When Lucius talks, I listen.

SF Signal: MIND MELD: Science Fiction Films That Surprised Us -- In Good Ways and Bad Ways (With Video):

Gareth Edwards' Monsters surprised me by taking a pulp idea---spores brought back to earth on a crashed NASA probe grow into monsters the size of apartment blocks--and turning it into a character-driven drama/science fiction flick...and all for a reputed 15K.

The quote is from Lucius Shepard's contribution to the discussion. It was Lucius who got me into Yo La Tengo, an abiding musical love, and I've read nearly everything he's written over the years -- he and Kim Stanley Robinson have what I think of as the Shelves of Honor in my library.  So, when Lucius makes a recommendation, I check it out. 

Sci-Fi List Meme

My Secret Science Fiction Past – waggish is my jumping off point. Basically, it's a list of Sci-Fi classics where I'm bolding the ones I've read and italicizing the ones I still like and would recommend:

1 – The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
2 – I Am Legend – Richard Matheson
3 – Cities in Flight – James Blish
4 – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
5 – The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester
6 – Babel-17 – Samuel R. Delany
7 – Lord of Light – Roger Zelazny
8 – The Fifth Head of Cerberus – Gene Wolfe
9 – Gateway – Frederik Pohl
10 – The Rediscovery of Man – Cordwainer Smith

11 – Last and First Men – Olaf Stapledon
12 – Earth Abides – George R. Stewart
13 – Martian Time-Slip – Philip K. Dick
14 – The Demolished Man – Alfred Bester
15 – Stand on Zanzibar – John Brunner
16 – The Dispossessed – Ursula K. Le Guin
17 – The Drowned World – J. G. Ballard
18 – The Sirens of Titan – Kurt Vonnegut
19 – Emphyrio – Jack Vance
20 – A Scanner Darkly – Philip K. Dick
21 – Star Maker – Olaf Stapledon
22 – Behold the Man – Michael Moorcock
23 – The Book of Skulls – Robert Silverberg
24 – The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
25 – Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
26 – Ubik – Philip K. Dick
27 – Timescape – Gregory Benford
28 – More Than Human – Theodore Sturgeon
29 – Man Plus – Frederik Pohl
30 – A Case of Conscience – James Blish

31 – The Centauri Device – M. John Harrison
32 – Dr. Bloodmoney – Philip K. Dick
33 – Non-Stop – Brian Aldiss
34 – The Fountains of Paradise – Arthur C. Clarke
35 – Pavane – Keith Roberts
36 – Now Wait for Last Year – Philip K. Dick
37 – Nova – Samuel R. Delany
38 – The First Men in the Moon – H. G. Wells
39 – The City and the Stars – Arthur C. Clarke
40 – Blood Music – Greg Bear

41 – Jem – Frederik Pohl
42 – Bring the Jubilee – Ward Moore
43 – VALIS – Philip K. Dick
44 – The Lathe of Heaven – Ursula K. Le Guin
45 – The Complete Roderick – John Sladek
46 – Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said – Philip K. Dick
47 – The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells
48 – Grass – Sheri S. Tepper
49 – A Fall of Moondust – Arthur C. Clarke
50 – Eon – Greg Bear

51 – The Shrinking Man – Richard Matheson
52 – The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick
53 – The Dancers at the End of Time – Michael Moorcock
54 – The Space Merchants – Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth
55 – Time Out of Joint – Philip K. Dick
56 – Downward to the Earth – Robert Silverberg
57 – The Simulacra – Philip K. Dick
58 – The Penultimate Truth – Philip K. Dick
59 – Dying Inside – Robert Silverberg
60 – Ringworld – Larry Niven

61 – The Child Garden – Geoff Ryman
62 – Mission of Gravity – Hal Clement
63 – A Maze of Death – Philip K. Dick
64 – Tau Zero – Poul Anderson
65 – Rendezvous with Rama – Arthur C. Clarke
66 – Life During Wartime – Lucius Shepard
67 – Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang – Kate Wilhelm
68 – Roadside Picnic – Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
69 – Dark Benediction – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
70 – Mockingbird – Walter Tevis

71 – Dune – Frank Herbert
72 – The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein
73 – The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
74 – Inverted World – Christopher Priest
75 – Kurt Vonnegut – Cat’s Cradle
76 – H.G. Wells – The Island of Dr. Moreau
77 – Arthur C. Clarke – Childhood’s End
78 – H.G. Wells – The Time Machine
79 – Samuel R. Delany – Dhalgren (July 2010)
80 – Brian Aldiss – Helliconia (August 2010)

81 – H.G. Wells – Food of the Gods (Sept. 2010)
82 – Jack Finney – The Body Snatchers (Oct. 2010)
83 – Joanna Russ – The Female Man (Nov. 2010)
84 – M.J. Engh – Arslan (Dec. 2010)

I haven't investigated the criteria of the source list but, of course, many omissions leap to mind. Primarily, where the heck are the Kim Stanley Robinson novels?

Random Book, Random Passage #5

Randomness brought me to The Year's Best Science Fiction 1984 this time. It's got Lucius Shepard (twice), Kim Stanley Robinson, Gene Wolfe, Robert Silverberg, John Varley, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, it's quite a collection. But my random page puts us in Dozois's Introduction. Random giveth and random taketh away. Still, he writes:

So instead I'll limit myself to commenting on the novels that I did read this year, I was most impressed by Neuromancer, William Gibson (Ace Special); The Wild Shore, Kim Stanley Robinson (Ace Special); The Man Who Melted, Jack Dann (Bluejay Books); Them Bones, Howard Waldrop (Ace Special); Green Eyes, Lucius Shepard (Ace Special); Frontera, Lewis Shiner (Baen Books); The Man in the Tree, Damon Knight (Berkley); Heechee Rendezvous, Frederik Pohl (Del Rey); Across the Sea of Suns, Gregory Benford (Timescape); Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Samuel R. Delaney (Bantam)...

I'll stop there even though several more outstanding novels follow in his list (Icehenge and Job: A Comedy of Justice not the least of them).  Many of the books Dozois lists are classics, and are sitting on shelves in front of me, waiting for the randomizer to select them.  How about they eye for talent whoever did the selecting for the Ace Specials had, eh?  My Ace Special editions of The Wild Shore (signed) and Green Eyes are prized possessions.  (I sure hope my kids like to read sci-fi when they get a little older, I can't wait to share these with them.)  A little further down the page where Dozois discuss the small press, it brings a smile to my face to see how he acknowledged Zeising for publishing novels by Gene Wolfe and PKD.

Book/Reading Meme

via It Doesn't Have To Be Right...

Hardback or trade paperback or mass market paperback?
For Kim Stanley Robinson, it's Hardback & first available paperback. For all others, it's whatever the library has or I can get on bookmooch.

Bookmark or dog-ear?
Bookmark! Dog-earing is vandalism.

Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random?
Well, I used to alpha by author, then chronological within author. Now, I'm lucky to keep authors together.

Keep, throw away or sell?
Depends, mostly keep. Doing lots of bookmooching though.

Keep dust jacket or toss it?
Keep. But I took the dj off "Quicksilver" while reading it, lost it for a while, found it, then lost it again during the move, and found it in the car after the move - trashed. I'm starting to wish I didn't care about djs. I like the plain, no dj, look. And they're a pain when you're reading.

Last book you bought?
Wow. I can't remember. It may be a couple years since I bought a book? I'm a library guy. Oh wait, "Sixty Days and Counting" was a 2007 book, that was the last one I bought.

Last book someone bought for you?
Would've been last Christmas ... so Quicksilver from my mother-in-law.

What are some of the books on your to-buy list?


Collection (short stories, same author) or anthology (short stories, different authors)?
Collection, I suppose.

Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, or the velvety embrace of Death?
Potter.

Morning reading, afternoon reading, or nighttime reading?
Nighttime.

The books you need to go with other books on your shelves?
I'm still missing a few Lucius Shepards.

Do you read anywhere and anytime you can or do you have a set reading time and/or place?
Whenever and wherever I can. Which is not often. I've got an office/library in the new house though, so that's nice.

Do you have seasonal reading habits?
No.

Do you read one book at a time or do you have two or more books going at once?
I'd prefer one at a time but I'm all over the place lately. Audiobooks in the car. Picking up graphic novels before I've finished other books I've started. Keeping one book in the living room and another in the office. A mess.

What are your pet peeves about the way people treat books?
Seriously, don't me started. Books are not coasters. Bookmarks are a must. Don't lick your finger before turning the page of my book, you sick f*ck, that's just gross.

Name one book you surprised yourself by liking.
"Atonement."

How often do you read a book and not review it on your blog? What are your reasons for not blogging about a book?
I don't think I ever put book reviews on TC. I review books on LibraryThing when I have the energy. So, not that often.

Lucius in Stride

Lucius Shepard's Hugo Nominated short story, "Stars Seen Through Stone." The intrusion of other realities into troubled relationships is Shepard's meat and potatoes. I like this as a relatively upbeat alternate version of his recent short novel, "Softspoken."

Movies Recently

King Kong
Worth seeing? Yes. Great movie? No. Too long? Way. Great special effects? Yes. Best character? Kong, definitely. No actor in the movie is as convincing as the cg ape, least of all Jack Black.

The first hour starts out impressively. 1930s NYC looks amazing. Then, it quickly degenerates. I don't know if it's the editor or the director you blame when what ought to take 15 minutes takes 60, but someone needed to recognize that fat needed to be cut.

The Skull Island middle third or so of the movie also runs too long. It's not that it drags -- it's almost nonstop mayhem once Kong appears but maybe Kong could fight two T. Rexes instead of three (too much of a good thing here), maybe the giant insect part was unnecessary -- and for Pete's sake, can we cut the number of shakey zoom-to-skull shots and ease up on the jarringly faux dramatic slo-mo shots?

After returning to NYC, the movie ends well: Kong's escape, the ice pond interlude, and the Empire State Building sequence are awesome.

Syriana
This should have been a great movie, a compelling examination of how business and government work for and against each other, of how macro and micro forces conspire to twist the work of the best intentioned so they serve the will of the greediest and most corrupt, or something like that; the elements are there, but they don't quite add up. Siddig El Fadil, George Clooney, Chris Cooper, and even Matt Damon turn in intriguing performances ... and yet taken all together, the film is less than the sum of its parts. I found myself wishing the focus had been different; I would've rather seen the Prince Nasir character as the central focus - he's the only character aside from Damon's Wall Street analyst with whom we can sympathize. I'm not familiar with the source material, so I may be imagining a movie that couldn't have been made from the book it was based on. I wanted to like Syriana, but can't recommend it.

I've just started reading Lucius Shepard's Weapons of Mass Seduction and can, however, wholeheartedly recommend it. Now them's some movie reviews. Lucius has a keen eye for what makes a movie suck and an entertaining penchant for imagining how appropriate karmic retribution would play out for the likes of a Steven Spielberg, for example. He also bravely practices Bonedaddy's art of reviewing a movie he hasn't seen yet, boldly predicting why and how it will suck. Not that he hates everything, he actually is kinder to Vanilla Sky I would have suspected, though I still don't think I'll be able to bring myself to watch it.

Amazon Shorts

Amazon Shorts
New short fiction and essays available only from Amazon to either read online or download as PDF files. I just bought a Lucius Shepard story and a Kim Stanley Robinson essay. (There's also a $50 gift certificate contest for first reviews ... and neither has a review attached yet, so that's next after I read 'em.)

Update: done and done. I recommend both and now am crossing my fingers that one of the reviews will make me 50 clams.

Lefty Sci-Fi

A well-researched list of must-read SF for leftists. Includes Kim Stanley Robinson and Lucius Shepard. (link via ethel)

Radiant

An excerpt from "Radiant Green Star" by Lucius Shepard. Shepard is one of my favorite sci-fi writers; I'm ashamed that I didn't even know about this novella until I saw that it's been nominated for a Hugo. It doesn't appear to have been anthologized yet. I'm hoping this means there'll be a follow up to "Barnacle Bill the Spacer" one of these days.

Ziesing's Catalog

My freshman year of college, I discovered Yo La Tengo by reading a book catalog (Ziesing's) with a little article by Lucius Shepard in it in which Lucius listed a bunch of bands he was digging at the time. I liked the name, so I bought President/New Wave Hot Dogs and have been devoted to their music ever since. So when Lucius talks, I listen. Here's an old article I stumbled across where Lucius talks up Paul Mann's novels.