Mood:
celebratoryNow Playing: Lucius Shephard interview on Agony Booth podcast
Topic: Book Review
Lucius Shephard is one of the few real true characters working in fiction today. Reading interviews about his life and work makes his real life adventures come off as cool as anything he writes about in his stories.I first became a fan of Shephard with the publication of his near-future stories in F&SF magazine; these were in turn anthologized in the Gardner Dozois "BEST SCIENCE FICTION OF THE YEAR.." series. Shephard's stories are haunting and familiar, like they are taking place in a mirror image of reality but only a couple years later than today. Much of what he predicts in his fiction (smart suits, combat drugs, seeing eye gun tracking) has either came to pass or is in the works for the next generation of soldiers. Much of his story arcs concern themselves with an imagined war in Central America (a part of the world that he is very familiar with), and were later novelized on their own as LIFE DURING WARTIME and THE JAGUAR HUNTER.
The book I just finished, however, is not about a future war, and only a little bit of it is even fiction. TWO TRAINS RUNNING is three bits; the first bit is a lengthy article about hobos and the FTRA (Freight Train Riders of America), an alleged "hobo mafia" that might or might not have harbored homicidal maniacs at some point. The other two bits are short stories utilizing the settings and characters out of the FTRA story.
Frankly, the best part of the book is the non-fiction bit. It's humorous, wry and pointed. I like the fact that Shephard went out on the road with hobos and "catched out" to hop freights with them.. still, he doesn't pretend to reshape them as noble savages (as they probably would themselves). Shephard appreciates the romance of the hobo lifestyle but wouldn't trade his life for theirs for any money. And that's how most of us would react, too.
The stories are .. okay.
My next Shephard project is finding and reading COLONEL RUTHERFORD'S COLT, which appears to have some promise!
Posted by mrnizz
at 12:04 PM EDT
cool
Harry Bosch is back again, in all his cool, hip and noir glory. This is the big tie-in novel for all of author Michael Connelly's serial characters-- virtually every P.O.V. character from every series is tied up in a neat package here.. Harry Bosch (all the Bosch novels), Terry McCalleb (Blood Work et. al), and Rachel Walling (the Poet) all intersect as their plot lines come together for one big orgy of noir, sex and violence.
What can I say? I think a lot of the "I'm gonna share universes and put all my characters together for a special novel" schtick is artificial, and the plot line strikes me as the most contrived Connelly book ever. There are so many POVs running simultaneously that it's hard to track.
Still, Harry Bosch is Harry Bosch, and Harry Bosch is cool, violent, principled, unyielding. The character makes up for the deficiency in the plot.
It's always a good time reading a Bosch novel...
a-ok
I like Fred Pohl's books generally speaking. JEM, GATEWAY, MAN PLUS, and THE SPACE MERCHANTS were great, fun, reads. Fred Pohl is a prototypical science fiction writer with a career spanning the Golden Age, the "New Era" and onward. His fiction usually revolves around an interesting idea (For instance, what if ancient aliens left behind an orbital with a host of exploration vessels capable of jumping into space, but nobody knows exactly where they are going?) Alas, it would seem that his output has declined in the last decade or so, though the penchant for a single cool idea is still present.
library (Audio Version, Cassette, Books on Tape) I had reasonable expectations. This is Fred Pohl, after all. THE OTHER END OF TIME is the first book in a series called Eschaton (the moment the universe collapses, when everyone who has ever lived will be reborn and live for eternity). Pretty heady concept.. but the execution in the first novel is glacial. The future is dystopic, economies on the brink of collapse. There's a wide gap between haves and have-nots in this future. A government agent is sent to spy on a space mission to a derelict satellite. He, and the rest of the mission, are kidnapped by aliens, taken through a dimensional portal, and held captive in a featureless 'no space" for a looong time. Much of the book takes place during this captivity. We learn there is a galactic war going on over "The Eschaton" (the universe collapse/rebirth thing), their captors might be good guys, bad guys or indifferent guys. They escape at the end, and that's about the sum total of the plot.
SIEGE OF ETERNITY takes up about five minutes behind the first novel. Pohl focuses most of his efforts on portraying an unrepentantly selfish world dealing with an unprecedented crisis. His world is politically unstable, with widespread terrorism, runaway inflation and rampant crime. Even most of the likable characters are more concerned with personal gain than with the larger problems of dealing with the alien threat, which doesnt seem to be taken seriously, at least inthis novel. Pohl is also very effective at presenting the Horch and Scarecrows as aliens, rather than funny looking humans.
I love the archeological stories of 
mischievious
caffeinated
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don't ask
I just finished THE STARS AND STRIPES TRIUMPHANT, by Harry Harrison. Normally I rather like Harrison's work, especially the more pulpy material like BILL THE GALATIC HERO, MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! and STAR SMASHERS OF THE GALAXY RANGERS. The Stars and Strips series is a full-fledged jump into Turtledove's territory. The jumps in history are intriguing. The Mason-Slidell incident becomes cause celebre in Great Britain, tipping them into the cause of intervention. Alas, they intervene in the wrong place and slaughter a hapless outpost of rebs. This miraculously reconciles both sides of the ACW and unites them against our real foe, Great Britain. (the first book). The reunited Americans then smash British rule in the Eire, helping the suffering Irishmen establish a republic there. (second book). In the final book, VICTORIOUS, the Americans take the war to the UK itself. The title might be considered a spoiler. 
I just found this new collection of short stories by Gene Wolfe, who brought us the Long Sun/Short Sun series. 
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I saw this one in a library display of recent books, and picked it up. The NSFA reprints have been uniformly good, and this was no exception.