Where Else You Can Find Me

The recent trashfires at Twitter have gotten me off my sluggish ass to set up a new social media account at Mastodon earlier tonight. Here's a link to the paint's-still-wet page:

https://mstdn.plus/@BruceArthursAZ

I have a second account on Twitter, GOBI - Great Old Book Illustrations, which presents (mostly) 19th-century book illustrations found (mostly) on the British National Library's huge image archive on Flickr, with some cleanup & adjustments in Paintshop Pro. Haven't set up a Mastodon account for it yet; will edit this post as soon as I have a URL available.

No one knows if Twitter will last at all, or in what form and ambience if it does. I'll continue to post and comment on Twitter for now, but every day it feels like the Weeping Angels are getting closer and closer.  For the moment, I'll try to post at both Mastodon and Twitter, where suitable. 

Here are Twitter links to my accounts there, at least as long as they continue to exist:

My general account: https://twitter.com/BruceArthursAZ 

And the "GOBI - Great Old Book Illustrations" account: https://twitter.com/BruceArthurs4 

REVIEW: MICHAEL'S CRAG, by Grant Allen, 1893

MICHAEL'S CRAG is an 1893 novella by Grant Allen, a popular Victorian writer of fiction and non-fiction alike. I came across it via my "GOBI - Great Old Book Illustrations" account on Twitter, where I featured several of the 350 silhouette-styled illustrations by father-son artists Francis Carruthers Gould and Alec Carruthers Gould that originally appeared in the book's margins. The fine mustachioed gentleman at right is one of the illustrations.

I found the novella both intriguing and confounding. Set in the Cornwall coast of England, a very big “Chekhov’s Gun” is revealed early on; one of the main characters, Trevennack, an important figure in the Admiralty, is actually the Archangel Michael… or so he believes himself to be. He is, of course, utterly delusional.

So my expectation was that at some point Trevennack’s delusion would be revealed to more than just his long-suffering and horrified wife, that the Chekhov’s Gun would be fired, and various dramatic or comedic consequences would result. (The film THE RULING CLASS was in the back of my mind.)

But… that never happens. When Trevennack’s delusion finally take full occupancy of his mind, it’s when he is alone in the countryside, where he sees a large aggressive black ram as Satan, leading to a struggle that ends in a fatal fall over a cliff. Only his wife, and the doctor whose autopsy discovers a large blood clot in Trevennack’s brain, know the truth. None of the other characters, Trevennack’s daughter or friends or acquaintances, ever know more than that he sometimes said strange things or acted oddly.

My initial reaction was “Well, this Grant Allen fellow didn’t know how to structure or plot a story very well.” But then I thought about it some more, and realized that the entire purpose of the novella was to serve as a paean to British reticence and propriety.

Because insanity wasn’t just a shameful thing to have in your family, it was a blight on your family, as madness was still largely believed to be an inheritable trait, and if there was even a possibility that Trevennack’s daughter Cleer might ever inherit her father’s madness, her marriage prospects would be ruined, along with the family’s social standing.

So a good part of the story, the sections where we see Trevennack’s inner mind, is about his inner struggle to maintain a normal appearance and behavior. Because, up until his final end, there’s still a small portion of Trevennack’s mind that realizes his angelic nature can only be a delusion, even though he also knows, is also certain, that he is in deed and in fact the Archangel Michael. So, for propriety and for the sake of his family, Trevennack manages to keep that British “stiff upper lip” and proper behavior almost until the very last.

Looked at from that perspective, Trevennack’s death, and the solitude of its circumstance, is the happy ending of the story. He maintained propriety. He maintained appearances. He ensured the continued fortune and fates of his family. He maintained the status quo of upper-class British society.

The paean to propriety is further reinforced by the secondary plot narrative. The daughter, Cleer, mis-times a walk out to a rugged, rocky tidal island (where a pathway is revealed at low tide) and is stranded when the evening high tide comes in. A prospective suitor, Eustace, tries to swim the gap in a dimwitted attempt to rescue Cleer, only to barely reach the island, badly battered and bruised from being tossed among the rocks. So both Cleer and Eustace are stranded overnight on the epynomous crag until low tide returns.

Well! An unmarried couple spending the night together?! Alone?! That’s a scandal, sir, a scandal! (Even if the night was spent cold, wet, rained upon, and with Eustace barely able to move.) So of course the two of them must be married now! No acceptable alternative exists! Ha-rumph! So once again the rigid rules of society follow their inevitable, respectable path.

So, if you want a peek at British societal customs and attitudes circa the 1890s, MICHAEL’S CRAG is actually a pretty good choice, I think. The book also features some very effective descriptions of the Cornwall countryside and coast, making it seem both bleak and beautiful.

(first appeared, in slightly different form, in Last Stage For Silverworld, March 2022)

Blowing the Dust Off This Blog

Most of my social media has been via Twitter for... a while. But occasionally I still feel the need for a longer format.  And, somewhat less occasionally, I actually find the time to write those longer pieces.

So, cranking up the good intentions (oh, that's a dangerous phrase), I'm going to try and start posting stuff on Undulant Fever more often. (A fair deal of material, like the review of a vintage book I'll be putting into a separate post, may be reprinted from Last Stage For Silverworld, a print-only apazine I've been doing since 1979.)

Checking the "Statistics" page for this blog, I'm somewhat amazed to find that a handful of people are still looking at (or at least having it pop up in Google results) UF every day. Guess I'll find out if having new material drives those numbers up.

(illustration by Christiana Mary Demain Hammond, 1893)

Some Words Sparked By My High School's Upcoming Reunion

My old high school's 50-Year Reunion (delayed a year by the pandemic) is upcoming in October. Received an email about it, with a link to a website that helps reunion committees organize the things. Posted a few things on my profile there, which I though I'd share here (where, honestly, it's more likely to be read).

First was a synopsis of my life since high school:

After high school, I went to ASU for several years, served in the US Army for three years, went back to college for a while, worked as a legal secretary, spent thirty years with the US Postal Service, then another dozen years working in the security field. Finally took full retirement in March 2020, which was pretty good timing to start spending most of my days at home.

Also in there, I somehow ended up with a wife and stepson. Hilde and I have been together for 45 years. I don't believe in miracles as a general rule, but that comes as close as anything can. I'd always expected to probably end up one of those wild-eyed hermits who live in a shack in the deep woods.

And... my interest in science fiction (which was a source of distress and disapproval from teachers and family alike, back in those days before every blockbuster movie was sci-fi; my Twitter profile reads "Mom always said reading science fiction would rot my mind, ruin my morals, and lead to hanging out with disreputable characters. Thank God, she was right.") lead to occasional success with writing the stuff. I've had about twenty short stories published over the years (including several in the mystery/crime fiction genre), edited two anthologies, and...

...wrote an episode of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. ("Clues", 4th Season, 1991). That moment when the writer credits roll by is what I call "My one-point-five seconds of fame."

After managing to sell that script, I spent several years trying to sell movie scripts; some got expressions of interest from and meetings with production companies, but no one ever put money or a contract on the table.

(Scriptwriting is tremendously difficult to break into, and almost as hard to stay in. Now that I'm retired, I'm thinking of giving it another shot.)

There you go; fifty years in just over three hundred words.

The reunion site also asked for my "Favorite School Story". Wel-l-l-l-l, "favorite" isn't a word I've ever applied to my high school experiences. And after fifty years, my fucks-to-give supply has grown low enough to not whitewash what was mostly an unhappy time:

What I most remember about high school is that a good day was being just numb, instead of miserable. I remember feeling disassociated from the school, the teachers, and the other students. Not so much ostracized (though there were definite moments of that) as irrelevant and invisible to almost everyone else.

I had "acquaintances" with other students; some were even "friendly acquaintances". But there were only a very scant handful of people I considered actual "friends".

Remember Richard S. Cantor, the journalism teacher? He let the journalism room he oversaw be a refuge for outsiders and weirdos like me. Not sure I would have survived high school without that safe space to occasionally retreat to.

(When I first got onto the Internet, my first "find people you knew" search was for Mr. Cantor. It led me to his obituary; he'd died of cancer a few years before, still in his early 50's. I'm sorry I was never able to let him know how much his empathy meant, to me and others.)

Sorry if you were expecting to read a feel-good story. For some of us, high school wasn't the wonderful experience a lot of people like to pretend it was.

Out of a graduating class of over 700, only a few dozen have registered on the reunion page so far, and only a handful have bought tickets to the reunion dinner. And (as with previous reunion years), almost everyone that I might be interested in seeing or talking with again is on the "Missing" list. So I'm not likely to attend.

A Few Thots On Some Old Tarzan Movies

Hilde and I have been watching old Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies from the 1930s & '40s, via DVDs from Netflix. Not all were available, but we’ve watched TARZAN AND HIS MATE, TARZAN FINDS A SON, TARZAN’S SECRET TREASURE, and TARZAN’S NEW YORK ADVENTURE.

TARZAN AND HIS MATE was filmed before the prudishness of the Hays Code began in 1934, but released into theaters as the Code was starting to be put into effect. Maureen O'Sullivan's very skimpy outfit (see below) came in for some side-eye from Code censors, but the biggie was the nude swimming scene with O'Sullivan (actually her stunt double) and Weismuller (who kept his loincloth on). Only early theater audiences saw the original swim; a more modest version was substituted for later showings. The Netflix DVD we watched included the original version.

These…are not great movies. There’s a nostalgia factor in re-watching them. (I saw a lot as part of Saturday morning tv-watching growing up; it was cartoons in the early morning, then adventure and monster movies on the local channel in later morning.) With modern eyes, I can’t help noticing the many faults. Even overlooking the “of their time” ethnic stereotypes, the writing, acting, direction, etc. are, for the most part, pretty damn stiff and unimpressive. And there are a lot of plot elements recycled from movie to movie.

Some takeaways:

• The greatest dangers in the jungle are from stock footage
• Never trust a man with a thin mustache.
• If you’re an old man with a sense of decency, make sure your life insurance is paid up.
• Pretty sure Boy grew up to become The Professor on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, where he recreated many of the devices in Tarzan’s treehouse.
• Where the hell did Tumbo go?
• Cheeta is an asshole.

(a somewhat shorter version of this piece first appeared as a comment at File 770)

Is The... *A* Future Finally Imminent?

Hilde and I were able to get Covid-19 vaccine shots recently. After spending the last year of our lives in mostly a holding pattern, we may finally be able to slowly begin resuming a more normal pattern of life.

April 8th will be two weeks after my second Pfizer shot, and I’ll feel (somewhat) more secure about adding more errands out to more locations more frequently. (Keeping trips outside the house to 1 or 2 a week for the last year has sometimes been a hassle.)

One of the first things to do is make an appointment for a new eye exam and new glasses. On Twitter and elsewhere, I've posted various eyepos I’ve made trying to read small print on my phone. From a few says ago: Misread someone tweeting “my bed covered with dice” as “my bed covered with lice”. Just a bit startling until I took a second, closer look.

(I actually had “new exam & glasses” on the post-retirement to-do list last March, but then the country began locking down just before I retired, and any non-essential appointments were pushed back. For a few months, he said, laughing weakly. I needed new glasses a year ago, and need them more now.)

Also going to try going to the gym every day if I can. And by “going to the gym” I mean walking to the EOS Fitness place that took over the old Safeway grocery's space last year, and walking back home again. (Nope, still not going to go inside any gym yet.) That’s about a 3-mile walk altogether, which maybe will help shed the ten pounds or so I’ve gained in the last year for some inexplicable reason.

(I felt kind of sorry for that EOS location. Their “grand opening” was in the middle of rising alarm about Covid-19, when people began avoiding gyms and fitness centers in droves. They were only open for in-person attendance for about a week before they had to close their doors and try to transition to online video classes for customers, for the duration of the lockdown. One of their ads during that increasingly dire week proclaimed “WE HAVE TOILET PAPER!”)

The local libraries have served as a good indicator of whether it’s safe to ease up on social restrictions. They were locked down for several months, with only curbside pickup. My local branch currently has a “mini-library” set up in one of their meeting rooms, with a smaller selection of the most popular books and DVDs on its shelves (you can request a hold for a title from the full inventory; patrons just can’t go browsing in the full public spaces yet).and with mask and social distancing guidelines enforced. Local politicians (rom city-level up to Arizona's dumbass governor Doug Ducey) are pushing for full re-opening, but librarians have been pushing back successfully so far.

I’ve only been back to the local library branch once in the past year, instead using Overdrive to borrow works (mostly audiobooks, and an occasional ebook) to sate my library jones instead. Miss being able to drop in and browse the shelves when I want, and especially the monthly meetings for the local writers workshop.

(After a few months off, the writers workshop moved to Zoom when it became clear the library meeting rooms we used wouldn’t be available again for a long… long… time. But it’s not quite the same as meeting in person.)

And of course my outside trips will still be masked and distanced. If Arizona gets down to zero Covid deaths for a week, I might (might) start thinking about the possibility of bare-faced gallivanting. Zero Covid hospitalizations, even better. Zero cases, best scenario of all.

But it looks like there's slow and mostly steady progress toward a post-Covid future. It would be even steadier if there was less masking-resistance, consistent social distancing, and end to anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, and fewer politicians trying to wish a post-Covid economy into being by lifting restrictions too early and too fully.

(a slightly different version of this piece first appeared as a comment on File 770)

From September 2020, when my
"Crazy Old Homeless Guy" quarantine-look
was at its peak.

My Writing 2020: Award Eligibility Post

So one of the things writers are supposed to do is publicize their work, and one of the ways to do that is to put a year-end roundup of published work on their website or blog.

I had two pieces of work published in 2020. The first, in January, appeared in online UK horror magazine DREAM OF SHADOWS. "Voices, In A Cedar-Scented Darkness" (short story, 1030 words) was available online for six months. DoS takes a year of stories published online between June and May and makes them available in a printed/ebook collection. The Dream of Shadows Monthly Stories for 2019-2020, including "Voices, In A Cedar-Scented Darkness", is available on Amazon; 99¢ for ebook, $3.99 for print.

My second published work for 2020 was "The Child-Eating Forest Speaks Its Mind", a long poem published in Liminality Magazine, Issue #26, Winter 2020-2021, just out a few days ago. I rarely take a stab at poetry, but this one worked out pretty well, I felt. I'm curious to see what kind of reaction it gets, so go ahead and take a look. (I've liked a good deal of the other poetry Liminality has published, too.)

Are either of these award quality? I'm prejudiced, but editors thought enough of them to purchase and publish them. Anything further depends on how many people actually read the story and poem, and what they think of them. (There usually isn't much feedback on short fiction or poetry, and even less when it gets published in small press venues. Good thing the main motivation for my writing is to satisfy myself.)

Review in Brief: MURDER IN THE NAVY by Ed McBain

I just finished reading an early (1955) Ed McBain novel (written as Richard Marsten), MURDER IN THE NAVY. Some nice noir elements (the naval officer hero drinks too much, has a cynical worldview, and has his quest complicated by superiors who want to sweep a murder under the rug).

But the main female character continuously places herself into risky or dangerous situations with a combination of naivete, foolishness, and just plain outright stupidity.

Add in the stereotype of Navy sailors who not only blatantly troll for sex, but succeed more often than not, and I was left rolling my eyes and feeling more than a little uncomfortable for reading the book.

Sadly (since I've enjoyed a number of McBain's 87th Precinct books), not recommended.

The "Hollywood" Ending, and a profound uneasiness

Having watched the "Hollywood" mini-series from Netflix, I came away being both very impressed by many aspects, but uncomfortable --very uncomfortable-- with how the series was concluded.

[MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD]

I watched "Hollywood" without having heard much about it. Caught a trailer, looked good, and How-Hollywood-Sausage-Gets-Made is one of my own interests, so went into it fairly cold, almost like catching a sneak preview of a film.

"Hollywood" is set in Post-WW2 Hollywood...but not quite. My first impression was that it was a story overlaying fictional characters, set in a fictional studio, onto actual Hollywood history. But then real people from Hollywood history (Rock Hudson and his agent Henry Wilson, in particular) entered the story line as prominent characters...

...and the story became an alternate history of Hollywood, rather than a fictional overlay. Or an uncomfortable mashup of both. (In real life, Hudson was first signed as a contract player by Universal, not the fictional Ace Studios depicted here.) Or something. I wasn't certain where the plot was heading.

[AGAIN, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. SPECIFIC PLOT POINTS! DETAILS! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!]

Curt and the Green Penis

CurtStubbs passed away September 14, 2019. He’d been a friend to many, and to Hilde and me for over forty years. 

We didn’t see Curt as often after he moved to Tucson in the mid-1980s, but we always tried to have dinner with him at TusCon, the annual SF convention there. Curt struggled with a lot of health and financial issues through most of his life, but he seemed to have found a satisfying social niche in poetry, both his own and acting as a docent for the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona; he was also active in Tucson’s gay community. And he still enjoyed reading science fiction and attending an occasional convention. For years, he was the cook for the traditional Dead Dog Chile served on the last day of each year’s TusCon; there have been a lot of good bowls of chile served there over the years, but Curt’s (sorry, you later chile chefs) was the best.

When he was younger, and before some of his health issues surfaced, Curt tended to party hard. This led to some memorable anecdotes, and Curt’s fannish nickname of Captain Coors.

This is one of the stories from those early years:

---------

One morning, after a particularly hard night of partying and drinking, Curt woke up on the floor of the party apartment. He quickly realized two things:

• He wasn’t wearing any clothes, and,
• Sometime during the night, while Curt was unconscious, someone had decided to paint Curt’s penis green.

And then Curt looked at a clock, and realized a third thing:

• He had an important job interview scheduled for that morning, and there were less than twenty minutes before it was supposed to take place.

A moment of wild mental panic ensued: “My penis is green! Job interview! Green penis! Job interview!”

Curt had to make a choice. He found his scattered clothing, pulled pants on over his engreened penis, added shirt and shoes and a quick brush through his hair, and rushed out to make the job interview on time. Every minute on the way, the thoughts “I have a green penis. Someone painted my penis green. I have a green penis,” looped through his head.

Curt arrived to the interview on time, barely, still thinking “My penis is green. I have a green penis,” in the back of his mind

Somehow, he’s able to give coherent answers to the job interviewer. Things seem to be going well. But Curt’s mind is still repeating, “I have a green penis. I have a green penis. Oh, God-d-d-d-d-d, I have a green penis.”

“Well, that’s the end of the formal questions,” the interviewer finally says. He looks Curt straight in the eye, and asks:

“Is there anything else about yourself you’d like to tell us, Mr. Stubbs?”

Curt did not get the job.

ONE-BUCK BOOK REVIEW: This Strange Engine, by Philip Ligon

In the same vein as my occasional "The Brave Free Books", I'm hoping "One-Buck Book Review" will turn into an ongoing series reviewing books that I've bought for a dollar or less. A lot of these tend to be ebooks offered at 99 cents as a promotional sale, frequently for the first book in a series; I'll note the regular price when needed.

Fair warning: I try not to be overly negative, but when a book has flaws that lessen my reading experience, I'll point them out. (A lot of the 99-cent sales are from indie/self-published writers who tend to be at an early point in their writing careers. Sometimes this means their craft skills don't match up with their ambition or goals. Occupational hazard of writing.)

So, the first offering: THIS STRANGE ENGINE, by Philip Ligon. Ebook, regular price 3.99, I bought it on sale for 99 cents. Published by Silver Empire, 419 pages. Amazon link.

Steampunk fantasy mix. A portal to a fantasy world has introduced magic and magical creatures (elves, gnomes, cyclops, dragons, etc.) into Victorian England. Inevitably, some humans use the new resources and abilities to gather power and wealth for themselves. Ash, a disgraced cleric, is trapped under the thumb of the mysterious Misters, who coerce him into stealing magical objects. Aided by fellow friends in the criminal world (an invisible thief, a techno-gnome, and a barmaid with a hidden past). One of their opponents is Ash's ex-wife, who betrayed and tried to murder him, the start of the cascade failure that lead to his current dilemma and situation.

Adventures and disasters ensue. First in a series, this volume leaves many questions open, particularly regarding that portal to a fantasy world. I'll hazard a guess that in a later book, the portal will be traveled thru and adventures take place in the fae world.

All this is a good set-up, with a lot of possibilities. Unfortunately, two things kept me from enjoying the book as much as I had expected and hoped.

1) Ostensibly set in Victorian England, it felt very much set in the generic pseudo-England common to so very, very many fantasy novels. Steampunk, in my experience, usually offers stronger references to the history and culture of actual Victorian times. The "Victorian" details seemed scant and tacked onto the narrative.

2) My biggest problem, though, was Ash. He is one of the most whiny, self-pitying "Woe is me, my life sucks" characters I've ever encountered. Spending 400+ pages with the guy felt like a long slog through sad, depressed mud. I wanted to smack him upside the head and and say, "Your ex-wife has tried to KILL you. REPEATEDLY. Get a CLUE, you DUMBSHIT." (Note: Other characters give basically that same advice, over and over again, to Ash in the course of the book. To no avail.). It's only near the very end of the book that Ash finally gets a glimmer of self-realization and hope for himself.

The other characters were a lot more enjoyable. If the thief, the gnome, and the barmaid were to ditch loser Ash and go off on their own adventures, I'd probably read *that* book. They're kinda fun, aside from their inexplicable decisions to repeatedly stick by Ash.. But I'm reluctant to spend more time with Ash.

Overall impression: Interesting setup, but I felt the "Victorian" setting should have either been stronger, or simply go with the Standard Fantasy Setting it seemed to mostly be. Action scenes are well done. I felt making Ash such a completely miserable, self-loathing character was a poor choice.

Three out of five stars. I can see Philip Ligon set himself some ambitious goals for the story, but I came away feeling he didn't fully succeed.

Blast From The Past: 102 Great Novels, as of 1962-63

Among the papers of our friend Anne Braude, who passed away in 2009, I found a small pamphlet, a single folded sheet yellowed and brittle with age, that listed “102 Great Novels”. The pamphlet was distributed by the Scottsdale Public Library, and its list “COMPILED BY NELLENE SMITH, DIRECTOR”. Ms. Smith’s name dates the list to 1962 or 63 (thanks, Google!).

So, nearly sixty years ago, these were the books thought listing as “Great”. I thought it might be interesting to see how many still might be recognized as Great, or recognized at all after sixty years.

The list:

• A Death In The Family, Agee
• Moses, Asch
• Sense and Sensibility, Austen
• Pere Goriot, Balzac
• The Old Wives’ Tale, Bennett
• The Death of the Heart, Bowen
• Jane Eyre, Bronte
• Wuthering Heights, Bronte
• The Good Earth, Buck
• The Way of All Flesh, Butler
• Plague, Camus
• Death Comes For The Archbishop, Cather
• The Horse’s Mouth, Cary
• Don Quixote, Cervantes
• Greenwillow, Chute
• Lord Jim, Conrad
• The Just and the Unjust, Cozzens
• The Red Badge of Courage, Crane
• David Copperfield, Dickens
• U. S. A., Dos Passos
• The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
• An American Tragedy, Dreiser
• Advise and Consent, Drury
• The Three Musketeers, Dumas
• Rebecca, du Maurier
• Justine, Durrell
• Middlemarch, Eliot
• Light In August, Faulkner
• The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
• Madame Bovary, Flaubert
• A Passage To India, Forster
• The Forsythe Saga, Galsworthy
• The Cypresses Believe In God, Gironella
• Vein of Iron, Glasgow
• Dead Souls, Gogol
• I, Claudius, Graves
• Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Hardy
• The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne
• The Old Man of the Sea, Hemingway
• The Wall, Hershey
• The Rise of Silas Lapham, Howells
• Green Mansions, Hudson
• The Fox In the Attic, Hughes
• Les Miserables, Hugo
• Brave New World, Huxley
• The Wings of the Dove, James
• Ulysses, Joyce
• Trial, Kafka
• Zorba the Greek, Kazantzakis
• Darkness At Noon, Koestler
• The Leopard, Lampedusa
• Main Street, Lewis
• The Call of the Wild, London
• Epitaph For the Small Winner, Machado de Assis
• The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, McCullers
• The Watch That Ends the Night, McLennan
• The Magic Mountain, Mann
• Nectar In A Sieve, Markandaya
• Point of No Return, Marquand
• Of Human Bondage, Maugham
• Therese, Mauriac
• Moby Dick, Melville
• Gone With the Wind, Mitchell
• The Cruel Sea, Montsarrat
• Two Women, Moravia
• The Tale of the Genji, Murasaki
• Nineteen Eighty Four, Orwell
• Dr. Zhivago, Paternak
• Cry, The Beloved Country, Paton
• Ship of Fools, Porter
• The Man On A Donkey, Prescott
• Remembrance of Things Past, Proust
• All Quiet On the Western Front, Remarque
• The King Must Die, Renault
• The Trees, Richter
• Jean Christophe, Rolland
• Giants In the Earth, Rolvaag
• The Catcher In the Rye, Salinger
• The Human Comedy, Saroyan
• Ivanhoe, Scott
• Fontamara, Silone
• Strangers and Brothers, Snow
• The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
• The Red and the Black, Stendahl
• Treasure Island, Stevenson
• The Travels of Jamie McPheeters, Taylor
• Vanity Fair, Thanckeray
• War and Peace, Tolstoy
• Barchester Towers, Trollope
• Dream of the Red Chamber, Tsao-Hsueh-Chin
• Torrents of Spring, Turgenev
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain
• Kristin Lavransdatter, Undset
• Candide, Voltaire
• The Egyptian, Waltari
• All The King’s Men, Warren
• Ethan Frome, Wharton
• The Once and Future King, White
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Wilder
• Look Homeward, Angel, Wolfe
• Memories of Hadrian, Yourcenar

The small pamphlet concludes with this statement from Nellene Smith: “There are so many fine novels that they all couldn’t be placed on a small list. However, I have presented a variety of classics and some works of contemporary authors whose writing is exceptional. –Nellene Smith”

MY READING/LISTENING, 2018

2018 READING

(For some reason, the first line of each paragraph is longer than the rest. Looks okay on a desktop monitor, but on mobile that first line continues off-screen to the right. Attempts to correct it haven't succeeded. Other formatting glitches and idiosyncrasies have been cleaned up, I'm pretty sure.)

My reading in 2018 was as usual a mixed bag, mostly fiction and some non-fiction, ranging from works published in the last few years to work from decades ago. Some I read in printed editions, others in digital format on my smartphone. A fairly large number were listened to as audiobooks.

(My workplace allows listening to music or audiobooks so long as one ear is left unobstructed; so a Bluetooth earpiece lets me add an extra book to my “reading” about every one to two weeks.)

I also listen to a pretty large number of fiction podcasts, but that adds up to somewhere around 400-500 short stories a year, and read probably around half a dozen or so short story anthologies above and beyond that. I haven’t kept lists of those like I have longer works. If I manage to somehow get myself super-organized in the coming year, I might maintain a list of podcasts and stories I particularly enjoy.

Podcasts I listen to: Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Toasted Cake and (under the Escape Artists umbrella) EscapePod, PodCastle,and PseudoPod. 2018 also saw the return of Norm Sherman’s Drabblecast (“Strange stories by strange authors for strange listeners”), which I’ve found highly enjoyable. Outside the dedicated SF/F/H podcasts, I also listen to the mystery podcasts from Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen magazines, the New Yorker’s The Writer’s Voice, the BBC’s Drama of the Week, and Levar Burton Reads. (Burton chooses a fairly large share of SF/F stories to read, but not exclusively.)

A complete reading list for 2018 will be below, but the following were books I particularly enjoyed:

DAUGHTER OF MYSTERY by Heather Rose Jones was probably my favorite of 2018. Some books and writers get buzz and reputation by emphasizing one particular aspect of storytelling; plot, setting, characters, worldbuilding. What particularly struck me about DOM was how well balanced all those aspects were. Every page of this swords-and-manners (with Fantasy Lite aspects) story ran smoothly; it allowed me to fall fully into the story, to not be aware there was a writer pulling strings behind everything. Excellently done, and I have several more of Jones’ books in my TBR pile now.

A pair of outstanding novellas, THE ARMORED SAINT and THE QUEEN OF CROWS, came from Myke Cole in 2018, the first two parts of a trilogy. Medieval-style setting with a brutal theocracy that will straight up murder individuals or entire towns suspected of  being tainted with deviltry. A young woman, Heloise, comes into possession of a suit of powered (via a steam-engine-like technology) armor and is reluctantly forced into revolt against the theocracy. Cole pulls no punches about the costs involved in such a revolt; lives are upended, homes destroyed, friendships betrayed, loved ones lost, even many who survive still suffer injury and maiming. The mental and emotional toll on Heloise and others is also brought out. One aspect of Heloise’s world that Cole hasn’t focused on so far is that the “devils” are real, ripping into our world (literally, through the bodies of the possessed) and wreaking murderous havoc; so the theocracy, despite its brutality and corruption, actually is protecting the world from chaos. If Heloise’ revolt is successful, what would replace the theocracy and its protection? Perhaps that question will be one of the complications in the forthcoming final part of the trilogy.

• Some other books I read with notably grim, violent settings and situations included:TRAIL OF LIGHTNING by Rebecca Roanhorse. In an altered America where gods and magic have returned to Native American lands, monsters have returned as well. A young woman raised by a demigod to hunt and kill monsters has to deal with outsider and abandonment issues, plus past trauma. She serves the People, but is not fully one of them.
• THE STARS ARE LEGION by Kameron Hurley. I will confess, I found the cosmology of Hurley’s universe in TSAL difficult to grasp. But it seems in the far, far future when much of the natural universe has gone cold and dark, there are enclaves of created systems and planets, with almost continuous war between planets for scarce and dwindling resources. Life is struggle on both larger and smaller scales, and ruthlessness is a virtue and a necessity. I found the book engrossing regardless, in part because the society and background were so mysterious and disturbing.
• UNDER THE PENDULUM SUN by Jeanette Ng was another book where the background and society were uncertain, but in this case that uncertainty is an integral and deliberate part of the book. The lands of Fae are real, reachable by ships that have found themselves lost upon the sea. Ways to become deliberately lost enable a measure of trade and commerce with the Fae. In addition to such commercial interests, missionaries travel to the Faelands to try to convert the heathen Fae to Christianity, with exceedingly rare success. The sister of one such missionary follows him to Fae, where she finds the “reality” of Fae lands is very flexible indeed, an uncertainty matched only by the (malicious?) fickleness and mystery of the Fae themselves. This is a grimness of the mind, and both brother and sister find their own weaknesses, exacerbated by the strange and uncertain land and beings around them, lead them into unwise actions and decisions.
• Another work of psychological grimness is FORTRESS AT THE END OF TIME by J.M. McDermott. “Travel” between stars is accomplished by sending data to duplicates a person’s body and mind at the receiving end; from the original’s viewpoint nothing has happened but the duplicate will spend the rest of its life at the destination point. FATEOT takes place in a military space station orbiting a harsh planet at the ass-end of nowhere, listening for signs of an alien enemy that may never come. I caught notes of Dostoevsky, Kafka and Joseph Conrad in the style and narrative, though McDermott cites THE TARTAR STEPPE by Dino Buzzati and THE OPPOSING SHORE by Julian Graq as the major influences.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I don’t mind grim in my reading. (Though I don’t really like the term “grimdark”; somehow, for me, the term seems just a bit coy and… twee?)

Less grim, but with plenty of more traditional action and political maneuvering:

• MEDUSA UPLOADED by Emily Devenport
• THE TIGER’S DAUGHTER by K. Arsenault Rivera
• BEHIND THE THRONE by K.B. Wagers
• A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC, by V.E. Schwab
• BINTI by Nnedi Okorafor
• THE ACCIDENTAL WAR, by Walter Jon Williams

In a lighter tone, I enjoyed Marshall Ryan Maresca’s LADY HENTERMAN’S WARDROBE, second in his “Streets of Maradaine” series. Think the tv series LEVERAGE set in a well-developed fantasy world and city. (Maresca has several other series, with different characters and premises, set in Maradaine.) When their neighborhood is burned out by arson (in the first volume, THE HOVER ALLEY CREW), a group of criminals and former criminals join together to try and find out the reasons and perpetrators behind the devastating fire. Break-ins, chases, disguises and deceptions ensue. As is common for breakneck caper stories, the clever plans only work until Something Goes Wrong, with a mad scramble to improvise their way out of disaster quickly following. Very enjoyable and well-written.

Among the stories in THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING, a collection by Nick Mamatas, I particularly enjoyed the short novel “Under My Roof”. wherein a suburban father builds a DIY nuclear bomb, then declares his house and the lot it stands on a separate country. The absurdity is further heightened by the family’s young son, secretly a powerful mind-reader whose wry sardonic commentary on the real thoughts and motives of other characters adds much to the comedy.

Among the older books I read or re-read in 2018 was Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ. There’ve been a number of online discussion and essays the last decade or so over how many of the “Classic” SF or fantasy works are still exemplary or at least satisfying, and how many have been visited by the Suck Fairy upon reading in the present day. (Heinlein’s name and works tends to be mentioned a lot in those discussions.) Re-reading CANTICLE after about fifty years, I found it held up very well. Basic premise, for any I’d-lose-at-Jeopardy people reading this: Three linked novellas, roughly 600, 1200 and 1800 years after a nuclear war (the “Flame Deluge”) devastates Earth, followed by social upheaval among survivors that destroys most remaining knowledge and technology. Each story centers around the monastery of the Blessed (later Saint) Leibowitz, where a relative few salvaged shreds of knowledge, documents and books have been preserved and copied and re-copied for centuries.  Each section deals with how the monastery, and the beliefs and faith of the monks doing its work, react to game-changing developments: a trove of pre-nuclear documents, some relating directly to the life of Leibowitz, is discovered; six centuries later, science and technology are making a comeback, but threatened by the return of large nation-states and large-scale war; and, in the final section, science has advanced past the level existing before the Flame Deluge, making space travel a possibility, but also enabling the return of nuclear weapons which may destroy the Earth a second and final time before generation ships can establish new human footholds on other planets. Miller’s characters deal with doubt and uncertainty about their choices and beliefs in a dangerous and risky world. No Suck Fairy here.

Most of my reading is in the SF or Fantasy genres, but I also read occasionally in other genres, particularly mysteries and suspense. An older mystery I enjoyed was Philip Kerr’s 1989 MARCH VIOLETS. Set in 1930’s Germany when the Nazi party was consolidating its hold over German society, a private detective has to navigate corrupt bureaucracies and police, and the criminal underworld, in the course of investigating a murder and theft. Reading about the gradual normalization and acceptance of Nazi programs and atrocities was disturbing, not least because the events and history portrayed in Kerr’s novel parallel in many ways the actions of America’s own Trump administration.

Jordan Harper’s debut suspense novel SHE RIDES SHOTGUN was a thrill ride of a story. A somewhat ambivalent member of a white power prison gang, days before his scheduled release, has to kill one of the other members in self-defense. (Harper doesn’t go deeply how much his protagonist really buys into the white supremacist mindset -- in large part because for most of the book simple survival is the top and only priority --  but it seems he signed on primarily because in prison you either belong to a gang or you’re prey.) In result, a “kill order” is issued (including to members outside the prison) not only on him, but also on his entire family, the ex-wife and daughter left behind when he entered prison. He walks out of prison barely in time to avoid dying there, isn’t able to save his ex-wife but swoops up his pre-teen daughter just as she gets out of school. It’s a race to stay ahead of an entire gang focused on murdering them. When it becomes clear the pursuit will not stop until he and his daughter are dead, the decision is made to stop running away and fight back. To do that, he had to teach his daughter how to fight, how to shoot, how to kill. The bond between father and daughter, negligible at first, grows throughout the process and training. But what is that training doing to the girl’s bonds and relationship with society at large?

Two non-fiction books I particularly enjoyed:

ASSASSINATION VACATION by Sarah Vowell. I actually listened to the audiobook by mistake, having borrowed it from Overdrive having somehow thought it was a theme anthology of crime stories. No, actually it’s Vowell’s travelogue of sites relating to Presidential assassinations, with lots of interesting history and trivia along the way. But it’s also at times hilariously funny, because of Vowell’s self-deprecating humor. (She recognizes being obsessed with assassinations is a Pretty Freaking Weird hobby.)

UNDER THE RED SEA SUN by Edward Ellsberg. In 1942, the essential port of Massawa in Eritrea on the Red Sea was taken from the Italian forces that had occupied it, but not before the Italians blocked the port’s use by scuttling and booby-trapping numerous ships and the on-shore shops and facilities. Ellsberg, a maritime salvage expert was given the “impossible” task of reclaiming the port for use by the Allies, but with virtually no men, no equipment and no money, further complicated by corruption and incompetence in the military and civilian bureaucracies. A fascinating memoir of resourcefulness and ingenuity in the face of nearly overwhelming obstacles.

Full list for 2018:

JANUARY

Company of Lies, Karen Maitland

The Great West Detective Agency, Jackson Lowry (Robert Vardeman)

The Stars Are Legion, Kameron Hurley

Jane Steele, Lindsay Faye

The Wrong Stars, Tim Pratt

FEBRUARY

The Darkest Part of the Forest, Holly Black

Artemis, Andy Weir

Daughter of Mystery, Heather Rose Jones

Fortress At the End of Time, J.M. McDermott

Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan

MARCH

Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire

Bitter Greens, Kate Forsyth

The Moving Target, Ross MacDonald

Lady Henterman's Wardrobe, Marshall Ryan Maresca

Altered America, Cat Rambo

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel

Quillifer, Walter Jon Williams

APRIL

Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell

Before I Fall, Lauren Oliver

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

The Starlit Wood, Ed. Wolfe & ???

MAY

Beneath the Sugar Sky, Seanan McGuire

Hunger Makes The Wolf, Alex Wells

Aegypt, John Crowley

Alternate Routes, Tim Powers

Matchup, ed. Lee Child

She Rides Shotgun, Jordan Harper

The Armored Saint, Myke Cole

JUNE

The Serpent of Venice, Christopher Moore

Dogs Don't Lie, Clea Simon

March Violets, Philip Kerr

Medusa Uploaded, Emily Devenport

Hall of Heroes, ed. Fellowship of Fantasy

JULY

A Fierce Radiance, Lauren Belfer

The Tiger's Daughter, K Arsenault Rivera

Last Hope Island, Lynne Olson

AUGUST

The Paper Menagerie, Ken Liu

Behind the Throne, K.B. Wagers

Binti, Nnedi Okorafor

SPQR, Mary Beard

The City Stained Red, Sam Sykes

Stone Mad, Elizabeth Bear

SEPTEMBER

Night Has A Thousand Eyes, Cornell Woolrich

Sparrow Hill Road, Seanan McGuire

Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse

A Darker Shade of Magic, V. E. Schwab

The Accidental War, Walter Jon Williams

OCTOBER

Trouble Is My Business, Raymond Chandler

Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor

Selections from Dreamsongs, Vol. 1 (audio), George RR Martin

The Cobbler's Boy, Elizabeth Bear & Katherine Addison

The Lucky Stiff, Craig Rice

The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor Lavalle

Under the Red Sea Sun, Edward Ellsberg

The Queen of Crows, Myke Cole

NOVEMBER

Space Opera, Cat Valente

Wayward Saint, J.S. Morning

Penric's Demon, Lois McMaster Bujold

The People's Republic of Everything, Nick Mamatas

How To Stop Time, Matt Haig

Gallows View, Peter Dickinson

DECEMBER

Dreadnought, Cherie Priest

Amberlough, Lara Elena Donnelly

Under the Pendulum Sun, Jeanette Ng

A Canticle For Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr.

Forty Thieves, Thomas Perry

The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers

And by author:

The Cobbler's Boy, Elizabeth Bear & Katherine Addison

Stone Mad, Elizabeth Bear

SPQR, Mary Beard

A Fierce Radiance, Lauren Belfer

The Darkest Part of the Forest, Holly Black

Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan

Penric's Demon, Lois McMaster Bujold

Trouble Is My Business, Raymond Chandler

Matchup, ed. Lee Child

The Armored Saint, Myke Cole

The Queen of Crows, Myke Cole

Aegypt, John Crowley

Medusa Uploaded, Emily Devenport

Gallows View, Peter Dickinson

Amberlough, Lara Elena Donnelly

Under the Red Sea Sun, Edward Ellsberg

Jane Steele, Lindsay Faye

Hall of Heroes, ed. Fellowship of Fantasy

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

Bitter Greens, Kate Forsyth

How To Stop Time, Matt Haig

She Rides Shotgun, Jordan Harper

The Stars Are Legion, Kameron Hurley

Daughter of Mystery, Heather Rose Jones

March Violets, Philip Kerr

The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor Lavalle

The Paper Menagerie, Ken Liu

The Great West Detective Agency, Jackson Lowry (Robert Vardeman)

The Moving Target, Ross MacDonald

Company of Lies, Karen Maitland

The People's Republic of Everything, Nick Mamatas

Lady Henterman's Wardrobe, Marshall Ryan Maresca

Selections from Dreamsongs, Vol. 1 (audio), George RR Martin

Fortress At the End of Time, J.M. McDermott

Beneath the Sugar Sky, Seanan McGuire

Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire

Sparrow Hill Road, Seanan McGuire

A Canticle For Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr.

The Serpent of Venice, Christopher Moore

Wayward Saint, J.S. Morning

Under the Pendulum Sun, Jeanette Ng

Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor

Binti, Nnedi Okorafor

Before I Fall, Lauren Oliver

Last Hope Island, Lynne Olson

The Starlit Wood, ed. Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe

Forty Thieves, Thomas Perry

Alternate Routes, Tim Powers

The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers

The Wrong Stars, Tim Pratt

Dreadnought, Cherie Priest

Altered America, Cat Rambo

The Lucky Stiff, Craig Rice

The Tiger's Daughter, K Arsenault Rivera

Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse

A Darker Shade of Magic, V. E. Schwab

Dogs Don't Lie, Clea Simon

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel

The City Stained Red, Sam Sykes

Space Opera, Cat Valente

Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell

Behind the Throne, K.B. Wagers

Artemis, Andy Weir

Hunger Makes The Wolf, Alex Wells

The Accidental War, Walter Jon Williams

Quillifer, Walter Jon Williams

Night Has A Thousand Eyes, Cornell Woolrich