|
10-17-03: New Work
From Simon R. Green, Jack McDevitt, Katherine Kurtz, Sarah
Hoyt, Brenchley Series Finale, Arthur Conan Doyle, BBC
Interviews Offer SF Writers
|
Simon
R. Green Back on the Beat
|
|
My wish was already
answered.
|
Back in June I was singing
the praises of Simon R. Green's totally
enjoyable little novel 'Something
from the Nightside',
and hoping it would spawn a series. Well, given
that the sequel is out, it must have been at
least a two book deal with both books turned in
at once. So, John Taylor's back on the beat,
this time looking for the Unholy Grail.
Presumably he'll find it, but not before meeting
a few witty monsters, demons and angels. These
books make me rather giddy with delight. It's
just about a one-day read, sitting on the back
porch. Count me in, I'm ready to go, and I'm
hoping that there are still more in Green's back
pocket.
|
Jack
McDevitt Ends the World Again
|
|
Surf's up!
|
Jack McDevitt is ending this
darn world again! Somebody tell him that isn't
nice! Well, our world gets a 900 year reprieve
from these dastardly Omega Wave thingies, but
intrepid scientists discover that the Omega wave
headed our way has changed course and is aimed
at a pre-technological civilization. So it's
humanity to the rescue -- a rescue that must be
achieved without notifying those being rescued.
Ladies and gentlemen: welcome to what fills the
science fiction shelves.
|
Sartah
Hoyt and the Bard
|
|
Is she looking for the
one honest man? She ain't
gonna find him here!
|
Sarah Hoyt's New Adventures
of Shakespeare seem to be coming to a close in
the third novel, 'Any Man So Daring'. I'm
getting this one to Serena, who read
'Ill
Met by Moonlight' and
found it wanting, perhaps, but certainly of some
merit. The themes in this novel seem to tie in
nicely with a column we're hoping to have RSN.
In the interim, you'll have to make do with
another of my explorations into the Bush of
Books, currently being written when I'm not
furiously cramming for one interview or
another.
|
Katherine
Kurtz in the Service of Deryni
|
|
No ride through in
Kurtz's world,
apparently.
|
Here's a brand new novel by
an author with legions of fans, lots of books, a
beloved series -- and me, I've never read a one.
Part of the deliberately out of the loop thing.
So here we have it, Kurtz goes back in time to
mine the fertile fields of prequel. I have to
admit that I've never even determined with any
certainty if these books are fantasy or science
fiction. But that's where they'll get
shelved.
|
Arthur
Conan Doyle Papers
|
|
£200,000 gets you
the latest manuscripts from
Arthur Conan Doyle.
|
As I read about the discovery
of new Arthur Conan Doyle manuscripts and the
sales of some recently discovered papers, I
realized that Doyle, one of the first authors I
rabidly collected in paperback, really does map
out the perfect nexus of all my later reading;
he's written, science fiction, horror, and
mystery and work that combines aspects of each.
I have a clear memory of a trip I took one day
with a friend into downtown Los Angeles, to a
huge bookstore, where I carefully went through
and bought all the Sherlock Holmes and Professor
Challenger books I could find.
The books were published
before, but were certainly not familiar to me;
an autobiographical novel, 'The Duet' and 'The
Maracot Deep', which is said to anticipate work
by Huxley and Orwell. This is the day that you,
Dedicated Reader, find yourself reading
Yorkshire
Today. Relish the
joy!
|
BBC
Interviews with SF Writers
|
|
Mariella Frostrup
interviews authors for the
BBC.
|
You can always count on the
BBC to provide quality news, and I've unearthed
a link
to their author interview programme
OpenBook. That's a
link to an interview with J. G. Ballard; I've
also spotted Terry Pratchett and a few others of
interest. I wish the authors well. I might find
myself without words when faced with that smirk.
|
The
End of Brenchley's Series
|
|
Maybe Ace could have
found a weaker color to frame
the illustration for this
novel.
|
And yes, gasp, Ace has
released the final volume in their six-book
series derived from Chaz Brenchley's trilogy.
Now it's safe for you US readers to start. The
books are pretty short, so why they decided to
split them up like that is beyond me. But this
isn't new. Peter F. Hamilton's massive volumes
were split when they came out in the US as
paperback originals. You know, it just struck me
that there was no reason to assume that they've
even simply split each volume of the trilogy in
half. They could have taken the whole lump and
re-divvied it into six. I hope that they're not
that evil, however. The question is: does the
highest muckey-muck have a single, giant glowing
eye?
|
|
10-15-03: David
Czuchlewski Unveils the 'Empire of Light', Technovelgy.com
offers pure Spec-Tech
|
David
Czuchlewski Unveils the 'Empire of Light'
|
|
Asylum & Empire from
David Czuchlewski.
|
Last year, one of my more
entertaining readers and correspondents
suggested I hie me hence to yon bookstore and
seek out a novel by David Czuchlewski titled
'The Muse Asylum'. I did, but haven't yet
managed to get it into my overcrowded queue. But
now, with the release of 'Empire of Light', I
intend to get right to this fascinating author.
This novel tells of a young man who hopes to
rescue his beloved from a cult by entering the
cult. Perhaps not the wisest move. At 226 pages
it's even readable. Look for this to pop up in
Reviews
New This Week,
hopefully by next week.
|
Technovelgy.com
Offers Pure Spec-Tech
|
|
Science meets fiction in a lot of
places, usually in the newspaper.
|
Readers who look to science
fiction for its predictive value may frustrate the
writers, but it's too common to be ignored.
Technovelgy.com.
Technovelgy.com offers up a book-by-book analysis
of creations from fiction that have since come to
life. It's nicely designed and easy to navigate.
For those who like the ideas of science fiction but
not the messy plots and characters, here's a way to
pure, distilled science. It's also an excellent way
to waste an hour or two at work. Coming soon, my
site careerdestroyer.com, which will feature
sponsored links to work-time wasting sites. I'm an
instant millionaire! You can make money on
the web.
|
|
10-13-03: Everyone's a
Winner in the Lambshead Proof Giveaway Contest, Colson
Whitehead on The Colossus of New York, Pete Dexter takes the
Train
|
Everyone's
a Winner in the Lambshead Proof Giveaway
Contest
With
no further ado -- here are the winners in
the Lambshead Giveaway; both people who
entered won. I wish I'd gotten more
efforts. These were quite entertaining and
should pave the way for enjoying this
wonderful anthology. Our first place
winner is Ron Clinton, with artwork by
Ross Palmer Beacher. I think this is
rather fantastic -- thanks guys, the books
are in the mail, one for each of you (to
the same address, pokey book rate).
|
|
The Headless Horseman is the result of an
overly enthusiastic application of a cure for
migraines.
|
In
an enlightened, modern
age where
any evil is attempted by some to be dismissed
and explained away in the guise of cultural
influences or faulty, hereditary genetics,
the hypothesis that the famed Headless
Horseman of Sleepy Hollow was once a chronic
victim of migraines has been put forth. While
this theory has been ridiculed in some
learned circles, it would nevertheless
explain his obvious lack of head and general
surly, psychotic demeanor, a personality
fault that certainly could only have been
more exaggerated when his head was attached
and pain synapses fused. While his advocates
admire his resolve and imagination, others
question his extreme choice of solution,
claiming -- if true -- the cure was clearly
worse than the disease.
Even more recently,
these aforementioned advocates claim to have
linked the seasonal family tradition of
baking pumpkin seeds to the Headless
Horseman, attempting further to soften their
honored legend's image. They purport that the
Horseman, ultimately saddened by his
murderous exploits, grew despondent and
suicidal and raised a pistol to his
rainsoaked pumpkin head one dark night and
pulled the trigger. Villagers, alerted by the
shot of the gun, ran to the scene and in
delight at seeing the monster dead at his own
hand, scooped up his seedy brains and took
them home to bake and eat in vengeful
delight.
When relating this
later portion of the Headless Horseman's
tale, the legend's advocates suddenly take
their detractors' view: in this instance, the
cure was indeed worse than the disease, as
the poor Horseman was very clearly a simple,
misunderstood soul whose only real crime was
being born as a victim of migraines and did
not deserve to die at his own
hand.
|
Colson
Whitehead on The Colossus of New York
|
|
A jazzy evocation of New
York City in prose by the
author of 'The
Intuitionist'.
|
Colson Whitehead will be
heading out in a national publicity tour for his
new collection of non-fiction articles which
describes 'The Colossus of New York'. I bought
Whitehead's first novel, 'The Intuitionist' when
it came out, and it's been sitting on my shelves
waiting to be read. It's in the damn queue now.
|
|
Dueling elevator inspectors
try to outwit one another in 'The
Intuitionist'.
|
This is the kind of novel
that screams Rick Kleffel will like it. Set
in a nameless city, Lila Mae Watson, the
first black female elevator inspector in the
history of the department. The Intuitionists
are those inspectors who merely enter an
elevator cab, meditate and intuit any
defects. Opposing them are the Empiricists,
who measure cable stress and winch wear. Lila
Mae is an intuitionist caught at the center
of a controversy after an accident.
|
|
John Henry lives again in
Colson Whitehead's second novel.
|
'John Henry Days' was
Whitehead's second novel, and it won awards
like there was no tomorrow; LA Times,
Washington Post, SF Chronicle, and
Salon
to name a few. One worries about books with
so many awards, but Whitehead's averts that
worry by being praised for being funny. We'll
see if he is. I plan to read a couple of
Whitehead books before he shows up in town.
Tour stops and dates (10/22-11/08) can be
found via the publisher's website
here.
|
Pete
Dexter takes the 'Train'
|
|
Los Angeles 1953 is the
setting for Pete Dexter's
Train.
|
Pete Dexter is known as a
"writer's writer", again, something of a warning
sign in my tiny brain. But Terry insists that
he's worth reading, so we'll both be looking at
his first novel in 8 years, 'Train'. 50 years
ago in LA, the survivor of a yacht hijacking, a
police sergeant and a young black caddy are
drawn over the edge. It sounds promising and
looks economical. We shall see -- and hear Pete
Dexter as well, on one of the dates in his tour,
listed here.
Well, fall is the big literary season, and we've
already experienced a reverse invasion; that is
the literary genre being invaded by the science
fiction genre, in the person of Jonathan Lethem.
'The
Fortress of Solitude'
is a wonderfully huge and compulsively readable
Great American Novel. I'm waiting for John
Irving's science fiction novel.
|
