I’m very slowly making my way through the massive 700+ page novels by Alastair Reynolds (three down, many to go) but I took a side trip with this short story/novella mainly because I like a challenge. It is very much out of print and available on Amazon for something like $125. There is *one* copy of it in the New York Public Library system. I tracked it down, read it in one sitting, then sent it back into the stream.

Is it any good? Yes, because Reynolds is incapable of writing something that doesn’t have a few “woah, where the hell did that idea come from?” moments every 30 pages.

This one is something of a space spy story, but (as usual) with characters that are both good and bad and over long stretches of time tend to play both sides of that line. It imagines an alternate Earth where Genghis Khan conquered the world, and the Mongol Empire is now making leaps into deep space (hey, just go with it.) What they find in some wormhole hub thingy is, well……maybe I shouldn’t spoil that for you.

Quite possibly the most “meta” thing I’ve ever read – this may very well be the actual notebook Roth was keeping when he wrote “The Anatomy Lesson,” without intending ever to publish it. At least that’s what “Philip Roth” claims when his jealous wife finds the text, most of which are intimate details from an affair that are too specific not to be genuine (as is what happens in “The Anatomy Lesson.”)

The text is almost exclusively dialogue – it is practically a play – and even if you aren’t familiar with all of the names in the greater Roth Universe (Zuckerman, Carnovsky, Tarnopol etc) a reader will still find some marvelous, crystalized moments.

Some of Roth’s navel-gazing can be a but much (skip “The Facts” and “My Life As A Man”) but sometimes his insights are revelatory (as it “Patrimony” and “Operation: Shylock.”) I place this one somewhere in between.

Oh my God the Vanguard series is so much fun. This is book 5 in the series and it has gone to very much unexpected places. I say with no joking around that if the character of T’Prynn had ever made it to one of the TV shows she’d be the new fan favorite.

All-Star Western #4 – B+
DC Universe Online Legends #20 – D (I’m taking this off my pull list. Once the Sinestro arc ended I just haven’t cared.)
Green Lantern: New Guardians #4 – C+ (This one is in danger of getting dismissed, too)
Captain America #5 – B
Captain America #6 – A-
Kick-Ass 2 #6 – B
Aquaman #4 – B+
The Strain #1 – A-
Voodoo #4 – B
Star Trek #4 – B

New to JH.c!
I waste $ on comics, the least I can do is keep track of what I felt. This’ll be a week-by-week.

BATMAN #4 – A
BIRDS OF PREY #4 – B
BLUE BEETLE #4 – A-
CAPTAIN ATOM #4 – B+
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #4 – B
JUSTICE LEAGUE #4 – B-
NIGHTWING #4 – B+
WONDER WOMAN #4 – B
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #676 – A
DEFENDERS COMING OF DEFENDERS #1 – B
VENOM #11 – A

Roth’s books (and I’ve read almost all of them) take on a mantra-like quality with their repetition. All of ‘em, even the high concept ones like Operation: Shylock or The Plot Against America, are basically the same stories over and over.

This time, the main character is a little more of a pompous prick than usual. And it doesn’t work out well for him.

This li’l novella is wonderfully funny and has some of the best recollections of mid-century sexual deviance that I’ve ever read. He does it so effortlessly. There’s an insight on every page. Another masterpiece from a man who has delivered many of them.

To say that I loved this book just doesn’t cut it. I actually found it so hard to put down that I MADE myself put it down so it could last longer. It is hilarious, it is insightful and it feels like it is sent to us from another planet.

Somewhere along the way I decided that Vonnegut wasn’t worth any more of my time. I don’t know where I got this idea. I’ve read many of his books, but not all of them. This is ending now.

With the purchase of my Kindle I subscribed to one of the three great SF pulp publications of yore: Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

I do not read them cover to cover, but each month I find at least one story I love and two I find “of some merit.” The editorials and nonfiction are a glimpse into a fascinating world and the “Science Fact” article is always a crap shoot.

Starting in summer ASFF started serializing a near-future novel, Energized, that is soon to be published in book form. I lapped it up and loved all but the fourth and final chunk.

Set after the Crudetastrophe, which makes our current energy woes seem like a trifle, the story takes a reasonable if not slightly paranoid view of what would happen if Russia had control of all the oil and the US was fighting a zealous group of domestic terrorists called “resetters.”

Fortune orbits our way in the form of a meteor that, if manipulated, can aid in beaming down pure waves of solar energy. Valuable to business, but dangerous in the wrong hands.

It’s a decent set-up, but really a terrific playpen in which to describe a world (not! that! far! from! our! own!) that is crippled by energy and environmental concerns. It’s hard to say just where Lerner himself falls on the political spectrum. Our hero has no time for those that stand in the way of progress, but considering the way he describes the potential bursting out of NASA agents and other scientists it is easy to see why.

Should you find yourself with some of these flimsy, odd-shaped magazines in your hand on a long flight, you may want to poke around. I’ll be curious to see what kind of attention Energized gets when it makes its broader release.

I’m thrilled to know about this book simply so I can point to it to prove that, yes, you can support Israel but also be a Leftist.

Grossman’s essays chronicle ten years of living in Jerusalem from 1992 to 2002. (He’s a novelist, so these published dispatches represent something of a side gig.) We start with the signing of the Oslo Accord, the make our way to the assassination of Rabin, Barak and Arafat in Camp David, Sharon on the Temple Mount, the second Intifada, 9/11 and various incursions and disengagements from the settlements.

In other words: all the hits.

Throughout it all, Grossman makes the same point: can’t everyone see this is crazy, and they only way out is a real peace agreement? He also tosses in the occasional “well, what do you expect? These things take time!”

He’s quick to point fingers in both directions and concludes with a depressing-as-hell epiphany at a symposium with Protestant and Catholic Irish leaders. They realized that the fighting simply had to stop. Of course, they fought for six centuries. The Jews and Arabs in this region have only been fighting for one. Oy vey.

All the known Captains America (and some hitherto unknown) join forces in a pocket universe to right the timeline. Don’t they always?

It’s goofy pulp stuff with Tony Stark’s brain in a vat, the Ameridroid, Cosmic Cubes and panels that look like Escher paintings. A fun mini-series. Really fun.

When will Kiyoshi Morales, the giant Commander A who reports to a Muslim-American General reappear I wonder?