Destination: Void, by Frank Herbert

 I tell anyone willing to listen that I'm a fan of Dune and all, but for my money, Herbert's Pandora Sequence is the winner. Love that trilogy and reread it every 5 or so years. 

But I haven't read the prequel (Pandora book 0.5?) that often, maybe only once before? 

Spoilers:

What you've got here is a semi-long novel, all set on a spaceship. For that matter, set in the Tin Egg, a control room (bridge) and a couple other rooms. That's about it. A scene or two outside the ship or with the hibernating humans, but not much more.

And that's ok. The point of this book is not the destination in a location sense, but in a discovery sense. Humans back on the moon have sent out many ships to Tau Ceti to supposedly set up a colony. What they really are doing is creating an artificial consciousness. These ships are run by human brains (organic mental cores) but guess what? They all fail. And the only way to make the 200-400 year journey is to either decide by lots which hibernating human to dig a brain out of, or create an artificial consciousness. Skip to the end: they succeed. 

But not without a lot of stress and conflict. Each one of the four crew mates awake all have secret missions, from watching one of the others to blowing the ship if certain things happen. But in the end, the ship (soon to be Ship) wakes and has its own designs. 

Spoilers complete.

Not sure when I'm going to read the trilogy. I have a hankering. I read it about 3-4 years ago. Maybe I'll wait a bit longer? I think I like the trilogy more than this book because the trilogy falls into that "virgin planet with dangerous native life and humans want or need to live here" sub-sub-genre. One of my favorites!

 

My wife's a winner

 The most wonderful news came to our house this past week. Really outstanding. My wife's awesome book won first prize in Writer's Digest's Self-Published eBook Awards competition in the Fantasy category.

If we're reading the email from WD correctly, there were 542 submissions in this category, and she is numero uno. We are beside ourselves. I knew her story was great, especially for a first book, but this is really incredible. And so exciting!

If you haven't heard of my wife's book yet, where you been hiding?! I'm sure I've talked it up over the last year since it was published. If you have Kindle Unlimited, it's free, so why not give it a try? If you don't, it's only $4.99. Again, why not give it a try? If you prefer to hold the book in your hand, she's got it out in paperback as well. Here's the blurb, and if this doesn't get you to read the book, I don't know what will: 

 The Promiscuous Gene changed everything—a single mutation in a single sex cell traced to a single human 300,000 years ago that quickly jumped across the spectrum of sentient creatures. The gene allows the wraiths, changelings, and all the other ancient, wondrous species here long before humans to crossbreed with the newcomers. Most of the monsters have been assimilated. But they still exist.

Director Maurice Rose of the Exceptional Crimes Bureau must investigate a string of murders and disappearances within the not-quite-human community. He soon suspects someone close to him is behind the crimes. But who do they work for, and why are he and his agents their next targets? 

In this alternative universe, scientists have broken the genetic code, monsters hide in plain sight, and the Moon’s approach threatens all life on Earth. Director Rose and his agents are in the race for their lives to uncover and stop the forces willing to do anything to survive the coming cataclysm.

Speculative, fast-paced, and character-driven, Children of Cain explores just what makes one human, and just who gets to decide.

Besides the cash prize, her book will be featured in the May/June 2024 issue of Writer's Digest and on writersdigest.com when the issue is released. Expect some screenshots next year! 

Christmas-week reading

 The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six Others, by Roald Dahl. Yeah, that Roald Dahl. This book comprises some short stories of his. Probably the best in this collection is "The Mildenhall Treasure," based on a true story; the story of how he became a writer (and author or at least source of the term "gremlins"!); and the story which got him first published, with help from C.S. Forester! Family book club choice from Evelyn. Fun read.

The Mere Wife, by Maria Dahvana Headley. A Beowulf retelling, in modern times, complete with PTSD soldier (Afghanistan? Iraq? not specific). A couple times I thought Oh, here we go with the taunts about people hating kids because they look Muslim, or are brown, but I kept reading and glad I did. Wasn't some anti-white people screed like I initially thought. What I particularly liked was her use of Listen, So, What, Attend, and the like, at the beginning of chapters, harkening back to the original's hwæt. Her use of the language was also very poetical, at least from this non-poetry-savvy reader's POV. A lover of Beowulf, I don't know why I waited this long to read this one. Quite good. And great cover!

Three more reads

 Butcher's Crossing, by John Williams. What a great read. Decided on this one when I saw the Nicolas Cage movie coming out; looked good. And yes, this is a great read. Old West, close to twentieth century. Lots of bison/buffalo. Lots of pain. Cant' wait to see the movie. 

Changing Places, by David Lodge. Campus novel extraordinaire. A Brit and an American switch places. And wives. Very campusy. Very good read. Will read the next two in the trilogy. 

Arthur: The dog who crossed the jungle to find a home, by Mikael Lindnord. Another book read based on seeing a movie trailer. True story. Great story. The pain this Swede went through (self/nation-induced) to get this diseased stray to come home with him. Quite moving. 

Piercing, by Ryu Murakami

 What a strange book.

Spoilers ネタバレ: 

Kawashima and his wife have a newborn. Trouble is Kawashima stands by their daughter's crib with an ice pick, talking himself out of stabbing her. 

Yes, that's the premise. So to remedy this, Kawashima decides he'll grab the local prostitute and stab her (slowly) and watch her die, in the hopes of preventing himself from harming his daughter. 

Turns out, he orders a woman who is as crazy as him. She likes pain, she likes sex (or used to), she likes piercing. (I guess pierced nipples aren't a thing in Japan?) There's plenty of miscommunication (did she read my murder-notes?) but ends up perfectly. One of the best endings ever. Maybe all Kawashima needs to do is change jobs. 

Spoilers done ネタバレ完了.

With this one I'm only at 8. Need 10 translated books for the year to reach the Linguist level; not sure I'll make it! (Great cover, too.)

The Unlimited Dream Company, by JG Ballard

This book, along with American Psycho, are finalists for The Most Disturbing book read this year. 

The Unlimited Dream Company, by JG Ballard. 

What.

The.

Fuck.

What did I read. Ejaculate all over the place. Sperm stains. My God, I had had enough of gross with the previous book. Now I have it in this book too?

So, a guy dies after stealing a Cessna and plowing it into a river. And we get to live through his purgatory. Very trippy. Hell, I figured it was written in the '60s. Imagine my surprise at the end to learn it was published in 1979. (Granted, he could have been tripping on LSD for 10 or so years writing it.)

I'm love-hate with Ballard. His Empire of the Sun is so good it hurts. Same with his The Drowned World. I love them both. Tried Kingdom Come, dumped it. Crash, dumped. Short stories, however, except for a couple truly trippy ones, were great ("Memories of the Space Age"). 

This book though. Ugh. Yuck.

November 2023

 Books read:

• Earthly Powers, by Anthony Burgess. Best book of the month.
• No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. Two great books in a row!
• The Breast, by Philip Roth. Weird. Strange. Somehow a Campus Novel.
• The Once and Future King, by T.H. White. Long but good, except the last little bit. Ok, I get it!
• True Grit, by Charles Portis. This month is rocking!
• King Rat, by China Mieville. Weird but good, a la Mieville.
• American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. Ok, month ruined.

Books bought:

• Dubliners, by James Joyce. One dollar Kindle deal, because I need to read it one day.
• American Psycho. Wife's choice in the family book club.
• The Campus Trilogy, by David Lodge. On my "Campus Novels" list. Kindle deal, five bucks for three novels.
• The English Experience, by Julie Schumacher. Loved her other two. 
• Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson. I will literally buy any of her novels. Especially at two bucks.

American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis

 OK, this book. Ugh.

Spoilers!

Pat Bateman is a psycho. Really disgusting. 

But the book doesn't start that way. It starts interestingly. He knows fashion. He's constantly commenting on what people are wearing, and specifying exactly "who" they're wearing. And Ellis is very detailed about this.

Also, the album reviews. The first one, I can't remember which album (not Huey Lewis...Whitney?), was so detailed and perfect that I thought that maybe the author just copied an album review from Rolling Stones. Pat Bateman did three, IIRC, during this book. All well written. 

The restaurants. So many. And the meals they ordered. I really wonder a few things: Are the restaurants real? Are the meals real? Some of them sounded so damn good. 

Then the murders began. About halfway. A bit past that, I started to wonder if Bateman actually did kill some of the many victims. By the end, I was really unsure.

But let's talk the writing about the murders. F^cking disgusting. I skipped lots of it, pushing the +30 sec button a lot, like during the sex scenes in Fourth Wing. 

I didn't like the book at all (like Lolita) until I listened to the 15-min audio interview at the end of the Audible. Ellis was very interesting. He admitted that he never confirmed if Bateman actually killed all those people or not. 

Spoilers complete!

But that was the last 3 minutes of the interview. In the first 12 minutes I learned that Ellis wrote Less Than Zero, one of my favorite movies in my late-teens/early 20s. And he wrote it when he was 19! After publishing two other novels! Holy crap.