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Post by EdoBosnar on Oct 8, 2020 16:48:57 GMT -5
The Black CloudFred Hoyle, 1957  Until I picked this book out of a dealer's discount box at Zagreb's SF convention a few years ago, I never knew Hoyle had written any science fiction. The basic story here is that in the mid-1960s, astronomers in the UK and the US, working separately, discover at virtually the same time a large dark cloud of cosmic gas making a bee-line toward the sun. There are concerns that it could blot out the sun's light, but also wreak havoc when it passes through the Earth's orbit. An international (but mostly British) team of scientists are set up in an estate in the English countryside with all of the proper equipment to observe the phenomenon and advise the governments of the world on how to deal with it. As the cloud eventually passes by our planet (and indeed wreaks tons of havoc) and then blots out the sun for a number of weeks (causing even greater havoc and much loss of life), a few of the scientists come to the realization that its rather odd and often unpredictable behavior indicates that it is actually an intelligent form - and they eventually figure out how to communicate with it. This is a very fascinating book, and a pretty gripping read - which, given how much of it involves various scientists discussing and hashing out theories and possible courses of action, is a bit surprising. Given that Hoyle was an astronomer, he made sure that the speculative aspects of story were based on sound and plausible science. One of the subsidiary themes is the short-sightedness and shallowness of politicians, as opposed to scientists. I suppose one could counter that with the fact that scientists also often display a dangerous amount of hubris, but given the world's current situation with regard to the intersection of politics and science, I found myself sympathizing with Hoyle's attitude here.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2020 23:57:35 GMT -5
Finished the second book of Jordan's Wheel of Time-The Great Hunt  I forgot some of the stuff in this book happened this early in the series, but I am really digging the reread of the early parts of the series. For as long as the series is, there are moments in each book where Jordan really pays things off that he has been setting up throughout this book (and in the first book). It really helps feel like you are getting a return on your investment as you read this large, winding series because it will be a while before there is any final payoff and resolution. Looking forward to book three, but I need to finish off Abercrombie's First Law trilogy first. -M |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Oct 11, 2020 5:35:03 GMT -5
The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An SmithJosephine Saxton, 1969 (69 - heh, nice  )  The description on the back cover calls it "science fantasy," and I suppose that's as good a way to label it as anything. Initially, it seems like it's set in some kind of dystopian future after some kind of catastrophe wipes out most of humanity, because it begins with a 14 year-old boy wandering through the world all alone, coming across towns in which all of the stores are well stocked with food, clothing and other necessities, but there are hardly any other people. However, at one point he hears some strange cries, and comes across the body of woman who had just died while giving birth to a child, a baby girl. Against all of his instincts, the boy decides to take the baby and see to her survival, going to a nearby town to scrounge for suitable food and eventually also learning how to clean and generally care for her. As the child grows, they begin to wander the landscape together. As the story progresses, you begin to realize that the setting is not some kind of post-apocalypse, but something quite a bit more odd, as though the two are playing out some kind of assigned roles - clues are dropped throughout, and you have to keep in mind the book's title, 'hieros gamos.' The ending is puzzling, or not, depending on how you take it. This book is very much a product of its time, i.e., the late '60s/early '70s, when a lot of SF and fantasy writers were experimenting with different ideas and story-telling styles. Saxton was apparently influenced by a lot of the ideas that were popular in that era (like Jungian psychology, for example), but the prose isn't bogged down with, say, lengthy stream-of-consciousness inner monologues and so forth. She wrote this story as a very straight-forward narrative, so it reads almost like a modern, adult fable - and at 120 pages, it's a novella that can be read in a single sitting.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 11, 2020 11:37:26 GMT -5
 Carnal Hours by Max Allan CollinsHeller is back involved in another big historical case. And like most of the rest this one started a bit slow and then sucked me in in the second half and made me lose sleep. The added attraction here is that this is the first one that I wasn't at all familiar with Heller's case. I was generally familiar with the Capone/Nitti era stuff, Dillinger, very familiar with Ben Siegel and the founding of Las Vegas and quite familiar with the Lindbergh case. But I'd never come across the murder of Sir Harry Oakes until now. And, as usual, Collins had me Googling aplenty as I read the book. Heller flies to The Bahamas at the behest of Sir Harry Oakes, multi-millionaire and the richest man in The Bahamas (and Canada) to investigate Oakes' son-in-law. Heller himself doesn't like doing cheating spouse work, but Oakes makes him a monetary offer he can't refuse. Unfortunately, the night that Heller is hired Oakes is murdered in his Bahamian estate and Heller is thrown into a murder investigation that is complicated by the Duke of Windsor (former King of England and, in 1943, the Governor of the Bahamas) who brings in two thuggish mob-connected Miami police detectives to investigate. Heller ends up hired by Oakes' daughter to find the real murderer and free her husband, who has been charged with the murder on very thin evidence. I think I may have enjoyed this one more than most simply because I was less familiar with the surrounding events. Oakes himself was an extremely interesting man. As I followed up on his life he was a bit of a real-life Uncle Scrooge, prospecting in the Klondike, California, South America and Australia before finally striking it rich in Ontario, Canada with what would become the second largest gold mine in the Americas. He ultimately moved to The Bahamas as a tax refugee where he donated over a million dollars (around fifteen million today) to Bahamian charities. Collins does a good job of bringing the tropical setting to life and showing the divergence of the lives between the white upper crust of Bahamian life and the largely black underclass. He also sprinkles the book with the requisite historical celebrities, almost all of which were organically involved in the case; The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Erle Stanley Gardner (who covered the case for Hearst Newspapers), Sally Rand (who did do some shows in The Bahamas at the time and did appear in front of the Windsors), and Meyer Lansky (who was involved in bringing casinos to The Bahamas after the war). He also throws in one British spy who wasn't involved in the case but was stationed in Jamaica at the time. Another fun read made more fun by the fact that I wasn't familiar with the case or setting and that Collins goes down a slightly different path than the standard for deciding who actually killed Sir Harry Oakes (still officially unsolved). |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 12, 2020 19:43:54 GMT -5
Song of Achilles
by Madeline Miller
Reading this for book club... our city is using Circe for the big read, but since we already read that, we're going with this one.
The author is excellent, but something about this book just didn't grab me... maybe it's that of all the characters in the Iliad, Achilles is the one I was least interested in. Or perhaps it was too much a romance story and not enough epic in there. I can't really put my finger on it.
It also seemed alot less original than Circe. That later book really seemed to expand the character beyond the standard portrayal... it lead me to look up more about it, and see which things the author got from stories I didn't know about, which blanks she filled in herself, etc.
With this book, it all just seemed a straight retelling of the story.. perhaps I've seen it too many times, or perhaps I read this book before and forgot about it? Whatever the reason, and just didn't really do anything for me.
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Post by berkley on Oct 12, 2020 20:54:52 GMT -5
Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller Reading this for book club... our city is using Circe for the big read, but since we already read that, we're going with this one. The author is excellent, but something about this book just didn't grab me... maybe it's that of all the characters in the Iliad, Achilles is the one I was least interested in. Or perhaps it was too much a romance story and not enough epic in there. I can't really put my finger on it. It also seemed alot less original than Circe. That later book really seemed to expand the character beyond the standard portrayal... it lead me to look up more about it, and see which things the author got from stories I didn't know about, which blanks she filled in herself, etc. With this book, it all just seemed a straight retelling of the story.. perhaps I've seen it too many times, or perhaps I read this book before and forgot about it? Whatever the reason, and just didn't really do anything for me. I haven't read either book but the Circe one does sound more appealing to me than the Achilles , in spite of the fact that I do think Achilles is a fascinating character, one of the archetypal "great warrior" figures of myth and legend, up there with Gilgamesh, Herakles, etc. But modern treatments tend to focus, as you say, on the homosexual relationship with Patroclus, which in my view is an entirely superficial addition to the basic story, something brought in during the Classical era and not present at all in Homer. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 12, 2020 21:06:54 GMT -5
I think it's an attempt to humanize the character... rather than have him just be a petulant but amazing warrior. The other interesting thing in the book as she totally doesn't go with the thing where his heel is his weak spot.. he just gets shot with an arrow. If fact, she spends a fair bit of the book mocking that particular part of the legend.
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Post by Duragizer on Oct 14, 2020 14:23:51 GMT -5
Eye in the Sky (Philip K. Dick)  A very good novel, verging on great — then came the final two chapters.  In a lot of ways — and here be some spoilers — Eye in the Sky's reminiscent of the Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun". It's bizarre, bewildering, beguiling ... benumbing. The stakes are too low. If death in dreams don't translate to death in reality, why should I feel invested? 6/10
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Post by berkley on Oct 14, 2020 19:11:44 GMT -5
I think it's an attempt to humanize the character... rather than have him just be a petulant but amazing warrior. The other interesting thing in the book as she totally doesn't go with the thing where his heel is his weak spot.. he just gets shot with an arrow. If fact, she spends a fair bit of the book mocking that particular part of the legend. Well, I think "petulant" is also a misjudgment derived from a failure to appreciate how culturally different the world of the Iliad is to ours and how within the value system the characters were operating under, Achilles's behaviour would have appeared in a much different and more favourable light tha it does to us.
But she's right about the invunerability aspect and the legend of Achilles' heel - none of that is in Homer.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 16, 2020 8:47:01 GMT -5
Really? It was definitely in the version I read in high school.. I had no idea it was a later addition. I get the honor system and such, and in other versions of the story, Achilles comes off alot better. That's kinda odd, since he's the star of this version (though one could argue Patroculus is really the star). He's most certainly portrayed as petulant in the "Troy" movie, which is probably the other big source people have of late.
In this one, it feels very much like he just wants his own way so he can be the hero. I also feel like he's not supposed to be of a different generation than the other heroes, though I can't say I know that if that's from the source or just in my head. Then again, I've always be much for a fan of Odysseus, so maybe I'm biased.
A Civil Campaign
Lois McMaster Bujold
If you had told me before I read this that, instead of weaving character subplots into the story on the side as most authors do, instead they're just going to be an 'interlude' book where 5 or 6 such plots just tangle together all at once, I'd have said no, thanks.
Somehow, it works. While there was a decided like of action, it was still a pretty fun book. Alot of minor characters got a spotlight (I loved Ivan in this book, and I think Nikki might be my new favorite), and there were definitely some genuinely funny moments mixed into some serious issues.
I don't think we needed another Miles witch hunt plot.. I feel like that was done early on, but this one resolved in a very different way, so I guess that was fine. I still don't love Eketerin... she's just too perfect a match for Miles. On the other hand, it is refreshing to have a book where things work out pretty positively for the good guys, that's not something that happens much these days.
Not the best book in the series, but good enough to give me enough momentum to read the last couple, I think.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2020 0:00:38 GMT -5
Time Magazine has issued a list of The 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time recently. Of course all such lists are highly subjective, but there are huge gaps in this list. It tries to span from the 8th-9th century (Arabian Nights) to the present (a plethora of recent fantasy), but really skips over large periods of time in the choices, and gives a smattering of classics then focuses heavily on modern fantasy. Some glaring omissions- Brothers Grimm, Lord Dunsany, all the pulp era sword and sorcery writers and their followers (Howard, C.L. Moore, Lieber, Moorcock, Clark Ashton Smith, Zelazny, Vance, etc.),some of the pioneering female fantasists like Marion Zimmer Bradley and Mercedes Lackey, and lots of influential modern fantasy writers too (Tad Williams, Brent Weeks, Jim Butcher, etc.). There are also some odd choices on books include on the list, choosing singular books in series that may or may not be the best representation of the series or author. And a real heavy emphasis on modern writers from diverse backgrounds, which is good because a lot of that stuff gets overlooked by many and is some really quality stuff, but leaving off folks like Charles Saunders and other pioneers from that focus group also doesn't speak well for it. I don't think it is a bad list per se, it just doesn't do what it claims to do. I think it is an invaluable list as a source of discovering new reading material for people discovering fantasy or trying to brank out from the stereotypical fantasy favorites, but it had too many omissions and odd inclusions to be a best of all time list. Still worth taking a minute ot tow to look over though. -M |
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Post by Calamas on Oct 18, 2020 12:06:48 GMT -5
. . . There are also some odd choices on books include on the list, choosing singular books in series that may or may not be the best representation of the series or author. . . . -M I’m not particularly familiar with Fantasy so the link doesn’t help me with this--and it’s a curiosity question anyway. I find on lists like this that they automatically offer the first book of an author--or the first entry in a series--presumably because it broke new ground or introduced a character or concept of importance to the genre. Most readers know that much more often than not it is not the best, and is often a poor choice to hook new readers, especially the further back you go in time. Is that the case here or is there no perceptible pattern to their selections? |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2020 13:41:52 GMT -5
Yeah some of the choices are not the first book of the series, and are not really was is often considered the best. Sometimes a book is chosen and is the only choice representing an author, but it is not their best nor most popular, and not the most influential book they've done. So no, there's not really a rhyme or reason as to which books were chosen form series or to represent authors.
-M
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 18, 2020 21:09:37 GMT -5
That list is painful in it's attempt to be diverse... I find most public lists these day do that, with the added detriment of making the recency bias worse. INteresting they picked Dragonflight, though... which many modern readers shut as too sexist. I mean, some of the books on that list aren't even GOOD, never mind best of all time. They added stuff like King Arthur and Arabian Nights, great... I can dig it.. what about Three Kingdoms then? Ridiculous that there's no Howard or Burroughs... you have 100 books, and you have to list BOTH Madeline Miller books, which aren't even really fantasy, but a retelling of an ancient myth? Or, if that counts, why not the originals? And why have all three Lord of the Rings books and not the Hobbit? Also, I wouldn't consider either Watership Down or Good Omens fantasy at all (though both are great books), and there are far too many children's books that I would simply call children's books, not 'fantasy' in terms of the category. Today's book: Day of the Giants by Lester Del Rey  Unlike what the cover shows, this is actually Del Rey's version of the Norse Ragnarok legend. He uses twin brothers from a midwest farming community as the POV character, who get brought to Asgard by Valkeries to be heroes to fight the giants. Interestingly, his Loki is actually practically a good guy. He's still a schemer, of course, but his plots are all for the common good in trying to prevent the downfall of the gods, with Odin's other sons in the villain role instead. Rather than show the gods as mystical figures, it's portrayed more as 'science, sufficiently advanced, seems like magic'.... but with the added wrinkle that the gods themselves don't know how things work, they just follow tradition and hope for the best. It really made for a nice contrast, and showed why the gods needed a few humans, and vise versa. Leif, the main character, adds a much needed dose of common sense and know how as Loki's protege, while his soldier brother Lee helps Thor lead the troops. Well worth the read for any fan of the Norse.. just ignore the cover. (It's not even GOOD stock sci fi art!) |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 18, 2020 21:26:05 GMT -5
I have absolutely no idea what “Good Omens” and “Watership Down” are of they aren’t fantasy.
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