May's Magical Meditations on Masterfully Manafactured Manuscripts

[J-Sun]

Read Sturgeon's Visions and Venturers. This is a strange collection. All the line-by-line writing is there and all the quirky characters and all the unusual descriptions and the wonderful control of tone and so on. Most every story was interesting through the bulk of each. But not a single flippin' one of them was extraordinary throughout and many were deeply, deeply flawed with overt discussions of how uptight and mean all we humans usually are and how if we'd just chill out, everything could be so groovy. I mean, regardless whether the observation has validity or not, it makes for preachy and simplistic-seeming stories. And many of the concepts were incredible - in a bad way. The "altruist" who charges large sums of money after kidnapping spineless people who happen to try to steal the car he's set out for them when they want to drive off a cliff to attempt suicide - why, these people he pep talks (with some apparent superscience gizmo for added heft) into Speaking Confidently. Or the hardnosed literary agent who happily swallows the pretty girl's story about the lost superweapon of the alien races. And so on. So there were all those good things I mentioned first but there were poor ideas, plots, and handling of themes, also.

All in all, it wasn't a bad collection, but it's easily his worst (displacing probably Sturgeon in Orbit for that distinction), and doesn't have a single can't-miss story. Probably "The Martian and the Moron" and "One Foot and the Grave" were the best, though "The Traveling Crag" almost made it, despite a couple of major problems.

But maybe it's just me and they're not hitting me right for some reason. These aren't un-Sturgeonesque stories and he's usually teetering on the brink of a lot of the problems I mention even when successful so I dunno. He's usually one of my favorite writers - just not in this collection.

 

[J-Sun]

Read van Vogt's The Mind Cage (1957). All I can say about this is that, for the first two-thirds or so, it's okay but not particularly gripping and then it finds another gear and fully becomes a great example of what JunkMonkey recently described, though this is the single SF work from his c.1952-1962 hiatus so isn't exactly either early or late van Vogt.

Body switches, mistaken identities, revelations of relationships or lacks thereof, weird tyrannies and vast conspiracies, Great Judges and Brains, strange social structures, that vision thing, superpowers - the whole enchilada in the kitchen sink, except that it's strangely less Cosmic than some van Vogt. Dunno what I really think of it yet but it was an interesting experience.

 

[Grunkins]

Finished Iain M Banks' Excession last night and loved it. Possibly my favorite of his novels so far. The ship to ship dialogue was fantastic.

About to start Daniel Abraham's second novel in his Dagger and Coin series, King's Blood. (Usually it takes me a good long sit down, staring at my TBR stacks, to pick my next book, but last night I had a dream I was in Abraham's kitchen, so I decided to run with it.)

 

[Vertigo]

Yes I too loved the ship to ship communications in Excession!

Had a couple of lighter reads:

More than Honor by David Weber, David Drake and S M Stirling. A little disappointing. Just three stories; Weber's was very good, Drake was pretty bad and Stirling's was OK. The appendix background info on the Honorverse was interesting but not quite what I was expecting.

Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold. Another book of three stories but this time all three are Bujold at her adventure hero writing best. Great fun!

 

[Fried Egg]

Finished John Wyndham's "Kraken Wakes" and now reading Guy de Maupassant's "Tales Of Supernatural Terror".

 

[Lord Soth]

Finished Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber. A little slow to get going, and I barely put it down a third of the way through but persevered and it turned out quite enjoyable in the end, will continue with the series.

Now (re-)reading Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson, if you haven't done it yet I suggest everyone to re-read the whole series. Much easier to follow and you pick up on so much more the second time round.

 

[Connavar]

I read Scum Manifesto by Valerie Solanas.

A bit wild on her views against males but she was really radical,smart about her ideas,comments on the gender roles. The book has dated really well despite writing about hippies. Fantasticly agressive and powerful read. She might not like my gender but i dig her book

 

[ratsy]

Finished the Windup Girl and I am now reading Captain Nemo by Kevin J Anderson.

 

[J-Sun]

Finished (re)reading Pohl's collection, In the Problem Pit (1976). Good+. (As usual with collections, verbose post in the short story thread.)

 

[Rodders]

Finished Lovegrove's The Age of Odin. Very enjoyable. Now onto I, Partridge and finding it very funny already.

 

[J-Sun]

Harry Harrison's Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers (1973). This book is chock full of funite! If you love 30s-style space opera (and have a sense of humor), you'll probably love this and if you hate 30s-style space opera, you'll probably love this. While it at first seemed to be nothing but pure comedy, the moment I thought to myself that the humor was wearing because, ironically, I couldn't take anything "seriously" enough to keep the humor biting, the book began to manage a remarkable job of being passable old-style space opera while continuing to mercilessly skewer it with pinpoint accuracy and kept things fresh by diverging from expectations in places while it usually accorded with them. IOW, for every nine ingredients that had to be there to be classic space opera, there was one ingredient that pointedly couldn't be in classic space opera - or never would have been brought to the foreground. So it was funny both ways.

Anyway - this is easily better than Bill, the Galactic Hero and probably only fails to displace The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat out of sentimentality or due to the fact that SSR is a very different kind of humor with, actually, more serious substance. I felt like Bill had a sort of sap of a protagonist that Harrison was mostly just sadistic towards and some of the non-Starship Troopers satirical targets didn't really make much sense and much of the story was (naturally) unpleasant. Not to say it's bad, but just that it wasn't as much to my taste and wasn't as enjoyable. Whereas Galaxy Rangers was basically intrinsically entertaining, funny, pointed, and kept a light feel despite the barbed nature of the satire.

As a fan of all four, I can almost say that, except that it's almost impossible to be as concentratedly funny as Spinal Tap and ST didn't really run the counter-expectation riffs, Galaxy Rangers : Space Opera :: Spinal Tap : Heavy Metal.

 

[vanye]

Followed Weber's A Rising Thunder by A Beautiful Friendship. Not sure that I am fond of the idea of him adding a young adult series to the Honorverse. Which is too close to being a euphemism for adolescent, I feel. There's a fix: On the one hand I don't want to miss out on background/historical information, on the other hand I didn't enjoy reading it as much as I liked reading A Rising Thunder.

Followed that up with a fun read, if you like military scifi: David Drake, The Road of Danger. Lots of attitude. Great stuff.

Am now reading The King's Blood by Daniel Abraham, the follow-up on The Dragon's Path. The first one was a very promising beginning, I thought, but it is early days yet.

 

[Grunkins]

I started Devil to the Belt by CJ Cherryh yesterday. It's the first of her novels that I've read. So far so good, and not what I expected.

 

[Extollager]

Decided to reread The Lord of the Rings (this will be my twelfth reading), this time following along with the Hammond-Scull Lord of the Rings Companion and reading selections from The Silmarillion (today, "Of the Rings of Power...") and Unfinished Tales, etc.

Btw, this year is loaded with Tolkienian anniversaries. This week I turned in an article to Beyond Bree, the Tolkienian newsletter, on The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (50 years); Poems and Songs of Middle Earth, the Caedmon LP with Tolkien reading several of his poems -- this was a treasure for some of us back in the day, a rare opportunity to hear The Professor -- who is a great reader of his own work (45 years); and Smith of Wootton Major (45 years). It is the 35th anniversary of the publication of The Silmarillion. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the publication (in Sauron Defeated) of The Notion Club Papers, Tolkien's unfinished novel that he worked on during a time when he was stalled on the composition of The Lord of the Rings (that is probably an oversimplification). According to the story itself, this year 2012 is the year in which the Notion Club Papers were discovered in waste paper in an Oxford basement. This year is also the 75th anniversary of publication of The Hobbit, but you may have heard about that already!

I'm reading Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography (he knows Arthur Machen, as well as Dickens and Thomas de Quincey, as one who evokes the mystery of London), Roger Scruton's Green Philosophy, Bradbury's Dandelion Wine (just a little at a time) and selections from Moore and Kuttner's Detour to Otherness collection. I've also decided to read the entire King James translation of the Bible, taking several years to complete it if need be. I recently read the Bible (the 66 books, not including the Apocrypha, which I mean to begin reading later this year) in the English Standard Version, taking two years. I read the Bible as a Christian, but I would recommend it to non-Christians too.

I'm also reading stories by Chekhov and have read several by Arthur Machen, including "A Fragment of Life," which I think very well of. I read it in S. T. Joshi's Penguin selection of Machen, which makes choices I would dispute. For example, I think that, if space was limited, he should have omitted "The Bowmen" and "The Soldiers' Rest" in favor of perhaps my favorite of Machen's stories, the little-known London story "N." I'll probably read again "The Terror" before returning the book to the library.

 

[dask]

Finished HORROR: THE 100 BEST BOOKS edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman. Great, I loved it. Wasn't sure at first but like a good burial my impression was premature. My three favorite essays based on writing alone --- I kept the writers' names covered --- were Colin Wilson on DRACULA by Bram Stoker; Harlan Ellison on OUT OF TIME AND SPACE by Clark Ashton Smith; Donald A. Wollheim on THE OUTSIDER AND OTHERS by H.P. Lovecraft tied with Lisa Tuttle on THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson. Sorry, I hate ties as it shows unwanted weakness but I couldn't decide. So there!

The three books I wanted to read most based on the essays regardless of how well I enjoyed the writing: THE KING IN YELLOW by Robert W. Chambers, essay by H.P. Lovecraft; A SECOND CENTURY OF CREEPY STORIES edited by Sir Hugh Walpole, essay by Hugh Lamb tied with THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU by H. G. Wells, essay by Gene Wolfe (didn't feel right substituting an anthology for a novel so another annoying tie); and HAWKSMOOR by Peter Ackroyd, essay by R.S. Hadji.

My least enjoyable essay? Almost from the first sentence I knew something was off. I spent too much time rereading sentences trying to figure out what the guy was trying to say. Who could this be? Then, two sentences from the end, and I swear this is true, it hit me. I slid the piece of paper away confirmed I was right. John Clute. Now I like John Clute and his entries in the SF Encyclopedia pose no problem, in fact there a little off too but in a good way. This here was like his book reviews in F&SF. Sometimes I just didn't know what he was saying. But it's over with, the book is read, enjoyed, and highly recommended.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm really pleased to have picked up a second hand copy of Eyes of the Dragon by King at the school fair yesterday - I haven't read it in years. Just finished Anne Lyle's Alchemist of souls which I very much enjoyed.

 

[j d worthington]

Finished HORROR: THE 100 BEST BOOKS edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman. Great, I loved it. Wasn't sure at first but like a good burial my impression was premature. My three favorite essays based on writing alone --- I kept the writers' names covered --- were Colin Wilson on DRACULA by Bram Stoker; Harlan Ellison on OUT OF TIME AND SPACE by Clark Ashton Smith; Donald A. Wollheim on THE OUTSIDER AND OTHERS by H.P. Lovecraft tied with Lisa Tuttle on THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson. Sorry, I hate ties as it shows unwanted weakness but I couldn't decide. So there!

The three books I wanted to read most based on the essays regardless of how well I enjoyed the writing: THE KING IN YELLOW by Rob]ert W. Chambers, essay by H.P. Lovecraft; A SECOND CENTURY OF CREEPY STORIES edited by Sir Hugh Walpole, essay by Hugh Lamb tied with THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU by H. G. Wells, essay by Gene Wolfe (didn't feel right substituting an anthology for a novel so another annoying tie); and HAWKSMOOR by Peter Ackroyd, essay by R.S. Hadji.

My least enjoyable essay? Almost from the first sentence I knew something was off. I spent too much time rereading sentences trying to figure out what the guy was trying to say. Who could this be? Then, two sentences from the end, and I swear this is true, it hit me. I slid the piece of paper away confirmed I was right. John Clute. Now I like John Clute and his entries in the SF Encyclopedia pose no problem, in fact there a little off too but in a good way. This here was like his book reviews in F&SF. Sometimes I just didn't know what he was saying. But it's over with, the book is read, enjoyed, and highly recommended.

I'd forgotten about Clute's review of The Anubis Gates... it's been a looong time since I read this particular collection of essays. As a side note, i think it's very telling that Lumley was so taken with Cave's Murgunstrumm, given that Cave was, by and large, almost the quintessential "pulp hound"*... and Lumley's work is often very much in the "pulp" category. (Actually, I'm rather fond of Lumley's work, so this isn't meant as an insult... merely an honest critical assessment.)

*And if anyone wishes to contest that, I suggest they try reading Murgunstrumm, especially given the perfectly apropos addition of those grotesque Lee Brown Coye illustrations, before doing so....

 

[dask]

I don' need no stinkin' contest. I've been looking for MURGUNSTRUMM ever since I saw the old pulp cover to one of Cave's stories where a damsel was strapped to a gigantic pair of scissors, an evil looking doctor and his drooling assistant eagerly standing by expecting---?! Man, that stuff wouldn't be allowed on a magazine cover today no matter how free the Supreme Court says we are. No way!

 

[Grunkins]

I read the first book in the CJ Cherryh omnibus, and enjoyed the hard science and quality of the writing, but also need a break before the second half.

Now I'm about 100 pages into Alastair Reynolds' House of Suns, and so far it's a winner.

 

[vanye]

Man, that stuff wouldn't be allowed on a magazine cover today no matter how free the Supreme Court says we are. No way!

That is sad for you and your compatriots. Fortunately it is not so where I live!