Readings & watchings #10, 2011
This is the final post detailing the books I read and the films I watched during 2011. I don't think I'll bother doing these in 2012 as I suspect I'm stretching myself a bit thin with them. They're also a bit long, which probably puts some people off reading them. Perhaps I'll just blog about individual books or films I consider worthy of recommendation on an ad hoc basis. What do people think?
For the time-being anyway, here it is, the culture (and I use the term loosely) I consumed right up until the 31 December 2011...
Books
Time to Live, John Rackham (1966) / The Man Without a Planet, Lin Carter (1966), was an Ace double I picked up at a convention chiefly, I seem to recall, because Rackham was a British sf writer of the 1960s and 1970s I'd not read. (Though he also wrote as John T Phillifent, his real name, and I think I've read one of his books published under that name.) And so... Well, it's hackwork right from the first page. Time to Live opens with an amnesiac protagonist, and the entire story feels like it was made up as Rackham wrote it. The amnesiac is wanted for murder, but he didn't commit it, of course. And the native race on the planet on which this takes place are all preternaturally good-looking, have psychic powers, are near-immortal, and have willingly turned their backs on high technology. The native woman who rescues the amnesiac when his car crashes quickly realises he is innocent and later falls in love with him. Of course. This is not a book that will ever make the British SF Masterworks list. Lin Carter, on the other hand, was not a Brit, and he also seems to have made a career from writing pastiches of sf and fantasy from an earlier age. His Callisto books, for example, take off Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom stories, and his Thongor is Conan in all but name. The Man Without a Planet belongs to Carter's History of the Great Imperium trilogy, and it's real swords & spaceships stuff. The protagonist is a naval hero who returns to his home world but doesn't like what he finds there. He is reluctantly pushed into the arms of a displaced empress who wants her planet back. It's all stupid cod mediaeval dialogue and most of the cast wearing next to nothing as manly men battle to protect feisty females and ensure that what is right prevails. I have to wonder how many readers lapped it up and didn't realise Carter was taking the piss.
The Silent Land, Graham Joyce (2010), is likely to end up on a few short-lists this year was on several short-lists last year, though I ultimately found it an unsatisfactory read. A young couple are on a skiing holiday and get caught in an avalanche. They manage to rescue themselves, but when they return to the village where they're staying, they find it deserted. Certain things don't seem quite as they should, or as they remember them - candles don't burn down, meat doesn't go off, things don't taste as they ought... and whenever they try to leave the village they find themselves circling back to it. The couple and their relationship are drawn exceedingly well, but most readers will probably figure out what's going about halfway through, and it's the lack of a final unexpected twist that left me slightly disappointed. Otherwise, a book definitely worth reading.
(Rest of post on It Doesn't Have To Be Right...)
For the time-being anyway, here it is, the culture (and I use the term loosely) I consumed right up until the 31 December 2011...
Books
Time to Live, John Rackham (1966) / The Man Without a Planet, Lin Carter (1966), was an Ace double I picked up at a convention chiefly, I seem to recall, because Rackham was a British sf writer of the 1960s and 1970s I'd not read. (Though he also wrote as John T Phillifent, his real name, and I think I've read one of his books published under that name.) And so... Well, it's hackwork right from the first page. Time to Live opens with an amnesiac protagonist, and the entire story feels like it was made up as Rackham wrote it. The amnesiac is wanted for murder, but he didn't commit it, of course. And the native race on the planet on which this takes place are all preternaturally good-looking, have psychic powers, are near-immortal, and have willingly turned their backs on high technology. The native woman who rescues the amnesiac when his car crashes quickly realises he is innocent and later falls in love with him. Of course. This is not a book that will ever make the British SF Masterworks list. Lin Carter, on the other hand, was not a Brit, and he also seems to have made a career from writing pastiches of sf and fantasy from an earlier age. His Callisto books, for example, take off Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom stories, and his Thongor is Conan in all but name. The Man Without a Planet belongs to Carter's History of the Great Imperium trilogy, and it's real swords & spaceships stuff. The protagonist is a naval hero who returns to his home world but doesn't like what he finds there. He is reluctantly pushed into the arms of a displaced empress who wants her planet back. It's all stupid cod mediaeval dialogue and most of the cast wearing next to nothing as manly men battle to protect feisty females and ensure that what is right prevails. I have to wonder how many readers lapped it up and didn't realise Carter was taking the piss.
The Silent Land, Graham Joyce (2010), is likely to end up on a few short-lists this year was on several short-lists last year, though I ultimately found it an unsatisfactory read. A young couple are on a skiing holiday and get caught in an avalanche. They manage to rescue themselves, but when they return to the village where they're staying, they find it deserted. Certain things don't seem quite as they should, or as they remember them - candles don't burn down, meat doesn't go off, things don't taste as they ought... and whenever they try to leave the village they find themselves circling back to it. The couple and their relationship are drawn exceedingly well, but most readers will probably figure out what's going about halfway through, and it's the lack of a final unexpected twist that left me slightly disappointed. Otherwise, a book definitely worth reading.
(Rest of post on It Doesn't Have To Be Right...)