I’m an old RUSH fan super excited by their recent reunion announcement, and so I’m the perfect audience for a band like Coheed and Cambria. A friend of mine has been raving about them for years, but it was only a couple of months ago that I finally took the plunge and started listening. I’ve bought two albums and will eventually get them all. It is so cool to see a progressive band like this doing so well.
I have very limited time, and so I usually stick to my favorite bands from earlier eras, (Jethro Tull, RUSH, YES, Led Zeppelin, The Who, ELP, King Crimson, Dylan and Tom Petty and The Kinks and so on) with a few newer ones sprinkled in here and there. Sometime around the birth of my children, and having the demands of family and my job, I kind of lost the ability to know much about new music, but these guys are so good. The epic science fiction story of The Amory Wars, (for the uninitiated, every album is set in this universe) the amazing riffs and energy of these albums, it’s fantastic. I feel like there should be some kind of rare band act passed by congress to protect these guys. They’re so great. I’m glad younger people have a modern day Rush they can follow. My kids are already singing along in the minivan.
I’ve read a couple of the omnibus comics and am getting into the story a bit, as well. I love how the comic books enhance the whole experience; it’s incredibly ambitious and also such a cool thing for fans to get into. As a teen, one of my favorite things to do was to get a new album by RUSH or some other progressive rock band and spend hours listening, reading the lyrics, looking at the artwork, all of that. I still do that when Jethro Tull or some other favorite band of mine releases a new album, or re-re-releases old ones with dozens of unearthed tracks. It’s more than just listening to songs; it’s an entire experience, and Coheed and Cambria is carrying on this glorious tradition.
I may not have been able to get Rush tickets, but I’ll be sure and try to see these guys the next time they’re touring near me.
‘Hateful day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. ‘Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.’
The first ever horror and science fiction novel, first published in 1818, when Mary Shelley was just twenty years old, Frankenstein has a reputation that has been as long lasting as it is deserved. A beautifully written tale that began as a legendary writing contest between Shelley, her husband Percy, Byron, Dr. John Polidori, and others who were spending a summer together in Geneva, Frankenstein bears little resemblance to the monster most of us recognize from the many film adaptations that we’ve seen through the decades.
The monster is philosophical and brilliant, almost superhuman, and the real villains are those in the story who judge him by his ghastly appearance. There are as many interpretations of the work as there are film adaptations: a warning against humans playing God, the irresponsible Victor whose thirst for knowledge leads to catastrophe, the humans who judge the creature by how hideous he is. Several chapters in the book deal with a family of poor, blind people who treat Frankenstein with care and respect because they cannot see him. It’s written in a beautifully poetic style, was immediately successful, and still finds new and enthusiastic readers today.
There are a few different versions of the book, which Shelley revised in 1831, but most scholars prefer the earlier edition. Shelley had a very difficult early life, losing her famous mother when she was just a few weeks old. Her father, also a well-known intellectual, remarried a woman with whom Mary had a very difficult relationship. Under these circumstances it seems a miracle she was able to write such a classic. Her husband, the famous Romantic poet, also caused a scandal when he left his wife for Mary, and had numerous affairs.
I could write a lengthy essay about this book and its influence and various interpretations, but I’m by no means an expert on her; countless scholars have already done that better than I could, and the purpose of my blog this month is to offer a few thoughts on some of my favorite horror novels. This is an essential one that everyone ought to read. It’s one of the great novels in literary history, a book that will help you understand where the genre came from.
We start the month with one of the finest collections of seasonal stories ever, by the great Ray Bradbury. Released in 1955, its significance in the genre can’t really be overstated, nor can Ray’s role in shaping Halloween as we know it today. Just leafing through this one is enough to give you a warm feeling of nostalgia and creepiness, to know that autumn is at hand. You start reading and immediately know you’re in the hands of a master.
I first encountered this one many years ago, and I make a point to re-read it nearly every October. The beautiful cover by Joseph Mugniani (with whom Bradbury often collaborated) sets the tone, and it keeps getting better as you read each tale. There are so many memorable stories here that it’s a bit like listening to the Beatles’ greatest hits: The Small Assassin, The Dwarf, Jack in the Box, on and on they go, each one weirder and more wonderful than the last. I love The Dwarf, the tale of a short man who visits a carnival fun house each night to see himself taller and more handsome, only to be cruelly abused by the fun house proprietor. For me, the centerpiece here is “The Homecoming,” which along with “Uncle Einar” are the strangest and most jaw-dropping of these stories. They’re so good that later in his career they became the backbone of another collection, ‘From the Dust Returned,’ which explores the Elliott family in all their glory.
Bradbury wrote so much over his long and storied career that it’s hard to pick just one novel or collection of his, but I think this one is most emblematic of all his best elements. Good-hearted, small-town people meet fantastic beings. Helpless loners and outsiders are treated cruelly by life but keep their souls intact through art and kindness. The wonder and mystery and imagination of the dark side of the world, all told with Bradbury’s poetic prose, heartfelt emotion, and wild imagination. It just doesn’t get any better than The October Country. We were so lucky to have had Ray.
Bradbury often wrote of the importance of feeding one’s imagination. Zen and the Art of Writing is a wonderful book for any writer, with lots of great observations on how to work at your craft. Mostly, he wants writers to stop thinking and just write. The ideas poured forth from his mind when he did this. One oft quoted passage from the book is: “If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy, or both. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
I think there’s a real lesson in this. Overanalyzing things, thinking too much, and soaking up too much information, which is very easy to do in our hyper-connected world, is the enemy of good writing. In my view, Bradbury’s method works. He was drunk on life and ideas and let them spill out in beautiful ways that have resonated with millions of readers for generations. May he keep finding new audiences forever. Thanks for all the stories, Ray.
One of my fondest, most primal memories of childhood is being up late in the summertime, reading a good book, while everyone else in our busy house was asleep. There were so many novels I enjoyed back then, and I read indiscriminately, for the pure joy of being lost in a fantastic new world.
There were many great series for young people back in the early 1980s, and I read many of them. The Hardy Boys, The Black Stallion, Matt Christopher’s sports stories, Encyclopedia Brown the boy detective, Danny Dunn, a boy wonder who created all kinds of machines with his pals, and on and on. There were some great works of literature too, like Madeline L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door, Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Detective, Ray Bradbury and The Martian Chronicles, and others. Today I can see how much more sophisticated these last three are, but as a young boy I didn’t care about their literary merit, I just wanted to read.
To read as a nine year old meant getting lost in another world that seemed so real I became irritated when my mundane surroundings intruded. It meant an escape into magic and mystery and wonder, into past eras that seemed completely real, as if I were suddenly in a time machine, transported to colonial era America, or King Arthur’s Court. Perhaps I’d go to a distant strange planet, or an isolated pacific island, or any other a million different times and places. There was nothing so wonderful in the world as being lost in those pages, many millions of miles away from wherever I was and whatever was happening around me in my little corner of the world.
I’m now fifty, and very occasionally this magnificent feeling will come over me again when I’m reading a truly great, original book. It seems to happen less and less these days; perhaps that is a failure of imagination on my part, or perhaps it just happens with age. After you’ve read so many books, they cannot all have that glorious impact, and many of them will seem merely adequate. I’ll say that in the past few months, Ron Chernow’s Hamilton was a biography that transported me to the early days of America in a way that was quite breathtaking; I don’t normally read a lot of history, but he is such a fine writer, telling the story of the founder in such an empathetic way, that I was swept up in the drama of it and couldn’t wait to read more.
Novels are a different matter, and as I’ve read so many of them, it has become harder for me to find ones I truly love, that affect my outlook so dramatically, that can transport me in that same primal way. Susanna Clarke’s writing does that for me, and I recall a well-spent winter evening not long ago, when I was up through the night, finding revelations on every page of her incredible book, Piranesi, which I finished in one sitting. I can’t recommend her work highly enough, and I was ecstatic to learn she has a new novel arriving this fall.
In this hyper-connected age, it is increasingly difficult to shut out the outside world and enter the fortress of mystery and imagination that is a great reading experience. I read whenever I can, as much as I can, but with the demands of a job and a family it’s not always easy. I’ll stay up late at night when I’m not too tired, or read when I have downtime on the train or before the rest of my family is up. I guard my reading time jealously, just like when I was a boy, and get frustrated sometimes when there isn’t enough time or quiet for me to read every novel or work of history or criticism on my shelves. My collection is wide and varied–I have books on a great many topics, because I am never sure which one I will need at any given moment. This is one of the great things about being a librarian, as well: if I don’t have it on my shelves at home, I can almost certainly find what I need in the library.
I enjoy movies, though I’m not exactly a movie critic. I have found that films, television and video games don’t transport me the way a good book does. Maybe some people find the same elation and deep mystery watching things or playing video games, but it doesn’t happen for me. I can enjoy such media, but it won’t impact me in the same way, and while I don’t know for certain, I suspect that the effort required of a careful, thoughtful reader will always make the reward of reading that much greater. To me, it’s a bit like the difference between hiking to the top of a mountain and taking in the view, as opposed to having someone drive you up there on a paved road. (The same can be said for writing vs. AI-assisted writing, but that is the topic for some other post.)
One of the essential things about reading is the way it can change your perceptions, your outlook, your knowledge of the world, and perhaps even knowledge of yourself. The greatest works help us do this and will enrich your life in ways like nothing else. For me, reading a great book is one of the last bulwarks I have in guarding my mind from a ceaseless stream of meaningless junk that increasingly defines modern life.
The other night my young daughter, who is brilliant and perfect, happened upon the Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough at Last,” with the great Burgess Meredith. I hesitated to show it to her, but she was eager to see it and I relented. At the end, she was in tears for Henry Bemis, the tortured man who lives through an atomic war only to be left utterly alone, despondent, bereft of all hope, sans spectacles. “I hate this,” she said. “He was finally able to read and now he can’t.” I felt like an awful father for having shown her the episode. We talked a bit about the message of the show but she was inconsolable, much like I was decades ago when I first saw it.
In these waning days of summer, I admit I feel some pressure to read what I haven’t from my list so far, but my task shall be Herculean. I have a copy of Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, which I have never read and will likely not get to before the end of August. I have works by Saul Bellow, Robert Caro, Don DeLillo, Tim Powers, Toni Morrison, Barbara Tuchman, Octavia Butler, and too many others to list sitting on my shelves, waiting to be opened, calling to me, but time is running out. I’ll get to a few of them, and the rest will likely need to wait for winter break, or next summer, when I will have time enough at last.
If you’d told me when I was twelve that we’d have endless new sci fi/superhero/fantasy movies and shows every single week, I would’ve been ecstatic. But alas, since I’m fifty and no longer twelve, I’m totally disinterested in most of it. Partly this is because I’m no longer a child, but it’s also because I enjoy new and different stories, and none of these gigantic intellectual properties do that. They just make the same exact stories over and over.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, George Lucas created something special that felt fresh. Comic books did that also, and some still do. Tolkien created a genre that has been well mined for generations. Other writers have done and continue to do this, and some films do as well. But most of the large properties simply make the same thing with slightly different characters or timelines. It obviously sells and many people love it. It doesn’t interest me, though– new and interesting stories do. But these famous, valuable names are like real estate snatched up by greedy developers.
At times, older fans can get prickly about newer things. I’ve felt that way as well, mainly because the experience of reading an amazing novel can never be matched by any movie, no matter how well done. As George RR Martin recently commented, very rarely does a great book get a truly worthy interpretation, but when it happens it’s quite amazing. Dune managed it, in my opinion, and Jackson’s Lord of the Rings did, as well. But more often they just leave you cold.
Don’t adapt this, son. Don’t even try.
Most of these newer films are not made for middle aged guys, so I just accept that it isn’t for me, and go back to the books. But I admit, and as Martin said, I find the arrogance of some of these adaptations hard to believe. Luckily I will always have my bookshelves.
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” –Frank Herbert, DUNE
The new Dune film is amazing, far better than anything that fans of the book had any right to expect. I loved it. I started rereading the book as soon as I got home; I read the above quote and had to put the book down for a moment. Frank Herbert wrote that in 1965–probably quite a bit earlier, as ’65 is the publication date. What a visionary.
The film changed a few things, but that’s to be expected in a work of this size and scope; it would be impossible to adhere to everything Herbert wrote. At some point I may write up some further thoughts. But suffice to say it was great and left me speechless. Once I finish the first book, I’ll probably continue with the others, too. I loved the first three books in the cycle and enjoyed the next three as well, though I felt they weren’t at the same level of quality as the first two or three.
A good friend of mine also recommended the many sequels written by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, so I may go down that Golden Path, as well.
I’m really in awe of Denis Villenueve and the whole cast of this movie, particularly Javier Bardem, who I felt carried much of the film as Stilgar. We’re lucky that a director as good as Villenueve was able to make this. In my opinion, this achievement is as great as Peter Jackson and Lord of the Rings, and will be remembered for a long time.
For most of my life I’ve read copious amounts of fantasy and science fiction. I recall the Wild Cards series coming out in the late 80s; an acquaintance of mine sang the book’s praises, but the idea of comic book characters was something that at the time, as a 16 year old, I felt I was outgrowing. Maybe I was self-conscious reading Batman and Superman and the X-Men as an older teen, and advertising that I still loved those characters seemed unwise. Though of course, I read them at home, away from my peers.
During the recent holiday break, I was looking for something light to read, and picked up the first volume of Wild Cards, that series I had shunned in my young, foolish days. If George RR Martin edited it, it must be good, I reasoned. I’ve been wanting to read Winds of Winter for some years now, but alas, it seems I’ll have to wait for that. I have read almost everything else George published, so I gave it a try.
How I wish I could go back 30+ years and tell sixteen year old me to read Wild Cards. I was the perfect demographic for it back then. I guess I still am. What a fun, crazy ride I had with these stories. I didn’t love all of them, but there were enough good ones to keep me interested, and the ones I didn’t like as much still had some cool elements.
Wild Cards, for those of you unfamiliar with this now-32-volume series, is a shared world alternate universe filled with superheroes, in which, at the end of World War II, an alien virus outbreak turns a large segment of humanity into mutants. It kills some of them outright, horribly disfigures others (known as Jokers) and turns some into superhumans (aces). It’s a funny, neat idea, full of noirish and comic elements, enough to keep an adult comic book reader happy during these long winter nights. I particularly enjoyed Roger Zelazny’s entry, as well as Martin’s. I don’t want to spoil the stories, they are too fun. If you enjoy comic books, but want something a little darker and more adult themed, give these books a try.
I’d never read something like this collection before. I loved the idea of a shared world in which lots of writers try their hand in storytelling in the same setting. I also really enjoyed the way these comics were written with adults in mind. I’d never seen this before in fiction, except perhaps when I read the novelization of the 1989 Batman movie as a teen. These stories reminded me of Frank Miller’s work with Batman, and Alan Moore’s many legendary tales of Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and others. I don’t regularly read comic books these days, but this first volume in the Wild Cards series made me want to revisit my favorites, and maybe read some more in the Wild Cards series.
The Wikipedia entry for this series says that Martin and his friends started the series after playing a GURPS style RPG based on superheroes, which makes perfect sense. The detailed backstories in each tale in this volume are a perfect fit with an RPG campaign of this style. Probably most people who have played in a campaign thought of turning it into a book (what a great idea!), but leave it to uncle George to actually pull it off. I was also reminded of the wonderful Dragonlance books, which were similarly based on a D and D campaign. I may also have to try Thieves World, which is a series I never read, but which was also a shared world.
There are so many books, and never enough time for me to read all my favorites, but I’m glad I gave this series a try. Winter is the perfect time to stay inside and curl up with a book. You’ll have fun with Wild Cards, I think. I just hope Winds of Winter comes out soon.
Every Saturday I have a ritual, in which I go to the library used book sale. I always stop first at the science fiction section and see if there is anything by Philip K Dick, who is one of my favorite writers. I haven’t found one in the roughly eight years I’ve been doing this.
This week, for the first time, I took my three year old. I carried him into the store and put him down. He grabbed a board book that was on display. We went to the Science Fiction section. He ran to a random area of the shelf and grabbed a book off the shelf and held it up to me. “Get this one daddy,” he said. “You can read it to me, too. I want this one.” Here’s the book.
The Zap Gun, by Philip K. Dick
I’ve read dozens of his books. This felt like the start of some crazed scene in one of his novels to me. Perhaps the boy was directed there by some outside intelligence. Maybe aliens planted it there. Or another dimension is seeping into ours. Perhaps an unlikely coincidence. I think I’ll be taking the lad again.
There was an endless appetite for games based on our favorite heroes and villains. Star Wars Rebellion, I am happy to report, is one of the very best of the bunch. Made by Fantasy Flight Games, it has their usual high quality minis, a beautiful board with numerous planets and systems, and lots of cards and markers and characters. It’s for 2-4 players, though I have only played the two player version. One side plays the rebels, the other is the dark side.
Rebellion is varied enough and features enough twists and turns that I think it has a high level of replayability. My 10 year old and I have played it 6 or seven times since we got it, and it’s always been fun and surprising. Essentially, the rebel player has a hidden base that the empire is trying to find. If the rebels can stave off the superior firepower of the empire and hang on for enough turns, while increasing their sympathy throughout the galaxy, they’ll win. But the moment the empire finds the rebel base, it’s over for the rebels. Each time we’ve played, both of us had a chance to win by the final round, making for an exciting and unexpected end with each game.
Each player has special attributes and cards to help them win; the rebels, for example, are aided by cards that allow them to change the location of the base, should the empire draw near. Other cards will allow sabotage, and to increase your reach through the galaxy. The rebels will gain victory points through a series of objective cards that award points when completed. The empire, meanwhile, has far superior numbers and brutal planet destroying weapons like the Death Star, making them hard to beat.
The character cards are also well designed. Each of the rebel characters have special skills and powers that allow them to succeed at basic missions, like gaining loyalty in systems, establishing weapons production, or conducting raids on the empire. The empire characters have similar skills, and are able to corrupt the rebels, destroy them with the death star, or otherwise ruin their chances to win. For example, in one very funny moment in our game, Obi Wan was turned to the dark side, which is rather hard to envision if you’re a fan of the old films, like me.
There are plenty of opportunities for battles, and that’s a lot of the fun of this game. You can move into systems and attack with your fleet of finely constructed X-Wings, Tie-Fighters, Star Destroyers and ground forces. You’re aided in battle by the leaders you’ve chosen and special cards that you draw through each round of combat. Nothing hurts so badly as building up a legion of rebel troops only to have them wiped out by Stormtroopers and AT-ATs (take it from me.)
This game is not cheap–the price runs around $90, but if you’re a fan of strategic war games, and of Star Wars, and you think you’ll have time to play this one, I’d say go ahead and buy it. It’s a lengthy game, often taking a few sessions of an hour or two each (or most of a day, if you’re able) to complete. I have found it a great way to spend time with my son, who has delighted in beating me a number of times.
Rebellion is pretty true to the spirit of the films. I love it, and recommend it highly, rating it five out of five stars. Maybe six out of five if you’re a star wars fans into miniatures and epic boardgames.
I loved Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series when I first read it as a teen. It’s still one of my all time favorite science fiction series–it imprinted on me at a young age, before I had read very much, but it holds up quite well. Asimov’s later installments, in which he revisited and added to the series, were great too.
I’m not setting out to review the books right now, nor the new, slick production from Apple TV. What I will say about the show, after watching a couple episodes and then giving up, is that it must take some gargantuan ego or confidence to change such a classic work until it’s unrecognizable, and still call it Foundation. I have no idea where the show is going and didn’t care much after what I’ve watched. The production is expensive and looks cool and the actors are quite talented but the story was so different from what I read that it seemed strange to say it’s based on Asimov. Aside from the title and the most general plot setup, it wasn’t. It seems I’m in the minority, and many people love it, but that’s my opinion. I’ll probably just re-read Foundation instead.
Call me old fashioned; I don’t mind. Books don’t always need expensive adaptations. This series seemed ripe for such a show, but it wasn’t to my taste at all.
Christopher Tuthill 