September Reading Discussion.

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I finished Dangerous Visions. It was okay - some very good stories, some pretentious rubbish. More of the former, to be fair. Full review of all the stories posted on the Reviews board.
 
I finished Neal Asher’s Lockdown Tales and enjoyed it a lot.

Now on to Inhibitor Phase By Alistair Reynolds, which I’m very much looking forward to.
 
I've just finished Ganymede Wakes by Joshua T. Calvert. It is book 1 of what is so far a trilogy. It is reasonably hard S.F. set in a relatively near apocalyptic future (I don't believe dates were given -- I'd guess 150 years?) In a turn from normal post-apocalyptic books it sees, what I would consider to be a more likely outcome, a world of vast differences in wealth and safety, and a less likely, highly developed Space tech. An interesting feature is that the governments are subservient to 4 major corporations (a not unlikely turn either). The story has two sets of protagonists, one based on earth as a group of mercenaries, and one based on Ganymede and in space generally. A new planet has been discovered and the robotic ship bringing a sample back finds something very strange.

On the whole this is a good book with almost too much action. It reminds me a bit of The Expanse, but it remains to be seen if the series will go the same kind of direction.

Solid 4 stars. I have the sequel in my queue.
 
Parson said:
I've just finished Ganymede Wakes by Joshua T. Calvert. It is book 1 of what is so far a trilogy
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I've had it a few weeks, so far I've made three attempts at getting in to the story but I found it a struggle every time.

Your post is challenging me to try again - so it's added to my tbr once more :)
 
Danny McG said:
I've had it a few weeks, so far I've made three attempts at getting in to the story but I found it a struggle every time.

Your post is challenging me to try again - so it's added to my tbr once more :)
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honestly the books have not met my expectations so far, except for blood drawn. well desert prince is okay also. i've reading a lot of manga and become fascinated with 2 or 3 concepts: isekai, cultivation and game world. i guess that if you believe some theories and we live in an holographic universe we are living in a game... can anyone please tell me how to level up?
 
The Apocalypse Troll.

I'd never read it until about two years ago, re-read time tonight
 
Finished Last call by Tim Powers. This has a brilliant central storyline (one of the best in fantasy for my money), but didn't quite escape the Tim Powers tendency for wobbly endings, when he fails to quite pull everything together. I think it would have been a much stronger book with a tighter focus and a couple of the subsidiary strands and characters cut. Even so, highly recommended, and after Declare, I'll be looking at the other two in the Fault Lines trilogy.
 
Just finished Lovecrafts's At The Mountains Of Madness. I'd not read it before, but heard good things. Last week I watched the film Memory about the conception and inspiration behind the original Alien film, and it cited ATMOM as a key influence, so I decided to read it and got through it in a few days. I've not read all of Lovecraft's stuff but have read quite a bit and this is probably my favourite piece so far. It's also his longest piece, so he really gave himself time to go to town with the story. As well as the usual cosmic horror stuff, there seems to be a very Promethean theme running through it, and for once the human characters actually seem to empathise / sympathise with the strange creatures called the Elder Things / Old Ones that they discover. It turns out to be an unusually self-aware piece of foreboding / forewarning on the part of HP about the creation of humankind, and the things that we in turn create and unleash upon the world. And the shoggoths are very cool creatures, inspiring all sorts of other horror creatures from books and films (including, inadvertently, a creature from one of my own novels - funny how these things come around).

I'm also about two-fifths of the way through A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James. Not SFFH in any way (although some of the stuff that goes on in the Jamaican ghetto gets pretty close to horror at times), but it is a searing, angry read with a host of grotesque characters. Reading it I'm intrigued by his foray into epic fantasy (Black Leopard, Red Wolf) so have put that on the TBR pile as a result.
 
Dan Jones said:
Just finished Lovecrafts's At The Mountains Of Madness. I'd not read it before, but heard good things. Last week I watched the film Memory about the conception and inspiration behind the original Alien film, and it cited ATMOM as a key influence, so I decided to read it and got through it in a few days. I've not read all of Lovecraft's stuff but have read quite a bit and this is probably my favourite piece so far. It's also his longest piece, so he really gave himself time to go to town with the story. As well as the usual cosmic horror stuff, there seems to be a very Promethean theme running through it, and for once the human characters actually seem to empathise / sympathise with the strange creatures called the Elder Things / Old Ones that they discover. It turns out to be an unusually self-aware piece of foreboding / forewarning on the part of HP about the creation of humankind, and the things that we in turn create and unleash upon the world. And the shoggoths are very cool creatures, inspiring all sorts of other horror creatures from books and films (including, inadvertently, a creature from one of my own novels - funny how these things come around).
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If you get a chance, take look at Victor LaValle's introduction to The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham. He makes a compelling argument for one reading of the human sympathy for the Old Ones and abhorrence of the shoggoths.
 
Randy M. said:
If you get a chance, take look at Victor LaValle's introduction to The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham. He makes a compelling argument for one reading of the human sympathy for the Old Ones and abhorrence of the shoggoths.
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I definitely will, thanks. It's funny, whilst the shoggoths are abhorrent, repulsive creatures who mock their erstwhile masters, there is a sort of off-key sympathy for them, too - they were created for the sole purpose of exploitation and slavery, and thus there's an inevitability with respect to their rising up against their masters. Which is why I thought it rather self-aware for Lovecraft, given his own overt racist tendencies elsewhere in his work. As though he'd had a change of heart and was able to consider things from the perspective of "the other" - in this case, the Old Ones and the shoggoths, as both offer a Promethean representation of mankind.

If you're interested, LaValle has some nice recommendations of other Lovecraftian horror here - The Fisherman is particularly wonderful.
 
Dan Jones said:
I definitely will, thanks. It's funny, whilst the shoggoths are abhorrent, repulsive creatures who mock their erstwhile masters, there is a sort of off-key sympathy for them, too - they were created for the sole purpose of exploitation and slavery, and thus there's an inevitability with respect to their rising up against their masters. Which is why I thought it rather self-aware for Lovecraft, given his own overt racist tendencies elsewhere in his work. As though he'd had a change of heart and was able to consider things from the perspective of "the other" - in this case, the Old Ones and the shoggoths, as both offer a Promethean representation of mankind.

If you're interested, LaValle has some nice recommendations of other Lovecraftian horror here - The Fisherman is particularly wonderful.
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Thanks. I was going to say I hadn't seen that page before, but just noted that I contributed comment 17. Huh.

I read LaValle's The Ballad of Black Tom a couple of years ago. That and his intros to this one and The Best of Richard Matheson have pushed me to pick up a couple more of this books. Now all I have to do is read them.

Oh, and I have read The Fisherman and agree it's very good, maybe just a bit better -- or at least, more intense -- than Gemma Files' Experimental Film, which he also recommends, and that I'd recommend, too.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
I have just started Octavia E. Butler: Kindred, Fledging, Collected Stories (2020) edited by Gerry Canavan and Nisi Shawl. It's one of those fancy Library of America volumes, collecting the author's first novel, her last novel, stories, and essays. With this book, she has been added to the list of genre SF/fantasy writers who have won mainstream literary approval. (Bradbury, Dick, LeGuin, maybe others.)
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Those Library of America sets always draw me in. Resisting ordering something from their mailing list each week is a challenge.
thaddeus6th said:
I'm reading the first Dragonlance book by Weis and Hickman, on my Kindle, and Taiko, by Eiji Yoshikawa, in hardback. Been after the latter for a long time but it kept on being unavailable.
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I'm always oddly happy to see people picking up Dragonlance still. Love those books.

I finished House in the Cerulean Sea and enjoyed it quite a bit. Very whimsical and upbeat, a refreshing change from most of my reading of late. At times it maybe got a little TOO saccharine, but my reading could probably do with a little more of that. A government bureaucrat sent to investigate/evaluate an orphanage for magical children finds more than he expected.

Now I'm late on starting my summer-dumb choice of Sahara by Clive Cussler, which may be an over-correction in the dumb direction. I feel like I'm reading an Uncharted video game, only without the video game industry's comparatively complex and nuanced portayal of women. Even James Bond had more realistic interactions with the ladies...

Also reading Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers, which I read in undergrad but remember nothing about. Going to follow it up with Christie's Murder of Roger Ackroyd in a heavyeight bout to see which queen of mystery comes out on top.
 
Frank Waters "The People of the Valley" (1941)
Remote Spanish-speaking farming community high up in the Sangre de Christo mountains pre WWII or maybe even WWI.
 
jelyll and hyde by simon r green and a new tao wong system adventures are out
 
I'm almost finished reading "You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin" by Rachel Corbett.
 
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