religion left behind by three visitors from another planet; "The Martian Invasion Journals of Henry James," in which said author recalls the invasion usually credited to H G Wells. Lots of fun here!! Other great stories are "The Second Shield," "Hot Times In Magma City," "The Way To Spook A City," "Looking For The Fountain," and "It Comes and Goes." A very good collection.
Blood Beach is part 12 of the adventures of Commander Fox of the British navy, during the battles with Napoleon around the year 1800. The
amazing thing about this book series is that the major events that take
place remain true to history. On top of that is the fact that Fox
is one of the great characters of literature. Add also that Bulmer can
tell a great action tale like no one else. The
blood beach of the title is in Egypt, and Fox is destined to fight in
the Battle of Abukir, which occurred in March 1801. In this battle the
British attacked the remaining French forces, and after a gruelling
fight on the beach after landing their troops, they go on to win the
battle and get established on land for a later assault on Alexandria.
Lucky for the British that Mr. Fox was there to fight with them that
day!
Mayenne is #9 in E C Tubb's Dumarest series, a series that has managed to keep up its high quality of adventure SF writing. Very much like a Star Trek episode, a crippled space ship encounters an all powerful alien in the form of a planet. It wishes to learn about humans, and especially about love. Cue Captain Kirk! Despite the flaky sounding plot, it is actually a very good read.
Elric At The End of Time is one of Moorcock's better novellas about the end of time (a six volume series that has enormous highs and several unwelcome lows). Elric encounters the beings who inhabit the end of time, mistaking them for the Lords of Chaos. Lots of fun is poked at Elric's character here, and the story zooms along nicely. Also included in the volume are some forgettable early tales by Moorcock of his teenage barbarian hero Sojan The Swordsman, a few essays, and another short story, previously read in another collection.
Lastly came an early novel by Barry Malzberg, non SF. Like many pulp writers of his day trying to survive, he wrote a lot of soft core porn. But as has already been seen in a few volumes, above, he often does not write any kind of erotic literature that would turn anybody on. Instead, he has written several really impressive novels that helped get sold because they had sex in them. Fire, from 1968, is about a Vietnam War vet returning to the US after being discharged
for immoral behaviour. He was caught with a prostitute, and interrupted
at a very crucial moment. Once back home, this failure to complete the
sexual act haunts him. His fiancee wants nothing to do with him any more, and
a two couple party set up by a friend and coworker turns into a
relationship disaster. He is ultimately rescued from himself by a young
prostitute, but scars from his time in Vietnam remain with him. A really good read.
Turning now to off-the-shelf books, I finally managed to finish Jan Swafford's Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph. At 1077 pages, fully footnoted, it's a hefty read. Of course this means that we are nearly at the end of listening to all of the composer's works. We have the last few string quartets remaining. Like the author's previous book about Brahms, this one often reads like a novel. It is truly the essential book on Beethoven's life and music.
Next came Malzberg's pick for the best novel of the 1960s, and I might have to agree with him. Richard Yates' epic Revolutionary Road is the tale of a couple and their two children living in the suburbs. Dad commutes every day to Manhattan by train, returning home at night. The writing is crisp, and despite the 463 pages, not a word is wasted. This was the author's first novel, and it is a devastating look into what it means to be trapped into a life. The opening chapter sees a local amateur production of "The Petrified Forest" being put on in the local high school gym. The play turns into a performance disaster. The lead actress is our heroine, and the play largely fails because of her. She has deep psychological problems, and wants out of the area, even the country. She plans for the family to escape to Paris, where she would work for the American Embassy and support her husband, while he tried to "find" himself. But the plan goes awry when she becomes pregnant with her third child, setting up the ultimate disaster that the family must go through. Among the best writing I have ever come across, I will certainly be looking into his shorter fiction and other novels. Very highly recommended.
Another non-fiction book was up next, Richard Burton's 1851 travelogue Goa and The Blue Mountains. Burton is quite a good writer, though it can be expected that a good deal of racism will enter into the book. However, he isn't any more racist than many people alive and blogging in 2023! He visits Goa, still a colony of Portugal at the time, and reminisces about Vasco da Gama's voyage here in the late 15th C. There are several good stories related here, many of which were told to him by his guide and by people he meets. After several adventures in Goa he heads south again down the Malabar Coast, and eventually inland to explore some mountains and old forts. Remarkably, I am mostly able to follow his journey on Google Maps, though many of the geographic names are now spelled quite differently. We get detailed looks at the people, from the Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, and the way they feel about one another. He also talks about how the Portuguese went about converting the locals at the time of their invasions, and also what the Jesuits were up to in the same vein. In the 2nd part of the book he spends time in the mountains. First let me say that I had no idea India had mountains in the south, just north of Kerala. Exceeding 8,000' in places, the Nilgiri Mountains (also called Blue Mountains) occupy Burton for a long time. First discovered and populated in the late 1700s, by Burton's day there were established hotels, a man-made lake, and a growing population of diverse peoples (all described by Burton). Some of the most amusing parts of the book occur during his interminable stay in Ooty (Ootacamund). Though hardly an 'adventure' book, there is some good writing here, about places and peoples of which I knew next to nothing.
Robert Chambers is mostly remembered today for his story collection "The King In Yellow," from 1895. A few stories are non-eerie, including a few about foreign students studying art in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Thus he also wrote three novels set in that time period (spring 1871 for this book), the first being The Red Republic. An American student gets caught up in the aftermath of the war, when the Commune brutally took over Paris, attempting to wreak control from the legitimate government (bad as it was), abolish the Roman Catholic Church, and refuse the Prussians entry into Paris. So the book can be classified as historical fiction, written some24 years after the events depicted. At its heart it is an adventure story, mixing real life characters with fictional ones. Chambers is obviously on the side of the government, which fled at the time to Versailles, before retaking the city (just in time to save our hero and his beloved). The Commune is made to look very bad in this story, being run by bullies, criminals, and blood thirsty maniacs. Which may have been true for some of the real people involved, but likely not to the extent that the author depicts. A good tale, again teaching me about things of which I know little about. It made me investigate the facts, many of which Chambers gets right.
Next came some early shorter fiction by Raymond Chandler. All but one of Chandler's hard boiled detective novels have been made into films, and include several of the best noir films ever made. His shorter fiction consists of novelettes of about 50 pages in length. I read his first 7 stories, each one a gem. They are complicated and long enough to easily be made into a feature film, but to my knowledge they never have. Some amazing lines come out of the story. I paraphrase a couple here. "A hardboiled redhead came on next, singing a hardboiled song in a voice that could split firewood." Or how about "I'm an occasional drinker. I'm the kind of guy that goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard." The stories are filled with tobacco and booze, and often take place in LA bars and nightclubs, not to mention run down fleabag apartments and hotels. Two of the best stories (they are all fun to read) were "Spanish Blood" from 1935, and "The King In Yellow" from 1937. The latter references a story, or rather a collection of stories, by Robert Chambers, and that book is loosely mentioned at one point in the story. Great stuff!! If you want a serious taste of what Chandler is all about, listen to Tom Waits sing "Invitation to The Blues."
Salman Rushdie's 2023 novel Victory City was next. It is a fantasy novel with strong historical roots, about a woman who was touched by a goddess at an early age, and lives to see the creation and destruction of a vast empire in South India during medieval times. His story is based on the Vijayanagar dynasty, which once ruled much of South India. He uses the historical founders, supposedly cow herders, and real Portuguese explorers who visited and wrote about the city. But the main character is the female Pampa Kampana, who lived for 247 years and chronicled the entire dynasty, here called Bisnaga. Though I often found the actual storytelling quite dry, and told with little feeling or emotion, it does read like a chronicle of events that actually happened, and the tale becomes more interesting as it develops. There are heavy doses of a Utopian lifestyle in both the original city and the fantasy one. All religions were tolerated, for one thing. Also, the arts flourished, especially sculpture and poetry. And women had virtually equal rights with men in day to day life. Could the author be bringing certain things to our attention here? Quite a good read, and loosely ties in with the Burton narrative, above, which takes place in the same general area. If you have read the Mahabharata and/or the Ramayana, or even some of Burton's Thousand and One Nights, you will be on familiar ground here.
Lastly came a book by G K Chesterton, a dialogue between an unbeliever and a Christian, debating whether belief in a Christian god is possible. The two have sworn to duel with swords, but every time they commence, an interruption occurs. They end becoming more freinds than enemies. The Ball and The Cross won't be to everyone's taste, but the book seems to fit nicely with the Ballantine Adult Fantasy idea. The book is more on the adventure side of things than it is dialogue, though there are some very witty and worthy words spoken. They end up, like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings, affecting the entire country (England) and all the people in it with their intentions to duel. The last act, a long one, takes place in an asylum. Who is mad and who is sane? How do various governments deal with people who are truly different. Are these people assets or liabilities? A fascinating read, and a good place to start with Chesterton.
Mapman Mike
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