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

 

 

 

 

 

June Reading Summary

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!

Cover art by Thomas Maronsky. 

 

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