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1. Asimov's Science Fiction Sept/Oct 2024

Since Asimov's Science Fiction magazine switched to six issues a year, I really can't write much of a review for the stories. There are just to many things in each issue. Even mentioning each piece would be screenspam.

I am glad I took the time to read the complete H.P. Lovecraft's complete work, because now I pick up immediately when someone is riffing on it. I'm pretty sure Naomi Kritzer was doing just that in "The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea". I liked Anita Vijayakumar's "Bitter Chai, Sweet Chai". "In the Dark" proves James Patrick Kelly can still keep up with the kids on the dance floor. Ray Nayler also delivers an interesting near future in "A Gray Magic".

2. John Steinbeck "Tortilla Flat"

This is one of those books which could get shredded by modern sensibilities. The main characters are all ne'er-do-wells. You can have ne'er-do-wells of any race, but if the author is of one race and decides to write about ne'er-do-wells of a different race, things get more dicey. It feels to me that he appreciates the overall culture he's writing about, but it's not my culture. Add to that, the main characters do whatever they can get away with, that includes in respect to the female characters. They are as transactional and careless as an American president. So yeah, I can only hope no one reads this book thinking they should aspire to be like the main characters.

But the adventures of the main characters are just the kind of adventures you'd expect for people who will work very hard to avoid working. They are written well, with humor, and the jokes on the characters don't feel mean spirited.

Every now and then you read about an author saying "the characters led me to the ending" or some such. For most books I could never picture that. For this book, each step in overall plot feels like it's just what the characters would do. It gets all wrapped up with a neat little bow, but every bit of it is in character and feels right. It's art or literature, but it's also a fun, well written read.

3. Asimov's Science Fiction Nov/Dec 2024

Dominica Phetteplace's "Dreamliker" is near future fiction. Well, maybe fiction, but then again it just reads like next week to me. Sometimes sci-fi is scary real. Zack Be "The Start of Something Beautiful" likewise was a good near future as well. Mary Robinett Kowal's "Deep Space Has the Beat" combines tech and dance clubs, so I'll pay the cover. I've got to say, I thought the world Sean Monaghan built in "Wildest Skies" had promise, but the plot didn't really take me there, maybe this is part of a novel in the making.

Wow, again a long time since I last posted my books. I'm not sure I have everything in order. I'm not sure I didn't miss anything. But this is what I think I read.

( this got long )

13. Christopher Moore "Razzmatazz"

I liked "Razzmatazz" better than "Noir", but I still think Moore was just trying to hard to make every single character over the top. Many of his earlier books most of the characters were normal people going through extraordinary circumstances or dealing with the one completely bonkers character. I've got to give credit though with the plot points of getting a group of people under surveillance to a party. I like the way the different threads came together and thought it was the best part of the book.

14. various "Tales from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine"

I have no idea where we got this book, but it's been on the shelves for a while and I just found it. It contains stories originally published between 1979 and 1984, so fairly early on in the Asimov's run. All before the time I started reading the magazine. The first few stories felt young and fresh. There were some which probably felt retro even in 1984. Overall, it was a pretty good collection. I must admit I was surprised to read the Octavia Butler story in a collection for young adults. She can be pretty bleak and harsh and I'm not sure I would suggest that particular story for young adults.

15. Robert Harbinson "The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable"

This is what happens when you take some lectures and try to fluff them up to a a full length book using impenetrable academic speak. Don't walk away from this one. Run. Any sane person would have stopped after a few pages. I have a nice jacket with long arms for occasions like this.

16. Terry Pratchett "Men at Arms"

The good thing about there being so many books in the discworld series is that by the time I get to re-reading them, much of it is fresh and new for me. I had forgotten how much innuendo there is between Nobby and Angua, although it's rather inevitable. It's Nobby afterall. It surprises me how the critical part of the scene with Cuddy in the Tower of Art takes place entirely off screen. I think that was intentional, to make it less disturbing. It might have been better if the paragraphs with Cuddy's viewpoint and Detritus' viewpoint were reversed. I imagine that was a hard bit to figure out how to write. This books is where the Watch really starts to get rich with characters and interactions. Also I love the choice of title of the book. The tongue is stuck firmly in the cheek for that one.

8. Irvine Welsh "Trainspotting"

I have seen the "Trainspotting" movie multiple times but I'd never read the book before, so this was a treat. I think the people who made the movie did a very good job of translating the book into a different form. They did a good job of capturing the feel and many of the stories. But the book format allows so much more. The vast majority of the book is told 1st person. In each chapter/piece you have to determine who the first person is because it's not given to you. All the characters have different internal (and external) voices and generally it's this which gives you the first clue of whose perspective you are experiencing. I found it interesting that this rotating 1st person perspective was kept consistently up to the chapter where Renton meets Dianne. After that point, the 1st person perspective comes and goes.

I don't think they could have done much better with the movie adaptation, but there is so much more in the book. It is awful, dark, and delightful and poetic.

9. Arthur Ransome "Great Northern"

I finally gave in and read the last book in the Swallows & Amazons series. I had been holding out because as long as I had one more book, it wasn't over. But now, alas, I've finished the whole series. I will go back and start from the beginning again.

This book had the whole usual cast of characters, but focuses on the younger kids. That makes sense, because by this point John, Susan, and Nancy are basically adults. They are wrapped up in duties and responsibilities. Nancy does get to shiver some timbers, but Dick, Dorothea, Roger, and Titty are at the center of the action. By bringing in the younger characters in earlier books Ransome solves the "they never grow up" problem which other children's books series get stuck on. They do grow up and more kids come along, that's just the way it goes.

Like the other books this book teaches how to do some thing "the old fashion way". In this case you learn how to make nets and blinds. I don't think this book read quite as well as some of the others. This one had a point "egg collectors bad, conservation good" and the fun was secondary to that.

10. Nicholas Meyer "The West End Horror"

This book has been hanging around the house for many years. Published in 1976, it's one of the Sherlock Holmes stories of the "found writings of Dr. Watson" variety. Basically a fan fic before the term fan fic. I can't seem to put a finger on why but it felt like the story and pacing didn't feel like the originals. It didn't wow me.

11. Rohase Piercy "My Dearest Holmes"

This book is a more recent (2007) Holmes & Watson story. Again, a found writing of Dr. Watson. It is un-apologeticaly slash fiction. The first section is a stand alone story, which takes place before Watson's marriage. I felt this section did a good job of Holmsian plot and pacing. The detail of dialog and inner dialog didn't really hold up for me, it went a bit too far from the original. But then again, I'm not the target audience. But I felt the author did a nice job of tying up the mystery. The second part of the book deals with the time when Watson is married and to the resolution of "The Final Problem". This section I felt was more clunky. I did like how the author came up with an explanation for Mary calling Watson "James", a very nice touch. And I liked the how the author dealt with Mary & Watson in general. But the detail writing felt even more removed from the canon constructions. Slash fans who don't want prawn might find this book more entertaining.

5. "Sisters In Law"

This book covers the careers of Sandra Day O'Connor & Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the 1st and 2nd women on the supreme court, respectively. I lived through the time covered by this book, but through much of it I was less than totally aware of what was going on with the Supreme Court. I found some of the book quite enlightening. I was not happy to read all the ways in which things happened due to "friend of a friend" type contacts. The differentiator was less about 'liberal or conservative' and more 'went to the right school and knew someone who knew the right person.' I assumed there was some level of that, but the breadth and extent is still disappointing. Today I always assume politics is heavy in the court, but I didn't realize the sort of backhanded maneuvering was taking place in the '70s. I'm sure it's even worse now, which makes it hard for someone a cynical as I am to think about. I don't think it is the most corrupt institution in US government, but that bar is very low indeed.

I have always felt like my life will probably be summed up to "everything he ever did in total amounted to fuck all." That's the way life is for most of us. We really aren't going to change the world. We're going to muddle through, get by okay if we're lucky, and hopefully treat our fellow human beings decently. But for prominent people to have their entire life's work basically undone in a short time, that's got to bite. Well, it would bite if they were alive to see it.

I was startling to be reminded just how awful the gender discrimination and straightjackets were back in the early '70's. I mean today we can see a lot of problems and backsliding, but I'd forgotten just how bad it was before. I like to hope that there will be an equal amount of change in another 50 years and not continued regression.

6. Janny Scott "A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother"

This book was an interesting biography. The first few chapters covered more grandparents, great aunts and uncles than I could follow, but once we got down to the birth family and life of Stanley Ann Dunham it got more interesting. The biographer drew together a bunch of incidents and facts which suggested ideas but didn't draw positive conclusions. I like that. It was interesting as a biography regardless of the fact that one of her children ended up becoming president of the US. That comes in, but thankfully isn't the focus. I think the book is a good example of how most of us more or less muddle through and if we're lucky we find out what makes us happy, or content, or perhaps provides for us before we die. If we're unlucky we find none of the aforementioned. Very few find all of the aforementioned. I think Dunham understood at some point she was trading security for what made her happy, what was her passion. That might have cost her years in lifespan, but she (and we) can never know. She just might have traded her happy years for stable unhappy years and ended with the same outcome.

I've been doing genealogical research, which for me mainly involves reading lots of town records. These involve handwriting from a few hundred years ago, which degraded for a couple hundred years, then were scanned on microfilm a hundred years ago.

Now first off, it is so awesome that anyone can sit at home and browse through films. When I was younger you had to travel to individual towns and leaf through pages of old books (thereby degrading their condition) just to find a tiny bit of information. Now real source material is much more accessible. It still has its limitations.

In the mid to late 1800's there were census records with a lot of information, but the census takers never asked how to spell a name because they couldn't assume that the person they were talking to knew how to spell. So an individual's name might be spelled differently on every single census. Poor Mehitabel really didn't stand a chance.

But before 1850 it was all about the town records and almost all of those are spelled phonetically. So Rebecca Hoyt might have been born Rebeckah Hoit or Hoite. Whether Sara has an H or not or Ann has an E or becomes an Anna is not based on the parents' decision but entirely the town clerk's habit. The Wingate family becomes the Wingit family just because of dad's pronunciation. The only way anyone had a consistent name was if birth, marriage, and death were all recorded at the same time.

The handwriting is challenging. I don't read the whole page, but learn to recognize the surnames I'm interested in and try to spot those within the page. Comprehending the whole text just takes too long. But sometimes I notice names I'm not looking for. Unusual names provide some amusement. I have pity for the young woman named Experience as I do the children literally named Orphan (they sometimes did this when dad died before the child - male or female - was born). But sometimes names are a just weird. I kept seeing entries for Honey Brown. My first thought was "named after a craft beer!" A weird name, but I've seen lots of weird names. I saw the name in multiple places: born, had a whole bunch of kids. It was later when I was trying to decipher another piece of text written in the same hand that I realized Honey Brown wasn't Honey. It was bad penmanship. Henry Brown lived a long life and had many kids. Too bad, I kind of liked the craft brewery tie in. I mean I did find a Samuel Adams, so why not.

And now I can't get the Morphine song "Honey White" out of my head.

30. Sally Mitchell "Daily Life in Victorian England"

"Daily Life in Victorian England" was written as a textbook/school library book intended for high school or maybe 1st year college. It has lots of easily consumable short sections which have a lot of facts, but don't go very in depth on anything. You can't really go in depth if you want to cover the entire Victorian Era in a reasonably short volume. There were certainly some interesting bits, but I wanted more depth and detail. The prose was very straightforward, easy to read, and yes, boring for me. Being for the school market, it irked me in places how the author had to "balance" everything. So, the treatment of natives is balanced. The treatment of the poor is balanced. The treatment of slaves is balanced. There are some workhouses which offered some education to some of the children (got to stretch a long way to get balance on that one). So yeah, it's not entirely Victorian worship, but it definitely only glances and looks away politely at the uglier bits. It's easy to cover terrible inequity up with "overall the standard of living improved so drastically." Yeah, we're still doing that.

uh, 13 revisited

Asimov's March/Apr 2023, I thought I read this earlier, but it turns out I skipped it. I liked that the cover story by Paul McAuley refused to be any of the cliches it might have become. It was complicated and multi-layered. Ray Nayler's language and setting in "The Case of the Blood-Stained Tower" really reminded me of Roger Zelazny. It also had the feel of "there is a lot more here that I'm not telling you about" which Zelazny was famous for. Overall it was a pretty good issue. There were a few duds I could have done without, but the majority were good.

31. Fern Brady "Strong Female Character"

I enjoyed Fern Brady's "Strong Female Character". Reading about her troubles makes me glad that I just find it incredibly tiring to interact in society, hard to maintain eye contact, and depressing to remember everything stupid I've ever done. I have a functional, if begrudging, relationship with human society. So a lot of what Fern went through was familiar to me, but if I had rolling hills she had mountains and cliffs. I imagine a lot of people who read the book will say, "I remember feeling like that" in places. But I think the extremity of the experience makes it a different experience. We all end up having to build our own toolbox, so we can hear the common thread in what she says. But where an average person might need a hammer, Fern needs a sonic screwdriver, multi-tool, sawzall, and vacuum pump. And she got to build them out of fuck all. I was surprised to read how much sexual repression and period shame her generation experienced. I'd have thought people of my generation who had to deal with all those hangups wouldn't subject their kids to it, but I guess it's the gift that keeps on giving.

28. Neal Stephenson & Nicole Galland "The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O"

This book was hard to get through. The writing isn't good. The detail plotting feels clunky. The characterization isn't. In the middle of this book I actually looked up some reviews to try to find how the authors divided up the writing. I mean I really wanted to makes sense why it was written the way it was.

Several of the reviewers complained about the quirky format. It goes from regular first person past narrative as the main characters diary to various other formats: another characters journal, email chains, bureaucratic reports, transcribed audio, powerpoint slides, even some epic poetry. For the most part I enjoyed the exotic methods better than the straightforward narrative. This is because the straight narrative wasn't very good and the authors didn't seem to be able to portray or develop the characters. The odd formats actually covered up a lot of that inadequacy. So the weird parts were actually better. With the exception of the epic poetry. I'm glad I wasn't reading that in close proximity to a fork or knife. I remain ocularly intact.

The book has a fair amount of satire poking at bureaucracy. Alas it's sprinkled throughout the main text. Sometimes it jars against the rest of the text, feels like an off note, and loses it's own punch amongst all the other words. It probably would have been better as a short.

Through the whole thing the authors keep having secondary characters refer to the high degree of romantic tension between the primary characters. But the authors seem utterly unable to show that to the reader. Of course, overall, I don't think the characters are well portrayed, but the romance thing feels really unsupported.

One of the tricky parts of magic is you need to have rules and be consistent with them. One of the tricky things about time travel is you need to have rules and always obey them. The more you pile on the harder it becomes to not seem inconsistent, or sloppy, or slapstick.

Overall, if you see this book on your (virtual or physical) shelf, don't walk away. Run.

19. Vaseem Khan "The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra"

I wanted to like this book. I am always looking for new detective series. Even better if it takes place in a culture I'm not all that familiar with. But it just didn't make it.

20. Terry Pratchett "Guards! Guards!"

It was so much fun re-reading "Guards! Guards!". I had forgotten much of the plot. My memory had mixed in bits of different Watch books and left out some significant bits of what was there. Sybil rocks so hard in this book the trolls should give her an honorarium. Some of the lines are so very perfect for our current political discourse that it's scary. I mean current political discourse is scary and it must have taken one cynical mind to come up with it in 1989. Prime Pratchett.

21. Tom Clancy "Red Storm Rising"

This was a re-read from back in the '90's. Back in the day I read the first few Clancy books then got turned off by the direction of the Ryanverse. This book feels incredibly well researched. When I first read it I didn't pick up on the construction, but it is a good lesson in how to write a huge book. It spans a lot of places, time, and storylines. It does that by picking up specific characters and following them through each of the story arcs. Some come onstage for only a brief time, so persist for much of the book. As I was reading it, the jumping from character to character in the different plotlines reminded me of Lord of the Rings. I'm not saying it's anything like LOTR in other aspects. But the way of dealing with OMG what a long and complicated story by breaking it up into bite sized chunks following specific characters is similar.

"Red Storm Rising" is very much retrofuturism now, but some of the assumptions made by characters in the book and some of the results ring awfully close to what we have seen in Ukraine.

22. Terry Pratchett "Eric"

At some point I have to read "Faust". I mean so many authors riff on it. "Eric" isn't my favorite Pratchett book. It has its funny bits, but I think Pratchett is much better when he's running in an open field chasing whatever butterflies inspire him.

23. Abbott Payson Usher "A History of Mechanical Inventions"

I picked this book up at a book sale who knows how many years ago. It is a reprint of an imprint from 1954. When I started it, I was disappointed how much time it spent on theory and how little depth it seemed to go into of each aspect of mechanical/technical development. This isn't a book which would guide you to rebuild civilization. But it does do a good job of illustrating its main theme: it takes village or many villages. It argues that there isn't one big invention. Each invention is a whole lot of stage setting, the actual invention or many inventions, and a whole lot of refinement and improvement. Often one person gets credit because their name is written down somewhere, but usually they just got lucky enough to get written down. When the knowledge gets distributed and multiple people start to refine it and expand on it, then things really start to roll.

I must admit, I spent way too much time reading this book for that one lesson. I might have been better off focusing all the time on learning the details of any one of the chapters. There was a lot of "there is too much material for a detailed study within the scope of this work".

7. Terry Pratchett "Sorcery"

Continuing the re-read of all the Discworld books. In "Sorcery" you can feel Pratchett getting the rhythm which he honed for many years. It's hard to put my finger on just how, but every now and then I'd hit a bit of very prime stuff. Bits of this felt repeated from the early books and I'm glad for the next book we get to move on to a different cast of characters. It seems by the way Pratchett ended it, he wanted a break from the characters as well.

8. Jennifer Worth "Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End"

This book, like the previous two has a mix of dark and light stories. There are some places where we cover ground which we'd gone over in previous books, sometimes from a different perspective, sometimes not. This book wraps up several of the main characters stories and is a natural ending point of the series. I don't think it was as strong as the first two books, but it was nice to see how some of the things turned out.

9. Asimov's Jan/Feb 2023

I have had a subscription to Asimov's since the '80's. We have boxes of back issues on shelves or in storage. It is hard to contemplate, but I'm debating letting my subscription lapse. Every now and then there will be an outstanding, wonderful story. But in general the number of stories that do nothing for me outweigh the ones which do anything for me. I feel like the quality of the stories has been steadily declining over the years. This makes me sad. It seems the longer form stories tend to lose the most and the short works are where we see the remaining gems.

What follows is what I wrote to a friend about Norman Spinrad's "Up and Out".

"Derien started to read it and gave up after a few paragraphs. I had to read the whole thing, because I always do.  Spinrad is either a) senile, b) a really bad author, or c) a genius author who is able to write an entire long form story perfectly in character of a thoughtless tech bro. It's hard to tell which based on the evidence presented. As far as the qualities of the story, it's hard to know where to start.  All complications and consequences are just glossed over. The writing made we want to poke my eyeballs out with a spork. The plot was wanking over (to quote the Australian "Honest Government Ads" group) shitfuckery. If it was a spoof of how Musk would think and write about himself, it was brilliant. If it was intended to be anything other than a farce, it was sad indeed."

The whole first part of this issue was either torture or did nothing for me. My favorite was Ramsey Shehadeh's "Cigarettes and Coffee" which did a good job of putting the reader into the shoes of a main character who is not in charge of everything and not infinitely wealthy, and who's world just doesn't turn out perfect no matter what they do. Quite the opposite in fact.

10. P. G. Wodehouse "Sam In The Suburbs"

After Asimov's I decided to read a random P.G. Wodehouse. I thought based on the title and the settings that this book was written later in his career, but it's was actually published in 1925. The prose was right on the mark with humor both overt and implied. The plot is a bit less clear. Maybe he tried to put too much in there. The start is a bit clunky because plot points involving the main character need to get established. I thought Wodehouse spent a bit too much time on the early scenes in London. He brings in a ton of different characters all working on different threads through the middle of the book. In the end he ties it all together, but the way he chose to do it seemed a bit off. While I was reading it I actually thought of a way it could have tied out better, but I can't remember it now and might never again.

Not the strongest Wodehouse book, but still a fun read.

11. Terry Pratchett "Wyrd Sisters"

I finished the re-read of "Wyrd Sisters" while on vacation. I had forgotten just how unresolved Pratchett left many of the story lines in this one. He really had fun bashing tropes in this one and the refusal to resolve everything feels like more of that. Granny is much more Granny in this one, but hasn't quite jelled into her final state. Nanny springs into action basically complete. After reading this one, I almost feel like I have to read one of Jasper Fforde's "Fool" series to get my full dose of Shakespeare pastiche.