Reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper

All reviews copyright 1984-2008 Evelyn C. Leeper.

HOAXES by Curtis D. MacDougall:

FADS & FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE by Martin Gardner:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/18/2006]

And then of course, I have to mention HOAXES by Curtis D. MacDougall (ISBN 0-486-20465-0), a 1940 volume which covers the Cardiff Giant, John Wilkes Booth's mummy, and the baby picture of Adolf Hitler (among many others). And even Martin Gardner's classic FADS & FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE (ISBN 0-486-20394-8) covers some of the same territory, though it is more about the delusions than the outright scams. (In some cases, it is hard to tell for sure--was Bridey Murphy a scam or a genuine delusion?) And this could easily segue into several of Stephen Jay Gould's collections, such as THE MISMEASURE OF MAN. But I've probably suggested enough books to keep you busy for a while already.

To order Hoaxes from amazon.com, click here.

To order Fads & Fallacies in the Name of Science from amazon.com, click here.

ROMANITAS by Sophie MacDougall:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/17/2006]

ROMANITAS by Sophia MacDougall (ISBN 0-75286-894-2) is set in the present, but in a world in which Rome never fell. (MacDougall conveniently provides an appendix with her altered timeline, and it is the foiling of the assassination of the emperor Pertinax in 193 C.E. that makes the difference.) Rome now rules most of the world (except for the Sinoan Empire, the southern half of Africa, and Australia, which is either completely ignored by everyone or part of Nionia--the map is unclear). Christianity seems to have have failed to take hold, and slavery is still the rule of the land. The only problem is that the story could take place anywhere--it is full of political intrigue, but of a sort that could be transposed to just about any empire. It is well- written, but I found myself wishing that there had been more dependence on the world that MacDougall had created. For example, though Rome controls "Terranova", this is only mentioned in passing a few times. This is a British book, so it is not surprising that it focuses on Europe rather than "Terranova" or Asia (and of course Rome is there and not here), but I suspect that in spite of the popularity of alternate histories in the United States, this may be an obstacle to getting it published over here.

To order Romanitas from amazon.com, click here.

DOM CASMURRO by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/22/2006]

DOM CASMURRO by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, translated by John Gledson (ISBN 0-19-510308-4) is known for its "eccentric and wildly unpredictable narrative style." I do not know if it had gone on my to-read list because someone had suggested it had an unreliable narrator (which I find interesting), or because I had read something which recommended several Brazilian authors for their odd styles. (I know I had the Brazilian author Fernando Pessoa on my list from the same time.) In DOM CASMURRO, the narrator is not unreliable, but is definitely quirky, prone to digressions, and self-aware, often addressing the reader directly.

One of the things that struck me was that in Chapter LXXII, the narrator proposes that "all plays should begin with their endings. Othello would kill himself and Desdemona in the first act, the three following ones would be given over to the slow and decreasing process of jealousy, and the last would be left with the initial scenes of the threat from the Turks, the explanations of Othello and Desdemona, and the good advice of the subtle Iago: 'Put money in thy purse.' In this way, the spectator, on the one hand, would find in the theater the regular puzzle that the newspapers give him, for the final acts would explain the denouement of the first, as a kind of witty conceit; and, on the other hand, he would go to bed with a happy impression of tenderness and love." All this is reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's COUNTERCLOCK WORLD, of Martin Amis's TIME'S ARROW, MEMENTO, and even of the much more mainstream BETRAYAL. [Mark also suggested THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, depending on your point of view.] Of course, some of those assume the actual backwards flow of time, while others merely adopt a reversal of time in the narration. MEMENTO and BETRAYAL embody the "puzzle" aspect, but TIME'S ARROW definitely emphasizes the idea of going from unhappiness to happiness.

[As an aside, this is the third reference to Othello I read in a single week. One expects it, of course, in a book about Shakespeare, and is not surprised to find it in a book about reading literature through the lens of biology, but finding it in an 19th century Brazilian novel is a bit unexpected.]

To order Dom Casmurro from amazon.com, click here.

EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS & THE MADNESS OF CROWDS by Charles Mackay:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/18/2006]

If you liked any of these books, you should read Charles Mackay's EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS & THE MADNESS OF CROWDS (ISBN 0-486-43223-8). This was written in 1841, so the delusions, schemes, and manias are all fairly old--though most are still with us in some form or other. We do not have tulipomania, but every generation seems to have some commodity that becomes vastly over-priced until the bubble bursts. (The 1932 introduction by Bernard M. Baruch mentions the 1929 stock market boom and bust.) Mackay writes about scams such as "the Mississippi Scheme" and "the South Sea Bubble", follies that recur in slightly modified forms such as the Crusades and the witch hunts, as well as seemingly permanent delusions such as alchemy and fortune- telling. Of the Crusades, Mackay says, "Every age has its peculiar folly; some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation. Failing in these, it has some madness, to which it is goaded by political or religious causes, or both combined. Every one of these causes influenced the Crusades, and conspired to render them the most extraordinary instance on record of the extent to which popular enthusiasm can be carried." A hundred and fifty years later, that statement probably still holds. I will admit to not re-reading this whole book to comment on it, but I was sorely tempted, and given that it is seven hundred pages long, that is a strong recommendation.

To order Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madnesss of Crowds from amazon.com, click here.

THE SUMMER ISLES by Ian R. MacLeod:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/02/2005]

Too many alternate histories spend all their time on how things got to be different without telling you how things would be different. One gets a five-hundred-page book that details all of the battlefield and political maneuvers of Lincoln, Davis, Grant, Lee, and everyone else, then ends with, "And so President Lincoln signed his name to the treaty that once and forever recognized the Confederate States of America as a separate country." That's not the end of an alternate history; that's the beginning. So it is wonderful to get an alternate history that looks at just what life would be like in a changed world, and such a book is Ian R. MacLeod's THE SUMMER ISLES (ISBN 1-933-08300-X). The premise (hinted at from the beginning, but spelled out about a third of the way through) is that Britain and her allies lost the War of 1914-18, and was taken over by a "Modernist" (fascist) party. The time frame is 1940, but there is, of course, no hint of a second World War. Our main character is, as is often the case in alternate histories, an outsider, someone who does not quite fit in with the new way of things. But MacLeod does not make him Jewish (too cliche) or Irish (too obvious) or even Communist. No, MacLeod makes the main character a homosexual and by doing so makes it more difficult for readers to see the Modernists just as people who are evil, but of course we would never do anything like that . . . . As an American, it is difficult for me to be sure, but I get the feeling that MacLeod captures very well the feel of Britain and the feel of what a defeated and demoralized Britain might have been like in the 1930s. There is one major plot contrivance that seems forced, but not impossible as described, so I can suspend my disbelief, particularly since in everything else MacLeod takes a very realistic approach. A novella-length version appeared in the October/November 1998 issue of ASIMOV'S, was nominated for a Hugo for that year, and won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History (Short Form). In spite of this, the novel-length version was turned down by every major publisher, and as a result, is available only as a limited edition from Aio.

To order The Summer Isles from amazon.com, click here.

LEARNING THE WORLD: A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE by Ken MacLeod:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/05/2006]

Although I started Hugo-nominated LEARNING THE WORLD: A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE by Ken MacLeod (ISBN 0-765-31331-6), I could not get interested in it, and gave up after about fifty pages.

To order Learning the World from amazon.com, click here.

"Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" by Ken MacLeod:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/27/2008]

"Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" by Ken MacLeod (THE NEW SPACE OPERA): I assume that the title is a reference to the "Outer Limits" episode "Wolf 359" (which was also referenced in "Star Trek" in the episodes "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" ["The Next Generation"] and "Emissary" ["Deep Space 9"]), but MacLeod's story has no other apparent connection to that episode.

-30-: THE COLLAPSE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN NEWSPAPER edited by Charles M. Madigan:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/26/2007]

-30-: THE COLLAPSE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN NEWSPAPER editeed by Charles M. Madigan (ISBN-13 978-1-56663-742-8, ISBN-10 1-56663-742-2) is a collection of articles by different people, so it is not surprising that they do not all agree on the causes of the phenomenon, the solutions (if any) to the phenomenon, or even the age of the phenomenon. Several writers say that the newspaper has been in decline for decades now. The causes seem to be some subset of 1) the growth of the suburbs, 2) the erosion of advertising revenues, 3) the spread of competing media, and 4) greed. The growth of the suburbs is a two-fold problem. First, the people in the suburbs have more interest in their local communities and less in the big city itself. And second, distributing a daily newspaper over an entire metropolitan area is considerably more difficult than distributing it within the relatively compact city limits.

The erosion of advertising revenues is, again, two-fold. The big city center stores, with their multi-page ads, have declined, and the chain stores in the suburban malls advertise in suburban papers and direct mail flyers. And the classified section is being eaten away by Web sites such as Craigslist.

Competing media have been around since radio became popular, and this is why the story of the decline of newspapers has been around almost as long. For example, the decline of the afternoon newspaper can be attributed to the rise of the evening television news, which competed in the same time slot, but with newer news, and with more pictures.

And finally, greed. As newspapers went public, bought by large conglomerates, their stockholders started demanding higher and higher profits, profits comparable to other investments but not in accord with the more intangible goals of the press. This may be in part why the smaller newspapers are still surviving--they are often still family-owned, and the family cares more about the quality of the newspaper than squeezing out another few dollars.

One local example given by Neil Hickey may serve to explain why there is disagreement. According to Hickey, "when Gannett took over the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, it cut the staff from 225 to 180 and told the theater critic there was no money for him to cover Broadway plays." Cutting the staff means less coverage, and less in-depth coverage, than before, but I think Gannett may have a point on the Broadway plays. At one time Asbury Press and its constituents could have been considered being within the circle of influence of Broadway. Nowadays, that is not true, due to part to rising transportation and ticket costs. If the Asbury Park Press wants to continue to cover culture, it would probably do better for everyone if it shifted its staff to books, which remain far more available to the Press's readers. (One doesn't expect the Allentown, PA, or Albany, NY newspapers to cover Broadway plays, does one?)

As for the solution, some feel a better integration of print format and Web sites would help. Most feel that blindly following what readers say they want (shorter stories, more pictures, horoscopes) rather than providing better, more in-depth reporting and analysis is not the solution. And all agree that the constant cutting of staff most newspapers are trying will not solve the problem. And there should be some solution; Hickey points out that the news business "is the only business protected by the Constitution of the United States, a status that brings obligations for both the shareholder and the journalist."

If you want to read more about the future of journalism (with some comments on newspapers), see my write-up on the panel "The Future of Journalism" at the 2006 Worldcon.

To order -30- from amazon.com, click here.

HOW THEY SAID IT: WISE AND WITTY LETTERS FROM THE FAMOUS AND INFAMOUS edited by Rosalie Maggio:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/31/2003]

I've been reading HOW THEY SAID IT: WISE AND WITTY LETTERS FROM THE FAMOUS AND INFAMOUS, collected and edited by Rosalie Maggio. Two samples:

Edna St. Vincent Millay to Arthur Davison Ficke: "Please don't think me negligent or rude. I am both, in effect, of course, but please don't think me either...."

Agnes de Mille to Anna George de Mille: "Tomorrow at dawn, or literally very early, we motor north. The address will be

	BRYNHFRYD
	PONTFADOG
	WREXHAM
	DENBIGHSHIRE

To order How They Said It from amazon.com, click here.

INTRODUCING CAMUS by David Zane Mairowitz and Alain Korkos:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/01/2006]

Coincidentally, the same week I read THE RABBI'S CAT by Joann Sfar (set in Algeria), I also read INTRODUCING CAMUS by David Zane Mairowitz and Alain Korkos (ISBN 1-840-46064-4). Coincidentally, because Camus was from Ageria and set many of his works there. (He also played goalie at soccer. This is a fact which won me a "Dublin Literary Pub Crawl" t-shirt when I was the only one in the group who knew which position he played. This was because it was about the only position I knew the name for.) This is one of the good books in this series, and of necessity covers the political situation in Algeria as well as Camus's life and writing.

To order Introducing Camus from amazon.com, click here.

STRANGER THAN FICTION by Aubrey Dillon Malone:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/30/2005]

STRANGER THAN FICTION by Aubrey Dillon Malone (ISBN 0-8092-9904-6) is a delightful little book of literary lists, such as "10 unintentional double-entendres from the classics" and "5 authors who went missing or got lost". And unlike most books of this sort, this one has an index! So if you know there was something interesting about a particular author, you can actually look up that author. (Of course, if it's Ernest Hemingway or W. Somerset Maugham, you still have a lot of pages to check.) Two examples (from another well-represented author): Brendan Behan was asked to come up with an advertising slogan for Guinness. He suggested, "It makes you drunk." And when he was offered thirty pounds for a play if they could change the title, he said, "For thirty quid you can change it to "The Brothers F***in' Karamazov."

To order Stranger Than Fiction from amazon.com, click here.

DARK SINS, DARK DREAMS edited by Barry N. Malzberg:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/23/2006]

"This is a genre book, a category book if you will; it will go into bookstores and libraries, it will go out of print, but ten or twenty years from now someone will have been reached by this book just as I was reached by similar genre or category hardcover books which were mine to behold a quarter of a century ago at the Flatlands Public Library." [Barry N. Malzberg, Afterword to DARK SINS, DARK DREAMS, October 1976, no ISBN] Read by me June 2006 in a copy checked out from the Red Bank Public Library. As with many books I get through inter-library loan, I am grateful this was not "de-accessioned" even though its complete check-out history seems to be three instances: one in 1987, one in 1996, and now mine. This book is a collection of science fiction crime stories, and was edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg. Nowadays there are many collections that could be described as "science fiction crime stories", but almost all of them consist of stories written for those particular anthologies and the overall quality is below this collection, which consists of the best of the genre over a period of many years.

To order Dark Sins, Dark Dreams from amazon.com, click here.

DOWN HERE IN THE DREAM QUARTER by Barry N. Malzberg:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/10/2006]

DOWN HERE IN THE DREAM QUARTER by Barry N. Malzberg (ISBN 0-385-12268-3) is a 1976 collection of Malzberg's work from 1972 to 1976--and it contains two dozen stories and essays. A couple of points are worth noting about it. First, Malzberg in his comments says that the story "Transfer" was held at the offices of "Fantastic" three years before actually being published, and then, Malzberg says, "Barring one published letter in the fan columns of those magazines I have never received comment upon it." However, since this collection was published, "Transfer" has been reprinted at least four times. Some stories just take longer to percolate, I guess.

The other point is that of "Seeking Assistance" (published in the April 1976 issue of F&SF), Malzberg says, "It is meant to be my farewell to the practice of science fiction." Although he said there would be later stories published, they were written before "Seeking Assistance", and says that that story "is in point of chronology the last I will ever write."

To order Down There in the Dream Quarter from amazon.com, click here.

THE ENGINES OF NIGHT: SCIENCE FICTION IN THE EIGHTIES by Barry N. Malzberg:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/03/2008]

In one of the essays in THE ENGINES OF NIGHT: SCIENCE FICTION IN THE EIGHTIES (ISBN-13 978-0-385-17541-8, ISBN-10 0-385-17541-8), Barry N. Malzberg says, "Truthful as this material is, if there is any audience for this book (in truth, there is no other) it is one comprised of aspirant writers...." This master wordsmith makes two mistakes in one sentence, one grammatical and one substantive. The grammatical is in the use of "comprises" (it should be "it is one comprising aspirant writers"), but more important, Malzberg fails to reckon with people who are not aspirant writers and still want to read this book. I don't always agree with Malzberg (he has far too pessimistic world view for me), but I do find his writing stimulating.

To order The Engines of the Night from amazon.com, click here.

THE GAMESMAN by Barry N. Malzberg:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/01/2005]

Just as Barry Malzberg's REVELATIONS presaged Jerry Springer, his novel THE GAMESMAN (ISBN 0-671-80174-0) was way ahead of the curve in contests like "Survivor" whereby people hope to succeed through a long chance at a game rather than by hard work. Of course, in the world Malzberg describes hard work won't do it either. One of the predictable things about Malzberg is his unremitting pessimism. You'll either love it or hate it.

To order The Gamesman from amazon.com, click here.

IN THE ENCLOSURE by Barry N. Malzberg:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/11/2005]

As part of my long-term project to catch up on Barry N. Malzberg's writing, I bought several of his novels from the 1970s at the Worldcon last year, and just read IN THE ENCLOSURE by Barry N. Malzberg (so old that it does not have an ISBN). Quir, the first-person narrator, is an alien who has come to Earth as part of a team of 248, all of whom have instructions to tell the Earthmen everything they wanted to know. And more than that he can't remember. But (not too surprisingly) the Earthmen are suspicious, put them all in the "enclosure", and grill them twice a day about all their scientific and technological knowledge. Even though Quir tells them everything, they tell him they know he is withholding information, pressure him, and even torture him. A lot of the structure of the enclosure reminds me of Guantanamo (though the aliens being held there did not come in starships with a vast store of technical knowledge). For example, Quir is told that when they have told the Earthmen everything they know, he and his friends will be released. Yet the reader (and the narrator) suspect that this is not true.

There is also a touch of Lake Woebegon here. The aliens have a strict hierarchy, and Quir says, "I was . . . one hundred and fifty-eighth. This does not mean that there were one hundred and fifty-seven aboard more worthy or intelligent than I, but on the other hand there were ninety who were definitely less so." (page 14) Later he explains, "I was barely below the midpoint of the hierarchy; the midpoint was one hundred and twenty-four and I fell only thirty-four places below that, barely a statistical variation." (page 35) Actually, of course, he is within only a few slots of being in the bottom third. But he labors under the common delusion--held by probably 80% of people--that he is in the top half. It's not just status--it's income, it's intelligence, it's morality, it's anything positive.

To order In the Enclosure from amazon.com, click here.

THE MAN WHO LOVED THE MIDNIGHT LADY by Barry N. Malzberg:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/10/2006]

In DOWN HERE IN THE DREAM QUARTER by Barry N. Malzberg (ISBN 0-385-12268-3), a 1976 collection of Malzberg's work, he says in the afterword to an April 1976 piece, "It is meant to be my farewell to the practice of science fiction." Which is why THE MAN WHO LOVED THE MIDNIGHT LADY by Barry N. Malzberg (ISBN 0-385-15020-2) does not exist. It does not contain thirty stories and essays written between 1976 and 1980, and is obviously just a figment of my imagination. Well, okay, luckily for all of us, Malzberg changed his mind about writing science fiction.

To order The Man Who Loved the Midnight Lady from amazon.com, click here.

THE MANY WORLDS OF BARRY MALZBERG by Barry N. Malzberg:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/29/2005]

Barry N. Malzberg's THE MANY WORLDS OF BARRY MALZBERG (ISBN 0-445-00298-?) is a 1975 collection of eleven short stories by one of my favorite authors. In his introduction at that time, Malzberg wrote, "I have resolved to write no more or at least very few short-stories...." Luckily, this resolution was abandoned, because Malzberg has written many very fine short stories since then. Why do I like Malzberg's writing? Because he writes with passion. His stories are not written as exercises in elaborate plotting, but as character portraits and as a means of conveying emotion. This is probably why he has written mostly short fiction--even his novels are much shorter than the current norm. (I believe he has never written a work longer than two hundred pages.) An example of his writing: "Carrying gods around like baggage means after a certain point they become as familiar as underwear and nearly as negligible in the imagined scheme of things." This volume may be hard to find; there is another, later collection titled THE BEST OF BARRY N. MALZBERG (ISBN 0-671-80256-9) which may be easier to find.

To order The Best of Barry N. Malzberg from amazon.com, click here.

REVELATIONS by Barry N. Malzberg:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/10/2004]

Years before there was "Kung Fu" (with David Carradine), there was "Mad" magazine's humorous suggestion of "Frontier Buddhist". And years before there was Jerry Springer, Barry Malzberg suggested a similar show in his novel REVELATIONS (ISBN 0-380-00905-6). REVELATIONS is also one of Malzberg's novels that takes a cynical look at America's program, with an astronaut who seems to claim (at times) that the whole program was a hoax. Whether it all holds together is not clear, but Malzberg's observations about television seem remarkably prescient.

To order Revelations from amazon.com, click here.

THE SODOM AND GOMORRAH BUSINESS by Barry Malzberg:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/19/2005]

Barry Malzberg's THE SODOM AND GOMORRAH BUSINESS (ISBN 0-671-77789-0) is perhaps most notable for a single prescient sentence. Malzberg describes the Watts riots after Robert Kennedy's assassination, and then writes, "Then Chicago in the eighties when the Twin Towers toppled, and the Prudential went." (I realize that sounds as though he thinks the Twin Towers were in Chicago, but I'll note that the line is from the point of view of a narrator who has been at best spottily informed about history. Alas, when one thinks about it, a lot of today's students would do equally badly in sorting out events of fifty or sixty years ago.)

To order The Sodom and Gomorrah Business from amazon.com, click here.

PROBLEMS SOLVED by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/07/2003]

Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini collaborated on several mystery and science fiction stories, which are now collected in PROBLEMS SOLVED. (It's impossible to tell from the book if this includes all their short collaborations or just a subset.) I know Malzberg mostly from his science fiction rather than his mysteries, and Pronzini only as an editor, so it's hard to compare these stories with their other writings. I found them reminiscent of John Collier or Jeffrey Archer, and they're all very short (half a dozen pages or so). I'm a Malzberg completist, but for those who aren't the book is a bit pricey. Alas, as a trade paperback, it's unlikely to show up in your library either.

To order Problems Solved from amazon.com, click here.

GOLDBERG STREET: SHORT PLAYS AND MONOLOGUES by David Mamet:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/17/2004]

David Mamet's GOLDBERG STREET: SHORT PLAYS AND MONOLOGUES (ISBN 0-802-15104-3 is successful only if you are familiar with Mamet's work on stage and screen. Trying to understand these without hearing them in your head with Mamet's peculiar rhythm would be almost impossible. Even knowing how to "hear" them doesn't always explain what Mamet intended with these pieces. They are the sort of thing one might find in a Mamet film as a way to show a character's state of mind, but standing alone they seem less meaningful. Still, if while you read these, you hear William Macy or Joe Mantegna delivering the lines, the sheer beauty of the rhythm of the words makes it worthwhile. (Synchronistically with the What, many of these plays have Jewish themes or characters.)

To order Goldberg Street from amazon.com, click here.

INTO THE LOOKING-GLASS WORLD by Alberto Manguel:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/20/2002]

I also read Alberto Manguel's collection of essays, INTO THE LOOKING-GLASS WORLD. (He is the editor of the *really* excellent anthology of magical realism, BLACK WATER.) On one of the section title pages, he quotes Chapter V of Lewis Carroll's THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS:

"There's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all."

"Suppose he never commits the crime?" said Alice.

"That would be all the better, wouldn't it?" the Queen said.

Is this where Philip K. Dick got his idea for "Minority Report"?

I also started Avram Davidson's collection THE OTHER NINETEENTH CENTURY, about which I will probably say more later. [-ecl]

To order Into the Looking-Glass World from amazon.com, click here.

1491: NEW REVELATIONS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS by Chares C. Mann:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/03/2006]

1491: NEW REVELATIONS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS by Charles C. Mann (ISBN 1-400-03205-9) sounded promising, but is written in such a dry style, and structured so poorly, that I could not finish it. (By poorly structured, I mean that Mann does not follow any of the rules about having a first and last sentence that help summarize whatever comes between.) In addition, Mann has decided to follow new spellings for names in indigenous languages. So, for example, he uses "Inka" rather than "Inca", "Atawallpa" rather than "Atahualpa" and "Qosqo" rather than "Cuzco". This makes everything difficult to follow, but even worse, he does not cross-reference these in the index, so if you look up "Cuzco", there is no entry for it *or* pointer to "Qosqo". (I have no idea why someone decided that "Inca" was incorrect and should be "Inka" instead; it is not as though they are pronounced differently.)

To order 1491 from amazon.com, click here.

THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE FICTION edited by George Mann:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/18/2008]

I got THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE FICTION edited by George Mann (ISBN-13 978-1-84416-448-6, ISBN-10 1-84416-449-9) in order to read a single alternate history story in it (Peter F. Hamilton's "If at First..."). But then I read the Paul Di Filippo story ("Personal Jesus"), and then the Stephen Baxter ("Final Contact"), and then decided to read the rest of the anthology. Noteworthy were the Di Filippo and James Lovegrove's "The Bowdler Strain". The Baxter had an interesting idea, but there was a bit too much "British-stiff-upper-lipism" for me. The other stories varied in quality, but in any case it is good to see original un-themed anthologies being published. Tor's "Starlight" series was excellent while it lasted, but ceased after five volumes. Perhaps a mass-market format will last longer.

To order The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction from amazon.com, click here.

THE MAN WHO BECAME SHERLOCK HOLMES by Terry Manners:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/17/2004]

Terry Manners's THE MAN WHO BECAME SHERLOCK HOLMES (ISBN 0-7535- 0536-3) is about Jeremy Brett and his life and career, and is probably more thorough about his earlier career than his stint as Holmes. In part this is because his illness (manic depression) became most pronounced during his times as Holmes, and so Manners concentrated more on the illness than on Brett's portrayal of Holmes. It all seemed a bit sensationalist at times, but I suppose if one is attempting to explain a lot that people may have misinterpreted, that is necessary. (For example, towards the end, Brett was too heavy to be an accurate Holmes, but this weight gain was a side effect of medication and not something he could control.)

To order The Man Who Became Sherlock Holmes from amazon.com, click here.

MURDER ON MAIN STREET by Cynthia Manson:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/15/2005]

MURDER ON MAIN STREET edited by Cynthia Manson (ISBN 0-56619-927-1), you will be pleased to hear, doesn't have any overt anti-Semitism, though it's unlikely that someone editing a book in 1993 for Barnes & Noble would include any of that sort of material. (Of course, the subtitle is "Small Town Crime from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine & Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine", and one is somewhat less likely to have Jewish characters to comment on in a small town in Nebraska than in London.) As a summer beach read, this is pretty good, because the stories are best read spread out over a week or two of vacation rather than one after another.

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