February Reading Summary 2026

It was a short month, but the first half was cold enough to be inside a lot.  There are seven books to report this month

 

Scorpio Reborn is from 1995 and is 252 pages long, the first book of the Lovian Cycle by Kenneth Bulmer, itself part of the extensive Dray Prescott series.  Our hero now finds himself in the southern hemisphere, sent on another mysterious mission by the Star Lords.  He arrives amidst a dwelling fire and barely manages to save a woman before he is knocked cold by a falling beam.  She ends up dragging him from the building.  In a neat twist, Dray Prescott is paralyzed for the first few chapters of the novel, watching events transpire but unable to participate.  He gradually recovers the use of his limbs, then comes speech, and finally he is his old self again.  He is paired with another of the Star Lords' servants, this time a female.  She thinks that she saved him from the fire, instead of the other way around.  Dray allows her to lead, but when he thinks matters should be handled differently he goes his own way.  A good tale filled with evil and cruel bad guys who get their just desserts in the end.  There are three novels in this volume.  

 

The Kindle volume contains three novels.  I read the first one, above.

Cover art by Ken Kelly. 

 

Prison of Night is by E C Tubb and is from 1976 and is somewhat unusual in this series.  Earl Dumarest stays on the same planet for this direct sequel to the previous story, something that has never happened before.  Readers should be glad he did, as some of the mystery of this very strange planet gets solved.  Every day its two suns come close together, and when they do an effect termed Delusia occurs, which enables dead people from a person's memory to come forth and speak with them.  It can be a very unnerving experience, though in some cases it is healing and beneficial.  That is one mystery that does not get solved in this story.  However, this planet has another surprise to claim as its own.  Humans can only be outside during the daylight hours; should they remain out after dark it is the Sungari that rule the world.  These are mysterious creatures that kill people who leave home after dark.  When curfew is called people must remain indoors.  Dumarest stays out and attempts to meet up with these mysterious night time things.  As a result part of the mystery of their existence is revealed to readers.  The rest of the book is standard adventure, with a war to fight and a woman who loves Earl and wants him to settle down with her and raise babies and stock animals.  It won't be a surprise to readers of this series that Dumarest blasts off for other worlds at the end of this book, continuing his search for Earth and his avoidance of the deadly Cyclan.  They are after information in his brain, so he remains on the run. 

 

Cover art by Don Maitz. 

 

I began a Michael Moorcock epic novel called The Whispering Swarm.  It is the first volume of a series called The Sanctuary of the White Friars.  As the large first volume is divided into three books, I shall report when I have completed all three.  I am reading one a month for now.  If things go well I will tackle volume two.

 

Turning now to the Delphi Classics series, I began the month with a novel by Jerome Jerome.  Tommy and Company is from 1904 and consists of a group of short stories loosely linked into a very readable type of novel.  The year is significant, as the stirrings of feminism began to appear in the London public.  Jerome has a field day poking fun, mostly at men, and how they react to modern women.  Tommy/Jane is the central character, a sexless waif at the beginning who is taken in by Peter Hope and eventually adopted by him.  The first story describes their meeting and establishes both characters in a most hilarious fashion.  While the book is far from farce, it is often very very funny.  It can also be quite touching.  Overall, however, the stories are simply great fun to read, and give insights into the times and the people of London.  We meet characters one or two at a time, and though they usually star in their own story, Tommy/Jane is usually working behind the scenes in all of them.  While making only brief appearances after his/her first story, Tommy/Jane provides the main reason to keep on reading.  He/she is one of the most original characters in literature.  The final story is one of the finest endings to a novel this reader has ever encountered.  Full marks for Mr. Jerome.  **** stars.

 

I have added D. H. Lawrence's complete works to my Delphi Classics collection. I began with a novella of his, The Ladybird from 1923.  It's an emotionally packed story that takes place from 1917 to sometime after Armistice.  A young woman visits an English hospital to see a badly wounded German officer known to her family from before the war.  Her own husband is fighting somewhere in Europe of Africa,and is eventually wounded himself.  The wounded German and the young wife become closer and closer, until when her husband finally returns, she is faced with her great problem.  A good read that delves into the psychological problems that wars create, as well as the physical ones.  It also demonstrates how war can change certainties (her love for husband) into uncertainties.  When one thinks one is happily married and then encounters a soul mate, what can one do?  *** stars.

 

Next came a rereading of George MacDonald's Phantastes, his first novel published in 1858.  I first encountered this fairy tale for adults in Lin carter's Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (see separate blog) as #14.  On first reading I loved the book and awarded in four stars.  On second reading I sitll love the book, but rated it down slightly.  This is mainly due to the main character and the many terrible choices he makes through his dream journey to fairyland, thus causing hardship and misery to others.  The main character is Anodos (ascent in Greek), and his adventures are epic.  They begin in the fairy woods, then on the the fairy castle, then deep underground and opening out onto a vast sea.  This book, more than other other, helped start the adult fantasy trend, and direct links can be found in many places to later works by William Morris and Lord Dunsany.  It likely also influenced Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis, who read the book at 16, was forever changed by it.  Even Arthur Machen's writing can be traced back to episodes in this book.Therefore, anyone interested at all in adult fantasy will find this a must read novel.  It isn't terribly long, and there is a lot of poetry and stories within stories.  Definitely recommended.  *** 1/2 stories.

 

Cover art by Gervasio Gallardo.  See my Ballantine blog link at upper left margin.
 

Speaking of Arthur Machen, next came his earliest published short tales.  The Chronicles of Clemendy, or The History of the Ix Joyous Journeys Carbonnek.  In these linked tales from 1888 of medieval love and loss Machen harkens back to Rabelais, Chaucer and Boccaccio.  His stories feature during a journey among fellow Silurians (lovers of wine, joy, music and letters), and are told by various men.  One tale tells of a mechanical clock knight that usually hits the bells with his weapon, but appears to be walking about town after dark and catching people doing things with members of the opposite sex that they really shouldn't be doing.  Another tale explains how a man wasted his life digging for treasure after overhearing some monks discussing the subject.  There are two with wizards and maidens, the first one a sad tale of woe as a lovely maiden is kidnapped and ravished by an adept, then killed.  The second tells of a wizard father who does not wish his daughter to see other men, afraid that his dark magic might be called out.  Other tales tell of a knight trapped in a high tower, more than a mile above ground, while another tells of a knight trapped in dungeon far beneath the earth.  In all it is a good collection of tale, though after a while they have a similarity that makes it difficult to remember and distinguish between them.  I could see James Branch Cabell being influenced by these tales, though his writing is more erudite and dryly humourous.  Machen does inject humour into the tales, however, sometimes waiting till the moral of the tale is revealed.  Well worth reading, especially if you have only read his novels and later stories.

*** stars.

 

Ghosts (1986) is the second tale in Paul Auster's New York Trilogy.  It is short, more a novella, and seems to repeat a lot of what was encountered in the first book.  Again we have a private eye (a real one this time, supposedly) staked out in an apartment and keeping an eye on a man.  That's pretty much the story in this disappointing sequel to the first book.  Auster seems to get some of his inspiration from the final episode of the 1960s The Prisoner TV series, where Patrick McGoohan finally discovers "who is Number One."  I will eventually get around to book three, but now I am in no rush.  ** stars.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 
 

December Reading Summary

 It was a good month for reading, with 14 books read.  My usual times are 1:30 to 2:45 every day, and 10:30 pm till 11:45 pm at night.  On Sundays I manage an extra hour of reading, since that is a non-piano day for me.  In addition I often get time to read while taking Deb to her medical appointments.  It was a fairly cold month, so a good month to be indoors.  Let us begin.

 

I read #25 of the Dray Prescott series by Kenneth Bulmer.  Legions of Antares is from 1981, this 153 page continuation of the epic story of life and death on the planet Kregen contains a few surprises.  The bad queen of Hamil has caused much destruction in surrounding countries.  Her cruelty has been the bane of many a good man.  The evil wizard who has been using her for his own greedy purposes has also been a major thorn in the side of good guy Dray Prescott.  Low and behold, they both get their comeuppance in this volume!  It's almost as if Bulmer were wrapping up the series, with perhaps one additional title forthcoming.  Alas, there are still several books remaining.

Dray is by now so used to danger and fighting that he is nonchalant about the telling of it, though after fighting a Cthulhu-like creature underground, he does express himself rather well in words as to how difficult it was.  To this reader the entire capture of the main city of Hamil by the good guys is a bit anti-cimactic, as if it was a done deal from the start.  The action scenes and bloody battles are minimized, but the politics and planning are brought forward.  I would have preferred a bit more sense of climax, with at least one battle given more description.  There is also a final battle between wizards, but that too seems to be hurried and written without much passion.

It is still a good entry in the series, but the defeat of the main foes of the last 24 books just seems rushed to this reader.  As the series could really have ended here (perhaps it was originally supposed to), I am curious to see what comes next.

 

The evil queen of Hamil finally gets her just desserts.

Original cover art by Ken Kelly.

 

For once, the cover of a Tubb western has something to do with the story.  Even the title, The First Shot, fits.   The story is from 1957 and is 117 pages long.  A man returns from the Civil War, having fought for the losing south.  This is a familiar opening in most of Tubb's westerns.  He had been a p.o.w. for two years, and was quite sick when the war ended.  He heads home to his father's Texas ranch to find turmoil and misery, mostly due to the now valueless southern currency. He encounters neighbouring ranchers who accuse him of rustling cows, and they beat him badly.  With help from a few friends he sets out to set things right.  This is a good story, and well represents what most people think a "western" novel should be.  Once again Tubb treats the Indians with respect, and makes one of the bad guys a crooked government Indian agent.  There is a high stakes poker game, and a climactic shoot out at the very end.  A good story that would make a fine film.

 

I read the Kindle edition. 

 

Originally contracted for ten books, Malzberg's vigilante hero series made it to 14.  Detroit Massacre does take place in Detroit, though there is no massacre.  From 1975, the novel is 152 pages long.  Detroit was still humming in 1975, but one would never know it from this novel.  Hudson's was still downtown, and the Ren Cen complex was being built.  Obviously the author had never been there, as the city is so sketchily represented as to be laughable.  The absence of a massacre in Detroit (there are two murders, and a man dies in an explosion) left me scratching my head.  Who wrote the titles for these books?  Malzberg, as noted frequently in this blog, can get inside the head of a crazy person better than almost any other writer.  Burt Wulf is going mad, and is beginning to crack at the seams.  So is a Detroit police lieutenant, who totally goes off the deep end.  Heroin is being smuggled into Canada hidden inside new Cadillacs, but the perfect system gets disrupted when an assembly line worker spots a bag of heroin sitting in a half assembled car.  From there things go downhill rapidly.  Meanwhile back in New York Wulf is being held in solitary until the system can figure out what to do with him.  With help from his cop friend Williams he manages to escape and make his way to Detroit.  Wulf's method of cleaning up the distribution of heroin is to blow up the vast Cadillac assembly plant.  Go figure.  Not the best in the series, but still readable.  Three more books to go.

It has taken me almost a year, but I have finally completed the four Colonel Pyat books by Michael Moorcock.  I hope I am able to reread this complex but highly entertaining series of books all over again.  The Vengeance of Rome is from 2013, and is 638 pages long.  The 4th and final volume of the Colonel Pyat series is a truly remarkable achievement.  Moorcock has been able to take a complex and virtually untreatable subject--the history of the western world from the early 1900s to present day London, and make it read like a novel.  Which it is.  While the main characters are fictional, the events enwrapping theses characters are not.  Think of Woody Allen's Zelig film, where he was able to take his character and insert him into old newsreels to make it look like he was really there at the time.  Moorcock goes much deeper, though, taking 2000 pages to firmly insert Pyat into 20th Century history.  And by all indications, the century, especially the first half, was nothing but a series of unspeakable horrors, culminating in Hitler's rise to power and subsequent events.

The character of Pyat is difficult to describe.  He uses cocaine when available (though claims he is not addicted), is against Jews (in the end denies his own mother and his Jewishness), is an engineer who designs futuristic ideas, often dealing with flight, makes love to women and men (though he much prefers women, especially younger ones), and travels the world, getting into serious difficulty no matter where he happens to be.  Pyat is a marvel of a man, and I dare say he is "everyman," one who seems to embody not the worst nor the best of the male sex, but fits just about in the centre.  However, his lows are very low, but his highs are also remarkable.

The story continues where volume 3 left off.  Pyat is soon in Italy, and we are immersed in the world of Mussolini.  After his Rome adventures the setting moves to Germany in 1930, remaining there until just before WW II.  Pyat's one personal encounter with Hitler must go down as the most shocking scene in the entire series, and there have already been several doozies.  Pyat spends time in German prison camps before managing to finally get to England, his destination since volume 1.  Mrs. Cornelius continues to provide him with literature's weirdest sidekick.  The book's final scene, where Pyat denies he is Jewish (as he has already had to do hundreds of times in the story), seems to be a perfect ending to one of the greatest series of books ever written.  Really, it could not have ended any other way.  The books are definitely worth a reread, in perhaps five years or so.  Until then, Pyat's adventures in 20th C. history will never be forgotten.  Very highly recommended series, ending with perhaps the best book of the four.

The four previous novels continue my exploration of SF authors who were represented in the Avon/Equinox SF Rediscovery Series (see my entire blog, link in upper left).  After finishing up the Moorcock, which I split into two months of reading, I moved on to the next author in the incomparable Delphi Classics series.  Paul Kelver is the first serious novel of Jerome Jerome, and is from 1902.  It's a 400+ pager, but is quite fun to read.  It is semi-autobiographical.  The first part of the book (the book is divided into 2 books, each with 10 fairly long chapters) is seen from the perspective of a 7 year old boy, as his parents go through a crisis.  The scenes all take place in various parts of London.  Jerome cannot help but write with a wit that often leaves a reader laughing out loud, and this part of the book strongly reminded me of Kenneth Grahame's incomparable series of short stories called The Golden Age.  One quite tender scene has the young boy unwittingly come across Charles Dickens, sitting on a park bench, and their interaction is quite stirring and memorable.  A sort of hearty snideness pervades the novel, and often the humour becomes the main event.  One of the funniest and at the same time most uncomfortable scenes is when Paul gets drunk for the first time on sweet champagne.  He ends up proposing to a somewhat large young woman from his rooming house, and spends many pages afterwards trying to undo the damage.  However, before he can is dragged by his fiancee to meet "the family," a scene so unforgettable and so claustrophobic that it is a true wonder how Jerome manages to make us laugh all the way through it.  One of the most vivid scenes of any novel I have read.  Essentially, Paul wants to write serious drama, but is dragged by the collar, so to speak, into the world of comic writing.  His coming of age takes a rather long time to arrive, but along the way we get to share Paul's highs and lows, all of them entertaining and great fun to read about.  Filled with a large cast of wonderful secondary characters, this is a lengthy novel I am most happy to have rediscovered.

George MacDonald's The Portent is a ghost story first published in 1864.  Or rather a love story in which the two people have some type of deep psychic connection.  The opening scene and the conclusion are in Scotland, but the main part of the book takes place in a great house in the English countryside.  Working as a tutor to three children, Duncan Campbell encounters as pale young woman also living there.  However, she is kept closely watched by the Lord and Lady of the house, mostly for selfish reasons.  The girl gradually takes to Duncan and attends his classes, as she can neither read nor write.  The Lord and Lady seem to like things that way.  Hmmmm.  Suspicions are aroused.  The two become lovers and meet clandestinely in an old unused part of the house.  That is, until they are caught, and Duncan knocked unconscious and left in the woods.  The lovers become separated for about 8 years before Duncan finally makes an attempt to rescue her from her captors.  An easy read, the book has very short chapters and a short length.  Not great MacDonald, and not a great ghost story, it is still easily readable.

The Green Round is a supernatural story by Arthur Machen from 1933.  It was his fourth and final novel.  The tale is told in a somewhat confusing way, mirroring the problems that occur to a few different characters, but mostly to the main character.  Told both in his own words and by a therapist who treated him, it is a fascinating if often told story.  What makes this one so unusual is that the ghostly trickster causing the problem follows its victim home from his holiday beach location, where he had been causing problems already.  Once back in London, the entity begins to cause all sorts of nasty events to occur.  For the most part, the victim assumes he is imagining the presence and the events.  But the therapist checks his story and finds that witnesses confirm that events did happen.  Then what is causing them?  Why do some people see a dwarf accompanying the victim, and others do not?  Why does the victim eventually begin to see this dwarf?  As in any well told tale, there is no definite answer or conclusion to the mystery.  Is the victim's mind conjuring this demon and the events, or is some ghostly presence responsible.  There is a lot of discussion about dreams, along with the basic story.  Intelligent and quirky, this makes for an interesting read.

The Mystery of Philip Bennison's Death is a murder mystery from 1894 written by Richard Marsh.  Two older men, who have been best friends for many years, have a discussion about the Art of Murder one night.  Next morning one of them, Bennison, is dead.  It appears to be heart failure.  But this is a murder mystery, so we know better.  So does the surviving friend, Otway.  Despite the inquest proving no foul play, we and Otway are soon on the track of how Bennison died and why.  There is a butler who may have stayed out all night.  Did he do it?  Mystery readers know for certain that the butler did not do it.  Did Otway do it?  He walks in his sleep, and did dream of being in the room that night where the murder took place.  Was it the gambling nephew who always needed money from his uncle, who was none too fond of him?  Or perhaps it was his loving stepson, or even his more loving stepdaughter.  This is a good story that seems to have disappeared off the radar of this well known and still fairly popular author.  

Tony Hillerman's 1978 Navajo mystery novel Listening Woman contains most of the traits for which Hillerman has become justly well known.  Read many years ago, it was time for a reread.  This paperback has been on our shelf a very long time, even after we gave away the rest of Hillerman's works to my dad (who also got seriously hooked on them).  It is one of Hillerman's best novels.  Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Police is all alone on this case, and before the end he has gone through enough physical hardships to last for several more novels.  Poor Joe!  The basic plot involves a radical band of Indians.  They have robbed a bank in Santa Fe, and now their new plot involves kidnapping 11 children (Scouts) and three adults, in retaliation for a similar number of Indians that were massacred by soldiers in the 1800s.  But the best part of the story isn't the story itself, but rather what we learn about Navajo religion and sacred rites.  One can learn much about the Navajo from reading Hillerman, as well as people from Zuni, the Hopi, and even the Utes.  The contrast between other tribes and the Navajo is quite startling at times.  A very fine read!

 

No cover art credit is given.
 

Harp of Burma is from 1966.  Written by Michio Takeyama, my translation is by H. Hibbett.  The story concerns a group of Japanese soldiers operating in Burma (now Myanmar) in 1945.  The story begins just before Japans surrenders, and continues until the men are sent back to Japan sometime afterwards.  The captain is a music graduate, and teaches his men how to sing.  They bond together strongly as a result.  One of the men, Mizushima, constructs a Burmese harp and learns to accompany the singing men.  Burma at the time was a very peaceful and strongly Buddhist nation that Japan wanted to conquer.  Once the men are placed in a temporary POW camp after Japan surrenders, they begin to reflect on their previous actions and those of their now defeated countrymen.  They begin to realize the errors of Japan's previous way of thinking and acting, and they wish to return and help rebuild their country.  But Mizushima had undergone a series of separate adventures from his troop, and decides to remain in Burma after the war and try to help bury the thousands of dead soldiers lying in forests and jungles.  This is a very moving account of a part of the war that is mostly unknown to people.  It also has a strong anti-war sentiment.  Highly recommended.  I have watched the film, but a very long time ago.  I will put it back in the queue for a near future viewing.

A scene from the book, by Motoichiro Takebe. 

 

Meanwhile back at the mystery book shelf...  The Man Who Went In Smoke is the second Martin Beck novel, written by Swedish husband and wife team Sjowall and Wahloo and published in 1969.  No matter where one reads about mystery novels, these ten books always come up as among the best ever written.  Martin Beck is no super detective, and sometimes doesn't have a clue what to do.  Though he has above average intelligence, he is often stymied in his investigations.  He usually works with a partner, but in this one he is alone a lot.  In this case, the disappearance of a successful magazine writer in Budapest doesn't interest him at all.  But off he goes, abandoning his wife and kids on holiday to accept the case.  While most of the story takes place during a hot and sunny summer spell in Budapest, the final denouement takes place back in a cold and rainy Sweden.  One of the interesting things I am noting as I begin this series is how much detail the writer includes, along with advancing the plot.  Rooms are described in detail, as are characters, some of whom have habits (such as drinking a lot of coffee each day) that help delineate the man.  And this seems, so far, to be a series that male readers might enjoy more than female ones.  The only lead female character in this book is a nymphomaniac.  The policeman's wives are using at home waiting for them to come home from work.  Though the books are slightly odd and different from most mystery stories, they don't yet come close to those written by Stanley Bennett Hough, who also wrote SF until the name Rex Gordon.  Still, I enjoy the European locations, as it doesn't take long to tire of New York or LA in mystery writing.  A fun read.

 

The Mugger is Ed McBain's 2nd 88th Precinct novel, from 1956.  Set in a fictional big city which is remarkably similar to New York, the title pretty much gives the plot of this one away.  However, when it appears that the mugger, who uses violence in his attacks on females, has killed a young woman at last, things heat up in the precinct.  In book one, a beat policeman got shot off-duty by a gang in a case of mistaken identity.  He makers an important appearance in this novel, actually solving the murder part of the mystery on his own.  this earns him a promotion, and if he appears in future novels, he will be detective 3rd class.  We get to see other detectives on this case, as the first detective from the previous book is on his honeymoon.  All in all a pretty decent read, though all the police detectives are men.  A female officer is used to try and snare the mugger.  The books were inspired, according to the author, by the Dragnet TV series, and often read much like one of those episodes.  This novel had a lot more humour in it, despite the seriousness of the cases.

 

Oscar The Detective, or Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective wins this month's award for best book title.  Written by The Old Sleuth, it is from 1895.  Detective Oscar Dunne was born with very feminine good looks and mannerisms, which he often uses to advantage to catch the bad guys.   For beneath his effeminate exterior, he is a real tiger.  Hee hee hee, as Oscar would say.  His type of man was called a dudie or a chappie in the day, so there you go.  Ever read a story about such a detective before?  Me neither.  But it seems to work, as the bad guys fall one by one, and an innocent woman is saved from a life surrounded by criminals.  The story is mostly about a gang of thieves who robbed a noble household in Rome, Italy before escaping with the goods to New York.  It's great fun watching Dudie Dunne work his magic.  A most unique mystery novel.

 

Lastly, I finished a book I have been reading off and on for the past few months.  Tales From the Road is a collection of 33 short stories by various authors, all having something to do with a road trip.  Excerpts from Steinback, Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, and short stories by Ballard, Moorcock and many more kept my interest up throughout.  Quite a few of the stories are SF.  I will mention a few of my favourites.  A chapter from Thompson's The Rum Diaries really grabbed me, and I am now interested in reading more of his novel.  The chapter included here first appeared as Chapter 7 of the book with the same name.  It details a drunken adventure he had in Puerto Rico with some friends, an episode that reminded me of the song Sloop John B.  Michael Giorgio's "The Two Ton Turtle of Tattler's Terrace" is a fun little piece about a man's brief visit to a small mountain town following a stop to remove a turtle from the road.  Roxane Gay's "The Myth of Fingerprints" is a superior piece of writing that details the days before a woman's nervous breakdown.  It manages to be comical and dramatic in its 14 pages.  Brian Hodge wrote Miles To Go Before I Weep, about how a travelling salesman meets his lady, and the adventures that occur both before and after their unlikely meeting.  This one packs a few surprises, and somehow manages a happy ending.  "The Blood Like Milk" is a SF like no other, taking place in a pollution-filled future when gangs of roving and half-crazy drivers seek out moments of sunshine, to experience its effect on themselves and local fauna.  It is possibly the best story I have read that deals with ancient Mexican gods.  Coincidentally, the same Mexican god that messed up our third and final Mexican vacation, does its work on the hero of this story.  Quite unforgettable.  "That'll Be The Day" is a fantasy that gives an interesting look at Buddy Holly's final gig, before he died in a plane crash.  All in all a truly good collection of stories.  The Moorcock and Ballard stories are also both good, and I have read them and commented elsewhere.  They are "The Mountain" (Moorcock) and "The Mountain Dances" (Ballard).

 

See you in a month!

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

September Reading Summary

I hit the jackpot with the first novel of the month, Robert Silverberg's Kingdoms of the Wall, a lengthy novel from 1992.  Joining books that take us on great journeys such as some of my favourite reads of all time, this one easily ranks as a don't miss masterpiece of hiking.  It has more than a bit of The Hobbit in it.  It also has some Gormenghast elements, especially at the beginning, and quite a bit of Well at The World's End, too.  Then come memories of the two volume set of The Night Land, not to mention Dante's Inferno.  Which brings to mind the paintings of Bosch.  The Voyages of Gulliver are here, and David Lindsay's A Voyage To Arcturus, and, of course, Homer and Ulysses.  In short, Silverberg's novel is an epic in every sense of the word, a quest akin to searching for the Holy Grail.  So I guess Arthurian tales should also be mentioned here.  It is a vast fantasy novel wrapped in thin science fiction paper.  It is a tale of people on a strange planet, searching ever for their gods.  What they eventually find no one could have predicted, though it drove many of its discoverers mad.  A great novel in every sense.

 

Next came Armada of Antares, the 11th volume in the tales of Dray Prescott, written by Kenneth Bulmer.  It concludes a large block of a continuing story line, which taken altogether is pretty good fantasy writing.  Beginning with the 6th book and continuing through the 11th, the Havilfar Cycle is an impressive read, inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian series.  This last book finally sees the greatly anticipated battle take place between Hamil and Vallia.   But the final book in this segment of the story isn't one of the better entries, and the battle itself is told quickly and without much detail.  So much for building to a climax.

The Captive is another western (he wrote 11 of them) by E C Tubb, written in 1955.  This one takes place near the end of the Civil War, in a western desert.  The South is losing, unable to feed or pay its troops.  They try to smuggle a gold shipment from California to help their cause.  A man is given the task of finding the wagon train shipping the gold, and to see that the gold does not reach the South.  Along the way he is captured and tortured by Commanches.  But again (see last month's read by this author) Tubb gives two sides to the story.  The Indians are fighting a losing battle against white encroachment, and are desperate to die fighting.  However, some want peace, no matter how many treaties the whites have broken.  There aren't enough soldiers to deal with Indian raids, due to the Civil War.  So the white general is also hoping for peace.  A decent pulp action novel with some strong characters, including Native ones, and even Southern ones (well, one anyway, a female).  And what happens to the gold at the end will keep adventurers searching for it forever.  Good luck with that!

 

I finished up a large Moorcock volume, Earl Aubec, which contains a novel (see last month) and a whole slew of short stories, written between 1962 and 1993.  Two stories stand out, while several others are worth reading.  "A Dead Singer" is from 1974, and is 8 pages long.  I think Iain Banks would have loved this story, and some of it reminds me strongly of his writing.  Jimi and a roadie take a little trip.  Highly entertaining!  "Hanging The Fool" is from 1989, and is 17 pages long.   One of Moorcock's Euro-tales, of which I am immensely fond.  No fantasy elements here, but the Tarot Deck plays an important role in the story, and it has a grisly side to it.

 

Lastly (from my Avon/Equinox authors project) came a new collection of old stories by Barry Malzberg.  Called Ready When You Are And Other Stories, the author gives a short introduction, and then follows each story with a brief afterword.  The stories date from 1979 through 1997, with most of them written in the 1980s.  "The Twentieth Century Murder Case" is an ingenious crime caper, with a very unusual victim.  "The Trials of Rollo" is a humourous piece about a man travelling back in time to have a second chance at landing the girl of his dreams.  "Grand Tour" is one of two stories where a man gets three wishes from a genie.  Even after getting his three wishes, he is still depressed and at the end of his rope.  Why?  Because he is who he is, and he did not wish for any kind of real change in himself.  "Celebrating" is quite a charming tale about a man with a gifted young daughter, who teaches him a very important lesson.

 

My first free choice read of the month was H. Rider Haggard's second novel, "The Witch's Head" from 1884.  It is an epic read, originally published in three volumes.  I nearly gave up part way through book 2, but I am glad I persevered.  For a while it looked like a typical late 19th C soap opera kind of story, which I found surprising for Haggard.  He has long been one of my favourite authors, for reasons that will become obvious the further along we go with his works.  But Haggard soon has turned the Victorian novel much on its head, and written a very entertaining piece of fiction.  Three women love the same man, but he only loves one of them; the most beautiful of them, Eva.  Eva's jealous older sister, who also loves poor Earnest, contrives to ruin their relationship.  She does a masterful job of it.  Young Dorothy, almost like a sister to Earnest, also loves him, but realizes that she is far out of the running.  After getting engaged to Eva, Ernest is off on an adventure which will lead him far from most other young men's adventures abroad.  He kills a man in a duel (a cousin) and flees with a friend to South Africa.  He ends up fighting in the first major encounter of British versus Zulus (Battle of Isandhlwana) on January 22nd, 1879, in which the British were totally demolished.  He comes out alive, but blind, due to a lightening strike.  Where does the witch's head come into things?  At the very beginning, and at the very end.  Why did the face of the witch look like Eva's older sister, the one who spoiled everything for the lovers?  Who knows.  Still a cracking good adventure novel, with lots of courting, shooting, and fighting.  For his time, Haggard was fairly advanced in his written treatment of women and Blacks, though today he would be called sexist and a racist.

Next up on the Kindle reader was Dashiell Hammett's first novel, Red Harvest, from 1929.  The only kind of non-wartime story that would have a higher body count would be a samurai film.  And guess what?  Kurosawa took this novel and made it into Yojimbo, one of his biggest popular hits.  A private detective arrives in a small city to find a seething den of crime and general iniquity.  An old man hires him to clean up the town and discover who killed his son, who had just taken over the town newspaper.  The son had actually hired him first, but was gunned down before he could give his scoop to the detective.  The plot and characters are nearly impossible to follow; there are at least three criminal gangs and the entire corrupt police department to deal with, so the detective goes about setting them all against one another.  While the writing style is crude, it is effective and often very dry and funny.  An amazing first novel, and great fun to read.

Fergus Hume followed up his successful first novel with a shorter one called Professor Brankel's Secret, from 1886.  This is a very quick read about a mad chemistry professor who finds a formula that will allow him to travel back in time.  There is also a formula that will allow him to travel into the future, but that part requires having the missing 2nd volume of an old chemistry book.  He tracks down the 2nd book to an English collector, looking for the missing formula.  This is a Gothic tale along the lines of Stevenson's Jekyll/Hyde story, but not nearly so carefully written.  Fun to read, and does not require much from the reader.

Watch and Ward was written in serial form and published in 1871, then revised for book publication in 1878.  Henry James' first novel is a very minor and bizarre tale about a man who takes in an orphaned 12 year old girl and raises her to be his wife.  Try writing that kind of story today!  Of course she knows nothing of his ultimate purpose, and grows up well cared for and happy.  To begin at the beginning, after her father commits suicide, a young girl is left homeless and without family.  Our hero steps in quickly to look after the child, as he was first on scene after the shooting in a hotel.  Before any readers panic, he has an older female housekeeper who helps raise the child, who is soon sent off to boarding school.  A year in Europe follows for the girl, accompanied there by a friendly and rich female friend of the rescuer, and sees her return at age 18 a beautiful and highly educated young lady, in whom three men are very interested.  One is supposedly a long lost cousin of hers, who turns out to be quite a cad.  The other is our hero's cousin, a preacher.  She falls for him, but in the end realizes how weak the man truly is.  In short, the only man whom she can fully trust is her rescuer and guardian.  When he proposes marriage at long last, she at first refuses and runs off to London.  After a few sordid epidsodes there, and having her eyes opened wide to life,and especially men, she returns to marry him after all.  Though the subject matter is somewhat strange, what really defeats the novel (which James disavowed later in life--it's very hard to find a copy of it, but my complete set of his works from Delphi Classics has it) is its simplistic outlook and very simple plot.  While I am glad that for once nothing seriously wrong happens to the child, other than witnessing her father's suicide, the characters are little more than cardboard, and seem to have very little depth.  Probably meant to be a heart warming tale of a man who finds true love (and the woman, too, eventually), James goes out of his way to avoid the story becoming creepy or sentimental.  While it is neither of those, it still lacks enough energy and power to stand even in the middle of the pack as a good read.  Probably best read by James' completists and scholars, or those curious as to the subject matter.  It was first published in serial form in 1871, and considerably improved for its 1878 book publication.  I read the 1878 version.

A second collection of ghost stories by M. R. James is simply called More Ghost Stories, and was published in 1911.  There are 7 stories, and while all of them are worth reading, I will mention two that stand out.  "Casting the Runes" was made into a superior horror film by Jacques Tourneur called Night of the Demon, which was only spoiled at the very end when the monster is shown.  James' tales are so different from those of Lovecraft, an inferior writer who dwells endlessly on how horrible and terrifying everything is.  James is one of those writers that seems to get the facts of the matter down without emotional baggage attached, and still provide a spine tingling thrill by the final page.  Even though I knew the story well, I was biting my nails towards the end of Runes, as if the ending might somehow turn out differently, and the innocent fall victim to the evil.  Another great story is "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral," dramatized for British television many years ago.  This one involves carvings that were made from a very old, dead oak tree for the church, and depict frightening creatures that seem to be able to punish anyone who touches them who happens to have blood on his hands (meaning that he has murdered someone).  There is also a good tale about a haunted rose garden, and another about a haunted maze.  Fun reading, especially on a windy night!

 

1st edition of James' 2nd set of ghost stories. 

 

Jerome K. Jerome also had some things to say about Victorian ghost stories.  He early and short collection of stories is called Told After Supper, and was published in 1891.  The author pokes fun at the English tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve.  Here in North America we usually prefer Samhain, or Halloween as it is now known.  The stories are few and they are very short.  This is a very easy read, perfect for a damp and dark afternoon.  Parts of this book are very funny indeed, my favourite being the story told about the man who killed an entire host of annoying street musicians.  Highly recommended, and makes a perfect after dinner mint after reading the M. R. James stories.

The 1st edition. 

 

I pressed on with a slightly longer, though still short, story collection by Jerome called John Ingerfield and Other Stories, published in 1893.  The lead story is the longest of five tales, three of them very serious ones.  This first story is a very well written one called "In Remembrance of John Ingerfield and His Wife Anna."  Jerome bases this story on a tombstone the narrator seeks out in a poor section of London on the grounds of an old and run down church.  At its heart it is a very unusual and touching love story, set in a time when typhoid fever was running rampant in parts of London, mostly in the poorer areas.  "The Woman of the Saeter" is an old fashioned ghost story that takes place in the mountains of Norway.  I guess he wanted to prove that he could write a real ghost story.  "Variety Patter" details the humourous adventures of a 14 year old boy making his first visit to a music hall.  He smokes cigars, drinks too much, and does it all again when he is 16 or 17.  A pretty funny story.  The final two stories are not very memorable.

 

Lastly came the next Oz book, the 7th, by Frank Baum, called The Patchwork Girl of Oz, from 1913.  All of the Oz books are so odd that by the 7th book they don't seem very odd anymore.  Baum had ended the series at book 6, but decided to bring out another one due to popularity and the income it brought him.  Oz had been sealed off from our world, so he had to come up with a way for the new story to get to him.  New characters in this story, which was his first "quest" adventure, include the namesake Patchwork Girl, as well as the Crooked Wizard, Ojo the Boy Munchkin, the Glass Cat, and the Woozy.  As they seek ingredients for a magic formula that will free Ojo's uncle from an accident with a magic spell that turned him into a marble statue, along with the wizard's wife, they gradually encounter most of the old friends we have all come to know from previous books.  Baum claimed that this was his best Oz book to date.

 

Back by popular demand.
 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

August Reading Summary

First, a note about the weather, and cutting grass.  It's been a dry summer, with very occasional rain that doesn't really soak into the ground.  While areas around us received an occasional deluge, we never did.  The last time I cut our grass was June 25th.  It finally got cut again yesterday, August 31st.  It was mostly straggly weeds that I cut, but things do look better today.  Our last rain was Monday, when again giant storms just missed us.  We still got some healthy, badly needed rain, though.  And a rainbow--a double one, actually.

Last Monday evening's double rainbow, as seen from our back deck. 

And it's been almost a week since our driveway cement was laid down.  Tomorrow night the car can finally return to the garage!  The final big project for this year is the large poplar tree in the far backyard, across the creek.  First, the leaves need to come off, and the bank account return to the black.  Hopefully early October, as that tree tends to lose its leaves early.

In reading news, I managed to finish 15 books, very assorted.  As usual, I continued my Avon/Equinox reading project, where I still have 8 authors works to complete.  And I dove into my Delphi Classics Kindle library, where I have now collected over 40 authors' complete works.  Of course I won't live long enough to get through most of those, but I will die trying.

It seems more than a month ago that I read Star of Gypsies by Robert Silverberg, an intriguing SF novel that takes the Roma and their culture into the far future.  Though the premise is worthwhile, the execution falls short, in my opinion.  The story is a very simple one, and it's a good thing, as it gets constantly interrupted by the main character's reminiscences and dream journeys.  Some of the best planet descriptions in SF are to found in these pages, as well as some fun adventures.  But after a while it gets to be a bit much, and we just want the main story to progress.  But it barely creeps along. And at 467 pages, it is a long creep.

Piers Anthony's And Eternity was meant to be his final book in his Incarnations of Immortality series, but he eventually wrote one more (which I will read in October).  It would be impossible to read this book without having read most of the others.  Even having read most of the others, it's still a pretty difficult road to follow as so many threads are tied together at last. Things that happened way back in the first book (this is Book 7) now finally come to fruition.  Though the series is pretty silly overall, it does have many moments that show the author's genius for plot, setting, and character.  Even so, this is a weak book overall, and not a little confusing.  Anthony is one of those writers who does not believe anything an editor tells him, so his books essentially are published as written, or sent to a different publisher.  Must be nice.

Next came Galactic Dreams, a short story collection by Harry Harrison.  However, there were only 4 of the 12 stories I had not read and reviewed already.  "Famous First Words" is a very funny tale about a professor who manages to find words once spoken by famous people that would eventually become prophetic.  "The Pad" is a sexist but very funny story about a rich man attempting to seduce an unwilling young woman.  Think of a Pepe Le Pew cartoon, only much funnier.  And a newly written (for the collection) story about Bill, the Galactic Hero, is also quite hilarious.

Fox 6 by Kenneth Bulmer, continues the saga of Abernathy Fox, a ship's officer in the British Navy during the Napoleonic wars.  Even though this one is just another pot boiler, it's still great fun to read.  I can easily handled on of these per month.  This adventure is enlivened by the appearance of a group of Turkish warriors and a horde of harem girls brought aboard, with their eunuch.  The girls add humour to the proceedings, and end up surprising Mr. Fox with their ability to help out his short handed crew on deck.

Only One Winner is an interesting collection of minor works by Tubb, including the novella of the title.  There is a long speech that Tubb gave at a SF convention in 1970, and though a bit rambling, it brings up some interesting points from one of the greatest pulp masters of the genre.  The three short stories it contains have already been read and reviewed.  Philip Harbottle also contributes a short essay.  The novella itself is standard pulp fare, and not Tubb's best.  4 losers attempt to take over a space liner filled with rich people on a cruise.  One of them is an alcoholic, and one is a female.  They are thieves and murderers of the worst sort, and they all come to their expected end, after causing much mayhem and death.

Wolves of Darkness is the 2nd of 8 or 9 hardcover books containing most of the shorter fiction of Jack Williamson.  Published in suburban Detroit, these are collectors editions, now long out of print.  I managed to get Vols. 2, 3, and 4 at somewhat decent prices, but the remaining volumes, when available, are way out of price range.  This volume is a 549 page collection of stories from 1931 and 1932.  There is a 23 page preface, followed by 509 pages of stories, and then an afterword of 40 pages.  The preface contains images of old pulp magazine covers, and an essay by Harlan Ellison.  The afterward contains some essays by the author about some of the works in this collection, as well as a short modern piece for this edition.  This volume also wins Cover of The Month, depicting an original magazine cover from back in the day, illustrating one of Jack's tales contained herein.  The cover story is very much in the Lovecraft tradition, and rather spooky at times.  Another story, "The Lake of Light", seems also influenced by Lovecraft, namely his Antarctic tale "Mountains of Madness."

Cover of the month, by pulp artist H. W. Wesso, from 1932.

It took Michael Moorcock 7 years to get around to publishing the third Captain Bastable story, called The Steel Tsar.  I enjoyed my stay on Rowe Island, discovering traces of Ballard in the writing setting, and some of the lost characters.  Most of the action and dialogue take place in the island hospital and in the lone remaining hotel.  Eventually, the Japanese arrive and capture the whites.  More adventures ensue, but the writing becomes more philosophical, as the author and his characters ponder the purpose of the multiverse and their place in it.  The Steel Tsar is a ruthless socialist, based on Stalin, and is also named after a giant creation that Harryhausen would have happily animated: a giant, scimitar-wielding robot created by one of the oddest characters to ever appear in a novel.  My edition is amply illustrated, and I enjoyed this third and final Bastable novel as much as the others in the series.  Recommended for the adventure, and the philosophical discussions.  Here is a quote from near the end which I particularly liked: Mrs. Persson is speaking.... "We have only institutions and a crude, fragile kind of democracy standing between us and absolute Chaos.  That is why we must value and protect those institutions.  And be forever re-examining them."  Well said!

Malzberg At Large is a story collection of his from 1979, containing a previously read short novel and 5 stories.  I had also read two of the five stories.  And one of the stories eventually became the first chapter of his brilliant novel, Overlay.  There is also an essay by the author, offering insights into his life that really brings a lot of his writing into much clearer focus.  The short story "Gaheena is From 1971" has been called Malzberg's Rashomon.  A very brief and tragic love story is told from 3 different perspectives, with a coda.  Interesting story telling.  And A Soul Song to the Sad, Silly, Soaring Sixties sums up so much of Malzberg's writing.  Very powerful.  If you have no time or patience to read any of his assassination novels, this story would be a good substitute.

And now we turn to books off the shelf, and from Kindle.  First up was another Anne Hillerman mystery, set in New Mexico's lava fields called El Malpais. Deb and I are very familiar with the area through hiking and exploring, and it is one of many unique and highly memorable landscapes in the state.  Cave Of Bones is perhaps her finest novel to date, getting very close to her father's love of the land, and his ability to transfer that to writing.  Like any modern mystery story, it is perhaps a bit too complex, filled as it is with characters.  But it was a fun read, and it is now off my shelf.

I managed to finish a large art book which I have been perusing for many months.  Towards A Modern Identity is the 3rd book dealing with the Detroit Institute of Arts' American painting collection.  This one has 129 paintings, each one discussed in detail and illustrated in colour.  It has been a multi-year journey reading all three volumes.  This one features many of my favourite artists, including Thomas Dewing, James McNeil Whistler, along with many American impressionists and tonalists.  I have now read all the published catalogues of paintings from the museum.  Others include Flemish and German Paintings from the 17th, Dutch paintings from the 17th Century, and Italian baroque art.  I'm still awaiting publication of early Flemish and early Italian catalogues.

I read 5 books from the Delphi Classics series.  First up was a reread that I first came across in paperback at least 40 years ago, probably more.  I don't know what ever became of my copy, but I have it now on Kindle, along with William Hope Hodgson's Ghost Pirates.  This is one of the better early ghost stories, written in 1909.  It was the 3rd book of a loose trilogy of terror by the author, which also included The Boats of the Glen Carrig, and The House on the Borderland.  All three are remarkable books, and a must read for lovers of early fantasy and horror.  The present novel builds nicely from corner of the eye sightings to a full fledged attack on a ship by ghost pirates.  Good late night reading, if you are all alone in a creaky house (or boat).

Fergus Hume's first novel, and the one he is still most famous for writing, is called Mystery of a Hansom Cab, and was first published in 1886.  Delphi has the 1898 corrected edition by the author, as well as his original intro to the updated version.  Hume was a new Zealander, though he lived mostly in Australia, where this novel takes place (Melbourne).  He had studied many different mystery stories before he wrote this, and it shows.  He has all the necessary ingredients for a good murder mystery, and then some.  With the success of this novel, he eventually went on to write about 130 books.  Highly readable, and though the Victorian morals do dominate the mystery and the story, they are not nearly as hard to take as in works by other authors of the time.  Well worth a read for mystery fans.

Next came a real treat, M. R. James' first collection of ghost stories, called Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, from 1904.  My Delphi edition contains 8 stories, each one chilling and quite scary.  If some of his stories were ever literally transferred to screen, they would prove as violent and hard to watch as something by Stephen King, or directed by Del Toro (he would actually be a perfect director for these stories).  For example, in "Lost Hearts", children are murdered by a madman trying to follow an ancient formula to help him live forever.  Their beating hearts are cut out while they are still alive. Imagine what Del Toro could do with that!  And in "The Ash Tree," your worst nightmare regarding giant spiders will haunt you for many days after.  Ohter storeis are just plain scary, without too much violence.  In "The Mezzotint", an old architecture print without any people in it gradually acquires a frightening entity that is seen to move slowly across the print and into an open window.  This story reminded me of the Doctor Who episode called "Blink."  "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come To You" is yet another example of good, old fashioned pure blood curling horror.  Great stuff!!

Next came Jerome Jerome's sequel to Three Men In A Boat, called Three Men on the Bummel.  The same characters (minus the dog) go on a bicycle tour of parts of Germany.  Published nearly 10 years after the first book, this one is also rich with side splitting humour.  Even though there are many parts where things don't really come off too well, there is enough entertainment in these pages to keep me reading passages to Deb for the entire winter.  His observations on marriage are priceless, and still give me pains in the chest when I think of them.  At one point I simply could not read any further; I was hurting too much from laughing.  The best parts are in the first three chapters, which are among the funniest things ever to be written down.  There are stories about sailing holidays, too, as well as many walking and bicycling tales.  Very rich reading.

With one day to spare before resuming my Avon/Equinox SF books, I turned to the next story by Frank Baum, entitled The Road To Oz.  Dorothy sets out from Kansas one day, as she agrees to show the wandering Shaggy Man the correct road to take.  They meet up with Button-Bright, and with Toto following along, are soon lost in another strange world.  The first half of the book details the usual scary adventures one seems to have in trying to reach Oz safely.  Along the way they meet the lost Poly Chrome, daughter to the Rainbow Man.  They are also helped out by Johnny Do-It at one point, in trying to cross that impenetrable desert.  He builds them a sand sleigh to sail across it!  The second half of the book has the group safely in Oz, and soon meeting up with old friends.  By the end of the book, virtually every character we have met so far in the entire series is present, for it's Ozma's grand birthday party, and everyone is coming to help celebrate.  While there is very little adventure in the 2nd half of the book, there is spectacle.  A good addition to the series.

I'll be back soon with film updates. Stay tuned.

Mapman Mike