Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

• Rick Kleffel has really been burning it up over at The Agony Column. There’s been some really top quality stuff there over the last couple of days, including: A lengthy interview with Naomi Novik¹ (mp3), A lengthy interview with Charles Stross² (mp3), and a review of the why-isn’t-it-here-yet new Tim Powers novella.
• Martha Wells has started online serialization of her debut novel The Element of Fire. I’m quite a fan of hers–I’m not going to start on my “publishers in collusion with the large chain buyers are killing promising midlist writers” rant here, but I want you to know I am only barely restraining myself–and I’m delighted to have the chance to point people to this. Many of you reading this were given copies of The Death Of The Necromancer by me. I’m actually following the serialization myself, since she’s updated the text slightly.
• The Kama Sutra of Reading.
• “Well, there’s drug-addicted space vampires. One drug-addicted space vampire, anyway. Except he’s only in space because we brought him with us. I would like to think that I have conjured up the most rigorously-plausible biological rationale for vampires yet devised by a hack writer.” Meme Therapy interviews author Peter Watts
• Even though some of the way Travis McGee interacts with women hasn’t aged well, I think John D. Macdonald is still likely the best storyteller America produced in the 20th century. Here’s a link to some links about him at The Rap Sheet.
• The Random H.P. Lovecraft Story Generator.
• Apparently the number of attempts to get libraries to ban books went down last year. I guess that’s a “yay!”, even if the absolute number of attempts is still ridiculously high. As a gesture of protest against the banners, go browse 42 banned-at-some-time “great books” at Google’s Book Search.
• Read a couple of interviews with mystery author Robert Crais. One at January Magazine, and one at Shots.
• Is a silver gravy pot suddenly worth £2,100 because Agatha Christie owned it?
• SFSignal has a reader-generated list of overlooked SF books. My reactions are as follows:
  • Happy to see Powers–because some of his later books are better, Dinner At Deviant’s Palace often gets overlooked. For my money it’s the best book out there at capturing the way that the self-destructive rock’n'roll rebellion can sometimes save the world.
  • Happy to see Gentle–The Book of Ash really rewards a careful reading, and I almost passed on it as I was initially really put off Gentle by starting with Grunts.
  • Happy to see Jeter–For every 10 PKD fans, there’s one person who knows (and loves) Powers. For every 5 people who know Powers there’s one person who knows (and loves) Blaylock. And, for every 5 Blaylock fans, there might be one person who is familiar with the third point of the post-Dick triangle: K.W. Jeter. It’s a shame, because his works can be really excellent, as shown by Noir. (Actually, in a broader sense Jeter might be the best known of the four, since he also has written Star Wars/Blade Runner/Star Trek novels, and probably has a larger audience through them than the others do–but that doesn’t count as far as I’m concerned.)
  • It’s really time for me to investigate Hodgson, isn’t it? I’ve been putting it off in a (probably vain) attempt to avoid needing to buy another set of books from Nightshade.
  • Similarly, I probably should revisit A Voyage To Arcturus, which I last read at age 13 or so.
• Among many things I owe Dennis Lehane for, far and away the biggest is leading me to George Pelecanos. God he writes a good novel. The NYT had a big piece on him a while back. I’ve got a copy of his new book waiting for me, right now, as I write this. Oh, and for those of you who do more TV than novels, Pelecanos is also one of the writers of one of the three best shows on television. I got the link to the Times from a piece at The Rap Sheet.
• Another author I’ve been meaning to investigate is Ernest Bramah. I keep hearing things about the Kai Lung books, often in the same breath as people talking about Hughart. I’ve been toying with buying the books from Wildside, but I think I will just try reading the free e-texts from Project Gutenberg. If I like them as much as everyone says I will, then I can spring for the Wildside editions. I’m going to start with Kai Lung’s Golden Hours.
• Hal Duncan, author of Vellum, goes off about his version of magic. I suspect Hal and Alan Moore could have a lovely chat about this stuff, and it sure is fun to read, even if it is a bit on the pretentious side. (Actually, that was my reaction to Vellum: full of of lots of really fun ideas, well manipulated, resulting in a very pleasant read, but not quite as clever as it thinks it is.) Some of what he says lines up nicely with my ideas about how you can be a complete rationalist and still enjoy the ideas of chaos magic.
• There’s another overlooked books list at SFSite. Actually, it’s one of a list of lists. This particular one is of note because I haven’t read anything on it except the Whittmore³, and I really like the Whittmore, so that suggests that these might be new things I would like. It’s actually pretty rare for me to find things I’ve never heard of, so that’s exciting.

1. I think I wanted her to sound like Patrick O’Brian or something.(back)
2. …who does not sound “Scottish enough” to me. I wanted him to sound like Gavin Grant when he’s been at the bottle.(back)
3. I have, obviously, heard of Peake and Tinniswood, but not much about these particular books.(back)

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