Books

You are currently browsing the archive for the Books category.

My Two Favourite SF Reads of 2011 (Neither of Which I’ve Finished Yet)

January 31, 2012 in Books by Brian | 4 comments

I am a naughty, naughty reader.  Even knowing that, these days, it takes me a looong time to reach the end of a novel, I’m apparently incapable of resisting the urge to have more than one book on the go at any given time.  Sometimes three or four, in fact.  As a result, books often languish for months on my bedside table, silently bemoaning their misfortune of having fallen into the hands of such a reckless reader.

Still, perhaps a couple of them might be comforted if I go public with my affection for them.  (And to be fair, I didn’t actually start reading them until December, so I’m not in exactly flagrant breach of article 3.2 of the Responsible Reader’s Code: Timely Completion of Books Once Begun).  As I’ve not finished either of them, it’s possible they’ll go horribly wrong in their latter stages, but I think it’s unlikely.

Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding is the kind of book I find myself more and more drawn to as I get older, and ever poorer in available time.  It’s energetic, entertaining stuff that carries you along very comfortably at a decent pace.  A sort of blend of fantasy, steampunkish sf and pirate romp, it’s got a  faintly indiosycrantic vibe to it that makes it almost, but not quite, like stuff you’ve read before (as did the other Wooding book I read and enjoyed, The Fade).  Airships, golems, daemons, guns and swords abound in this tale of piracy gone wrong and brigands on the run.  The characters flirt with being unsympathetically selfish and hard-nosed, but so far Wooding’s kept them just on the right side of that line, for me at least.

The Dervish House by Ian McDonald hardly needs me to trumpet its worth, since it’s been praised hither and yon from the moment of its publication.  But I’m going to do it anyway, because when he’s firing on all cylinders – as he seems to be here, so far – I find Ian McDonald to be a quite extraordinarily good writer.

On a word to word, sentence to sentence, scene to scene basis he’s just brilliant.  If anyone wants to know what science fiction looks like when it’s produced by someone who absolutely knows and understands the genre, but also has a mastery of written English to match almost any author of literary fiction, this is it.  I’ve always believed that you might be able to teach someone to write fiction competently, but you can never instil in someone an instinctive ear for the intricate ebb and flow of prose, and the rhythms of description.  An author’s either got that somewhere inside them or they haven’t, and McDonald’s got it in spades.

Near-future Istanbul is the setting for this multi-viewpoint exploration of nanotechnology, urban history, terrorism and old mysticism.  On balance, I think it’s the best stuff I’ve ever read from McDonald, and that’s saying a whole lot.

Tags: , , ,

Books I Wish I’d Written

June 17, 2011 in Books, Writing by Brian | No comments

Don’t know quite what got me started thinking about this the other day, but it struck me there’s a difference between books I really, really like and those I kind of wish I’d written. It’s difficult to pin down the exact nature of that difference. Despite the misleading title to this post, I don’t 100% literally mean that I wish I had written another author’s book; it’s more that there are certain books that leave me profoundly envious of some aspect or aspects of the author’s craft, art, vision or whatever, and make me imagine how immensely satisfying it would be to emulate their achievement in my own (different) way and voice.

For whatever reason, plenty of excellent books don’t elicit quite that response. My reaction to the vast majority of the books I enjoy is simply that: I enjoy them, and admire the writer’s talent, but don’t get that odd little twinge of aspirational envy. I’m not quite sure exactly how this works, but I think it’s down to specificity. There needs to be some very particular, distinctive element of a book that dazzles me in some way before I’ll get that ‘man, I wish I’d achieved/thought of that’ response. The presence or absence of that response doesn’t make me like a book any more or less, it’s just a subtly different mental reaction to the text. I’m a big fan of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion books, for example, but not in a ‘wish I’d written that’ sense.  (Though I’d be pretty pleased with myself if I had written them …)

Anyway, I was gazing at my bookshelves, and one or two examples of this odd little phenomenom caught my eye.  Books I kind of, but not really, wish I’d written:

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.  For it’s adeptly handled density, visionary sense of an interconnected world and stupendously brilliant title.  Honestly, I’d be satisfied with just coming up with a title for a book as awesomely intriguing, clever and fitting as that.  That the enormous tome backing up that title is every bit as intriguing and clever is very cool.

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock.  A clear case of writerly envy, this.  The central concept underlying this book, and all its sequels, is one I’ve always found dazzling in its simplicity and elegance: a wood that is larger on the inside than the outside, and has the power to give physical form to the mythic archetypes lurking in the subconscious of all those who enter it.  I would like to have an idea as good and rich in potential as that, please.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.  An historical crime novel that’s about books, religious philosophy, medieval history and a whole lot more.  To make such an intricately put together intellectual puzzle read like a thriller is a work of something close to genius, I reckon.  Any writer with a grain of sense’d be pretty happy to hit such a pinnacle just once in their career.

Regeneration by Pat Barker.  It’s a long time since I read this, but it’s stayed with me as one of my very favourite examples of ‘literary’ fiction.  It’s about young men suffering from shell shock during the First World War, and is good in all sorts of ways, but what impressed me most about it at the time I read it, and still lingers in my mind, is the straightforward clarity with which it is written.  The prose is not at all fancy or convoluted, yet it conveys very powerfully complex emotions and themes.  Very clever.

A Christmas Miscellany

December 23, 2010 in Books, Clips, History, Movies, Music, Podcasts, Short Stories by Brian | No comments

Thought I’d resurrect an old tradition around here – not that something that’s only happened once before, long ago, really qualifies as a tradition – and provide a randomish smorgasbord of odds and ends to mark the festive season.  So, without further ado:

For Movie Fans (and Superhero Fans), the trailer for one of the latest in the apparently endless sequence of movies based on comic books.  Thor, which I confidently predict will be the highest grossing superhero-fantasy-Norse mythology mash-up of 2011:

Considerably more promising than I thought it might be when I first heard it was in the pipeline, but I’m saying that from a position of low, low expectations. Vastly more promising, in my humble yet obviously expert opinion, than the other big budget superhero trailer doing the rounds at the moment: Green Lantern.  Still, trailers are only trailers; who knows how the final products will measure up.

For Book Fans, and in a somewhat self-serving spirit entirely out of tune with the season, my author copies of the Subterranean Press Speculative Horizons anthology edited by Patrick St-Denis turned up the other day, and things of compact but considerable beauty they are too.

The limited edition signed copies are very pleasing, with a whole page of signatures bound into the book.  Enough to make a chap giddy, to be keeping such august authorial company:

Available from the Subterranean Press website (where those nifty limited editions reside), or from the usual online venues, should anyone fancy a post-Xmas treat.

For Podcast Fans, I offer a couple of the more unusual items from the long list of stuff I’m subscribed to, in case there’s someone out there who shares my peculiar combination of interests.

The Norman Centuries.  An excellent, straightforward narrative history of the Normans.  For fans of medieval history, this is rich pickings.  Most folk – round here anyway – know the Normans as the conquerors of England, but less generally known is their habit of conquering all sorts of other folks, wherever they went: the French, the Italians, the Byzantines, the Sicilian Muslims.  Just about everyone they came across, really.

The Ink Panthers Show.  Exactly the kind of thing, in many ways, podcasting was invented for.  Two guys, with occasional semi-random guests, talk to each other about … well, about almost anything they feel like talking about, really.  They’re both comics creators, so that comes up now and again, but a lot of it is just about what’s going on in their lives and families.  I find them pretty personable, articulate and funny.  Once – if – you get on their wavelength, it’s a pleasant listen.  It’s mostly quite family-friendly, but sometimes strays into slightly more adult or non-PC areas, so consider yourself so advised.

For Fans of Ye Olde Classical Music … well, this (in case any overseas visitors don’t know, by the way, the chap introducing things is Matt Lucas, one of the current movers and shakers of British comedy):

You can only wonder what the neighbours thought …

And, come to think of it, I’m going to repost the musical clip from that long ago first iteration of the Christmas Miscellany, just because I still think, as I did then, that it’s one of the nicer sounds on the web and sounds to me suitably restful, reflective and contented for the holiday season.  How’s that for keeping a tradition going?

And For Everyone Else: well, just my best wishes for the festive season, however you choose to spend it, or celebrate it, or ignore it.  I’ll be back and blogging once the inevitable gluttony-induced lethargy and inertia wear off.  Happy Christmas!

Tags: ,

When in Doubt, Meme

May 24, 2010 in Books, Memes by Brian | No comments

I don’t really do memes, on the whole, but now and again it’s a mildly diverting way of passing a few minutes.  So: meme on the subject of Book Habits.  I’ve seen this in one or two places, first I think on Antick Musings, so we’ll say I borrowed the idea from there.

What is your favourite drink while reading?

Don’t actually drink much while reading (what if I spilled something on the book?  Horror!).  But tea is pretty much my favourite drink in all non-social settings, so that’d get my vote.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

Horrify might be a bit strong, but it definitely makes me a bit queasy.  I like my books clean so I’m highly unlikely to start scrawling annotations in one.  The only exception would be if I was reading the book for research, but even then I’m much more likely to take notes separately.

How do you keep your place while reading a book?  Bookmarks?  Dog-ears?  Laying the book flat open?

I feel a faint pang of guilt when considering this question.  I suspect the appropriate answer for a true bibliophile, someone who gives books as physical objects the full love and respect they deserve, is Bookmark.  But I haven’t used one of those in years and years and years.  I’m a dog-ear man through and through these days.  In my defence, I would never, ever mark my place by laying a book flat open other than for a matter of moments (like when going to get another cup of tea or something). Testing book spines to destruction is not my thing.

In fact, now that I think about it, it’s not quite that simple.  I read a lot of graphic novels, and I’d never dog-ear one of those.  It’s never hard to find where you left off in a graphic novel, ‘cos of the pictures and all, so memory works just fine for them.  Also, on the rare occasions when I’m reading a hardback, I’d never dream of dog-earing: that’s what the flaps of the dustjacket are for.  So it’s actually just the poor old paperbacks – which is what I mostly read, admittedly – that get the dog-ear treatment.  I guess the mass produced, mildly disposable feel of paperbacks makes it feel psychologically acceptable.

Fiction, nonfiction or both?

Both.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?

Unless in an advanced state of exhaustion (or possibly boredom, I suppose) I’ll always be looking for a natural break in the text before I set a book down.  Leaving things in the middle of a scene would make feel a bit fidgety.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?

Nah.  I’m the type of person to just quietly stop reading, put the book aside and go looking for another one if I’m not enjoying it.  If I found the actual author irritating rather than just the book, that would be a different matter: then, I’m probably not going to be reading one of their books in the first place, I suppose.  Come to think of it, I very rarely find books irritating: you can like or dislike a book, but I tend to think life’s too short to get seriously irritated by a book. (There are exceptions, of course, but we won’t get into that …)

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?

I might, but it’s not happened in quite a long time, as far as I can remember.  I tend not to read the kind of books that would contain a significant number of words I don’t know.  Me no like think too hard.  Either that or I’ve got a truly brobdingnagian vocabulary.

What are you currently reading?

Most recently completed: Godland volume 4.  Thing I was reading last night: The Kalevala.  Thing I’ve been reading intermittently for ages (for research purposes), and may well be consulting again today: Burke & Hare by Owen Dudley Edwards (long out of print).

What is the last book you bought?

The aforementioned Godland volume 4.  Although I’ve got another graphic novel – Scalped Volume 3 – on its way to me (UK postal system permitting).

Are you the type of person who reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one?

Ha.  I wish I was the type of person who only reads one book at a time.  I used to be that person, back when I had an attention span, and plenty of time at my disposal.  Now I’m more likely to have as many as half a dozen books on the go at any given time, scattered around the house.  Some of them’ll never get finished, some of them are re-reads, some of them will go on hiatus and I’ll come back to in a month or three’s time.  It’s a shambles.  But, of course, some of them’ll grab hold of me despite my pathetic shortcomings, by force of quality or style or whatever, and force me to read them straight through.

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?

Not relevant.  It’s not a question of where and when I would like to read, it’s a question of where and when I can read.  Which as often as not amounts to in bed, at night.

Do you prefer series books or stand alones?

Don’t care.  I’m all about the quality, man.  If it’s good, I’m in.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?

Lots.  Dan Simmons, for the Hyperion books and The Terror rather than his whole catalogue.  Guy Gavriel Kay for pretty much his whole catalogue, at least as much of it as I’ve read.  Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.  War and Peace.  I could go on and on.

How do you organize your books? (by genre, title, author’s last name etc.)

Every couple of years – sometimes more often, sometimes less – I will make a valiant attempt to impose some sort of order on the books in the house.  I don’t try for anything too ridiculously ambitious.  Just aim to get all the spec fic clustered together, with all a given author’s books next to each other; get the non-fiction in a group, with a very vague common-sensical arrangement by topic or theme.  Literary fiction here.  Poetry – all three or four books of it – there.  Graphic novel series in sequential order, all grouped by publisher.  That kind of thing.  It doesn’t seem like too much to ask, really, not in the grand scheme of things.  Apparently it is, as the system’s usually displaying severe signs of wear and tear within a few months.  Sigh.

MPoaF: Making a Book in the 21st Century

January 22, 2010 in Books, Clips, ebooks, Moving Pictures on a Friday by Brian | 11 comments

Well, one way of making a book anyway. The Espresso Book Machine is already installed here and there, including a few bookshops around the world, I think. Is this a possible saviour for a handful of the doomed bookstores I was talking about last week? I’m a bit dubious, but you can see why they’d want to give it a try. Any straw you can get hold of probably looks appealing when you’re sinking fast. It is quite clever, I suppose, and it’s fun to watch a book coming into existence like that.

I’m not sure it really offers much defence against the e-book advance, though. Much as I hate to dwell on the gloomier aspects of this revolution, it’s stayed on my mind this last week, so a couple of further hints at what the future holds:

As pointed out by Simon in the comments on the last post, Waterstone’s, the UK’s last big chain of dedicated bookstores is shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic. They plan to turn their backs (partially) on the dreaded celebrity biography and give individual store managers more control over what books their shops stock and promote. It’s an idea I can get behind, but will it stave off the coming storm? Somehow I doubt it. Might prolong the life of some of their stores, but can’t see it saving large numbers of them in the long run.

20% of digital book buyers apparently stop buying print copies entirely. Can’t make up my mind whether that’s a higher or lower percentage than I would have expected. One thing’s for sure, though – it’s a chunky enough number (and one I’d imagine is only going to rise) to put a big ugly question mark over the viability of all bricks and mortar bookshops once the digital habit has spread a bit further through the reading population.

Lots of digital books are illegally downloaded. A staggeringly unexpected discovery, I’m sure you’ll agree. Reading about it a bit more widely, it’s not obvious the study’s findings are exactly robust, since there’s a lot of extrapolation and sampling involved, but maybe I should just be pleased to see that fiction titles are actually amongst the least affected. (But in this case ‘least affected’ still means thousands and thousands of copies). Again, one thing’s for sure: the numbers will only rise once on-screen reading of books becomes a more widespread and deeply entrenched norm. What effect it’ll have on the financial stability of the whole writing business remains to be seen, and I’m instinctively doubtful of anyone who claims to know.

And as for publishers … well, all I can say is I’m glad it’s not my job to spend all day trying to figure out where all this is heading, and whether I’ll still have gainful employment when it gets there … I’d be in a perpetual cold sweat.

My Role in the Demise of the High Street Bookstore

January 14, 2010 in Books by Brian | 9 comments

In 2009, my answer to the question ‘Are bricks and mortar bookshops doomed?’ underwent a subtle but significant change. (No one has actually asked me that specific question, by the way – after all, who cares what I think? Well, I do, so I have regularly asked myself the question).

Anyway, up until some time in 2009, when pondering an answer to this weighty self-inflicted question, I would have to think about it a bit. Kick a few ideas and scenarios around in my head. Weigh up the exact wording of my response. And end up with: ‘Probably.’ Which I would then dress up with various caveats and qualifications.

For a while now, however, my answer has not been something I need to think about too much. Are bricks and mortar bookshops doomed? Yeah, pretty much.

I’m still going to stick one or two qualifications on there, though, just to be picky. By ‘bookshops’ I mean mostly – but by no means exclusively – the big stores that reside in every town centre in the UK. By ‘doomed’ I mean headed for a potentially savage reduction in numbers and, for the surviving outlets, a future rather different from their recent past. Timescale-wise, I’m no real futurist so who knows? The evidence in the UK would seem to suggest that it’s already underway: Borders UK – a small but not insignificant chain – went under late last year. Waterstone’s, the last big dedicated bookselling chain, has just announced really horrible Christmas trading figures, at a time when most other high street retailers have been posting surprisingly good numbers. (I’ve no idea how WH Smiths, the other long-established biggish beast of high street book sales is doing, but they’re not solely reliant on books for revenue so may not be so vulnerable).

I really, really like bookshops, so this is not a change I instinctively welcome, but it would be silly to ignore my personal contribution to the hammering these bookstores have been taking. Because I’m definitely part of the problem. A tiny, tiny itsy-bitsy little part of the problem, for sure, but I’m in there doing my bit to destroy their business model. I’m only human, and the forces arrayed against the poor old bricks and mortar bookstore are powerful enough to suck even me along in their seductive wake.

The price- and convenience-appeal of online shopping (not just for books, of course) is too much for me to resist, a lot of the time. Although I’m far from poor, I’m not rich enough these days to be entirely uninterested in the unit cost of my reading habit, and there’s a lot to be said for being able to acquire the objects of my desire without having to even leave my house. Result: it’s at least possible that in 2009 I spent more buying coffee in bookshops than I did buying actual books. And much as I like coffee (and tediously expensive as it is in such places) I don’t spend nearly enough on it to keep Waterstones or any other cafe-equipped bookstore in business for long.

If it was only the competition from online sellers that the stores had to face, they could probably hang on in there. But the supermarkets have driven a coach and horses through the established price structure for bestsellers, destroying what used to be a central plank in the financial viability of dedicated bookstores. I am, at least, innocent of any complicity in this development, since I have never bought a book in a supermarket, and hope I never will. (Which is fairly easy for me to say since, to date, they don’t sell the kind of books I tend to read).

And there’s the third, and probably most dangerous, club bludgeoning the bookstores about the head: e-readers. Late last year I played around with one in a shop, the first time I’ve ever really done so with proper attention. And – sacrilege! – I found myself thinking: ‘You know, I could actually read a novel like this. It’s quite a pleasing bit of kit, all in all. And it would be kind of cool to have hundreds of books in your pocket …’ I might even buy one, one day. (They’ll have to be both even better and cheaper, though). And that’s really bad news for bookstores, because I’m a paper and ink guy through and through. If even I’m wavering … well, the end is surely nigh. The real breakthrough for digital books is a little way off yet, but one things for sure: the market for them isn’t about to start shrinking any time soon..

I expect there will still be some shops that make enough money solely from selling books to keep going – quite possibly they’ll be local, brilliantly managed independent shops with a specialist interest. And there will no doubt be plenty of places that sell books alongside all kinds of other stuff. But I’m pretty sure we’re in the twilight of the ubiquitous, big, dedicated bookshops in prime retail locations we’ve all grown up with. Eventually lots of them will go the same way so many of the music stores have gone, and the way the movie rental shops and the video game stores will probably go in due course. (Is it my imagination, or do all these places, when they close down, get replaced with mobile phone shops? Is there some law about this I’m unaware of? Is there no upper limit on the density of mobile phone emporia an area can support?)

It’s just change. It’s the way of things these days. Business models, even whole industries, come and go. No point in getting gloomy about it, or too nostalgic for the way things used to be – particularly when I, along with millions of other perfectly well-intentioned folk, am helping to propel the change. But there’s no getting away from the fact I’ll miss knowing that I can find, somewhere in the centre of every reasonable-sized town in the UK, a big open shop filled with rank upon rank of shelves stuffed with thousands and thousands of books (and pretty much nothing but books), and having the sense of being on the threshold of a great storehouse of knowledge and entertainment and craft. And cruising the aisles touching the books and turning them over in my hands, admiring them as objects. I hope that when these places are gone – or at least much rarer than they used to be – their absence won’t be an excuse for people to forget how important and magical books with paper pages are (were?).

But as I said before, I’m no futurist. So who knows?

Robert Holdstock

December 1, 2009 in Books by Brian | 2 comments

I was surprised and greatly saddened to hear of the death of Robert Holdstock this past weekend. With his Mythago Wood series, he produced one of the most singular and significant bodies of work in British fantasy of the late 20th century. His central vision of folklore given physical form is amongst the most memorable, resonant and elegantly presented themes I’ve encountered in speculative fiction, and I’ve never forgotten what it felt like to read those books for the first time and be aware that I was experiencing something special.

I met him at the David Gemmell Legend Awards ceremony in London earlier this year. We spoke relatively briefly, about inconsequential things, and he was friendly and full of enthusiasm. But I was not on top form, and more than a little starstruck. I was introduced to him as a fellow writer, but felt entirely unworthy of such a status: I was a fan, meeting someone whose achievements I was somewhat in awe of, and was a little flummoxed as a result.

I should have told him, but did not – or certainly not emphatically enough, just how much I liked and valued his work. I should have told him, but did not, that the first story I sold to a magazine was published in an issue that included one of his own co-written works; and how much that simple fact meant to me at the time, to be appearing in print alongside a name that had so much weight and importance in my eyes.

It’s nothing compared to the loss now experienced by his family and close friends, of course, but thousands of readers suffered a loss this weekend too: a creator of wonderful fictions, dying too young, with, no doubt, too many stories still untold.

What I’ve Been Reading

July 23, 2009 in Books, Comics by Brian | No comments

Not enough is my standard answer these days to people who ask what I’ve been reading lately. So much stuff to read, so little time. But still, I’m fitting a little bit of quality time with the written word in here and there, so a quick update.

On the books front, there’s been Pavane by Keith Roberts. Something of a mosaic novel: scenes from an alternate history, describing a 20th century Britain that has languished under a repressive and anti-technological Catholic yoke ever since the counter-factual success of the Spanish Armada. The details of the world are fascinating – clanking steam engines hauling land trains, a secretive Guild controlling the gigantic semaphore machines that transmit messages over long distances – but it’s the tone and quality of the writing that struck me most. Large chunks of the novel read almost like literary fiction, eschewing grand drama and concentrating at least as much on the evocation of setting and the inner world of the characters as on plot. It’s a book that gradually draws you in and although in some ways not a great deal happens, the cumulative effect is immersive and, for me anyway, quite memorable.

And there’s also been Vietnam by Stanley Karnow. Fairly regularly a nagging voice turns up in my head and points to some piece or period of history, ancient or modern, saying “Look, don’t you think that might be interesting? You don’t know nearly enough about it. You need to know more. Go on, buy a book. You know you want to.” And I, being of weak will, do as I am told, buy the biggest and most detailed-looking book I can find on the subject in question and spend the next little while discovering that yes indeed, it is interesting, and I did need to know more about it. Hence, this time around, Vietnam by Stanley Karnow.

On the graphic novel front: Rex Mundi, written by Arvid Nelson, volume 1 and volume 2 so far. I can’t describe it any better than the author’s own ‘elevator pitch’ for the story: “a quest for the Holy Grail told as a murder mystery, set in a Europe where the Catholic Church never fell from power and sorcerors stalk the streets at night”. So yes, it’s another alternate history focusing on the role of the Catholic Church, this time with some magic thrown in. It’s also got a very considerable amount in common, plot- and background-wise, with The Da Vinci Code (which it started to be published before, and than which IMHO it is better). Good fun, though the second volume flails around in the treacherous quicksands of exposition and info-dump a bit. I’ll be reading more.

And then there are webcomics. Which are, of course, being digital, touted by some as the future. There’s certainly been an explosion of them in recent years, and some seriously talented artists and writers are getting involved (though as far as I can tell they run up against exactly the same problem that so much that is internet-based does, i.e. it seems to be only a small minority of creators who can actually generate any significant revenue from their online exploits, unless they make the transition to print). Anyway, those I’m following at the moment (not counting things like PvP online and xkcd that everyone surely already knows about) include (all the following links are, by the way, to the first page of the comic where possible):

The Abominable Charles Christopher. The webcomic that got me interested in the form in the first place, and which I’ve praised before here, so I won’t go over old ground. But it’s still good.

Kukuburi. The surreal adventures of a delivery girl who passes through a magical doorway into a dream (or possibly nightmare?) world. Terrific art, and a wild visual imagination at work. Lots of funny and bizarre characters. Pretty light-hearted stuff that’s just plain fun.

Sin Titulo. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here. It’s a mystery, with noirish overtones, but it’s also got dream sequences, biographical reminiscences, strange and possibly supernatural goings on. I’ve no real idea where it’s heading, but I find the journey interesting.

The American Dream. Completely different from the above, this is a gentle, engaging dream narrative whose basis is explained in the first panel: ‘I dreamed there was no America’. Though it updates regrettably infrequently, I really, really like it. The art is simple, cartoonish, but I find it quite beautiful.

The Futurists. This one’s only just started, so here’s a chance to get in on the ground floor. Set in India towards the end of the 19th century, it says it’s about ‘the quest for eternal life gone horribly wrong’, which sounds promising to me. The art’s certainly quite nice.

So there you are. I’ve not been entirely delinquent in my reading duties. Up next: What I’ve Been Writing. Yes, by some mysterious quirk of fate, my novel-writing career is not yet over. News on that front here next week. I’m sure you can’t wait.

Short Fiction: My, That’s a Big Snake

April 24, 2009 in Books, Short Stories by Brian | No comments

One of the nicer surprises of last year for me was being asked to write short stories for a couple of anthologies. Makes you feel all kind of warm inside, that does. One of them is all done and dusted. It’s called ‘Beyond the Reach of His Gods’, and will be found in Rage of the Behemoth from a little outfit called Rogue Blades Entertainment, due for publication at the start of June I believe.

No one, famously, gets rich from writing (or publishing, for that matter) short stories these days, so, much as any invitation to write a story is welcome for that aforementioned warm feeling it engenders, you kind of need some other reason to say ‘yes’. In this case, I had the time to write something, I had been toying with the idea of trying to write some short stories anyway since I hadn’t exercised those creative muscles in a while, and the premise for this anthology – heroic fantasy involving giant monsters – just struck me as a chance to have a bit of uncomplicated fun. Plus as soon as I heard that theme, the basic idea for the story popped into my head more or less fully formed, so it seemed a shame to ignore it.

The story is about … well, it’s pretty much about this:

Seems pretty clear, no? And yes, that’s the main reason for this post: to show off the rather fine illustration that Johnney Perkins came up with for my story. Surely nobody could look at that image and not think ‘Why, yes. That story’s got to be some kind of fun, in a serpent-hero-jungle mash-up kind of way’? Nice work by the artist, and should you so wish you can actually buy the anthology with this image as the cover art from the Rogue Blades website. Whatever your taste in cover art, if doughty heroes and gargantuan monsters sounds like your kind of thing, why not give the book a try?

Further Book Matters (and a curse)

March 9, 2009 in Books, Fall of Thanes, Signing by Brian | No comments

Does it betray some weird psycho-sexual dysfunction (phallic insecurity, perhaps?) that my first reaction upon receiving the huge box containing my author copies of Fall of Thanes was to pile them all up into a tower and take a photo of it? Probably not, though I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility entirely. Behold my mighty book tower! See how it … towers.

Clearly, since these have shown up on my doorstep – and looking very fine at that – publication of the third and final part of the trilogy is now unavoidable. Early May, in a shop near you (or online if there’re no shops near you, of course). For those thinking of putting in an order, a reminder: should you be tempted by the thought of a signed, dedicated etc copy of Fall of Thanes all of your own, the place to go is the Transreal website. Click on my name at top right for all the details, but the most important point is that it’ll only cost you cover price plus shipping. Bargain!

While on the subject of books, I have been rectifying a shocking gap in my genre reading. Until this last week or two, my sole experience of Conan the barbarian was the long ago and rather dubious movies featuring a certain US politician in the title role. Now, I’m pleased to say, I’m making up for lost time by working my way through this gorgeous book – close to a thousand pages of pulpy, politically incorrect sword and sorcery merriment. I’m enjoying it considerably more than I thought I might, and for all the lack of ‘polish’ that occasionally crops up in the writing (these stories were being turned out incredibly quickly, after all), I’ve been struck by what an effective writer Robert E. Howard really is. There’s some seriously vivid and atmospheric work going on, alongside all the vigourous hewing and hacking and thumping. Great fun. How come I never read this stuff before? Idiot.

And finally, to the person or persons responsible for ms antispyware 2009, I have only this to say: may your toenails shrivel and crack, and turn yellow and crusty and stinky, flaking off into your socks bit by bit until they are all gone, leaving only a suppurating blisters where once they lay. And if your stupid little malware gets on my PC again, I hope the suppuration spreads up your legs until it reaches areas more vital than toes. So there.

« Older entries