Aguirre, Forrest, ed: Leviathan 4: Cities 3/2007 If all you think the fantasy genre has to offer is endless scenes of elves and orcs battering one another’s brains in, then you really need to get out more often, or at the very least, pick up this book, which offers a convincing rebuttal. Contained herein is modern urban literary fantasy, a double handful of stories by the likes of K.J. Bishop, Jay Lake, and Ben Peek. With a touch of what they tried to sell you in college as "magical realism," a dash of Surrealism, a dollop of pulp, and a sprinkling of noir, and not an orc or elf in the bunch, this collection deftly demonstrates just how wide a literary playground fantasy can be.
Armstrong, Jon: Grey 1/2007 Brilliant high-fashion dystopia, and I did the jacket copy. Trust me, you want to read this book.
Asimov, Isaac: Cosmic Critiques 4/2007 Imagine, a Writer’s Digest book that doesn’t suck! No wonder it’s out of print. Asimov and Greenberg present ten short science fiction tales, each of which is followed by Ansen Dibell’s explicit examples of what makes each succeed as fiction. While not every story included is a classic, all are memorable, excellent illustrations of Dibell’s points. Stand-outs are “Transstar” by Raymond E. Banks, “Billenium,” by J.G. Ballard, “The Last Question,” by Isaac Asimov, “Dial F for Frankenstein,” by Arthur C. Clarke, and “Carcinoma Angels,” by Norman Spinrad.
Barron, Laird: The Imago Sequence and Other Stories 6/2007 I’m half convinced that Laird Barron is the love child of Jack London and H.P. Lovecraft, and his writing evokes both authors, fusing hardboiled naturalism with unflinching cosmic horror. Amazing stuff, well worth picking up for the title tale, an update of Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model,” but all nine stories are top-notch horror fiction in the vein of Lucius Shepard, Thomas Ligotti, or Peter Straub.
Bishop, K.J.: The Etched City 1/2007 I picked up The Etched City because it was name-dropped in the jacket copy of Jay Lake’s Trial of Flowers, along with texts by China Miéville and Jeff VanderMeer. Like Lake, Miéville, and VanderMeer, Bishop's novel is Fantasy, but a branch of Fantasy that owes more to the Surrealist, Magical Realist, and Noir literary movements than to the swords and sorcery of epic fantasists like J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. Although it does occasionally get bogged down, particularly near the novel's middle (as first novels are wont to do), The Etched City features captivating storytelling, memorable characters, and outstanding set pieces (including a battle on a statue-covered bridge that manages to affect a tone both epic and personal). Unlike Lake, Miéville, and VanderMeer, however, whose City Imperishable, New Crobuzon, and Ambergris actively become characters within their novels’ narratives (in the mode of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium), Bishop’s lush and teeming Ashamoil, while evocative and picturesque, never quite rises to the occasion, remaining a setting that is well-imagined, yet never quite real. Bishop’s leading characters, the gunslinging soldier for hire Gwynn and his female counterpart, the outlaw surgeon Raule, are compelling, charismatic, and believable. While the duo technically share protagonist duties, peacock-coat clad Gwynn quickly moves to the narrative's center, becoming a peacock himself, taking the more active, adventurous role as Raule spends most of her time on the sidelines, observing, philosophizing, speculating, and tending to the wounded. Although Gwynn cuts a flamboyant figure with an affectation of glam-rock panache, for a novel that name-drops Aubrey Beardsley and J.K. Huysmans in its jacket copy, The Etched City depicts a surprisingly heteronormative world, with a touch of tacked-on exotic orientalism included to make the city seem decadent. Frankly, Lake and Miéville both do decadence better. Still, I would call The Etched City an easy recommendation, an enjoyable and thoughtful bit of fantastic escapism with plenty to offer.
Brooks, Max: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War 1/2007 Max Brooks’s World War Z is another easy recommendation, though I knew, based on Mike the Gorehound’s fervent recommendation and the novel’s high concept (Studs Terkel’s The Good War meets Dawn of the Dead) that this was going to be a book I couldn’t help but like. While World War Z is categorized by its publisher as humor (actually “War—Humor”), this genrefication is a bit of a misnomer, and likely based more on Brooks’s genetics than anything else. Sure, the book’s got plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, but these are not only few and far between, but are far outnumbered by the novel’s anxious, tearjerking, angering, and, ultimately, crowd-pleasing scenes. This is a novel with something for everyone. Fans of current events will find plenty of allegorical connections to today’s headlines and will have a blast identifying the thinly-veiled avatars of newsmakers and politicians. Fans of action will find a relentless pace. Fans of military novels will be fascinated by the day-after-tomorrow tactics and hardware on display. Fans of voice and character will be astounded by the way in which Brooks channels hundreds of distinct personalities. And fans of zombies… well, let’s just say there are lots and lots of zombies.
Calder, Richard: Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things 2/2007 I’m only about two-thirds through this one, since other books keep jumping up and yelling “read me!” But so far I’m far enough down the rabbit hole to say that Calder’s trilogy is a Trevor Brown painting come to life, told through lush, decadent prose reminiscent of Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition or Burroughs’s The Ticket That Exploded by way of the Marquis De Sade. Not a book for the faint of heart, but if the prospect of adolescent schoolgirls transformed into vicious vampiric gynoids holds an appeal for you, then look no further than Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things.
Delany, Samuel: Babel-17/Empire Star 6/2007 Through sublime craftsmanship and a thorough understanding of human relationships, these two oddly-interrelated novels (Empire Star is a work of fiction within the universe of Babel-17, and was written by a former lover of the novel’s protagonist) are wonderful examples of just how “literary” science fiction can be.
Delany, Samuel: Trouble on Triton 4/2007 Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy has sex change operation and then attempts to get girl back, all with a devastating interplanetary war erupting in the background. A classic of the genre.
Delany, Samuel: Einstein Intersection 4/2007 A decade before Trouble on Triton, Delany offered a primitive post-human future in which man has been replaced by a three-gendered mutant race and the Beatles have become mythology. While some of the novel’s big ideas have since become Saturday-morning sci-fi commonplaces, its take on gender and society remains revolutionary, and should be considered alongside Joanna Russ’s The Female Man and Michael Moorcock’s The Final Programme as an example of how science fiction trends happen decades ahead of mainstream fiction.
DeNiro, Alan: Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead 7/2007 Great imagery, but too often reads like a grad student's perilously purple prose, erring on the side of experimentation and self-consciousness when a concise plot might have better served the story. Still, DeNiro’s narratives have a haunting staying power marking him as an author worth watching. Oh, and Small Beer Press makes great looking books.
Dick, Philip K: Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s 7/2007 Philip K. Dick was an author ahead of his time. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich imagines a rapidly-heating earth ruled by ruthless businessmen intent on profiting on dubiously-legal psychedelic drugs that allow those drafted expatriates living in lackluster and dangerous planetary settlements to experience a drug-induced vicarious earthlike existence through Barbie-like “Perky Pat” dolls and props. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis of the Ridley Scott film Blade Runner), on the other hand fills its earth with Radioactive dust and a collapsed ecosystem, in which living animals become the ultimate in hopeful status symbols while synthetic humans are hunted down and killed for daring to act human. Both of these novels (along with the other two collected here, The Man in the High Castle and Ubik) are classic Dick, visionary, spiritual, and strange, and this Library of America presentation is nothing short of impressive. A great introduction to a master of fantastic literature, and a volume well worth purchasing to replace your tattered Vintage paperbacks.
Disch, Thomas M: Camp Concentration 7/2007 Camp Concentration’s clever premise is quickly awash in the literary mannerisms and peculiarities of the late-sixties New Wave, and its privileged prisoners seem a fixture of that era better explored in William Peter Blatty's Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane (the basis of Blatty’s film The Ninth Configuration) and Peter Watkins' Punishment Park. Even so, Camp Concentration exhibits brilliant, poetic language, and it’s no wonder Samuel R. Delany has so often lionized this novel’s praises.
Dungy, Camille: What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison 3/2007 Most contemporary poetry leaves me cold, so I expected more of the same from this collection, particularly since it was school-related reading. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised by this assortment of more-or-less sonnets. Camille Dungy’s poetry is personal, emotional, lucid, and active, and is both easy to read and lingering. Good stuff.
