Bjorn and Sven's MonthlyYearly-ish Review of Reality as we know it

Oh my dear lord, it's an update! Be still, my heart! (Hit Reality Check for a selection of various bad excuses as to why we haven't updated for so long and other news.)

The biggest news (and the primary impetus behind an update right now) is that Cosmic Banditos has been republished! That's right, you can now get your very own copy, and for a much more reasonable price than the $200+ some used copies were going for (or you could at least buy a whole *bunch* of copies for that price!). Check out A.C. Weisbecker's site for more information on this as well as his new book, In Search of Captain Zero.

And now, without further ado, some actual <gasp!> reviews!!!

The Sirens of Titan -- Kurt Vonnegut

I must admit, with no small amount of embarrassment, that this is actually the first Kurt Vonnegut book that I have read. While I was in Indonesia however, my cousin bade me read this book, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The Sirens of Titan is a quirky little adventure story with all sorts of strange characters, odd twists and general weirdness. Throw in a good lump of existentialist philosophy, and you've got what turns out to be a really clever, entertaining and thought-provoking book.

The story is that of one Malachi Constant, a generally decadent and unpleasant guy who finds himself, throughout the book, being dragged from one set of nasty circumstances to another, with little or no control over his own destiny. Ultimately, this reveals itself as one of the main themes of the book, and one which I gather is a common one in Vonnegut's work. The writing itself is both humorous and sharp, as I would have expected from what I know of Vonnegut. Actually, the quirky humor was a very pleasant surprise to me, and I found myself often reminded of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as I read - I had to wonder if Douglas Adams drew any of his inspiration for The Guide from this book.

Given that the book was written in 1959, it holds up tremendously well, even with the holes one might expect of a book which has as part of the plot a planned Martian invasion of earth. But the fact that it appears that Mars is severely lacking in invasion forces in the 21st century detracts not at all from the story (any more than it does from Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land) - if anything it adds to the overall feeling of the surreal that pervades the book. All in all, I highly recommend this book, and will be planning to delve more into Vonnegut's other books in the near future.

The Gunslinger Series -- Stephen King
The Gunslinger
The Drawing of the Three
The Waste Lands
Wizard and Glass

For some reason, I have always avoided Stephen King - I think probably in large part due to the overwhelming popularity of his books and also because I read one of King's other attempts at fantasy in high school - The Eyes of the Dragon - and wasn't very enthused. I was later encouraged to try a couple of his other, more famous books, and I thought both It and The Stand were tremendous (and I by that I mean good and not just large, although both are that as well). His characters are generally very vivid, and the plots are interesting and generally highly engaging. The Gunslinger books - a series he has added to over a span of decades - are all extremely popular and, as it turns out, highly entertaining fantasy.

In this series, King uses his popular writing style to draw together two of my favorite forms of light entertainment: fantasy and westerns. The title character of the series - The Gunslinger - is a man Roland, and is one of the last remnants of a culture that is a blending of an Arthurian medieval world with the wild west. The world that Roland inhabits is seemingly on the fringes of reality, and there are bleeds from our world into his and vice versa. This series also draws in a lot of what has come to be identified as "The Steven King Mythos", with the occasional wandering into another of his worlds, and appearances from a character that may or not be another face of The Walkin' Dude, of great import in The Stand. The books themselves are King's telling of the backstory to Robert Browning's poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" (here is a site with the text of that poem, if you're interested...).

The first book is of a very different style than the later three - much more surreal in some ways, where the other three are more traditional adventure stories. I found it a bit difficult to get into the first time I read it - it is very different from King's normal style of writing - but it was still an excellent book. I'd like to go back and reread it, as I think I would enjoy it more now that I know what to expect. It tells the early story of Roland, and his encounter with the boy Jake, as he pursues The Man in Black - a foe from his past - and the mysterious Dark Tower. This book feels like a book that was written such that it might not have a sequel, and is much more self-contained than the other three books, which are all obviously part of a series.

The Drawing of the Three picks up immediately after the The Gunslinger (although it was written years later) and tells the tale of Roland's retrieval of companions from our world to help him in his pursuit of the Dark Tower. This book has a lot of switching between our world (or at least King's version of it) and Roland's world, which yields an odd pacing to the book, but it makes for quite a driving story overall (with King's typically strong characters). The Waste Lands is mostly the story of the companions moving on in their quest for the Dark Tower, and is largely an adventure story set in the apocalyptic world that Roland inhabits - a world that is seemingly on the edge of reality and slowly falling apart. This book was probably my favorite of the series so far, particularly towards the end of the book. The interplay between the characters was good, and there are some really creepy moments towards the end.

Wizard and Glass is kind of a departure (for reasons other than being the only book not to start with the word "the") - the first part of the book is the resolution of book three, while the second part is mostly a telling of some of Roland's back story. This is a much more traditional story - almost more of a western with surreal overtones than a fantasy book. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but not as much as either The Waste Lands or The Drawing of the Three, at least once the trademarked Bjron-euphoria wore off.

These aren't particularly deep books, but they do make for a very enjoyable adventure story. The mix of science fiction and fantasy lends a nice surreal feeling to the story, and there are some genuinely frightening moments in the traditional King style. In some ways, these books have the same appeal to me that the Split Infinity books did, but are much better written. A good read, and a good introduction to Stephen King from the fantasy direction rather than the horror direction.

Grass -- Sheri Tepper

I had never heard of Sheri Tepper before I was loaned this book by a friend, but I was very happy to discover her. This is a fantastic book, and I have to apologize in advance for the vagueness of this review - the book itself is at another of my temporary residences, so I don't have it in front of me for reference.

Grass is, generally, a story of a far-future humanity in danger of being wiped out by a mysterious plague. The main power in this time is the church, who sends a very dysfunctional family to be emisarries to the planet Grass to discover why it is the only place where the plague hasn't struck. I don't want to tell too much more of the plot, as a lot of the enjoyment of Grass is watching it unfold. Fortunately, I can't anyway, since I don't remember any of the character's names nor the names of the alien races and, as I mentioned, the book is about a half-hour's drive away right now. Suffice to say, however, that this is a failing of my memory and not of the book - I could tell you the entire plot, just not anyone's names. Much like the way I am in real life, actually.

But getting back to the review, Tepper's writing style is one of the more distinctive ones I've come across - she does things in this book that I think I would find annoying if almost anyone else tried to write that way, but for some reason it works beautifully when she does it. I found myself getting more and more drawn into the book, until finally I had to just set aside an evening to finish the entire second half in one go, because I couldn't put it down.

The friend who loaned me this book also bought me another Sheri Tepper book for my birthday (thanks, Kristin!) that I haven't read yet called Sideshow. Given how much I enjoyed Grass, I'm greatly looking forward to reading more of her work.

The Harry Potter Series -- J.K. Rowling

OK, everyone and their mother (literally) has read these books, so I just have this to say: They really are as good as everyone seems to think. Read them. (That, and that the movie is going to make an absolutely absurd amount of money.) The scary thing is, they're actually getting better as the series goes along.

OK, that'll do for the moment, other than some brief tidbits below. More reviews to come, hopefullly sooner rather than later...

General Science Fiction

Look to Windward -- Ian Banks

Shadow of the Hegemon -- Orson Scott Card

General Fantasy

The Lions of Al-Rassan -- Guy Gavriel Kay

Nonfiction

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman -- James Gleick
The Technological Singularity (essay) -- Vernor Vinge

Anthologies

Best of (any year since1983) -- Gardner Dozois, ed.

Movies/TV

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