As the year went out, I went on vacation without the laptop.  Once the internet deprivation syndrome wore off, I managed to get quite a bit of reading done.  Just enough to prune back my subscription pile.  Now I can almost see the end table underneath.  "Stuff read" follows with light commentary.

Dwarf Stars 2007 - A tough call picking just three!  Will be interesting to see where my votes lined up with the winners.

Been reading novels obtained at WFC since then (slowly, slowly) so have only snuck in a little short fiction of late, and for some odd reason, not stuff from my looming pile of subscribed-to zines....  Really must tackle them soon.

Vylar Kaftan's "Something Wicked This Way Plumbs" Shimmer Bonus Mini-issue -  A fun tale told in a lighthearted, surreal sort of Shaun of the Dead meets The Office sort of tone.  I enjoyed it.

Two selections from Clarkesworld.  Both highly recommendable in their own ways.  "Curse" by samhenderson starts off as a bitter post-Rumplestiltskin tale, but in the end we come to understand the bitterness and see a sort of putting-to-rights and the beginning of a better life for the story's characters--though not without some bloodshed.  I usually am not so big on reinvented fairy tales, but Sam's writing is a bit like a drug and is capable of making most any subject seem shiny as crow's eyes to me.  The second was kenscholes's "Summer in Paris, Light from the Sky".  Wow.  This short story builds and builds until I had to wipe man-tears from my eyes.  And yes, I wept for Adolf Hitler.  This is the kind of story, the kind of writing, the kind of warm humanity captured in prose that makes reading worthwhile.  I have not felt such an emotional release from a short story since the first time I read joshrountree's "Chasing America" or Ken's own "Last Flight of the Goddess".

Finished Bloodlines by F. Paul Wilson.  The stakes continue to rise, FPW is at the top of his wicked-little plotting game, and I'll be there next November waiting for another hit of Repairman Jack.  (aka  The Best Horror-Thriller Series You're Not Reading.)

Trial of Flowers by jaylake.  Another from the WFC pile.  The first of Jay's novels I've read and a whole lot of dark urbane goodness in a setting so vibrant and detailed I would not be surprised to find a Frommer's Guide to the City Imperishable.  The language is lush as well.  I found myself tromping off for a dictionary a few times, unable to tell whether he was using a word he made up that sounded like a Middle English term or vice versa.  More often than not, I ended up searching online and finding out that things like cordwainer, chirurgeon, chalcedony, and  champertor actually are vestigial words, all but obsolete and forgotten.  These occasional nuggets made the reading even more fun, in the same value-added nerdy way that Stephen R. Donaldson's dictionary-reliant books are fun to read.  But the mechanics of the storytelling were not so interesting to me as the themes he brought to bear, both externally in the City itself, and internally in each of the three viewpoint characters.

The external themes revolved around the danger of concentrated power (including that of mobs misdirected with the best of intentions), unlikely allies making common cause despite their differences, and--bleeding into the internal themes perhaps--the need we all have for unasked for, undeserved aid from those we have the least right to ask it of.  Internal themes for each of the main characters circled around the shades of redemption and the personal sacrifice necessary for redemption to be meaningful, as in actually redeeming.  I liked what the novel had to say here.  I am no fan of the easy routes out of guilt pavlumed up by mass-market mythologies.  And here we see Imago of Lockwood, who tried to take the easy way out of financial guilts by becoming Lord Mayor, suffering in full measure for his redemption, and at the end of the novel becoming a bigger man for it.  (Ironically enough given the circumstances.)  We see Jason the Factor, a man saddled with a species of familial guilt/betrayal, sacrificing much in the name of love and arising from the grave to lead a desert army into a verdant Eden/Armageddon both natural and man-made in the mid-city plaza; in the end, he brings about what would otherwise be his final betrayal, were it not done out of love. Most significantly, we see Bijaz the Dwarf, easily the most despicable and justifiably self-loathing character in the book, redeemed of his very personal guilts against his fellow men, but only after he suffers much and mislearns much and then walks openly through the streets of the town crowned by the symbol of his shame, which quite literally prevents him from looking down his nose at anyone.  I did not expect this novel to be so textured with symbolism, and to be honest I didn't start picking up on it till the first section was ending.  This book was thematically surprising in a way that satisfied on intellectual, emotional and story-consumer levels.  I'm really looking forward to checking out Mainspring sooner or later as I work through my pile.

In Audiobookland, listened to these 24 half hour lectures on Fantasy and Science Fiction Literature by Dr. Eric Rabkin.  A gifted speaker, Dr. Rabkin integrates the great movements and moments of imaginative/speculative fiction in ways that entertain and inform.  I hadn't read many of the books he discussed, and I feel poorer for not having done so.  Regardless, I feel like I came away with a much better understanding of both genres how the fantastic has shaped our literature and by extension, Western Culture.  And did I mention how pleased I have been with CT libraries for even having audiobooks from The Teaching Company?  I can only hope that Ohio's libraries are able to hold up a flickering Bic lighter to the Aurora Borealis that is the CT Library system... :)

Another "Stuff Read" post, with low-calorie commentary.


Finished Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill on Audiobook.  Phenomenal. Engaging. Lyrical and coarse in exactly the right proportions and  places.  The most intensely satisfying audiobook experience in recent memory.  Now I think I need to add 20th Century Ghosts to my read list.  As if I do not have enough on that pile from WFC...

Finished Shimmer Pirate Issue also.  Hands down favorites: Marissa K. Lingen's "Pirates by Adeline Thromb Age 8" and Rajan Khanna's clever and squirm-inducing debut "The Furies".  "The Perfect Hook" by Justine Graykin was not far behind these two.  All in all, a solid representation of every generation's piracy, from the 1700s and into the future.  A fun read.

Read stillnotbored's poetry collection Blood and Brine, and found it a neat trip through the twisted girly psyche as played out across every speculative genre and subgenre--except perhaps alternate history.  Really big fan of "Sir Once Forgotten", the creepy/sad "Eldest Daughter" and "Minotaur", a duet of sorts with John Borneman.  Also not to miss among all the other good stuff: "Curmudgeon's Apprentice" and "Wings".  The book itself is gorgeously put together, from the well selected art upon it's stiff, glossy cover to its linen-textured pages and crisp font.

Not in order read, since I've just been randomly scribbling titles on both sides of a post it note wherever they will fit since probably before September.

1) Moved to a bigger apartment down the hall. (Hooray for the kids getting their own bedroom when they're with me!)

2) Painted a wall (Hooray for friends with good ideas!)

3) Caught a nasty headcold (Hooray for Dayquil!)

4) Took the kids to see The Simpsons Movie (Hooray for Spider-Pig!)

5) Finished reading Black Gate #10  (Hooray for another quality issue, but especially for the stories by Judith Berman, Howard Andrew Jones, and the totally socks-rocking Naturalist tale by Mark Sumner!)

Catching up on lots of stuff with this post, none of it really related to any of the rest of it.*

STUFF (singular) SOLD

-My poem "The Roads Both Taken"  (Confronting Robert Frost with the Quantum Age) sold to Star*Line while I was off in TN and VA. 


STUFF WATCHED

-Found out you can never go back when I attempted to watch some episodes from X-files first couple seasons on the ABDUCTION 2 disc set.  It's just not as fun when you know how it all turns out. Then I found out there are some places you'll never want to go back to when I accidentally let the TV stay too long on Stan Lee's Who Wants to be a Superhero?

-The Simpsons movie was generally funny and entertaining and a good summation of what made the show such a lasting cultural icon.  That said, it wasn't as good as some of the earlier episodes, and some of the humor seemed watered down for the big screen.  At any rate, I felt like there wasn't as much "smart" humor in the movie as there could have been.  But heck the show's been around long enough to be starting college.  I caught it for cheap on military night, but I'd recommend all but die hards wait for it on DVD.

ETA: Just saw Live Free or Die Hard on the base for 3$ (there's one benefit not steadily eroding--so far)  The plot was highly implausible, as were just about all of the bad guy's teams plans. (Example: Set C4 so it won't detonate until the computer user presses DELETE key, yet the C4 is armed by a radio signal sent from the van outside the building.)  The main baddie resembled the forbidden love child of Joel Gresch and Bill Paxton.  The McClain attitude was there when needed from WIllis, and it should come in handy if Bruce Willis ever gets cast as DUKE NUKEM. The action sequences were solid and entertaining, but 90% of the non-action (aka "acting") sequences limped along on wobbly legs.  Standard issue summer popcorn flick: a solid B, as far as summer blockbusters go.


STUFF READ

-Listened to the audiobook of Harry Potter & the Sorceror's Stone with the kids on a verry long road trip last month to visit family.  A decent reading and a fun enough book. I can see how so many became enthralled with the little guy, but I'm not into it enough to want to keep going.  I'm fine with just seeing the movies with my kids when they come out.

-Read Under My Roof by nihilistic_kid. Have to say it is every bit the caffeine buzzing packet of irreverent funny sacred cow skewering that the reviews make it out to be.  This slim but effective novel packs exactly the kind of subversive free-thinking wallop I yearn for, and a razor sharp message I can never get tired of seeing baked into the cakes we feed our kids these days: Think For Yourself.  The only trick Nick missed was forgetting to put his "Send me a dollar" link somewhere in there.  Maybe even in the prose near the end when Harold is making his direct plea to the reader.  But hell, this satirical near future sf novel was fun, bombastic, intelligent and cocky enough it should do plenty well on its own.  I suspect this book will one day be taught in schools as required reading, and at that point Nick will be forced to write himself a rebuttal.  Seriously though, Nick, if you pop in here, thanks for a great read.

-Polished off Apex #10 standing in lines at Six Flags New England yesterday.  (Went for a "me" day to ride all the stuff I never get to when I take the kids.)  There was the second part of Geoffrey Girard's CAIN XP11 story, a solid part 2 of this 4 part serial, as well as imaginatively realized dark tomorrows by Nancy Fulda and Patrice Sarath.  Ian Creasey did a fair turn with the gritty ghostly crime tale, making some complicated plotting come out in a way that felt so easy a president could understand it.  Cherie Priest's BAD SUSHI was a personal favorite of the issue perhaps because I pictured my local Sushi chopper in the role.  While I enjoy a lot of Lavie Tidhar's stuff, and this story contained some quite clever moments, this entry was kind of a let down after the romp that was THE GUNSLINGER OF CHELEM in last issue. 

In the read pile: Black Gate #10 (still), Straub's lost boy, lost girl, and assorted other stuff.




*And those ugly rumors in OK! are completely unfounded!

The completist nut in me would not rest until I read the final book (an extensive prelude, as most long-in-tooth series are prone to come out with) and so I finally polished off the last of Robert Doherty's AREA 51 series.  This one lacked the excitement and mystery of the earlier books, maybe just because I am an older reader now with different expectations, and maybe because it was kind of a by-the-numbers placing of chess pieces for the series proper.  It was an okay read over all, but like the other prequel "NOSFERATU" it just didn't press my buttons nearly as hard as the first seven books did once upon a time.

Also recently finished the (short) audiobook of Walter Mosely's THE MAN IN MY BASEMENT.  This was the first Mosely I'd ever read and to do it with the voice of Ernie Hudson as narrator was a special treat.  The story was engaging and incredibly thought provoking. Without too many spoilers: a white man pays a black man $50K to be his warden, holding him prisoner for 65 days in the black man's basement.  The whyfor of it all and how things play out make for some intelligent debate material; this is quite possibly one of the most meaningful and relevant modern works I've read on the nature of evil, guilt and redemption.  The only real downside for me wasn't with the story itself (which would not have been out of place in the recent Transgressions anthology, and perhaps even more pertinent than some of the stories in that volume) but rather with the production. There were key bits of music for chapter breaks, the end of each disc and a special "Skinemax" saxophone thing would come on every time the protagonist thought he might get some booty.  Guess which one annoyed me.  :)

Misc: another Mental Floss issue.

Just finished the fiction in Apex #9.  Another issue chock full of disturbing SF entertainment (or entertaining SF disturbment, your choice!)  Some standouts were already noted in an earlier post, but they have something going on that is worth further attention in case anyone reading here was on the fence about subscribing:

They just started a 4 part serial by Geoffrey Girard called CAIN XP11 which is off to an exciting start. In a nutshell:  someone has been cloning serial killers, ostensibly for researching the medical/crime-abatement/military applications, but they've also been pursuing their own agenda as well. Now the clones range from about 8 years old to late teens and they've gone off the rez.

From all appearances, Goeffrey Girard doesn't plan to take the easy way out and make this a simple good versus evil, nature versus nurture story.  Yes, there are plenty of notes from those themes being played, but the key figures in this dark drama are rich, textured, conflicted and worth finding out more about. The dialogue crackles along, the style is clean and direct, and the possibly controversial subjects under the microscope are handled with maturity, compassion and nary a drop of the luridness usually associated with the famous names invoked here. 

I for one am hooked.  If you like your near-future SF filled with darkness, tension and an almost clinical thoughtfulness, you should climb aboard CAIN XP11.  It's promising to be a complex and satisfying ride.

No truer title has ever graced a collection. I picked this up in Boskone, after years of hearing from folks like joshrountree how Waldrop was a King of the Form and a national treasure to boot. I figured a retrospective like this would be a good place to see what all the hubbub was about.

So I put this one by the bedside and began sipping stories from it on and off since February.  (I am a slower reader these days than I used to be, but that's not the whole story. I was enjoying this book so much I wanted to make it last.)

Boy howdy.  Where has this Waldrop guy been all my life, and how can I go on without making it a point to seek out more of his fiction? The stories in this retrospective are--every one of them--amazing.  From doo wop gangfights to the lives and times of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., I was swept up in the narratives and came away feeling like I've just stumbled upon a secret not unlike the one about the dodos in his opener "The Ugly Chickens".  I, for one, pray that Howard Waldrop never shares their fate.  And you should too.

Consider yourself evangelized.

Pleasantly surprised today to discover my story "Last Word in Lonesome" will be appearing in an upcoming issue of nanobison.  YAY! Sales make me happy.

I've not been very productive fiction-wise this year (only about 7k), but I'm suddenly finding poems everywhere I look. (22 and rising.)  They jump out at me from beneath the squealing brakes of a semi, or wait for me in bits of dialogue from Bukowski documentaries. Sometimes three or four ambush me at once and it's nearly impossible to de-conflate them. 

I'm one of those "own worst critic" types. Granted, there is a whole lot of personal life gar-bajj going on of a very serious nature, so I try to tell myself that it's ok not to have a higher fiction output while there is so much turmoil and change going on, and look to the poetry as a mitigator. Amazingly, I'm not being terribly super-critical of myself for the low fiction output.  But in true super-critical fashion, I am kind of beating myself up about not beating myself up more about the fiction, particularly when it involves collaborating with friends.  And also doing a lot more deleting than I've ever done before while composing.  Go figure.






OK, that's enough for now. More later. I still have to get some more wordcount done for the neato collab novel joshrountree  is patiently not thumping me over the head for (yet), and try to pack for Boskone, too!

Geeked with the girls tonight watching Ultimate Avengers after playing quite a bit of MARVEL ULTIMATE ALLIANCE on the old XBOX. Quote of the night for me:

[regarding Thor's brimming stein of mead] "Ha-Ha! Thor's got another cappucino!"

Heh. I shudder to think about the day they discover keggers...

In other news, issues 1 and 2 of Warren Ellis's NEWUNIVERSAL are finally washing out the rancid taste left by that fifteen minutes of Heroes I watched last fall.  Thanks, Warren!

#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#

Also read this month:

Hannibal Rising (audiobook)
Overall, I enjoyed it. He did what I thought was not possible: aroused sympathy and understanding for Hannibal Lecter in a compelling way that made you feel like you were on the downward spiral with the fine young cannibal. The writing style and plotting felt more polished than HANNIBAL, but WTF happened to that sixth finger?  It's like it never even existed. Surely someone would have noticed, or it would have made it harder to do med school cutting and drawing or something... Another minor downtick: getting used to the author's soft southern accent incongruously narrating a story set primarily in Lithuania and France.  But niether criticism is enough to ruin the book, at least for me. The thing about Hannibal Rising is that it really is more of a character development piece with a plot meandering through it--folks coming into it expecting a tight serial killer hunt like the first two will be disappointed. This book is a pear in a bowl of apples. A pretty good pear, but unwary apple-lovers won't find what they are looking for here.

The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand
Some interesting bits on combining plot and theme, plus a grueling (yet illuminating) comparison of several different authors describing the same things (romantic love, nature and NYC.) Kind of a hodgepodge of a book after the first third, given that it was pulled directly from a set of living room talks she gave the devoted sometime after Atlas Shrugged was published.  Probably a bit too dense on the Objectivist metaphysics and esthetics even for those writers on nodding terms with O- or o-bjectivism.  ( slithytove, you out there?)  But there was an interesting point made that I had never considered:

"The best drawn character in anyone's writing is the author himself. [...T]he author's philosophy is present--in what he chooses to say and in how he says it. In a sense, a fiction writer cannot hide himself. He stands naked spiritually.

"You cannot create style artificially, composing each sentence word by word and then weighing each word: "How does this fit with my official dogma?" A writer's style comes from his accepted philosophy--accepted in his subconscious."

The jury is still out on what this means when applied to style monkeys.   ;)