Erica's Infrequent Book Reviews Presents: CHAFFS by Douglas P. Lathrop

Every dystopia actually reveals the writer's anxiety about the present. In Chaffs, Douglas P. Lathrop follows the Tea Party movement to its natural conclusion: a fascistic nightmare state that slaughters people of color, tortures queer people in reeducation camps, and spies on its citizens, all for the glory of the "Fourth Great Awakening," headed by President Muldoon, a cult of personality leader whose framed picture hangs in every home.

The narrator, Tyler Treppenhouse, knows there's something odd about himself, that he doesn't quite fit into the rigid masculinity required of all males of his world. But it's not until he meets handsome skater boy Casey that he realizes the truth: he's gay, and in America after the Fourth Great Awakening, that means he might as well be dead. As their relationship develops, Tyler gradually learns that his world is built on horror upon horror, and he must make the ultimate sacrifice to save Casey's life: becoming a mole at a reorientation center. Yet, queer folks aren't the only ones who suffer under the Muldoonian regime, and during his mission Tyler learns that the resistance is bigger than he ever thought possible.

For all the talk about diversity, there really doesn't seem to be that many gay protagonists in YA fiction, and very few in YA science fiction*. Actually, I can't think of any right now, though I'm definitely not as well-read in YA as some folks. The love story which drives the plot feels raw and true, and Tyler's gayness isn't a tacked-on identity. Nor is it the kind of gay love story that's written to be titillating to straight women; there is a lot of sex, but it's all necessary to the plot, and in a world where either of the main characters could die at any moment because of their love for each other, the sex carries a lot of emotional weight.

The setting of Chaffs also hits much closer to home than most dystopias, there is the real sense that this could be our world (and if you don't think that, then you must have not been around in the 2000s). One interesting quirk is that aside from weaponry and surveillance, technology has been pushed backwards, so there's no Internet, no smartphones. Much like North Korea, the Muldoonian government tries to stifle revolution by isolating people from one another. Queer people who came of age before the Internet might also find this especially true to life. Tyler's isolation from any sort of queer community, his feeling like he's the only gay person in the world, was something that really resounded with me. LGBT rights are mainstream now, and even in the most rural areas gay teens can find some kind of community. But twenty years ago this wasn't true at all, especially in small towns, and the confusion of not knowing what you are and the fear of being found out all felt very honest to me. Even if I never had to deal with fascist shock troops, I still grew up at the tail end of a period where queerness just wasn't discussed except as a slur. It Got Better, but if you came out (if only to yourself) before the turn of the century, you don't forget what it was like back then. As a gay man a generation older than me, Lathrop was clearly mining some personal experience here.

Lathrop was an excellent writer, with a knack for believable dialogue, well-detailed description, and tightly-paced plotting. Sadly, this is his only novel, as he died last year. A truly great loss, as I think Chaffs was only the beginning to a great career. It's available from Amazon now, and I'm guessing there will be an electronic version as well. Whether you're queer or straight, an adult or a young person, this is a book that wins both on its politics and on being a fast-paced adventure into the heart of a sinister alternate America that could have been... and could still be, if we're not careful.


*Or adult science fiction, honestly. Especially gay males. I know there are exceptions, and I know things are changing rapidly, but... publishers still gotta cash in on that straight male nerd demographic. But that is an article for another time!

Erica's Infrequent Book Reviews Presents: ELYSIUM by Jennifer Marie Brissett

Note to people recommending books to me: all you really have to do is say that the book deals with the shifting nature of reality. I will snap up that book like other people snap up sasquatch porn or cat-themed mysteries. Granted, I will be horribly disappointed if the book in fact is not about the shifting nature of reality, but Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett totally is! This experimental SFnal book, published by Aqueduct Press, is a book in the grand weird tradition of The Lathe of Heaven (my favorite book of all time) and everything PKD ever wrote, though with an Afrofuturistic and queer bent that places it firmly in the modern era.

(Note to readers: this review is chock full of SPOILERS although I was spoiled before I read the book and I still enjoyed the hell out of it. Elysium is really not a book that you read for the plot.)

Central character Adrianne/Adrian is ostensibly a human being who shifts through genders, ages, and scenarios. The only thread which is consistent in each of these scenarios (none of which last for more than a chapter or two) is her/his relationship with Antoine/Antoinette. Sometimes it's a parental relationship, with the two trading off roles. In others they are spouses or lovers. Other characters are also constants in the book, likewise swapping genders, sexual orientations, backgrounds, etc. As the story unfolds, Brissett slowly paints a picture of the true reality: an Earth overtaken by aliens, where the scant population of remnant humans lives underground, slowly dying off and being replaced by projections. Surprise! Adrian(/ne) is not a human at all, but a piece of AI tasked with uploading the human history of Earth onto a massive datanet. The coda states that the relationship of A. and A. is inspired by the relationship of the Roman emperor Hadrian and the Greek boy Antonius, and I really appreciated the book all the more when I read up on them afterwards.

The scenarios are interesting enough in and of themselves, but the main "plot" here is the AI's fractured psyche and above all its devotion to its mate/counterpart. Even though the relationship between the two is constantly changing (** BREAK **), it's also the thread that binds this crazy-quilt of a novel into a mostly cohesive whole. Though it would never be classified as such, Elysium is at its heart a love story and an examination of both parental and romantic relationships. It's also worth noting that Brissett accomplishes all this in only 199 pages in a time when most writers think they need three to seven books to tell a complete story. And best of all, Elysium is a debut novel, so we should have many more of her novels and stories to read over the years to come.

Elysium is nominated for this year's Philip K. Dick Award, and while I haven't read any of the other nominees yet, if it wins it's an honor well deserved. This is really not a novel for everyone. If you like your prose told plainly and your plots straightforward you probably won't like this. But this book is parked right in my own personal wheelhouse of strangeness and unreality. So read it if you're me is what I'm trying to say here, I guess.

The Best Books I Read in 2014

Yeah, we're well into 2015 and I'm just now making my list of my favorite books from last year. Well, what do you expect, this is free content. Suckers.

Anyway, I read a lot of books last year, but very few of them were actually released last year. But that won't stop me from making a list! No rereads, because otherwise The Lathe of Heaven would be on my list every other year. Oh, and it's an alphabetical list, but the first entry is probably my #1 anyway.

On to the list!

Afterparty by Daryl Gregory (2014): Long review here. Oh come on, of course this was going to be on my list. This book follows a former scientist who accidentally created a "God drug," and now has an angel tagging her every move. The research team (who have all overdosed on the drug, and have their own personal gods) decides never to release the drug, but it gets out anyhow, and the thrillerish plot involves Lyda's quest to reach the drug's source and wipe it out. There's also fun stuff like a gentle rancher of miniature bison who takes a drug to become a contract killer, frat boys who take pills to turn "gay for a day," and a CIA operative who overdoses on a drug to promote mental clarity and now sees people as amorphous blobs when not jacked up. There are a LOT of drugs in this book, okay? And a lot of examinations of the nature of faith, mental illness, addiction, etc. It's like the author took everything I like to read about and put it in a blender. I'm hella nominating it for the Nebula and Hugo, and not only because it was the only SF novel I read that was released last year (though I should have the Southern Reach books soonish).

Emissaries from the Dead/The Third Claw of God by Adam-Troy Castro (2008/2009): Yes, this is two books, but it's a series, so whatever. These are mysteries set in an SFnal world that Castro has visited in several of his stories. What I liked about these books were how good they were as mysteries. Often in books that blend speculative tropes with other genres, the other genre takes a back seat. Whereas here, while Castro's universe is well-sketched and immersive, they are at heart more mystery than SF and the books are written like traditional mysteries: interrogations, logical deduction, a final reveal scene, and kooky sidekicks. Claw is in fact a locked-room mystery, and his sleuth (a six-year-old war criminal all grown up) uses brains more than tech to get to the truth. I absolutely love Castro's short fiction ("During the Pause" is one of the most perfect stories I've ever read, and "The Thing About Shapes to Come" is a recent favorite... you know, just go read all his stories right now), and his style holds up just as well in a longer form. I wish there were more of these books. I wish I could read a new Andrea Cort book every year, and you all know I am not a fan of series books by and large. But these exist, anyway, and you should read them.

Empty Space by M. John Harrison (2012): Seeing as how I've reread the other Light books several times over the years, I should have read this when it first came out, but somehow it slipped through the cracks. It follows the adventures of humans living near the cosmic event known as the Kefahuchi Tract, except for the strand that follows serial killer/astrophysicist's Michael Kearney's ex-wife. There's weird shit happening on every single page, from data infecting human flesh to people turned into spaceships to a rain of baby shoes on an alien beach to a summerhouse that burns intermittently but is never consumed. Anyway, if you're already a fan of the Lightverse you'll like this. If you're looking for a more traditional space opera, go elsewhere.

Look Straight Ahead by Elaine M. Will (2013): Long review here. Graphic novel, not genre. A fictionalized autobiography (according to the author) of a teenager with bipolar disorder, drawn in a multitude of styles to portray the protagonist's spiral into madness and the struggle out of it. Jeremy (the protagonist) is an artist, and while that should annoy me in the way I won't read books where the characters are writers, it works here as Will expertly shows Jeremy's fear of losing his creative capacity with treatment. I've sort of fallen away from reading comics, because a lot of what I was reading wasn't really inspiring me. One weird quirk I have is that for as much as I love SF prose, I pretty much only like "mundane" comics. Maybe that's because so many SF comics are about superheroes, which I find kind of boring and insular for people who aren't in the know. And while I read very few graphic novels this year, I'm so glad I read this.

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks (1988): Somehow I managed to avoid reading the Culture series until last year, despite the fact that it's about a far-future anarcho-socialist utopia. How the hell did that happen?! Jernau Gurgeh, a "man of the Culture," is invited to an alien world to play an extremely complicated game which forms the foundation of the backwards capitalistic Azadian Empire. The plot is really just an excuse to explore aspects of the Culture and compare them to a society based on our own, but I totally don't mind that when the ideas are so interesting. I also loved the fact that the Culture is an unabashed utopia, so refreshing in these days where you have your pick of outwardly dreary dystopia or a bright happy future that's a dystopia in disguise (and my own work isn't helping matters). I can tell there will be many visits to the Culture in my future.

(NOTE: All but one of these books are from the 21st century and most of them are series novels. Either my reading tastes are changing or I've just run out of all the good books from the last century.)

Compulsory Blog Post

Things have been, in general, pretty great. So great that I don't want to destroy the good mood I'm in by writing up a blog post! Regardless, I feel like I should post in this at least a few times a month to prove that I'm still alive or whatever, so anyway, here's a blog post.

One thing new that happened is that I got a part-time job. I'm not going to talk much about this because I'm not going to jeopardize my job by talking about it to randos on the Internet, but I can say that it was exactly the kind of position I hoped to get when I moved to Portland. Seriously, things on that front could not have worked out better.

For the first time in a while, I am actually reading some current long-form fiction. I don't tend to do reviews, and most of the stuff I'm reading is popular enough that it seems pointless to review it. I will say that although Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie isn't the mind-bending book many other people seem to think it is (seriously, were people really confused by the pronoun thing?), it was still a first-rate space opera and nearly justified its length. Yes, I do rate novels based on how much extraneous material they have. The novel I'm reading now, which I will not name, at least half of those pages don't need to be there. Anyway, I'm the last person to actually read Ancillary Justice but I'll be getting the sequel when it comes out for sure! I love you, Multnomah County Library.

This is a beach picture I didn't put in my last post but this post needed more pictures.

I'm thinking about taking up knitting again, only for the fact that when I don't knit, I don't watch movies, and consequently I haven't seen a movie since we got to Portland basically. It feels like ever since I started writing science fiction again, every other single interest of mine has fallen by the wayside: knitting, zines, bicycling not for transportation. The weird thing about this is that I don't feel upset about this state of affairs at all, I don't feel like I'm becoming more one-dimensional even though that's the exact definition of one-dimensional. Curious.

In writing news, I'm still plugging away at the novel so it can be ready for submission in time for OryCon and consequently my short fiction progress has fallen way behind. I had set a goal for myself of writing a short story every two weeks, but novels have a way of destroying all your best intentions. Regardless, I am already planning to write another one next year. What is wrong with me?? However, I did complete a short story last week, my first "done done" non-flash story in three months.

Some thoughts on our half-Portlandiversary: It's been six months since we did this crazy, monumental move, and right now all I can say is that every day, Portland feels a little more like home. It feels like home in a completely different way than Pittsburgh did. Pittsburgh felt like home because I was basically from there, I fit into the culture and the history of the city as much as any other local (even though I never set foot in Pittsburgh-the-city until I was seventeen years old).

But almost nobody in Portland is from Portland. I'm sure some people move here for jobs or family, but in general, you move to Portland because you really want to live here. Only people of a certain temperament are actually going to like this place, meaning that it's a city that's as close to an intentional community as you're going to get. I can't explain Portland culture without resorting to stereotypes, but in general the atmosphere is more collaborative, less steeped in tradition, and much more laid back. In a sense, Portland lacks a certain burden of history, leaving people more free to chart the course of their own lives without the feeling that you have to do things in a certain way because "that's the way it's done." See, stereotypes! But true!

Ever since I was a kid I had dreams of moving "out west." I don't even know where that idea came from. Until we moved here, I'd never been west of Columbus. While at my rural college, I'd research cities I wanted to move to: Denver, the East Bay, and yes, Portland. When the time came when I had to move to a city, though, I took the safe option and moved to Pittsburgh. And I don't regret it, at all! But I think I always knew deep down that I'd wind up out here eventually, given enough time. Now I have. It was so worth it to make that leap of faith.

It's after midnight here, so I'll close for now. I don't like writing blog posts anyway.

Just another day in Portland.

Buy My Book!

Well, it happened: I finally became curious enough about self-publishing to throw a story of mine up on the Kindles and see how it plays. "Some Kinds of Life" is a rewrite/expansion of a story I had published in a print anthology way back in 2005, a simpler time of LiveJournals and palm-sized cell phones. Here's the description:

Sam sells children. Or close enough. After biological warfare ravages the planet, an organ dealer rebrands its product line by creating artificial offspring. But Sam's faltering career in sales stirs up unpleasant memories of the children he mothered and had to leave behind. "Some Kinds of Life" is a 4500-word short story about what's real, what isn't, and the things that really matter. An earlier version of this story appeared in the anthology Triangulation 2005 under the title "Wave of the Future."

This e-book includes the bonus story "Super-Parents Last All Childhood Long." When Caleb's girlfriend tells him that her parents were robots, is she lying? Or is the truth stranger than it seems? Originally appeared in Daily Science Fiction.

It's only on Amazon right now, and it will likely stay that way because I am far too lazy to port this to other e-book retailers. On the plus side, if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free and I still get paid in some kind of wacky Internet money. Either way, if you're looking for something weird and kinda depressing then this is something you can download for all your "weird and kinda depressing" fiction needs. I am a marketing genius, clearly.

(The title of this post is of course a reference to this. Semi-coincidentally, Rob and I are re-watching The Critic right now. If you remember the nineties, it totally holds up.)

P.S. Thanks to Annie Bellet for sourcing the cover image for me, since unlike zines, if you use a cover image you haven't paid for on an e-book, you're likely to be caught and sued. Isn't that crazy? No, wait, it's completely sane.

Erica's Infrequent Book Reviews Presents: AFTERPARTY by Daryl Gregory

Afterparty by Daryl Gregory
Tor Books
Buy at Powell's or Amazon

Neuroscientist Lyda Rose has just learned that the experimental drug which drove her crazy and caused her wife to be murdered is loose in North America. The drug, codenamed "Numinous," causes users to experience a hallucination of God, and to believe in it. Lyda breaks out of the mental health facility where she's being detained to find out the source of Numinous and stop it from spreading. Part near-future science fiction, part murder mystery, Afterparty is a novel for anyone who likes smart fiction.

I first discovered Daryl Gregory's writing in 2012. Searching for novels recommendations, I went to the list of Philip K. Dick Award nominees and checked out some of the synopses. The one for The Devil's Alphabet stood out to me, and I fell in love with the novel. I went on to read the rest of Gregory's output very quickly (always a marathoner) and was just as impressed, particularly with Pandemonium, which was hands down the best novel I read in 2012, holding my attention despite a general preference for short stories. So when I read that Gregory was working on a novel that combined my two favorite subjects, recreational pharmaceuticals and spiritual inquiry, I was immediately intrigued. And then I had to wait a year and a half! Such is publishing, I guess.

Like his previous novels, Afterparty delivers healthy doses (so to speak) of philosophy, well-rounded characters, and not a small amount of dark humor. That's especially true when describing the many pharmaceuticals in use in his near-future setting, like the sexual orientation-altering drug "Flip," which straight frat boys use to have a night of raunchy sex with their buddies. Another example is the apartment rancher/hired killer Vincent, who uses a designer drug to strip away his moral code. I get the feeling that Gregory is using these drugs less to make commentary on (prescription) drug culture than he is to investigate the mechanisms that make us what we are, and how easily biology can override what we believe to be true about ourselves.

Gregory's damaged characters are painted with great detail, from the driver Bobby (who wears his consciousness in a plastic aquarium toy around his neck), to Lyda's girlfriend/co-conspirator Ollie, whose paranoid tendencies were solidified with a drug that causes her to see patterns in everything. Lyda and Ollie sneak across the Canada-America border to investigate the spread of Numinous, but the conspiracy goes deeper than they think--all the way back to the five scientists involved in the creation of the drug and the fateful afterparty that left one of them dead and the rest of them locked into a permanent relationship with their unwanted spiritual guides.

The book is structured like a thriller, but the real meat is in the philosophical questions Gregory brings to the table. Is God only a chemical reaction, and if so, does that make the spiritual experience any less valid? (We are our minds, after all.) How do you regulate drugs in a world where everyone can be an amateur neuroscientist? While it doesn't have the same kind of world-shaking conclusion that Pandemonium did, I was still blown away by the ending, which features a crucial and surprising choice by the atheistic Lyda about the nature of drug-induced faith. It's also a diverse novel, with a lesbian protagonist and a rainbow of characters much like one would expect to populate Toronto a generation from now.

Afterparty by Daryl Gregory gets my highest possible recommendation, but then, I have a severe soft spot for philosophical writing and drug novels. (Like I told Rob when reading him the synopsis, "it's like it's written for me!") This is kind of like a novel Philip K. Dick himself would have written if he'd been allowed to edit and hadn't had hang-ups about women. Thanks to Gregory for writing it, and to NetGalley for the advance copy.

Links, with Occasional Exclamation Points

1. I have a new short story out! "The Speaking Ground," published in AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, is a flash fiction tale of madness on an alien world. Enjoy!

2. You can now order a copy of the Bundoran Press anthology Strange Bedfellows, including my story "The Afternoon Revolution," from Powell's Books and the Bundoran web site. Black Gate calls my story "a grim and relentless look at humanity and inhumanity and how the US is really f&*king it all up with the economic misdistribution of resources driving the decay of America, wrapped in an exciting kidnapping tale." Seems legit!

3. Hate Star Wars? I know I do! Over on SF Signal Mind Meld I bloviate about my least favorite epic science fiction movie. Okay, I don't like any epic anything, but Star Wars holds a special spot of hatred in my pitch-black heart.

4. I will only be on the East Coast for seven more days. Unreal.

5. Saturday's night State of Short Fiction roundtable at BSFS was a success. We discussed the differences between print pubs and online pubs, crowdfunding, podcasting, rising short fiction stars, diversity in the slush pile, and the current popularity (or possible lack thereof) of the short form. Couldn't make it out? Watch the link!

The BSFS State of Short Fiction crew.

6. Are you using Habit RPG? You should be!

Erica's Infrequent Book Reviews Presents: LOVE IS THE LAW by Nick Mamatas

Love Is the Law by Nick Mamatas
Dark Horse
Buy at Powell's or Amazon.

"Golden" Dawn Seliger is the only genius on Long Island. A punk, a Communist, and a follower of the occult works of Aleister Crowley, Dawn's world is overturned with the death of her mentor Bernstein, an apparent suicide. But Dawn knows better, and in Nick Mamatas' first crime novel, she intends to get to the bottom of it like a counter-cultural Harriet the Spy.

I first heard about this novel on Twitter, when Nick was having some fun with the Nanowrimo folks by throwing together random motley elements as his "Nano novel." I remember reading the tweet, laughing because it sounded so awesome but also really ridiculous, then forgot about it. A few months later he started blogging about how he was writing the thing. Whoa, really? I looked forward to reading it because I tend to like Nick's writing a lot, but of course part of me was wondering if a book generated from a throwaway comment on Twitter would work, even in a good writer's hands.

Well, it definitely works! This is a confident genre-fuck of a book, equal parts mystery and magickal fantasy. As Dawn seeks j______ for Bernstein, she finds herself caught up in conspiracy after conspiracy, aided by (not that it's their choice) a rich Marxist lawyer and a burnout from her former high school, among others. There are some of the usual mystery/noir tropes: the search for clues, interrogations, chasing down leads, the final reveal. But this is in no way a standard mystery, as the conclusion Dawn is inexorably drawn to comes from a definite otherworldly place, and Dawn is certainly no ordinary detective. In another writer's hands, there might have been a point where Dawn lost her tough exterior and learned to cooperate with her male companions and tie up all the loose ends with a ribbon and a moral, perhaps falling in love with one of them along the way. No. Love Is the Law never once loses its brutal edge, down to the haunting final sentence.

A book this short (and oh, rare is the modern writer who can tell us a story in exactly as many words as needed and no more) would be "spoiled" by saying too much about the plot but I can tell you that the Marxism and the Thelema totally come together. In one of his blog posts, Nick says that he considers Salinger one of his literary models, and I definitely saw that in the dialogue: true to life, a little bit "off," hyper-realistic. Everything is filtered so well through Dawn's cynical perspective that you don't realize that while you're going along with the mystery aspect of the plot, you're also learning things: about magick, yes, but also about the system that keeps us all chained down, even people as iconoclastic as Dawn. I guess in parts it's a bit of a polemic, but I like that kind of thing (and do that kind of thing), so it totally worked for me.

My favorite aspect of the book, though, might be its setting. While I've never been to Long Island and probably never will be, it comes alive in Love Is the Law. Nick perfectly captures what it's like to feel trapped in a small, class-divided town that's so close yet so far from a major city (yeah, that hits close to home... though Pittsburgh isn't quite NYC). It is indeed a Looooong Island, and the varied cast of supporting characters paints a picture of barely concealed class strife and cultural diversity without ever once "telling" (I think the whole tell/show dichotomy is over-simplified but go with it) you a thing. He also has a strong sense of time, as the book is set at the end of the Cold War and the characters, with their disparate Marxist views, act and react accordingly.

I can guarantee you that this is the best novel about a Marxist Thelemite punk rock girl detective that you'll ever read. If this is what Nick's interpretation of a crime novel is, then keep them coming!

Erica's Infrequent Book Reviews Presents: MIXTAPE FOR THE APOCALYPSE by Jemiah Jefferson

Mixtape for the Apocalypse by Jemiah Jefferson
Self-published (but why??)
Available for Kindle, Nook, and in paperback

Mid-90s Portland twentysomething Michael Bronwynn Squire's been having some problems. His roommate moves in her lunk of a boyfriend against his will. He's failing at both his jobs. His underground comix career is going nowhere. He's just started a romantic relationship with his best friend Lise. And then he starts receiving covert messages from Echo & the Bunnymen songs, and things start going from "kooky 90s romantic comedy wacky" to Walter Bishop-level insanity.

So you know how a lot of people say that it feels like books are written just for them? I find that annoying and self-centered. And yet, that's the feeling I had when reading Mixtape for the Apocalypse. These are characters I know, these are situations eerily similar to ones I lived when I was myself a twentysomething living with friends in another city that begins with a P. I've been, at different times, both Squire and Lise. So I guess I'll just have to be one of those losers whose reaction to a book is based largely on personal history. At least Mixtape is a better book than Generic YA Fantasy Dreck. (Aside: when I looked for reviews of this on Goodreads, to see what other people thought before I wrote my own review -- this book is criminally under-reviewed -- it recommended a bunch of YA dystopia novels. This is why I don't use Goodreads, people.)

After a framing chapter, Mixtape is split between Squire's increasingly madness-driven journal entries and straight narrative, with the latter subsiding once he makes the move into Lise's spacious walk-in closet and doesn't interact with anything outside of his own head. (Aside Part Two: this is probably a side effect of reading on a Kindle, but I sometimes found it hard to tell where the "journal" part of the story ended and the "past reminiscences as told by present-day Squire" began. Not sure if the paper-book version has different fonts or italics or anything; I don't think you can mix fonts in Kindle editions. This isn't anything that hurt the experience of reading the book for me, more of a "I wish there was a better way to show this on Kindle" whine.) While I hate the idea of calling something a "breezy read" because it makes me think of popcorn fiction -- which Mixtape definitely isn't -- it reads fast and compelling. Jefferson's prose flows smooth as crazy butter. I read it in less than two days, stopping all other in-progress books to finish it.

Though the characters and place descriptions give a grounding of realism to the book (oh Portland, someday I will live in you!), what really takes this book from good to awesome is Squire's breakdown, the way it goes from being something just hinted at around the edges to full-on batshit, yet it never feels like a left turn, never feels like something thrust on the character from the outside. There are few books that come close to realistically depicting what it's like to have a nervous breakdown, because it's only one of those things that you can write if you've lived it, and most readers who have not had nervous breakdowns don't know the difference between a good depiction and a bad one. Voices from the Street by Philip K. Dick is one that I can recommend even though it's one of his more misogynist works (it's not genre fiction, either). I don't know whether Jefferson has lived through these experiences herself, but to my trained eye, Squire's breakdown feels legit. What really nails it are the touches of humor, like this line: "They don't show TV, which is good, but they do show static, which is good." Classic. Also the kind of inspired lines you really do come up with when you've been up for over a day, high on caffeine.

In closing, Mixtape for the Apocalypse is one of the best books I've read in months and well worth your $2.99. I also hope Jefferson writes, if not a sequel, at least more books in this vein. My highest possible recommendation!

Short Fiction Round Up: January 2013 (more or less)

It's a few days late, but here's the list of the best short stories I read in January and the first few days of February.

"The Golden Age of Story" by Robert Reed: I've been aware of Reed for almost a decade now, since he was published all over F&SF and Asimov's (where this story appeared, February 2013 issue) when I started reading those magazines on and off back in the early aughts, and also saw his name occasionally in the online magazines. But for some reason, I always ignored his stories when I encountered them. Maybe I read a "bad" one and just instinctively stayed away. But I doubt I'll ignore his name after reading this, a masterfully woven series of vignettes about an experimental nootropic that turns its users into geniuses and pathological liars, and the ramification on society when a significant percentage of its members are reporting from a reality vastly different from the one we inhabit. In some ways "The Golden Age of Story" reminded me of the "neuro-SF" of Daryl Gregory, a.k.a. the best writer I discovered in 2012.

"The Wanderers" by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam: Our broadcast transmissions got out to deep space, and attracted alien visitors who love ultraviolence just as much as humans. The group of aliens named for our cultural heroes come to rule us, but when they arrive, we're already gone. A tromp through "city and suburb" reveals no humans to conquer, but plenty of sights to interpret through the lens of creatures that have only known humanity through our broadcasts, yet perhaps understand us better than we do ourselves. The humor in this story is also not to be glossed over, as the alien warlords pay homage to our "goddess Herbal Essence" or describe the post-apocalyptic wasteland as "no explosion marks... more like The Road." I'd never heard of Stufflebeam before this, but definitely looking forward to watching her career.

For the past few months, I've really been enjoying plowing through a few collections of Robert Silverberg's short fiction that are cheaply available on Kindle. Silverberg is not the first name one thinks of when thinking of New Wave science fiction, and I wonder why. Maybe because he started as a pulp writer, which is more an accident of timing than of any lack of quality on Silverberg's part. Some aspects of his stories are outdated, but they're from the sixties and seventies, so what do you expect? The stories in Volumes 2, 3, and 4 are all quite good, but some representative stories that I thought were especially good were "Schwartz Between the Galaxies" (an anthropologist struggles to continue his work on an Earth with one homogenous, globalized culture), "Hawksbill Station" (what Terra Nova could have been if it wasn't fucking awful), "When We Went to See the End of the World" (darkly ironic story about apocalypses both futuristic and present day), and "The Wind and the Rain" (in which we're reminded that conservation shouldn't be about saving the planet, it should be about saving humans) Seriously, I could have listed about a dozen stories here. It always does seem silly to review things this old on a blog but if you like New Wave SF or are just interested in reading some then buy these, especially if you have a Kindle.

"During the Pause" by Adam-Troy Castro: Of course I'd like this story, it's just one long damn hypothetical argument. An alien transmission describes a "phenomenon" that will soon (and you will eventually find out just how soon!) overtake the Earth. There is nothing we can do to stop it. The horrific phenomenon is described in ghastly detail, even as the alien message laments that much of it is untranslatable. There is something we can do, doomed as we are, to make our existence meaningful. But it comes at a cost. Anything more would ruin the story, which you should just go read. I thought about this story for like two weeks after I read it, and it's still in my head.

That's all for now. As per usual, if you know of any short stories that I should have already read, link them in the comments.

Short Fiction Round Up, December 2012

It's the last day of the month, which means it's time for the monthly rundown of "best stories I read this month, but were not necessarily released this month." Yeah!

I usually hate speculative (and non-speculative for that matter) Xmas stories. There's one by China Mieville I really like, but other than that, I can't think of a single holiday story that I didn't find ultimately cloying. But now I guess there are two Xmas-themed short stories I like, now that I've read In the Late December by Greg van Eekhout. An immortal being traverses the universe, giving hope and toys to the remaining consciousness clusters as they are swallowed one by one by the process of entropy. This should be an Xmas standard.

I don't know whether the timing of Your Final Apocalypse by Sandra McDonald was decided because of the "Mayan apocalypse" or not, but it's a far better end-of-the-world story than 99% of disaster porn out there. The cold, clinical POV (my favorite kind) describes an alien intelligence extracting Earth experiences, then leaving them behind like empty husks. The chilling fate of the protagonist is something that will stick with you far beyond the first read. More like this, please, science fiction.

I enjoyed most of the stories in Terry Bisson's collection TVA Baby, but if I have to pick one to feature (and according to the arbitrary rules I just made up, I do), then I'll select the title story, a neat little bit of ultra-violence that follows the escapades of a clearly insane person, with a nod to television culture. Really hilarious in places, like most of Bisson's work. Read it online, then pick up the collection at PM Press.

Earthrise by Lavie Tidhar, over at Redstone Science Fiction, is a very good latter-day cyberpunk story set in a world dominated by a social media web called the Conversation. A collection of tropes -- the outlaw terrorist artist, the domed cities, the uploaded minds -- somehow turns out to be more than the sum of its parts. I have Osama on my reading list for January, and reading this story makes me really look forward to it. Tidhar's prose just sings.

That's it, I'm tired of writing! As always, if you have any stories that you think I should feature in January, please leave them in the comments.

Short Fiction Round Up, November 2012

I totally suck at blogging regularly, I know. And probably the last thing someone who sucks at blogging regularly should do is start some kind of blog series, but since this is mostly links and I'm only going to do it once a month then maybe it's not that onerous a task. So, without further bloviating, here are a couple of short stories that I really enjoyed reading this month, and maybe you will too! (P.S. Not all of these were published in November 2012 and I'm not going to only commit myself to posting about current stories. These are stories that I read in November.)

First up, "Robot" by Helena Bell. I'd fallen behind on reading Clarkesworld Magazine and for that I have no excuse because it's one of the best short fiction rags out there. And this is one of the best stories I've read in Clarkesworld for quite some time. I'm not sure if the nod to Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" was intentional but I'd like to think it is. Just like the list of dos and don'ts in the Kincaid piece paint a vivid picture of the titular girl's world, the list in "Robot" gives an indirect view of the world that the "robot" (which is not actually what the creature is at all... or is it?) inhabits and of the changes being wrought to humanity due to contact with the creatures. Just a really awesome piece of work.

On the homage front, just today I read "A Game of Rats and Dragon" by Tobias Buckell on Lightspeed and found it an awesome update of the classic Cordwainer Smith story. I got into Smith last fall after a mention of him on another blog. I'd never heard of him, but within that morning I'd read everything of his available online for free, and ordered the best-of collection. Then, the complete collection soon after. If you'd have told me that some of the most whacked-out, mind-bending, truly alien SF ever had been produced by a fucking Golden Age writer, I'd have never believed it. Smith was born too early, and died too young. And Buckell's story puts a modern twist on one of the best of Smith's tales, placing it within the milieu of virtual LARPing. Read it, then read the original, or maybe do that backwards. (For bonus lolz, check out the comments. A few people are quite upset with this story for... not being written by Cordwainer Smith, I suppose.)

"Beneath Impossible Circumstances" by Andrea Kneeland (Strange Horizons), much like Bell's story above, tells you more by what it's not telling you than by what it is. At its core, this is the story of a break-up, but also a break-down, of either society or the natural order or both. I really dig these kind of dystopic stories where you aren't exactly told what precipitated the downfall, just left with the result: a world where the "unreal" is overtaking the "real," and of course all the questions about whether that matters and if so, why? And Kneeland's prose is fantastic: "The sun is a whitehaired girl, fever sleeping and swaddled in a blue blanket." Spec-fic needs more poets, I think.

That's it! Hopefully, check in next month for the best short stories I read in December that I was moved to write about before becoming sick of blogging. And if you have any recommendations, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Erica's Infrequent Book Reviews Presents: STARVE BETTER by Nick Mamatas

I read Nick Mamatas' Starve Better last year and fully intended to review it then, but everyone who knows me knows I hate reviewing things. Especially if I enjoy them and/or find them useful. So let the lateness of this review not be a way to say "this really sucked" so much as "I really suck at writing reviews on time."

Anyway! If you read Nick Mamatas' LiveJournal (and oh, how I wish LJ hadn't deteriorated into a ghost town) you know that he often dispenses bits of writing advice written in an acerbic tone which is a refreshing departure from that given by either commercially-obsessed genre writers or high-falutin', "you'll get your reward in history" literary MFA types. Having gone through a genre-focused MA program, I've obviously heard more of the former types of "advice," and I've gotta say, if this book had been out ten years ago (or I'd even heard of Mamatas ten years ago), I'd have absorbed far less bullshit that wouldn't have led to me pretty much quitting writing for something like four years because it felt like the only way to "succeed" was to sell my soul. (I also probably wouldn't have gotten the MA, but if I hadn't then a whole lot of things in my life would be different so I don't want to traipse too far down that road.)

The book is split up into fiction (with an emphasis on short story writing and sales) and non-fiction and I'll focus on the former, because it had more relevance to me. The title of the preface, "All Advice is Terrible Advice, Plus Other Useful Advice," sets the stage for what you're going to get: someone who's not going to guide you through the wonderful world of spinning yarns for nerds. The opening chapter questions your desire to write short fiction in the first place, giving many reasons TO write short fiction (quick cash, freedom, a greater "hit" of artistic bliss), and just as many reasons NOT to write it (that it's "practice" for writing novels, that it's easier*).

Now, I write short stories, and vastly prefer writing (and reading) them to novels. To me, the short story is the ideal form for genre fiction, and I believe that a lot of genre novels being published today are merely puffed-up short stories. It's also clear when someone who is a "true" novelist is attempting to write a short story, and vice versa. A short story isn't practice for a novel any more than sprinting is practice for a marathon: it's the same basic motions, but nearly everything about the scope, the characterization, the language, etc. is different. Has to be different. So if you're only writing short fiction because you feel you "have" to, just stop. (Same goes for novels. Why I've stopped attempting to write one for now.)

Later chapters go more into the craft of short stories. Mamatas uses the metaphor that short stories are a lot like photography, in that they preserve one moment in time, and are defined just as much by what is absent as by what is present. While short stories often need some backstory to be coherent (in SF/F, it's almost mandatory), the sin of over-explanation can be a story-killer, and lead to something more akin to a family photoshoot than an Ansel Adams composition. Short stories are delicate creatures.

Mamatas continues with a chapter on hooks (yes, they're important, but just throwing a bunch of action at the beginning does not a hook make) and on writing sentences, which includes the forehead-tattoo-worthy phrase "write well; it makes things easier." Two chapters on dialogue--which make a good point that media has tended to make dialogue far more generic and "teen-boyish" than it actually is--are useful reads but I paid special attention to the chapter on scene breaks. I like scene breaks a lot, but they're a hammer, not a seasoning. You don't need to break every time your character gets into a car or goes to the bathroom. It's advice I think I break often (though as Nick might say, all advice is bad advice).

My absolute "favorite" (it seems weird to use that word on a writing-advice book, but whatever) part of the book, though, is the chapter on endings. I seem to remember a similar post being on Nick's LJ once upon a time, but can't find it, but I really think the chapter on endings is worth the price of admission alone. See, stories shouldn't always tie up in a neat little package. Endings should leave you hungry for more, but also give you enough of a meal that reading it doesn't become an exercise is pointlessness. Very often the understated ending is the right one: the "hero" coming to the realization that everything is futile, or that there are mysteries that won't be answered, at least for now. Leave the reader wanting more, but also provide the foundation for that wanting. And all this in a seven-page chapter (did I mention that the chapters themselves are a good example of writing short?).

The non-fiction section of the book, which contains information on how to pitch an article and how to write term papers for <s>fun</s> and profit (Mamatas' widely reprinted "The Term Paper Artist" is included), doesn't have much relevance for me personally (yet) but it's written in the same practical, no-holds-barred style as the first half of the book.

In short, Starve Better is highly recommended, particularly for genre short fiction writers, and people who don't need their head patted every five minutes. If you've ever defined yourself as a "wordsmith," or trumpeted your Nano wins on Tumblr, this book probably isn't for you. If, however, you're someone honestly dedicated to improving your craft, then go pick up Starve Better right now. It's only $5 on Kindle for the best tough-love writing advice book currently in print.


* Ha, ha. Ha ha! Haaa-hha-hee-hoo!!!!

So Okay, I'll Update My Damn Blog

It's perhaps typical of the way I conduct my "writing career," and indeed my entire online persona, that as soon as I got to the point where I got a dozen or so hits on this blog a day, I immediately stopped posting. What can I say, other than that updating a non-LJ blog feels way too much like performing in front of a live audience and takes away from the time I spend doing "real" writing.

But anyway: updates! I sold a story to PodCastle, so look for "The Hand of God" to invade your auditory canals sometime in the early fall. This is the first time my writing has been adapted to the form of a podcast. I hope to be in smells by late 2014.

Also, my zine distro is still running (though not accepting any new submissions -- when I'm sold out I'm sold out for good!), so maybe check it out? I'm also probably going to whip up something in time for the DC Zinefest, though I'll probably not be tabling since someone (uh, me) didn't register in time. But I'm easy to spot: just look for the lady with the fresh tattoo of two Jeffrey Brown-inspired cats riding a tandem bike on her right arm.

Some other things I've been doing/reading/etc:
**Read Daryl Gregory's Pandemonium, which is if anything even better than The Devil's Alphabet. Man, if you aren't reading this guy right now you're a chump.
**Reading Robert Jackson Bennett's The Company Man. Remember the kerfuffle on Twitter a few weeks ago about steampunk being fascism for nice people? I only vaguely do, since I mostly use Twitter to keep up with the antics of John Darnielle and DadBoner. Anyway, if you're tired of steampunk about aristocrats this is the cure: Bennett's steampunk is dirty and political, showing us the lives of the crooked company and the corrupt union that fuel a magical city made of gears, gaslights, and wonder. Despite a slow start, recommended!
**Going on a trip to western North Carolina, which included camping in the Blue Ridge. Note to self: next time bring mattress.
**Working on a short story about generation ships, and also misery.
**Eating food, breathing, sleeping. You know, human stuff.

Anyway, see you in a month I guess!

xo,
Erica

"The Devil's Alphabet" by Daryl Gregory: Snuggly Soft Biological SF

I first encountered Daryl Gregory's work through the short story "First Person, Present Tense" in an anthology, and thought it was one of the best short stories I've read in months (and I read a lot of the things!). So, naturally, I sought out the rest of his writing. He's a fairly new writer, which is both good and bad: good because there's hopefully a lot more to come, but bad because when I find an author I like I need to read everything they have written ever, and with only three novels and a collection I'll be done with Gregory's oeuvre in a month. But anyway, with that one story selling me on the writer, I looked up his novels, and started with the one that seemed most interesting.

The Devil's Alphabet is present-set science fiction, taking place in Appalachia, that involves themes of evolutionary biology and mind-bending drugs. Seriously, it's like the thing was written just for me. Twelve years before the story begins, the small town of Switchcreek, Tennessee was struck by the non-communicable "Transcription Divergence Syndrome." In practical terms, that means that most of the people of the town began to mutate into one of three creatures: super strong, ten-foot-tall argos; hairless red people called betas (who are mostly female and reproduce through parthenogenesis); and quarter-ton charlies, some of whom just happen to secrete a psychotropic drug through their skin. All the clades, as the groups are called, are as different from one another genetically as they are from human beings, and with the exception of the argos they're fertile, with a desire to spread their non-human genes as far and fast as possible. The main character, prodigal Switchcreeker Paxton Martin, is a "skip," meaning that the mutations passed him over completely... or did they?

Pax returns to Switchcreek for the funeral of his beta friend Jo, after her suspicious suicide. The investigation of Jo's death provides the framework for this story, though this mystery is by no means the only thing going on here. Among the other secrets in Monster Town are an embezzlement of federal funds by the new mayor, the issue of birth control among the early-blooming beta girls, and Pax's growing addiction to his father's strain of "vintage" (the drugs the charlies produce). The book is mostly in Pax's point of view, though it dips into two other character's heads periodically, which I thought made a nice balance.

Halfway through the book the plot takes a major left turn when (SPOILER ALERT) TDS breaks out in Ecuador, and from there the speculation as to what TDS is flies fast and furious, and while no definite answers are given (this being Charmin-soft SF), the most viable possibility is genes being sent from a parallel dimension as part of some kind of multiverse-wide genetic war. The national guard is called out, and Switchcreek is put back under quarantine, and that's when the riots start. Pax must try to break his addiction to his father's sweat (seriously, how awesome is this book?) and do what he can to save Jo's daughters, two "natural" betas who provide insight into just how different the inner world of the changed is from that of humanity.

Another detail of the story I liked a lot: Pax is bisexual, yet this is not remarked upon positively or negatively in any way, which is as it should be but almost never is. It's extremely rare to find fiction about non-straight characters (especially bisexuals) that doesn't make a Huge Deal about their orientation, that treats it just like being left-handed. Romantic/sexual relationships aren't exactly a focus here and it would have been very easy just to make Pax "default straight" but Gregory didn't do that.

The only "problem" I had, which isn't really a problem at all, is that the book seems to be mis-marketed. The creepy cover, the title, and the blurb on the cover (which claims that The Devil's Alphabet "evokes the best of Stephen King"... not that I dislike King per se but this book isn't at all reflective of his style or themes) all seem to be attempting to market this as a Southern gothic thriller, which it isn't in the slightest. The cover doesn't even mention the book's very deserving nomination for the Philip K. Dick Award. I gather that Gregory's other two novels do align more with Southern gothic fiction (being about demonic possession and Haitian-style zombies, respectively), so perhaps this was only the publisher's desire to retain previous fans. Still, I might have passed over this novel completely if I hadn't read "First Person, Present Tense," and that would have been a shame.

Jumping That Bandwagon

So, I got a Kindle.

Some history: when I first heard about e-readers, I thought they were the stupidest thing ever. What, exactly, is the problem with a book? E-readers seemed to be a solution to a problem that didn't exist, which is the worst kind of technology. I also felt like the technology was kind of crappy; in particular it took a really long time for pages to flip. Either the technology has improved or my patience has (not likely), but that doesn't bother me anymore. I got the least expensive, most stripped-down Kindle, both because I am cheap and also because back-lighting hurts my eyes.

A lot of people get Kindles so they don't have to carry around doorstoppers. But I don't read doorstoppers (well, occasionally I do... Infinite Jest was the best book I read in 2010 and I don't care if that makes me sound pretentious), I'm a short story person. And I read a lot of short stories. Between online magazines and collections, short fiction comprises approximately 75% of what I read. I'm told this is unusual for a reader of this generation? I could go into reasons why short stories are a superior art form to novels but honestly, I mostly read them because I have the attention span of a mayfly.

So the breaking point for me was discovering Kindle Singles, and realizing that many of my favorite authors have short stories on Kindle that I can't get elsewhere, except in long out-of-print magazines. There's also free classics, which I'll probably take advantage of at some point, but honestly I'm still hung up on Kindle Singles like whoa.

The very first thing I downloaded was a collection of two short novels by the power team of Jonathan Lethem (who in my opinion is one of the top ten writers working today, and a real inspiration for my own fiction writing), John Kessel (who I've never read), and James Patrick Kelly (who I know mostly through his work as an editor). Both of these stories were published around a decade ago in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and don't appear in either of Lethem's short fiction collections.

The first story, "Ninety Percent of Everything," has a lot of Lethemesque touches, which you'll either love or think is too twee, depending on your tastes. You all know how my tastes run. Short recap: blue space dogs come to Earth to build massive shit piles that sprout diamonds. It does make sense in the end, and while the explanation might be a little too neat for some tastes, I was just thrilled to have a "new" Lethem novella. It's probably most similar to As She Climbed Across the Table in tone, and shares its delightfully screwy science.

The real gem, though, is the second story. "The True History of the End of the World" takes place in a world that seems too good to be true, a world brought to Utopia by that favorite bogeyman of SF writers, cryptically-referred-to-but-sinister-sounding brain surgery. Citizens who undergo the Carcopino-Koster treatment seem smarter and less prone to emotional outbursts, but to the non-treated, they're lobotomized zombies (a conclusion not borne out by the C-K people we see). The story follows a former President who plans to take down the C-K society with the rest of the inmates at his "accommodation farm," but finds out (through a series of character interactions that I won't go into here) that in fact, the "boost" is actually wholly beneficial, and the President and the rest of the inmates are the deluded ones for staring Utopia right in the face and not seeing it for what it is. This story does an inversion I've just never seen before, and is that rarest of finds: a fairly original idea.

Unlike reading on a computer screen, the immersion into whatever I'm reading is truly seamless. The fact that my Kindle doesn't have a touch screen makes it so I don't feel like throwing it across the room every time I use it (hi there, smartphone). I had a little bit of confusion with the directional buttons because I'm basically the least tech-oriented person ever but now I get it.

Will a Kindle make sense for you? I don't really know. To be honest I thought there might be a chance I would hate it and not ever use it, but I haven't picked up a "real" book since I got it. (Then again, I've only had it for a week.) I have a nice backlog of short stories to read now (including the digital version of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which is only 99 cents a month and has all the content of the print edition) and I think my readership of online magazines will probably suffer because of the Kindle, because I hate back-lighting so very much. The thing is, stripped-down Kindles are currently so cheap that even if you think you'll only use it a little, you should probably just buy one anyway. (Or a Nook. I'm not a brand snob. Although I do strongly prefer my Kindle to Rob's Nook, either because it doesn't have a touchscreen or because it's a slightly different shape, I don't know.)

Sometimes You Should Stop at the First Book: My Review of "Monsters of Men" by Patrick Ness

Recently Requires Only That You Hate, one of the best book blogs that I read (okay, so it's the only book blog that I read), put up a post about why she's done with YA. I may have recently reached my limit with YA science fiction as well, after spending my morning finishing Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness, a book that was so disappointing it made me downrate the rest of the series in retrospect, much like the third season of Star Trek to some extent invalidates the previous two seasons. A book that made me have so many strong emotions (most of them negative) that I'm breaking my ban on book blogging to write this! This is really more of a review of the series as a whole, although most of the hate falls to the third book because that's where things really fell apart. So yes, SPOILERS AHOY, although only dweebs care about spoilers.

I picked up the first book in the series, The Knife of Never Letting Go, because it won the Tiptree Award and I'm trying to read through the Tiptree Award winners because, why not? There's too much on both the Hugo and Nebula winners' list that I know I'm going to hate, so I'm never going to do a systematic read-through of either of those awards. Anyway, TKONLG centers around a religious community that colonizes a planet. When they get there, they discover two surprises: there's a native species on the planet, and they can hear the thoughts of everything in the world... except human women. We never learn why women are exempted from this involuntary telepathy (although I was desperately hoping to learn it at some point), but the effects of this exemption are more important. Men's distrust of women leads to gender segregation in some areas, all-out war in others, and in the main character's community, to gendercide, of the women by the men, although one would think that the tactical advantage of silence would give ladies the upper hand. Not so!

So the book opens with the main character, Todd, who has never seen a woman and is basically waiting to die on this crapsack world with maybe a hundred or so angry men on it. Soon, though, he learns that there's more to the world than just his town, and he meets a girl, Viola, who he believes is less than human because of her lack of Noise, yet somehow feels drawn to help her anyway. We all learn something about sexism, and there's a lot of chase and actions scenes because well, this is YA. The most interesting part of the first book for me was learning about how the other towns on New World "dealt with their women," and I bet it was these glimpses at an extreme (if invisible) sexual dimorphism through the eyes of an innocent person that won this book the Tiptree. It probably deserved it, although I don't know what else was nominated that year.

In the second book things... kinda fall apart, although not completely. The focus shifts toward two groups, the male, town-based Army of the Ask led by the mustache-twirling Mayor Prentiss, and the mostly female, woods-based Answer, who are portrayed as terrorists, although it's a justifiable terrorism. I mean, man, when a megalomaniac takes over your town for no reason other than bein' crazy, and pretty much starts right away with the business of oppressing women, who wouldn't be a terrorist? One of the things that annoyed me about the second book was that the Ask and the Answer are seen as being two sides of the same coin when, no, that's not true at all. AFAICT, the women in the largest town (Haven) were pretty much just chilling, not really being oppressed at all, when crazy old Mayor Prentiss rides in and turns their world upside down. It's hinted that it's only because of the tacit approval of the men of Haven that he's able to accomplish this takeover, but I think again, it doesn't go far enough, whether because Ness didn't want to alienate male readers or because he himself is male.

Third book, though, hoo boy. We've totally abandoned the interesting gender speculation of the first and part of the second book, and it's all about WAR WAR WAR. We also have a new first-person viewpoint character in the person of 1017, one of the Spackle, the humanoid (blah) native species of the planet who, again, have such a strong tactical and population advantage over the Earthicans that in reality this book should have been like five pages long. "There's tens of millions of Spackle to 1000 Earth beings. The end." But because the Spackle aren't a ruthless species (like human men... dunno if this was meant to be the point but that's what I took away from it), there's instead 600 pages of drawn-out battle scenes handled even more awkwardly than the battle scenes in Mockingjay (and that's saying a lot... Suzanne Collins your books are enjoyable in many ways but that city warfare is terrible!). Adding the VP of the Spackle does almost nothing for the book except reinforce that writing non-human characters is extremely difficult and something that almost nobody should try, because 99% of the time it comes off as hokey. That's no different here. Bonus points for the Spackle not being an alien stand-in for Native Americans but they don't appear to have much culture at all. It makes sense that they're monocultural, because a telepathic, quasi-hivemind species wouldn't have developed different religions or languages or rituals (it's also stated that the leader has control over the world-mind), but they don't have much of a culture, period, other than being humanoids who walk like us, ride animals around like us, fire gun-like weapons like us, etc. Writing intelligent aliens who aren't just humans in costume is really fucking hard which is why I don't do it. But hey, at least they're not Native Americans!

So anyway, both the Mayor and the leader of the Answer become pretty cartoonishly evil over the course of this book, and nobody plugs either of them, under the belief that doing so would make them (especially Todd, who is already on the road to evil due to his maleness) as bad as the adults. Uh, what? Dude, at some point, the refusal to kill isn't a virtue, it's a sickness. Anyway, there's a showdown between Todd, Viola, and the Mayor, which involves Todd and Viola flinging each others' names at him in succession, making me think of another character from a series that declined in quality as it went along:

WAAAAALLLLTTTTTTtttttttt....!!!

But then came the part of Monsters of Men that I thought was inexcusable, the reason I'm writing this review. 1017 comes upon Todd and Viola on the beach after the Mayor's suicide (spoilers!) and thinks Todd is the Mayor, so shoots him. Todd is established as being dead. 1017 is shown to be devastated over this even though Todd is a member of the species who enslaved him and killed thousands of his people. (But the colonists will be good THIS time! Pinky swear!) Meanwhile, Todd comes back from the dead, and at the end of the book is in a vegetative state that we're led to believe is temporary. So basically, Ness led us down a path where the plot seemed to dictate that Todd HAD to die, he had to die to leave us with the knowledge that war can be so devastating that it can up and kill one of your main viewpoint characters, and then totally ruined that ending. What a freakin' copout, and I daresay it wouldn't have happened in a book not marketed as YA.

So yeah, the plot was disappointing, but so were a lot of other elements. While I don't like to be "that person" who whinges about improper science in my science fiction books, the question about why women don't have Noise gnawed at me and the fact that it wasn't answered was like breaking Rule #1 of creating your science fiction world. It can be a bullshit explanation (and what SF explanations aren't?), but it has to be there, or at least be commented upon. At the end, it's assumed that the men and Earth animals will join with the Spackle in some hippy-dippy communal voice that will create a peaceful paradise lasting for all time... but when Viola asks "hey, what about the ladies?" it's merely hinted that they'll, like, learn how to use Noise. Stop bothering us with your stupid questions, girlie!

Also totally missing from the book is any mention of religion, except that their religion is what caused the colonists to take the oh-so-convenient step of destroying links to Old Earth. It's gotta be Christianity due to the colonists being almost all white and the houses of worship being called "churches," but no link is made between the original religious motivation for colonization and the consequent falling apart of society due to the gendercide and resultant fallout. You know what might have been interesting? Using the church as an explanation as to why it was so easy for the men to overpower the women despite their silent advantage, because paternalistic Christianity taught them to obey men. But that would have unsettled some Christian readers, I imagine, and been too "heavy" for a YA book.

One bright spot is the fact that there are several same-sex couples in this book handled without fanfare, both human and Spackle, although I really wondered how this fits in with the fact that the colonists are supposed to be religious fundamentalists. Perhaps New World was founded by fanatic Universal Unitarians? It's cancelled out, however, by the gender essentialism: my "looking for scientific answers in a YA book" mind originally assumed that all the native species on the planet were one-sex, which would have simplified the mechanics surrounding Noise, but instead the way Noise is handled made it seem like XX human beings were some kind of freaks. I think it speaks to a lack of imagination that the Spackle race has two sexes (although they don't appear to have gender). There are apparently no trans* humans on New World so I don't know how Ness would have dealt with their Noise.

So while I could have recommended the first book gladly, I can't really recommend the series, and unfortunately TKONLG ends with a major cliffhanger. I don't think this book will put me off YA entirely, but I think that this pattern of "excellent first book, okay second book, terrible third book" is something I've seen a LOT in the YA series I've read over the past few years: the aforementioned Hunger Games, the Uglies series. The underrated City of Ember remained at a high point throughout, but it's the only example I can think of right now. So maybe the rule for YA should be, read the first, make up your own ending? That sits a little too close to fanfiction for this extremely infrequent book reviewer.

This Very Small Amount of Internet Fame Will Go Straight to My Head

In the past few days I've had almost four hundred hits. Four hundred! That's how much I get in a typical month, and what makes it a little frustrating is that I can't figure out where you people get here from. The keywords are not helping, the referral sites are the same ones that always refer my site (and the numbers there look the same), and the pages "hit" are a motley collection of bikey posts, writing posts, and posts way the hell from last year. So if you're on this site for the first time, my question to you is: why?

So I might as well take advantage of my sudden Internet fame to update you with some important life news:

• I got a new job! My last job, as I think I might have mentioned here at some point (or maybe it was on Dreamwidth), was at this deli, and while it definitely gave me fodder for a potential writing project, it wasn't the job for me. Even "in this economy." I'm not going to say anything specific about the new job because hi, separating Internet life from work life is always a solid plan but it's the best job I've had since 2007. Looking forward to staying the course, racking up experience points, and learning much more about the profession I work in.
• I've been re-reading a lot of my favorite books this month, because that always gets me more into the groove of writing my own stuff. First I re-read Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem, which might be the book I've read more often than any other. Now I'm onto the Light/Nova Swing duology by M. John Harrison, which was groundbreaking when I first read it (I still hadn't read all that much SF by that point despite writing it... the fact that I only got into SF as an adult and how that's influenced my reading/writing/thoughts about "fandom" should really be its own blog post at some point) and is still amazing now. Up next: probably some Philip K. Dick, since I'm getting the Exegesis for Giftmas and I want to get in the mood.
• Sparkle Season isn't annoying me this year as much as it has in the past. I still don't like the semi-compulsory participation in a holiday I have no religious connection to, I still really don't like giving or receiving presents, but this season I've managed to be more Andy Rooney than Lewis Black about the whole thing.
• My new work commute is over twice as long as my old commute, which would make most people groan but not me, because I'm insane. Or a bike commuter, same difference really. Maybe I'll write about it on the bikey blog but I update there even less frequently than here. I'm learning how to ride safely with one earbud in which makes the commute all the more sweet. (And will hopefully get me back into music. I've only listened to ONE album released this year, I used to care so much more about new music. Of course, I am also 30, and I gather that one's enjoyment of new music tends to wither after you hit your third decade.)
• Working on stories, same old, same old. The revised story I thought about self-publishing as a social experiment is actually turning out to be good, so I may attempt to publish it for real after all. I've come to the conclusion that blogging about writing is sort of boring because it's pretty much a one-woman enterprise and anything that isn't "hey I finished something" or "hey I published something" (and dudes I totally did publish something this year) is frankly kind of dull, don't you think? Being a short story writer and zinester, I hit this "finishing point" more often than novelists but still, it's not climbing Everest, exactly. Maybe taking "action shots" of my netbook in various exotic locations will help, it certainly works for bike bloggers.

And... that's it! Bye for now, my hundreds upon hundreds of mystery readers.

Breakfast at Twilight #4 Is Out and Buried Under a Cat

I've been living in Baltimore for a week now and it's pretty awesome! The neighbors are friendlier, the sights are interesting, and the bike lanes and public transportation are existent. And while I will put up a big-ass update post with pictures and such soon, I still can't find my camera in the moving boxes and bags and I sort of hate pulling pictures from my phone. Also, I've been spending too much time on the Internet, as evidenced by the fact that I haven't even finished a book this month. (The book I am reading, The Godwhale by doctor-turned-SF author-turned-doctor T.J. Bass, is awfully written but awesomely idea-ed. It's the sequel to a book that's even worse and I don't really know why I'm continuing to read it except that it's a fairly unique dystopia and I love me some dystopia fiction. Maybe I'll put up a post about it at some point. But basically if you enjoy 1970s-era environmental dystopia and don't mind reading sentences like "now the more purposeful cutaneous capillaries puckered to conserve heat," these are the books for you!)

A zine so awesome, it killed a cat.


But! This post is actually an official announcement of my new zine, Breakfast at Twilight #4: The Bike Issue. My new zine touches on such hard-hitting topics as:

• My history with driving, and also cycling
• Confrontations with drivers
• How to bike in suburbia without getting murdered
• Beginners' Gear 101
• My beef with athletic cycling
• A very short urban planning history

And more! Okay, no, that's pretty much it. It's forty pages, quarter sized, and pretty text-packed except for some hand-drawn illustrations. If you want it, copies are $1.50 and you can Paypal me at blacklightdiner at gmail dot com. Outside the US, please add a little for shipping. Distros who want a copy, get in contact, and it will be available at my own distro (for the next month or so that it's open online) once I hook up the scanner. But what I really want is trades! My zine reading has really slacked and I don't know why, except that I haven't gotten very many new zines in the mail lately. So if you're someone I've traded with before, or even someone I haven't, email me. It will be awesome.

The Cat Days of Summer

Bikey news: One of the bike blogs I read, Let's Go Ride a Bike, is sponsoring a Summer Games for those of us non-athletic-type riders who nevertheless enjoy a bit of friendly competition. The challenges, intended to push one out of their transportation cycling comfort zone. Some examples of activities you too can participate in: ride on a bike path you've never been on before, ride somewhere new in your city, commute to work if you don't already, go on a group ride. As I'm moving into an essentially new-to-me area in six days (!), and plan to explore the hell out of things during the first week of August, I figure I'll have this one in the bag!

Not that I've been doing a lot of riding lately. Today's temperature clocked in at 102 degrees, and I don't know what a heat index is but it can't be helping anything. I am, in general, a huge fan of hot temperature; my ideal temp is around eighty degrees, with just a slight breeze. But this triple-digit crap that's been going on for the entire past week is a different animal. It's not as bad as winter because nothing is as bad as winter. Yet it's still weather that keeps me indoors when I'd prefer not to be, which is crazy-making even without all the white shit on the ground. But it's supposed to be down into the nineties next week in Maryland, which will be a relative relief.

Non-bikey news: As previously alluded, Rob and I are moving from the suburban college town of Towson to the neighborhood of Hampden in Baltimore, to a lovely first-floor apartment with multicolored walls and a tree in the backyard, and from which I will have non-trivial access to public transportation, independent non-chain businesses, and other things that make life worth living. But before the moving comes the packing, and wow, I really hope we stay at this new apartment for years and years because the process of packing to move is one of the most miserable things of all time.

We have a lot of books. I mean, a LOT of books. Lots and lots of books. So far, we're up to a mighty thirty-four boxes and while mostly done there are a few stragglers which I'll just throw into crates or something because we're out of damn moving boxes. I'm pretty sure that if I piled all the moving boxes on top of one another and jumped off the pile that would be a stupid idea. In addition, there's the furniture and clothing and such to deal with, but those aren't beyond what most "normal people" have in their houses. And no, an e-reader wouldn't really help matters, since 80% of the books are comics. At least the situation is improved from the last move, though, when we had probably over fifty moving boxes for books alone and also a dozen long boxes of single-issue comics. The latter is gone almost completely, and there's a significant dent in the former. We're also both becoming a lot pickier about what we bring into the house, too, which is going to cut down on the accumulation while we continue to chip away at what's already there.

Just in case there's anyone who reads this blog and also orders from Black Light Diner Distro, I'll be boxing up zines (both my personal collection and distro zines) around mid-week, and unboxing whenever I get around to it, so if you want to order anything (and help me lighten my load) then do it now, now, now! Also in zine news, I'm seriously thinking about doing a 24-hour zine for International Zine Month, since I've never done one, aside from a comic flipbook in 2008 that I promptly put out of print because I didn't like it. I have so much packing/moving-related stuff to do, though. It will probably come down to whether I feel like I can justify squandering a few hours to work on a zine. But as I've already spent most of this afternoon sitting in a blissfully air-conditioned Panera doing nothing... maybe my time isn't as precious as I think it is.

And--out!