Books in the Post - 'All the Books!' Edition

Because sometimes you wait for one book to arrive and then they all show up at once. And they are all books that I want to read; I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in over the next few weeks.
Before we get started on those though, here are some books that turned up literally minutes after I posted last week,

While I won't be reading 'The Arrows of Time' (I didn't even know there were two books before it...) I will very much be reading 'Last Call' (because I just want to finish a book by Tim Powers, everyone else has) and 'The Falling Woman' (Fantasy Masterwork, enough said).
And here's the rest...

It would appear that right now, I'm just after reading about men hitting other men (and monsters) with big swords :o) Someone on Twitter said something about this being down to the nights drawing in and I think she's right. If other blogs are to be believed (and I trust them) there's some good reading to be had here. I'll let you know how that goes.

I already mentioned 'The TIme Traveller's Almanac' yesterday and will be picking more stories, from it, to write about over the next few days and weeks. I finished 'The Language of Dying' about ten minutes ago and will try and get a review up tomorrow. All I'll say for now is that it's incredibly powerful stuff and cured me of a minor urge to start smoking again. 'The Desert of Souls' has come my way before but I think now is the right time for me to finally give it a shot (the 'reading burnout' headaches are a thing of the past).
And 'Seven Sorcerers', the final book in a series that it appeared I was only person who actually liked. I've still got 'Seven Kings' to read but this one is definitely on the radar.

All of this, of course, comes after I've finished 'The Copper Promise' and maybe a couple of others. We'll see about those. What are you reading and what did you think of 'Doctor Who' last night? I'd tell you what I thought but iplayer is messing me around on both my phone and the computer. Thanks a lot iplayer...

See you guys tomorrow ;o)

‘Death Ship’ – Richard Matheson (From ‘The Time Traveller’s Almanac’, Edited by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer, Head of Zeus)

 

'Death Ship' is the opening story in Ann and Jeff Vandermeer's 'The Time Traveller's Almanac' and, as such, was the perfect way to combine two of my favourite reading past times at the moment. I'm always looking to read anything by Richard Matheson and if the Vandermeers were to release an anthology of shopping lists, you just know that said anthology would have you considering shopping lists in ways that you never thought you would. Anything with their name on it is required reading for me then.

Have you seen the size of 'The Time Traveller's Almanac' though? It's massive, a book that could easily cause some damage if it fell from a great height (I say this because it fell off the bunkbed this morning and caused some damage...) I'm not going to be able to cover all the stories inside, in one post, so I'll be focussing on some in a bit more depth and offering a few thoughts on the book, as a whole, a little closer to Christmas.

Which brings me neatly back to Richard Matheson and 'Death Ship'.

‘Mason stood up as the captain gestured towards the door. Mickey started to move, then hesitated. He looked at the bodies.
“Shouldn’t we…?” he started to inquire.
“What, what?” Ross asked, impatient to leave.
Mickey stared at the bodies. He felt caught up in a great, bewildering, insanity.
“Shouldn’t we…bury ourselves?” he said.’
Whilst exploring a planet, for potential colonisation, the crew of a spaceship discover another ship has already crash-landed. It's not just any old ship though, the bodies inside the wreckage are theirs... Having seen their fate, the crew must decide whether to depart the planet or cheat death by staying. They can't stay though...

When I realised what the ending actually meant for the crew (I read it three times and suddenly went, “wow…”) I had to ask myself how much of a time travel tale ‘Death Ship’ actually is. There’s a definite element of horror there that, for me, overshadowed the whole time travel thing (and I can’t say more without giving the game away, Matheson does his trick of setting expectations then blowing you away with something out of left field). Time travel is definitely a feature though so it counts. Magnanimous of me, I know :o) I liked the Matheson introduces the theme as it asks a lot of questions of characters already on the edge. It asks a lot of questions of the reader as well. Can the crew cheat fate? On that score ‘Death Ship’ is a tale that gets you thinking.

It’s a Richard Matheson tale and, for me, that means very intelligent use of language that sets the reader in the middle of things right away. You never find out much about the planet itself, you don’t need to. This is all about the crew and their reactions to one hell of a conundrum. I really felt the sense of panic in the crew as things became much clearer, Matheson takes the reader along at exactly the same speed (never giving anything away until the right moment) and it’s like you’re right there with the characters.

And that ending… If the rest of the tales in ‘The Time Traveller’s Almanac’ are of the same standard then I’m looking forward to dipping in and out of this book over the next few weeks.

2000AD Prog 1859

I'm a little bit later than planned with this post but that's kind of been the story of this week really! Just a short post for today then, I am so looking forward to this weekend and just resting up a little... Anyway... Prog 1859 was fun to read, possibly because I decided that life was too short and ditched one story entirely. You can probably guess which one that was.

Here are some quick thoughts on what I read. This time round, I’m concentrating more on the stories as the artwork has remained pretty much consistent from the last issue (apart from the ‘Future Shocks’ story which is new). Here goes,

'Judge Dredd: Ferals (Part 2)'

I only started reading this story last week and already it's at a crossroads. I've got a horrible feeling this story is treading familiar ground (won't someone think of the children?) but I've still got high hopes that it's somehow going to form part of something much larger. Please let it be the latter, please? Still fun to read though, especially with Dredd's interactions with the Juves.

‘Future Shocks: Home Are The Heroes’

I have no idea what was going on here (the plot hinges on something that was never explained) but the note of horror, right at the end, really made it for me. A story that really makes you consider the title in a whole new light. I really enjoyed Nick Dyer’s art as well, reminded me of the copies of 2000AD I used to sneak a look at when I was a kid.

'Brass Sun: The Diamond Age' (Part Ten)

This story is far too advanced for me to get caught up quickly and I found that I wasn't interested in even trying so, erm... I haven't.

‘Flesh: Badlanders’ (Part Ten)

This one is kind of hard to call really. Part Ten has all the awesome stuff that Part Nine had but didn’t really move the story on that much if at all. But… Dinosaurs! Well, one big dinosaur facing off against one lone cowboy. Yeah, I’ll be back for more of this next week :o)

‘Damnation Station: The Howling Beast on the Borderline’

Is there nothing that Al Ewing can’t write? I’m still getting to know the characters (and I’m wishing that I spoke more than just English, couldn’t understand a word the lady was saying…) but this is an awesome slice of void warfare with aliens boarding a space station and some hard choices to be made by the command staff. And what a cliff-hanger… I will definitely be back to see what happens here.

Cover Art – ‘Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond’ (Edited by Bill Campbell & Edward Austin Hall)

Why the post? Look at the cover art and you’ll know right away… :o)

Isn’t that just gorgeous? The kind of vibrant cover art that brings a little colour to these increasingly dull looking autumn mornings. I really want to read this collection (I have an electronic review copy) but it’s just that tiny bit too large to fit comfortably on my phone (reading fifty or sixty words at a time, then turning the page, makes for a reading rhythm that I can’t quite hack over longer books) so it might be a while before I can do it justice. I want to review the book as a whole, not just cherry pick stories. In the meantime, have a look at the press release that came with the review copy.

On Friday, October 18 [Graeme’s Note: Yep, I know but I’ve been busy…], a bold, new anthology, Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond, will be hitting the streets. The goal of this anthology is to give “space” some much-needed color. As publisher, Bill Campbell, stated:

“When we look up at the night sky, space is black as far as the eye can see. Yet, when we read novels about it or watch something on TV or in the movie theater, it is white beyond all comprehension.”

Featuring the works of such stellar talents as Junot Díaz, Lauren Beukes, Victor LaValle, Linda D. Addison, S.P. Somtow, and more, Mothership not only represents the emerging diversity in the speculative fiction field but also that diversity's quality. The Pulitzer, American Book Award, Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, James Tiptree, and countless other awards are represented by the writers in this collection.

You can get yourself a copy of Mothership’ via http://rosariumpublishing.com/.

'The Year of the Three Monarchs' - Michael Swanwick

I love reading Sword & Sorcery books right now.Apart from a few books here and there, most Sword & Sorcery books are fairly lightweight reads and thats just what I'm after at the moment (what with all the other stuff going on). It's not just that though, Sword & Sorcery is all about hooking the reader quickly and then making it worth their while with derring do, a bit of swashbuckling and some dark magic. Like I said, just what I'm after these days and the main reason why I keep going back to Tachyon Press' 'The Sword & Sorcery Anthology' when I have a spare half an hour to kill and want to read something that's fun...

Friday night saw me absolutely shattered from work and after something short and snappy for my reading. It doesn't get a lot shorter and snappier than Michael Swanwick's 'The Year of the Three Monarchs', a tale that weighs in at a painfully slender four and a half pages long; a tale that you just want to take home and bulk up with some nourishing chicken soup :o)

Don't be fooled though, there is so much more going on here than you think although it's over so quickly that themes and approaches are highlighted rather than explored. The rather odd outcome of this then is that for a story with so much going on, there isn't actually an awful lot to say. Funny that...

Read 'The Year of the Three Monarchs' though, definitely read it. While I'd recommend the collection to anyone, this is the story that you need to read first. It may even be my new favourite story in the collection itself. 'The Year of the Three Monarchs' has it all, up to and including hiding its punch line in plain sight just as the story starts to move forwards. I love it when an author does that. You have three strong characters interacting in the most unexpected of ways and only one of them will be the ruler at the end of the story. If that wasn’t enough, Swanwick paints an enthralling picture (in hardly any time at all) of just the kind of dark and dangerous world that the best ‘Sword & Sorcery’ tales sit in. ‘The Year of the Three Monarchs’ is certainly one of those as far as I’m concerned.

Like I said, I think you should all be reading ‘The Sword & Sorcery Anthology' anyway but ‘The Year of the Three Monarchs’ has been a real unexpected highlight for me. I’m really keen to read ‘The Iron Dragon’s Daughter’ now if this is any indication of what Swanwick is like as a writer. Brilliant stuff, the ideal way to spend the last little bit of Friday night.

A little bit from 'Behind the Sofa'

And I'm not talking about what I found, the other day, when moving our sofa. That bloody mouse, I will catch it if it's the last thing I do...

No, I'm talking about the 'Celebrity Memories of Dr. Who' that is out right now. With the 50th Anniversary episode out in a few days time (yep I'm excited especially after watching the 'minisode' the other day) Gollancz have been releasing little snippets of book out into the wilds and seeing where they land. I got a piece by Ben Lawrence (TV & Radio Commissioning Editor at the Telegraph apparently, you learn something new every day...) and here it is.

It is hard to believe now, but there was a hint of cynicism in the air in March 2005. Us lifelong Doctor Who fans had been dreaming of a regeneration for nearly 16 years, but of course we had been here before. In 1996, Paul McGann and The TV Movie had tried to breathe life into a dead franchise, but had twisted the premise into a cod US imagining of what a British science fiction show might be. It was unexciting and, crucially, lacking in any charm.The press launch for Russell T Davies’s new series in Cardiff proved that the BBC had faith in it. They had invited celebrities (Charlotte Church, Robson Green, Matt Lucas), produced proper canapes and, unfortunately for me not stinted on the wine. And then the screening. I can still feel the whizz of adrenaline.Rose lasted 45 minutes but it seemed to last seconds. A tightly constructed story, its use of Autons was inspired, their aesthetic blending in perfectly to 21st century TV. It was funny. And Billie Piper as Rose silenced all the naysayers with her touching, heartfelt performance. But it was a speech that really struck me. Christopher Eccleston’s “Now forget me, Rose Tyler” was unlike anything the series had witnessed before. It was the Doctor as Prospero and the moment that Doctor Who was elevated from tea-time whimsy to award winning drama.Enjoyable, always. But now with something genuinely important to say. I was grinning from ear to ear. As was everyone after the launch. Barry Letts was there, looking exactly as he did in 1973. This wise old guardian of the show clearly approved. As did Terrance Dicks, although you could tell that razor-sharp mind had been unpicking the structure and the dialogue, wondering what he would have done better.And that was it. The day Doctor Who became a critic’s choice, the day the world changed. The day I drank too much red wine and got black lips, and had to later endure an army of Autons marching through my head. Still, it was all worth it.

I can't remember exactly where I watched that episode but I remember feeling similar kinds of things. Dr. Who was back and, better than that, it looked really promising. I'm hoping for more of the same next weekend and I'm pretty confident I'll get it. I think we all will.

As I said somewhere up the top, Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Dr Who, edited by Steve Berry is out now, Gollancz, £9.99 (author royalties are donated to Alzheimer’s Research UK). You can find out more about the book Here and, if you do buy a copy, you can see where those author royalties go by visiting the Alzheimer's Research UK Site.

Books in the post - The 'Three Weeks In, Three Weeks To Go...' Edition!

Three weeks into the new job (which doesn't feel so new anymore...) and I'm finally starting to feel like I've got back into the world of work. I've even started to wake up naturally instead of having to drag myself out of bed with the alarm. Having said all that then, I think this will be the last time I talk about being back at work. It's good to be back, lets just leave it like that ;o)

Three weeks to go until our baby turns up though... Yeah, you'll probably find me talking about that a little bit more before the time comes ;o) It feels like the last eight months have gone really quickly although Sue would violently disagree with the way she's feeling right now. Keep an eye out for 'new baby' pictures here over the next few weeks...

What with everything going on then, there hasn't been any room left in the week for new books to arrive. A couple managed to squeeze in actually. Go on, have a look...

I'm really keen to get reading 'The Copper Promise' as I've already read it twice in different formats (self published novella and submitted manuscript) and want to see the shape it has finally taken. Also, it's proper old school sword and sorcery and I can't get enough of that right now.
'The Forgotten Beasts of Eld' (has anyone read this?) is my last 'free pass' Fantasy Masterwork, purchased on Amazon. From here on in, it's back to scouring the second hand bookshops, I wouldn't have it any other way ;o)

That's me then, I'll be into 'The Copper Promise' soon but I'm reading 'She Who Waits' right now and it's amazing; I don't actually want it to end.
See you all tomorrow but in the meantime, what are you reading this weekend?