Purchases

What do these four paragraphs have in common?


“He awoke and did not know where he was.”

“ ‘Everybody all set?’ Young Ross Jenkins glanced nervously at his two chums. ‘How about your camera, Art? You sure you got the lens cover off this time?’ ”

“It is written in the Eternal Scripture that one should come to whom the Tower would yield her secret. For untold billions of years hath the Tower guarded her Mystery, aye, since that the Children of Aea set forth from this Galaxy and returned to that place from whence they came in the Beginning, even to that strange region called The Fire Mist which lieth beyond the Universe of Stars.”

“Once upon a time there was a sane scientist who had an ugly daughter.”


Give up?

They are the opening paragraphs of four paperback SF books I bought today while the whole family did their Black Friday shopping out here in PA.

The first is from The Stone God Awakes, by Philip Jose Farmer, a really, really talented writer who should be more famous than he is. Meaning, outside of SF circles. About a scientist who is “accidentally petrified” and awakes a few million years later on a completely alien Earth. This’ll be the fourth book of his, I think, that I will have read. So far, each one gets better than the previous. I hope the trend continues.

Any guess on the second paragraph? That word chum should be a huge clue. You know it’s from the Golden Age of SF, probably 1950 or earlier, so it’s got to be, well, any educated guess would have to name Heinlein. And that guess would be right. Rocket Ship Galileo, though aimed at a “juvenile” audience, should be a quick, fun read, and it’s one that I don’t recall getting to when I was a juvenile. Had a great time reading his similar Red Planet, which I read twice three years ago as a writer’s exercise type thing.

The next paragraph, about Eternal Scriptures and Fire Mists, is a guilty pleasure. Something so bad that it’s gotta be good: The Tower at the Edge of Time by Lin Carter. He was a writer whose heydey was in the 50s through the 70s, specializing in those short, “exotic” fantasy paperback tales. You know, some Conan-like dude with a scantily clad babe splashed upon the cover. My dad had a couple of these books I read as a kid, and about ten years ago I finally found one in a used book store. Kinda like an Arabic Tolkien, but not as good as that might sound. Still, should be a quick, fun, guilty read.

The last comes from the book that I’m most excited to read. It’s called Atoms and Evil and is a short-story collection by Robert Bloch, the guy who wrote the book Alfred Hitchcock snatched up and filmed called Psycho. Don’t know much about it but it looks like some creepy mesh of horror and SF. Very, very interesting …

Since I’m hooked on these George R. R. Martin epics, and each is a thousand pages long (I’m 300 pages in to the second one of four written to date), I think I’ll start these paperbacks once I finish Mailer’s book. So, lotsa reviews in the near future.

We might go back in to town (a different one, that is) tomorrow. Towns are like a half-hour driving distance from each other around here. If so, well, I may be forced to scope out another book store. Never know what treasures may be found …

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all have a wonderful day and enjoy your feastings. I'm looking forward to some varied reading (what else is new) while the kidlets run and crash all around here at my parents house in the sticks of northeastern PA.

Oh, and for your enjoyment if you should be so inclined, one of the best scenes from the greatest Thanksgiving movie, Planes Trains and Automobiles. (Seriously - check out the subtle changes of emotion in John Candy's expressions throughout ...)




And if I still have your attention, the same scene, rendered by Peter and Lois Griffin:

Kindred Spirits

“The nympholepts of old were curious and unhappy beings who, while carelessly strolling amidst sylvan shades, caught a hasty glimpse of some spirit of the woods, and were doomed ever afterwards to spend their lives in fruitlessly searching after it. The race of Fanatics are somewhat akin to these restless seekers. There is a wildness and excessive extravagance in their notions and actions which separates them from the calm followers of Truth, and leads them into strange courses and curious beliefs. How far the sacred fire of enthusiasm may be separated from the fierce heat of fanaticism we need not now inquire, nor whether a spark of the latter has not shone brilliantly in many a noble soul and produced brave deeds and acts of piety and self-sacrifice. Those whose fate is here recorded were far removed from such noble characters; their fanaticism was akin to madness, and many of them were fitter for an asylum rather than a gaol, which was usually their destination.”

From Books Fatal to their Authors, by P. H. Ditchfield, c. 1894.


What an awesome concept for a book! I have this on a CD and I’ve never read it, but I’m going to bring it with me over the weekend to peruse. Might be something of interest – ghoulish interest, perhaps – with this topic. I mean, can you think of anyone who was killed by a book he wrote? Off the top of my head I can recall one, Tyndale maybe, who translated the Bible into English vernacular and was burned at the stake a short while later. I think. But Ditchfield’s book literally talks about over a hundred writers subdivided into various fields, such as religion, philosophy, politics, even science.

I can’t tell you how many strange and usually pointless books I read, mostly in part but sometimes in full, because I’ve “caught a hasty glimpse of some spirit of the woods.” I think it began when I was young, in the 1970s, becoming enraptured with science fiction and just plain science books (yes, and pseudoscience). My mother was a librarian back then, and some of my fondest memories are camping out in the 001 section of the library. Reading Tolkien at the cusp of manhood while my parents split up was enormously influential and formative. And, of course, slowly traveling through the Bible from Genesis 1 straight through to Revelation 22, beginning in a cold February and culminating on Easter, 1992, was a genuine spiritual, almost “mystical” experience for me.

But it left me dry. Cursed now, forever, to seek out what it was that I was allowed to see. I conservatively estimate close to 500 books in those near-20 years, but nothing satisfied me, though some have come close. I am even thinking the sacrilegious thought that perhaps what I am seeking cannot be found in a book. But that is too radical a thought for me to handle right now.

Sorry for being somewhat cryptic; this is a rather personal subject.

More on this man Ditchfield’s book in the days to come. Also, more from my friend, Michio Kaku, and his fascinating Physics of the Impossible.