Thursday, December 28, 2023

Book Review: Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars Avi Loeb

 


The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars Avi Loeb 

  252 pages,Hardcover

Published August, 2023 by Mariner Books

One of the coolest moments I have had on my podcast was the episode when I interviewed my favorite Astronomer Avi Loeb. I know not everyone has a favorite astronomer, but I most certainly do. He is an exciting figure in space exploration, at least in the context that can be done researching from the ground. He is also not the most popular person in the field willing to use his intense imagination as a tool in his astronomy tool kit. That sometimes causes eye-rolling by the old guard. Doctor Loeb has a science fiction mind but is not driven to write narratives.

He tells stories in the context of theory and teaching, and he is good at that. That is how he comes up with wild ideas like breakthrough star shot, which are box ideas for sending laser-guided probes to alpha centauri. Or why he courted controversy by insisting and writing a book suggesting Oumuamua was proof that it was technology from extraterrestrial life.

Interstellar is not for me, even though I am a huge Avi Loeb fan. The fact is that I listen to all his interviews so the book doesn't break a ton of new ground for me. One of the main points he is making is that our species needs to become an interstellar species and how we might interact with the wider universe.

Much like Dawn of the Mindful Universe, I think an essay could make this point but it is easier to promote and sell any idea as an entire book. as the dust jacket says "Combining cutting-edge science, physics, and philosophy, Interstellar revolutionizes the approach to our search for extraterrestrial life and our preparation for its discovery."

Indeed and as such if you are a person who values our place in a wider universe, wants to understand our wider universe, and wants to see our species grow up Avi Loeb makes several important points about why and how we could make it there. Important stuff.

Book Review: In the Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami, Ralph McCarthy (Translator)

 

 




 

 In the Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami, Ralph McCarthy (Translator)

217 pages, Paperback

First published January, 1997

Last year in our best reads of the year podcast Marc said to me I should read this book and in April he gave it to me and still it took me until  December to read it. The combined pressure of library books and stuff for the podcast kept pushing this back. On paper I should dig, Tokyo Vice was one of my favorite shows, I like international-based crime novels, and the idea of a Japanese 8MM is a pitch that works. I have seen comparisons to American Psycho. Not for me.

Kenji is our point who is tour guide for perverts that come from other countries. You see American perverts do this. Most of them are not savvy enough to get around a foreign country. I am sure they are party to some awful shit. Kenji has a bad feeling about the homely-looking Frank who is visiting from America. As he takes him around to the various clubs and places it becomes apparent Frank is a scary dude.

I don’t know much about the author Ryu Murakami but it sounds like he is like a combo of Conan O Brian, and David Lynch. For a guy who is a popular celebrity this a violent, violent book. I suspect some of the noir vibe of the Tokyo streets is lost in translation. I have read about some horrible places so honestly until the serial killing started I thought this seemed tame.

Having watched Catch a Predator, and seen documentaries about sex tourism I found this first bit of this novel to be not very shocking.   What I did like was a few moments of off-hand observations that seemed to express Kenji’s way of seeing the world.

Some were dark…

“You don't know what cold is until you've experienced the cold you feel when the blood is draining out of your body.”

That one gave me a little shudder, but I tended to find those moments less interesting than the moments of commentary. Like this one that stopped my reading flow.

“All Americans have something lonely about them. I don't know what the reason might be, except maybe that they're all descended from immigrants.”   

So he was hanging out with an American serial killer but he is commenting on all of us. He is making a sly comment on how we don’t have the national identity they do. I don’t think that is the reason, but it was interesting that he thought so. (also all Americans?)

Anyone who reads my reviews knows I look for mission statements. A part of the novel that I think expresses what it is all about. In The Miso Soup, I feel the author is exploring how his country becomes a vacation spot for people like Frank. At the same time, he is clear. Don’t blame the art. Perhaps my favorite passage makes this point.
 
“People who love horror films are people with boring lives... when a really scary movie is over, you're reassured to see that you're still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That's the real reason we have horror films - they act as shock absorbers - and if they disappeared altogether, I bet you'd see a big leap in the number of serial killers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news.”

In The Miso Soup is a good horror novel, and the setting is fascinating. It should appeal to horror and noir readers but it didn’t knock my socks off. I thought it was a good read but I was hoping for a great read. Now I want to see this dude’s movie and talk show.

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Audiobook review: Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones



Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones

  Narrated by: Isabella Star LaBlanc, Jane Levy, Alexis Floyd, Pete Simonelli, Timothy Andrés Pabon, Marni Penning, Dan Bittner, Corey Brill, Matt Pittenger, Jesse Vilinsky, Migizi Pensoneau, Lee Osorio, Gail Shalan, Alejandro Antonio Ruiz,

Format Audible Audio Length: 15 hrs and 4 mins Length
Published February, 2023
 



For the record, since I listened to this on audiobook the review will not be as intense as I might have if I read it. The audiobook on my Libby app is not ideal for me, but the physical library book in San Diego had like sixty holds on 15 copies.  I have said many times I like to listen to franchise books when I am listening to audiobooks. If the choice is to wait forever or listen to it. I decided I was not waiting.  As an audiobook, it is an interesting one as the different POVS were recorded by different narrators. All were OK to great.

Stephen Graham Jones is one of the best things to horror in this century. I think Mongrels and The Only Good Indian are masterpieces. The latter I think is an all-timer that will be taught, talked about and remembered as one of the best horror novels ever. That said Stephen and I share a love for many things - basketball, Damian Lillard, and Philip K. Dick. I do not share his love of slashers. It is one of his favorite corners of horror, and it is not mine. That’s fine but it is the reason My Heart is a Chainsaw, and its slasher worship didn’t work for me as well as some.

Objectively I think Chainsaw is a great book. Jade Daniels is a great character. I can and often separate what I love and think is good. Don’t Fear the Reaper follows the sequel path of most slashers. Your Final girl survived and is older, and wiser. She is troubled with some PTSD and legal issues. She tried to change her name and move on. The high school reunion pulls her back into town.

She returns to  Profrock on Thursday, December 12, and is just in time for a Friday the 13th snowstorm and an escaped slasher. Dark Mill South, motivated by vengeance for thirty-eight Dakota men hung in 1862, he is such an interesting character that his escape from his prison just outside of Proofrock, Idaho takes this novel in fascinating directions.

I enjoyed this novel far more than My Heart is a Chainsaw, but the heart is not the killers of this trilogy but Jade Daniels. Her growth is a part of the genre and the important steps being a final girl in a slasher trilogy.

Don’t Fear the Reaper is what you want it to be. Better than the first book, and an escalation of the story. I really enjoyed this audiobook and the presentation. I might listen to the next on audio. Awesome.  

Book Review: The Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanity's Future Marcelo Gleiser


 The Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanity's Future by Marcelo Gleiser

Ideally this a book that would get a wider audience. As an activist and a vegan, I have been working to combat climate change and the holocaust of animals for decades now. I understand the depths of the crisis, I understand the lengths required to get people to care, I mean they say they care but will they act?

Enter Marcelo Gleiser, an award-winning astronomer and physicist who is trying to make the argument that science is an argument for an enlightened treatment of our only planet. There is some interesting history going back to Copernicus that is meant to establish the journey science has taken us on in our understanding of the universe.

So the message which I am not sure should take an entire book is something to say that we need to embrace a new life-centric perspective, one which recognizes just how rare and precious life is and why it should be our mission to preserve and nurture it. As a person who doesn’t eat honey and has been vegan for thirty years, I think our mileage may vary on what is a life-centric perspective. This was a well intentioned book, but I felt like this could’ve been an essay.  I was going to say 3/5 stars but the message as such it gets higher marks. 4/5.

Sunday, December 24, 2023

Book Review: Neom by Lavie Tidhar


 

Neom by Lavie Tidhar

256 pages, Paperback
Published November, 2022 by Tachyon

 Coming in as a dark horse candidate for the top ten read of the year was a last-minute addition to the reading agenda. Lavie is a former guest of the Dickheads podcast, I had the Israeli-raised science fiction author on for the 10th anniversary of his World-Fantasy award-winning novel Osama. That novel more than any other had the feeling of PKD’s classic alternate history, but what those two novels had in common was a feeling of alternate reality as much as alternate history. That feeling separates those books from more mainstream Alt-history like The Plot Against America or TV shows like For All Mankind.

The first Lavie Tidhar book I read was a book that took place in the same future history of Neom. Central Station and Neom are works of modern Science Fiction that are influenced by the golden age and new-wave writers. This balance of new and old school is something I am constantly looking for in modern science fiction. The agents and publishers these days are looking for something more “modern” and you end up with plain flavored books.

One of the things that gave Central Station that feeling was that it was a fix-up novel made up of various short stories that were connected. In the Golden Age this was a tactic that was required of authors, but it is a rare tactic now. Neom is more interconnected but that golden age feeling filled me with joy while reading. In the afterword, Lavie points to Cordwainer Smith as a major influence but the Dickian vibe drips off the page. I want to point out I don’t make PKD comparisons lightly, there are lots of works influenced by PKD movies. The things that make his books Dickian are things only true Dickheads will pick up. The half-step off reality that comes close to satire. The humor is a key element of this. The themes of religion, and reality in the mirror reflected from this future is what PKD did so well.

In Central Station Tidhar wrote about an Israeli spaceport, staying in the Middle East Neom is the technologically advanced urban sprawl on the coast of the Red Sea, a free city built centuries earlier by a Saudi prince. The setting of the city and that feeling of place drives this book, which has a sense of place for a far future story. It is a story of the Middle East and that is special because it is a part of the world we rarely see represented in genre fiction. The city of technology is interlocked with technological beings, the robots that live in the city.  

Saleh is a character traveling the desert with a caravan attempting to get off world, he finds a robot buried in the desert an artifact of war. Marium is a flower seller, Nasir is a former officer, and a robot who discovers the beauty of a rose are some of the character-driven elements of this novel that are woven together eventually. It is the subtle beauty of this novel.

The scene when the robot buys the rose is excellent and highlights the Dickian questions the novel raises. Like Phil’s best work, this scene uses speculative irony, makes a hilarious joke, uses world-building to establish the universe, and asks major questions in just a few paragraphs. This happens when Mariam asks why they chose a human shape and if they could be a different shape.

“Yes, yes,” the robot said, almost impatiently, she thought.
The robot reminded her of an elderly relative, abrupt at times. To the point of rudeness, as though old people always had too much and not enough to do. “The poet Basho became a toilet on a spacecraft for two hundred years, it is said. It wanted to understand bodily function.”
“I thought Basho was human,” Mariiam said, surprised.
“Well, that is how we tell the tale,” the robot said.
“You have many tales of your own?”
“Some,” the robot allowed. “and you are right, of course, I could transfer my consciousness in some way into another vessel. Even become pure code like the Others. But what would I be, then? I would be changed.”


Much is made of stuff that feels like PKD, but most of that stuff is paranoid Hollywood stuff that is like PKD adaptations and how not very Phil at all. The above passage is as Dickian a thing I have read in a long time. Beautiful speculative writing.

Some of my favorite moments were in scenes when Mariam was moonlighting and cleaning high-rise homes. She got a great view of the city. It gave narrative and organic reasons to explore and explain the city, and it set up many elements that paid off.

“She was alone and content with being alone, and seeing as she was by the water and there was only a thin crowd by the pier, she lit a cigarette – it was Ubiq, high density with data-loaded particles that hit the lungs and went straight to the brain. They helped her think. Sometimes they helped her not to.”

 Yes, the cigarette is a clear homage/easter egg to PDK’s UBIK.  I mean it has Martian Kibbutism like Martian Time-slip and a character like Elvis Mandela feels pulled out of The Simulacra. The book also refers to boppers, creatures I recognized, and the homage to Rudy Rucker is in the text when it is mentioned that the machine lifeforms “were seeded on titan by “Mad” Rucker." That one was great but also as cool as the CL  Moore reference with the data vampire being called Shambleau. I see what you did. I was glad the book came with a glossary because of some rad stuff like Battle Yiddish and The Conversation I might have missed.

Neom is one of the best most underrated recent SF books because it is loaded with all the elements I love about the genre. It took me to another part of the world, it envisioned the future there. It made me smile, laugh, and feel emotions as a product of pure imagination. Most of all it is the questions it raised.

“What do robots dream about?” Nasir said. He climbed in next to her. Laila hit the accelerator and the car swerved, threw sand and dust, and began racing back to the city.
Laila said, “Maybe they dream of Freedom.”


Saturday, December 23, 2023

Book Review: Horror Library, Volume 8 edited by Eric J. Guignard , Jana Heidersdorf (Illustrator),


Horror Library, Volume 8 edited by Eric J. Guignard , Jana Heidersdorf (Illustrator),

338 pages, Paperback

Published July, 2023 by Dark Moon Books
I don’t have a ton to say about Vol.8 of this very reliable series of horror fiction stories. Eric J. Guinard has become horror’s most prolific anthology editor and, amazingly, he keeps up the quality, the stories he publishes are wide and diverse. I understand that means that he is reading and passing on three times that number of stories, which in itself is impressive.

If you want markets for this kind of horror fiction, then you need to support it. The Horror Library series is not one Eric started, but he has taken a series with a good reputation, and it has been made better. What can you expect from a HL volume? A mixture of established big-name and award-winning authors like Bentley Little and Steve Rasic Tem and the newer voices. Guignard has an eye for new talent. Thanks to doing books like World of Horror he also is good at getting national diversity. There is always gender and racial diversity not exactly the strengths of the early volumes of this series.

All the stories in this collection were good and entertaining enough that rarely skipped or tapped out on stories something I do on occasion. My favorites were Only the Stones Will Hear Scream by R.A Busby, Blockchain by Dexter Mcleod, H Is for the Hunt by Steve Rasnic Tem, and Solace by Anna Zielgelhof.

Solace was my favorite a short, and experimental Sci-fi story with a corporate nightmare feel. Steve Rasnic Tem has always been a great short story writer and H is for the Hunt is also short but the story builds a dark vibe. Blockchain could also be at home in a science fiction anthology and is a story about technology. The R.A. Busby story is a very claustrophobic tale that stokes my fear of isolation.

If you are a devotee of the horror short story the work of Eric J. Guinard and Dark Moon books you should follow closely. Also the book comes Also including a special guest artist's gallery of Jana Heidersdorf, which is a special and fun part of the book.

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

Book Review: The Ghost in Bone by Mike Carey

 


The Ghost in Bone by Mike Carey

138 pages, Hardcover
Published July, 2023 by Subterranean Press

One of the highlights of this year for me was hopping on the podcast and interviewing Mike Carey, who I spent many words introducing in the review for Infinity Gate, which is one of the absolute masterpieces released this year. He is an international bestselling author under the pen name MR Carey, hiding in plain sight with the debut The Girl With All the Gifts. That book became a major hit, and suddenly as Mike put it “nobody wanted Mike Carey books anymore.”


Well MR Carey took over the workload, but Mike Carey already had fans. Count me in the loyal bunch that read him before he wrote his first novel in the form of comics.  For me, it was Hellblazer which is still my favorite comic series ever. That is why I was first in line to read "The Devil You Know" the first(of six) Felix Castor novels, which Mike has stated was an attempt to do something comfortable, similar to Constantine.

Infinity Gate this year’s MR Carey is the kind of novel that when you read it, as a writer I know it took years, that Mike was experimenting, taking shots that missed the rim, but thankfully he often got his own rebounds. The Ghost in the Bone however feels like the writing/reading equivalent of putting on a comfortable old pair of shoes. A 138-page Felix Castor exorcism tale feels like Mike Carey could do with ease, but that said I think this is the best-written Castor story yet. MR Carey and the experience gained is apparent on every page.

I had a great experience reading this short novel mostly on a trip to and from the theater to see Godzilla Minus One. It is a short but powerful read. A $40 special edition (1,000 copies) that Mike traded a copy of my latest novel for, is not cheap so keep that in mind. This is the first new Castor story since 2009. The supernatural hard-boiled feeling has returned, and even though my memory was a bit foggy on what happened last I followed just fine. The Castor novels with equal parts gothic feeling as urban fantasy balanced with dark and gruesome humor.

The story is simple enough Castor answers an ad looking for London exorcists. The ad was placed by the daughter of a Russian oligarch who is desperate to find her missing father, alive or dead. Right from the start the weird energy drips off the page. Castor visits his zombie friend who has to keep his apartment cold so he doesn’t rot. The zombie is a hacker but that doesn’t play out until later.

My favorite moment of the book came when Castor performs the first step of the exorcism, a summoning.

“I’m lucky, if I’m in the presence of a ghost and I’m on a roll, the tune builds quickly and takes shape - the shape that for me is a kind of translation of the ghost’s essence or thisness.
That didn’t happen here, mostly because I wasn’t in the presence of more ghosts than I could readily count.
In answer to my tentative invitation a hundred echoes rose, and then a hundred more.”


Yeah, super creepy. The Ghost in Bone is a bite-sized but powerful Felix Castor story. I enjoyed every page.

Book Review: The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei


 

The Deep Skyby  Yume Kitasei

399 pages, Hardcover
Published July, 2023 by Flatiron Books

Let me make it clear, that I root for every book, every book I open, I want it to rule, and I want to enjoy the experience every time. Science Fiction most of all. I don't remember where or how I heard of this novel. At some point, I put a hold on it at the library and was just hanging out on my hold shelf at the library. I honestly don't remember why I put it on hold.

I started reading it cold, reading nothing of the plot, but I did see this was the author's debut novel. This is a technically well-written novel and I enjoyed reading it for the most part. It was such a straightforward 21st-century science fiction novel it felt kinda like eating a plain bagel. I like my science fiction weird, with some jagged edges and that is not this.

To me, this felt like a super safe, down the middle mostly "hard" Science fiction. the story of Auska a half-Japanese woman who is chosen to represent Japan on a dangerous mission. The Phoenix is a generation ship sent out into the void to make sure the human race survives the coming ecological crisis. Trained from their young adult years a crew of all women who travel to the new worlds and mother to a new generation on the new world are traveling out.

The novel's events start with an explosion and Auska or point of view character barely survives. This starts the narrative that cuts back and forth with details about the training. It had to be this way since the first half being set up for the mission could have worked; it was better to have the action of the mission drive the narrative.

Auska and Ruth's story also benefits from how information is released slowly and carefully. The order of everything is carefully designed to keep the reader assuming that we will get answers to the mystery of who bombed the ship.

One of the problems I had with this novel is there was little new that I felt the novel brought to the table. The concept of the DAR (which I think stands for some form of augmented reality) was interesting, in that it made every corner of the ship like the holodeck, to keep the astronauts from feeling trapped in the tin can of the ship.

“Sometimes Auska admitted, but only after Gabriela was gone. She reached two fingers to her temple and triggered her DAR. She should be floating in the sky above Earth, arms outstretched surrounded by birds, but wherever she looked, puce-colored clouds pressed in. She couldn’t see a thing.”

The DAR was used in the story, it was Auska's malfunction in the system that led to key revelations, but I really thought we would go weirder places with it. I kept waiting for the AI or the antagonist to use this tech to manipulate reality.

For me, one of my favorite aspects was the relationship between Auska and her radical environmentalist mother. I could have used more of that part of the story. I am sure that is just a me thing.  That is part of the problem the novel lacks a true antagonist. That could be seen as refreshing, but I saw it as a missed opportunity.

“She thought how there was nothing pure about love after all. How it had to get muddy with misunderstanding. People like her mother, like Ruth, they would always be other stars, visible but impossibly far away, and she would have to settle for imagining she knew what they were like inside.”

I don’t want to sound like I am being too hard on this author and this book. I was entertained. And there were things I liked about the experience. *Spoilers ahead* The biggest problem I had with it is something I am not sure would affect most Sci-fi readers. Too safe not enough jagged edges. The idea that a radical made it on the Phoenix was far more interesting than the story solution we got. This novel seemed to run away from dramatic tension. Auska and Ruth come together in a greater understanding. I felt lots of dramatic potential was left on the table. The fact that the great distance of interstellar space kept Auska and her mother from coming to terms with each other was great drama again I thought it was best to leave it unsolved.

Yume Kitasei is a talented writer and I will check out her work in the future. The Deep Sky had enough going for it, that I am excited to see where she goes from here.

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

Book Review: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm


 Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm     

207 pages, Paperback
Published August, 1981 by Pocket (First published 1976)

Literary awards:

Hugo Award for Best Novel (1977), Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novel (1976), Locus Award for Best Novel (1977), Jupiter Award for Best Novel (1977), John W. Campbell Memorial Award Nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel (1977)

Being a science fiction writer and reader in San Diego gives me a unique position to spy on the next generation of writers as they emerge. Each summer the UC San Diego is host to the modern version of the Clarion workshop. It lasts around six weeks and is an intensive workshop for Science Fiction and fantasy writers. The list of teachers and students over the years is a who's who of genre fiction. John Shirley now an elder statesman of Science Fiction recently told us on the Dickheads podcast the story of jumping out of a tree to scare his teacher Harlan Ellison when he was a dog-collar-wearing punk rocker student in the 70s.

The tradition and the impact of Clarion are hard to undervalue when you read about students who become teachers like Kim Stanley Robinson and Octavia Butler talking about learning from Theodore Sturgeon and Ursula K. Leguin you get a sense.  When I say I spy I have never attended Clarion but the Mysterious Galaxy book store has for years hosted off-site book signings. The students often attend when the teachers host, and you can talk to the students and ask who the writers I should look out for. Sam J. Miller author of the genius Blackfish City is an example of this and he recently returned as a teacher, he is someone I discovered on those spy missions.

What does this have to do with Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang? This novel by Kate Wilhelm has been on my list for years. Ecological science fiction and weird apocalypses are absolutely my jam. The SF novel I consider to be the best of the 20th century is Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. I am a huge of Yarbaro’s False Dawn and The Sheep Look Up. This book is right up my very narrow alley.
As a fan of the history of Science Fiction, it was a goddamn shame,  I think of her impact through Clarion, but she won the Hugo for this novel. I had not read Wilhelm before and I had to fix that, her role in starting Clarion alone… The Clarion workshop that started in Pennsylvania, had a stay in Michigan and Seattle before settling here –  and it has been told to me it was her idea.  She and her husband Damon Knight (also a legend in the field) were two of the three founders with Robin Scott Wilson. That would be enough to make her a legend but Kate Wilhelm was a powerhouse writer not just of Science Fiction but of mystery novels as well.

In the late fifties her first accepted story, The Mile-Long Spaceship, was published in (John W. Campbell's) Astounding Science Fiction, and ten of her SF stories were published before the end of the decade. She wrote a long-running series of Barbara Holloway mysteries, about an attorney in Eugene, Oregon. Starting in 1991 the series is a precursor to the popular cozy mystery genre. Holloway and her husband would solve mysteries that combine detective work with courtroom drama.

Where Late Sweet Birds Sang however is considered to be her Science Fiction masterpiece. It won the Hugo and Locus award in 1977.  The narrative is divided into three parts, "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang," "Shenandoah," and "At the Still Point."  The title borrows from the Star Trek tradition of using Shakespeare quote for the title, Matheson would do it too around the same time with What Dreams May Come.  The first part was published before in the 15th edition of Damon Knight’s Orbit series of anthologies.

All this is important history and despite what I think about the novel I want to make clear how important Wilhelm and this novel are.  Where Late Sweet Birds Sang, maybe I should just WLSBS from here out or just the novel. Ha-ha. This novel contains lots of fascinating and important ideas. I like the message but had trouble getting into this book. It has a special place with some of the other classics I mentioned as pointing to the crisis of Climate change when Jimmy Carter was still president. No little feat.

The main character of the first part is David, and he is our point of view for the collapse. The book opens with the weird details of his family. David sees the coming end and builds a community in a river valley in Virginia that becomes an isolated community as the human race dies out. The ecological issues are not the only ones, a global pandemic and mass infertility would mark the end. David’s family as farmers hip to the danger of the famines.

“The Wistons were farmers, had always been Farmers. “Custodians of  the soil,” Grandfather Wiston had once said, “not its owners, just custodians.”

The characters are thin in a style of writing that is indicative of a pre-word processor/ Stephen King-era style. To a modern reader, and more specifically this reader it is one of the weaknesses of the novel, a novel written even ten years later with the same concept would likely have double the length just to be publishing standard, and I don’t know that it would have helped.  The highlights of the book relate mostly to the intense world-building and prophetic character details make up for much of the novel’s shortcomings.

“There’s more drought and more flooding than there’s ever been. England’s changing into a desert, the bogs and moors are drying up. Entire species of fish are gone, just damn gone, and only in a year or two…”

Decades later, with 20/20 hindsight it is easy to assume everyone saw these possibilities. We have actual dates for fish die-off, the droughts have started and geo-political experts are starting to identify where wars over water are just decades away. But the details of how fast the world recovers are my favorite way the novel highlights the crime of ecological overuse…

“The winters were getting colder, starting earlier, lasting longer, with more snows than he could remember from childhood. As soon as man stopped adding his megatons of filth to the atmosphere each day, he thought, the atmosphere had reverted to what it must have been long ago, moister weather summer and winter, more stars than he had ever seen before, and more, it seemed, each night than the night before: the sky a clear, endless blue by day, velvet blue-black at night with blazing stars that modern man had never seen.”

We are still heading to this future and in Wilhelm’s novel, the collapse is followed follow by infertility and the slow death of the human race. The earth is recovering while the human species is forced to use science to hang on by a thread.  David and his group of survivors don’t consider that maybe this is for the better. Wilhelm does however the about the weight of this in a few beautiful passages.

“He looked at the sky once more. Men had gone out there, he thought in wonder, and couldn't think why. Singly and in small groups they had gone into strange lands, across wide seas, had climbed mountains where no human foot had ever trod. And he couldn't think why they had done these things. What impulse had driven them from their own kind to perish alone, or among strangers.”


None the less her characters try to help the human race survive. They do this by cloning, and building a new culture one that they hope is more suited to the earth. Much of the narrative conflict comes from the clones who reject sexual reproduction and the small group of fertile humans.

 The ethics of these cloned children and how they are raised are touched upon in interesting ways. They have multiple copies of each style of child and of course that greatly affects individuality. On page forty of my edition, there is a whole exchange where the birth of the clones is compared to the raising of animals for meat.  The second and third parts of the book focus on this new civilization.

“They were happy because they didn't have enough imagination to look ahead, he thought, and anyone who tried to tell them there were dangers was by definition an enemy of the community.”

I found this element of the novel to drag a little bit. Wilhelm tells this story with paper-thin details and little to no humor. A story like this becomes tedious if there is no energy or attention given making at least a little fun. I found myself thinking about details I would have added to create more narrative drama. There is an interesting concept here for sure. Children Of Dune by Herbert, and Man Plus by Fredrick Pohl were among the nominees. Was this really the best SF novel of that year?

Personally, there are things about this novel  I respected, a few moments I thought were impressive but overall I can’t say I enjoyed this. I read plenty of retro SF that if not timeless doesn’t suffer from being from a different era. This one just felt like it was missing something.

Monday, December 11, 2023

Graphic Novel review: Earthdivers Vol.1 Kill Columbus by Stephen Graham Jones and art by Davide Gianfelice


 

Earthdivers Vol.1 Kill Columbus by Stephen Graham Jones and art by Davide Gianfelice

176 pages, Paperback
Published September, 2023 by IDW Publishing

Earthdivers is one of the reads of this year I was most looking forward to this year. Stephen Graham Jones is one of the most exciting writers in the horror genre. The idea of SGJ writing a science fiction story of any kind is exciting enough but this concept is just beyond cool.

The concept is simple and beautiful, the telling is complex and thoughtful. Stephen Graham Jones is the author of one of the bone-fide masterpieces of the decade so far in The Only Good Indian. While I enjoy his slasher fiction, I don’t love it like I did Mongrels or high-concept stuff like Mapping the Interior. I would argue that despite being straight horror The Only Good Indian, and the use of the time-slipping around the fan is very Phil Dickian. That said It is exciting to see SGJ go full Science Fiction.  

 Native American man goes back in time to kill Columbus. We open on the dead future earth, and a group of friends finds a cave that will send the multilingual Tad of the Lakota nation back in time. Tad is the one who can speak the native tongue of Columbus. He has committed to memory the details of the trip.

The narrative is divided between 2112 and 1492. The story in the past has more horrific elements and plays with history, I really loved how SGJ was able to work in details of the real history. The story in the future is a little harder to follow but what it does is set up future volumes. The characters left in the future include his wife Sosh, transgender character Emily, and the Blackfoot Yellow Kidney. Sosh is the one who sacrificed her husband but Yellow Kidney who discovered the cave has secrets.

I am trying not to give away too much, although the execution of the art by Davide Gianfelice is so fantastic that I think it is impossible to ruin the experience. The story is driven by a sense that history itself is trying to prevent change and the very last frame shows this series is more than going after one historical figure.

Saturday, December 9, 2023

Book review: 101 Horror Books to Read Before You're Murdered by Sadie Hartmann

 


101 Horror Books to Read Before You're Murdered by Sadie Hartmann 

168 pages, Paperback
Published  August, 2023 by Page Street Publishing

*In January Sadie is returning to my podcast

Her first appearance was on this panel about favorite horror novels...


Sadie's first time on the pod, top horror novel panel

Sadie Hartmann was first on my radar as the trusted source of book recs on Twitter and Instagram for probably a decade now. While we don't always agree on books I always respect Sadie's opinion.  Even if I think being a horror fiction expert and not liking horror movies is a little strange.  This review will be shorter than my fiction reviews but I want to tell you how it can be helpful, and why if not on your shelf at least get it from the library.

One thing that was helpful for me about following Sadie online is that she gave me a window into some of the modern, and indie books that are hard to follow. I mean there are as many new indie horror authors as there are local bands out there. How do you find the gems?   Sure I don't need this book to tell who Alma Katsu and Paul Tremblay is, but I know I am also not the target audience. At the same time, it is fun to read the commentary.

Part of the fun is seeing the commentary that you agree with and disagree with. I think the dark bizarro arm of horror is largely missed. Important voices to me like Gina Ranali and Cody Goodfellow for two examples that I personally think should be on everyone's list. No project like this will have everything you are personally looking for. I mean I can't understand this book not having one Sarah Pinborough title, but considering how many new to me authors I found I can only split so many hairs.

Sadie did an amazing job and the best part she is working on something new. Author spotlights, essays, book reviews based on subgenres. This is a must-have for horror readers, make a list and make requests at your library or take it to the horror section at Barnes and Noble. It will help you find what you are looking for.

Tuesday, December 5, 2023

Book Review: Whalefall by Daniel Kraus


Whale Fall by Daniel Kraus

327 pages, Hardcover
Published August, 2023 by MTV Books

I am surprised more authors don’t admit to jealousy when they read a fantastic novel. For me, it is often a genius concept that makes me shake my head and think “What a lucky person” this writer is to explore this amazing concept. I think many writers had that reaction to this novel. A modern hard science horror novel retelling of Jonah in the Whale that uses the disconnecting way we as a culture dealt with death during the pandemic was nothing short of a stroke of genius. I knew it was genius when non-readers at my day job when hearing the concept would say “That should be a movie,” or “I would read that.”

The writer behind this strike of genius is a writer whose brain I got to pick once before.  Not everyone could be chosen by the Romero estate to finish the ultimate zombie novel he was writing when he died. That novel is filled with smart, bold, and inventive moments, so when I saw the concept of Whalefall I fully expected an amazing novel.

Then came the hype, blurbs from writers I trust Gabino Iglesias, Stephen Graham Jones, and outside of the unusual horror suspects Gillian Flynn. The readers that did beat me to it as I waited for my library hold, one after another heaping praise. The crime writer Daniel Vlasaty said he couldn’t put it down, and bizarro horror writer Grant Womack said simply amazing. On and on.

So the first question I have to answer. Is the hype real?  One hundred pages and I was hooked and having the same problem putting it down. Whalefall keeps you engaged and turning pages for a variety of reasons. As crazy as the set-up, Jay our hero's survival minute to minute is so impossible that shutting the book gets harder as the story goes. To make the book even more addicting Kraus uses a trick that I associate with action thriller writer David Morrell who mastered this technique. Short and powerful chapters that keep you thinking "I might as well read one more it is just a few pages." Next thing you know you read 50 more pages. Whalefall also uses parallel storytelling. Some crazy thing will happen in the present of the story and you will be on the edge of your seat, and get a chapter or two of backstory. The back story is emotionally rich and involving too. But even if you are less interested in the family drama, you want to read it just to get back the whale and present action.

The story of Whalefall follows Jay, who is just barely an adult, he has given himself an impossible task, find his father’s body after he went into the ocean to kill himself.  His father taught him to scuba dive but this mission is a crazy dive with little hope of working. What is crazier is he ends up getting swallowed alive by a giant whale. With oxygen tank and plenty of feelings of guilt over how he dealt with his father this becomes a tale of survival that I am surprised doesn’t get compared to Gravity. It has the structure of Gerald’s Game and the bleak survival aspects of Gravity or 127 Minutes.

The structure and pacing of the book is brisk. The chapters are generally short, but there are moments of character or description that show a real command of the form. You might think the flashbacks would drag down the pace of the whale story but it doesn’t do that ever. Interesting too, because it is one of the first books I read that kind of has the pandemic in the rearview mirror just a fact of time.  Daniel Kraus is an excellent writer, and beyond the high concept, he clearly researched the whale science and never cheated the concept.

So before we get into the details add my voice to the chorus of hype. Buy it, borrow it from a library, and spread the good word.  Whalefall is more than just survival horror, and family drama in not-so-subtle ways the book gives the reader a strong sense of the power, scope, and majesty of nature in the ocean.

“Rising.
A ship of gods for primordial tar, yard after yard of wrinkled black bulk, a farce of size displacing the entire ocean. There’s an Omega shape in phosphorescent white, and Jay’s stupor permits the dull understanding that this crescent is a mouth, twenty feet of closed mouth, and this obsidian skyscraper is no surfacing Atlantis. No colliding planet.
It is a living thing.”


Jay’s position inside the whale creates intense claustrophobia, moments of suspense and action but it is those moments when the reader is confronted by the power of nature that made this book special to me. Every scuba diver is kept alive with the equipment on their back gets a crash course in the power of the ocean, this novel puts you right there. Jay being in the belly of the beast, gets a lesson about the dangers the whale faces.  

These moments and all the tiny details sometimes based on science really sell the book. The action is not just propulsive but also well-written. It is a bit of a trick to imagine the inside of a whale, something Kraus does an amazing job of.

“A slam against the back of his skull, his body against the whale’s nose, a hard pop inside him, something broken. What feels like bottle caps grind into his left side, and when he rolls, he finds himself face to face with eggy pile of what look like eyeballs, except hard and sharp as rusty tin barnacles.”


Some of the most harrowing moments for me came when the whale was rising and lowering quickly in the ocean. The whale designed by evolution can handle but the change in pressure is deadly to humans, and unlike a submarine, the whale's stomach is not pressurized. This scene messed with me.

“A dull bang inside his right ear. Crackling sonic fire through his skull and hood. His right eardrum has exploded. Jay smiles, tastes the bitter cherry of collapsing lungs.
Everything’s fine.”


But Jay's inventiveness to try and survive was also neat. like when the whale grabbed a glowing squid to light his way...

“Jay’s left fist is a torch. Preposterous. Incredible.”

That is also a way to describe this novel. Preposterous. Incredible.  A preposterous concept so well executed it is Incredible. One of the best horror novels of the year, and this year has had some great stuff. This is an excellent example of high-concept action. This and Vertical by Cody Goodfellow were the worst tense action and survival stories I read in the year.   


Sunday, December 3, 2023

Radio drama/ Audio book Review: No Man's Land (Star Trek: Picard) by Kirsten Beyer and Mike Johnson


 No Man's Land (Star Trek: Picard) by Kirsten Beyer and Mike Johnson

Audible Audio, 2 hours

First published February, 2022

  Technically this was a radio drama, and as such my review will be short, as it is not my thing to  break down radio dramas. Set after the events of Picard Season one. (by the way as a person who has been calling for more Star Trek set in-universe with not Starfleet settings and characters I actually really liked Picard Season one).  The opening scene is a kinda touching flirty dialogue between Rafi and Seven.

 The performances were as good as you could expect, and it is awesome to hear Jeri Ryan and Michelle Hurd doing these scenes. As the story progresses there is some forced dialogue for the format, but it shows how controlled Jeri Ryan is as Seven. Fun little Fenris Ranger story, (my first reaction is I would consider giving up a toe to write Seven Fenris Ranger novels. Just saying Titan books.) I have learned since I listened to this that David Mack was given this job and his next Star Trek novel is exactly that. First in line.

Book Review: Maeve Fly by CJ Leede


 

Maeve Fly by CJ Leede

288 pages, Hardcover
Published June, 2023 by Tor Nightfire


Some books and movies become victims of marketing. First off you have a blurb from Tori Amos that goes on the freaking cover. No offense to Grady Hendrix or anyone else. I don’t think CJ Leede the author of this novel minds all the American Psycho comparions but EVERY single review compares these books because to the point that I had that book in my head constantly while reading it. I mean the dust jacket in the description straight up says “inspired by the pages of American Psycho, sales-wise it is a great strategy but for fucks sake Feminist Slasher should be enough to sell the book. So from here on on out we are not going to mention that other book.  We are here to talk about Maeve Fly.

So yes this novel is a feminist slasher whose antagonist whose name is the title of the book works as a Disney princess at Disney World. Her dying grandmother was a Hollywood star and Maeve is a perfect copy of her. It is an encounter with her best friend’s brother that awakens something in Maeve.

"Men have always been permitted in fiction and in life to simply be what they are, no matter how dark or terrifying that might be. But with a woman, we expect an answer, a reason."

If there is a mission statement in the book, and you know I look for those it is that last quote. Maeve Fly is a dark, surreal, bloody exploration of feminist motivations in the form of a slasher lens. There are plenty of ways to approach the stories of slashers – Dahmer is an example of a realistic look at the disconnected realistic disconnection that motivates real killers. Books like these use highly stylized and humorous misanthropy to create killers who express the types of rage we feel and never act on.

“I have tried the way of the misanthrope, the way of the deviant, the philosopher, the observer, the pretender. But there is one road I have not seriously considered walking down, and have not permitted myself to. Perhaps it is time.”


As such Maeve Fly will appeal to readers for the ways it commented on feminist rage, the daily frustrations of being a woman in this culture, and California life. I live in California so that last one provided many of my favorite moments of the book. Your mileage may vary depending on how much life in California is something you understand.

“There are many definitions of insanity in this world. One could argue that spooning a man’s eyeball out of the socket and performing carnal acts of religious desecration with it is insanity -we will revisit that later- perhaps you’d be right, but I argue that true insanity is driving in Los Angeles.”


These moments were my favorites of this novel, and I love it when authors comment on places where their novels take place. A couple of generations of readers know about Maine.  The other favorite moments came from the relationship between Maeve and Hilda the caretaker of her grandmother. That went somewhere I didn’t expect and challenged our ideas of our narrator.

Here is the thing. Maeve Fly is an interesting novel. I respect lots of things that it is doing, but I didn’t enjoy the experience enough. A book like this needed to make have uncomfortable laughs and I didn’t have a ton of those. Lots of authors I respect and Tori Amos blurbed this novel I know my local author friend Brian Asman LOVED this. I think most readers who like transgressive gory horror fiction will love this. I think this is a good novel that I didn’t connect with. I will however be first in line to see what CJ Leede does next.   

Monday, November 20, 2023

Book Review: The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage by Nick de Semlyen


 

The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage by Nick de Semlyen

352 pages, Hardcover
Published June, 2023 by Crown

 

This will be a short review as this is not the kind of book you come here to commentary on. Well I consider myself a pretty high-brow fan of all things speculative and dark literature I also love 80s action movies. I consider Commando the citizen cane of bad action movies. I have read Outlaw Vern's book on Steven Segal, and I have followed the behind-the-scenes articles, and commentaries about all these action stars so I didn't read this book.

Don't get me wrong Nick de Semlyen (whom I know from the Empire podcast) did his job. Most of the details were things I already knew. I knew that Chuck Norris's real name was Carlos but his friends stories of the early days were pretty cool, Van Damme's first stage name was Frank Cujo and the scope of Segal's derangement on the set of On Deadly Ground were the things I felt I learned for the first time. Seriously a biopic TV series about the making of On Deadly ground would be hilarious.

It is great to have all this history between the covers of one book, for that, I give this book five stars.

In the spirit of this book:
Ahhhnold- Commando
Sly - Rambo (IV)
Chuck - Invasion USA (just beat the Octagon)
Van Damme - Sudden Death
Segal - Marked for Death
Bruce Willis - Last Boy Scout
Jackie Chan- Supercop 3

Sunday, November 19, 2023

Book Review: The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Ann Older


 

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Ann Older

169 pages, Hardcover
Published March, 2023 by Tordotcom

 Sometimes the concept of a novel is so good you marvel at the fact that it wasn't done before. The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Ann Older is  The first of a novel series of novels meant to invoke a cozy gaslamp mystery feeling.  In the  Holmes and Watson tradition, our detectives are two characters Mossa & Pleiti who have survived the ecological devastated earth to live in tightly packed platforms high in the atmosphere of a gas giant we assume is Jupiter but referred to through the book as Giant.

This is my second time reading Older and I really enjoyed the blend of social justice activism and near-future world-building of Infomocracy. That novel had more in common with political thrillers than the weird works of the Cyberpunks although the comparisons were out there. Think the Ryan Gosling movie Ides of March meets Leguin. It is part political and part spy thriller.  So yeah I am still four years later suggesting Infomocracy.

This novel which was born out of the isolation of the pandemic, is a great high concept that is not exactly for me. I am not a cozy gaslamp mystery reader but I highly respect the idea and execution. Someone who is Holmes-head (I don't know what they are actually called) would probably find lots of easter eggs and stylistic touches that are sailing over my head.

The mystery is cozy in the sense that the unexplained suicide of a character who didn't seem like he wanted to die is low-stakes. It is not the fate of the universe. There are details that set a Holmes-like mystery with facts that twist and turn the story.

The novel is written in first person from Mossa's point of view. I am rarely a fan of novels told in first person but the story was told well enough that I forgot about it. Unlike Ascension by Nicholas Binge it CONSTANTLY reminded me.

The thing that worked for me was the world-building that expressed the details of an ecological crisis and Earth's postmortem. Page 31 of this book is an info dump but it does an amazing job of answering the many questions the first thirty pages gave me. I liked the way you are through into the world and that was just the right amount of pages to leave the reader wondering.

"There had after all, been many species on earth, once.
Even the small subset of that number whose genetic information had been collected before they were driven out of existence,  and a smaller faction of those who had been resurrected for the Mauzooluem, still resulted in an extremely large panoply of species."


The setting provides a set of stakes and pressures that counterbalance the so-called "cozy" nature of the mystery. The world-building is so well done, subtle at times, intense at others but always handled with skill.  As a real-life Animal rights person I noticed a shout out to my peeps in this future.

"There were of course Animal rights activists who argued that the animals shouldn't  have been reconstituted to live in what is essentially captivity."

Mossa points out that few have taken up this view because that is what humans are dealing with. What is interesting to me about this is what this means for this mystery series. All the mystery cases will be a result of the characters essentially existing in captivity.

Mossa as a character has Holmes's careful considerable intelligence when he calls the academic Pleiti we get the idea that their partnership is more than the mystery. As curious as I was about them I admit I was also interested in the street preacher who only appears on page 46. I am probably the only reader who felt that way but I wanted to know his deal.

Mossa calls back to the street preacher in chapter 17 and that was the first time in a while I really thought about the first-person narrative. Really cool high-concept science fiction and an excellent translation of the concept.

Friday, November 17, 2023

Audiobook Review: Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov, William Dufris (Narrator)


 

 Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov, 

William Dufris (Narrator)

399 pages, Paperback
Published November, 1984 by Del Rey/Ballantine Books

 Literary awards: Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel (1984), 

Locus Award Nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel (1984), 

Prix Cosmos 2000 (1985)

Series  Robot (#3), Robot, chronological order (#3), Greater Foundation Universe (#4)

My copy of Robots of Dawn has yellowed paper but I bought it brand new first edition paperback at Waldenbooks when I was too young to understand what I was reading for the most part. It sat on the shelf for a few years then. My first read of this trilogy (there is a fourth book that will come later)  was when I was in 8th grade if my memory serves me.

 Our understanding of Issac Asimov has changed as much as robotics have in the years since this trilogy started with Caves of Steel in 1954 and The Naked Sun in 57. Thanks to wonderful research most famously in Alec Nevala Lee's Fantastic must-read book Astounding, we have a warts and all history of Asimov who kept detailed notes on his own life. In the past, there was a lot of shoulder-shrugging about the heroes of Science Fiction who had some pretty ugly behavior. I remember Watching Harlan Ellison speak to a packed house at Worldcon he made a joke about another writer’s breasts and he paused for laughter and was met with disgusted silence. The community has changed dude,  and soon after a veil of silence was lifted we know some ugly things about Asimov. He groped women, made sexist comments, and was generally gross about using his stardom in the community.  It also appears before his death his behavior had gone away. Did he get it? I hope so.
 
 I like lots of art by problematic artists. For me, it is a case-by-case basis. I am not a fan of British SF writer Neal Asher’s right-leaning views, but I don’t mind that we don’t agree. Dan Simmons on the other hand crosses a line into racism. I have been turned off on his books. With Simmons and Crichton it began to affect the fiction in a way that I couldn't ignore.  I think what we have learned about Asimov affects this book more than most of his canon. Mostly I try to judge books on their own merits but as you’ll see it is hard in this case.

I have no idea if Asimov was planning a trilogy featuring Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw when he wrote the first book Caves of Steel, it is hard to say because it was decades between books two and three. To mirror that a bit I intended in 2019 to re-read this trilogy and The Naked Sun was one of my wildly too close to reality lockdown reads of 2020. I admit also that I listened to this novel on Audiobook. Something I normally reserve for tie-in novels.

That first book was a very character-driven spin on the detective noir that was augmented by the fantastic world-building. The world of the first book was Earth in the far future, although set in the same universe as the Foundation centuries before the events of that series. Part of the strength of the first book was the dynamic between Baley and Olivaw. One of the complaints about genre works from this era (the 50s) and Asimov, in general, is that he was more focused on the gee-whiz than the actual characters.

None the less The Naked Sun is an excellent sequel to Caves of Steel. Robots of Dawn is more complicated, written in the 1980s it serves a very important role in the Asimov canon. On the surface, it is the story of a Humaniform robot Jander that is “killed” on the colony world of Aurora. It is almost impossible to discuss without spoiling the ending. Caves and Naked Sun feel like they could be translated into exciting detective movies/ TV shows.

Robots of Dawn is talky book, and the tension comes mostly from interactions written by an admittedly awkward scientist writer who was not exactly known for his characters.  
Sometimes it works…

“That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Is that it, Daneel?”
Daneel paused, then said, “I am not certain what is meant by the smell of a rose, but if a rose on Earth is the common flower that is called a rose on Aurora, and if by its ‘smell’ you mean a property that can be detected, sensed, or measured by human beings, then surely calling a rose by another sound-combination—and holding all else equal—would not affect the smell or any other of its intrinsic properties.”
“True. And yet changes in name do result in changes in perception where human beings are concerned.”
“I do not see why, Partner Elijah.”
“Because human beings are often illogical, Daneel. It is not an admirable characteristic.”


But often entire chapters are mucked up in which characters set up how impossible the mystery is. I admit as this was a re-read (well Audio) I knew the ending, and since it is the most interesting part that may have added to my annoyance with these conversations. This is when we get into the uncomfortable Asimov zone that has to do with the character Gladia Delmarre and her relationship with the victim Jander.

“Did they know that you had a robot husband?”
“I had a husband. Don’t call him a robot husband. There is no such expression.”


There is a lot of talk in the section about her needs sexually, this is where Asimov is clearly a man writing a woman, and it feels super icky. At some point in the 70s Asimov was accused of writing prude-ish sterile Science Fiction and considering how grown-up the new wave was writing it did make his books feel a little old-fashioned. Considering the new wave included voices from Malzberg to Joanna Russ, Asimov's lack of sexuality both in horny stuff and political gender stuff was noticeable. For readers anyway. Considering that mutton-chopped minor celebrity had at conventions a bad reputation for being all hands and horribly sexist maybe it was better he left it off the page.  In Robots of Dawn, it is not so much the plot, but the red herring and misdirection of the story.  As such it takes up many pages and all that stuff that made me cringe.

At the end of the sixties, most of Asimov’s publishing was non-fiction books, and he was constantly on National TV for moon shots but the reality was Asimov was in a 15-year Science Fiction drought. That ended when he released the excellent 1972 The God Themselves. This second part of that book is a reaction to Asimov being called him a prude, and there is tons of para-dimension sex just because. I know it sounds weird and it was. I also believe that Robots of Dawn is a reaction to the prude accusations. That is the kindest possible way to look at it, as there is another.

Asimov was very intent on making colony worlds like Solaria (in Naked Sun) and Aurora in Robots of Dawn have very different moral values from Earth where the human species was born. This is most glaring in how these societies view sexuality. There is a whole storyline involving incest and Galdia’s anger over being rejected sexually by her father.  The ick factor is bad no matter who wrote it but considering who wrote it adds an extra level.

Someone writing a  review who was not a part of the SF community probably wouldn’t devote so much attention to this minor aspect, but I can’t help it in this read.  There is one excellent scene where Bailey is trapped in the rain, which doesn’t sound like anything but for a person raised on earth his terror is really felt. From a pure storytelling perspective, this moment of terror from Bailey is one of the better individual scenes of Asimov’s canon.  It is one born purely of the world-building and character-meeting concept.

We also know famously that Foundation was an idea John W. Campbell handed A young Asimov, he wrote the first stories not even thinking of a novel, let alone a saga stretching multiple books. Asimov is dinged for not being able to write characters. Bailey and Olivaw are not exactly the most dynamic characters but they are memorable. Because Asimov started Foundation it really until the second book when The Mule is introduced that you get any sense of plotting at all. The Twist ending of Robots of Dawn is right in the title, which reminds me of Matherson’s  I Am Legend in that sense. Asimov hinted that these stories took place in the Foundation universe just centuries before. The twist is that this roboticide was committed as part of a plan to spread humanity through Humaniform colonies. This connects these robot novels directly to the Foundation series. 


That is one reason I think of this book as the end to the trilogy. The story is continued in Robots and Empire, but is that a Foundation book? I think it is.  Robots of Dawn is a book with ups and downs. There were moments I thought this was a 2-star book, but the ending makes up for a lot. It is impossible in 2023 to not read this any other way than the acknowledgment of creepy Issac. That makes the misdirection of the mystery really tough to read. It is talky, but it is the Science Fiction version of a locked door mystery that in the final act opens up to a wider universe.

As a novel Robots of Dawn shows the strengths of Asimov’s imagination while showing many of his weaknesses as a writer. Overall I think it is an important book in SF canon, as long as the reader can balance the context. I understand if readers might want to focus on writers of the past who were not as problematic, or not problematic at all. To me the books outlive the person and the behavior, the question is does Robots of Dawn highlight the problems with Asimov? It gets damn close, a writer who deserves the benefit of the doubt might not get the same critical to the uncomfortable sexuality. Robots of Dawn is interesting because I believe it is canon and a 3/5 star book at the same time. Important, at a few key moments great but not something I can’t fully get behind.  

Friday, November 10, 2023

Book Review: Vertical by Goodfellow


 

Vertical by Cody Goodfellow     

336 pages, Paperback
Published September, 2023 by Titan Books

Almost two decades ago I went to a coffee house to meet a local horror author to see if there were ways we could work together to promote our small horror community. I read his debut novel before we hung out and frankly, I couldn’t believe how good it was. I had first heard of Cody Goodfellow in an intensely hyperbolic review in Cemetery Dance Magazine by Splatterpunk legend John Skipp. (Skipp would go on to team up with Cody on a couple of novels) Throughout the years there have been lots of reviews and blurbs that will tell you how genius Cody Goodfellow is. Skipp and I are far from alone.

I assumed once the secret got out he was on track to become the biggest writer of our generation, a household name, bestselling novels, home on paperback racks that kind of thing. To me, he was that good. Over time I learned that happens to your Ray Bradburys and Isaac Asimovs. When the people doing really crazy original stuff like Barry Malzberg and Norman Spinrad you get respect from the hardcore but it took death for Octavia Butler and Philip  K. Dick to be recognized as the towering giants they were. They didn’t play it safe; they wrote revolutionary genre fiction and sometimes it helps to be a mad scientist.

 That is what Cody Goodfellow is at heart, a mad scientist, who unlike most literary freakazoids from those earlier generations Cody grew up with more than a massive library, but also punk rock, alternative culture, and an open attitude toward mind-altering genre and chemicals. The kind of alchemy that creates in Cody Goodfellow a human who writes novels that are so good, so weird the world is just not ready for them.

I once asked Cody what he was working on. He responded “A body horror novel about a haunted house with bees that turn you into communists.” The result was a horror novel Perfect Union. This novel is a masterpiece, but when Cody shopped it to major publishers the silence was deafening. In my opinion - they didn’t get it. This novel recently reissued by Ghoulish Books is STILL ahead of its time. It is better in my opinion than hundreds of mainstream horror novels and stomps most Stoker award-winning milk toast.

Didn’t matter if he wrote weird mystery noir like Repo Shark or SF dystopia in Unamerica it was equally good.  I was ready for him to write a straight-ahead action techno-thriller like Vertical. I knew that this project was brought to Cody by Alcon Entertainment. He was given a Screenplay in development, but as a long-time Goodfellow reader I wouldn’t have guessed, because the characters feel like his and the action and details elevate what could be a simple action adventure in a less dynamic storyteller’s hands.  

Vertical is the story of an Urbex crew of adventure activists who pull off daring stunts sometimes with a message.  Outlaw athletes who pull off political pranks they broke up after the last stunt almost killed them.  Michael Foster has moved on to working as tech-bro when Cam and Maddie from the crew recruit him for the ultimate prank.  Climbing the unfinished tallest building in the world being built in Moscow and billed as Vertical City.  Once up the plan is to send a friend to launch in a dangerous wing-suit flight.

The Korova Tower on Russia Day is a prank for the ages. The location and set-up are one that Goodfellow doesn’t rush. The characters are key in thrillers and Cody fills them with reasons, flaws, strengths, and motivations. They are not plot chess pieces, and that is important because when shit gets crazy you need a reason to give a shit about them.  

Let's start by talking about how well Goodfellow sets the stage for the location.

“As they passed out of the tunnel, a gargantuan shadow fell across the highway, eclipsing the pale, rising sun.

Twice as tall as the cluster of gleaming spires around it, Korova Tower looked like a ladder to the stars.  Its one hundred and ninety stories dominated the skyline, surmounted by a forked crane that made the already imposing tower look like it has horns.”


The reputation Goodfellow has for writing bonkers stuff and that kind of hides how powerful and poetic his prose can be. That is an example of excellent writing. This book is filled with moments like that it in a book designed to be a commercial vehicle. Another thing that elevates the book is the balance between knowledge of the gritty underground world matched with above-average knowledge of historical and literary details. Vertical has a urbex crew a reference to the Illiad, and former punk rock Russian cop who makes jokes about Sex Pistols in his narrative POV. Speaking of that guy’s band The Great Train Robbery whose records were pressed on the vinyl on old X-rays, a detail Goodfellow uncovered doing intense research. That is key Vertical is intensely researched. It has to talk about the white-knuckle action of the final act without spoiling the action, so if you want a spoiler-free experience go read Vertical meet me back here at this part of the review.

Going into the book I assumed it would have Die Hard feeling, with the Russian agents or Mob chasing the team around the building but a few set pieces in particular drive the action. The one I didn’t see coming was an earthquake under Moscow. The reason for this is one I appreciate but won't give away.

It is one thing for a city not used to earthquakes to suffer one during the Russia day party, that is enough to add chaos to your adventure story but…

“Like its neighbor, the Federation town, Korova stood on a shelf of sedimentary rock separated by a thick stratum of alluvial clay from deep but perennially depleted aquifer, which served as a perfect transmitter for the longest wavelengths of the distant quake to strum the skyscraper like a taunt string. Built to suspend 190 stories of concrete, steel, and glass on a minimal footprint with little consideration for seismic endurance, the skyscraper’s tripod shaped foundation core tisted against itself as if some greater force was wringing it dry…”

Now imagine your prankster crew of activists are trapped on the half-finished top floors.  Once the building starts to fall part of the adrenaline ride of the story starts. Like another horror or suspense thing you have to put yourself in the shoes of the characters and the whole thing would be gut-wrenching and terror-inducing, not just for the fear of heights but the building falling apart. Goodfellow figures out dozens of crazy ways the building and events would kill a character, and who survives drives the tension.

Of course, this would make an incredible movie, just the scene of Tom Cruise hanging off the building of Mission Impossible was nail-biting, a whole movie of it done right could be crazy good. We don’t need to wait for it. We have to story already playing out in this novel with the unlimited budget of your imagination. Cody Goodfellow is a wordsmith hell-bent on giving you the literary feeling of looking over the of high-up building. Now imagine that building starting to crumble apart. Vertical is an action thriller that works on the page.

Sunday, November 5, 2023

Book Review: Alien: Enemy of My Enemy by Mary Sangiovanni


 

Alien: Enemy of My Enemy

416 pages, Paperback
Published March, 2023 by Titan Books

A young or new musician composing a song requires the musician to create something out of nothing. It is different when Tony Iommi plugs in his guitar and goes to write a Black Sabbath song he has certain expectations. He has chords, a guitar sound, and he has Ozzy or Dio’s voice in his head, I know Geezer wrote most of the lyrics but you get the idea.

Writing a tie-in novel is a tricky thing.  Fans of the franchise, are like fans of a band. You have to hit the recognizable notes like a power cord. This novel has to feel like it is in the Alien universe, some readers will complain if something is too different, it has to simply feel like something they have seen before. At the same time, other readers will complain if they don't get something new. I enjoyed it when Brian Evenson (written as B.K. Evenson) did something wild and out there with his Alien: No Exit. That novel was a like Noir with a detective who sleeps in hypersleep until Xenomorph events happen.  Some readers complained it wasn’t Alien enough.  Threading that needle in this novel is a great writer.

Mary Sangiovanni is a knowledgeable writer who has been on my podcast a few times to bring her expertise on all things cosmic horror.  I was excited to see Mary write a science fiction novel, I was personally less interested in Xenomorph of the whole thing as  I was at seeing what Mary did with Sci-fi. This is the third in a self contained trilogy, but I didn't read the other books and I think I was fine.

Mary stuck close to the formula, which is fine because there are many times she gave it her special touch – namely reminding the reader that these monsters are a creation of the darkest corners of the cosmos. Space is always trying to kill us. Consider this moment on page 78…

“Another pass of light showed even larger holes in the floor and more yellow acid that had eaten through the floor around the medical pods.
“Blood can’t do that,” Siobhan said, shaking her head. I don’t care what kind of experiments they’re doing here. How could any living thing have blood like that?”

A moment of suspense for sure, that will remind us that feeling we got watching the movies. The question at the end of this quote speaks to cosmic horror at the heart of these killing machines. It is the reason that the corporation in this franchise want to make the Xenomorph into a weapon. Some writers doing Alien novels just set up the action scenes. No moment of cosmic dread is left behind in moments like this. Many of the best moments of this novel are in the execution.

The set-up is an interesting one. I don't know how much comes from the first two books in the trilogy.  A Weyland-Yutani bioweapons lab is under the gun to provide results as the Moon they are stationed on is in sudden danger as the orbit is collapsing into the planet Hepaestus. Again, the cosmos itself working to kill the characters and creating an added ticking clock besides the Xenomorphs running around. There is another research labs near  and they are a different corporation making drugs. They are all waiting to be evacuated just as a major peace conference is set begin on the nearby conference.  

Quickly, maybe too quickly the Xenomorphs escape the lab, and in the prologue start the killing. This maybe a function of being a third book, and I get why you do that as a writer to open with action and give yourself some room for a little more build-up  later. Sangiovanni certainly uses build up and tension through the rest of the book so this is minor complaint and I absolutely understand  why you would start this way.

There are a couple of elements that give the framing story something original to the alien franchise. The concerns of the two corporations, the ticking clock of the dying moon, the peace conference. These are balanced with moments that feel very familiar, dynamics between the colonial Marines, the lead character, but those are features not bugs.

If you want to go in cold that stop here, buy and read the book and meet me back here. I really enjoy when writers like Tim Lebbon or Mary Sangiovanni play with the tropes and make solid as a rock Alien novels.  I think I personally enjoy the weird B.K. Evenson No Exit style but we are not here to talk any other Alien books and this one is super fun.

For those of you who complain there is nothing new here, let me stop you and present a scene for further evidence.  In the first one hundred pages the local wildlife who are like massive elk on the dying moon are seeded into the background. This pays off on page 120.

“The Xenomorph clinging to the outer wall was enormous, two or three times the size they’d seen so far. Tufts of fur grew between the jutting blades of its shoulders and black spines, and it’s chest was much broader. Most notable, though-  most terrifying – was the set of gigantic bony antlers protruding from the curved, eyeless heads.”


I kinda always understood that the Xenomorphs we’ve seen face hug a human and then they are a human like version. This scene really got me. Cool stuff.

I admit I don’t know the Alien universe, but when the novel get into world-building and background of the conference is when we get details of the wider universe which in the main franchise is mostly expressed in corporate greed. We knew they wanted bioweapons so in this we get some information about the seeds of the conflict, it is light seasoning, a pinch of salt but it did tons for this reader. I am assuming there is more details in the first two books. I suppose I will have to go back and check them out at some point.  
 
The most interesting character was Weyland-Yutani researcher Dr. McCormick, who created meds he thought could slow down the process of Xenomorph gestation up to three weeks. Running out of time this crazy fucker allows himself to become a host, figuring he can prove his science, and in a sense make himself valuable to be saved after he realizes the whole mission will be written off.

This character might be the most interesting thing in the novel, and I was impressed by this whole storyline. It is a interesting wrinkle that comes logically out of the world building we've seen. I also liked that the novel touched on the Prometheus/Covenant events as I am one of the rare fans of Prometheus and the bold swing it took mythology-wise.

Alien: Enemy of My Enemy is a strong powerful power cord that is played with great skill. A fun read for fans of the franchise who want to familiar story with elements of cosmic horror and minutes of elevation. As a writer I was playfully jealous  that Mary got to play in this sandbox and was constantly thinking about more Alien novels that could be. That shows that this novel was stimulating my imgination, telling a fun story and entertaining. Mission accomplished.

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Book Review: Holly by Stephen King


 

Holly by Stephen King

449 pages, Hardcover
Published September, 2023 by Scribner

Maybe you have heard of Stephen King? Just kidding look several people have told me they were looking forward to my review as I play it straight up. I love Uncle Steve, I think I love him as a person more than I do as a writer. I love his interviews and the highs in his career have been good enough I will always check out his work.

Like a new Metallica album in the metal scene, the release of a new Stephen King novel will get an opinion out of everyone. My Stephen King love is mostly in the older early work but that doesn't mean I have not enjoyed some recent works. I absolutely loved Doctor Sleep and Later.  At the same time, I found Fairy Tale and The Institute to be unreadable. The Outsider started strong but the end didn't deliver on the promise of the first two hundred pages. My point is I love Stephen King but I am also honest about my opinion.

That said I enjoyed Holly.  Is it perfect? It doesn't have to be. King has written plenty of masterpieces even for Steph Curry misses a shot or two.  I'll take as many Metallica albums and Stephen King novels as we can get.

Holly Gibney is the point of view character of this novel, and although this is the third Holly book if you count 1/4 of a novella collection. This one is Holly in the spine of the book. I admit I leave for vacation tomorrow and I have one foot out the door as I write this review, but let me start by saying that for the most part a lot of the things that annoyed me about books like Fairy Tale are not here.

This novel has a focus. It feels like King, who is notorious for not having plan, had to have an idea. The novel has a structure that Fairy Tale didn't have. Events had to happen in a certain order, there was research he had to do into the Harris couple.

It is not a spoiler to point out that the book is about serial killer seniors. The concept of the super carnivore professor who thinks eating human livers will keep him and his wife young appeals to this vegan. King is said that he wouldn't be good at who-done it. This is a who-done-it for Holly but for the reading is a why-done-it. You dig.

SK cuts back and forth between points of view and timelines to set suspense from the parallel track of the stories. This makes me think he must have had some kind of plan. Just as important to the book as Holly is the 2021 post-COVID era it is set in.  That was interesting to me because I traveled around that time I had the experience of seeing regional levels of public response. Where I live in San Diego the fears of COVID were pretty light, we have year-round warm weather lots of outdoor options. When I traveled to the Bay Area was the first time I was asked for a Vax card to get into a movie. It seemed to me that the COVID reaction was over the top but that is likely my perception.

The story starts with Holly's MAGA mom dying from COVID. There are some interesting moments about online funerals. Holly wants life back to normal and takes a gig looking for Penny Dahl's lost daughter Bonnie. Her partner is sick with COVID and the clock is ticking.

It is no mystery to the readers. We saw the old professors Rodney and Emily Harris take Bonnie and through flashbacks, we know they kidnap and eat their victims. King does an excellent job juxtaposing these events to create tension. while I have some nitpicks overall I think the novel works quite well.  

Before I talk about the nitpicks I want to say I know this is a little like telling Mozart he hit some wrong notes. Stephen King is human and I am just a reader here. I think King being one of those baseline authors that everyone reads means he is like a common language we can speak in. It gives a much wider world of readers and writers a common book we can talk about the mechanics of what works and what doesn't. Being the most popular writer in the universe means he is a language we all speak. Plus a nimrod like me won't hurt his sales right?

So the Harris couple as a serial killer team can't have the motivations of a normal, sad sack lonely serial killer. They are open to each other, so the motivation SK develops is a good one. The idea that this carnivore zealot forces their victims to eat almost raw liver before dying was horrifying to this vegan.  Kudos to him for putting a vegan in that basement who refused.  Because for that scene I had the thought that if I was there I would do the same thing you. You are going to kill me anyways fuck you I am not eating that.

This book has brutal moments, it has thoughtful moments. There were typical asides that SK is known for. He probably spent more pages on the Bowling league which led Holly to find the killers.   My friend Ivan Zoric was more bothered by that, and for me, it was chapters about Barbara, Holly's partner's sister learning from a  poet that felt too long and unneeded. Together 60 or 70 pages could have been trimmed but I am OK with a few Stephen King asides.

I can live with that, but the novel has constant Tell don't show moments. One of the first fundamental rules of writing is Show, Don't Tell. As in don't tell me what happened, show me. It is one of the first bad habits editors have to pound out of young writers. Constantly in a chapter from the victim's point of view, it will give background about the other victims, stuff they couldn't know.

For example on page 271. In the scene, Holly is at the Bowling alley getting closer to the killers Professor Harris, through his bowling team. Several chapters earlier an entire chapter was devoted to Penny Dahl talking about Holly on social media, Rodney and Emily Harris were on to her and it was creepy.  Then in a Chapter from Holly's  POV, "It never crosses her mind  that Penny Dahl has outed her Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter." Well yes it would be impossible for it to cross her mind that. That is the point. You already showed us that earlier no need to tell us again.

On page 290 Bonnie is in the basement "There's a Porta-john in the corner of the cell, and like Jorge Castro, Cary Dressler, and Ellen Craslow before her (Stinky Steinman Perhaps not so much), She knows what it means: someone intends for her to be here awhile."

Bonnie has no reason to know the names of the other victims, or that one victim didn't need a porta potty as much. Where the fuck was King's editor to ren pen that and say "all you need here is She knows what it means: someone intends for her to be here awhile."

Sorry to nitpick but King deserves better editing than that. We all writer sentences like that, we all push ideas that someone has to say "I see what you are trying but it doesn't work." I also feel like King is not trusting his readers to remember. Look I get the man is 75 years old. I hope to live that long and stay as sharp as him but the editing let him down.

Overall I liked Holly, I enjoyed the process but was bothered by a few of these tiny moments. Holly is not a bad book and I am simply holding King up to the high standard I expect from him after reading 50 or so of his books.