"Redshirts" by John Scalzi (2012)

"'Yes, and I have training dealing with deep, existential questions,' Dahl said, 'The way I'm dealing with it right now is this: I don't care whether I really exist or don't, whether I'm real or fictional.  What I want right now is to be the person who decides my own fate.  That's something I can work on.  It's what I'm working on now.'"

John Scalzi is a science fiction writer living in California.  He's known for both his novels and his blog Whatever, which delves into a variety of topics.

This is the first of his novels that I've read, though I've heard his name mentioned for many years now.  He seems to have a very loyal following, and after reading Redshirts I can understand why.

In Redshirts several "extras" living out a television show come to grips with the fact that the situations in which they find themselves aren't as authentic as they once assumed, and as they delve deeper into their predicament they become aware of a much larger reality beyond the confines of their starship.

Highlighting this narrative is the author's sense of humor.  Imagine Philip K. Dick, for example, getting "recursive and meta" (to use Scalze's words), but instead of retreating into his usual hopelessness and paranoia PKD stops to crack a joke.  This ability to poke fun at his characters while telling challenging stories is what sets Scalze apart from many other writers.

My only complaint is the three "extra chapters" tacked on to the end of this book.  In my opinion these "codas" were completely unnecessary, and their more serious tone brought down what was otherwise a fun little jaunt through a universe not too far removed from Star Trek.  These extra chapters seem more like unsuccessful attempts at the original novel, and while two of the three would work well as short stories, they're really too different in tone to bear inclusion alongside Redshirts, the main narrative.

I look forward to reading more of Scalzi's books in the future.  I haven't seen any in the bookstores I frequent, but perhaps I'll stumble across something by him in the summer.

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"The Planetary Omnibus" by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday (1999-2009)

What a ride.  I just finished this hefty volume, and I have to say it was great fun.

The task of describing its plot, however, is daunting.

You remember Crisis on Infinite Earths?  The multiverse?  OK, Planetary in some ways goes back to that.  Instead of infinite Earths, however, there are a limited number, which makes a kind of sense given that some alternate universes would collapse in upon themselves before the present time, while some other Earths would never come to be.  We're limited by the laws of physics, and not every Earth will exist over the same span of time.

In Planetary the nature of the multiverse is also more interesting.  In Planetary a Doc Savage clone and his cohorts create a quantum computer back in the 40s, and this quantum computer, intended to calculate the best possible end to WWII, renders several other alternate realities extinct in the course of its calculations.

That, by the way, is just one of many fun ideas in this collection.  There's also a weird, alternate "Superman," a time travel loop that brings a dead man back to life, and a bizarre conspiracy involving a group of supervillains who seek to hoard forbidden knowledge for themselves.

Planetary and its "archaeologists of the impossible" could have easily been a science fiction novel, but in Ellis' hands it becomes something more, it becomes a comic book that's aware of itself, and which is aware of its readers.  It's also a really BIG, ambitious tale, and I admire the scope of its ambition.

At the back end of this sizeable omnibus are two bonus features: a comic featuring both The Authority and Planetary, and another comic featuring Planetary and Batman.  The first of these comics is the weakest part of the omnibus, while the second, bouncing as it does between different versions of the Dark Knight, is a lot of fun.

I highly recommend this story of multiverses, not-so-superheroes and monsters.  Its episodic nature can feel somewhat disjointed at times -- especially in the first half -- but once it gathers enough momentum it's something to behold.

Which makes me think... there's an Authority movie coming, isn't there?  Could Planetary be part of that film?

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"Saturn Run" by John Sandford and Ctein (2015)

"Worst of all, they hadn't arrived at their destination, not really.  They'd still need to make another pass through Saturn's atmosphere before they'd be able to match orbits with the alien operation."

John Sandford is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of many, many books.  He started out writing for the Miami Herald and then transitioned into the writing of novels.  He's best known for his Prey series of detective novels, two of which were adapted into TV movies.  Ctein, his cowriter on Saturn Run, is a more colorful figure.  His main business seems to be photography, but he "has degrees in English and Physics" and he's "researched" various scientific topics.  Like many such people he lives in San Francisco.

In Saturn Run humanity learns of an alien outpost hidden in Saturn's rings.  After learning of this outpost the United States and China launch semi-covert missions to this outpost, each striving to arrive there first.  The Americans, piloting a slower but surer course, and the Chinese, piloting a faster but more uncertain course, both regard the acquisition of alien technology as essential to their nations' continued survival.  With the political tensions between the two countries forming a potent backdrop, both sides race to Saturn in the face of numerous obstacles.

Fans of hard science fiction and space exploration will be all over this book.  It was very well researched -- to the point where the spaceships' respective journeys were modeled on a computer -- and there's even a postscript at the end describing the science behind the story.  This scientific basis doesn't always make for the easiest reading, but it does add a great deal of realism to the narrative.  This narrative, by the way, is full of interesting and convincing characters, and their reasons for doing what they do always seem to make sense within the context of the story.  I assume most of the science part was the work of Ctein, while the heavy lifting with regard to the actual writing was done by John Sandford.

If I have complaints about this book it's that a) it veers a little too closely to Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two, and b) some of the Chinese crew members act a little too "American" in the first half of the book.  The "Mandarin" they sometimes use is also a bit silly, with some of their phrases  being obvious translations of English phrases that wouldn't be used in Chinese, (i.e. "What the hell?").

But these complaints are small ones.  Overall Saturn Run is an excellent book, and perhaps the best co-written book I've ever read.  The two authors of this novel complement each other well, and I hope they collaborate again in the future.

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"Me" by Elton John (2019)

I can't remember when I started listening to Elton John.  It couldn't have been that long ago.  I believe I arrived at his discography from Billy Joel.  I probably wanted something piano-driven, and decided to give Elton John a listen.

My favorite Elton John album is definitely Madman Across the Water.  That album is great.  My second favorite is Captain Fantastic.  Goodbye Yellow Brick Road would be my #3.  I still don't like his discography as much as Billy Joel's, but that doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed his music a great deal.  He lost me somewhere in the 80s, but then again, looking at collections of his "greatest hits," he lost a lot of people in the 80s.

With the above said I was bound to like the earlier chapters of his autobiography a lot more than the later chapters.  My musical tastes tend to veer toward the late 60s/early 70s anyway, and reading about how a record label passed him over for The Groundhogs (!) brought a smile to my face.  I love The Groundhogs, but Liberty Records made a serious mistake that day.

Elton John, on an early encounter:

"There was a funny little guy we knew who - in keeping with the flower-power mood of the times - had changed his name to Hans Christian Anderson.  The aura of fairy tale otherworldliness conjured by this pseudonym was slightly punctured when he opened his mouth and a thick Lancashire accent came out.  Eventually he changed his first name back to Jon and became the lead singer of Yes."

On hearing something for the first time:

"One morning, at the offices in South Audley Street, he said he wanted to play me something by one of his new clients that was going to be a huge hit all over the world.  We listened to the song and I shook my head, incredulous.

"'You're not actually going to release that, are you?'

"He frowned  'What's wrong with it?'

"'Well, for one thing, it's about three hours long.  For another, it's the campest thing I've ever heard in my life.  And the title's absolutely ridiculous as well.'

"John was completely unfazed.  'I'm telling you now,' he said, lifting the test pressing of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' off the turntable, 'that is going to be one of the biggest records of all time.'"

Regarding a night out:

"...Crisco Disco once refused to let me in.  I was with Divine, too, the legendary drag queen.  I know, I know: Elton John and Divine getting turned away from a gay club.  But he was wearing a kaftan, I had on a brightly coloured jacket and they said we were overdressed.  'Whaddya think this is?  Fuckin' Halloween?'"

On dinner with Michael Jackson:

"It was a sunny day out and we had to sit inside with the curtains drawn because of Michael's vitiligo.  The poor guy looked awful, really frail and ill.  He was wearing make-up that looked like it had been applied by a maniac: it was all over the place.  His nose was covered with a sticking plaster which kept what was left of it attached to his face.  He sat there, not really saying anything, just giving off waves of discomfort the way some people give off an air of self-confidence."

And on Madonna's songwriter:

"It was hilarious, he was the guy who co-wrote 'Like a Prayer' and 'La Isla Bonita', but he was completely obsessed with Jethro Tull.  He'd probably have been happier if Madonna had played a flute while standing on one leg."

The above passages were my favorite parts of this book.  The rest of it?  I think that Elton John has written an entertaining - and surprisingly self-deprecating - account of his life up to the year it was published.  He's honest about himself to the point of embarrassment, and this honest self-appraisal makes his bouts of egomania and occasional jabs at other celebrities easier to digest.

If you are, like me, a fan of Elton John's music you'll enjoy this book a lot.  It doesn't offer much that other rock biographies and autobiographies haven't done before, but the author's unique perspectives on the music business and what it means to be a gay man working in this business give an old formula new life.  That, and Elton John really knew/knows EVERYBODY, from David Bowie right on down to Eminem.  The guy has certainly been around.

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"Next Man Up" by John Feinstein (2006)

"It was midway through the second quarter and the Browns were driving.  Referee Jeff Triplette called a false start on Browns center Jim Bundren and tossed a penalty flag in his direction.  Back then, referees were instructed to throw penalty flags in the direction of the offender.  Penalty flags are weighted at one end by a tiny beanbag so they don't float in the wind but rather stay put once they land on the field.  Somehow, Triplette threw the flag right at [Orlando] Brown.  Instead of landing near Bundren, it went through Brown's face mask and smacked him in the right eye.  Brown screamed in pain because the weighted part of the flag had scratched his cornea.  Enraged, he charged at Triplette and knocked him over before he was pulled away.  He was ejected from the game, which was a moot point since he couldn't see out of his right eye anyway.  To add insult to injury, the league suspended him for the final game of the season, meaning he lost a week's pay while wondering if he would be able to play again."

John Feinstein is a sports writer living in Maryland.  He contributes to a number of publications, and he's also written books about golf, basketball, and baseball.

The cover of the book promises "a year behind the lines in today's NFL," but I didn't find Next Man Up to be that, exactly.  It's more of an in-depth look at the 2004 Ravens, with very little to say about other teams, or the general progression of that season.  The Patriots, who won the Superbowl that year, are only mentioned in the context of one game.  A lot of the NFC teams, such as the Seahawks, the Cardinals, the Panthers, and the Saints, aren't even mentioned.

So no, it's not the league-wide look at football you were probably hoping for.  Instead, it focuses on the Ravens to the exclusion of nearly every other team, which I suppose is a given considering that the author's method of writing the book was to follow the Ravens around for a season.  My biggest complaint is that the book jacket goes out of its way to disguise this fact, in the hope that fans of other franchises will buy it.  I'm sure I'm not the first person to take exception at the marketing ploy, and I doubt that it's won the author any new fans.

And then there is the attention to detail.  Don't get me wrong, detail can be a fine thing, but choosing the right details is what separates good authors from bad authors.  Next Man Up features such an onslaught of detail that reading it felt like preparation for some kind of super obscure quiz on the 2004 Ravens.  Even most football fanatics would be put off by the endless parade of names, dates, and pre-game speeches that make up this book.  Honestly, who cares about the guy who played one down in a game against the Jets 12 years ago?  Who cares about the job worries of an assistant defensive coordinator from the same time?  There was a greater football narrative to be told in this book, and instead of doing so, Next Man Up gets lost in an abyss of trivia.

Granted, I don't read a lot of books on football.  I watch every game the Seahawks and Steelers play, but I'm not big on reading about the game.  Just the same, I feel certain that there are better football books out there, and even fans of the Ravens will probably be disappointed by Next Man Up.

"The John Varley Reader" by John Varley (2004)

John Varley is an American science fiction writer.  He has won the Hugo and Nebula awards, and the movie Millennium was adapted from his story "Air Raid."  None of his novels are particularly famous, and as sci-fi authors go he remains fairly obscure.

This is a shame, really, because Varley is an inventive writer who ought to be read more.  I think the reason he isn't is that it's his short stories that are famous, and few authors are remembered for their short stories.  In Varley's case this is an especially saddening phenomenon, since it's in his short stories that he really shines.

There are eighteen stories in The John Varley Reader, and all of them are good.  A few of them are excellent.  A couple of them are not bad, but forgettable.

"Picinic on Nearside" is one of the forgettable ones.  In this story, two "sexually ambiguous" children encounter a hermit and his curious notions about their society.

"Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" is one of the few stories in this collection that doesn't dwell on the concepts of gender and sexuality.  Instead, we get an excellent tale of how the difference between reality and illusion might be blurred in a future society.

"In the Hall of the Martian Kings" details what happens when several stranded colonists revive a dormant biome on Mars.  It's an excellent, well thought-out story.

"Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance" is one of the weirdest stories in this collection, and I loved it.  Hard to explain what it's about.  A symbiotic organism visits a talent scout.

"The Barbie Murders" is an good idea that isn't explored deeply enough.  The story falls a bit flat at the end, and the author himself admits that the concept of individuality so central to the narrative could have been explained a bit better.

"The Phantom of Kansas" is alright, but as with "The Bellman" I could see the major plot twist coming a mile away.  If you've read that Heinlein story about the time-traveling police"man" you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

"Beatnik Bayou" might be the worst story in this collection.  A young "man" living in a sexless society comes to terms with his own sexuality.  There are some interesting ideas in it, but the overall narrative is a mess.

"Air Raid" inspired the film Millennium.  Don't bother seeking out the movie.  It's really not worth your time.  The story is good, but too short to leave a lasting impression.

"The Persistence of Vision" describes a visit by a sighted man to a colony of deaf and blind people.  It brought to mind Jose Saramago's novel Blindness, though I found this story to be far more satisfying (and far less depressing) than Saramago's novel.

"Press Enter," along with "Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo," might be the best story here.  Stories about AI or "the Singularity" are old hat now, but in the early 1980s this was heady stuff.  The interplay between the protagonist and the computer program is well done, and the technological concepts imported into the story are convincing.

"The Pusher" is the kind of story that's bound to offend someone, and I applaud the author for having the courage to write it.  He was really crossing some boundaries with this one.

"Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo" might be the best story here.  It's not heavy on the sci-fi elements, and instead offers the touching story of a young girl trapped alone in a space station.

"Options" explores the future of sexual reassignment surgery.  I really enjoyed this story, and it provides much-needed background for the other stories in Varley's "Eight Worlds" mythos.  If any story was ever ahead of its time it's this one.

"Just Another Perfect Day" details a day in the life of a man who won't remember today once it becomes tomorrow.  It forms a nice pair of stories with "In Fading Suns and Dying Moons."

"In Fading Suns and Dying Moons" is as trippy a science fiction story as you're likely to find.  It's short, but it messed with my head in delightful ways.  Nth-Dimensional being(s) "invade" the Earth.

"The Flying Dutchman" is a horror story in which a lonely traveler finds himself stuck in a loop.  It's good, but I feel like I've read too many other stories like this already.

"Good Intentions" is also not science fiction.  In this story, a political candidate makes a deal with the devil.  Seems kind of pedestrian for Varley, and lacks the depth that make other stories in this collection much better.

"The Bellman" was also reviewed in my entry for the 2003 edition of The Year's Best Science Fiction.  I referred to it as "not all that good" there, and my opinion of this story remains the same.  I could see the twist at the end coming, and it just doesn't seem as inventive as many of the other stories here.

"Chimera" by John Barth (1972)

"Polyeidus defended the monster's deadliness on genealogical grounds - both of its parents had been legendary man-killers - but acknowledged that the creature had not left its lair in Amisodorus's deadly service at least since tranquilized by the Polyeidic magic papers, and so could be said to be a threat only to vulcanologists or ignorant spelunkers, whom a posted guard could easily warn off.  He agreed with me therefore that there was no particular need to kill it - or her, if I preferred."

John Barth is an American writer who also taught at various Ivy League universities.  Much of his later fiction was inspired by ideas first put forward by Joseph Campbell.  Chimera is his most famous novel, and it won the National Book Award in 1973. 

This novel - if Chimera can be called a novel - consists of three interlocking stories.  The first of these is a kind of postscript to The One Thousand and One Nights, the second is an update of the Perseus myth, and the third takes extensive liberties with the story of Bellerophon, a hero whose greatest labor was the slaying of the Chimera, the mythical creature that gives this "novel" its name.

Beyond that, Chimera is also the story of a mid-life crisis.  In both Perseus's and Bellerophon's stories we find heroes struggling with a loss of virility, and in Sheherazad's story we find two brothers using this perceived loss of virility as a reason to abuse the female protagonists.  Towards the end, this novel is both extremely self-referential and extremely difficult to pin down, but the author's (and through him, the heroes') struggle to preserve a sense of his/their own virility is a persistent theme.

But again, is it a novel?  Aside from certain themes, there is little to hold the three stories together, though the author does his best to arrive at a conclusion that embraces all three of them.  Just the same, I think the finality of the second story's ending weakens the whole, and it might have been better to present the three stories on their own merits, without trying to present them as a novel.

Taken altogether, Chimera has its strong and weak points.  The use of sex as a plot device grows tiresome, and at times the last story becomes too convoluted for its own good.  I would imagine that readers steeped in the Greek classics would have an easier time keeping track of what's going on, but for the rest of us it can be slow going.  Classics majors will love this book, but readers with more modern tastes will probably feel left out in the cold.

Even so, I thought the conclusion of the second story was quite moving.  I won't give it away here, but the "translation" that occurs really lifted the narrative to another level.  The first story isn't as successful, and the third, well... it's a lot like it's titular hero.  It can't quite get it up at the end.

Compared to Gunter Grass's The Flounder, another, similar book recently reviewed here, Chimera is much more readable, though almost as ponderous.  I can't say that it's a bad book, but it left me a bit disappointed.

"Sex and the High Command" by John Boyd (1970)

"WOMEN'S LIB GONE WILD

Dr. Henrietta Carey, leader of the

Fems, was the first woman candidate

for president, and the perfector

of

VITA-LERP

a biological skin cream designed to

do away with superfluous men.  It

spelled

WAR BETWEEN THE SEXES"

-from the back cover

John Boyd was the pen name of Boyd Bradfield Upchurch.  He died two years ago, in 2013.  His best known work was The Last Starship From Earth, a book about a parallel reality in which Christ was a revolutionary agitator.*

Boyd was never a big name in science fiction, and if the rest of his output resembles Sex and the High Command, I can understand why.  Sex and the High Command might be excusable if it had been written a couple of decades earlier, but by 1970 we were well beyond the Golden Age of science fiction, and the 60s vibe that this novel purveys is strictly old hat.  It also exhibits a multitude of other problems, some of which I'll go into below.

But first, the story (or lack thereof).  After the above-mentioned doctor Carey discovers Vita-Lerp, she realizes that it a) allows women to achieve orgasm without any external stimulation whatsoever, and b) allows them to bear children without resorting to sexual intercourse with male members of the species.  This discovery triggers an attempt by women everywhere to overthrow the male power structure, to the extent that the government employs nuclear weapons to thwart their ambitions.

And if you're scratching your head at that one, you're not alone.  There is a lot that goes unexplained in Sex and the High Command, and by the end the plot makes little sense.  It's almost as if Mr. Boyd was making the whole thing up as he went along, without any sense of the greater narrative arc within the story.  Events occur and are reacted to arbitrarily, the characterization is inconsistent, and the resolution of this novel is entirely unsatisfying.  It is, in other words, one of the worst science fiction novels I've ever read.

A dedication on the first page reads "To Aristophanes and Lenny Bruce," but I can't help but think that Aristophanes would have been embarrassed by this book.  Aristophanes wrote the play Lysistrata, which in part inspired this novel, but Sex and the High Command has neither the humor nor the cleverness of that famous work.  It is instead a sophomoric attempt to shock its audience with bad language and sex talk.

Worst of all, this book is too similar to Stanley Kubrick's film Dr. Strangelove.  Where as that movie still has a lot to say about politics, armageddon, and even 60s attitudes toward sexuality, the best that Sex and the High Command can offer is lame literary allusions, and jokes that are too crude to be funny.  It promises biting social commentary, but fails to deliver.

If you're looking for a book that explores similar themes much better, I would recommend Theodore Sturgeon's Venus Plus X or Raymond Z. Gallun's The Eden Cycle.  Both are excellent books, both appeared in the early 70s, and both are far, far better than Sex and the High Command.

*most of this was taken straight from the Wikipedia article.