Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Book Review: The Ganymedan R.T. Ester
Book Review: A Spectre is Haunting Texas by Fritz Leiber
A Spectre is Haunting Texas by Fritz Leiber
197 pages, Ace Books Mass Market Paperback
First published, 1968
This book is an insane thing that should not exist on multiple levels. A political satire that no publisher should have greenlit ever, with icky characters and ideas abound. How this was conceived of is just the first mystery, but we can solve how it got published. It was serialized over three issues of Galaxy magazine by editor Fredrik Pohl, who was one of the best tongue-in-cheek writers the genre had (see his novel The Space Merchants, co-written with CM Kornbluth), and that solves that. Pohl has the kind of sense of humor that, despite being a great SF mind, also enjoys the completely bonkers concept.
Fritz Leiber, the author, is a very interesting figure in Science Fiction. A very respected author who has written classics like The Conjuring Wife, Gather, Darkness, and a personal favorite of a young PKD, Destiny Draws Three. But as respected as he was, he also had the reputation for writing The Wanderer, which is universally agreed upon as the worst novel to win the Hugo Award.
The Wanderer is also a batshit crazy bizarro SF novel, that is about feline Anarchist nympho aliens who destroy the moon by bringing their planet into orbit with the earth. It had to be a lifetime achievement award because it was nominated against The Planet Buyer by Cordwainer Smith and Whole Man by John Brunner, while not perfect, those books are actually, you know, good. Not like hilarious, The Wanderer is only good in the way Megaforce or an 80s Chuck Norris movie are ironically good.
This novel is even weirder, bonkers on a level that is hard to explain, but it at least it seems to be some intelligent satire. Of course, there are plenty of politics of the era I didn’t get, and I suspect most will not catch on that the title is a play on the opening line of the communist manifesto.
The plot is described on the back cover…
Christopher Crockett La Cruz (or 'Scully') is an actor, an extrovert and a ladies' man. To most of the inhabitants of post-World War III he looks outlandish, even sinister, To their women, he looks very comely. Earth looks equally odd to Scully. Hormone treatment has turned Texans into giants and their Mex slaves into unhappy dwarfs.
To the Mexes, Scully is a Sign, a Talisman, a Leader. To Scully, the Mexes are a Cause, The time is ripe for revolution...¨
So Scully is an actor who grew up in Zero-G in orbit, so when he comes to what he thinks will be Canada in an exo-skeleton suit, he discovers that Greater Texas has taken over most of North America. The good ol’boys in Texas take growth hormones so they can be eight feet tall and enslave those tiny Mexes. Yeah, that setup is just the beginning of the madness.
“Scully, son, ever since the great Texas ward industrial migration and World War three, Texas has extended from the Nicaraguan canal to the North Pole, including most of Central America, all of Mexico, nearly all of Canada, and all that matters in the flibberty gibbet 47 I mean former United States of America.¨
Everything is bigger in Texas, and I feel like this 50-year-old novel would have hit hardest in the GW Bush years, when it seemed we were getting the violent neocon fantasies of a YALE grad trying to be super Texan.
“That is, at present. We Texans might take a fancy to extend our boundaries any day. There's Cuba to be reconquered, and Indochina and Ireland, and Hawaii and hither Siberia. But on the whole, we Texans are peaceable, tolerant shoot-and-let-shoot people. We whipped the Cherokees and the Mexicans and tied the Russians and Chinese, we're inclined to rest on our laurels and less, of course, roused when we get dynamic as an automated cotton picking rig goosed by the program for the Irish jig.
But as for being independent, let me tell you, Scully my boy, Texas is the golddurnest independent nation in the entire annals of political science.”
You see what I mean. I think Lieber lived in Chicago, and I am not sure this wouldn’t have been a more effective satire written by a Texan, but this novel, as weird as it is, made me laugh with parts like that. There are plenty of icky political and social notions, but the setup and world-building are just so Bizarro.
There is a fake historical quote at the opening of chapter 3 governors ranch that really he explains the insane world building of this novel “Texas is a wandering and tattered ribbon of white fascism, ineffectually separating the non directive black democracies and hip republics of Florida and California, now occupying at most two percent of North America, two cents worth of bloated mentally bombed out squaredom! -Africa America, by Booker T. Nkrumah
Can you say this novel works or is good? Not really, I can’t tell this is a genius work of SF satire but I can say it is a weird as hell artifact that seems impossible.
Elmo shook his head and sucked his lips with a plop. “Nope, Scully, and achieving real freedom we've long ago discarded the phantasms of democracy. For the immaterial, ignoble ballot we've received, it substantiates the material, brutally preferable, noble bullet, which is the item Longhorn E. A the. most contumeliously refuses to face. Adverse ballots he'd like to cascade off him like Cottonwood balls.”
OK, that sounds like today. I am glad I checked it out. In fairness, I can only give this book three out of five stars, because it is deeply flawed. I personally had a five-star experience because I just couldn’t believe what I was reading, or understand how this got published.
Book Review: Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
163 pages, Hardcover
Published August, 2025 by Tordotcom
My first experience with this author was at a book signing event. Sure, I knew the name; they were appearing with SB Divya at Mysterious Galaxy to promote the Terraformers. I kept thinking about my father, a lifelong political scientist who had lots of city planner students when Newitz was talking about that book. I say this as a compliment, but that novel was a great piece of political scientist fiction. That novel ended up working for me on every single level. Super amazing Science Fiction, so I went into Automatic Noodle cold, knowing nothing except what I could glean from the cover art. Robots and noodles were involved.
At 160 pages, this will be marketed as a novella, but in the old days, this would be a novel, and since I am mostly a classic and New Wave reader, I am going to go ahead and consider this a novel. So far, one of the best novels I have read this year. I suppose if you trust me, go in cold and read this. I don’t think you can spoil this one, but I liked discovering the story as I went.
I also want to talk about it. It is also being marketed as cozy, I think, because it is a generally positive story about bots and AI opening a ghost kitchen. As I was wondering if the novel has haters. The reality is that authors and creators of art have taken a pretty hardline stance against AI slop, and we just saw the Shy Girl thing happen, where an entire book and author were canceled for using AI.
So here is a novel where you find yourself rooting for a bot who opens a noodle restaurant in post-independence California. In this novel, Newitz seems to be playing with the concept that these bots have become their own lifeforms. Their struggles become very real, and I found myself naturally rooting for them. Authors don’t want AI coming for their jobs, but I am sure chefs don’t either.
I also found it strange that a book marketed as “cozy” has such a bleak (albeit realistic) speculative future. A war between America and California with Robotic battles and missiles launched at the Bay Area…
“Downtown had the appearance of a burned forest with a new undergrowth, full of precarious potential.
The old City Hall with its fake classical Dome was rubble, and Cruz covered its remains into sidewalks and bridges long ago. Now, the city government worked out of Klamath tower, whose refurbished light screens gleamed with images of the California flag, featuring a stoned-looking brown they're alternating with San Francisco's rainbow skull and bones.
Millions fled the Bay Area after missiles hit Mountain View and Cupertino in 57, but millions stayed too.”
The future of Automatic Noodle was very well envisioned, and worked for me, but it is not exactly cozy. The relationship between Californians, both bots and humans, and America is a subtle but interesting part of the novel. I have spent enough time in the Bay Area to picture the geography involved. The idea of living in California and thinking of America as some place else I suppose, was cozy for me.
“Thanks. I really don’t want to get sent back to America. Fuck that place. It’s a hellhole run by garbage cans.”
There are several main characters, although most of the action is seen through a robot who was a veteran of the war named Staybehind. The point of view is interesting in this novella, as much of it is by text message threads between bots. We know that 50 years after the Colossus project predicted it , computers and Bots are talking without us. I suppose it is a cozy notion that they are not plotting the end of the world but planning to open a noodle restaurant.
Again, this presents to me the ultimate question: as writers are rightly sensitive about folks using AI to “write” novels, are readers going to be cool with robots “taking” our cooking jobs? I really wasn’t asking those questions while I got wrapped up and invested in the story of their operation.
“Fritz co. was constantly creating new storefronts on GrandoSando, activating a new one every time we got terrible reviews. Why do you think we had to make Mexican, Chinese, Indian, and colonial American food all at the same time? Because all the ingredients were shit. To keep the illusion going, we became new restaurants every few weeks.”
The speculative nature of restaurants culture was as thought out as the city planning in the Terraformers, but not that different, as AN was using those political science muscles. The world-building just never failed.
“Word of the upstart restaurant spread across the Bay, too. Grizzled mixed-race zoomers rode e-bikes across the Nu Bay Bridge from Berkeley and posted videos of themselves trying to slurp an entire noodle in one go. Even a few willowy white ladies from the gated towns of Marin drifted through to declare their satisfaction with the veganism of it all.”
This is a strength of Automatic Noodle, but there are other strengths. The characters who are not human become relatable, and it is a bit sneaky. IT is easy not to start picturing Stay behind as a Bay Area bike messenger instead of a robot veteran of the war.
“Sweetie folded her arms. What the hell? You changed our business name? That would get us flagged by a fraud algorithm. What if the city figures out we're running this place? Bots aren't allowed to own property, I'm pretty sure we aren't allowed to own a business either.
We don't own a business - like I said, legally we're a proxy for Fritz Co.”
The novel has many deeper and richer themes. I love how fully realized the non-human characters are throughout the narrative. Staybehind has a past in war, and the character has trauma that might be more in the mind of the reader than the character, but that itself is a neat author trick.
I loved Automatic Noodle, even if the idea of bots running a restaurant makes me as ethically uneasy as writers who cheat using LLM. This novel does what the best SF does: ask questions, put forward ideas and force us to confront the direction of the future. Big fan of Automatic Noodle.Book Review: Horror Library, Volume 9 edited by Eric J. Guignard
340 pages, Paperback
Published February 3, 2026 by Dark Moon Books
special guest-artist's gallery of Michael A. Livolsi!
Eric and Dark Moon books are consistent. Like Death, Taxes, and quality short horror fiction. Eric didn’t start this series, and I not even sure with which volume he took over, but I know he has been the editor for the last couple of editions.
One thing you can bank on is that the stories will be excellent, dark, and from diverse sources. Guignard has experience doing international anthologies, and as an active member of HWA, he is able to pull authors from around the world. One thing I noticed right away was a couple of very exciting names in this line-up.
Brian Evenson (who I think is the best living short story author), Poppy Z. Brite, Bentley Little, and Delilah S. Dawson. It was also nice to see So-Cal locals in Jo Kaplan and KC Grifant. For long-time horror-heads, the appearance of Brite and Little is “no way” inducing.
30 stories and about 300 pages, will tell you many of the stories are short, but they all provide a serious punch.
Highlights for me include Eyes without Lids by Jo Kaplan, which got me even more excited for her Clash Books title Midnight Muse. This story is a creepy story about a who wakes up a captive. The mood and setting of this short but powerful story completely hooked me. Found You by Poppy Z. Brite was a quick, evocative tale that reminds fans of this classic author why they are so beloved.
Bentley Little’s Before His Time is a fun little Hollywood tale, and Evenson’s tale is about Opera and it was great, although I felt I might have been missing knowledge that might have helped it. Delilah S. Dawson’s story does the most with the shortest word-count in that sense; it reminded me of RC Matheson (his story Red Shortest most effective horror story ever). Grifant’s Mask-off had a traditional Tales of the Crypt feel to me.
Some stories didn’t hook me as strongly, but I only skipped a couple of stories whose tone didn’t catch me. +Horror Library+ is a series that continues to be the mark of high quality. Those of you who want more markets for short horror fiction…if you want a place to find new authors, and you want a market, you gotta support it, buy short horror.
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