May's Marvellously Mysterious Manuscript Meanderings

[AE35Unit]

I finished yesterday The Pnume (Planet of Adventure #4) by Jack Vance.

It was wonderful SF adventure series. I felt a rare sense of loss when Adam Reith story on the alien world Tschai ended.
.

Im still looking for that one so I can read the other 3 books in the series!

 

[Rodders]

Just finished Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet: Courageous." Very enjoyable with a bit of a gung ho ending. Now onto The Lost Fleet: Valient.

 

[Hypnos164]

Recent Readings:

The Sour Lemon Score - Richard Stark : Great Parker action.
Fuzzy Nation - John Scalzi : Enjoyable yarn, though perhaps a bit too much "gripping" courtroom drama for my tastes.
Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris : "meh" vampire romance

Currently having a go at Black Sun Rising by C S Friedman

 

[GOLLUM]

Currently having a go at Black Sun Rising by C S Friedman

Good choice. Will be interesting to see your thoughts on this one.

 

[gully_foyle]

Finished The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin. Whilst I can recognise its merit I can't say I enjoyed it. Ms Le Guin doesn't exactly write uplifting stories but I really enjoyed The Left Hand of Darkness and The Lathe of Heaven. This one was more communist manifesto than novel as she explored the clash of a truly socialist world with a typically capitalist one.

Now reading The Weapon Shops of Isher by A.E. Van Vogt.

 

[Connavar]

Im still looking for that one so I can read the other 3 books in the series!

Frankly its not the strongest in the series the last book and it took me 2 years to read all four books. I read first on in 2009 and book 2-4 the last 3 months.

Dont wait to read the series i tell you, they are pretty short 150-200 pages but they take alot of fun time to read.

 

[Vertigo]

Im still looking for that one so I can read the other 3 books in the series!

You can get it second hand from Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0879974842/?tag=brite-21 £4.60 including delivery

or Abebooks: http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?an=jack+vance&bt.x=0&bt.y=0&sts=t&tn=pnume £2.10 including delivery

 

[Diggler]

Finally finished Boneshaker. While I did enjoy it, it really dragged in places. If it was made into a film, I would be first in line because it would make a great movie.

I was going to read an A.E Van Vogt novel, but stumbled upon Hothouse by Brain Aldiss instead

 

[Vertigo]

Now that's one strange book Diggler but I loved it

Just finished re-reading Selling Out, the second book in Justina Robson's Quantum Gravity series and once again, brilliant! I seem to be enjoying these every bit as much as the first time around. So now it's on to book three: Going Under.

 

[D_Davis]

Let's see, over the last weeks I've reed/tried to read/started:

Elric of Melnibone - re-read - amazing
Mardock Scramble - rubbish and terrible (didn't finish)
Who Fears the Devil? - started - awesome
Tales of the Pirx the Pilot - dull, lifeless, and entirely uninteresting. The complete opposite of Cyberiad.

 

[J-Sun]

Finished Rucker's White Light. It could be savaged as an almost plotless dream about nonsense or loved as a brilliant and funny experience with many mind-expanding moments. I'm somewhere between, but definitely on the positive side.

John Shirley does the foreword and accurately summarizes the pros and possible cons and references PKD. Rucker does the afterword and references PKD again, along with Kafka and Watson. None of these references surprise me. I like the original Ace blurb: "Albert Einstein! Georg Cantor! David Hilbert! Donald Duck! The Secrets of the Universe Revealed!" (It kinda blows my mind that Jim Baen originally published this though he was more eclectic than he's sometimes credited for.)

A couple of examples of concepts and humor (though, in places, it's quite dark and serious):

A description of Hilbert's Hotel (pp.81-2):

Although the hotel was only two hundred feet high, it had infinitely many floors. The trick was that the upper floors got thinner and thinner. Each successive layer of rooms was flattened enough to use only one twentieth of the remaining hotel height...so there was always room for nineteen more floors.... I stared up at one of the slit-like upper windows and wondered how anyone could use a room with an inch-high ceiling...let alone a room that an electron would have to stoop to enter.

The protagonist's sometime travelling companion, an alien who looks like a giant cockroach and sometimes has an interesting take on English (p.158):

To be human is to be erroneous.

Also, there's a line in here which bugs me (so to speak) as it reminds me of something, but I can't place it - maybe some fable like the lion with the thorn in his paw or something? Does anyone recognize this? (The 'him' being Franx, the alien cockroach (aka Gregor Franz)).

(p.84):

Someone..."some benighted xenophobe"...had thrown an apple at him. It had stuck in his back and begun to rot.

Anyway - a very wild, interesting, good book.

 

[D_Davis]

White Light is a masterpiece. One of my all-time favorite books. Mathpunk/Transrealism at its finest.

 

[woodsman]

Sounds great J-Sun might have to have a look for it.

Half way through Gormenghast - Peake, loving it.

 

[Fried Egg]

Finished Rucker's White Light. It could be savaged as an almost plotless dream about nonsense or loved as a brilliant and funny experience with many mind-expanding moments. I'm somewhere between, but definitely on the positive side.

This book is a kind of fictional companion piece to his non-fictional book called "Infinity and the Mind" in which he explores many of the same concepts. I actually read that book first and "White Light" later.

I've just finished "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" by Jack Finney and now I'm reading my first Harlan Ellison: "I have no mouth & I must scream".

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Five Roundabouts To Heaven by John Bingham. Very beautifully written and disturbing crime novel.

 

[J-Sun]

This book is a kind of fictional companion piece to his non-fictional book called "Infinity and the Mind" in which he explores many of the same concepts. I actually read that book first and "White Light" later.

Yep, I have Infinity and the Mind, but haven't read it yet. I still have a billion pieces of fiction in the TBR (and only a million or so non-fiction ) so that's higher priority at the moment, but I look forward to getting to that.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Abandoned Vor by James Blish halfway through; too many turgid expository passages and a rather sexist 'human angle'. Now reading Ticket Of Leave, an earlier translation of the Simenon novel now available from NYRB Classics under the title The Widow.

 

[Nesacat]

Five Roundabouts To Heaven by John Bingham. Very beautifully written and disturbing crime novel.

You're the only other person I know who's read this. It's is lovely and very disturbing and I cannot get anyone to even get half way.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

It's like Proust writing a crime novel! We should start a campaign.

Have you read his other books? I mean to pick some up with my next paycheck.

 

[Nesacat]

There are none to be found in the bookshops here. I found Roundabouts in a remainder store and I already had a list of books to buy in Europe. Since most of what I really wanted were new and hardback there went my budget. Maybe more will show up at BookXcess.