Christmas before time: yesterday my brother gave me two books as a gift, and I already started reading one, because it looked quite interesting – an impression that was confirmed by the first chapters.
Continue readingCategory Archives: Books
Leigh Brackett’s Birthday
Today is the birthday of Leigh Brackett, one of the most influential authors in the field of space opera and planetary romance, or if you prefer of sword & planet, a hard boiled writer and screenwriter, and the wife of Edmond Hamilton.
I first discovered Brackett in the mid 80s, with an Italian translation of The Sword of Rhiannon. Only twenty-odd years later I’d find out that the translation was heavily manipulated, but even in that unfaithful version, I was hooked.
The Skaith books followed – in English, the three Ballantine-Del Rey volumes. And then anything else, in whatever form I was able to find.
It is reading Leigh Brackett that I was made aware of the connection between pulp science fiction and hard boiled fiction. Someone observed that all of Brackett’s heroes were, in the end, Humphrey Bogart, even when they walked the alien dust of distant planets. And this is not a bad thing. By coupling the sense of wonder of the Golden Age of Science Fiction with the melancholy and cynicism of hard boiled, Brackett created a universe that had an incredible stopping power, and feel fresh and exciting seventy years on.
But instead of reading my ramblings, check out this article, called Queen of the Martian Mysteries, by the Michael Moorcock.
And afterwards, check out Black Amazon of Mars, and judge by yourself.
Trigger, by Courtney Alameda
Having happily completed BUSCAFUSCO: Fun & Games, and while I let it rest for a few hours before I hand it over to the Amazon oompa loompas, I decided to award myself a little diversion. And as far as A Job Well Done treats go, the Tor.com ebooks are absolutely perfect.
In case you missed them, these are stories – in the novelette/novella range – published as ebooks for cheap by the digital branch of Tor Books, purveyors of fine imaginative fiction.
They offer a wide selection of authors and genres within the science fiction/fantasy field, both well established and up-and-coming, and they are both a great, quick, affordable read and an excellent way to remain current with the latest authors and trends in the field.
So I splurged 83 eurocents and got me a copy of Courtney Alameda’s Trigger, a tough and yet finely nuanced horror tale set in a San Francisco infested by a number of strange creatures.
The Helsing family is charged with commanding the special units of Harkers that hunt down and kill the monsters.
The story mixes horror and action, features a number of easter eggs for horror fans, and delivers a promising worldbuilding. The ebook promises a folow-up to this short piece, in the form of a novel, and I’ll be there to read it as soon as it’s out.
In the meantime, Trigger is quite fun, and a perfect way to finish a long night of writing and insomnia.
A book about trees
No good deed goes unpunished, even if it’s s good deed done for a lark: back when my friends Hell and Silvia came to visit last month, a common friend’s birthday was coming up, so we did a collection to buy her a present. I advanced the momentous figure of three euro to cover for my friend Lucy’s share – just for a lark, because she’s a great person but she tends to obsess a little over such details, and I wanted her to relax a bit. She retaliated by sending me a book from my Amazon wishlist.
Continue readingThe Singing Bowl
I was in need of adventure, and thanks to one of those very mysterious book promotions Amazon Italy sometimes does (why? How? Based on what? It’s a mystery) I got myself a stack of books by the Long Riders Guild, livening up my growing collection of books about the Silk Road and environs. I am going through them in the evening, when I am too tired to write and the countryside is dark, cold and unforgiving.
If I can’t travel, my mind can.
Last night I finished Alistair Carr’s slim The Singing Bowl – Journey through Inner Asia (2006), the chronicle of the author’s visit to Mongolia and the Silk Road in the early 2000s.
It is a crisp, concise story of an adventure -a travel started because the author woke up one morning “with Mongolia in his head.” An apt way to describe the lure of far-off lands, the urge that animated travelers for centuries.
88 cents of dystopia
Well, isn’t it a bummer: I had just time to discuss with some of my friends about how I do not like dystopian science fiction (I’m more of a positivist, optimist sort of guy), that the Humble Bundle went and did a Dystopian Worlds book bundle offer, and I ended up shelling out 88 hard-earned eurocents. And then I thought you might like to take a look at it. So here is the link.
For 1 dollar, or the equivalent 88 cents of a euro, you get an incredibly good selection of great books:
Continue readingFighting the Kaiser in the American South-West
Alternate history.
I like that a lot – you get the best of both worlds, a solid historical background, and a fun science fiction/fantasy/what if angle and plot.
I did write a few alternate histories in my time, and of course Hope & Glory is a huge alternate history universe.
So yes, I like that.
And while I don’t read that much alternate history anymore, I am in the habit of keeping a few books as an emergency stash for bad moments, and one, in one of my surprise book boxes, happened to be an alternate history book.
And I’m having a go at it.
Karavansara 