Review: The Blue World by Jack Vance

THE BLUE WORLD

By Jack Vance

THE BLUE WORLD is an engrossing, exciting and intelligent science-fantasy novel, set on an ocean planet with no landmass. Twelve generations ago, we are told, the Firsts came to the planet as a refuge, and set up home on a series of floating islands, made from reef, coral and other natural substances. Over the years the people have multiplied, and developed their society. Great hoodwink towers on each Float are used to communicate across stretches of sea, and to warn of the proximity of terrible sea-beasts called the Kragen. Over the years the People of the Floats have created religious Intercessors among their number, who have effectively deified one such large beast, King Kragen, and now live in a static society where King Kragen is kept fed and happy, in return for not destroying their floats, and keeping other lesser sea-monsters at bay. The novel tells the story of one man, Sklar Hast, who has tired of feeding King Kragen and is doubting the talents of the Intercessors; he makes an attempt on King Kragen’s life and this results in huge waves of discontent running through the entire society. What follows is a compelling, well-told story of rebellion within a closed society; ostensibly an adventure story about giant sea creatures, the book deals heavily with religion and the veracity thereof, and many of the long meetings of the townspeople are told with zeal and with flawless logic.

This is a great little book, with a colourful and exciting world, well-established [if perhaps two-dimensional] characters, great monsters and action, and an intelligent theme throughout. The character names, at first alien, are truly creative to behold; Sklar Hast, Semm Voidervegg, Barquan Blasdel, Emacho Feroxibus, and their slightly archaic style of speech and logical thinking is contagious. The book conjures up some great visual images, and Vance’s writing shines out without being pretentious; the action rolls along, and my only slight criticism is the ending is handled a bit quickly, and leaves a couple of ends dangling. I could have read a whole series set in this world; indeed, I wish I had read this when I was much younger, for it is the sort of story that lights up your imagination.

Jack Vance died recently [May 2013], but has left behind a huge shelf-load of imaginative books. If they are all as good as this one, I will be reviewing more soon.

8/10

Jack Vance: A Flash Non-Fiction [With Lots Of Pics]

 

 

JACK VANCE: A FLASH NON-FICTION

Jack Vance, a lifelong writer of science-fiction and fantasy, died on May 26 2013. He was little-known outside the genre, but highly popular, prolific and respected.

He has won a mantelpiece of awards, the Hugo three times, the Nebula, the Jupiter Award, World Fantasy Award [and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award], an Edgar for his mystery novel THE MAN IN THE CAGE, and is a SFWA Grand Master. Four years before his death, TheNew York Times Magazine described Vance as "one of American literature’s most distinctive and undervalued voices."

Vance was born in 1916, and spent his childhood in California, after which he had a string of badly-paid jobs. He worked as an electrician in the naval shipyards at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, and left only a month before the Japanese attacked it. His eyes were weak from childhood and this prevented a further career in the military, until he memorised an eye-chart to get in the Merchant Marines.A lifelong love of water and boats showed through in his future career.

He was a man of many talents; a minor jazz musician, a house-builder, a fine boatman, and an accomplished traveller, as well as his prolific writing. He married in 1946, and remained married until his wuife’s death in 2008,.

Vance wrote many science fiction short stories in the late 1940s and through the 1950s, which were published in magazines. He has said he got inspiration from a heavy childhood reading, and was taken with authors including Jeffery Farnol, a writer of adventure books, whose style of 'high' language he mentions, P.G. Wodehouse, L. Frank Baum, James Branch Cabell, Edgar Rice Burroughs,   Robert W. Chambers, Jules Verne and Lord Dunsany.  He was yet another great genre writer to be heavily influenced and encouraged by the magazines, Wierd Tales and Amazing Stories. These cheap ‘pulp’ magazines have left an outstanding and long-lived legacy; Robert E Howard, Robert Bloch, H.P.Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, Clark Ashton Smith, etc

One of his first writing jobs was as a screenwriter for the TV series Captain Video. His first published story appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1945, and since then has produced over sixty books. THE DYING EARTH was an early series of short fantasy stories, set in a far distant future in which the sun is slowly going out, and magic and technology coexist. Theis became a long-running and popular sequence and has given its name to that particular brand of far-future science-fantasy, the Dying Earth genre. This seqwuence continued with titles like THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD, CUGELS SAGA, RHIALTO THE MARVELLOUS, and THE LIGHTNING MAGICIAN. I think you can get a sense of the alien wonder simply be reading the title’s of many of Vance’s works; MAZIRIAN THE MAGICIAN, THE BLUE WORLD, THE DEMON PRINCES, THE HOUSES OF ISZM, THE DIRDIR, THE PNUME, the unfortunately titled SERVANTS OF THE WANKH, CITY OF THE CHASCH, THE DRAGON MASTERS, NIGHT LAMP, SLAVES OF THE KLAU, THE DARK OCEAN, THE MAGNIFICENT SHOWBOATS, LYONESSE, THE DEADLY ISLES and many many more. Colourful covers contain colourful characters and although usually set in a science-fiction background and setting, but featuring societies that have often evolved back to a mediaval-style fantasy type. His influence can be seen in a vast amount of writers but most especially Brian Aldiss, Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe,and Phillip Jose Farmer. The sci-fi authors Poul Anderson and Frank Herbert were close personal friends of Vance.

His poor eyesight continued to fail throughout his life, and in the 1980s he was declared blind, but still managed to write using specially-written computer software.

He died on May 26 2013. I had read a handful of his short stories in the past, and had a couple of yet-unread novels on my shelves. But, in that strange way of sychronicity, I read of his recent death in a magazine and within days I discovered his 1966 novel THE BLUE WORLD in a charity-shop in my home-town. More coincidence abounds, as a quick glance at the book tells me of a similar setting to my recently published [on Smashwords] story BLUE. Well, I’ve now read THE BLUE WORLD [review to follow] and I’m pleased we went in different directions with the setting. However, I had – and still have – plans for follow-up stories to BLUE, and I will work into them my own little tribute to Jack Vance.

For any fantasy or science-fiction readers who have not yet encountered his clear but magical words, I give a whole-hearted recommendation.

RIP Jack Vance 1916 - 2013

The Lair Of The White Worm

The Lair Of The White Worm

Ken Russell’s film of this novel popped up on Sky, so I recorded it, as I hadn’t seen it in years, but I thought I would read the short novel first, and it had been sitting on my shelf unread for a long time. I’ve only read one of Stoker’s novels, the classic DRACULA, which I enjoyed, apart from healthy grown men fainting in horror all the time like a bunch of wussies. I’ve read a number of Stoker’s short stories too, varying from very good [“The Judge’s House”, “The Burial Of The Rats”] to poor [about half the stories in “Dracula’s Guest”].

I read THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM, impressively, on three different mediums; on my kindle, on my android phone [it is a free download from Amazon or Project Guttenberg] and I even read some of it from my book, with pages in made from that paper stuff. Unfortunately, whichever medium you might choose, it won’t improve this confusing, boring, unbelievable, chaotic and slightly strange story.

Adam Salton has come from Australia to the Welsh border-country where he befriends his uncle, whose near neighbours are an odd lot; Sir Caswall is hated by the local farmers but fawned over by would-be-wives, hungry for his money, including another neighbour Lady Arabella March who is involved in some strange collusion with a primeval monster, the White Worm of the title. This beast nestles on rock outcrops and props itself up on its tail, surveying its territory with piercing luminous eyes. Every so often it eats someone. Two other characters, Lilla and Mima Watford, are local girls, whom Ada#m Salton takes a shine to, and despite being fairly important characters, are given no dialogue at all.  

The novel is confusing because the plot seems to have little structure; important events are afterwards almost forgotten by the characters, and any decisions to be made must be mulled over and discussed for a chapter or two. It’s disjointed; the book has too many wrists and ankles, and not enough brain. Events seem to be related, told to someone else, rather than actually happen, and there’s little mood or atmosphere.  There are psychic battles between people, which seem to consist of just looking at each other all afternoon. Mongooses [mongeese?] are torn apart with bare hands; a scary black African servant appears menacingly then falls in a hole and that’s him done; there’s a mildly interesting bit about vast flocks of birds and a giant scarecrow kite; this is quite interesting, but what is the point: if there ever was one, I’ve forgotten it. The characters do and say ridiculous things, that often are faintly stupid and in complete contrast to the natural evolution of the plot. It’s akin to a character being in a burning house and suddenly saying, “Oooh, I fancy a banana.” And Lady Arabella March, great name, interesting character, but was she the worms-keeper or did she actually transform herself into a vast were-worm; Stoker doesn’t really tell us; you sort of get the feeling he thinks he has, but actually, he’s just minced his words and forgotten.

 In fact, that seems to be a theme running through the book; Stoker seems to be in a muddle. Sometimes it seems that he’s forgotten to include a chapter, like he’s written it in his head but not in reality, or that he’s had a stray idea in his head – largely unconnected with his story – and decided to write it down and stick it in somewhere. It’s a messy, poorly-written, terribly executed, muddled story. It should have been great, it had some great ideas to be great, but it hasn’t worked.  WORM was Stoker’s final novel, and it was written in his final years when his health was failing, and, possibly, he was addicted to laudanum. Those circumstances would certainly help to explain this difficult-to-read book. In a later edition, the publishers actually removed several chapters, which would only seem to confuse the plot even further. Lovecraft, in his “Supernatural Horror In Literature” says that Stoker has “poor technique”, and, of WORM, he writes; “Stoker...utterly ruins a magnificent idea by a development almost infantile”. Stephen King, in DANSE MACABRE, notes that it is was not as successful as DRACULA, while Glen St John Barclay, in his strange book ANATOMY OF HORROR says, among other insulting things, “...it could not possibly have been less competently written.” I wouldn’t quite go that far [it could have been written less competently by a blind dyslexic paraplegiac bat-monkey creature] but I agree strongly with Lovecraft here; It is a poor swan-song for Bram Stoker, and a novel which, were it not by the celebrated author of DRACULA, arguably the most famous and successful horror novel in literature, WORM  would almost certainly never have been published, and had it been, it would be deservedly forgotten today. Read DRACULA instead, or his short stories “The Judges House” or “The Squaw”.

Doctor Who And The Creative Synchronicity

I'm annoyed, and instead of ranting at my wife I'm gonna get this out now, in blog form. I have just read the brief episode details of the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who, and was aghast at what I read. It seems that this upcoming episode (to be aired in five days or so) has certain striking similarities to the "original" ghost story, "Uncontainable", that I have been working on for the last few weeks. Bugger!

I hate this creative synchronicity; something you have been working on for a while, thinking it's a fairly new and original idea, and suddenly something huge comes along with the same idea, so that, in the future, anyone reading your story will simply think you have just copied the idea. Bugger again. In science-fiction terms, I don't think there's anything bigger than Doctor Who, certainly nothing that will reach so large an audience. And it's very annoying when this sort of thing happens, so that your small, original, and very modest story, even though it was written independently and/or earlier, becomes nothing more than a re-hash of "that Doctor Who episode", or whatever. It is extremely frustrating! 

Certainly I will watch the episode, although not when it is aired. I will take care to complete my story first [it is nearly done], and then watch it, to see how similar things were. No doubt, I'm just having a rant here, and the two stories will be very different [hopefully]. But Bugger again anyway!

Curiously, this has sort of happenned before, although not as simoultaeneously as this time. The last Christmas episode of Doctor Who [I forget the title, but the one with Richard E Grant in], had an idea about sentient snow. I wrote a story about this, "Snow Wonder", ten years ago; and even though this story was published on Smashwords before the episode aired, I'm sure that any Doctor Who fans who might read my story would simply think it was a rip-off of their idea. Don't imagine for a second that I'm saying that Stephen Moffat and crew are spying on my writing, in some clever science-fictional way, and ripping off my ideas. Not at all; I'm simply having a grrr at this writers coincidence. One shiny bit of fruit in the clouds though is this; if I'm having the same sort of creative ideas as the Doctor Who people, then that can't be a bad thing, really.

I have heard tales of it happening before; authors working in secret on "great-idea" novels, and just as they are writing the last page, the same idea comes out in a film by James Cameron or a Michael Chrichton novel or something like that. If I remember rightly, I think John Brosnan [as Harry Adam Knight] wrote CARNOSAUR, about genetically-engineered dinosaurs, at the same time, or before, Chrichton's JURASSIC PARK came out. I also remember that Roger Corman bought the rights to CARNOSAUR and made it into a confusing film, just so, I think, he could say that although his film came out after JURASSIC PARK, he could say it was based on a book that came out before Chrichton's novel, and thus that he sort of had the first film-rights to the idea of "genetically-engineered dinosaurs". But that's very off topic. So for now, Grrrr, and I'd better go and finish my story.

 

P.S. Jenna-Louise Coleman's character seems to be a much better companion to the Doctor; I was never really keen on Amy Pond, and I'm sick of her now [in fact, am just watching her final episodes now, about six months or so after they were shown.] But bring back Jon Pertwee, that's what I say!

James Herbert Is Dead!

JAMES HERBERT IS DEAD!

On 20 March 2013 the shock news was announced by his office that the bestselling horror novelist James Herbert had died, aged only 69. He was a true giant of the horror world, and was one of the leading horror authors to change the face of horror literature in the 70’s.  Before Herbert’s first novel THE RATS was published in 1974, the most popular author in the horror genre was Dennis Wheatley, with his leisurely and stuffy black-magic stories. James Herbert changed the landscape of horror instantly with THE RATS, with graphic descriptions of violence and horror; men, women, old people and babies being killed and eaten alive by hungry rats in the heart of London. It caused a sensation and in the days before VHS players or Nintendo’s, the novel sold 100,000 copies in just two weeks, and went on to sell millions of copies. He instantly became a bestselling writer, and he followed it up with hit after hit; THE FOG [“For God’s sake don’t leave it on Aunt Edna’s chair!” said one reviewer] was about a poison gas cloud that caused violence and horror wherever it drifted, THE SURVIVOR, FLUKE, THE DARK, SHRINE and more. He wrote two great sequels to THE RATS; LAIR had the rats grouping en masse in Epping Forest, while DOMAIN saw the rats mutated hideously after a nuclear apocalypse.

I discovered James Herbert in 1994, when I was 16, and probably got the books from that windy market stall I mentioned earlier in my blog. I remember reading THE RATS and LAIR during English lessons when I should have been reading Dickens or Skakespeare and preparing for my GCSE’s. I got wrong off my English teacher Mr.Keegans when some lads in my class pointed out to him that I was reading LAIR in class. He took it off me and said something like “read it after your exams, Michael” when he gave me it back after the lesson. Little did he know I had already read most of THE RATS in his class earlier that week. Anyway, that May of 1994, so my notes tell me, I read THE RATS trilogy [as well as RED DWARF for the fifth time] when I think I should have been revising for, or doing, my GCSE exams. I love THE RATS books; not only are they fast-paced icky reads but they opened the door for me marked “Animal Attack Books”, and in the years that followed I’ve read all sorts of titles, some good [THE SCURRYING, THE SWARM, THE BLOODSNARL, DEVOUR, various CRABS books by Guy.N.Smith,  BATS OUT OF HELL, etc], some not so good [THE PIKE, PIRAHNA, THE CATS, NIGHT OF THE BUDGIES etc], but THE RATS was the original and best and kick-started my love for Creature Feature stories. Thanks for that Mr.Herbert, and I can happily say that my in-progress creature-feature novel DALE OF TEARS owes more than a little to Herberts style and substance.

Like Stephen King, Herbert had his first book published in 1974, and in his native England, in the 1980’s, Herbert regularly outsold King. Film and Television weren’t so quick to adapt Herbert’s novels; the recent three hour series THE SECRET OF CRICKLEY HALL wasn’t bad, but films FLUKE and HAUNTED stumbled at the box office, and THE SURVIVOR, the first of his books to be filmed, turned out to be a confusing mess of a movie. I love the anecdote that when James Herbert was watching THE SURVIVOR, based on his novel, he fell asleep because he couldn’t understand the story.

Over the years I’ve read ten Herbert novels, my favourites of which are the three RATS books, THE FOG, and PORTENT [about sudden and dramatic – and supernatural – climate change], while I wasn’t overly keen on HAUNTED or THE MAGIC COTTAGE [with MOON, ONCE and THE SURVIVOR somewhere in between]. His latest [and now last] book ASH  garnered quite a lot of poor reviews on Amazon, many readers apologising in their reviews for giving a Herbert book such low ratings. I don’t know why, but for a couple of weeks as soon as ASH was published it was released as a Kindle book for just 20p; perhaps the publishers had an idea this might be his last book, and wanted to nudge it to the top of the charts. His output has slowed over the years, and, although I haven’t yet read it, ASH would seem to be poor Herbert; perhaps his health, and talent, has been flagging for some time. But never mind that; the majority of authors flag towards the end of their career. Herbert’s legacy is that he pumped much-needed momentum and fresh blood into the horror genre, and during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s he was very much the face of, and the king of horror writing in England, and has left behind some cracking books; THE RATS and THE FOG in particular will be remembered with affection.

As my own small tribute to Herbert, I’ve a) written this article, and b) I’ll read another of his novels [he wrote 23], one I’ve not yet read, a Herbert classic.  

R.I.P. James Herbert.

ADDENDUM: It is now five days after Herberts death, and I am reading, and enjoying, his novel THE DARK, that has been sitting on my shelf for many years. A quick check of the Bestselling Horror charts, at Amazons’ Kindle Store [which is used for all the e-book bestseller charts you might see], and I see that all but one [THE JONAH] of Herberts books have shot into the Top 100, with 8 of them dominating the Top 10. Clearly, dying does your career no harm at all.

Sexy Crocodiles

CAUTION: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS IMAGES OF AN EX-EMMERDALE ACTRESS WITH NO CLOTHES ON. AND SOME CROCODILE SEX. SORT OF.

Another quick post. I have just hilariously noted from looking at my blog statistics that someone out there has googled the search term;

CROCODILE SEX SCENE

And, joy of wonderful joys, the clever magic interweb has brought them to my blog page. Now I hadn’t really thought of it before, but it’s true, if my blog lacks anything at all its almost certainly crocodile sex.

Now, this got me wondering. Was the googler searching for

A – scenes of human sex in a giant crocodile film.

B – scenes of crocodile sex in a giant crocodile film

C – Scenes of crocodile sex in just anything, really

D – Scenes of human/crocodile sex

Well, if it was C there are plenty of HOT XXX ADULT CROCODILES ONLY nature documentaries out there.

If it was crocodiles and humans having sex together in some strange way, that this person was looking for, then I’m sure there’s a fetish site out there somewhere. Forgive me if I don’t search for it myself, but I’ve just had my dinner. In any case, the idea is a fabulous one, with a heavily-pregnant crocodile giving birth to a croc with a human head, or possibly the other way around; they could make a film out of it. It could be called CROC-BOY or possibly just CROCK! And could premier on the Horror Channel. I could write it; I’m good at writing horse-shit, after all.

Anyway, if this googler person is looking for option A up there, then I have wrestled my brains to think of what he could be looking for. Now, understand that I enjoy Giant Crocodile films for their artistic value, the prowess in the make-up and prosthetic departments and the subtleties and subtexts of the story. And sometimes for the crocodiles [although I have seen one or two crocodile films that didn’t have any crocodiles in them!]. Never for the sex scenes. Well, not much anyway.

Which brings me to what lingers in my brain like a cold smelly minestrone soup; in the film BLOOD SURF [which I have on good old-fashioned video] I remember there being a memorable sex scene. It has a bloke and a young Eastern woman [not a crocodile] going for gold in a small rock-pool. The scenery is lovely, and the water nice and clear, and these two are clearly having a fun time, until I believe, the giant crocodile asks for a threesome and spoils it all. I remember this scene quite vividly, particularly ‘cos we watched it one day when my mum had popped round for her tea. Obviously, I’d forgotten about the sex bit, and thought it was a “Mam-Friendly” film to put on while we all ate our fish fingers [or whatever we ate]. The film is also known as KROCODYLUS or something like that, and actually, as giant crocodile films go, isn’t bad.

Anyway, if that google searcher revisits then hopefully that might help to answer his question.  I don’t remember any other particular sex scenes in crocodile films without googling it myself [which I’ll do later! {I won’t later “google myself”; that’s not what I meant at all.]}. I do however remember Roxanne Pallett, a young actress who used to be in Emmerdale in the UK for quite a while, who went to Hollywood to make it serious as an actress. She whipped off all her clothes for the camera and went for a swim in giant crocodile film LAKE PLACID 3, which, I suppose if you’re writing a PH.D on Sex In Giant Crocodile Films, you’ll probably need to take a look at.

Right. I,m going to go and find some pictures on the internet, which, magically, are already above. Int' technology brilliant!

Thanks For My Review!

Just a quick post here to shamelessly promote my writing, and mention my latest review, for my story Horse-Flesh, recently posted, for free, on Smashwords. I always enjoy reviews; one single review is better than two dozen downloads, as it tells me that at least someone has read it. This particular reviewer of my story appears to have gone to a certain length; checking out their Smashwords profile, it would seem that this person has created his account solely to kindly review my story. It is effort like that which makes me particularly encouraged as a writer. It is a very short review, and I will re-produce it here, in full. The reviewer awarded my story with one star and commented:

“This is more of a horse-shit story than the horse flesh story.”

Thanks for that one. Thanks for taking the time to join Smashwords, create an account, and leave your comments; I’ll treasure that. Right, I’m off to write some more horse-shit.

HORSE-FLESH --- Download it Today  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/287702

Windy Market Stalls Full Of Books

Richard Laymon was a Californian horror writer, who died early, at the age of only 54, on February 14th 2001. He was primarily a novelist and always in the horror genre; his books featured supernatural themes and vampires, mutant beasts etc, but most often Laymon's books were about human pyschopaths; oddballs, freaks, weirdos, generally people you don't want to sit next to on the bus. I began reading Laymon when I was 15. I found his book DARK MOUNTAIN on a windy market stall -  [I loved that market stall and went there eagerly every Saturday morning in the early/mid 90's. The bloke who had it was called Bob, and he had a big van, like a removal van, and the back of it was just filled with stuff, mainly books. He would spread out as much as he could on his stall or in boxes around it, but also kept the back of his van open sometimes; when I'd become a regular to his stall he would let me get in the back of the van and rummage around among the books; I remember, at its fullest, it was like exploring a mountain of books, the ground forever slipping, and books falling out of the back.

After I'd had a rummage and found an armful of books, I'd get out the van and have to spend about ten minutes picking up the books that had fallen out. Many-a-time I remember happily walking home with lots of books; I remember occasionally having two carrier bags full. They were mostly old paperbacks, of all different genres, but I was most interested then, as I am now, in the horror, fantasy and science-fiction titles, and his paperbacks were all around 20 p or 6 or 7 for a pound, very affordable for a not-very-rich teenage lad like me. Here, among hundreds of books, was where I discovered all the names of the genres; E.E. Doc Smith, Graham Masterton, Asimov, Heinlein, Moorcock, Guy N. Smith, Lin Carter, and carrier-bag loads of wonderful oscure 60's onwards titles; I found and devoured many anthologies, The Pan Books Of Horror Stories, Fontana Ghost Books, Lin Carters fantasy collectiions, and half a dozen books with weird covers, edited by a guy with a weird name called August Derleth, and featuring odd olf-fashioned stories by writers I'd never heard of; H.P.Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E Howard etc. -- Saturday afternoons were often spent looking over and through my books, and putting them in ever-changing order of when I would read them. Sometimes I even DID read some, on those Saturday afternoons, but mostly that came later. Then I was just happy to spread them out on the floor and examine the covers and the contents, my imagination squashed out all over my bedroom floor in bright lurid illustrations.

While I'm writing about Bob and his market stall, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to him, twenty years later, for stealing one of his books; even though they were really cheap, and he seemed to let me have them even cheaper ["Oh," he'd say after glancing at a pile of books I had selected, maybe 15 or so paperbacks, "just give us two pound for them ones."], I still stole one book from him, because, at about 13 or 14, I was too embarrased to buy it; it was CONFESSIONS OF AN ASTRONAUT, or somesuch title like that, and had a very risque cover, and hints of all sorts of strange sex happening inside the book. I don't remember exactly, but I must have hidden it in my pocket or up my jumper or something, paid for my other books, and then, away, I had done it, I was a thief. I'm pretty sure, now, that if he'd somehow caught me - if the offending "adult" book had fallen out of my jumper at an inopportune moment - he wouldn't have carted me off down the cop-shop, but just looked dissapointed at me [which would have been worse] and probably told me just to keep it anyway, "you little 'scallion.".

Anyway, I'm sorry I nicked that book Bob but young teens didn't have the internet then, and the sex-on-a-friday night Channel 4 programmes hadn't started yet. If it's any consolation to Bob, or to my three blog- readers, then I DID read that book, CONFESSIONS OF AN ASTRONAUT, and it was crap, a huge dissapointment, like buying a blow-up doll with a puncture, and - hang on, I'll consult my notes - yes, here we are - it was by a guy called Jonathan May, I read it in 1992 [no exact date unfortunately], I gave it 4 3/4 out of 10 [in my complex rating system], and gave it the one-word review "different", but I remember differently, and believe me, it was crap; in fact I think it was one of those books you read when you're young and think "I can write better than this crap." Also any sex scenes or whatever were pathetic, and there were much more explicit scenes of sex in the pulpy horror novels I had been reading, or would soon read. I think just 'cos there was a bum or boobs or something on the cover it was going to be life-changing. In fact, I'm going to try and find the cover now on tinterweb, hold on - there it is off to the side, looking embarrassingly not very embarrasing. I also found another, look, how much fun is this: I wonder how much Jonathan May made from writing all these awful books.

Confessions Of A Something-Or-Other

 Anyway, I don't know exactly what happened to the book but I don't have it now; I probably sold it to a second-hand book store like dozens of other books, some of which I wish I'd kept.

Incidentally [and I think we'll get back to Richard Laymon another time; I've gone off on a tangent] aren't my book-notes really cool: they go back to mid 1992, and list every book [yes, really] that I've read since then. It's often really interesting and amusing to read some of my comments on books I'd read; here are some choice picks [from 1992];

        TITLE          AUTHOR       SCORE [out of 10] ---- Original Comnment

     A DRAGON IN CLASS 4 - ---- - 4 3/4 ----- Childish     (It was a childrens book!)
     SPACE 1   ---- Varied Authors ---- 6  ------   Anthology   (Helpful comment, that one).
     JULIUS CEASER  ---- Shakespeare--- 4 ---- Hard To Understand  (Nothing changed there, then.)
     DIARY OF A TEENAGE HEALTH FREAK -- ... - 6.5 -- Ideal For Teenagers
     MOONFLEET -- J.Meade Faulkner --- 1.5 ----- Crap!    (Followed by, a few entries later,...)
     MOONFLEET --- J. Meade Faulkner ---5.25 ----- Actually Not Bad  (I had to read it properly for school.)


After that my comments began to get more mundane and a bit more sensible.


Anyway, all those books from the market stall; I loved them, and even though I got rid of quite a lot, I still have lots of them today on my shelf. Though its difficult to remember exactly which ones I got off that stall [my notes sometimes help a bit, or sometimes I have written a date of purchase in the book cover] I recognise some of them, and know that there are quite a few, perhaps a dozen or two, that I never got round to reading at all. Poor books. I really should get around to reading them, seeing as I've had some of them for over 20 years now. Proper book hoarder me...

Ok, well, this post was originally going to be about Richard Laymon, his works, his writing techniques, and his problems with publishing houses, as I've recently read his intriguing autobiography/writers notebook A WRITERS TALE. But that'll have to wait for another time now, cos I've used up my spare time writing this, instead of writing the ghost story I'm supposed to be writing. Oh well.

Best And Worst Books I Read In 2012

[Sorry this is all text; I will add some pretty pictures later.]

Ok, well I’ve sort of done my best and worst films of 2012, so now it’s time for the books. But before that, I’m writing a few days before the Oscars winners are announced and looking down the nominations I see that once again I have not seen any films on the list. I even somehow managed to miss the mini-Simpsons short which is nominated in Best Short Animated Film; but seeing as I love The Simpsons [the first ten years or so, at least], I hope this wins in its category. Then it might be on the telly again!

 

Right, to the issue of the day. My best novels of 2012; I’ve sorted them into rank, with 1) being the best. Again, please note, these novels weren’t all published in 2012, they were just published in a limited edition in my brain in 2012. Here we go. My favourite novel that I read in 2012 was;

 

1)      THE DEAD ZONE [1979] by Stephen King. Unusually for a Stephen King title, I didn’t know a great deal about this before I read it; neither had I seen the film adaptation. There’s a link here > See all my reviews where there’s a long and spoiler-ridden review of mine for the book. THE DEAD ZONE is a great book, and the psychic supernatural stuff in it isn’t necessarily [NOTE TO SELF: learn how to spell] the best thing about it. Superb writing and excellent characterisation here. It is certainly among the top notch of King’s novels I have read, and I even read a fair chunk of it after a drinking session, when I usually forget how to read, such was its excellence. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys good writing.

 

2)      MOONFLEET [1898] by J.Meade Faulkner. I was first given this book to read at school in English, and, like most books at school, I didn’t like it. Boring, old-fashioned, can’t be bothered to read it. But something must have stuck, and over the years I found myself occasionally thinking about it, and when I saw a falling-to-bits copy in a charity shop I snapped it up and left it on my shelf for five years. Last year I finally read it; what an exciting, dramatic, compelling boys-own adventure story! The plot concerns a young boy and how he gets mixed up with smugglers and pirates treasure in the English coastal village of Moonfleet. It is an absorbing novel, and reading it made me feel like an excited boy again, instead of an old grumpy bugger. Very highly recommended, to boys of all ages.

 

3)      A WRITER’S LIFE [2011] by Eric Brown. This is a short [107 pages] novel masquerading as science-fiction, but in reality has tendrils of Lovecraftian horror throughout. It tells the story of Daniel Ellis, a writer and prolific reader who comes across a couple of books of Vaughan Williams, an author whom Ellis had not previously heard of. Ellis finds much to admire in the novels, and seeks out more by the author, slowly unravelling a mystery connecting three writers from different periods, and a bit of research and a series of coincidence soon guide Ellis to Williams’ isolated cottage, where local myths of strange events and hauntings abound. Will Daniel Ellis discover the truth, or will he find too much? This is very good, very readable and compelling and had me trying to guess the mystery, and I thoroughly enjoyed the journey of it. It’s a perfect book to get pulled into, and you could read it in one sitting.

 

4)      OF MUSCLE AND MAGIC [Published 2012] by Jonathan Strickland – Yes, this one’s by my friend Jonny, but wait a minute, it’s not a shameless plug [well, ok, it is a bit]; this short novel has made it into my top five on its own merit. The book was called THE TERROR ON THE ISLAND OF PAGZUIRE when I read it, and it takes the form of a classic sword’n’sorcery tale in the style of Fritz Leiber or Robert E Howard. It reminded me very much of Michael Moorcock’s 70’s novels, Corum, and Hawkmoon and all that; exciting, action-driven easy to read fantasy. OF MUSCLE AND MAGIC is about the same size as those Moorcock novels too, at around 40,000 words. The story concerns a demon who is devouring hearts, and the warrior Calin who attempts to destroy it. It is action-packed and is full of bright characters, sarcastic demons, imaginative monsters and real-ale drinking. It is only available as an e-book on Amazon or Smashwords for a dollar or two, but Jonny has very kindly put half of it [self-contained] on Smashwords for free. Why not download this for free, and see what you think. Truthfully, it could do with a little polish to make it gleam, but the occasional spelling mistakes and typos do not get in the way of the fantastic story. I loved it!

 

 

5)      THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO BED FOR A YEAR [2012] by Sue Townsend – I have loved Sue Townsend’s books since I was about twelve and first read THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE AGED 13 ¾ . THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO BED FOR A YEAR is witty and clever social commentary; a fictional look at popularity and a celebrity-obsessed society. Mum Eva, after sending her twins off to University, after years of looking after them, feels tired and goes to bed, and decides to stay there and see what happens, relying on her family and complete strangers to see to her needs. She soon becomes a local celebrity, and it seems everyone wants a piece of her, when all she wants to do is have a good lie down. Funny, relavant, insightful, realistic, and humane. It’s not the best Sue Townsend [the ADRIAN MOLE series or THE QUEEN AND I are her best work; fantastic stuff], but it’s well worth a read.

 

And there we have my five novels of 2012; now for the bad books I read. I don’t really believe that any book is really terrible and a waste of time, so these aren’t worst books, as such, more disappointing ones. Often even a really bad book can be instructive to a writer. It can tell you how NOT to write, and it’s often a huge boost to read something [especially by a big-name author] and think, “That’s crap. I can write better that.”. It’s inspiring; if they managed to get that crap published, then there’s hope for you yet. It’s also good karma to check reviews of bad books on the interweb, and when you see that others too thought that particular book not very good, you can get the satisfaction of being correctly able to distinguish between good writing and bad.

The most high-profile “bad book” I read last year was ODD THOMAS by Dean Koontz. Again, there’s a lengthy review on my Amazon page, but briefly; it’s clichéd, slow, meandering, and full of just plain bad writing. Not  bad writing in the sense of unskilled, but bad in the sense that Koontz is trying too hard to impress. His sentences, his dialogue in particular is ridiculous and pretentious; it is some of the most grammatically perferct yet viscous and difficult prose I’ve ever encountered, like reading treacle. Read this;

"The air flash-dried my lips and brought to me that summer scent of desert towns that is a melange of superheated silica, cactus pollen, mesquite resin, the salts of long-dead seas, and exhaust fumes suspended in the motionless dry air like faint nebulae of mineral particles spiralling through rock crystal."

Woah, right. What a sentence! What about dialogue; read this, say it aloud;

"I've listened with my heart for so long I've periodically had to swab earwax out of my aortal valve."

Who talks like that in normal conversation? Do you talk like that? I bet you don’t. It’s just too clever, or it thinks it’s too clever. This is not just one pretentious character who speaks like this, but the whole bloody lot of them in the book. For me, it killed any realism; I had to struggle to finish the book. Incidentally, the story concerns a bloke who can see dead people, and is barely interesting as it is, without the awful prose to wade through. But what do I know; ODD THOMAS has become one of KOONTZ’ most popular characters and he has written half a dozen sequel novels, with a feature film due out sometime shortly. On Amazon or Goodreads, it gets potty reviews calling it the best book ever; there are some nay-sayers like myself but in general they are shouted down by the masses.

It’s not that I dislike Koontz. I have read and really enjoyed MIDNIGHT, THE TAKING, LIGHTNING, THE VOICE OF THE NIGHT, HIDEAWAY, MR MURDER and more. But it seems in his more recent novels he has changed his voice to this awful, dragging, difficult style. I started LIFE EXPECTANCY a few years ago and couldn’t finish it; I have half a dozen or so of his fairly recent books sitting on my bookshelf, as yet unread. I don’t think I’ll be trying them anytime soon. Yet ODD THOMAS would have sold shedloads, and continues to do so, especially with a film coming out. Well, fairplay to Koontz, but ODD THOMAS was most definitely that, ODD!

 Well, that turned into a bit of a rant, but never mind; prime blog material.

 

I read a critical book on fantasy novels last year; MODERN FANTASY:THE 100 BEST NOVELS [1988] by David Pringle. The 100 novels that Pringle selected were an interesting list, very eclectic and varied, and unusual choices. The problem was, that the short piece [1-3 pages] on each book told you the entire plot, often including the ending, and discussed them in a needlessly highbrow and subtextual way. There were books there that I may have read at some point, but now Pringle has told me the plot, I may not bother. I really like books about books, but this one was really disappointing.

 

I read a number of trashy creature-feature novels every year; nature on the rampage, killer bugs, fish, scorpions, budgies etc, that kind of thing. They are often not very good, but I’m fond of them. Anyway, this year was a bad year for creature-features; THE CATS by Nick Sharman [1977] has an MOD-backed experiment into a new bacterial weapon go awry. The bacteria is injected into test-subjects, a laboratory full of cats, which, when the temperature rises, begin to turn into mad, crazy, but highly intelligent carnivorous pussies. Before you can say “Whiskas”, those couple of dozen animals have somehow turned into thousands of the furry blighters and go on the rampage. Cue vignettes of caricatured characters who get killed by the cats, then larger scenes of full-on action where vast oceans of cats gain ground against helicopter bombings and flame throwers (!), climaxed by a quick but drawn-out ending that equally makes little sense. Sharman appears to know or care little for cats as they are entirely lacking in any character or feline traits. The vast hordes of creatures he writes about are entirely interchangeable; he could have written of dogs, foxes, frogs, or rabbits with very minimal changes. I got the impression that Sharman didn’t actually like or respect cats much, and chose his “creatures” simply because they sounded so similar to RATS, which indeed they could very easily have been. Sharman’s human characters also are stereotypes, with questionable motives, and even more questionable dialogue, and I found it difficult to differentiate between them. In fact, I just generally found this book difficult; it is full of action, yet boring, and at a slim 160 pages, seemed to take ages to read.

 

I first read THE PIKE [[1982] by Clifford Twemlow] when I was still at school, and enjoyed it. It’s a novel [of only about 45,000 words] that is best read in your teens, and perhaps kept there. Where something like THE RATS retains its power and depth, THE PIKE, unfortunately, has lost its bite. Story; something is attacking and killing swans, fishermen and tourists on Lake Windermere. Surprisingly, bearing in mind the title of the book, this turns out to be a giant pike. A journalist, a trio of adventurers and a Scottish stereotype join forces to hunt it down and destroy it, while local traders try to hamper their efforts with a few fisticuffs. This is JAWS with flaws; this is basic, unimaginative story-telling. Exposition-heavy attempts at character are made, but in the end the players are one dimensional, and interchangeable; only the giant Scot, Ulysees, is at all memorable, and the climactic finale turns out to be both a bit of a cheat, and a damp squib. One event, on the final pages shows a bit of life, but it’s all too little, too late.

THE PIKE isn’t really a very good book, yet I am quite fond of it. It reminds me of hunting through piles of paperbacks on windy market stalls, and finding a book such as this, would give me a happy delight. I rather liked this as a teenager, and this time round I read it in less than a day and on holiday in the Lakes, hoping for extra atmosphere, which I didn’t receive. Oh well, not all killer fish books can be brilliant, can they?

The cover of THE PIKE proudly promises “Soon To Be A Major Film”; alas, it was not to be, despite celebrity author Twemlow and star Joan Collins trying to rustle up the funds for it.

Blimey, I’ve waffled on about books for 2200 words. I could have been farting about with my novel in that time. Congratulations if you’re still reading. Curiously, have any readers [curiously, have I got any readers?] got any particularly bad books to unreccomend. And yes, I know I can’t spell recommend. Although I may just have. Oh-kay, Next Time Gadget...