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Just finished: There Are Doors by Gene Wolfe. I read his Book of the New Sun a long time ago, and found it both confused and confusing; I didn't like it.
I can enjoy complexity in a novel, but I like there to be a point to the whole thing. I like there to be some sort of fundamentally coherent plot. Too many books lack that. I hate books in which the protagonist (if there is one) is insane, or reality changes in arbitrary and unexplained ways...much as I love the 60's, I don't care for a lot of the writing that came out of that era. I don't like psychedelic works for the most part.
Music, of course, is a different story. And I loved the movie of The Yellow Submarine. But books which are basically incoherent ravings I detest.
I don't remember a damn thing about The Book of the New Sun except the mercury-filled sword Terminus Est (which was a cool concept, but seemed structurally unsound), but I know I didn't like it. It was confusing and unsatisfying. So I avoided Wolfe for many years, despite all the raves.
But I must have picked up There Are Doors for free or almost-free some time ago, and I grabbed it at random when I needed a new book to read on my commute.
And it actually wasn't bad! True, there were changes in reality (actually, switches between two realities) that happened without much explanation until near the end of the book. True, the hero was somewhat passive and a bit stupid, and spent a fair amount of time in an insane asylum under the influence of electroshock and drugs. The whole thing was a bit confused. But all in all it actually worked reasonably well, and by the end I found myself wishing for a sequel.
There isn't one, of course. Oh well.
Now I'm rereading The Way The Future Was, the autobiography (and history of science fiction) by Fred Pohl. This was another "grabbed randomly from the shelf" book, and when I saw it in my hand I almost put it back.
I hadn't read it in so long that I'd forgotten if it was any good. But then I figured that it would still be better than reading nothing, so I kept it.
And you know, it's actually very good so far! I'd forgotten that Pohl was another of the Brooklyn cabal of early science fiction writers. And he's a damned good one, to boot. I never lived in Brooklyn, and I was born long after the Great Depression (although at the moment George W. Bush seems to be doing his very best to recreate it - I almost hope he succeeds, and that no equivalent to FDR emerges to save him and his entire class from the lamp posts that they deserve), but I have friends in Brooklyn.
I almost wish I had lived in Brooklyn in those days. Pohl makes it sound great. He doesn't pretty it up, but still, it sounds exciting and just plain fun.
In other news, I saw a deer in the woods from the train this morning, between the Norfolk and Walpole stations. It was small, and appeared to be nibbling at the base of a tree. It was a good distance from the train; perhaps 300 feet or so.
I can enjoy complexity in a novel, but I like there to be a point to the whole thing. I like there to be some sort of fundamentally coherent plot. Too many books lack that. I hate books in which the protagonist (if there is one) is insane, or reality changes in arbitrary and unexplained ways...much as I love the 60's, I don't care for a lot of the writing that came out of that era. I don't like psychedelic works for the most part.
Music, of course, is a different story. And I loved the movie of The Yellow Submarine. But books which are basically incoherent ravings I detest.
I don't remember a damn thing about The Book of the New Sun except the mercury-filled sword Terminus Est (which was a cool concept, but seemed structurally unsound), but I know I didn't like it. It was confusing and unsatisfying. So I avoided Wolfe for many years, despite all the raves.
But I must have picked up There Are Doors for free or almost-free some time ago, and I grabbed it at random when I needed a new book to read on my commute.
And it actually wasn't bad! True, there were changes in reality (actually, switches between two realities) that happened without much explanation until near the end of the book. True, the hero was somewhat passive and a bit stupid, and spent a fair amount of time in an insane asylum under the influence of electroshock and drugs. The whole thing was a bit confused. But all in all it actually worked reasonably well, and by the end I found myself wishing for a sequel.
There isn't one, of course. Oh well.
Now I'm rereading The Way The Future Was, the autobiography (and history of science fiction) by Fred Pohl. This was another "grabbed randomly from the shelf" book, and when I saw it in my hand I almost put it back.
I hadn't read it in so long that I'd forgotten if it was any good. But then I figured that it would still be better than reading nothing, so I kept it.
And you know, it's actually very good so far! I'd forgotten that Pohl was another of the Brooklyn cabal of early science fiction writers. And he's a damned good one, to boot. I never lived in Brooklyn, and I was born long after the Great Depression (although at the moment George W. Bush seems to be doing his very best to recreate it - I almost hope he succeeds, and that no equivalent to FDR emerges to save him and his entire class from the lamp posts that they deserve), but I have friends in Brooklyn.
I almost wish I had lived in Brooklyn in those days. Pohl makes it sound great. He doesn't pretty it up, but still, it sounds exciting and just plain fun.
In other news, I saw a deer in the woods from the train this morning, between the Norfolk and Walpole stations. It was small, and appeared to be nibbling at the base of a tree. It was a good distance from the train; perhaps 300 feet or so.
