The GMG SF/Fantasy/Horror Club

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

Is the collection Above the Human Landscape?  If so table of contents:

https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/242396/TOC

And buy it for a penny plus shipping:

http://www.amazon.com/Landscape-Social-Science-Fiction-Anthology/dp/0876200021

Dude, you're a Diva!  That was it!  You did what many sci-fi fans and reference books could not!  The story, now refound, was "Rate Race" by Raymond Jones.  It was a bit like time travel itself to re-read it and it's rather more significant than I had thought in my twenties.  I am very grateful to you for your help.   

[DavidW]

Awesome!

For me I read The Mutated by Joe McKinney.  I think this is the last novel in his series.  He had an interesting idea (a more advanced zombie that has personality and intelligence and can psychically control the other zombies) but it's starting to feel tiring.  There is only so much you can do with the zombie apocalypse premise, especially since it has been done to death.

[asin]B007T9WZMG[/asin]

And then I read The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan.  In an obvious nod to Dracula, an airplane arrives with everyone on it dead, and a vampire slips out and later retrieves his coffin filled with the soil from his homeland.  It was a great start, but immediately fell flat.  The novel is written like a movie and not a novel.  I felt the whole way through that I was the reading the novelization of a movie instead of a novel.  Too many Hollywood movie conventions. 

And then another problem is too many characters.  They keep introducing characters just so you can see a million different scenarios for vampires to feed on family, friends, neighbors etc  The intention might have been to give a sense of scale, but it doesn't work, it's just confusing.  And then at the end the protagonist is wielding a sword with a proficiency that he doesn't earn (no prior experience) and is quipping one liners like he stepped out of an 80s action movie.  He is a lab geek!  Not Chuck Norris! 

And don't get me started on the portrayal of the vampires.  This novel provides two contradictory explanations for what they are.  One is based on parasites, an infection and taking control at the genetic level.  The other is more magical, supernatural... you know the traditional vampire.  It can't be both!  Just choose one and stick with it!  I'm fine with either one, just not both at the same time.  My final gripe and a big one is that there is no closure at all. 

It's fine to write a trilogy provided that each novel can stand loosely on it's own.  It's fine to write a long novel.  It's not fine to write a long novel and split it into three volumes just to make people pay three times as much.  They tried to hide the brevity of each novel (really novellas) by using large print and entire page headers for each chapter.  But you can't fool me.

[asin]B002BD2V38[/asin]

[bwv 1080]

I liked that one well enough.  I usually don't care much for such quasi-militaristic SF, but this had some interesting ideas.

Thought this one outdid mote in most every aspect, particularly in having interesting characters

[bwv 1080]

Not sure is this has been posted here:

http://www.blastr.com/2013-4-10/syfy-announces-childhoods-end-and-ringworld-miniseries

[jochanaan]

...Anyone heard anything about the last volume of The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant?

I just checked it out from the library!  A worthy conclusion to the entire series.

[Bogey]

Thought this one outdid mote in most every aspect, particularly in having interesting characters

On it.  The "Mote" novel so far is good enough, but not much more than that.  Only 200 pages in, but I will probably finish it up.

[Bogey]

Guess this one can fit in the mystery section as well:

[Florestan]

Gaston Leroux --- The Mistery of the Yellow Room

Gives Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie a hard run for their money. 

[Bogey]

Gaston Leroux --- The Mistery of the Yellow Room

Gives Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie a hard run for their money. 

Dang, no Kindle edition yet.  I will look for a pb at a local store.  The above one I posted is excellent through the first three chapters.  Kindle sample available and has noir feel.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Disappeared-Retrieval-Artist-novel/dp/0615458564/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y

In a universe where humans and aliens have formed a loose government called the Earth Alliance, treaties guarantee that humans are subject to alien laws when on alien soil. But alien laws often make no sense, and the punishments vary from loss of life to loss of a first-born child. Now three cases have collided: a stolen spaceyacht filled with dead bodies, two kidnapped human children, and a human woman on the run, trying to Disappear to avoid alien prosecution. Flint must enforce the law—giving the children to aliens, solving the murders, and arresting the woman for trying to save her own life. But how is a man supposed to enforce laws that are unjust? How can he sacrifice innocents to a system he's not sure he believes in? How can Miles Flint do the right thing in a universe where the right thing is very, very wrong? This Endeavor Award-winning novel is Flint's first adventure, the story that turns him from a police detective in the Armstrong Dome on the Moon into a Retrieval Artist.

[Bogey]

Grabbed these yesterday for Friday work attire:

[Bogey]

Guess this one can fit in the mystery section as well:

Moving on to the second book in the series:

[DavidW]

How did you ever discover her Bill?  She doesn't seem that well known as a mid-lister from a small press (as opposed to one of the big 5).

A week or so ago I read Witches Water by Ed Lee.  One of his better novels, he uses violence and sex more psychologically instead of extensively, it works pretty well.

[Bogey]

How did you ever discover her Bill?  She doesn't seem that well known as a mid-lister from a small press (as opposed to one of the big 5).

A week or so ago I read Witches Water by Ed Lee.  One of his better novels, he uses violence and sex more psychologically instead of extensively, it works pretty well.

I was looking for a noir sci-fi type read and her name came up on Good Reads, a place that I haunt.  I went ahead and downloaded the sample for this second volume.  I would not place it in a noir category.  It was good though, so will keep going until it is not.  However, I went back to the third Martin Beck  novel that I had not finished.

[mn dave]

Want to see...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szaLnKNWC-U

[Bogey]

From 1948:



Absolutely brilliant.  But then again, the rest of the free world already knew this.

[Bogey]

I was a bit disappointed with how The Humanoids "finished".  Great start, but then it drug along and the ending was less than special.

Now reading:



The chapters seem to alternate between the years 2132 and 1779.  Could be interesting.

[Super Blood Moon]

Here be a fine tale by Clark Ashton Smith for horror and fantasy fans.

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/27/the-colossus-of-ylourgne

Yer pal,

David of Minnesota

[Jo498]

Thanks! I keep thinking that I should explore more of Ashton Smith, almost forgotten writer (compared to Lovecraft or Blackwood).

I read four books from those genres since Xmas, all of which I'd rate good to great

McMaster Bujold: The curse of Chalion. Fairly "mainstream" fantasy setting and plot but a rather unique and compelling treatment of religion, the most convincing I can remember
Poul Anderson: The broken sword. I wonder how I could miss this for so long. This is one of the darkest, most atmospherically evocative fantasy books I have read. It draws heavily from Norse sagas (even in style) and is very well done.
By the same author: The High Crusade. This was great fun, extremely entertaining. Some rebuttal of Twain's Connecticut Yankee: 14th century English knights kick alien butts, capture a spaceship and found an galactic Empire.

Jack Vance (another classic author I had only read a bunch of short stories of): Lyonesse. Also one of the best fantasy stories I have read. Despite some flaws so much better than most from the last 15-20 years. Both in writing style and in evoking atmosphere and a sense of depth of the fantasy world, Anderson (in Broken Sword, the other one is too satirical) are in a different class from Martin or Abercrombie.

[Super Blood Moon]

Thanks! I keep thinking that I should explore more of Ashton Smith, almost forgotten writer (compared to Lovecraft or Blackwood).

I read four books from those genres since Xmas, all of which I'd rate good to great

McMaster Bujold: The curse of Chalion. Fairly "mainstream" fantasy setting and plot but a rather unique and compelling treatment of religion, the most convincing I can remember
Poul Anderson: The broken sword. I wonder how I could miss this for so long. This is one of the darkest, most atmospherically evocative fantasy books I have read. It draws heavily from Norse sagas (even in style) and is very well done.
By the same author: The High Crusade. This was great fun, extremely entertaining. Some rebuttal of Twain's Connecticut Yankee: 14th century English knights kick alien butts, capture a spaceship and found an galactic Empire.

Jack Vance (another classic author I had only read a bunch of short stories of): Lyonesse. Also one of the best fantasy stories I have read. Despite some flaws so much better than most from the last 15-20 years. Both in writing style and in evoking atmosphere and a sense of depth of the fantasy world, Anderson (in Broken Sword, the other one is too satirical) are in a different class from Martin or Abercrombie.

Yes, the Broken Sword is quite good! And thanks for the tip on the Vance. I've read his Dying Earth stuff but not much else.

[mc ukrneal]

Yes, the Broken Sword is quite good! And thanks for the tip on the Vance. I've read his Dying Earth stuff but not much else.

+2 on the Broken Sword.

Vance is one of the better writers, so imagine you will enjoy it (if nothing else for that). Old school, baby!