Book Review: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

 

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Hardcover, 476 pages

Published May 2021 by Ballantine Books 

 

Andy Weir is kind of a cool and weird accident. It is strange for a Science Fiction writer, a truly hard science guy to become a household name. OK, he is not quite there but with the help of Ridley Scott and Matt Damon the Martian is a household title. Following up that success would daunt any first-time author. His second book Artemis was a smart follow-up that had elements of what made his first book work. Realistic science and setting elsewhere in the solar system. He expanded his range a bit by widening the scope to involve a murder mystery.

With Project Hail Mary he embraces the familiar and expanding the scope in far greater and more epic ways. In my opinion, this book works. I suppose a backlash was always possible and I admit I was almost scared away by opinions I trusted that did not like this book. It was too late I had it from the library. Both critics rolled their eyes at George RR Martin’s blurb and comparison to Heinlein and Asimov.  To that, I would the only reason to reject those comparisons is the emotional weight given to the characters is something those golden agers just didn’t have a strength for.

This is a singular work that only one author has in them. It is one of the best hard sci-fi I have read and maybe the best of that sub-genre I have read in a long time.

There have been thousands of ‘end of the world’ movies, and read as many novels. One of my favorites is Sunshine, and I admit this starts with a similar set-up. I feel like Andy Weir came up with this watching that movie and saying I can come up with something more plausible.  

I went into this novel cold story-wise, I knew nothing and it was a better experience for it. So before I break down the story let me give my non-spoiler recommendation. This book is very much about science as salvation. Science is like any tool it can be used for good or bad. At the core is a special relationship that makes the whole story work. Project Hail Mary works because it balances science and big ideas with equal parts character and heart.

OK, the story.  Spoilers ahead.

Ryland Grace, is a science teacher who wakes up with no memory at first of who he is and through the process of elimination figures out he is on a spaceship. Weir employs a smart non-linear story structure, by revealing elements to Grace who recover memories as he gets further from his deep space coma.  Grace is the only survivor of the mission to wake, and he remembers bits and pieces about the crisis and accepts his role as the only person left to save humanity.

Back home the sun is dimming and at first, the cause is unknown. Using science, it is discovered that a tiny organism in space that feeds off the carbon dioxide and intense heat is creating a shield between us and the star. Thus, a new ice age is on the way, and civilization as we know it is not going to survive.

“He fiddled with a pen on the table. “I’ve run the best models I have. Crops are going to fail. The global staple crops are wheat, barley, millet, potatoes, soy, and most important: rice. All of them are pretty sensitive about temperature ranges.”

The discovery of how the Astrophage works by a Science teacher (Grace) also lead to a breakthrough in energy, we now have the ability to breed and exploit them. This massive energy extraction will end fossil fuel and nuclear energy consumption. None of those matters if the sun is dimming.

The reason is one of the most original elements of a doomsday story I can remember but it is one that despite the cosmic scale is very relatable. A virus.

“Yes, every star eventually infects all of its neighbors. Judging from our data, we think Astrophage has a maximum range of just under eight light-years. Any star within that range of an infected star will eventually be infected.”

Only one star in the neighborhood Tau Ceti is unaffected. In a leap of faith, humanity puts everything into an experimental Astrophage fueled drive to send a ship to try and discover what makes this star immune. Just when the narrative set-ups the idea that Grace would be alone like Weir’s most famous character from The Martian I assumed that is where we were going. Instead, Grace is shocked to find a blip, and using a telescope he tracks another craft. It is a ship and someone from another world is trying to make contact.

Weir is never lazy about making a realistic first contact. Andy Unraveling it over a couple of chapters he successfully portrays the amazing nature of these scenes. The contact starting with a Blip that becomes a ship and the two scientists and lone survivors of rescue missions from different stars have to connect. They have to learn how to say hi, leave each other's languages and at the heart of the story is science saving two civilizations.

Grace pieces together clues to figure out that this being is the 40 Eridani System, they saw the same problem and the diming of the stars becomes the bond across the stars that brings these two scientists together.
 
“We’re as smart as evolution made us. So we’re the minimum intelligence needed to ensure we can dominate our planets.”

Through the airlock comes a being Grace calls Rocky. It is an effectively alien creature, who lives in heat much more intense than humans, its body is a rocky shell with many arms and totally blind, who communicates mostly in song. Once they master communication the relationship between Rocky and Grace is the heart of this novel. Probably the best magic trick of the narrative is the very idea that Rocky becomes a character we deeply care about.

First, he starts as curiosity, his very different biology is fodder for a few jokes. Weir establishes that as different as Rocky is he is a genius engineer. So they are born of species that evolved on very different planets under different stars, pulled together by the same crisis that threatens both worlds. Rocky and Grace have to learn about each other and work together. One of the more powerful moments comes when Rocky learns more about the Project Hail Mary Mission.

“My ship only had enough fuel for the trip here. I don’t have enough to go home. I have tiny little probes that will return to earth with my findings. But I will stay here.”
“Why is mission like this,question?”
“This was all the fuel my planet could make in time.”
“You knew this when you left earth, question?”
“Yes.”
“You are good human.”

Of course Rocky has a solution, he can give Grace fuel, rebuild his ship and they can work together to save both worlds. There is a touching moment when the two heroes having solved the problem by finding the predator that lives on the planet near Tau Ceti that eats Astrophage. They have a supply of these creatures and they are heading home. This goodbye is a tear-jerker. They are now friends. They care about each other saying goodbye is hard.   

I know I am a broken record pointing out the parallels and reversals that make up my favorite stories but this what makes the best stories tick and here Weir sets up a doozy. You see early in the story Grace accepts that he is here and he must be there as a hero.  Through the unfolding memories it is revealed he didn’t want to go save the human race he was dragged kicking and screaming. So when Rocky gives him a solution to get home he is moved and excited.

This sets up the reversal. As they travel apart Grace uses the telescope to monitor Rocky’s progress. Then disaster strikes. The predators get loose and eat his fuel. He figures out a solution but knows Rocky wouldn’t. He would lose his fuel, die and his civilization would die. Grace has the probes. He could launch the probes and the earth has a chance. He could make a sacrifice and save Rocky but also his world.

This is a very satisfying ending and in many ways is an example of science fiction at its best. Grace made the decision to risk his own life for a species based on the being he had met. Rocky was his only friend in the universe. He was ashamed as his memories came back that he was not the hero he thought he was. When he becomes a teacher, the lone alien on another world there is a wonderful feeling of hopefulness.

“Do you believe in God? I know it’s a personal question. I do. And I think He was pretty awesome to make relativity a thing, don’t you? The faster you go, the less time you experience. It’s like He’s inviting us to explore the universe, you know?”

Forget the gendering of a high power I like the essential point here. There is a serious heart and joy of wonder and discovery here. One of the best portrayals of alien contact, on many levels this novel worked for me.
 

 

 

Book Review: Only Apparently Real by Paul Williams

 

Only Apparently Real By Paul Williams

Paperback, 196 pages

Published July 1st 1999 by Entwhistle Books (first published May 1986)

I have mixed and complicated feelings about this short but important book. Look I don’t consider myself a scholar of Philip K. Dick, despite my position as the most research-minded of the hosts of the Dickheads podcast I am not as devoted as some of you. I know some of you think about Phil every day, down to tiny little details. That is really not my thing. I like other writers, am interested in the genre as a whole, and have my own science fiction to worry about.

Long before Hollywood found gold in the PKD hills when Phil was largely a working but not super successful author it was Paul Williams that put him on the map. He did this by writing an extensive profile in Rolling Stone that was compiled from a series of interviews with Phil in 1974 fresh off his pink laser beam upload. We also get brief appearances by a friend of the podcast Tessa Dick who was the last of Phil’s wives.

So the majority of this book is an expansion on that article, and transcripts of the interviews, that for better or worse are unedited. This is deep dive, drill-down information that I think is for hardcore serious DICKHEADS. If you want an actually readable biography or back story of PKD Sutin’s Devine Invasions can’t be beaten.

The thing is much of OAR is quoted on the online ‘THE ENCYCLOPEDIA DICKIANA’ or in Sutin’s book. So in doing research for two dozen or so Dick novels for the podcast I have stumbled upon many of these quotes.

Think this book suffers from moments that might sound interesting on recording but in the transcription feel repetitive. The details on the break-in of PKD’s house in 1971 is not nearly as interesting to me as Paul Williams. Some of his theories about his black militant neighbors have not aged well. There is great insight, warts and all. How deep do you want your Dick experience? I think the Sutin book is more important personally.

If you are interested check out the Dickheads podcast.

https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodcast  

Book Review: The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper

 

The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper

Paperback, 116 pages

Published November 15th 2020 by Off Limits Press

 Podcast interview scheduled...so keep your eyes peeled.

114 pages...When I closed this book for the last time it was almost impossible to believe that I had read only so few pages. Hailey Piper is a new author for me but she has packed so much of the grand scale of cosmic horror into so few pages is a magic trick. I know that cosmic horror was born in the short form in weird tales but it still impressed me. Even more impressive is to balance building a mythology and balance a very humane story.  

Hailey is an author I discovered when this book was announced, and it was on my radar ever since. The excellent artwork and the concept sold me. Then I followed Hailey on Twitter and found that I enjoyed her takes on many topics. It is a reminder that the more she talked about this book the more reminders I eventually picked it up. Keep talking about your books!

So glad I picked it up. The Worm and His Kings is an excellent book. As my first introduction to Piper's work, I am sold and will now follow her to whatever books she writes. There is a reason not everyone can write good cosmic horror. There is a certain elegant style of prose that really makes the best of the genre work. Piper's style is rich, vivid, and powerful. The tone reminds me of early Clive Barker in execution, Lovecraft in scale, and wholly unique in point of view.

Every page is written with skill, but the pages drip with an emotional intensity that is lost in some cosmic horror. The personal and the galactic collide and that is one wonderful thing about this novelette. Novelette, novella, or short novel I always point out Of Mice and Men was only 100 pages. I got more feels out of these 114 pages than some doorstop eight hundred pagers.

I went in cold and if you trust me, stop reading here and do the same. Light spoilers ahead.

The story itself is about Monique who is homeless on the streets of NYC, one of the few places of shelter she and her partner Donna had found a home in a tunnel they call the freedom tunnel. I took that to mean that there is a certain amount of freedom in choosing to live a life off the grid, I also liked that about this book the characters are relatable even if they have a certain diversity, you don't find as typical protagonists, LBGTQ, homeless main characters are very well written and refreshingly real. Monique is really our point of view character. The narrative benefits from staying close to her at all times. Not first-person but the book never switches perspective.

The cross of the personal and mythology shines in the darkness. Moments like this one…

“She’s part of the nothing now.” Hot tears flooded Monique’s cheeks. She tried to swallow the burning lump in her throat. “We fed her to the empty place.”
“No, No Lady smiled wide and shook her head. “Most of the universe is empty. We feel stretches of the worm, and she’s with him now, and full and infinatellsetsfree-”
Her words smashed together and thinned like Phoebe across time, becoming nothing.”

Monique is a transgender character. I thought about not mentioning this in the review. It shouldn’t matter but ultimately, I don’t think this will spoil the experience and I want to highlight the strength that this inclusion brings to the story. In the late 90s, I had a close friend and roommate transition and watched him deal with gender.  I know still, I can not understand so Monique’s experience in the book as someone with gender dysmorphia and no means as a homeless person leads to some heartbreaking moments. So valuable, and that is something, that is not a word that many horror novels can claim. It is that realistic terror mixing with the massive scale of the Worm that made the horror FEEL like something.

Outsiders of all kinds desire that the world change and the Worm is a monster that feeds on that desire. Long-time readers of my reviews know the key to a story in my opinion…parallels and reversals.

“…The wounds of this world will be unmade so says the King.”
“Scars never go away,” Monique said.
“They will when the worm remakes the world. The worm changes you.”

Later on the same page, Lady ponders. “The Worm changes everyone. I wonder what you will become.”

Is there anything more cosmic in horror when a monster knows you down to the deepest fabric of your heart? A monster that knows what you desire in your core and want more than anything. The greatest scariest moments in the genre of horror can only be achieved if the storyteller creates characters we care about and monsters who threatened them. The Worm is Monique’s fear made real.  

“And here, in the darkest place, Monique found monsters.
Maybe if her parents knew how far she’d fallen, they would at last regret having bashed their only child.
Unlikely. That was her imagination preying on her thoughts with something more painful than monsters in the dark-The illusion that her parents could accept her.”

Goddamn. Amazing stuff, the best thing I have read so far this year. Some of the best modern to come out of the small press in a long damn time.


 

Book Review: Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff Vandermeer

 

 

Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff Vandermeer

Hardcover, 351 pages

Published April  2021 by MCD

One of the coolest things about the popularity of Jeff Vandermeer is that he built a readership despite writing books as strange as the Southern Reach trilogy and last year’s Dead Astronauts. While Annihilation had the benefit of a movie starring Natalie Portman, it is cool that an author known for thoughtful surreal politically aware eco-science fiction has a following.  That all being said despite the title Hummingbird Salamander is Vandermeer’s most commercial and approachable book yet. Don’t misunderstand me it is plenty weird. As an unofficial vanguard of the new weird his is always an important voice even if the work is more grounded than we are used to.  

One of the things that grounds the book a bit is its ‘Ten seconds in the future’ vibe and the very solidly likely climate disaster expressed in mostly subtle world-building. This was done with a surgical touch, not a hammer.  There are a few paragraphs of exposition but done tastefully enough that they don’t feel like info-dumps. As an ecological alarmist who is also an activist and cli-fi writer myself I course could relate to those moments. Early on in the book, Vandermeer established a near future with multiple hotbed disasters happening everywhere.

I am not sure the average reader with relate to Jane Smith as the main character but I did. Take for example this powerful moment when the mystery at the heart of the novel starts to drive Jane and her husband apart.

“Here a woman could worry about her husband cheating on her while just two hundred miles inland there was a mass exodus of disaster refugees headed north to a Canada that might take them in. A “sanctuary” where aquifers and other water sources were drying up. In the Midwest, privatized security forces were brawling with protestors in the streets of small towns. Disease outbreaks had lead to mass slaughter of affected livestock. While stocks remained bullish about the future even as the window for reversing climate change had shrunk to an unreachable dot.”

I could relate to Jane Smith because for a long time I have struggled with the unshakable awareness of climate insanity and the attempt to live a balanced life despite the feeling of being like a lobster in a pot coming to a slow boil. At the heart of this story is Jane a security expert who has gifted her a key to a storage locker inside is a stuffed hummingbird from a well know radical environmentalist Silvina. The answer to this mystery is not as weird or surreal as I expected, but the journey is compelling.

The hummingbird is a classic Hitchcockian McGuffin. Jane becomes obsessed with Silvina and the mystery, it destroys her peace, her family and sends her around the globe for answers. In many ways, this is like an ecological Bond story. The story works, and has plenty of exciting twists and turns but for me, the book’s most interesting moments were the ways Vandermeer used the framework to discuss ideas.

Hidden between fight scenes and classic spy thriller excitement was an investigation that breaks down the life and death of eco-radical. The story tests the strength of Jane as she is tested by the ecological collapse which challenges her own ethics and sense of right or wrong. Vandermeer slips in moments of beautiful eco-philosophical ideas. Like this well crafted aside on the idea of progress…  

“Progress’:a word to choke on, a word to discard and then pick up again, hurl it in the oven like coal, watch it spurl out its own name in black smoke from the chimney of the hunting lodge. I embrace it, and I repeat it, and yet I know no word I or any other human could use will ever be the right word.”

The dying ecology and the balance of nature is the back drop of the mystery, it is the drive of Silvina’s plan. The world needs to be pushed to these limits to inspire the madness, but I can’t be alone in understanding her position. Certainly, Jane Smith comes to believe playing family is meaningless in this future.

 The story unfolds as Jane is reading Silvina’s journals, the world only growing darker as the killers and threats zero in on her. The timing of this in the narrative is all excellently paced. Bits and pieces of the plan are revealed as the threat becomes more clear. Silvina was an idealist who tried and failed to make a new way in a commune called Unitopia. This highlights the dilemma for many activists. All this work for change and the danger is only greater for my effort.  

“No, in the end, easier to tear it down and start over. The soundless scream of social media these days. The system must be destroyed. It can’t be fixed. Unitopia must have begun to seem like a Band-Aid applied to a gaping chest wound.”


This leads to the darkest moment in the book in my opinion.

"Impossible to tell how fast society was collapsing because history had been riddled through with disinformation, and reality was composed of half-fictions and full-on paranoid conspiracy theories."

We could be and probably are already there at the end.  It would be impossible to live in the internet age, certainly after four years of Trump to not see the danger of misinformation. This is a running subtext in the book, one of the coolest aspects of how the narrative unfolds is that we have two unreliable narrators at work here. Both Jane (if that is her name) and Silvina who has a very clear agenda.  The science on the climate is there and reliable, but who to believe when humans are.

Cli-fi is a genre but it is nothing new science fiction has been addressing the coming ecological disaster almost as early as the 50s. I known I am a broken record promoting the efforts of British sci-fi master John Brunner, but it is impossible for writers working today to speculate about the future without addressing these issues.

From here on out in this review, I am going to get into themes that involve minor spoilers, I don’t think the experience of this book can be ruined. But to sum it up before getting into the ending I would say this is a book worth reading. It is not as surreal as some of Vandermeer’s earlier work but doesn’t go in thinking that this is like Metallica writing a pop song. Every page drips with the author’s intelligence, creativity, compassion, and unique view of the world. That is what makes Vandermeer and this book special.  OK, Spoiler warnings were given…

As for the ending, important things happen that I want to talk about. As a an author of the new weird who wrote one of the greatest modern classics of genre mystery two things happened at the end I was not expecting.

First the end of the world, the progression of this element was darker than I expected but not sure why I didn’t see it coming. I liked that Vandermeer didn’t go overboard on describing or dwelling on this. Jane is mostly out and away from society. There are excellent moments of pure world-building I respected.

“Homeland security still exists?”
“Not by that name. Just their drones. Do you know how many secret drones lacerate the sky these days? They’ll outlast us all. Form their own civilization.”

I think one of the things that separates Hummingbird Salamander from other books in the Vandermeer canon is there is no hiding the mission statement as I saw it. Maybe I misreading this and I have not read or listened to any interviews that Vandermeer has given.  The following statement from the closing pages of the book appears to this reader to be the mission made more clear than I thought we would get.

“I spent some time frozen, arguing with my thoughts.
Derangement or genius? Was it even possible? If I was a right, to create not a deadly pandemic or a biological bomb but a new, true seeing? Let the world in through your pores like a salamander, see all the colors of the flowers only a hummingbird could see.”

Can you see and feel the world like these animals? Can you step outside of your human flesh and connect to the earth and nature a different way? Hummingbird Salamander is asking you to do that, and that is why it is a powerful book.

Book Review: The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell by Brian Evenson

 

 The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell by Brian Evenson

Paperback, 248 pages

Expected publication: August 3rd 2021 by Coffee House Press

 “Yours is a holy calling,” he told her.
“Or a useless one.”
“Perhaps,” he said, ever the optimist. “Perhaps.”  Then he embraced her again and departed. It was, the archivist suddenly realized, the last human contact she was likely to ever have.”

It is hard to argue that a collection made up of stories written for a whole bunch of different sources has a single mission statement. That said Evenson was in a flow it seems with themes he wanted to explore the collection with the subtle title The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell. I could be wrong but there are clear themes and ideas that were near the surface in many of the stories.

The dark surreal underbelly of high literature is kind of the space that Evenson writes in. Weird, bizarro, horror, Science Fiction, cosmic, surrealist all labels that fit stories here and there in the various collections he has released. The first author that lived in that space for me was Clive Barker, while he went on to commercial success, the first couple of years Barker was the undisputed champion of the horror short story.  Over the years Poppy Z. Brite, Thomas Liggotti, Laird Barron, and few others danced the line between beautiful prose and the absolute darkness of weird and scary fiction. There might be better storytellers but in all the reading I have done over the years no one has kicked my ass with beautiful darkness as Evenson has. This should come as no shocker as I have reviewed Brian’s work half a dozen times and interviewed almost as many.

To me at this moment Brian Evenson is hands down the best horror fiction short story author. Hyperbole, sure.

The above passage says much about the themes throughout this book. If a theme runs through this dark and surreal book it is the fear and isolation of environmental and societal collapse. The characters are nameless, just descriptions like Nameless Citizen or Archivist. They are reluctant explorers in a frontier of world-ending banality. The end times and a wrecked world filled with mutated post-humans are every bit as uncomfortable as it sounds, the hell of our creation is the frontier lands these Evenson stories explore.

The reader knows the reality and the state of the planet in one of the later stories The Extrication Evenson talks directly to his reader…

    “Have I been clear enough? The world is dying, is in fact already well on its way to being dead. Were it not, you never would never have wandered in here. You would never have occasion to think, what is this? An unoccupied bunker in which to shelter myself? What luck! And then have fallen into my trap. You instead would have a job in a small town as an accountant, say, or a data specialist.”
 
You as a reader may actually be a person with a standard job, and simple life but when you peer into these worlds and Evenson’s vision in a crafty way you have fallen into a trap. You can’t think straight forward, you have to open up your mind. He is willing to write a story that is just weird like the opener Leg. A story idea that sounds silly, about a captain of a ship whose prosthetic leg is an evil monster…

The rules don’t apply. Take the Devil’s Hand a story based on the trope of a deal with the devil story but done so strangely. A bet over a thumb. When a character points out that he has two thumbs and winning won’t mean much.  

“Then I suppose you will have three thumbs. I’ll attach the third wherever you’d like.”
   
How humans are casually transformed in Evenson's works. Keep in mind he is the dude who wrote a noir mystery novel about an undercover agent in a mutilation cult. Probably my favorite example in this book is when the mutating people and the surreal locations melded.

“And then he would tell me a story about a city that had come from another world, a city that was, in ways he either could not explain or which I could not understand, sentient. The beings in this city had once been like us.”

Evenson is never been a writer who describes deeply. There will never be detailed world-building or chapters that describe the weather or pages about how a tree looked.  The loose world-building and phantom places exist mostly in a foggy shadowy place that just gets hints of the dust or rotten unbreathable air.

 A great example is the Train car in the story Grauer in the Snow.

Described as “Just a place,” and another character says “It is or isn’t.”

Characters Amorphis enough to be human, maybe or probably wrestle with the grandest and most heavy themes of who or what deserves to live. The story Leg has a main character who is the captain of a ship. Boat? Spaceship? Not sure but it didn’t hurt the effect for me. Clouds of doom in Curator push nasty air and rain acid but the exact who or why doesn’t really matter.

“Nameless Citizen!” The voice called. Surely you don’t want our species to die out?”
But I did. Why ever not?  We had destroyed almost everything along with ourselves. It would be better for what little remained if we did die out.
Or they, I should say, since even though I was one of them, I could hardly be said to be so now. The disaster had changed me. I had become a different creature altogether.”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” I said “I might be nameless, but I am not a citizen. Not of your community.”

Nameless Person is a powerful point for me here. Because despite if it was Evenson’s intention it made this character all of us. I mean honestly if the world ends up becoming this ecological nightmare we all are responsible. Nameless Person could be me, you, or anyone else who reads the story. We all could end up asking ourselves if it is worth it to live another day.

That question hangs over this collection like the death cloud in the story Curator.  It is the stories Nameless Citizen and To Breathe the Air that most capture the themes.

“You,” said the other. Have no such constraints. You live outside, not underground. The air cannot hurt you. Truly, you are a wonderous being.”

Nameless Person will not help them.  It is a dark and sad point but, in a collection, names The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell I was not expecting unicorns and rainbows. If you met Brian he is a teacher and a father, a delightfully pleasant fellow. You might think from reading this collection that he is an angry eco-goth and I love that about this book.  

My favorite stories in the collection include Leg, Curator, Breathe the Air, Justle, Nameless Citizen, Elo Havel, and Daylight come. Leg is a strange and impressive for the power it has despite the ridiculous concept. Curator is a dark tale that sets a grim stage while addressing themes. To Breathe the Air might have been my favorite mood in the collection, it is one I wish was a novel. Justle has vivid powerful world-building with the most powerful ending in the collection. Nameless Citizen is filled with powerful moments but for me, the way it speaks to the reader is the power. Elo Havel is the best of the transformed person tales and Daylight Come is a short, weird tale that drips with a vibe.

You should pre-order this collection, but if there are many Evenson collections to read. Songs for the Unraveling of the World and A Collapse of Horses are collections up there as essential like the Books of Blood. Any Corpse might be one of my all-time favorites and now I have to add Breathe the Air.