So here’s
my dilemma: I finished The Three Musketeers about a week ago and was planning
to end the year with John LeCarre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold followed
by Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby. But something just didn’t sit right. Was
I intimidated? Was I worn down? The thrill of the hunt, which was there, was
there no longer. What happened?
I felt
like a World Series power hitter who, after coming so close to victory but falling
short, decided rest and recuperation were in order. Retooling, recalibration. My reading had
been in such high gear over the past, well, year, I suppose, that perhaps I
just craved a break. To return to baseball analogy, it seemed a couple of days
at the batting cages would be the best medicine.
During my
two-day vacation at the end of October I decided to drive to my local used bookstore
and see what might leap off the shelves at me. It had to be science fiction, I decided.
Where I got my start oh so many decades ago as a sprightly bright-eyed lad. I’d
only read seven sci fi novels in the past two years.(*) A return was needed.
So last
Thursday I dropped in to my store around lunchtime and left 45 minutes later
with four SF paperbacks, all for the price of a chimichanga at a high-end taco
store. My only criteria – they must appear interesting and must be quick reads.
Here they
are:
The Other Side of Time (1965) by Keith Laumer, 172 pages.
I last
read Laumer 20 years ago when visions of being a science fiction author danced
before my eyes. This is the most “fantastical” of my quartet of books. The back
cover describes hulking, cannibalistic ape men called “Hagroon,” an educated
monkey named “Dzok,” a place called “Xonijeel,” and an alternate universe ruled
by Napoleon the Fifth. It gave me Lin Carter vibes. It was also the shortest of
my picks; looking to read it over three or four days.
The
Jupiter Plague (1965)
by Harry Harrison, 274 pages.
Never got
into Harrison, but did read his “Planet of Death” novellas. This seems like a
70s-ish bad fashion low-budget SF flick, something that Rock Hudson might have
starred in, about a space probe that crashes back to earth at an airport,
unleashing a deadly virus. It’s been long enough since the Wu Flu that I can
read books about deadly viruses and take them at face value.
In the
Ocean of Night (1972)
by Gregory Benford, 321 pages.
The most
mysterious paperback of the haul. The back cover is very generic, almost to the
point where I can’t tell if this is hard SF or fantasy or a melding of the two.
But Benford is a legitimate physicist, and I haven’t read anything by him since
If the Stars are Gods back in 2002 when I lived in Maryland with the
Mrs. as newlyweds, so that novel, barely remembered, has fond memories for me nevertheless.
The
Reality Dysfunction (1996)
by Peter F. Hamilton, 1,225 pages (!)
Okay, I
went off the deep end with this. Almost as long as The Three Musketeers was
combined with how long Nicholas Nickleby will be, in terms of page
length. But – I liked the heft of the book (it felt good in my hands) and, this
is a first – I like the font. It’s easy on the eyes. I haven’t felt this way
about a font since I was a much more discriminating science fiction reader in
my late tweens. Looks like it could be a great example of Universe-building.
Anyway,
since each novel cost me an average of $3.25, if I get 20 or 50 pages in and it’s
just not doing it for me, I can set it down and move on to the next.
Looking to
start The Other Side of Time at the end of the week.
Happy reading!!
(*) = Going
backwards, Leviathans of Jupiter by Bova, A Matter for Men by
Gerrold, The Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut,
Revelation Space by Reynolds, Starship Troopers by Heinlein, and Nexus
by Naam.
