.
Frozen Hell by John W Campbell Jr. Written in the 30s and never released in it’s full, unedited form until recently. A cutback version saw publication as Who Goes There which was the inspiration for movies The Thing From Another World and John Carpenter’s The Thing. I’ve been on a serious early/mid 20th century sci fi kick for some time and I’m a massive fan of The Thing so this should hopefully be right up my street.
That’s what Psi Corps wants you to think.
That’s what Psi Corps wants you to think.
It’s a little reductive, but the kind of scifi Lorcan is referring to isn’t hard to quantify – it involves the minutiae of rocket propulsion.
Pick one at random and I’ll try to read it with you.
The Rama series is based on the idea that a Spaceguard was set up after a devestating and tragic meteor impact in 2077, but the date of impact gives me the chills, especially since one of the author’s most famous works is named 2001 and is set in that year: September the eleventh!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceguard
Pick one at random and I’ll try to read it with you.
Christian doesn’t know this yet but we are randomly reading Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence.
I have also read an entire novel. First one since Sept.
If you like good books, it is good.
2001: Made possible by humanity’s ability to fly, a historical event will change everything in 2001
Rama: A disaster that will change everything will happen in the 21st century, on 9/11
King Kong: a disaster occurs involving aeroplanes and a famously tall New York building.
It’s uncanny.
I bought this poetry collection for my daughter for her birthday recently as it’s a book that I read as a kid, and it really stuck with me over the years.
It’s a great combination of poems that doesn’t talk down to kids, and which provides a nice range of poems – some longer narrative poems, some shorter nonsense verses, some imaginative flights of fancy, some mundane slice-of-life scenes – and which isn’t afraid to balance its frequent humour and silliness with some striking moments of pathos.
I’ve really enjoyed revisiting it, and I’ve realised just how many of these ideas have stuck in my mind for good, even though it’s been decades since I last looked at it.
I had the fortunate foresight to take a day in town before the social distancing and lockdown began (the Monday before Mother’s Day, not coincidentally) and while going through charity shops, I happened upon a copy of The Callahan Chronicals [sic], an omnibus of the first three books in Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Place series. I’d read the first of these last year (digitally) after having played the very good PC adventure game, and found it a little underwhelming, but I assumed the series would go on to cover the gamut of madcap stuff present in the game (made over a decade after the last of these books).
And it does. These stories involve everything from talking dogs to alcoholic vampires to alien cyborgs and dodgy time travellers. There’s a huge variety of concepts thrown around in here, in a fairly SF savvy context, alongside a good deal of good natured human humanism and terrible puns. There’s even a selection of riddles in one story, which are quite fun (this is something the adventure game builds on).
That said, the stories never reach the heights that the game did for me. I suppose part of that is the game spoiled me on a lot of the surprises before the stories could, but the game has more scope than the books. In the game, the pub is a springboard from which crazy adventures happen. There, Jake (the player character and first person narrator of the stories) goes off into the future of New York, deep into a South American jungle, onto a UFO, breaks into a military complex and more. In the prose, people tend to come into Callahan’s and then just talk in the pub. And that works to a degree, but it can get a bit formulaic.
The stories are also pretty hit and miss and the two biggest misses for me are the two “big” stories in the third collection, Callahan’s Secret, which, in TV terms are the “story arc” episodes. The Blacksmith’s Tale is pretty awful – half of it is devoted to Jake ogling and then awkwardly seducing a woman, which gets old really quick, before then having her berate all the people in the pub for stuff regarding one of the regulars. It just doesn’t work as a story and isn’t helped by the last minute reveal that she’s the daughter of Mike Callahan, the owner of the pub.
The other dud is the last story, which brings something of a conclusion to the series, by blowing up the pub with a nuke in an effort to stop an alien from destroying the planet. There’s some good stuff there about the regulars rallying together to stop the threat, but there’s a very convenient nuke hanging around for plot expediency, huge long sprawling, music-based metaphors about the nature of psychic union/collaboration and then a truly groanworthy reveal of Mike Callahan and his family turning out to be time-travellers from really far in the future. 
I think the character of Callahan was better as just an unflappable guy who ran a bar where weird things happen, instead of being some special time-traveller there specifically because something was going to happen around that time and he needed to prevent it. It’s a bit like the recent retcons to Doctor Who – sometimes a protagonist works better as an ordinary person who excels in extraordinary situations. I understand why Robinson blew up the bar – I think he wanted an excuse to stop writing about it and have weirdoes writing to him asking where it is – but it’s a bit of a limp ending to the series (which then isn’t even the end).
All in all, I’d say Callahan’s Place ends up in this weird situation where the video game is better than the source material. And that never happens.
So, for the last few weeks I’ve been working from home at least four days a week and driving to the office the fifth day. As a result I no longer have a public-transportation commute, which was when I did the majority of my leisure reading. Last week I made a conscious decision to set aside a block of time each day to read for pleasure.
First up was David McCullough’s wonderful book 1776 focusing on the first year of the American Revolution, following General George Washington from his decisive victory against the British army in Boston in the winter of 1775/76, through his failures in Brooklyn and New York through the summer of ’76, and closing with his much-needed successful battles against the British and Hessians in Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey during the winter of 76/77. I applaud McCullough’s decision to focus on one year and one central figure rather than attempt a broader chronicle of the events of the Revolution from beginning to end, or even trying to cover simultaneous 1776 battles in Quebec and North Carolina. Limiting his scope allows the writer to create a more detailed report of Washington and his key compatriots, as well as British Generals Howe and Cornwallis and their aides. Very insightful and enlightening book.
Following that, I read a couple of Philip K. Dick’s short stories, including “Minority Report”. I don’t consider Dick a great writer, but he is a great “idea” guy. It’s no surprise that some of his stories have been translated into so many popular and successful films, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Adjustment Bureau, and the aforementioned Minority Report. I can only read two or three of his short stories at a time, but I know that when I read them I’m going to be entertained.
And now I’ve begun A Drink Before the War, Dennis Lehane’s first novel in his “Kenzie and Gennaro” series following a pair of private investigators in Boston. Lehane is one of my favorite writers, because he brings the city of Boston and its grimier neighborhoods and suburbs to life in his work. I’m 40 pages in and already hooked. You’ve likely seen at least one film based on his novels (Mystic River, Shutter Island, Gone Baby Gone), but his prose is worth reading; he’s a modern-day Dashiell Hammett.
I’m reading Murakami’s Birthday Stories.
Why are you reading that today? 
I’m spraining my tail?
I should have been more precise: I reject the ret-con which gathered a host of disparate stories into a single universe
It seemed silly to me. The “quite a moment” moment Christian refers to just felt very contrived, the work of a writer being clever for the sake of being clever.
Asimov’s early writing is probably still the greatest single body of imaginative work I have read from any writer. I just think he lost the plot a bit in later years.
Fancied some escapism so got stuck in to The Massacre of Mankind by Stephen Baxter -the official sequel to War of the Worlds.
Did hit a bump in terms of escapism early on:
“With the closure of London’s investment markets, through which in those days flowed much of the world’s money, there would be an instant financial crisis.” … “Food stores across the city were already depleted of stock because of panic buying.”
Fuck sake.
Reminders of the real world aside it’s a solid read. A faithful followup to the original text. Very mich enjoyed the fact it’s a direct continuation using characters from WOTW to populate its storyline. Maybe a bit overly long (it’s at least twice as long as the oringal) but i didnt really notice the length until the last third of the book.
I’m halfway through Killing Commendatore and am now halfways to being creeped out.
There’s a mistake in the text, “Menshiki climbed down the mental ladder the contractor had left for us. The ladder creaked a bit with each step.” Given the context, and the fact that it’s a Murakami book, mental works better than metal. The story’s sound of silence is creaking my subconscious.
I bought a book on Spinoza. His main work, the Ethics, is notoriously difficult, so I bought something that explains his stuff in peasant speech.
Well that book was dogshit.
Review of Asimov’s The Naked Sun:
Readers when it came out in 1957: Jehosaphat! These Solarians are sure strange! At least it’s just sci-fi!
Readers in 2020: These Solarians seem halfway normal, though some of their restrictions are extreme- ZOMG, IS THIS OUR FUTURE???!!!! *Cries*
Best post of the week 
I finished it yesterday morning. I’m still thinking about it. I’ve finally figured out what Murakami is doing. Took me long enough; I almost had it right before. I was writing to someone about Murakami and Greek myths when you sent your message so it’s good timing you’re reading Homer.
If you’ve not read, I highly recommend Adam Nicolson’s The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters, “here was someone speaking about fate and the human condition in ways that other people only seem to approach obliquely…As for leaves, the winds scatter some on the earth, but the new wood puts forth others, and spring comes again.” (Homer was a Firefly fan 
)
Good triple feature – Killing Commendatore and Duma Key and The Great Gatsby.
I’m currently reading Vocal Recall, a memoir by voice actor and former DJ Neil Ross (Shipwreck in GI Joe, Springer in Transformers, Leoric in Visionaries).
well, I say reading, actually listening. I decided to go for the audiobook, which Ross narrates himself, naturally, as that seems like the best format for it (and the paperback is really expensive).
This is actually the first time I’ve ever listened to an audiobook. Is that weird? I’m usually quite happy to read myself, not least because it’s quicker (though I’ve sped this up to 1.2x speed to help a bit). It’s a bit weird being part way into a book and having a completely accurate count of the time you’ve got left til you finish it.
As for the book itself, it’s pretty interesting. Very thorough, but I think Ross gets away with that. Currently still at the start of his DJ career. It’s a little hard to take in and keep track of all the stupid call signs US radio stations have to use. KFWB, KCRL, KHRA. CRAP compared to them having proper names like Severn Sound and Wyvern FM.
I’m halfway through King’s End of Watch.
I read the first two in the trilogy when they were first published. So far it’s good although a bit careless with some of the depictions of certain scenes. He read an extract from If It Bleeds a while ago. He seems very fond of Holly. I’ve yet to read it, she features in The Outsider too.
There’s a new Murakami short story in this week’s New Yorker. Christian was wrong. Monkeys are very chatty once they get going. Sorry, Jerry. I still don’t know how to write about Killing Commendatore. You can read this instead of me:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/08/confessions-of-a-shinagawa-monkey
You can read this instead of me:
Thanks, Bernadette; I bookmarked the link for reading later in the month.
I’m currently reading a book called Flight of the Earls (by Michael K. Reynolds) which I foolishly assumed was going to be about the Flight of the Earls. Instead, it is a lackluster fictional account of a brother and sister leaving Roscommon at the start of the potato famine to sail to America, landing in the Five Points section of Manhattan in the mid-19th century. It is so historically inaccurate/unlikely that I keep expecting the protagonist to take out her cellphone to call an Uber.
This is the first book of a trilogy; I won’t be buying the other two.
I’m reading London Falling by Paul Cornell. I picked it up years ago as an e-book in some Amazon sale for 99p but I hated the Kindle app on my tablet as the back light tired my eyes trying to read prose (for comics it’s always been fine).
Anyway I got given a proper Kindle as a present and it was sat there in my library so started reading. It’s interesting, starts off very much as a ‘Line of Duty’ style small team of police drama thing but a few chapters in gets quite supernatural. It’s a fun read, parts of it are a little clunky, there’s a football subplot that makes me thing he doesn’t really know too much about football. None of the characters really stand out much.
However he does well in making some sequences genuinely quite scary, which is always harder on the page than on the screen. It ventures into a lot of the geographical supernatural stuff that Ian Sinclair and Alan Moore have done but in a different enough way it doesn’t repeat. Overall it’s good so far, if not great.
I’m reading the 2001: A Space Odyssey sequels – 2010, 2060, 3001 – at the moment. I’m about a third of the way through 2060 at the moment. The first sequel, 2010, was pretty good – it manages to remain faithful to the original without getting bogged down by it. It’s written in the efficient Arthur C Clarke style that rattles along constantly without any overly poetic language. It’s been years since I read 2001 but 2010 does a good job of bringing you up to speed and reminding of what happened previously. 2060 feels like a direct continuation (after an obvious time jump) in terms of characters and themes and it’s written to the same standard as 2010. I’m a bit concerned that 3001 won’t be quite as good given the fact it was written good decade after 2060 and Clarke is getting on a bit but I’ll go into it with an open mind.
I’m rereading Naomi Klein’s No Logo and this line about Space Jam stands out:
“It was a historic moment in the branding of culture, completely inverting the traditionally fraught relationship between art and commerce: a shoe company and an ad agency huffing and puffing that a Hollywood movie would sully the purity of their commercials.”
I’m reading the 2001: A Space Odyssey sequels – 2010, 2060, 3001 – at the moment. I’m about a third of the way through 2060 at the moment. The first sequel, 2010, was pretty good – it manages to remain faithful to the original without getting bogged down by it. It’s written in the efficient Arthur C Clarke style that rattles along constantly without any overly poetic language. It’s been years since I read 2001 but 2010 does a good job of bringing you up to speed and reminding of what happened previously. 2060 feels like a direct continuation (after an obvious time jump) in terms of characters and themes and it’s written to the same standard as 2010. I’m a bit concerned that 3001 won’t be quite as good given the fact it was written good decade after 2060 and Clarke is getting on a bit but I’ll go into it with an open mind.
I read the first three as a young teenager and enjoyed them a lot (although I found the shift from Saturn to Jupiter between 2001 and 2010 a bit jarring as I hadn’t seen the movie at that point). I loved 2001, thought 2010 was a pretty decent follow-up and I liked how weird 2061 got.
Then I read 3001 when it came out and liked it but found it quite different to the others (although it is still very much a sequel). I guess the big time jump is part of it but also it just felt like a different sort of a story.
I remember liking the ending though, although I’m not sure if that will have aged well, which might be true for the technology aspects of the book in general.
Finished my 2001 sequel odyssey a couple of days ago. 2061 was solid. The only downer i had was that it set up a mystery on page 65 that was resolved on page 250 and I guessed the outcome on page 66. It could be a case that the reader was meant to know the outcome but then it would have been weird making such a mystery of it.
3001 was fine but seemed even more dated than the older books. The reference to physical storage media made me laugh given how much I’ve been relying on cloud storage these page few months. It’s often easy to accept the “projecting the present into the future” element of Clarke’s books even if they don’t quite fit with what we know now but with 3001 being written in 1997 it meant the datedness of the book really did come through. Also, a passing reference to Star Trek TNG also made me do a double take!
3001 was fine but seemed even more dated than the older books. The reference to physical storage media made me laugh given how much I’ve been relying on cloud storage these page few months. It’s often easy to accept the “projecting the present into the future” element of Clarke’s books even if they don’t quite fit with what we know now but with 3001 being written in 1997 it meant the datedness of the book really did come through. Also, a passing reference to Star Trek TNG also made me do a double take!
I remember reviews of it at the time saying it felt dated already.
I’ve been thinking for a while that an upcoming big tech-revolution is thought-activated technology. I have no basis for it really, but I still kinda think so.
A lot of shit is going to become very, very dated when that happens.
I picked up Charles Stross’s Laundry series in a charity shop a few months ago, and just finished working through them.
They’re set in the division of the UK government who deal with the mystical X-Files-style cases, except it’s very focused on how they’re still just part of the British civil service with all the bureaucracy, etc, that entails.
The first two (written in 2004 and 2006) aren’t great, but with from the third one, which came out in 2010, it picks up a lot (and moves to a mostly-annual schedule). My favourite is probably the seventh book, The Nightmare Stacks, which deals with some of the characters moving to Leeds as part of decentralisation, and has a lot of jokes about Leeds.
The most recent books have seen a change in scale with the reveal of the organization to the public and an ancient demon becoming PM that I’m not sure totally works, and lose a bit of the humour. I’m looking forward to the next book coming out this year though.
I’m not sure totally works
Umm. No. Yes. No. Yes.
There are few pleasures more satisfying than browsing in a bookstore — checking out the new bestsellers, seeing what’s in the Fantasy and Science Fiction shelves, and poking through the discount pile for special bargains. Browsing on-line choices via Amazon or BN.com just doesn’t provide the same sense of satisfaction.
BTW, currently reading Frank Herbert’s DUNE in anticipation of the upcoming television series.
The overtly friendly drug dealer.
My favoured Red Dwarf fansite is doing a ‘book club’ reread of the Red Dwarf novels, so I just ventured up into the loft and located my copy of the omnibus. I hadn’t seen it in years and it was like meeting an old friend.
If how beaten-up and bent and scuffed a book is provides an indication of how well-loved it has been, I must have been head over heels with this one.
Seriously, in my entire collection it’s probably only competing with this.
Marvel Stan Lee the Amaz Spider-m? Never heard of it.
Marvel Stan Lee the Amaz Spider-m? Never heard of it.
You know him, he fought the Gree Gob and Krav the Hun.
My book has a character called Christian.
Is it Pilgrim’s Progress?
No. I’ve been reading On Beauty.
Christian and Tim mentioned it a while ago. I was curious to see which one read it wrong.
Definitely have a pretty clear of what the characters sound like, though I’m not sure if I would call it a voice in my head. Same goes for the narrator. How about you?
It depends. Not just on the book or poem or script but my mood or how immersed I get. My internal reading voice sounds different from when I read out loud. If there’s a clear sense of distinct dialogue I sometimes ‘hear’ the accent, more so if I’ve met someone from the area or associate with an actor. If I’ve met the author or heard them read online, I occasionally catch their voice as both narrator and their approximation of their characters.
For example, I’ve heard your voice so I usually, not always, read your words via your voice. Sort of. It’s more muffled than true audio if you could even call internal reading audio.
Again it depends, sometimes it’s hazy, but I usually see the setting very vividly. Purple prose can pop like high definition. Extensive descriptions give a cinematic quality. Sort of. The camera angle isn’t always in the right place.
If there’s a cinematic version of a book, I’ll often think the door should be on the other side.
I won’t just see the apple, there’ll be a particular variety. Sometimes I can almost taste it or get a hint of the scent. Kind of hear the crunch.
The book I’m reading at the moment had a scene with snow. I briefly felt a chill. Reading the words, it’s more like when you can smell snow coming in on the air. You know? A hint of it. I’ve never attempted to explain this before. Words have associations too. Some are more cosy than others.
