The Book Draught

I realized something as I was driving home last night: it’s been ages since I finished my last fiction book. In fact, I can’t even remember what it was. I’ve read some non-fiction in the meantime, for example The Elfish Gene, which I finished in December. But good novels? Not really. The last 5 months have been filled with books that I just couldn’t get into. Just look at this list of books I stopped reading:

Anathem
Boy did I have high hopes for this book. It was supposed to be my first Neal Stephenson experience since Snow Crash – 8oo glorious pages of it. And then… this. I don’t know what happened in the last two decades, but everything that made Snow Crash great is missing from Anathem. It’s slow. It’s cryptic. It’s boring. After 110 pages, I started skipping ahead. Still not finding anything that resembled drama, I put the book away. I guess between Snow Crash and Anathem, Neal Stephenson’s taste took a 90 degree turn from my own.

World War Z
Yeah, it’s neat. Well written, too. It’s still sitting on my night stand, and I’m sloooowly nibbling away at it. But reading World War Z made one thing very clear to me: I’m sick and tired of zombies. Really tired. The scenario is so old and used up that even a clever book like WWZ has little to add to the genre.

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Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 5)

Welcome to the final installment of Rating “Cyberfilms”! This has been a lot of fun, but it’s also turned out to be much more work that I initially expected. Mostly because the reviews kept getting increasingly longer, I guess I can’t just write a couple of paragraphs on a story. We’re finishing the series today with George R. R. Martin’s Nightflyers and H. P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West: Reanimator. To learn more about the series and to see previous reviews, read parts 1, 2, 3 and 4!

Nightflyers (George R. R. Martin)
1980
Score: A+

Robert Jaffe adopted this story into the movie of the same name. It was directed by Robert Collector and starred Catherine Mary Stewart, Michael Praed and John Standing.

She put an arm around him, stroked him, coaxed him. “The esperon will give you range,” she said. “Feel it, feel yourself grow stronger. Can you feel it? Everything’s getting clear, isn’t it? “Her voice was a reassuring drone. “Remember the danger now, remember, go find it. Look beyond the wall, tell us about it. Tell us about Royd. Was he telling the truth? Tell us. You’re good, we all know that, you can tell us.” The phrases were almost an incantation.

He shrugged off her support and sat upright by himself. “I can feel it,” he said. His eyes were suddenly clearer. “Something – my head hurts – I’m afraid!”

“Don’t be afraid,” the psipsych said. “The esperon won’t make your head hurt, it just makes you better. Nothing to fear.” She stroked his brow. “Tell us what you see.”

The telepath looked at Royd’s [holograph] with terrified little-boy eyes, and his tongue flicked across his lower lip. “He’s -”

Then his skull exploded.

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Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 4)

Cyberfilms is a collection of 11 sci-fi short stories that were turned into movies at some point. Movies that, with the exception of Total Recall, I have never seen. So I cecided to review each story on their own merrits, and let you know if I could see a movie in each story. Today we have two rather well-known entries: Johnny Mnemonic and Enemy Mine. I didn’t end up liking either one too much, though To read about some stories that I did like, I suggest visiting parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series. Or wait for the weekend, when I will review the final two stories from this book. Anyway, on to this week’s reviews!

Johnny Mnemonic (William Gibson)
1981
Score: D

Johnny Mnemonic was adapted by the author and turned into the film of the same name, directed by Robert Longo, and starring Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer and Ice-T.

Yep, that’s me giving William Gibson’s story a D. I didn’t understand it. It might be a great tale, but the density of information that Gibson crams into every sentence and description is staggering. And unfortunately, it is done in such a way that my brain can’t follow. Gibson’s writing just doesn’t create any images in my mind, and an entire action scene might be over before I even realized it. Or understand what just happened.

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Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 3)

On to part 3 of the Cyberfilms feature! This part adds two reviews that I left out from the last post, because that article was getting too long for my liking. If you haven’t done so already, I suggest reading part 1 and part 2 of the series first! You will get an introduction to the book and insight on the stories that have already been reviewed. As with the other posts, you should be aware that this article might contain spoilers for the featured stories! (Some pretty big ones for the The Forbidden review.)

Air Raid (John Varley)
1977
Score: A

Air Raid was adapted into the movie Millennium by the author. The movie was directed by Michael Anderson, and starred Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd and Daniel J. Travanti.

Ah, John Varley. I’m a big fan of his Gaea cycle, and was captivated by this short short story (12 pages) as well.

Air Raid is one of those ‘clever’ titles. The story isn’t about an air strike – there’s no approaching fighter planes, no howling sirens, no people scrambling for cover. No, Air Raid is about a group of human time travelers from the future, who come back to our time to steal the travelers of airplanes that are doomed to fatally crash. Does that make sense?

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Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 2)

Part 2 of my Cyberfilms story review features two well-known authors and a big movie adaptation. Read part 1 of the series for more information on the book and these reviews. I had originally planned to post four reviews, but when I realized how long each of them had become, I decided to split up the post. As before, be aware that story spoilers might be lurking ahead!

Sandkings (George R. R. Martin)
1979
Score: A

This story was turned into an Outer Limits episode of the same name, written by Melinda M. Snodgrass, directed by Stuart Gillard and starring Beau Bridges, Helen Shaver and Dylan Bridges.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of this story, but ended up really liking Sandkings! It starts off a bit wonky, with a Mos Eisley style alien bazaar that conjures up a pulp sci-fi universe that I usually can’t buy into. But Sandking’s strength lies in its characters, not the environment.

When millionaire Simon Kress returns from a long business trip, he discovers that most of his exotic pets have died because of a lack of food – the piranhas cannibalized each other, and his ‘shambler’ devoured the carrion hawk. Somewhat miffed, Kress sets out to find repacement pets at the local market. After a lengthy, unsatisfying search, Kress is finally introduced to a novel species: the ‘Sandkings’, a race of insect-like creatures that build castles, wage wars against each other, and even worship their owner.

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Rating “Cyberfilms”

Cyberfilms is one of those books that I bought on a whim. It might have been during a late-night Readers’ Books run with Victoria. The book might even have been in the bargin bin – the cover isn’t all that attractive, but the description sounded interesting enough. Cyberfilms is a collection of sci-fi stories that were adapted into movies. The cover boldly proclaims that “You’ve seen the movies – now read the stories they were based on!”, but that might be overstating it a bit. Of the 11 stories on the book, only three or four (depending on your accounting) became major motion pictures. The remaining eight were turned into B or made-for-TV movies.

But even with over half of this book’s stories turning into somewhat obscure sci-fi movies, I was surprised (if not to say ashamed) to find that I had only seen one of the actual movies: Total Recall. That’s quite a wake-up call: I never watched Candyman! Or Mimic. Not even Johnny Mnemonic… or Reaminator! I’m not sure what I was doing in my teenage years, when you were supposed to watch these campy horror classics. I wasn’t keeping up with the times, that’s for sure.

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Harry Potter

I’m prepared to go on record on the 7th Harry Potter book (no spoilers), even though the following admission might lead to humiliation and ridicule. But here it comes: I think reading the new Harry Potter book before sleep is giving me nightmares.

I just don’t seem to be sleeping all that well during those nights. My dreams are filled with paranoid and disturbing scenarios. And let’s be honest, the last Harry Potter book isn’t exactly a joy to follow. People die left and right, things get lost or destroyed every other chapter, pivotal characters are defamed and painted in pictures never imagined… the whole story is just bleak. It’s well written and I’m glad to be reading it – but joyous and fun? Barely.

There, I said it; I feel better I’m wondering if I’m just being a wimp or if the book affects early readers even worse than me. The story above might also be the reason why I’m still not done with the book even though the rest of t he world probably is.

The War of the Flowers

Tad Williams is still one hell of a writer. I was a bit worn out after finishing Otherland a while ago, but now I’m back with The War of the Flowers. I’m only past page 100, but so far I’ve been entertained every second. Entertained in a very dark, depressing way, that is, but who says that’s a bad thing when the book is written so well.