Van Becelaeres at Cleveland
Charlie's Recommended Reads

The Martian
Andy Weir

The blurb from the Science Fiction Book Club (yes, I know ... but it lets me know what's new and all that) made me think I wanted to read this one. I was right - I really did want to read this one, and I'm glad I did.

From the start, I was hooked trying to figure how the protagonist could survive alone on Mars after the rest of his team had headed back to Earth (thinking him dead). The problems he faced seemed right on, and his way of solving them equally so.

The amazing thing to me, though, is that this is a first novel - and Andy Weir succeeded in making the characters different, believable, and memorable. The seemingly random details about the various folks involved in trying to rescue an astronaut accidentally left behind on Mars kept making sense, and making the characters seem real.

Based on my first read through, it's going to be a while before I read it again, simply because the basic plot is a series of challenges that need to be overcome by ingenuity and such, and since I remember how each problem was tackled, whether successfully or otherwise, it won't be nearly as compelling a read until I do a little bit of forgetting.

Despite that (very slight) reservation, I really do recommend this book. It's a much quicker read than the number of pages might indicate, mostly because you just keep going as it keeps you going.

Enjoy!


Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delaney

It's been a long time since I had read this book, and the last time I didn't actually make it all the way through it.
I almost didn't make it through this time, but I really don't like giving up, so I pressed on, and I'm pretty sure that I'm glad I did.

Delany is never a quick, breezy kind of read, and Dhalgren is about as dense as anything of his that I've read (I'll leave the Tales of Neveryon aside - that's been reviewed separately below.). When I hit the part at the end with multiple streams of narrative on the page, I wondered how long I could keep at it, but it did settle down to a readable amount.

Anyway, I really hadn't realized just how much this book had influenced my writing in A Rune With A View (2012, Grand Teuton Press). Much of the mysterious aspect of  how Jerry doesn't really know what's going on around him - while his companions seem to have a bit more of a clue - is at least atmospherically related to the way Kid drifts around Bellona in Dhalgren.

Still, unlike Delany, at least I let everyone in on what had been going on by the time the book ended; and the climactic scene in my book owes much more to Charles Williams than to Delany. In fact, it was that scene, and its very conscious debt to Williams, that was the whole point of writing the rest of the book.

But, back to Dhalgren:
I'm not sure I can recommend the book to other readers (there are simply too many bizarre and quite disturbing scenes and actions in there), but if you've read others of his books, but not this one, then you really ought to add it to your reading list.



Doc Sidhe
Aaron Allston

If' you've followed my posted reading, you'll have noticed that I've read this book several times, and usually rated it a 3.5 - above average, but nothing spectacular.
Why, then, do I keep going back to it when I need another book to read?
Frankly, the story is pretty good, but the writing is what brings me back.Allston manages to make most of the characters pretty real, even the ones who have no business being real at all. Further, the in medias res opening isn't just a toss-away scene to get things going, it's something that actually matters to the plot, and to the protagonist.
I haven't read them, but I've been told that Allston's contributions to the Star Wars universe are top-notch as well. Based on this book, I'm not surprised.
Now I need to find the sequel to Doc Sidhe and see what's next.


Atlas Shrugged,
Ayn Rand

Wow - this woman had problems.  Yes, I know that's the opening line from the previous review (below), but it applies here as well.
I gave this a 5 in my ratings, because it's that important a book.  That doesn't mean, though, that I think Rand is a great writer - hardly that.
   I think the saddest part of the whole thing is that she so thoroughly rejected so much of the Soviet system, but never realised that the Atheism that allowed it was something to be rejected as well.
   As we make our way through what has seemed to be a post-Constitutional America, the characters and actions in this novel have become frightengly familiar, and for that alone it's important that we all read this novel.  It does get a bit embarrassing as she seeks for higher feelings by describing all these great men's love for one another - and for Dagny Taggart.  Frankly, I think Hank Reardon is the most human of the characters, and he's a sort of pulp fictional super guy.  Melodrama is probably a reasonable assessment of the plot, and overwrought is a reasonable assessment of the histrionics, but frightenly accurate is also a reasonable assessment of her read on where America was (and seems now to be) headed.
  I do reccomend this book, but I'll warn you that it's not an easy or quick read by any means.

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever,
James Tiptree, Jr.

Wow - this woman had problems.  Yes, James Tiptree, Jr was actually a woman writing under a male pseudonym, but that's only the beginning of it.
   I found it quite sad - and this reminded me very much of F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby - wonderful writing, but the story: yow!
   Anyway, every interesting story (and many of them in this collection were well beyond simply interesting stories) was marred by her incredible fixation on sex and the "battle of the sexes" as the underlying cause of every ill.
   Great writer, sick woman.  It's too bad that rather than writing to overcome her problems - and to share that overcoming with the reader - she seemed more interesting in exploring the limits of her abilitiy to share her problems.
   Again, the writing was first rate, too bad the person behind it was so troubled.

  The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown

OK, it's kind of a fun read, but why all the accolades and disapprobation?  I see the page-turning part of it all - helped along by the fact that the chapters are incredibly short (I thought I was bad about that!), and not only does nothing ever actually finish in a given chapter, the next chapter switches to another part of the action.
   Anyway, it seemed like a fleshed-out back story for Lara Croft, Tomb Raider more than any reasoned and reasonable attack on Christianity.  I mean, all those things Brown brings into the story (and which he claims are facts which he had set out to disprove in doing his "research" for the book) are long-disproved ravings of anti-Christian pagan wannabes.
   I mean, look, if you want to have sex as a religious ceremony, that's all well and good, I suppose, but you don't need to make up stuff about Jesus to justify it, do you?
   Good grief.  What a bunch of crap.  But a fairly decent suspense-kind of novel anyway.  I hardly figured out who the Teacher was before it was revealed, and the other "bad guys" who turn out to be dupes were pretty well done as well.  Too bad he didn't have something better to write about, he seems to be fairly talented.

  Topper, Thorne Smith

What a great book!  I remember liking it a lot way back when I first read it, but it's better than I remembered.  Kind of racy for having been written in 1926, too!
Anyway, here's a brief quote from very near the end of the book that just caught me as I read it:
   "You've created happiness in me," said Mr. Topper.  "You've awakened dreams and left memories.  You've made me humble and you've made me human.  You've taught me to understand how a man with a hangover feels.  You've lifted me forever out of the rut of my smug existence.  I'll go back to it I know, but I won't be the same man."
   "You never were," she [Marion Kerby] answered logically.  "You were never intended to be.  Nobody is, but life gets you, life and the economic urge - success, esteem, safety.  How many of our triumphs in life spring from negative impulses, the fear of losing rather than the wish to win.  It's a lot of talk, Topper, the whole damn show.  And no one alive today is to blame.  We must thank the ages past and bow to their false gods.  We dress them up in new garments, but in their essence they're just the same - power, property, and pride.  You can't get away from them ,the subsidized steps to salvation.  I talk like this, but I've contributed nothing.  We must just keep on and on until the mountains themselves crumble from nausea or we learn to scale them and cool our hands in the sky.  Wild talk, Topper.  Let's go back and cage a drink."

  The Firebird Trilogy, Kathy Tyers

Wow.  It's been a long time since I've read something that I thought could rival CS Lewis's Space Trilogy, but this is it!  As did Lewis, Tyers sets up a spacefaring civilization with a mythos that is recognizably Christian, yet not straight out of the Bible.
Her starting point was something like, "what if God had decided to wait to send Jesus, and we had progressed technologically well beyond our current state? what would the universe look like?"
Very well done - well conceived, well plotted, well written.
I know I'll be back to reread these books.  Highly recommended.

  Silverlock, John Myers Myers

DO NOT MISS THIS BOOK!  This is one of the greatest sf/fantasy/etc. novels you'll ever read, bar none.  A romp through of the "Commonwealth" - the land where all the great characters of literature live.  The protagonist, A. Clarence Shandon journeys from Greek myth (Circe) through Teutonic and English legend (Beowulf and Robin Hood) to places I'd rather not mention, so I don't spoil the read for you.  See how many of the folks he encounters you can recognize - this book will send you back to re-reading the classics, or inspire you to read them for the first time. 
I CANNOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TOO HIGHLY - IT WILL REPAY EVERY EFFORT YOU PUT INTO FINDING AND READING IT. 
Really, I mean every word.

  Time Out of Joint, Philip K. Dick

A bizarre (of course) story of a man trapped in the past in order to preserve the future.  A tale of interplanetary war, newspaper contests, illicit love, mass hallucinations, and a array of other topics not to be imagined.
Not your typical sf story, by not your typical sf writer.

  Tales of Neveryon, Samuel R. Delany

You know what?  I (essentially) never stop reading a book until I'm done.  This is that rare exception.  I was going to re-read this book, and had wondered why it had taken so long to get back to it - now I know.  This is Delany at his most self-indulgent.  He is always ready and eager to show how smart, knowledgeable, and thoughtful he is, but in this book of stories it becomes simply too much to stomach.  I am normally a big fan of his writing (Dhalgren, Nova, Triton, the Two Towers trilogy, etc.), but this one needed an editor to sit down and say, "Chip, what are you thinking? No one wants to read this stuff except the teaching assistant to the professor who assigned you to write these essays in the guise of stories.  Let's move on to the next idea you had." 
Never mind.

  The 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick

A bizarre (of course) story of space travel, aliens, drugs, spirituality, morality, mortality, psychic powers, and economics.
Not your typical sf story, by not your typical sf writer..

  The Flight of the Horse, Larry Niven

Niven - that means hard sf, right? Stuff like Ringworld, the Integral Trees, all that, right? 
Wrong. 
Who'd have thought it?  Larry Niven can write funny, he can write socio-fiction, he can do it all.  Maybe it's because he does it because he loves it, that he can do it all so well.  This is a bunch of short stories, mostly centered on the time travels of (oops, I forgot his name!) to retrieve animals from the past for the director of the UN.  He is an inbred-ruler-type familiar to students of English history, who loves the pictures in old ABCdaria, hence, he wants a horse (of course, what they end up retrieving is a unicorn, and you can take it from there). 
There are other stories here as well, and the whole book is highly recommended.

  Night of Light, Philip Jose Farmer

John Carmody's experiences on the planet Dante's Joy during the "Night of Light" as he attempts to debunk a local religion, and during another "Night of Light" years later as he attempts to avert a planet-wide spiritual catastrophe.

 Three Hearts and Three Lions, Poul Anderson

A WWII Danish engineer finds himself transported to the world of Carolingian myth and legend - and finds himself strangely at home.

 A Midsummer Tempest, Poul Anderson

What if Shakespeare's plays were actually literal history?  How would that world be different from or the same as our own?

 A Case of Conscience, James Blish

A Case of Conscience is the fourth novel of a four book trilogy (the second entry was published in two parts) examining this question at length: 
"Is the pursuit of knowledge inherently evil?"

I heartily endorse this book.

  The Day After Judgment, James Blish

The Day After Judgment is the third novel of a four book trilogy (the second entry was published in two parts) examining this question at length: 
"Is the pursuit of knowledge inherently evil?"

I heartily endorse this book.

Black Easter, James Blish

Black Easter chronicles the "artistic" undertaking of a captain of military industry as he explores the "beauty" of destruction.  Hiring a black magician to loose demons from Hell with no specific instructions other than to return after 24 hours, he sits back to watch what pure, unbridled evil can do.  This is a serious question to the author, and his explorations of the nature of evil are well worth reading. 

Black Easter is the second novel of a four book trilogy (this being the first part of the second entry) examining this question at length: 
 
 

"Is the pursuit of knowledge inherently evil?"









I heartily endorse this book.

 Doctor Mirabilis, James Blish

Doctor Mirabilis  is a novelized biography of Roger Bacon.  Bacon was a monk in the middle ages who, by all accounts, was the true father of the scientific method.  This novel deserves wider distribution and especially readership, in that it takes seriously one's commitments to truth, faith, and integrity, examining the areas in which and the extent to which these come into conflict. 

Doctor Mirabilis is the first novel of a four book trilogy (the second entry was published in two parts) examining this question at length: 
 
 

"Is the pursuit of knowledge inherently evil?"









I heartily endorse this book.

 The High Crusade, Poul Anderson

The High Crusade is a combination of fantasy and science fiction, as is much of Anderson's work. 
The basics: an alien warship lands in medieval England to begin the work of clearing the planet of intelligent life to gain space for expansion.  Assuming them to be demons, the Englishmen are "protected" by a blessing from the local priest, and storm the ship, killing all but one of the aliens.  From here, it is a tale of battles and intrigue as the politically shrewd feudal English manage to take over an interstellar empire. 
The frame device is that the novel has been read by folks from Earth who have finally left for interstellar space and have encountered their brethren among the stars. 

A very fun read - get it if you can.

 A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller, Jr.

One of the most important works of Science Fiction I've ever read.  It's all there: Good, Evil, Art, Faith, Technology, Science, Politics, Life, Death. 
Don't miss this book; it's simply too good not to be read.
Spanning centuries during which we pass from post-nuclear holocaust Dark Ages through another Renaissance, another "Enlightenment", and eventually to the brink of another nuclear war, this novel examines human history from the viewpoint of a small religious community - and from the general viewpoint of the Church.  As stated above, don't miss this book; it's simply too good not to be read.
Last Update: 10 March  14