Inky Horizons

Here's the table of contents for Destination: Future which will be published by Hadley Rille Books  in January, 2010.  I must say I am deeply flattered (I know, hard to believe given my overblown ego, but it's true) to be in such august company as this:

"The Angel of Mars" by Michael Barretta   

"When You Visit the Magoebaskloof Hotel

Be Certain Not to Miss the Samango Monkeys" by Elizabeth Bear

"Memento Mori" by Sue Blalock

"Hope" by Michael Burstein

"Ambassador" by Thoraiya Dyer

"No Jubjub Birds Tonight" by Sara Genge

"Jade Flower" by C.E.Grayson

"The Gingerbread Man" by James Gunn

"Games" by Caren Gussoff

"Rubber Monkeys" by Kenneth Mark Hoover

"One Awake in All the World" by Robert T. Jeschonek

"Watching" by Sandra McDonald

"The Hangborn" by Frederick Obermeyer

"Dark Rendezvous" by Simon Petrie

"Encountering Evie" by Sherry D. Ramsey

"Monuments of Flesh and Stone" by Mike Resnick

"Mars Needs Baby Seals" by Lawrence Schoen

"Edge of the World" Jonathan Shipley

"Alienation" by Katherine Sparrow

"The Light Stones" by Erin E. Stocks

"Embians" by K. D. Wentworth

I happened to come across an anthology I wanted to share with you. It's called Northern Haunts: 100 Terrifying New England Tales. It's pretty good and I want to recommend it to you.

The stories are short but spooky and all of them are based in New England. The editor, Tim Deal, said he wanted the anthology to be used for ghost stories around a campfire and I can easily see that. Some of the stories are bloody, some ghostly, some psychological, some historical, and so on. You don't have to read this from front to cover. It's not that kind of book, imo. Just crack 'er open and start reading anywhere. Skip ahead, go back, carry the book with you and read a couple of stories while you're waiting in the grocery line or at a coffee shop.

And make damn sure you bring it with you next time you go camping. Read it while the firelight is flickering on your face and the dark is closing in and a hoot owl is watching you from the bare branches of a tree overhead.

Give it a peek. I think you'll like this collection.

Arkady Renko is one of the best detectives out there in current fiction. Except the novels he appears in by Martin Cruz Smith are sometimes themselves little better than phoned-in stories.  In other words, they're not all Gorky Park or Polar Star.

They just suck.

The novel Wolves Eat Dogs is such a novel.  It's not much more than a misfire.  It takes Arkady, our hapless Russian investigator, to Chernobyl where he must solve the murder of a Russian billionaire.  Good idea, but the execution leaves much to be desired. The writing is so low key and minimalist we not only stop caring about the story we stop caring about Arkady.  We even stop caring whether we finish reading the book or not.  Not a good sign.  The book was a total yawner.  Don't waste your time.

Even though some of the characters in Stalin's Ghost were first introduced in Wolves Eat Dogs you don't need to read the previous book to enjoy the latter.  Stalin's Ghost is Martin Cruz Smith at his finest, almost in the same crackling style we saw with Gorky.  In this one Arkady is forced to investigate sighting of the dictator in an underground train. The writing is tight and the story and mystery and relationships are all top-notch.  This is Arkady (and Smith) at his best -- and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Give this one a peek.

I finished Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope today. It took me three days to read it. Before my Lasik surgery I would have devoured this in a day. *Sigh* 

But, man, did I ever enjoy this book. President Obama is one hell of a good writer. That in itself will always carry weight with me. (To show you it's not always partisan with me, I always thought William F. Buckley was also a good writer.)  There is real writing talent evidenced on every page of Hope.  So few politicians have the innate ability to write well.  This guy doesn't suffer from that limitation.

I found it very moving with insightful glimpses into his life.  After finishing it I think I know him a little better, have come to realize a little clearer the kind of man he is, and the kinds of Americans he wants us all to be. I'm going to read Dreams From My Father next.

I very much recommend this book. If you haven't read it, please, give it a peek. I think you'll be happy you did.

And the writing is just goddamn phenomenal....

Zugswang -- when a chess player is forced to move, but every move he can make only worsens his position.


I don't do as much reading as I used to. Mostly it's because of my botched Lasik surgery. It's a real chore for me to read now because I simply cannot see as well as I used to and my eyes strain too much to read, even with glasses. And, for the record, yes, it was botched. He changed me by five diopters and I've had two optometrists tell me later that was too much.  One told me it was no wonder I now found reading so stressful. I used to read hundreds of thousands of words a month with nary a problem.  Now I'm down to thousands. It's that bad.

Reading used to be a pleasure. Thanks to the fucked up Lasik surgery it's a chore and I don't enjoy it anymore. It's my personal Zugswang.

There was a time when I went to the library and I'd walk out with five or six books. I'd be willing to give anything a try. Now I'm super picky because reading is so difficult.  I almost never check out a book or pick something up at a bookstore. It's very frustrating because my whole life used to be predicated on reading for pleasure.  That's gone now.  Forever.  And there's nothing I can do about it other than find the doctor who butchered me and shotgun the motherfucker to death. Which in itself would create new problems but it is not out of the realm of possibility. I'm that angry about it.

So when a book comes along that strikes my interest and forces me to overcome my propensity NOT to read, it's a good thing. I like chess, even though I'm not very good at it. I like stories about Russia even though I'm not Russian. I like intrigue and mystery and all that stuff.  So when I found Zugswang by Ronan Bennett in the library I thought I had hit pay dirt.

Then I started to read it.  Wow. Was the editor comatose for this one?  First of all, it starts off with a chapter that is completely unnecessary. It's what I call an "author chapter" in which the writer tells you how smart he is and what a great book you're in for, and why the story is so important and why you should read it because this is a great work of literature and every sentence is gold -- and it telegraphs the plot.  That's crap. The second chapter is much better, in fact this is where the book actually starts. And I'm surprised an editor didn't catch this amateurish fuck up and blue pencil it out of existence. 

But then the book gets more pretentious than that.  The protagonist is playing a chess game with another man. Bennett includes diagrams of the chess game in the book. This is dumb.  Way to limit readership and further proclaim how pretentious you are, not to add that someone who doesn't understand chess wouldn't understand the positions though they would understand the definition of Zugswang and how one's life might approximate that given the right circumstances.  So why include the diagrams at all?

But I'd had enough so that's when I stopped reading this book, right around two pages into chapter two. Like I said, you've got to be pretty damn good (or so goddamn awful you can't turn away like my previous review of Sax Rohmer) to hold my attention and my five-diopter-fucked-up eyes.  Bennett fails on both accounts. Which is a real shame because other than that the second chapter and the rest of the writing is very good. But that first chapter does nothing but slam the story to a standstill before it ever gets started, and the ridiculous chess diagrams (and this coming from a chess geek) hurts the overall feel of the book.

And writing, if nothing else, is all about feel. I've been doing it long enough, and professionally, to understand that much. Literary doesn't mean shit. It's how the reader feels when he's reading your stuff that makes it a hit or not, memorable or not.  That's just the plain truth.

Zugswang by Ronan Bennett. Really good idea executed in a shitty, almost amateurish way. Too bad, because this one had all the elements that interest me.  I suggest you pass this one by. You're not missing anything.

I finished reading Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey and I want to say I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.  I liked the use of color and the characters, and the writing itself wasn't bad considering this was first published in 1912.  There's some melodrama here you probably couldn't get away with now, but back then it was more acceptable and it doesn't hurt the overall tone of the book.

Sage gets a rap for being wholly anti-Mormon, but after reading this I think that's false. Yes, some of the Mormons in the book are presented in a bad light, and Lassiter, the laconic hero, is out to find and kill the Mormon who kidnapped his sister and his niece and put him in the ground.  But the woman he falls in love with, Jane Withersteen, is a Mormon and she is cast in a brave and bold light. So it's really less about Mormonism than religious intolerance, which in this day and age has a clear, distinctive voice.

There's lots of good stuff in this book.  Bern Venters, a rider for Jane Withersteen, discovers a hidden valley and falls in love with a bandit, Bess.  It's very much an analogy to the Garden of Eden and subsequent banishment.  There are some coincidences that stretch the imagination, but again you must remember this is 1912 and books from this time often had events that stretched credulity.  It doesn't really hurt the novel. Several scenes stick with you for a long time: Venters's ride across the sage, his discovery of the hidden valley, Lassiter's gunfights, but more than anything else Grey paints an absolutely gorgeous picture of the land and the sage and the sun and the wind and the dust.  Rarely have I read a novel that dwelled with such passion on nature and how men and women can connect to it.  This had always been Grey's passion and he recreates his love for the land in this book in exquisite, and memorable, detail.

This is regarded as Grey's finest novel and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that were true.  I don't think I will be reading other Zane Grey novels, at least not in the short term.  But I'm glad I read this one.  If you're looking for a colorful story about hard people fighting and loving one another, then give Riders of the Purple Sage a chance.

I just finished reading Sax Rohmer's The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu.

Wow.  What racist garbage this is.  It starts off as a bad Sherlock Holmes knock off.  There's Inspector Nayland Smith who has many of the characteristics and habits of Holmes, and he has his Watson, too, except this one is named Dr. Petrie.  Okay. I can live with knock offs as long as they're well written.  This one isn't.  The writing is downright bad.  Way too many adverbs and purple melodrama make this damn near unreadable. And the plot is bad.  The characters are idiots. They get caught in a trap door the first time they confront the Doctor. Okay, cool.  But then they get caught by the same trap later on in the book!  Well, you can't blame the characters.  That's just lousy goddamn writing.

But it's the blatant racism that appalls.  I'm of two minds about this as a writer. I don't hold it against Edgar Rice Burroughs he had some ignorance in his books when it came to minorities, anymore than I hold it against Ian Fleming or Conan Doyle or other writers in the past.  They are for the most part reflecting their culture at the time and not so much speaking what's in their heart.  At least they told good stories.

Sax Rohmer, on the other hand, is a downright racist even for 1913.  This book is filled with racism. He's not only reflecting attitudes of his time, he's showing you what's in his heart.  Rohmer is always jabbering about the war between the white race and the yellow race.  He calls them "Yellow Hordes", "Yellow Demons", and finds every possible way to couple the world "yellow" with a less-than-flattering description.  It never stops; the book is filled with phrases like that and it's unrelenting. 

And it's a real shame because Dr. Fu Manchu is a pretty decent character.  Evil to the bone, he might be some ancient force who inhabited the body of a hapless human, usurping its soul.  Kinda neat.  And he uses science and biology to further his evil ends and sustain his criminal empire.  Lots to work with there, right?  Wrong.  As far as Rohmer is concerned Fu Manchu is nothing but an extension of the dangerous yellow race that is plotting to destroy and enslave (or is it enslave and destroy, I forget) the fine, upstanding, God-fearing white race. Cut and dried. Q. E. D.

For all its faults there are a couple of good things that caught my eye.  Nayland Smith is never more than a caricature, and badly rendered one, of Sherlock Holmes.  But Dr. Petrie has his moments, especially when he meets and falls in love with Fu Manchu's Egyptian slave, Karamaneh.  She's good, too, and apparently later on in the series they marry.

Does that surprise you?  Yes, it's a series.  This book was so popular Rohmer wrote a ton of these friggin' things.  People ate them up.

As I said, it's too bad.  There were lots of opportunities for this to be a great book rather than a vile, racist tract.  In the hands of a better writer it might have been.  I have no plans to read any more of these. One was enough, thank you, very much.  And, no, I can't recommend this book at all. Read it at your own peril.

And speaking of peril, yellow or otherwise, as perceived by the estimable Sax Rohmer, he died of the Asian Flu.  No, really.  After all his novels spouting this racist crap, he was eventually done in by the Asian Flu.

And that, my friends, is the meaning of irony.

I've read a lot in my lifetime.  Maybe I've read too much because I've reached a point of diminishing returns, it seems.  The science fiction field isn't all that large. Not really. You can pretty much exhaust it within ten years -- five if you read voraciously.  Then you move on to the magazines, but after a while you realize you're reading the same story over and over, so you put them aside, too.

Then you reach a point where you pick up an occasional novel, try it out, find out it just doesn't hold up compared to the wealth of fiction already packed and chambered in your fevered little brain.  You feel disappointed.  Like there's nothing else out there worth reading.

There's damn little genre fiction I haven't read.  Let me rephrase that: There's damn little important genre fiction I haven't read.

So I've been reading a lot of non-fiction lately.  Almost exclusively, along with rereads of novels I liked as a kid or a young adult in the desperate attempt to recapture some of that early sensawunda.  It never happens, though.  Okay, rarely.  But the emotions aren't as strong as they once were.

I guess that's all part of growing up. But I'm kind of bummed about it. 

Silver Moon wants to publish my erotic novel, A Woman's Gift, in both downloadable and hard copy (paperback) formats. It will appear in the UK and be distributed in the United States.  What a bonus!  No firm date on when the novel will appear, but things are looking good so far.  Fingers are firmly crossed....

They wanted the novel  based solely on the strength of the 70-page proposal I sent them.  That was pretty exciting in itself.  Of course, when I have more news I'll share it with you.

And, yeah, I'm kinda pleased.

For those with little or no inclination to read Ayn Rand, you might want to at least take a look at the cover art for her novels.  It gives a good perspective both artistically and philosophically what Rand is all about:

Ayn Rand Cover Art

(No spoilers here.  I don't do spoilers.)

I saw the new movie last night and must say I liked it quite a lot.  This is no faint praise coming from me.  As a rule I loathe many of the Bond movies because they're so cartoonish.  This one was quite different, more in line with the true character in Fleming's novels than a well-dressed clown spouting one-liners to negate the comedic violence.  I know the producers chose this direction because they wanted to distance themselves from the goofy Austin Powers films which were nothing more than a parody of earlier Bond films... which had already become parodies of themselves!

God, how I hated that.

You see, the James Bond novels played a very large part in my growth and desire to be a writer.  My father introduced me to them when I was twelve years old and I devoured them.  I'm very picky, therefore, about my Bond actors and the movies themselves.  This one did not disappoint me.

The producers of Casino Royale also had the good sense to realize the actor playing James Bond is only as good as the villain he faces.  Le Chiffre was a sadistic bastard in the novel and he's played that way here, too.  And anyone who's ever read the novel will be gripping throughout the movie because they know what's coming later in the film. Again, Royale doesn't disappoint, nor with the love interest between Bond and Vesper, (Bond's first and really only love until me met Tracy) along with its inevitable conclusion.

The novel itself is somewhat famous for its last line.  (Mickey Spillane copied something like it for his Mike Hammer novel, I, the Jury.) The line appears here in the film, though not at the very end which lessens its impact.  It's still powerful, however, played against the backdrop of a crumbling building as metaphor for Bond's life.

All in all, a very good film. Bond is back, thank God, in a reincarnation that would make Fleming proud. 

Go see it.

I've just finished reading L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

And I didn't like it.

As a writer I thought it was dry, devoid of humor and little more than a patchwork of poorly executed ideas.  As a reader I liked it ...and I didn't like it at the same time.  I suppose part of the problem stems from the fact Oz tries to be the quintessential American fairy tale.  America is good at a lot of things, but our culture isn't geared for generating fairy tales along the quality of Arabian Nights, Grimm's or Wonderland and Looking Glass. (Though, to be fair, Carroll was a certified genius, so it's not fair to Baum to compare the adventures his Dorothy to Carroll's Alice.)

I'm certain I didn't let my knowledge (and love) of the 1939 movie version influence my critique of Baum's novel.  There were some elements of the novel I liked, like how science and scientific concepts played a (small!) part in the plot, and his repeated use of color. Baum did a good job with that, seeing as how he wrote Oz in 1900 and was tapping into the deep-rooted American philosophies of pragmatism.  Apparently a whole slew of sequels followed, but I won't be reading them, thank you.  Overall this just wasn't very good (poorly written and poor characterization) and I don't recommend it--unless you want to write fairy tales in which case Oz is still considered a benchmark...of sorts .

Otherwise, forget this book.  Watch the film instead. 

Finished Podkayne of Mars by Robert A. Heinlein yesterday.  Not bad, but you could tell it was the end of Heinlein's juvenile run and the beginning of his fascination with gravid women and the resulting by-product.  He was also forced to change the ending and you could tell it was a half-hearted attempt on his part.  Not only does it not ring true (Podkayne Fries died in the original manuscript) but it doesn't make sense given the rest of the book and Podkayne's rosey outlook on life.  Finally, when we see how asocial her brother Clark really is, we're not convinced because the change in tone comes with little or no previous explanation.  It's jarring, yes, but since most of the book is written from Pod's perspective and she thinks her brother is a terror, she doesn't recognize him for the psychopath he truly is.  The result is a somewhat disjointed story that leaves the reader unsatisfied.

Podkayne herself is extremely likeable and arguably a major fictional character in the genre.  But the book as a whole doesn't hang together as well as it might.  This one's for fans only.

..................

The Ryder Cup has started.  The Americans have already gotten off to a shaky start.  (Tiger cranked one into the water!) But maybe they can sack it up and not let the Europeans beat them like a red-headed stepchild ... again.   Two years is a long time to wait just to see Monty grind his heel in our face.  I hope our boys can do better this time.

Go Tiger!

I finished reading a history book titled The Battle of the Atlantic by Andrew Williams this weekend.  Apparently it was part of a program on the History Channel, or so says a blurb on the cover.  Eh, it wasn't that good.  It didn't have the moral clarity of Clay Blair's work  Hitler's U-boat War (although Blair can be too pedantic) or as well-written and emotionally moving as Iron Coffins by Herbert A. Werner.  There were a lot of typos in the text and the writing itself was all too often awkward in a lot of places.  It read rushed to me.

For other bubbleheads out there  (like me!) who are interested in this great battle there are much better books to read than this one.  Don't waste your time.