Mike is thinking about publishing

The one—and only—bad thing about publishing Farmerphile: the Magazine of Philip José Farmer is how much it cut into my reading time. I announced the rebirth of Farmerphile as an Annual anthology a little over a week ago and it's already having a similar affect. Of course with the first issue being due out in June, just four short months away, it's almost as if we're back to doing a quarterly magazine.

I also started my attempt at relearning computer programing in earnest this week. So far this is going well, it but it is a another time eater. Which is why I was up until 2:00am last night finishing Tales of the Shadowmen 6. Ok, I would have been to sleep by 1:00 if I hadn't found Pearl Jam's performance on Austin City Limits online here. I had to watch that last night. Since then I've listened to it twice while doing other things; in fact I'm listening to it right now.

As I said in a previous post, Black Coat Press' Tales of the Shadowmen series somehow gets better with each book. Even though this volume has this awesomely creepy cover and the theme Grand Guignol, "is dedicated to simpler horrors and theatrical villainy," the book contains little "horror." I won't describe all the stories in this excellent collection, but here are some of the high points.

It starts with Christopher Paul Carey's first solo effort in a Shadowmen collection, "Caesar's Children," which at it's core is an astoundingly original idea. You know all those Utopian novels written by Thomas More, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Edward Bellamy, Ignatius Donnelly, Jack London, etc.? What if they all came to fruition, at the same time, spread out in separate city-states all over the world? My utopian society is better than your utopian society, that's better than my religion is better than your religion.

Win Scott Eckert's story "Is He in Hell?" is the first in a series of stories filling in the "numerous gaps in the secret history of Wold Newton..." and features The Scarlet Pimpernel! If that doesn't pique your interest, you can turn in your WNMS badge at the door.

Matthew Baugh & Micah Harris teamed up for the wildly entertaining story "The Scorpion and the Fox." This story tells of the same shared adventure from two very different points of view, those of Rakhmetov and Becky Sharp. Ms. Sharp was the more interesting character, so much so I'd like to read more of her.

"The Treasure of Ubasti" by Travis Hiltz was my favorite cross-over story, with Mowgli meeting the unadventurous Dr. Henry Jones.

John Peel's "The Biggest Guns" would have been my favorite story in this collection. It is also a story, I think it is safe to say, Philip José Farmer would have gotten a kick out of. But, there are major continuity issues with the story, especially the ending. The ending is so wrong based on previous published accounts, that this story loses all it's credibility. A shame really.

Dennis E. Power's "No Good Deed..." is another favorite in this volume. As is often the case, I'm not familiar enough with most of these French characters, so I don't get much of the deeper significance of what is going on during the story. But the "reveal" at the end of this one was the biggest surprise in the book. It certainly put the biggest smile on my face.

David L. Vineyard's "The Children's Crusade" is a fun story for those of us who enjoy tales of espionage, scams, stings, and other trickery. I could see the twist at the end coming, but not all of it.

Really there is too much to talk about in this book with nearly every story being well worth reading. The volume is closed out with the fifth installment in Brian Stableford's alternate history tale where the dead can come back to life. But not really in a scary way.

The God Engines

John Scalzi is on a serious role. Everything he touches (writes) lately, turns to gold (great reviews, strong sales, award nominations...). His latest novella, and first foray into fantasy, The God Engines, is no exception.

This book arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago, and it was so hard to not read it right then and there. But, I was already in the middle of two books that I wanted to finish first and for once I showed some self-restraint. As it turned out, the book is an absolute page turner and is nearly impossible to not read in one sitting.

Thanks to John, you can read the first chapter online at his website. Without giving any spoilers it's hard to discuss this short book in any detail. It is a very dark and bleak take on religion with a few gruesome scenes and a couple of surprises towards the end. Definitely not a book for the kids, or if you insist on happy endings.

Here's hoping Subterranean Press and John Scalzi team up in 2010 as they did in 2009 with a couple of short projects like this one and Judge Sn Goes Golfing.

Stories from a Lost Anthology

When I first started reading Philip José Farmer, in high school and college, a lot of it went over my head. For example I'd never heard of Doc Savage before I read A Feast Unknown and it's simultaneous sequels, Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin. Often I knew I was missing references, but, as I learned in subsequent readings years later, some things were so far over my head I didn't even know they were there.

I sometimes get the feeling the same thing is happening when I read Rhys Hughes. Either he's riffing on people I've never heard of, let alone read, or he's just that original.

There are a small handful of authors that, to me anyway, are on different plane than 99% of the writers in the world. These wordsmiths can simply do things with the English language that go beyond telling a story: Mark Twain, P.G. Wodehouse, Vladimir Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut and (believe it or not) Kinky Friedman, all have a certain artistry to their work. These are all writers who've made me think, excitedly, "I didn't know you could do anything like that," and at the same time, sadly, "just one more example of why I'll never be a writer."

While in my estimation Rhys Hughes has not yet reached those lofty heights, his writing does have a similar effect on me. He constantly amazes me.

Now that I've gotten all that out, as for actually writing a review of his collection, Stories from a Lost Anthology, I think I'll direct you to this excellent review by William P Simmons instead.

Next up on my reading list, The God Engines, by John Scalzi.

Tales of the Shadowmen

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Steppe by Piers Anthony, which I finished last week, but have not had a chance to blog about. This was a fun read and very compelling. While I'm not familiar with the time period Piers references, I'm willing to bet he did his homework and got all that right.

The really fun part about the book is his idea on the effect serious computing power could have on games. This was a take on "virtual reality" games I've never seen before. Perhaps his really brilliant idea was the fact that people would watch other people playing these games on TV. Reality TV taken to the next level.

Don't be surprised if I read more of Piers this year. I have several books on the shelf I've never gotten around to: Chthon, Macroscope, Orn and a few of the Xanth books.

Since I finished Steppe I've been reading Tales of the Shadowmen volume 6. So far this is my favorite Shadowmen book yet. Jean-Marc really has a wonderful series on his hands as these somehow keep getting better and better. I'll give a review of this once I've finished it, but so far I've been blown away by the ingenuity of the authors. The ideas behind many of these stories are fantastic.

But, before then I'll be reviewing Stories from a Lost Anthology by Rhys Hughes, which I've nearly finished.

A Quick Aside

I'm in the middle of two books and don't expect to finish either this week since my reading time is being cut into by a couple of projects. But, I just wanted to take a second to say, completely off topic, that the Beatles Rock Band for the Wii is awesome!

I've never understood the allure of Guitar Hero since you're not actually playing a guitar when you play the game. But, playing the drums is different, it is much closer to actually playing the real instrument. When I read the manufacturer's claim that if you can play a song on the drums on expert level you can pretty much play that song for real, I was in.

My secret plan was to use Rock Band to get my son (8) and maybe even my daughter (14) to play the drums. We have a real set in the basement but I can't get them interested in it, I'm the only one who plays (perhaps if I found some Star Wars drum heads, my son would...nah, never mind).

The surprise has been how much my wife enjoys playing the guitar and how much my son loves to sing! So much so in fact that everyone else in the house now refuses to be in the room during yet another rendition of Yellow Submarine. My daughter is the most versatile as she can play (the game version of) the drums, guitar, or sing, with relative ease, but she is the least interested in playing. I play the drums almost exclusively. I've only tried the guitar once and barely finished a song, and so far I am the only one in the house to FAIL while singing on the Easy level.

So, while my plan of turning my son into Ringo Starr seems to be floundering, I have been amazed at how much my kids are enjoying the music. I'm taking this as a great victory since I have had very little luck turning them onto good music so far.

Now if I can just finish, I Want You (She's So Heavy), on the hard level (current best is 87%), I'll be happy.

I did it again...

Earlier this year I signed up with Planet Stories Ongoing Subscription service, which sends me a new book every other month or so. In the mail Monday comes their latest book, Steppe by Piers Anthony. I did not plan on reading this book next, but you know how it is. I opened it up, I read the introduction by Chris Roberson, I read the first couple of pages of the book to see how it grabbed me and the next thing I know my legs go numb from sitting so long. So, Steppe is now my "downstairs" book.

A quick word about Piers Anthony. I know a lot of people don't like him. Many dismiss his Xanth series as juvenile (hmmm, how are YA books selling these days?). I know he had a bad reputation with publishers for years because he actually expected to be paid the amount of royalties called for in his contracts (shocking!). I know he was involved in some famous feuds in the 1970s. Personally, I've read about a dozen of his books and enjoyed them all, especially the Incarnations series. But more to the point, I have reached out to Piers three times, each time asking him for something (always related to Philip Jose Farmer) and each time he came through. Came through big in fact. So in my book, Piers is a prince and a very good writer, I have nothing but admiration for him.

I finished reading Nick and the Glimmung yesterday. It was interesting to see Philip K. Dick writing for a younger reader. Written in 1966, the book didn't feel dated, though it did seem somewhat incomplete to me. It's definitely worth checking out if you have read a lot of PKD and are running out of his books (as I am).

More Distractions

Before I had a chance to start reading the next big book on my list, a Subterranean Press chapbook arrived in the mail. Judge Sn Goes Golfing by John Scalzi is 32 short pages of laugh out loud fun. I would assume it is even funnier if you play golf, which I don't unless you count disc golf. This story is set in the same world as Scalzi's humorous novel The Android's Dream. Now I can get back to Nick and the Glimmung downstairs and start something new upstairs.

More as a reminder to myself than anything else, here is a list of authors I hope to read a lot of this year.

First, Fredric Brown, Randall Garrett and Wilson Tucker. These are three "classic" science fiction writers that I really enjoy reading, but haven't been able to read their whole backlist, yet.

Rudy Rucker: the only author who I think messes with your head more than Philip K. Dick.

Chris Roberson: I keep hearing great things about him, but so far I've only read one novella of his.

Rhys Hughes: (see the last post).

Stanislaw Lem: maybe. The first book of his I read was The Cyberiad, and I loved it, I thought it was just wonderful. I've read several others since, but haven't enjoyed any of them nearly as much.

Charles R. Saunders: I really want to finish the Imaro series.

Joe R. Lansdale: I don't normally read horror, which I believed most of Joe's work is. But Joe assures me that most of it isn't horror. I've really liked Bubba Ho Tep, Zeppelins West, and the first two Hap and Leonard novels, so I'm going to try some more.

No doubt I will discover several new authors this year and try to cram in a bunch of their books as well. However, the most important book I need to read this year is C# 3.0 Unleashed With the .NET Framework 3.5. At 966 pages, plus appendices, it will probably take me all year. Gains in knowledge should make up for the lack in pleasure...