June Readings

 The reality of trying to make a living as a professional writer in the 1960s is on full display in this Robert Silverberg 1965 soft-core porn novel Killer, originally called Passion Killer.  For a decent SF writer to have to resort to writing this stuff is not only sad, but also not very surprising.  Its 156 pages contain a short story about a hired killer about to double cross the man who hired him to kill his wife, but in the end someone else also gets double crossed.  The actual story is about 40 pages long; the rest consists of people having sex nearly every which way.  And the top heavy females, who just love to have sex, consist of a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead.  All bases covered.  The basic story is okay, similar to any number of crime story plots from so many novels and or films.  The sex described in the book, which was probably sold under the counter in those days in certain types of book shops, is likely milder than in most best sellers of today.  Some may call this progress.  I call it something else.

From 1979 comes the next volume in the Dray Prescott series. A Life For Kregen is #19 in the series.  Bulmer seems to be having a lot of fun destroying the country where Dray is now Emperor, and seeing the locals fight to win it back from the enemy.  Vallia always depended on mercenary soldiers to defend its borders.  That didn't work so well when those soldiers were paid higher to revolt.  So now the average Vallian citizen is learning how to fight, something never seen before in the country. 

Bulmer may have created the best longest running fantasy series ever written.  It is essentially a story of battles against evil rulers, and Dray's attempts, often futile, to abolish slavery.  This volume is no exception.  But another theme continually emerges in the later books, that of Dray's family.  His wife and at least one daughter belong to a mysterious women only cult, which trains women warriors, among other things.  Dray rescues Jillian (see smaller cover, below), a new and fun character added to the many friends Dray has made during his stay on Kregen.  But one of his daughters is still out to kill him and help overthrow Vallia, though we don't know why.  She hates her father and thinks he is a coward.  Obviously she does not know him.

Though the book is filled with some thrilling battles and daring rescues, it's often at its best when Dray is thinking about things, wondering why things are happening the way they are, and figuring out how best to proceed with his plans to restore Vallia to its former glory.  The author's sense of humour is now always on display, and the proceedings, though often dire, are often relieved by moments of fun.  The books are more complex than anything I have ever read, with the amount of different countries, cities, mountains, deserts, seas, creatures, birds, and various races of people being very hard to keep track of.  And each book is obviously well planned before it is written.  Bulmer continues to succeed with this fun and everlasting series.  As a final note, once again he is not against killing off an important character.

 

The 4th entry in the SF series Cap Kennedy by E C Tubb is actually quite good.  In #4, Enemy Within The Skull, Cap Kennedy must stop a mad alien from using a powerful new concoction that brings out the worst violent nature in humans when exposed to it.  The alien plans to administer massive doses to people on Earth, in the hope that they will turn violently on each other, thus dooming the human race (not really needed, if he knew anything about humans).  As usual, the alien finds a receptive planet all too willing to believe his lies, which promises them untold power and riches once his plan succeeds.  Not too likely.

This is a lively entry in the series.  Cap usually works with a small team, like Doc Savage, and these people are finally being characterized more deeply as we come to know them better.  One of them is the giant man depicted on the original cover, below.  I think Tubb is borrowing a bit from the Doc Savage team, but not enough that it seems like a ripoff.

 

Cover by Jack Gaughan. 

 

Though better written than the previous Elric story, The White Wolf's Son by Michael Moorcock still has several problems.  In this story, published in 2005 and 339 pages long, Moorcock attempts to unite many of his favourite characters, including Elric, Bastable, Lord Renyard (the fox), Corum, and others from different series.  Oona is back (the Dreamthief's daughter), as is our trusty bad guys, Gaynor and his sidekick Klosterheim.  New to the story is Oonagh, the 12 year old granddaughter of Oona.  It's all quite confusing, especially if you haven't read the Corum series books in a while.  Those same events are seen now from a different perspective.

While Moorcock makes a heroic effort to bring so many previous characters into one book, his plot is still mostly fantasy nonsense.  Of course the bad guys get their way until the final twenty pages or so, and the great climax of the story is a sword fight between Gaynor and Elric (how original, I comments dryly, rolling my eyes).  And the problem of having a 12 year old as the central character, is that we know deep down that nothing bad will really happen to her.  She does lose some blood for a sacrifice, but as she is telling the story, she obviously survives.  She is plucky and smart, and is actually a welcome character compared to the morose people usually found in Moorcock's fantasy novels.

Now for the plot. The two bad guys have worked for hundreds of years for their chance to destroy everything, or rule everything, or something (big yawn).  Their plot can't miss (remember "The Master" from Dr. Who?).  Well, here is a spoiler.  They fail again.  What a surprise ending indeed.

I get the feeling that the author was trying to wrap up his Elric tales with this book.  We shall see....

 

Published in 2007, Barry Malzberg's Breakfast In The Ruins is a direct sequel to Engines of the Night.  Published in 2007, Engines is included (see last month's reading blog) for a total page count of 396.  Each book is thus close to 198 pages.  More essays on SF can be found here, dating from the 80s and 90s mostly.  Often Malzberg's writing does not get to much of a point, while at other times he scores direct hits.  His essay on Ballard is an example of both in one, as the text seems to wander about for a while before zeroing in on why Ballard's writing matters, and what effect it had on later writers.  However, he totally dismisses the early novels, such as The Crystal World, as being too derivative of early British SF disaster writing.  Hmm.  Not quite, Mr. Malzberg.

Many writers and editors are discussed, and the name dropping is quite astonishing.  It was a small world indeed for SF writers back in the day when almost all stories were first published in magazines, and everyone knew everyone.  The history of SF writing is not so very complicated, as separate essays on Asimov and Campbell illustrate.  Those two writers/editors largely influenced most of the SF that was written in the 50s, for example.  For anyone well read in older SF, this book will be a treasure to keep and reread.  Highly recommended, especially if you get the edition with both collections.

Engines ended with a fictional short story about a characteristic SF writer from the 50s, as he ages and realizes that what he has done with his life has little or no meaning (written well before Kindle editions of practically everything ever published began to come out).  In Breakfast he writes a sequel to that story, taking the writer to his final bedroom scene, where he exits, forever.  The two stories neatly summarize what it must have been like to have been a SF pulp writer.  One doesn't even need to read the essays to find out.  But do read them.

 

Turning now to (mostly) Delphi Classics, I began with a wonderful novel called Gallantry, by James Branch Cabell and published in 1907.  Each of the ten stories relates an episode that illustrates the title term.  Most of them have overlapping characters, and should be read in sequence, but this is not your ordinary novel.  Cabell at his best (which is pretty much always) cannot really be described well by this writer.  This novel is like being presented with ten of the finest bon bons or aperitifs ever created.  They should not be gobbled down, but rather first looked at, then lightly sniffed, then touched, and finally bitten in to and carefully chewed and swallowed.  And low and behold, those flavours!  Witty delicacies tell only part of the magic that await readers of Cabell.  There is more solid fare, too, but it is delivered in a seemingly harmless and off hand manner, so that the reader must be careful when things appear to become frivolous;  they really are not.  A wonderful collection of examples of men and women fulfilling their roles in magnificently human ways.  A treasure!

 

Next came Robert Chambers' next novel dealing with the Franco-Prussian War.  Lorraine was published in 1897.  Previous novels and short stories of his dealt with things from inside Paris.  However, this time we are in Lorraine, a province of France that borders Germany, Luxembourg, and Belgium.  The German attack comes through Lorraine first, and it is devastating.  The war lasted from 1870 thru 1871, and the French suffered terribly.  Chambers mixes in a love story between Lorraine, a young girl raised in a castle, and Marche, an American whose aunt and uncle own a big chateau not far from the castle.  Though he quickly falls in love with the young French girl, she takes a lot longer to fall in love with him.  Lorraine comes with a history, one that she will never fully learn.  She is a very simple character, her childhood formed by having no mother, and a father who chooses to work on his scientific projects rather than spend time with his daughter.  The relationship between Marche and girl, and the girl and her father, are handled well by the author, but it is his recounting of the beginning of the war that really shines here.  Chambers lists his sources and military advisors.  Though overlaid with a fictional plot, the war events are accurate.  The brutality and senselessness of war is brought home time and again, and the civilians and soldiers who survive are left permanently scarred by events, not to mention any wounds incurred.  While a 'happy' ending might seem a bit naive to readers today, this reader was very glad to come across it.  Any war, anywhere, and at any period of history, is a violent and shameful event.  The fact that wars are still being fought in 2024 tells us that no one learns very much from history.  In this case, the Prussians might have 'won' the war, but they too suffered terrible losses.  Despite much gloom and doom, this is a very rewarding novel to read.  Highly recommended.  It can be read for free on-line at Project Gutenberg, but I can highly recommend the Delphi Classics version.

1897 edition. 

 

Jump ahead 42 years and we arrive at Raymond Chandler's crime thriller The Big Sleep, published in 1939.  It isn't a complicated novel, and most actions have an equal reaction.  I've seen both movies many times, the 1978 version staring Robert Mitchum being the most recent screeening.  This film (there is a 1946 Bogart one, too) closely follows the written word, not leaving out very much of the plot.  Philip Marlowe isn't really much of a hero.  He has had experience with life, and has learned to only trust himself.  He is brave, somewhat stupid from time to time, but at least he is on the up and up.  He doesn't take advantage of clients, only charges $25 a day (plus expenses), and seems to keeps his hands off of girls.  He often does not carry a gun, though he ends up collecting some as the story moves along.

An old man hires Marlowe to keeps his two daughters out of trouble.  One is separated from her husband and likes to play roulette.  The other one, much younger, is not only big trouble, but also certifiable as insane. The body count is soon rising.  To my surprise, Marlowe only becomes unconscious once, and is never hit on the back of the head.  Movies and TV detective shows like these sort of tropes, but Chandler doesn't much go in for them.  The story continues to wind like a California Pacific Coast road, taking sharp turns again and again.  It's easy to get lost if you are not paying attention, or have set the book aside for several days.  It's best to read this one quickly.

It's quite well done, though the writing never gets much higher than average pulp fiction standard.  And Marlowe is not a very charismatic hero.  Enjoyable but not essential reading.

 

The Club of Queer Trades is a collection of six stories by Chesterton published in 1905.  The title, as explained in an introduction, examines 6 different and completely unique ways of earning a living.  The prospective member must earn his living in a job never seen before.  It must be different from others in significant ways, not merely a variation on an existing occupation.  We read about six different achievements by members of the club.  Imagine having to come up with no less than six unique occupations, one per story.  The stories are often humourous, and any violence turns out to be mostly unnecessary and quite comic.  The stories show Chesterton to be both highly intelligent and very witty.  He slyly pokes fun at Holmes and Watson, using three main characters that recur in each story.  And at the very end he brings all the characters from each story together for a wonderful conclusion.  Highly recommended fun for lovers of unusual mystery stories, as we never learn the occupation of an individual until the end of each story.

 

Next to last came Iain Banks' 2002 novel Dead Air.  Though a bit of a pot boiler, as if the author owed his publisher a book but wasn't really feeling it, the story nevertheless eventually becomes interesting, if a bit far fetched and over the top.  The main character, Kenneth McNutt ("two Ts"), is a type of morning radio show shock jock.  You have to like a character that describes himself late in the book as "a fuckwit with his thumb superglued to his personal self-destruct button."  Don't we all feel that way sometimes.  Ken gets in way over his head when he begins to secretly meet with the wife of a London crime boss for sex.  Yes, he could have chosen a safer partner, but Ceel is one of a kind.  The novel has several characters that are merely there to fill space, so there is no 'dead air' on the pages.  However, one of my favourite characters is a friend of Ken's called Ed.  Ed is a black DJ who lives at home with his mom in a tarted up old house and drives a black Hummer with blacked out windows.  Try to imagine what it might be like to drive a Hummer through the streets of London, or virtually any European city.  In one funny sequence Ken is doing just that with Ed.  The Hummer is a left hand drive, making it even weirder to drive in London.  Ken says to Ed, who is driving, that he is surprised they haven't been pulled over yet by the police.  And Ed replies, "That's cuz they think you're driving, Mate."  The book is a long one, and takes a lot of time to build up steam.  It all takes place in London, and I think Banks was writing for a London audience (and London press reviews).  It would not be a book I would recommend to someone who has never read Banks, but it does allow the author to have his say on many topics, from Nazis and holocaust deniers to what the Jews were doing to the Palestinians (and vice versa) back in 2002.  Banks likely had to go back and rewrite some of it after the 911 bombings, which are part of the backdrop of the story, though not a major part of it.  Though a mediocre effort from Banks, I did enjoy much of the book.

 

The final book of the month was Kate Chopin's second and final novel, The Awakening, from 1899.  It was her final book, since most publishers disowned her afterwards, due to its themes of sexuality and freedom for the female lead character.  And Edna Pontellies is a very troublesome character.  Modern in many ways, more than a little selfish, she is a Kentucky girl who married into a Catholic Creole family.  She lives in New Orleans, but the story opens in Grand Isle, a summer resort on the Gulf Coast for well to do families escaping the summer heat in the city.  Edna is 28 and has two children.  She comes to realize that she does not love her husband, nor wish to be around him very much.  It is fortunate for her that he travels a lot.  She falls in love with Robert, whose mother runs the summer camp on the Isle.  Robert is 25, and very much appreciates the company of Edna.  They become splendid friends over the summer, and Edna slowly awakens to her feelings of love for the young man, the first time she has felt such feelings.  When Robert realizes what is happening, he heads to Mexico looking for work.  We spend a lot of time inside Edna's head, and truly there isn't a lot going on there except confusion.  She certainly has no precedent, so help from friends in any shape or form is not available.  When Robert returns several months later, he does his best to keep his distance.  Edna's passion for him now totally consumes her.

Critics (male) found Edna to be mostly a repulsive character, mostly for not being satisfied with a loveless marriage and her two children.  Though she loves her children, she is happiest when away from them.  Look to Ibsen for similar themes, and much later Woolf.  But a strongly Catholic outlook at the time had no sympathy for a female character like Edna.  Critics were mostly ruthless, though she did find some support, mostly from women.  She never was allowed to publish again.  Another great victory for a patriarchal society tied to the church.  The only revenge we can have today is to read the novel and marvel at Chopin's strength for writing such a story at that time.  And we might also continue to support women writers, film directors, artists, etc.

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

 

 

March 2024 Reading Summary

March saw us do a week of travelling, and though I managed to read some at airports and at night in hotels, I did lose a lot of reading time overall.  There were also several astronomy nights in there, where I traded my night time reading for star gazing.  Despite this, I managed to get through 11 books, one of them a slim volume of poetry.  So here they are....

 

This month included my last Silverberg SF reading.  All done.  Tout fini, as they say in Montreal.  This time I read the last volume of his short stories, published in chronological order.  So these were stories from the late 90s  up to around 2010.  VOLUME 9:  THE MILLENNIUM EXPRESS 1995-2009 contains 16 stories, each one introduced by the author.  Several are novellas, which was Silverberg's preferred length of story (70-90 pages, usually).  Many of the stories are quite poor and not really worth reading, but there were a few gems.  "A Piece of The Great World" is from 2005, and is 72 pages long.  This novella is directly related to Silverberg's brilliant full length novel series told in At Winter's End and The New Springtime.  He had plans to write a third novel in the series, but it never came to be.  However, a detailed outline was written, and this novella relates one part of that unfinished trilogy.  Though a good enough story, it cannot replace the missing epic novel we all hoped would be forthcoming one day.  The story takes place 200 years after people have left the long winter cocoons.  Readers get to fly across the country this time, and then visit part of the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, on an anthropological expedition to find the last remaining group of a vanished race.  The entire premise of the story is quite sad, though.  Well worth reading for fans of the two novels.  "Defenders of The Frontier" is from 2010, and is 40 pages long.  A depressing but well told tale that Silverberg wrote for an anthology of stories about warriors.  This would make a great little film, or even a theatrical live stage production.  11 men at a frontier outpost have lost contact with their home city over the years.  When no other enemies can be located, they contemplate leaving their fort and attempt to return home.  Well done!

 

Cover art by Tomasz Maronski.

 

Savage Scorpio is the 16th book of Kenneth Bulmer's Dray Prescott series, and the second one in the Valian Cycle.  Bulmer is now so comfortable with his Dray Prescott hero, as are we, that we can enjoy seeing his character trying to grapple with his own character development.  He considers himself a peaceful man, even as he goes about chopping up enemies with his sword.  These enemies, however, are usually asking for it, and attack first.  The ones who survive an encounter with Dray are usually conked on the head and put to sleep while he carries out various clandestine actions.  There is usually some form of humour on nearly every page, which also helps keep the pages turning.  In this adventure, the Emperor of Vallia, Delia's father and Dray's father-in-law, is being poisoned by enemies, and Dray and Delia must get him to the sacred pool in time to save his life.  There is no love lost between the two men, and Dray only helps because of Delia.  This adds to the frustration level of things for readers, for Dray is never thanked for his life saving heroic deeds, but it also adds to the humour, as the tense scenes between the two men are often quite funny.  As usual for each successive volume, we learn a bit more about the Star Lords, those mysterious figures who seem to control Dray as if he were their puppet.  This is another solid entry in the series.

 

From 1956 comes E. C. Tubb's Trail Blazers the kind of story that most people would recognize as a 'true' western.  It concerns a cattle drive from Texas to Cheyenne, Wyoming, before there were any cattle trails to follow.  Besides natural obstacles such as desert, gullies, rivers, mountains, etc. there were also Indians to consider, and an evil bunch of gangsters in Kansas called the Jayhawkers.  Once again Tubb's very enlightened view of Indians comes through loud and clear in the voice of his hero.  But that doesn't stop a lot of Indians from getting killed, as well as whites who get in the way of the drive.  One of my favourite TV shows as a kid was called Rawhide.  It starred a very young Clint Eastwood as the assistant head drover, and Eric Fleming as the man in charge.  It ran for 8 seasons and a total of 217 50 minute episodes.  The unforgettable theme song was by Dmitri Tiomkin.  Tubb's novel predates the series by 3 years, but is so close to the Rawhide series in spirit that it's hard to believe that it wasn't part of it.  As usual with Tubb, this is a good read, and not far from the truth of what the early west was like.

From 1995 come the first book in Michael Moorcock's Second Ether Trilogy.  It is called Blood: A Southern Fantasy, is 336 pages long, and is a truly awful book.  Mixing SF pulp fiction (the really bad kind) with some kind of avant garde style of writing, there isn't a single redeeming page in this unholy mess of a novel.  This isn't the first Moorcock novel this reviewer has panned, but I hope it will be the last.  There are four main characters, two men and two women.  They are gamblers, after the Earth has pretty much been swallowed up by a vast black hole sort of thing near Biloxi, MS.  After all, what else do people in Mississippi do but gamble.  Our heroes inject themselves into the Game of Time, and play for stakes that only Moorcock might understand.  As usual, it's Chaos against Law, and the gamblers are hoping to keep a balance in the multiverse.  So what.  Many reviewers of Moorcock are truly afraid to call him out when he goes off the rails and wastes our time.  This novel goes way off the rails (deep into the muddy Mississippi River) and wastes our time.  I dread the thought of reading the two sequels, and may not...

 

Lastly from the Avon/Equinox stable of writers comes the next book, Havana Hit, from 1974, in the exciting series of adventures undertaken by Burt Wulf, vigilante.  It is 154 pages and is book #5.  Formally of the NYPD narcotics squad, and before that a Vietnam veteran, Wulf is out to single handed take down the drug trade in America.  So far he is doing a pretty good job, too.  Though this one has its share of murder and explosions, and even a sort of car chase, it is a much more restrained story than the previous ones.  Leaving Las Vegas for New York with his valise of recaptured heroin, Wulf's plane is hijacked to--where else--Cuba.  Virtually everyone there who comes in contact with the valise becomes instantly corrupted by the financial possibilities.  Wulf wants his captured valise back, where he has plans to take it to New York, where it had been stolen from the evidence room at the precinct by a bad cop.  But he has his work cut out for him in Havana.  There is a lot more introspection and existentialism in this novel, mostly involving thinking about death.  Wulf is helped by an American freelancer, before ultimately being betrayed by him.  For the second time we see Wulf getting close to someone, but this relationship goes sour at the end.  As usual, Malzberg's writing can get the reader's blood flowing quickly and the heart pounding at times.  Chapters often fly past without readers even knowing they have begun a new one.  A good series so far, and definitely a guilty pleasure.  Still, it's not that much different from a good samurai tale.

 

Now we can move on to my collection of Delphi Classics writers, which seems to grow each month.  Moving alphabetically through the list of writers use to take about a year before I'd be back at the "A" authors.  Now it's more like a year and a half.  I began with a collection of 40 poems by Rabindranith Tagore.  Called The Crescent Moon, it is from 1913.  Several poems, each one about a page long, are accompanied by watercolour images done by friends, harkening back to the tradition of Indian miniature painting.  The earliest poems express feelings towards a new baby (which he compares to a crescent moon), while later ones give a child's perspective looking out towards mother and father.  "Authorship" is quite charming, as the child questions his mother as to why father is always writing at the desk.  They are easy to read, but offer no hint as to what is to come from this man's pen.

 

Next is Olaf Stapledon's third novel.  Odd John is from 1935, and purports to be a case study of a rare and unique child growing up in England.  The author acknowledges the influence of another British writer.  J. D. Beresford's The Hampdenshire Wonder is from 1911, and it's genius child, Victor Stott, is mentioned in Stapledon's book more than once.  Beresford in turn credits Jules Verne for influencing his writing.  Now we just need to establish who influenced Verne.   John's  life is short (he will die at 23, we are told near the beginning).  After 11 months he is finally forced from the womb, but is still premature and only just manages to survive.  He finally decides to walk at six years, and his talking starts late, too.  By ten he is a criminal and murderer, but manages to get his life back on track, though his 'experiments' continue on Homo Sapiens.  The narrator is a journalist, a friend of the family, and becomes John's companion in many of his adventures.  The book becomes much more interesting in the final chapters, as John and others like him establish a colony on a remote South Sea island.  Many races are represented, including two Africans, something I cannot recall from any other novels until recent time.  All are telepaths, and far beyond humans in most things.  In addition, these people are not just freakish in their intelligence, but also in their physical features, which are more than somewhat grotesque.  The main thing that the book makes clear is that a very few people are so far beyond being human in intelligence that they find it impossible to remain sane while living among them.  Stapledon, so far as I have read (first 3 novels) is not so much a storyteller, but a chronicler.  The difference between an author telling us a story and a journalist, if you like.  But he is a pretty amazing journalist.  This book is an odd one, like its main character.  It's difficult to put it into a category of SF, as like his two previous books, it pretty much stands alone.  Worth a read, especially if you sometimes feel like you don't really belong to society.

 

Jules Verne's From The Earth To The Moon was published in 1865.  Like other novels by Verne, this story is filled with the latest up to date science from its day, as well as geographical knowledge of America.  But it's not all about the science; the satire is priceless.  Parts of this book, especially the early chapters, are among the funniest things I have ever read.  Largely poking fun at Americans and their love of guns (some things never change), many other countries also take a hit, especially Britain.  But the author also pokes fun at France, Switzerland, Spain, and many others.  Having recently visited the Florida State Highpoint (345'), it is amusing to see the giant gun built atop a Florida hill over 1800' high.  Also at the time, the highest point in the American Rockies was 10,600', where a large telescope was needed to build to see the projectile once launched (!).  And that mountain was in Missouri!  But geography and science facts aside, Verne hits a home run with this fanciful tale of three men launched to the moon from Earth.  Great fun!  The sequel came later, and will be reported upon here someday.

 

First English edition cover art.

 

Next came another great old classic, H. G.Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, from 1896.  This is much more a horror story than a SF one, and indeed becomes quite horrifying at times.  Some of the atmosphere comes through well in the 1930s Charles Laughton version, but the book itself provides all the necessary inner pictures necessary to imagine the island, the doctor, and the native inhabitants.  There have been so many novels set on uncharted Pacific islands, but this must remain as one of the best of them.  What the storyteller has to go through by the end of the novel has to be one of the most harrowing adventures ever told in fiction.  Permanent damage is done to his pysche; even once back safely in London he can no longer view people as harmless and with the ability to love one another.  Moreau's vivisection experiments and his alteration of beasts into men would likely drive anyone mad.  Some parts are actually difficult to read.  A completely amazing and original novel, and one that I would likely read again.

 

The original cover from the 1877 edition. 

 

The Duchess of Padua is a five act play from 1883, and was Oscar Wilde's 2nd play.  It was written for a specific actress, who refused it.  The play has never done well, though in the late 1890s it played in New York for 3 weeks.  It reads like a weak Shakespeare entry.  The action centres around a young man who is groomed to avenge his father's death at the hands of a cruel duke, and the duke's wife, who falls in love with the young man.  It's all been written before, and there are no new lines of any value here, despite a bit of Wilde's wit coming through in the later acts.  It certainly shows promise, however, as the events, action, and writing show the writer to have been very well read and able to maintain a certain tradition and uphold its values.  But we must be patient.  Soon the Wilde we all know and love will be ready to show his stuff.

I finished up with an early Edgar Wallace crime novel called The Four Just Men, from 1905.  The story is about a small group of vigilantes who carry out assassinations of people worthy of being murdered.  In this case, an unjust law (in their humble opinion) is about to be passed in the British House, and they threaten to kill the minister in charge unless he retracts the bill.  Wallace stretches credibility somewhat in his attempt to make the four men super intelligent and infinitely resourceful.  However, in the end, while they do achieve their goals, they barely manage it, and one of them gets killed.  This is pretty good writing, and the pages turn almost on their own.  It helps that the novel isn't overly long.

Mapman Mike

 

 

November 2023 Reading Summary

 Again it was a mixed month for reading, with 5 clear nights of astronomy wiping out 5 nights of reading.  I still managed to get through several books, a few of them quite long.

Beginning with Robert Silverberg, Starborne is from 1995, and is a novelization of a 1973 short story called "Ship-Sister, Star-Sister."  I always have mixed feelings about taking a really good short story and turning into a full novel.  Why do such a thing?  Well, for one thing, it makes putting another novel out there a lot easier for the writer.  And perhaps there is an inner pull to expand on certain parts of the story that were rushed over at the time of first writing.  For this book, I go with the former reason.  Silverberg was lazy, needed to publish his novel a year, and was likely burning out from writing so many great works lately, including his enormous Majipoor series.  And besides, who would ever remember that short story from 1973?  Ah.  Welcome to the world of reprinting everything that certain authors have ever written.  Hardly anything is hidden from view anymore, and indeed with the publishing of all of Silverberg's short fiction in a marvellous series of large edition paperbacks (see my first Silverberg page in this blog), it is so.  In brief, then, the short story is pretty amazing.  But the novel adds nothing much that is needed to enjoy the tale.  Do we really need more background on the several characters aboard the first star ship sent out to colonize new worlds?  Hardly.  The best parts of the novel deal with the first two planets encountered that might be able to support human life.  These parts contains wonderful SF writing, giving a good sense of alien landscapes, and teaching us the difference between what scientific instruments can tell us about a planet, and what human feet on the ground can tell us.  If you cannot find the short story, then read the novel.  Otherwise, the short story will do just fine.

The Tides of Kregen is the 12th book in Kenneth Bulmer's huge fantasy series featuring the adventures of Dray Prescott.  Dray is now involved in a new series of adventures, and starting to learn a bit more of the strange powers that are controlling his destiny.  He has been stripped of one of his most cherished titles, and must find a way to earn back his place among his warrior brethren.  I have no doubt that he will eventually do it.  A decent addition to the story.

From 1956 comes another short (118 pages) but effective western from the pen of one of the greatest of the pulp writers of the 50s, E C Tubb.  I wonder if the author could have ever imagined that someone would read and review The Liberators (also known as "Vengeance Trail", a much better title), in the year 2023.  What remarkable times we live in.  Not so remarkable were the times that fictional General Grant lived in.  A lone Confederate general returns home after the war, to find that his plantation and home have been burned to the ground, his parents murdered by rogue Union soldiers, and his slaves have left the area.  One loyal black servant remains.  Joseph gives readers the side of what it was like to be a slave, and Tubb pulls no punches about the topic.  Joseph is a great character, and he and Grant embark on a search for the killers.  Of course the five men they are seeking are low life outlaws, and the story heads to a dusty and thirsty small Mexican town.  Into the saloon we go, and eventually one of the men is found.

The book has a tight focus, with a small number of main characters.  The action takes place in the saloon first, and then out in the wilderness, where the rest of the outlaws are tracked.  When the Indians make an appearance, again Tubb seeks to educate the reader about their customs, way of thinking, and ultimately hopeless situation that they face in their battle to keep their land.  Add to this the addition of a credible black character (Joseph the freed slave), and the defeated Confederate general, and Tubb's novel would make good reading even today, possibly even in a high school English class, where the concept of vengeance, which is central to the story, could also provide lots of room for discussion.  A quick but decent read.

From 1978 (my edition is from 1986) comes this sprawling 378 page fantasy, Gloriana, owing much to the Gormenghast books of Mervyn Peake, to whom this volume is dedicated.  Besides Peake, other influences could be Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare. Think of Gloriana as a substitute for Queen Victoria, living in the largest palace ever conceived.  Gormenghast, as sprawling as it is, would fit into one wing of Moorcock's palace, which is in London.  Also, think of some of the American colonies as still loyal to England, as is Arabia, India, China, etc.  The empire still glows mightily.

Gloriana's biggest problem is that all lovers leave her unsatisfied; she has never experienced a proper orgasm.  She has rooms and rooms of decadent sexual inhabitants, to which she visits on whims.  This is the first main fantasy novel I have read that brings sex well into the picture, and uses it as it probably is and would used; to gain loyalties and to seal bargains, as well as for pure amusement.  In that sense it harkens towards the writing of Fritz Leiber.  But like Leiber, the book uses sex, but does not dwell upon it.  Queen Gloriana soon has more problems facing her than probably any other monarch in fiction or fact.

The novel begins slowly (like Peake's series), but continues to build throughout.  There are perhaps too many characters for a single book, even such a long one, but eventually most of them will become familiar to the patient reader.  There are so many surprises and twists and turns to the plot that I won't attempt to convey anything of what takes place to move the story along.  But move along it does, to its rapturous conclusion.  The ending itself is one of the novel's biggest surprises.  Certainly one of the best fantasy novels ever written.

 

Published in 2023, Collaborative Capers contains 25 SF stories that Malzberg wrote with different authors.  There is a short interview at the beginning between the editor and Malzberg.  The volume is 273 pages long.  Most of the stories are pretty short, with the longest being about 20 pages.  It is quite a fascinating collection, with Malzberg's voice sounding very clearly in many of the stories, and more subdued in others.  It is a collection probably best read a few stories at a time, rather than at once, which is how I read it.  Two stories are connected; the rest are individual.  There is a story about the Mona Lisa, another two about Van Gogh's painting Starry Night (Stars Nit), one that mimics the writing of Falkner, there is a tie  in to Cheever, as well as a story about Mozart.  Of course the Kennedy assassination (attempt) is also in there, and a few with Jewish themes.  Many stories are light-hearted, though, like the final one, sometimes have a serious underlay.  All in all a very worthwhile collection to acquire and to read.  It is probably a good way to get introduced to Malzberg, or to enjoy him more if you find his solo writing too much to bear.  There are several stories here to which I will eventually return.

That covers the five Avon/Equinox authors, my required reading for the month.  After this I found myself footloose and fancy.  First up came an early novel by Arthur Machen.  The Secret Glory was written between 1899 and 1908, but not published until 1922.  And the final two chapters were not included in that edition, nor were they published during the author's lifetime.  It is a story about a schoolboy, 15, 5th form, at a public school.  He is a loner but must face up to the horrors of such a life, of which he is ill suited.  The story jumps back to memories he has of his late father, and their excursions into the forests and mountains of Wales.  His father instilled a love of deep Nature in his son, and Ambrose has not forgotten those lessons.  In fact, it is those past memories of walks with his father that sustain him and enable him to face the realities of day to day life at boarding school.  While everyone at school finally sees him settling in after receiving a brutal caning, he is in fact in full rebellion.  The story sometimes jumps ahead, as well, to his 18th year when he leaves the school, tries university for a half term, then virtually disappears from the map.

So many people face demeaning lives and are unable to fit into society.  Ambrose is religious, but has been taught by his father about the older Celtic form of Christianity, which he can accept much more readily than the weekly trudge to chapel and the inevitable sermon.  He keeps certain secrets of past events locked in his heart, and this clarifies his vision and sees him through his troubled years.  A quite brilliant scholar, he realizes that what he wants to learn he won't learn at university.  He is a very strange boy, and only an outsider would be able to understand him and what he seeks.  This is a compelling novel and virtually required reading for those who feel that they don't fit in, and enjoy things that most others do not.  His search for what he wants was actually completed at ten years, and he is able to use his past experience to elevate himself spiritually in the present.  One gets a strong feeling that rather than turn out scholars, sportsmen, and jolly good fellows, the public schools in England at the time were great crushers of spirit and innovation.  In Ambrose's case, he was able to stay above the worst of it, keeping his values and beliefs strong within him despite the best efforts of the system to beat them out of him.  A recommended read.

Next up was the 2nd novel by Richard Marsh, Daintree, from 1883.  I enjoyed his first novel immensely.  The Devil's Diamond, also from 1893, was a funny and very original tale (see blog entry from October 1st, 2022).  Daintree, on the other hand, is a tough nut to crack.  In fact, it just might be the worst novel I have ever read.  The story, in one sentence, concerns two sons who wish to leave the farm life behind them, despite their father's wishes that they carry on the good work.  That's it; the whole enchilada.  This novel has more bible quotations than the actual Bible.  Seriously.  Avoid avoid avoid.

I needed a reward, big time, after that.  Dave Barry came to the rescue.  Or so I thought.  His first novel is called Big Trouble, from 1999.  Barry is a very funny guy.  There are plenty of funny things in this novel, which is a crime caper a la Elmore Leonard.  But the pace is unrelenting, with things happening every single paragraph.  And there are plenty of paragraphs.  There is some good satire, especially about voting, and airport security (pre 911 days), and radio programs.  But there is also a good deal of sadism, mostly aimed at women.  And after a while the reader notices that the author is using the same few jokes over and over again (dog and toad get way too much mileage, for one example).  So despite the rave reviews, and the book being made into a film, I would not give it more than 2 1/2 stars.  The beginning showed promise, but ultimately I was left rather chilled and worn out by it all.

Lastly came a very long novel by George Meredith.  Called by some the first truly modern novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feveral is an epic by any consideration.  In many ways it is an astounding novel, and though somewhat bloated with prose in places, it does cut to the quick when needed.  A baronet raises his only son under his own devised scientific System, hoping to turn out the perfect human to sit at his side and eventually take over the estate.  Being separated from his wife, his view of women is not only very low, but he even leaves them completely out of his System.  So when Richard, at eighteen, falls in love with the girl next door, things begin to go awry very quickly.  Meredith has written a novel that was included in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series called The Shaving of Shagput, which is how I came to know him.  Last October I read his second novel, a brief and not very substantial affair.  This, his third novel, has garnered several tons of literary criticism, which quickly becomes an entire study in itself.  Definitely recommended.  What an improvement in the relating of the eternal father/son struggle compared to Richard Marsh's effort, also read this past month.

 

December reading now commences with one of Robert Silverberg's final novels, The Alien Years.

Mapman Mike

July Reading

 As I am down to five remaining authors in my Avon/Equinox SF Rediscovery Project, I have more time each month to read beyond it.  My secondary main reading project comes from the almost unbelievable Delphi Classics series on Kindle, as I attack the complete works of so many great authors.  The rest comes from more laissez faire choices, including impulse reading.

All months now begin with something by Robert Silverberg, and will continue to do so until his works are complete.  I estimate about nine more months to spend with this great SF author.  The Positronic Man was a collaboration with Asimov, based on one his his earlier stories.  Silverberg has attempted to make a novel out of it, with limited success.  Short stories usually have one main idea that gets developed, whereas a novel can have several, depending on its length and the skill of its writer.  As a novel, this story of a robot that wants to become human is very single minded, never once deviating from its set course.  In fact, it often becomes monotonous.  Stretching it to novella length might work well, but extending it to a medium sized novel seems to be pushing things too far.  Within the Avon/Equinox series I have read much better and more profound stories about robots seeking humanity.  Top honours would have to go to John Sladek for his robot novels: 2 "Roderick" novels, and his "Tik-Tok", both wicked and funny; and Jack Williamson's brilliant pair of robot novels "The Humanoids", and "The Humanoid Touch".  All of these put Silverberg's novel into perspective very quickly.

 

Avenger of Antares is the 10th novel in the everlasting Dray Prescott series by Bulmer.  Our hero continues to search for the secret to the Havilfar flying machines.  They seem to sell ones to other countries that are prone to crashing, but the ones they keep for themselves fly much more consistently.  Under an assumed name he lives in their major city trying to find out more information.  But his plans (as ever) go awry when the teenage daughter of a good friend is kidnapped.  His friend is badly wounded in the attempt, so Prescott sets out to get her back.  She is no helpless child, though, and when she is finally rescued she manages to fight back quite efficiently, aiding Prescott in her escape.  This is a good addition to the series, which, unlike that of Tubb's Dumerest saga, are novels directly linked to one another.  There is endless material here for an ongoing TV series.

 

E C Tubb's own endless series features SF hero Dumarest, and I read #10, Jondelle. This story is also mainly about a kidnapped child who needs rescuing, but this time it's a boy about 6 or 7 years of age.  Our hero makes a pledge to the boy's dying mother that he will get the boy back.  There is a lot of death and mayhem in this tale, but overall it is a very good entry in the series.  At the very end Dumarest gets yet another clue to the location of Earth.  Will he ever find it?  No, since Tubb never saw fit to allow him to.  That is the real tragedy of this whole series.  Tubb died in 2010, and in 2008 the last volume of the series was published.  So don't expect Dumarest to finally end his quest.  Sadly, it will never end.

 

Moorcock's Elric is back in a novel called The Sleeping Sorceress.  Three linked stories are put together as a novel, with Elric aiding a woman sorceress against a common enemy wizard.  The first two stories are OK, but nowhere near the level of writing one might encounter in Fritz Leiber's word and sorcery writings.  In addition, Leiber's works are filled with wit and humour, whereas Elric is a rather dour old soul.  But the final story, "Three Heroes With a Single Aim," (also previously called "The Vanishing Tower") is right up with the very best of the genre.

 

Cover of the month.  The artist is John Picacio.
 

Lastly came another soft core porn novel, Machine, by Barry Malzberg (under an assumed name, but newly released under his real name) written in the late 60s.  Another small time loser loses big, as his newly opened pinball business is shut down by the local police, and his machines destroyed.  Mixed in with the main story is his relationship with two women, one a college coed and the other his ex wife.  Funny, tragic, and mostly very readable.  His thoughts often turning to pinball game  comparisons as he makes love are quite priceless.  Perhaps a little more "erotic" than his other similar novels, there is still a large helping of literary merit to the book.

Turning to "other" books, Kate Chopin's first novel did not find a publisher.  She published it herself.  Written in 1890, At Fault has its clumsy moments, but overall is well worth reading.  Part of the adventure in reading Chopin's works (I've read most of her short fiction) is trying to decipher and sound out her patois.  The way the French Creoles talk, and the way the Louisiana Blacks talk, is rendered as closely as is humanly possible by the author, and most of it is laugh aloud fun to read.  The story concerns a widowed plantation owner, who takes up the work her husband used to do.  She is a morally strong woman, and will not marry the man who comes to love her because he has been divorced (she is Catholic).  Instead, she talks him into going back to St. Louis and remarrying the girl, and to bring her back to the plantation.  Well, that doesn't work out so well.  Various subplots interweave with the main story, most ending tragically.  But never fear, there are happy endings for some of the folk we have come to know.  A highly readable tale, if you are not put off by the local dialogue rendering.

Next up was a mammoth novel by Wilkie Collins, his 3rd.  From 1854 (he and Dickens were very close friends) comes Hide and Seek, an engrossing tale of lost identity, a woman abandoned by her family (at least by her nutcase aunt), and a kind man who adopts a girl child with an unknown past, though he wants to keep her past secret to prevent anyone finding her and taking her away.  Rescued from a life of hardship and beatings in a circus, Valentine Blyth is determined to save her and take her home.  She has the face of a Raphael Madonna, and Blyth adopts her and brings him home to live, to learn how to draw, and keep his invalid wife company.  Due to a circus accident at a young age, the girl is deaf and dumb.  Collins researched this handicap carefully, and besides the young girl's affliction we also have his wife permanently kept in bed because of a painful spine malady.  Quite unusual main characters for a story from the 1850s!  The first of two books within the novel is called "Hiding," and deals with the girl's history and what little is known of her.  The second book is called "Seeking," and deals with how the truth was discovered about her background, and what happened as a result.  Collins is a master storyteller, with no wasted characters or scenes; everything fits and is required to advance the plot along a fairly seamless line.  The characters of Zack, Mat, and Blyth are very well drawn, the women less so.  Still, this is an engrossing novel, and hard to put down once begun.  Recommended.

I always get very excited when the Delphi reading roster approaches Joseph Conrad again.  Lord Jim, published in novel form in 1900 (it was originally serialized), is one of the most legendary books in literature.  For all its length, it tells a very simple tale.  Jim is the focus, and over time and many pages we learn pretty much there is to know about Jim.  His downfall came during a steamship journey carrying pilgrims towards Mecca.  Jim was the first mate.  Their ship struck something during the night, and was in imminent danger of sinking.  There were not enough lifeboats to rescue all the passengers, nor likely even time to get the boats afloat.  The captain and two crew left the ship by launching one boat.  A fourth man died of a heart attack helping launch the boat.  Much went through Jim's mind in the few seconds he had to decide.  He ended up jumping into the lifeboat.  Well, it turns out the ship did not sink, and the pilgrims were rescued by a French boat that towed them to shore.  The captain ran off before the hearing, the two surviving crew members were hospitalized with shock (and alcoholism), while Jim stood his ground to face the music.  The rest of the novel is his search for inner peace, knowing and accepting what he had done.  With the help of Captain Marlow, he eventually finds a tiny corner of the south east jungle that he can rebuild his character.  However, he is ultimately undone by a Gollum/Wormtongue character.  The book is rich in character development and observation, but the storytelling is somewhat awkward.  Marlow tells the entire tale.  Not once do we get inside Jim's thoughts through his character.  Only his words and actions are reported by Marlow, often from second hand sources.  The tale is not told in a straight forward chronological order, but more or less how things pop into Marlow's mind.  This can be confusing and disconcerting at times, and almost requires a second reading.  Still, a truly amazing novel about a man's lost honour and his search to recover at least a portion of it.

Next came Malzberg's choice for best novel of the 1970s.  Stanley Elkin's The Franchiser has to be read to be believed.  From 1976, its 300+ pages spoof an America caught up in the energy shortage and at a time when franchises were making virtually every city appear the same if looked at from a certain angle.  Ben Flesh owns franchises of about 13 different kinds of stores, including Radio Shack, Mr. Softie Ice Cream, a photo booth, a dry cleaners, etc.  He longs for the day when he will be able to drive into any American city and not know where he is, since every place looks the same.  It is a wonderful send up of an America just beginning to spin out of control.  Left a strange type of inheritance by his dying godfather, he must rely on the old man's 19 off-spring (all identical twins and triplets) to be able to borrow money from the estate at the prime interest rate.  He is on the road for much of the book, and we glimpse his version of America in hilarious scene after scene, all played quite straight by our man Ben Flesh.  His god cousins eventually begin to die tragically but uproariously of strange diseases related to their inferior genes, and poor Ben himself has an onset of MS, which he faces as well as can be expected.  This is the 2nd novel this month to treat disease and handicap in the forefront of the plot.  I have never read a novel  like this before, and can highly recommend it to anyone looking for a nostalgic look back to what America was like 50 years ago.  Or wasn't like.  A truly great, highly creative and unusual novel.

Finally came a guilty pleasure.  Since beginning my SF reading and review project I have read a lot of pulp SF, mystery, etc, written by the 24 Avon/Equinox authors.  I have a ton of respect for these highly underpaid professional writers who cranked out story after story to pay the rent and feed the family.  One of the superhuman heroes of my early teenage years was a character named Doc Savage.  Lester Dent wrote under the house name of Kenneth Robeson, churning out novel after novel of the adventures of Doc and his five sidekicks.  Unlike Conan, these were no barbarians.  They were intellectuals as well as muscle men.  Doc trained (hilariously) every muscle of his body two hours each day (though he never seemed to have the time during any of his adventure novels).  Doc could hypnotize, talk any language (even ancient Mayan!), and do just about anything else that circumstances demanded.  I read about eighty of these before finally giving up.  Philip Jose Farmer continued to develop the character in his own novels (and Tarzan, too!), and wrote a truly amazing biography of Doc (reviewed in my Avon/Equinox blog) which I thoroughly enjoyed reading.  In fact, it got me interested in rereading some of the original tales again.  I bought a kindle version of 10 novels, and finally got around to reading the first one.  Man of Bronze, from 1933, is where it all began.  Doc's father is killed for mysterious reasons by a secret cult, and Doc is soon thrown into his first adventure to make it to print form.  We learn all about Doc and his aides, about their headquarters, and some of their gadgets used to fight crime.  After 50+ years, I think I am enjoying the book more than I did as a youth, but for different reasons.  I read the adventures in earnest as a boy, wanting to be like Doc someday.  Now I read and find myself chuckling at every other paragraph, as Doc undertakes feats no other human being could possible undertake.  Great fun! 

Cover of the first novel.  Art by Walter Baumhofer. 

 

See you next month!

 

Mapman Mike

September Books, and A Few Purchases of Note

On December 16th it will be the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth.  We had already planned to incorporate many of his works into our nightly listening program next year, and in addition I am embarking on a 1,000 page biography written by Jan Swafford of Beethoven, published in 2017.  A few years ago I read his work on Brahms, and was enthralled for the several months it took me to finish it.  It was like reading a novel, rather than a biography, and I am hoping for much the same with Beethoven.  There are 33 chapters, and I will read one in between every two novels I finish in my Avon/Equinox project.  So far I have read the Introduction, Chapter One (his grandfather, father and mother, and his birth) and the Appendix, which has to do with musical forms used by the composer.

 

Now part of my on-going reading.

I was getting ready to buy the complete works of Bach on CD, something I've wanted to own for some time now.  We have purchased and listened to the complete works of Delius, Britten, and we are just finishing up Brahms.  But at the last minute I put the Bach project on hold, and purchased the Beethoven collection instead.  This makes more sense just now, even though I doubt we will listen to everything (though I am stubborn and persistent).  The collection gets rave reviews, consists of 118 CDs, including multiple recordings of some works, and vintage recordings of many others.  Also, the piano sonatas and string quartets and symphonies are not by all the same people, but a mix of top performers, which I like.  Combined with my own Beethoven collection on vinyl and CD, we are pretty much set for a fun year of Beethoven! 

This set is on the way to our house!

BTHVN 2020 ‐ Beethoven The New Complete Edition (118 CD + 2 DVD +3 Blu-ray Audio) 

 

On to my September reading.  I read ten books related to my Avon/Equinox project, which now stands at 495 books read and reviewed online, and one book unrelated.  I also began the Beethoven biography, a mammoth undertaking.

 

First up was a Piers Anthony novel, as I began yet another one of his series.  Split Infinity is the first of his Apprentice Adept series, which tries to lead his SF fan base into his world of fantasy.  The novel begins as SF, and then changes to fantasy, as we hop back and forth between two worlds, though existing on different planes of the same planet.  An interesting concept, but he doesn't pull it off very well.  I really like Piers Anthony's SF writing, among the best I've ever read.  But after three of his fantasy novels, I am not a fan of his writing in that genre.  I might try one more in this series later, or not.

 

Next came a Harry Harrison non SF novel, called The QE2 Is Missing.  This is a very taut tale about the great ship being hijacked at sea, then found later with all crew and passengers missing.  The novel has a great opening, and a satisfying ending, and in between is some nail biting adventure.  Another winning combination of husband/wife team up (Harrison is great at this) to help catch the baddies.

Next came Bulmer's 1969 Stained-Glass World, a 160 page distopian novel of a drug-filled escapist future, with the world divided between Workers and Uppers.  If the workers don't work, they don't get access to their off duty dream worlds, which is the only reason they work to keep the world running in the first place.  The Uppers have access to better drugs and dreams, and whenever they want.  There are various kinds of security forces, including the toughest of them, the Revenue men.  The streets are mean, and no one ventures out alone.  Very grim, and worth a look.

An early work by E. C. Tubb was next, from 1953, called The Price of Freedom (alias Space Hunger; alias Earth Set Free).  Coincidentally, this story makes an excellent pairing with the Bulmer novel, above.  Tubb gives a very honest and grim look at a truly free society of the future, one that a good deal of Americans are always screaming for.  It is a world filled with private security and bodyguards, assassinations, raids, robberies, and mostly jungle law.  It would no doubt appeal to a certain type of weapons-loving personality, but most people would prefer what we have now, flawed as it is.  A somewhat strange book, though not nearly as strange as the Bulmer one mentioned above.  Fun to read and think about.

 

Next comes Jack Williamson's highly readable adventure story, a retelling of Theseus and the Minotaur, called The Reign of Wizardry.  If, like me, you have always been fascinated by Crete and the Minoans, then this fun novel will be right up your alley.  It gets silly from time to time, and there is one (for me) big disappointment, but all in all this is a good book to seek out in a used book store on a rainy day.

Michael Moorcock's The Quest for Tanelorn concludes his Castle Brass series (3 novels), and Hawkmoon series (4 novels).  It's only 155 pages and easy to read, and in addition to wrapping up the two series mentioned, it also sums up all of his Multiverse writings up to that time (1975).  The three Count Brass books have been added to my all-time list of favourite series, though the four Hawkmoon books, which are good but not great, must be read first.  Highly recommended!

Next came Super-Cannes: A Novel, by J. G. Ballard.  Several of Ballard's books are my favourite books of all time, and this one is right at the top of the list.  Absolutely amazing writing, the book, at 340 or so pages, left me wishing it had never ended.  He hits so many things right on the head in this book that it could provide me with an infinite number of quotes, enough for several years of those little daily tear-away calendars.  One of the best modern novels, without question.  Not SF, but worth it for SF fans anyway.

Cinema by Barry Malzberg is another novel he wrote in the early 70s for a publishing house trying to upgrade itself from publishing standard porn novels.  They got way more than they bargained for with Malzberg.  Despite the sex, which is not pornographic at all, this is great literature, and reminds me of the joke of why blokes used to buy Playboy magazine back in the day ("for the articles, man").  A young woman, a recent college grad, wants to become an actress, and instead gets herself involved in the porn film industry.  Like his previous book for the same publisher, called Screen, this one is tragically hilarious, as we watch the poor heroine get ground down until she has a breakdown.  Doesn't sound very funny, but black humour is hard to explain.  This stuff is jet black.

Last in the cycle comes James Blish, who co-wrote A Torrent Of Faces with Norman L. Knight.  Published in Galaxy Magazine as three novelettes, and expanded and published here as a linked novel, we are taken to a future where Earth is home to 1 trillion people!  Now that's what I call trying to tackle a true population nightmare!  This is a nearly perfect story, so well done and so highly readable, from 1967.  One of the great SF novels, to be sure!

Before resuming my next iteration of the Avon/Equinox authors' books remaining, I now always take a break and read something different.  I returned to my childhood again, reading The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. It is a very well crafted novella, and my only regret is that the author never returned to the theme.  How I wish he had written a sequel!  One of the greatest stories every written, and I was suprised by how well the 1960s feature film followed the author's writing.  The movie did add more things, and left out the far future segment, but overall did a great job of bringing the story to the big screen.

Lastly for September came a novel by Robert Silverberg, as I start over in my reading cycle.  To Open The Sky, like the Blish book discussed above, also consolidated some works previously published in SF magazines in the mid-60s.  Five novelettes tell the story of how interstellar travel was achieved, over a period of some 90+ years.  Many of the same characters return in each story.  It is a very imaginative and unique look at how the speed of light might someday be breached.  Sometimes the writing is a bit too straight forward and not that engaging, but overall this is a well done project.  I wish there had been one more story at the end.

 

I am currently reading a 532 page SF novel by Piers Anthony called Mute (for mutation).  Next month I'll talk about it a bit.  If this or any of the novels mentioned above are of interest, refer to my Avon/Equinox blog.  There should be a link at the top of this page, in the left margin.

Too tired right now to include art from the DIA.  Hopefully next time.  Happy October, and Happy Full Moon!

Mapman Mike