Capsules

[mild n minor spoilers...]

Here’re two old reviews I found on my laptop – well, more like mini-reviews or capsules. Eight or ten years ago I was reading so much that I realized unless I did a little paragraph summation of the novel’s merits, or lack thereof, after a year I’d simply forget I even read the book. Oh no! The Puritan in me buckles at the retroactive waste of time, even though I understand that the act of reading, whether lifeshattering prose or hack work, is pleasurable as long as it transports you to another place and time. Oh, and the degree of pleasure obviously hinges on such things as the author’s competence and creativity and how that jives with your receptors for such competence and creativity.

One of my favorite SF works is a short monster novel entitled The Spinner by Doris Piserchia. I read it during a tremendously fertile period in the development of my imagination – right around when I was reading Tolkien and my parents were divorcing. I briefly blogged on the book here. But six or seven years ago I found another one of Ms. Piserchia’s novels at a used book store and since her works are out of print, I paid the $3 (I would have paid four or five times as much gladly) and immediately read it.

Here’s what I wrote in 2003:

A Billion Days of Earth by Doris Piserchia A-/B+ . Pessimistic. Characters that get beaten and broken in a horrible world. Yet very entertaining, even if I did not fully understand what was meant in the ending (the Gods departing and Sheen’s words to them). One of the best alien menaces I’ve read: Sheen. Intelligent, witty, dialogue-driven. Sheen as a Metaphor for Sin in our world???

Not too much detail, I admit. To supplement, the story takes place on Earth long after man has become extinct. Rats have evolved to gain intelligence and somewhat hominid form. A blobulous creature which calls itself “Sheen” suddenly appears and begins absorbing all life forms into itself, one by one, over the span of some years. Two rat brothers have deep philosophical discussions over why the one brother should not willingly allow itself to become absorbed (that entire sentence sounds weird, eh?). Scenes with the Sheen were interesting; rat angst was not.

Sometimes I pick up trashy SF novel on the hope that it may just end up a decent, guilty read. Often, I admit, I fall for those misleading back cover blurbs and pseudo-summaries. The second old capsule review, read and written right after Piserchia’s work, falls into this rare category.

Sargasso by Edwin Corley D+ . Very interesting premise in the first 20 pages – Apollo 19 lands in the Bermuda Triangle, and no astronauts are found on board. Rest of the story sucked. 70’s cliches, read just like a Charlton Heston-Irwin Allen disaster flick c. 1975. Boring, uneventful, eventual let-down at the end: astronauts were never aboard Apollo 19 – they stayed behind on Russian platform to dismantle its Evil Nukes (!). Only suspenseful moment: 5 or so pages where submersible loses power and starts to sink into the abyss.

Ouch! Scathing! I guess I didn’t like the book.

However, according to the nerdalogue spreadsheet I’m looking at, it seems I read a string of excellent SF after those two novels (Lest Darkness Fall, The Demolished Man, Babel-17). As well as an excellent book entitled The Death of the Thresher by Normal Polmar (about the first of America’s only two nuclear sub losses). Wouldn’t mind rereading any or all of those works.

Oh to have more time to read and spend less time worrying about the base necessities of life! Forward!