Book Review: Anybody Home? by Michael Seidlinger

 Anybody Home? by Michael Seidlinger

Paperback 220 pages

August 2022 Clash Books  

This one will be an interesting review. Off the bat, I should mention this is a Clash Books release which means. Author Michael Seidlinger and I share an editor as my book next summer is coming from CLASH. I generally avoid reading and more importantly reviewing books that might be perceived as coming from bias. I just kept hearing good things, very good things. Then I happened to be at the library and saw it on the new release shelf. OK, I am going to do it.

Before it came out editor Christoph Paul explained how this book worked and I admit I was skeptical. A home invasion novel is written in second person speaking to one of the invaders. The experimental form seemed like a huge risk for a narrative.

While home invasion movies are a prolific home subgenre. There are far more movies than books, with Paul Tremblay’s Cabin at the End of the World getting the M.Night treatment that is probably the most well-known. That being said I think the comparisons are a bit overblown to me. Very different books, I have seen some base comparisons.

Anybody Home? Kinda stands alone, I know everyone likes to say their book is like nothing else but in this case, I think Seidlinger has more of an argument than most authors.  This novel is a psychological horror that manipulates the reader more directly than ever before because it is talking to us directly. Not everyone has a family but everyone can be the invader so one of the interesting concepts at play is MS is making us the invader. He is making the reader a bystander to the crime, and with each detail of the nameless family, we almost feel guilty watching and judging.
 
There is no way to talk about this without spoiling a bit of what makes it special. This is in a sense a very experimental horror novel that worms into the reader by looking deeply into the home and family being invaded for reasons I don’t want to spoil that could be anyone. Trust me? Then read this book – it is recommended now I am going to spoil away.

Anybody Home? Is not a light easy read. I am normally a quick reader because often I learn the style of the author and develop a flow. That is impossible with this novel which lacks a normal narrative flow. I had to read slowly and carefully at times. I am not complaining. That is cool. It is not just the second person, although that is part of the reason. The characters simply being Victim #1-4 Or Invader 1-4 were important to the theme but it forced to work harder to keep it straight. That was on purpose and Siedlinger smartly plays with our confusion more than a few times.

It also gives the book a clinical feel, the invaders do this all the time, and they could be watching your family. Indeed Anybody Home is about the family as much as the invasion…

“The important stuff goes right onto the page. After seeing it happen a few times, you won't even second guess their actions. You’ll know the ins and outs of their day.”

It is not just that the invaders watch the family, that makes the novel creepy. It is the idea that someone, a group of someones is watching and studying your every move. It is interesting as the Numbering of characters and lack of names creates a dehumanization That Siedlinger balances with the exploration of their nature. Amid all that, there is one moment I found fascinating.

“The dog,” Number 4 points at the body, “It went missing like a day ago.”
Victim #1 looks over at the body, sighs, “She.”
“What?”
“It’s a she.’ You shouldn’t refer to your pet like it’s an object.”

Amid the dehumanization and the lack of names, this moment strikes me as important. Speaking as someone who would rather misgender a pup than ever call them an “it.” This struck me. The reason I came back to it is that when the characters have no names it adds a certain feeling. It makes for a moment the lack of a name stick out like a sore thumb, it also reminds me of how people can’t take violence towards dogs in media.

I mean the reason is simple dogs are innocent, and like forever children in our care, so that is why people watch armies of humans get destroyed in movies but can’t take one dog hurt. This novel taking the dog first is another smart detail.
 
Anybody Home? The act of invasion is called the performance, there is a hint of a cult but even when the novel gives details of other performances, the mystery is smartly preserved. This novel is an experiment and I was impressed that Siedlinger was able to stay consistent with the voice of this novel throughout. It is a genius work of horror fiction.

That said the form sometimes challenged me as a reader, just with flow. That is my bad, not a reflection of the novel.  Understand this is not a light read, but this is minor nitpick that I just think potential readers need to mentally prepare for. I mean that is a great thing for a horror novel, similar to Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door or Brite’s Exquisite Corpse it is a novel that should come with a warning.

Anybody Home? Is a masterpiece, I don’t say that lightly.  Not an easy light read, it is a challenging book in multiple ways but worth the investment.

Book Review: Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records by Jim Ruland

 

 

Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records by Jim Ruland 

 

432 pages, Hardcover

 April, 2022 by Hachette Books

I had mixed feelings going into this book, Jim Ruland is a local in San Diego and a writer I have seen at lots of events. I was a big fan of his memoir of Circle Jerk Vocalist Keith Morris – My Damage. He also did a great job doing a biography. Jim has shown a great knack for drilling down into the details of these underground figures in music and telling their stories. So what are mixed feelings about?

 
Writing a book about SST records is a really smart next move for Ruland who did some of the research naturally for this with his Keith  Morris book. I mean Morris started on SST records as an early vocalist of Black Flag. That is the thing, even though I am a big fan of classic punk rock, I love 80s punk, but one of the classic bands I never jived with was Black Flag. I know they were good, and they were important but I just never was a big fan.

I knew that this book was going to be lots of Greg Ginn and the drama that always circled around him and Black Flag. I knew he had more members come in and out than a Marching band in Flag. I wasn’t sure I would be interested. There are three SST bands I love Bad Brains, Descendents, and Husker Du. I admit I perked up a little more when those parts came up but I enjoyed the whole thing.

Jim Ruland is an excellent historian and plays a vital role in documenting the stories of these LA bands. It is important. Even if I don’t personally like many of the bands the details and the history are important.

This book didn’t give me more respect for Ginn, after reading it I began to really believe the dude was a jerk, it is clear who is hard to work with in the Black Flag orbit. (at one point there was a civil war of Black Flag fans on which version of the band to support)…It was clear from the outside that Ginn was the problem this book only confirmed it for me.

The number of details, research, and stories makes this book important for all music fans, if you like SST is not the point, they did really interesting things, and the study of how they did it is important. Jim is coming on my podcast at some point to talk about the book and his process.

Book Review: The Word for World Is Forest Ursula K. Le Guin

 

The Word for World Is Forest Ursula K. Le Guin

128 pages, Paperback

First published March, 1972

“For if it's all the rest of us who are killed by the suicide, it's himself whom the murderer kills; only he has to do is over, and over, and over.”

In these 128 pages of Science Fiction, there are many quotes that are wise, prophetic, and powerful quotes everywhere. I have thought about this review for a few weeks now. I have been invited to a podcast about this book and worried a bit about saying too much, but I don’t think that is possible. There are lots of places I could start but Ursula K. Leguin deserves our attention and time.

I know most of you know exactly who UKL is but to put her and this novel into context let's start at ground zero. Ursula Krober grew up in Berkeley the daughter of intellectuals, her father has since suffered from a wee bout of cancellation but at one time his name was on UC Berkeley’s Anthropology department that he had a hand in opening.

Being that I am a Philip K. Dick podcaster and researcher the fact that Ursula and Phil were high school classmates in 1947 class at Berkeley high is a curious footnote in SF history. Paintings of them are outside the high school on telephone boxes but they were never as close as those paintings in real life. They traded letters and in 1974 they were nominated for all the major SF awards together but never actually met.

I have written and spoken often about the difference in class between Ursula and Phil, not just from addresses and family life but to education. When she was going to Harvard he was working at the record and roommates with beat poets. There is no correct path to becoming a master of Science Fiction. I think we need The Phils and the Ursulas in Science Fiction.

The Word for World is Forest is a prime example of a novel that Leguin at the time was uniquely in a position to write. Of course, there is a history to this story and it is deeply connected to one of the most important projects of the SF New Wave. Leguin is a writer of the new wave, but her borderline literary SF often is thought of as having more of a Golden Age feel.

Phil actually started publishing close to the tail end of that era but he was also writing books that felt dangerous and new as soon as he was writing novels, most clearly perhaps in the World Jones Made. Leguin is not the gonzo writer that Dick, Malzberg, or even Joanna Russ was. That being said she is important to that era.

To plant the flag for this new subversive era of science fiction and sorta bridge the gap came a single anthology collecting live-wire SF edited by firebrand Harlan Ellison called Dangerous Visions. Ellison was a rising star in the community who was crawling out of windows at the Star Trek offices because his scripts with drug dealing enterprise crew members were way overdue. While avoiding Gene Roddenberry Ellison was also editing his collection. In the 1976 introduction, Leguin gives plenty of credit for influencing the novel and suggesting the title change. Thanks for that Harlan!

Dangerous Visions (This novella was written in the late 60s but appeared in Again, Dangerous Visions was delayed until 1972) is an all-important collection and has to be read to be believed. Among the greatest anthologies, it plays the role that Dark Forces would for horror in the 80s. Leguin in my opinion is a more conventional SF author for this era, but Harlan appeared to pull one of the more directly radical pieces out of Leguin. ‘The Little Green Men’ as she titled it is clearly about the war that America was involved in at the time.

So what do I mean by directly radical? I mean the woman wrote an introduction to Anarchist SF (The Dispossessed) and the master class in Always Coming Home. She wrote the first major SF novel to introduce a non-binary society in The Left Hand of Darkness. Well, this novel is more directly radical because she is more openly making the point than she ever did elsewhere. No metaphor, no analogy, no slow burn development.

Boom. This is anti-Vietnam war, anti-colonialism, and pro-ecology, above all, It is in your face about it. Writing this for the second volume of the anthology might have afforded Leguin a little freedom to be direct, plus in the introduction, she talks about 1968 as a year of great anger for the people opposing the war. One of the things that give Leguin her role is the combination of her parent’s influence, her education, her radical views, and her talent for writing.  This novel is an anthropological science fiction statement against colonialism. Awesome.

Re-reading this two weeks after seeing AVATAR: The Way of Water in the theater I know I have to address this. Cameron’s Pandora shares much in common with Leguin’s New Tahiti. Some of the comparisons are overstated, this happens in Science Fiction. Leigh Brackett, CL Moore, and Edgar Rice Burroughs all wrote about a similar Mars. I think Cameron and Leguin’s visions are similar because they are both using the same genre to write about the same evils. I personally am a fan of Cameron and the Avatar movies and have defended them enough that people joke that I am being paid by Cameron…I wish.

One of the arguments I had was with a friend who said Cameron had done nothing that Leguin didn’t do 50 years ago. Setting aside that the set-up of the story is very different. In Le Guin’s novel the scientist can only relate to and learn about the Athsheans, but in Avatar Jake leaves behind his species entirely.

There is a knee-jerk reactionary hatred against Avatar that I personally don’t understand, being angry that his SF tale set on another planet is somehow insulting indigenous people on this planet feels off to me but I am open to the discussion. For whatever reason Leguin gets a pass on this, perhaps it was 50 years ago, she is a leftie SF darling (for good reason) but her parents have a dodgy history on the topic so I am not sure it is equal. I come from the belief that both what Cameron and Leguin are doing are important. Writers need the space to create alien cultures and it is natural they will share some spiritual DNA with human cultures. She does an amazing job of developing their culture including developing the Forty Lands and how the women ran the cities and the dream lodges in very short passages.

Leguin was trying to be respectful and admitted that the tribe the Senoi in Indonesia was very similar to the one she invented who believe dream life is more important. It was an accident, she invented that aspect of alien culture and it happened to be like a real tribe. I personally think she is honoring them in an SF way, a tribe honestly never would have heard of without her book. TWFWIF and Avatar use SF to highlight Indigenous issues, the thing is Avatar has a 2 billion dollar target on its back. Enough about that…

Leguin uses SF to explore the destructive nature not just of colonialism but humanity’s destructive relationship with nature itself.  Seen through the eyes in the opening chapter of Captain Davidson a military commander overseeing the occupation of this new world, as far as bad guys go he is as arch as Leguin has ever written, coming off the page as macho as an 80s action movie hero.  Davidson is doing whatever he wants because of the distance – he was operating without contact back home.

“…so this world’s going our way. Like it or not, it’s a fact you have to face; it happens to be the way things are.”  We get details of this in a short info-dump about the conditions on earth, the best example is the huge animals they hunt, while earth hunters have hunt robodeer because the real ones are long gone. The science of the long-dead earth needed to cross space to harvest wood serves the plot, not logic however it is a metaphor you just need to ride with.

This novel takes place in the Hanish universe (the 5th book in the timeline) that supposes that Humans on earth were one of many offshoot species that were seeded around the galaxy by an ancient race. This novel is fairly on the nose but explores the racism of Colonial control The Athsheans (or Creechies as the name humans use as an insult and dehumanize them with) are basically human just as they developed on this different world.  The yumens as the Athsheans know them enslave them for work, and the way they talk about them should be familiar.

“Right, this isn’t slavery. OK, baby. Slaves are human. When you raise cows, you call that slavery? No, it just works…” and “…They don’t feel pain like humans. That’s the part you forget.”

This is the Dreaded Comparison. Considered a seminal book in the fields of Bioethics and Human-Animal Studies in 1988, two decades after Leguin’s novel Marjorie Spiegel wrote a book that compared the slavery of humans and non-humans. There are some that consider this argument racist, but the only way that is true is if you dismiss the suffering and lives of living, breathing animals. Plenty of people wanted to dismiss the lives of animals to keep enslaving them for food, clothing, and experimentation.

One uncomfortable notion this novel puts forward is that slavery is an uncomfortable part of Human's exploitation of the natural world. Most reading the novel will not want to confront this any more than Captain Davidson. That said this part 17 pages into the novel is a lynch-pin point of the message. Five pages later we learn that people on earth so destroyed the natural world it had no choice but to survive through veganism.

“What would they say on old earth if they saw one man eating a kilogram of meat at one meal? Poor damn soybeansuckers!”

As 30 year vegan myself I laughed at this, and I don’t think Leguin in 1968  was calling for veganism or anti-civ changes to our relationship with ecology but it is impossible for me not to read this novel and not see that exact point.    
 
“If the yumens are men, they are unfit or untaught to dream or act as men. Therefore they go about in torment killing and destroying, driven by the gods within, whom they will not set free but try to uproot and deny. If they are men, they are evil men, having denied their own gods, afraid to see their own faces in the dark...”   

I like the idea that these people view the human's inability to connect to their dreams as a form of insanity, and a reason for their disconnect to nature. For whatever reason, it is a reality in this novel (and our real world) that most humans have no ability to connect to nature. They thoughtlessly use and consume nature with the secondary disconnection of capitalism but this novel is very much about highlighting that disconnection. That point is powerfully made over and over some times with a scalpel but often with a hammer…

“I don't know what 'human nature' is. Maybe leaving descriptions of what we wipe out is part of human nature—Is it much pleasanter for an ecologist, really?”

 
This all comes to head when the events of a novel that Leguin had yet to release (for another 6 years) in The Dispossessed makes communication with earth possible. A supply ship arrives and finds the native peoples who were thought to be peaceful to a fault have murdered their first human and are fighting back. Earth is not happy, the corporations what humans to respectfully occupy the world. Is that enough of a change?  Can human nature really change? Can they adapt and survive?

 In a conversation, the ecologist Lyubov tells the colonizers the harsh truth. First invokes Alaska and the first famine, we don’t get an explanation, beyond that, an excellent piece of world-building that suggest just enough. Then we get the mission statement of the novel. There is a reason Harlan Ellison suggested this title change.

“A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it.  The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.  I submit, commander Yung,  that though the colony may not be in imminent danger the planet is-"

This is a classic for good reason. Leguin was never more in your face with the message and it makes a good entry point for her work. She has escaped this world before the fate that she hints at in this book but anyone still reading this review might still face that future. As is true with most of Leguin’s work you would be smart to listen to her and think about how you can make the world a better place.

Berkeley High year book I found at the library...

Outside Berkeley High School.I didn't get a picture with the Leguin side...

Book Review: Glorious Fiends by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

 

Glorious Fiends by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Paperback 130 pages,

September, 2022 by Underland Press

Reading this book was a happy accident thanks to one of the authors who blurbed the book. Now Sam J. Miller who has made my best of the year list twice with Blackfish City and The Blade Between said "If Hellraiser and Netflix's Castlevania hooked up and had a trio of queer poly bad-ass lady babies."  As great as that sounds it wasn't his blurb that sold me. After having interviewed Sam twice on two different podcasts I went to his signing at Mysterious Galaxy. As I waited to get in the long line to get my copy of Blackfish City signed Sam said "You should talk to David he is vegan and local."

So before I knew Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam was an author, we talked about all the glorious vegan food we have in San Diego, and where I should go if I come to her town in Texas. I took far too long to read this and I don't know if she listened to me and ate at Veganic Thai, but finally, we are here. I am sorry this sat on the TBR as long as it did. I like reading books by cool people and the good news is it is super fun!

Glorious Fiends is a dark monster bizarro gothic gore-drenched novella. Stufflebeam challenged my notions about a story being cute and gross at the same time, turns out that yes it can.

The story of Roxanne a manic, intense vampire...well she is a lot. When the guardian of the underworld gives her a task, she resurrects her besties a couple of classic monsters. When your best friends are Medusa and Mx. Hyde hijinks will ensue. The good news it is all entertaining gory, hot, and in the end, it will touch even the coldest hearts.

If you are a super-serious SF or horror reader then this book might not work for you. On paper, this is not the type of book I pick off the shelf. I like reading out of my comfort zone and the book was filled with moments that gave me a reason to smile.

Starting with the setting of the Great Library of Evil, a place you know you would love to browse. I love when one of the monsters picks up a living history book that is not finished, the book fills up as events unfold. There is a funny conversation about how annoying newly minted monsters are with their grand ideas. Medusa brings the funny conversation to a halt by admitting all she has wanted to do is fall in love. Medusa in many ways more than Roxanne wears the heart of this book on her sleeves.

 Consider Medusa's introduction... "Your hair is amazing," Roxanne said. She stepped around MX Hyde, toward Medusa, and reached out to pet a snake.

"I wouldn't-" Medusa began, but the snake struck the fatty round of Roanne's thumb before the words left her mouth.
Roxanne cackled "What a vicious garment."
"It's not a garment," Medusa said. Her voice was strange;strangled, not at all like it had been that night. "It's me."

If there is a mission statement, and anyone who reads my reviews knows I am always on the lookout for them it is right here. Glorious Fiends is a wonderful story of misfits who accept and love each other through all the weird and unfortunate violence that comes with being a monster. If there is a more important theme for young weirdos I am not sure what it is. I say weirdos with love in my heart by the way.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam wrote a book that is not really my style but one I respect when done right. It is a short quick, fun read. At 130 pages it is not long but packs a ton of invention into the short page count and if you like funny weird monsters with a heart you can't go wrong. The book also won my heart a little bit when Stufflebeam used the notes of a theremin to describe the feeling of a scene. I laughed but the reason I liked it...I heard it in my head throughout the book that I sorta envisioned it in glorious black and white.  

Graphic Novel Review: Star Trek Year Four #2 Written by David Tischman & Various Artists

 

Star Trek Year Four #2 by David Tischman, Steve Conley (Goodreads Author) (Illustrator),
Joe Sharp (Illustrator), Gordon Purcell (Illustrator), Rob Sharp (Illustrator), Leonard O'Grady (Illustrator)

I am not going to go super deep here. I don’t expect much from this series. I consider them basically lost episodes of the Animated Series. They have a bit more modern feeling, while still feeling like TOS, so I like that aspect. The stories in this collection are short, single-issue stories and I found myself wishing for one long story that would feel more like an episode of the live-action show.

That said I liked there were political stories, character stories, and a funny one that commented on TV. It was a good mix. It felt like Star Trek and I enjoyed it. Will keep getting it from my library.

Book Review: Hide by Kiersten White

 

Hide by Kiersten White

Hardcover, 243 pages

Published May 24th 2022 by Del Rey Books

I admit despite her many credits I was not familiar with this author, and she lives in the same city as me. That is one reason I got this book on a whim at the library. It looked like horror, saw the author was from here and I avoided the plot description on the cover deciding to go in cold. What I have gathered from the acknowledgments and the bio this was the first targeted at adults novel.

There is a degree that this novel suffered from the reader (that would be me) not connecting to it. On a technical  level there are several things the novel does very well. The tone, the atmosphere all service the novel which  is clear meant to have a point of view and a message. I personally like my genere fiction heavy handed and to the point, it could have even gone further with me and I am there.

Hide has an excellent concept, a reality survival  game set in a old creepy abandoned  amusement park, the beautifully designed book comes with a map. The idea is a group of young people have to play hide and go seek in the park, they can come out at dark to talk, eat and so on. This is important to the story so the characters can develop and play off each other. As some characters are found they disappear. To the players they are going home losers, with out the big cash prize but for the reader we know something darker is going on.

The main point of view character was a young woman named Mack, who is chosen for the contest because hid while her family was murdered. As a writer/critic who loves parallels and reversals I dig this set-up.  Mack is well written character. There is great  attention put to the characters and developing them…

“She’s so sick of trying to turn everything into an opportunity, trying to exploit every hobby, every interest, every talent, even her own fucking face and body in a desperate attempt to make enough money. The last time they spoke—a year ago, maybe?—her father accused her of being lazy, of not working, but the truth is, like everyone her age she knows, she’s always working. She’s just not making a living doing any of it. Yet.”

 Thee problem is the deeper the novel goes I was having trouble keeping the characters straight. Fourteen characters in a survival horror story is a lot to manage even if the structure includes taking out two a day over the week long game. The structure is interesting, because hiding for the daylight hours provides less suspense then you might think much of the heavy lifting is at night when the characters come together.  They are looking for fame and money, there is some interesting stuff to be said about what young people crave, and the lengths they will go.

 The structure has chapters representing days and nights at a time. White does a great job balancing the tension. I think the dynamic is the strongest part of the novel, that is what made my trouble telling the characters apart frustrating. I kept thinking about Panic Room. Writer David Koepp uses the geography of the setting to build tension and keep the viewer on edge. That is the thing missing from Hide for me.   

Remember when I said it could have been more direct. Looking for Quote from the dog-earred pages I had I found this…

“People pretend things aren’t wrong, even when they can feel the truth, because they’re too afraid of what it means to look right at the horror, right at the wrongness, to face the truth in all its terrible glory. Like little kids, playing hide-and-seek. If they can’t see the monster, it can’t get them. But it can. It always can. And while you aren’t looking, it’s eating everyone around you.”

 I think White was doing a good job expressing her anger at the shit our younger generations have to put up with. Yeah, it is some bullshit. This is a novel that didn’t quite gel with me but I think it is as much on me. I want to read White’s other work.  This is not a bad novel, I just didn’t connect with it. I like the concept, and I am interested to  know if it works for you.

Book Review: Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by David Gerrold

 

Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by David Gerrold

Paperback, 246 pages

Published April 1st 2004 by Writer's Digest Books (first published 2001)

My first read of 2023 was a book that I could have taken an attitude with. I mean I am the author of 11 published books, many of which are Science Fiction. I recently interviewed Gerrold for my podcast, and for background on an article I am working on about Dorothy Fontana. In the interview, he mentioned that he and DCF covered each other’s, writing classes. I had the thought of how jealous of the students at Pepperdine who went to Gerrold’s writing classes.

I knew Gerrold had written a book about writing SF for beginners. That is indeed the bottom line this book is written for the first time and starting writers. DG is giving the very basics but that said there is still much for writers even with lots of experience to draw from. My personal favorite aspect is Gerrold fills the book with personal stories that involve people in the science fiction community, editors he worked with, and advice he got from friends who are legends.

The first story is about his best and worst teacher that challenged him and told him he had no shot, and DG spent his career trying to prove this skeptic wrong. That is a powerful tool not to be underestimated. As far as rubber meeting the road there is tons of nuts and bolts advice that can help the writer who has no idea where to start.

Creating a story, Structure, plotting, world-building, characters, and even style. First lines, last line. This is more nuts and bolts and nitty-gritty than most writing memoirs. More helpful than say Stephen King’s On Writing which kinda banks on the reader coming to the table with natural talent. This reminded me of David Morrell’s fantastic writing memoir as far as being helpful with advice.

As far as what I learned about classic writers, a topic I am most interested in Gerrold told a story that he devoted a chapter about.  This story was one about The legendary author Theodore Sturgeon (More than Human) who told him his style of writing using a beat, metric prose. That was fascinating but I also liked reading about “Ten Tuesdays down a Rabbit Hole,” A Harlan Ellison-hosted writing class at UCLA that many writers around LA attended and guest lectured at.

For an SF writer who is young and starting their journey is a really helpful book. It is 20 years old and as a devoted reader of Gerrold’s work, I can detect his evolution in minor ways between this and his last novel Hella. Mostly in the pronouns chapter, which is out of date with how the evolution in society has changed. Gerrold doesn’t even mention the concept of Non-binary characters in Worlds of Wonder but he did in his last novel.

The only nitpick I have with this book is Gerrold has a very rigid point of view of what style of Science Fiction works. Read Hella for example his most recent novel, for example, it is a hard-SF novel about a colony world. It is important to Gerrold that his fictional world be real, and function. The science and aliens have to be believable for him.

As a huge fan of Philip K. Dick and surrealist SF, I don’t need such things. I like reading old out-of-date science fiction and don’t need believability. It would have been helpful if Gerrold could have encouraged a surrealist take, even if he doesn’t use it. I can’t stand first person for example, but if young writers ask me I give them the best advice I can even if I don’t write that way.


My first read of 2023 was a book that I could have taken an attitude with. I mean I am the author of 11 published books, many of which are Science Fiction. I recently interviewed Gerrold for my podcast, and for background on an article I am working on about Dorothy Fontana. In the interview, he mentioned that he and DCF covered each other’s, writing classes. I had the thought of how jealous of the students at Pepperdine who went to Gerrold’s writing classes.

I knew Gerrold had written a book about writing SF for beginners. That is indeed the bottom line this book is written for the first time and starting writers. DG is giving the very basics but that said there is still much for writers even with lots of experience to draw from. My personal favorite aspect is Gerrold fills the book with personal stories that involve people in the science fiction community, editors he worked with, and advice he got from friends who are legends.

The first story is about his best and worst teacher that challenged him and told him he had no shot, and DG spent his career trying to prove this skeptic wrong. That is a powerful tool not to be underestimated. As far as rubber meeting the road there is tons of nuts and bolts advice that can help the writer who has no idea where to start.

Creating a story, Structure, plotting, world-building, characters, and even style. First lines, last line. This is more nuts and bolts and nitty-gritty than most writing memoirs. More helpful than say Stephen King’s On Writing which kinda banks on the reader coming to the table with natural talent. This reminded me of David Morrell’s fantastic writing memoir as far as being helpful with advice.

As far as what I learned about classic writers, a topic I am most interested in Gerrold told a story that he devoted a chapter about.  This story was one about The legendary author Theodore Sturgeon (More than Human) who told him his style of writing using a beat, metric prose. That was fascinating but I also liked reading about “Ten Tuesdays down a Rabbit Hole,” A Harlan Ellison-hosted writing class at UCLA that many writers around LA attended and guest lectured at.

For an SF writer who is young and starting their journey is a really helpful book. It is 20 years old and as a devoted reader of Gerrold’s work, I can detect his evolution in minor ways between this and his last novel Hella. Mostly in the pronouns chapter, which is out of date with how the evolution in society has changed. Gerrold doesn’t even mention the concept of Non-binary characters in Worlds of Wonder but he did in his last novel.

The only nitpick I have with this book is Gerrold has a very rigid point of view of what style of Science Fiction works. Read Hella for example his most recent novel, for example, it is a hard-SF novel about a colony world. It is important to Gerrold that his fictional world be real, and function. The science and aliens have to be believable for him.

As a huge fan of Philip K. Dick and surrealist SF, I don’t need such things. I like reading old out-of-date science fiction and don’t need believability. It would have been helpful if Gerrold could have encouraged a surrealist take, even if he doesn’t use it. I can’t stand first person for example, but if young writers ask me I give them the best advice I can even if I don’t write that way.

My Top reads of 2022 Thumbnails reviews (Podcast links)

 

 

2022 was a good reading year for me including SF magazines which are book-length (so not cheating) I read 100 books. I admit I didn’t finish Uncle Steve’s Fairy Tale, I had to read hundreds of unpublished Treatments and outlines for research, but only one of those was actually published at one time and doesn’t count. The amount Goodreads counted was 25,499 pages.

I did a bonus video doing a thumbnail review of each and every read here:

Video talking about all 100 books I read in 2022 

Then for the podcast, I was joined by my homey Marc Rothenberg to break down our top reads of 2022 together.  Now that it has been out for bit here is my list.

Here are the links for the discussion and which includes Marc's picks.

Video of my Top reads of 2022 Discussion

 Audio of the Top Reads of 2022 podcaast

Best reading soundtracks:

Smashing Pumpkins CYR

Leprous – Mix

Katatonia - City Burials, Mix

Best non-fiction reads

Monster She Wrote by Lisa Kroger and Melanie Anderson

JG Ballard/ The Stars My destination Companion by D.Harlan Wilson

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds Edited by Ian McIntyre and Andrew Nette

John Brunner Modern Masters of SF series by Jad Smith

The World Hitler Never Made by Gavriel Rosenfeld

Best 5 retro reads:

Honorable mentions (Scanner Darkly by PKD, Blood Music by Greg Bear Conditionally Human By Walter Miller Jr.)

The Hustler by Walter Tevis: I read almost all of the Tevis books in the last year, and the year before. The Hustler is a subtle classic, but a classic for a reason.

Ice by Anna Kavan  The story of a weird apocalypse is at times almost surreal. A supernatural cold is slowly creeping across the landscape entombing the earth in a sheet of thick ice. We are told this story by a nameless narrator who goes on a hero’s quest across this cold and dying landscape in an attempt to save the “Glass girl” a blue-eyed super goth lilly white-skinned woman who is on the cover of this edition. Just wow.

Northwest of Earth by C.L.  Moore: An amazing collection of 1930s Weird Tales written by a woman who grew up in depression-era Indiana. Stunning.

Galaxies by Barry N. Malzberg: Meta-surreal SF novel that breakdowns down the concept of the genre itself. Full podcast coming with James Reich and D. Harlan Wilson (PFDW #101)

The Big Jump by Leigh Brackett: My favorite novel from the 50s by the woman who wrote the first draft of the Empire Strikes Back. Dark hard SF. Well based on the science of the time.

 

Top ten new releases

Honorable mentions – Manhunt by Grethen Fleker Martin, The Devil takes you Home by Gabino Iglesias, and God’s Leftovers by Grant Wamack.

10: Road of Bones by Christopher Golden

Road of Bones is a brutal high-concept horror novel that I would describe as a strange mix of Paranormal Activity, Ice Road Tuckers, Wages of Fear, and Joe Carnahan’s The Grey.  I personally find isolation horror to be one of the most intense forms of the genre. Maybe the years living in San Diego have made me weak, but the knife-sharp cold makes the isolation even more powerful. Enter one of the most horrible settings I can imagine.

The story is simple, and the execution is not. Tightly wound around atmosphere at times, and action at other moments in this novel. it has more packed into its pages than novels twice its length.

9: Daphne  by Josh Malerman

A horror master at the top of his form. Daphne is a far better novel than the concept would lead you to believe, much the way I felt when I read Malerman’s Peral. This shouldn’t work but it does. Why? Because Malerman is that good. Not everybody could pull off this book, the amazing fact is Only Malerman could. A horror novel that is equal parts a deconstruction of teenage anxiety and a loving tribute to the sport of basketball.

8: Aurora by David Koepp

Koepp uses his strength for suspense and details to create creepy moments that signal everything has changed. When the Aurora comes the neighbors all go out to watch the light show, and for a bit, the power stays on, and people ignore the warnings thinking the media was fear-mongering. Like the moments when the storm passed and NOLA thought they escaped Katrina. The moment the power goes out is not a huge moment but subtle and creepy. Aurora is a sneaky good novel. The concept is not groundbreaking. There is nothing that makes me think that I have to tell everyone they can't miss it. To me, it is a page-turner for one major reason. This is a storyteller driving a few narrative threads perfectly in the dance of parallels and reversals. This might is a storyteller's story for that reason.

7: The Last Storm by Tim Lebbon

The Last Storm is a CLI-FI novel, it has effective world-building, but it also has rich characters, and as Lebbon does so well there is a strong family dynamic. Jessie and Ash are tragic figures who have such important talents but it ends up being a curse.  This is a powerful story on many levels as a piece of science fiction it would be easy to focus on the dynamic of the rainmakers and the allegory they represent in the drought-stricken future. That is the heart of the story part of the story.

6: Insomnia by Sarah Pinbrough

The last couple of Pinborough novels are about the day-to-day death of a thousand cuts, and daily patriarchy in every way that Margaret Atwood deals with the system.  Insomnia is a paranoid feminist horror masterpiece. As the date approaches day by day, Emma loses everything through a series of plot twists. If there is a challenge to the book some of these twists are complicated, but no problem for SP. As Emma starts to lose sleep the events quickly spiral into paranoia and the reader will question her sanity just as Emma does herself. The 40th birthday becomes a monster lurking in the shadows, excellently off screen like the shark in Jaws

5 The Feverish Stars  by John Shirley

My favorite stories included Meega, Weedkiller, Waiting Room, and one written just for this collection Exelda’s Voice.  a sly character-driven story about a criminal who robs a bank with the help of a next-generation AI power directions app on his phone. It wasn’t lost on me in this high-tech world of the future the man in the story is robbing a bank to pay off healthcare debt. * Waiting Room is a story about being an old punk rocker. Weedkiller is the most powerful story about people who live online.

Best Shirley story this year – Lost City of LA in Startling Stories 2022 issue…

4:Noor by Nnedi Okorafor

 Noor is a deeply rich work of science fiction, that has more invention in the short length than some novels twice its length.  The subtext is close to the surface and hard to miss. Africa is a part of the world that for so long now had to fight colonial invasion and definition. AO and DNA Are on the run for their lives and that is the action on the surface, the real battle is how they define themselves. My favorite Okrafor novel so far.

3: Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi

 There is nothing soft, gentle, or politically sensitive about this novel. Which is kind of a pleasant (from my perspective) divergence from much of modern fiction that at times is afraid to push boundaries.  I think the reaction will be interesting as it is a very progressive story politically, but the delivery is zero fucks given warts and all depiction of the post-climate world. Of course, the future TO envisions is one where most of the wealthy have escaped earth to orbital colonies while the marginalized struggle to survive in our mutual home.

This novel is about the intersection between Racism/Classism and the growing climate change apocalypse. That was Brunner's message as well, but TO's window into it is fresh and vital in a way a book by a radical white Brit in 1968 just can't do anymore no matter how amazing it still is.

 

2: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

The marketing of the book makes the cross-comparison between Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven. The format is clearly influenced by David Mitchell's style of narrative formatting, It wasn't just that novel as he used a similar structure, he also used it in at least The Bone Clocks. The Station Eleven comparison is mostly pandemic related, but also the tone of reaching for hope.

Snortorious the pig chapter sucked. As a science fictionist and a space nerd, I found the chapter set on the generation ship escaping earth just as heartbreaking as an amusement park for euthanizing kiddos. Even with a chapter I hated, the rest was strong enough for it to be number 2.

1: A Sweep of Stars by Maurice Broddus

Sweep of Stars mixes deep cultural mythology and African vibes with characters who keep it real. Characters who give their family members shit and curse like normal people.

Sweep of Stars is Space Opera with an African feeling, it is an epic tale with lots of characters, narrative shifts, and twists and at the heart is a story that is entertaining for the events we witness as much as the radical ideas that get a subtle introduction.

“All of Muungano’s Territory lit up as a hologram projection, from the Dreaming City to Mars to the mining outpost. No borders, per se, not the way O.E. might define them. Only communities of alliance. This was what they had all fought so hard to forge. They needed a new vocabulary to describe the experiment they embarked on. Empire wasn’t it. A budding cooperative cradled in a sweep of stars.”

 This is one of the first elements I have seen ignored in almost all the reviews I have read. This may seem like simple world-building and MB does it subtly and right. These moments are not over-explained, they are naturally told in the midst of the story. You will of course notice the title of the book so it is not a stretch to think this passage is part of the mission statement of this story.

 

Leguin and Spinrad are some of the most well-known genre anarchists and I am not saying this book goes that far but it is clear MB is suggesting a divorce from western culture and standard capitalist monoculture. At the same time, this future while vastly different and divergent from our timeline is connected by characters like the Hellfighters soldiers who make a point not to forget the struggles the African diaspora had in our times.

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www.DavidAgranoff.blogspot.com

Author of Ring of Fire and Punk Rock Ghost Story.