Tag: Science Fiction

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Fantasy Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction

The Avram Davidson Treasury: Final Stories & Final Thoughts

*Breathes* is it over? Did I finish? Yes I did!

I’ve written on the prior sections of the Treasury in earlier posts, and now will sum up my thoughts on the final two sections and the collection in general.  Before starting, I noted that for an author that is rarely if ever circulated now despite his massive early  influence, it’s interesting to look at all the awards that he won or was nominated for.

http://www.sfadb.com/Avram_Davidson

How many authors win awards all across the mystery, sci-fi, and fantasy genres?  The entire Treasury itself also won and was nominated multiple times. Naples won a world fantasy award.  Davidson is like a shadow, an influential and widely acclaimed author that everyone seemed to love but now hardly anyone knows or talks about anymore. 

General thoughts

As far as The Seventies and newer stories, I largely liked Davidson’s older works much more than the newer ones. I have been reading through the collection slowly to avoid burn out but so much of the later stories just went straight over my head. Should I have DNF’d? Idk, I wanted to sample the works across the years.  I can’t say why the last bunch were my least favorites other than that I just tended to not understand them, or be bored by the long and winding trails from point A to point Avram.

I’ve been reading the collection since the end of January and definitely struggled at times, but feel like I learned a lot about genre history, general history, many odd facts, and about myself and my own reading habits where I love eclectic & brilliant minds but struggle to keep up sometimes.  If an author gives the editors hell and is considered Out There, I will gravitate towards it. (Y’all remember the Bukowski kick I went on recently)? That said, I can also admit when an author is just far, far too smart for me.

In the afterward, Ray Bradbury (my favorite short fiction writer, sorry Avram) agrees and stresses that reading one or two stories a night depending on the length is the best and only way to consume a book like this.  I also would stress that Davidson’s style starts ‘in a fog’ (Bradbury) and then slowly reveals itself, often times making us wait until the last paragraph or even the last sentence to get “the point” of the story. And oh, you’d better have been able to follow Davidson’s train of thought along the way too 😅. That’s where he lost me towards the end.

I’m not sad. I don’t feel like I wasted my time reading these. I tried. If you want to try too, go for it. I think this is a great collection to get some highlights of his work and related words from other authors. I think Davidson has some great classic stories that deserve to stay in circulation today, but there’s always going to be a lot of ‘other’ to wade through.

The 70’s

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From my final batch of stories, I’d like to nod to my favorites: essentially everything from the 70’s I loved except Manatee Gal, Wont You Come Out Tonight. Crazy Old Lady is sad and Selectra Six-Ten is hilarious. Obviously Polly Charms has much attention as well.

The 80’s & 90’s

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This final batch just did not connect with me. The Slovo Stove was probably my favorite because if nothing else, I thought the running joke and legitimate but impossible interest in obscure customs was hilarious. As a group these went over my head

Final thoughts

The last thing I’ll do is share an article I found by Henry Wessels

He wrote one thing that I feel wholeheartedly and have mentioned before while reading some of these stories, which is that reading Davidson just makes me feel like my reading is lacking in so many ways.  So many great authors and great  stories are mentioned that I’ve never even heard of. It makes me feel inadequate 😅 I hope Wessels won’t care that I linked to his article, it’s something I do when frankly someone just says something more eloquently than I can!

Anyway, these are my thoughts and I hope you’ll check out my other writing on Avram Davidson as I’ve made my way through this wild, difficult, wonderful book!

Categories
Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction

The Passenger by [Cormac McCarthy has lost his mind] (Book Thoughts)

Well. Well well well.  You guys know I had this box set preordered as soon as it was announced and this was my most anticipated read of 2023.  I’m completely and utterly dumbfounded by this stupid book.

It’s brilliant, it’s complete nonsense, it’s the stark raving mad ranting of an 89 year old that no editor dared to raise a red pen to. It’s a bait and switch. It’s aggravating.  And I can’t stop thinking about it. (See Bookish Quick Facts & Synopsis at the end)

The thing about The Passenger is that it ties together almost everything else McCarthy ever wrote. He calls out a lot of his prior works. He sets up a great and interesting mystery that he never follows through on, simply drops the plot line as soon as it gets good.

Is the government after the missing passenger from the fallen airplane, are they after hidden Oppenheimer papers, do they think his son has something? See, in the book, the main character is Oppenheimer’s son, and that angle didn’t work for me because I can’t take a real man with a real documented history and insert him into a fictional situation.  He didn’t die in Mexico, his kids weren’t schizophrenic as far as I can tell (although he was wrongly diagnosed) and it’s just a very bizarre conflagration of real and unreal, although the themes of generational guilt are real.

The schizophrenic circus, the thalidomide kid (really, really? So many old people are having flashbacks of that disaster right now 🤦‍♀️) it was one way to give us a background of the sisters life and psyche but frankly it was just weird.  I think these characters make more sense if you read The Kekule Problem but I would say to read it between The Passenger and Stella Maris.  This isn’t the first story where McCarthy wrote incestuous siblings and he actually gave Alicia more of a personality than most of his female characters.  That said, I think it was fu€ked up but they weren’t, like, physically involved.

So we start with a mystery and end up travelling a circus of bizarre characters, with some prophetic insights on life and more than a healthy amount of ranting about the Kennedys. Throw your plot out the window, no one will even notice, right?

McCarthy isn’t known for punctuation and normal presentation (he would get along with Davidson, real well), and this book falls into that category too so maybe stay away if that style bugs you.  I would recommend the audiobook, I did listen to parts of it to see if it sat in my mind better but honestly… Idk, I can’t retain any specifics.  The narration was good.

I think if you really want the most from McCarthy, you need to go back and read his prominent works and end with this big old finale.  Personally… Idk I’m pretty sure that McCarthy is an old perv who has gone and lost his darn mind, and he’s laughing at everyone trying to make prophecy out of his convoluted ramblings about life, psychology, physics, grief, family ties, the deep dark depths of the ocean,  etc etc etc.

I’ll write more after a Kekule reread and then getting through Stella Maris. I hate it but I’m too oddly fascinated not to keep going, plus SM  is much shorter so there’s that.

Bookish quick facts:
  • Title: The Passenger
  • Series: The Passenger, #1
  • Author: Cormac McCarthy
  • Publisher & Release: Knopf, 2022
  • Length: 400 pages
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐ for fans.  I don’t know if I think he’ll make new fans with this
Here’s the synopsis from Am*zon

The Passenger is the story of a salvage diver, haunted by loss, afraid of the watery deep, pursued for a conspiracy beyond his understanding, and longing for a death he cannot reconcile with God.

1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.

Traversing the American South, from the garrulous barrooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtaking novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.

Categories
Fantasy Science Fiction

SPSFC Semifinalist Review: Percival Gynt and the Conspiracy of Days by Drew Melbourne

As we read through the semifinalist round of the 2023 SPSFC, here is my second full review. If you haven’t been following along, I’m a member of team At Boundary’s Edge and have been posting my individual reviews and scores. These opinions are mine alone and don’t reflect those of the team nor anyone else in the competition. Anyway, let’s look at the book and then you can see my 2nd review out of six to come before the end of April!

Bookish Quick Facts:
  • Title: Percival Gynt and the Conspiracy of Days
  • Series: N/A
  • Author: Drew Melbourne
  • Publisher & Release: Self, 2018
  • Length: 356 pages
  • Rate & Recommend: 8/10 for fans of  comedy and adventures
Here’s the synopsis from Am*zon:

The year is 20018. The famed magician Illuminari is dead, and his greatest illusion has died with him. Dark forces now seek the Engine of Armageddon, the ancient, sentient doomsday weapon that Illuminari hid amongst the stars.

Enter Percival Gynt, accountant and part-time hero, whose quest to find the Engine before it falls into the wrong hands may be our universe’s last best hope for survival. It is a quest that will take him from the highest reaches of power to the lowest pits of despair and through every manner of horror and absurdity between.

But beware. This accountant has a secret. A secret that may damn us all.

Percival Gynt and the Conspiracy of Days is a sci-fi/fantasy adventure novel full of swashbuckling, math, dark secrets, space-faeries, obtrusive product placement, Nazis, beating up those Nazis, unlimited baked beans, zombie cyborg assassins, fate with a capital “F,” love, betrayal, wizards, jokes, paradoxes, a sentient doomsday weapon, eleven-dimensional space, clones, monsters, space-nuns, and at least one rat-chef.

(Only one rat-chef.)

My thoughts:

This book reads like a mashup of Austin Powers and Douglas Adams.  AKA it’s hilarious, over the top, entertaining, and sometimes I’m not quite sure what’s going on but it’s still funny. And dark. The book has a few surprisingly dark undertones that contrasted well with the general lighthearted tone.

Percival Gynt was a fast read for me. The pacing is constantly quick, the plot moves forward, and the characters are about as well developed as the average Austin Powers movie (that’s my analogy and I’m sticking to it) but I like them.

Percival is funny and has the best gadgets. Um is a long for the ride but takes a lot of death (poor guy🤣) and stays positive.  Esme cracks me up. Some people aren’t even who you expect them to be 😳  It was a good crew!

Another thing I really liked was the realistic looking “top news articles” at the beginning of each section.  I might have tried to click one 🤣

I did dock one point out of ten for some slightly confusing time jumping within two of the sections.  The other point I docked was for the plot getting a little confusing/convoluted about the time Percival tries to be a hero and the purity thing rejects him?  I don’t think I fully grasped what happened towards the end there but it didn’t change how I felt about the overall reading experience. (Good, I felt good)

Otherwise, I 100% recommend this book for those looking for a fun, funny, witty, snarky, brand infested space adventure of epic proportions.

Thanks for checking out my semifinalist review of Percival Gynt and the Conspiracy of Days by Drew Melbourne! An e-copy was provided for judging purposes although I read it through Kindle Unlimited. As always, all opinions are my own 🚀

Categories
Science Fiction

SPSFC Semifinalist Review: The Peacemaker’s Code by Deepak Malhotra

As we read through the semifinalist round of the 2023 SPSFC, here is my second full review. If you haven’t been following along, I’m a member of team At Boundary’s Edge and have been posting my individual reviews and scores. These opinions are mine alone and don’t reflect those of the team nor anyone else in the competition. Anyway, let’s look at the book and then you can see my 2nd review out of six to come before the end of April!

BOOKISH QUICK FACTS:
  • Title: The Peacemaker’s Code
  • Series: N/A
  • Author: Deepak Malhotra
  • Publisher & Release: Self, 2021
  • Length: 500 pages
  • SPSFC score: 7/10
HERE’S THE SYNOPSIS FROM AM*ZON:

Professor Kilmer, a renowned historian of war and diplomacy, is collected from his home and whisked off to Washington. Thrust into the highest levels of government as an adviser to the President, the young historian must come to terms with the seemingly impossible, figure out how to navigate a world where not everything is as it appears, and use all the skills and knowledge he has acquired in his life to help save humanity from a conflict of truly epic proportions. A genre-breaking novel that re-examines the human condition and masterfully blends some of the most compelling themes in literature: war & peace, strategy & serendipity, love & friendship, courage & fear, the bounds of possibility, and the limits of imagination. Replete with mysteries that will compel you to keep turning the pages, powerful moments that will stop you dead in your tracks, and insights that will change the way you understand and navigate the world. Most of all… a journey you will not forget.

My thoughts:

My goodness this is a tricky batch of books so far. The first book was exciting but horrendously edited and presented, while The Peacemaker’s Code had my brain in a fog but is meticulously edited and well presented.

This is another surprisingly soft sci-fi. First contact will always be considered a dear part of the genre but I don’t think I’ve ever read a first contact book where the aliens remain an on page idea rather than an entity we don’t actually “meet”.

Hear me out here, spaceships appear and we see the aliens talking, but in 500 pages no character actually meets an alien. they took nearly 200 pages to land on Earth, and there was nothing but debate relating to the aliens leading up to that point.

So the crutch is this: it’s a book about negotiation, superimposed on a first contact setting. I was dying waiting to meet the aliens while the characters just debated and debated various facets that didn’t have any context yet since first contact (other than with radio relays)  hadn’t occured. How much of this can we read before we just meet an alien? Well… 500 pages worth.  Personally I tuned out irrevocably but I’m still giving credit where it’s due, despite that there’s hardly any action. Even when the world is being attacked we get the view from the Situation Room.

That said though, he didn’t set out to write an action thriller so I can’t treat it as something it’s not supposed to be.

So… You gave it a 7? Yes! That all said, I liked Kilmer and Silla and a few of the other characters. I’m not going to fault the author who is a professor at Harvard for writing something his colleagues would love.  There are plenty of interesting ideas buried in the historical comparisons and there’s actually something to say for a book about first contact that keeps the aliens more or less an on page idea only.

What do they want? Why are they here? How do we communicate? Can we save the planet? All the big sci-fi ideas are here somewhere, just not in typical form.

Personally I’m here for more sci-fi, actual aliens, & action, with much less chatter when things are getting heated.  Realistically, I can acknowledge that the MC is a dude I’d love to get a coffee with and let him make me feel like a total idiot while discussing nerdy things.

My favorite idea in the whole book, despite not being a fan of romantic notions in sci-fi, was this feeling of an “us” despite all memories being cleaned out and a situation that repeated itself anyway.

I’m coming in at a 7/10 here, which is about the best score I’ve given in the competition so far. This book is far above average in the self published world but I have to take into consideration that it completely beat my attention span. Sorry professor 😅

Thanks for checking out my semifinalist review of The Peacemaker’s Code by Deepak Malhotra! An e-copy was provided for judging purposes although I read it through Kindle Unlimited. As always, all opinions are my own 🚀

You can find all the competition updates at thespsfc.org 

Categories
audiobooks Fiction Mysteries Science Fiction

The Avram Davidson Treasury: The Sixties (How I’m Getting the Hang of This)

I’m still reading a story here and a story there, and I’ve now made it through The Sixties! The first thing I’d recommend doing is checking out my intro post that also covered stories from the fifties, as I’m not going to repeat myself about the author and collection in general

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In general

Jumping right in, I think I moderately enjoyed the stories from the Sixties more than the Fifties.  Davidson’s penchant for language and linguistics came out in a more accessible format for someone like me, who’s not a genius and just likes reading good stories.

The Real MVP is Spider Robinson’s intro to Sacheverell, because it’s hilarious and now I want to read everything Spider has written. Anyone recommend where to start?

The magic of a google search

Many more good points were made by the authors introducing the stories, the main one being that most of the time Davidson omits “the point” on purpose, and leaves the reader to connect the dots.  I’m not good at this.  LeGuin pointed out that he throws in a lot of humor and extras, to see if people know what they mean, like the term “freemartin”, and it enhances the stories obviously if you catch his hints. That said, I’m so worried that I’m missing a lot of jokes and insights 🤣

A few of the stories so far have just made no sense to me whatsoever, so I jotted down a few keywords and did a Google search. Walla, boom, like magic, a historical backdrop popped out. (I’m looking at you, The Price of a Charm).

Frankly I’d just love to read these stories with someone who’s a better literary critic, because most of my insights are coming from the author intros and I’d miss the cool things if not for them, but I’m getting the hang of this!

Let’s talk about a few specific stories for kicks:
  • I read The Sources of the Nile twice, a few days apart, and I made more connections the second time around. Davidson had a lot of angst about what publishers & the public are looking for, I think, and he probably got a kick out of  writing this one
  • The Affair at Lahore Cantonment won an Edgar Award for best short story, and was on my reading list anyway for “reading that takes place in, or has meaning in London“. Personally I’m most enjoying the stories influenced by Davidson’s travels.  On the other hand, this is one of the stories that makes me feel like I don’t appreciate good literature enough.
  • I’m probably dumb. I thought Revolver had some good use of irony but I couldn’t see the humor 🤣
  • The Tail-Tied Kings … This was just weird and mildly disturbing, I don’t want to think about it any more LOL
  • The Price of a Charm I already mentioned above: this is the story that could have been read for what it was, until the end, where something happened and cast the rest into a light that made no sense. Well, insert Sarajevo into a search engine and BAM (no pun intended), a little background carries some of these stories a long way!
  • Sacheverell I also mentioned above, frankly I just took the story for it’s surface value (some guy kidnapped a talking monkey) but it’s a layered story. I just listened to a podcast about it prior to writing this. Anyway, the real MVP was Spider Robinson’s intro to the story
  • The House the Blakeney’s Built I also mentioned above, especially about LeGuin’s intro too.  This is a great story about what Davidson thought a colony would look like about 500 years after a family’s ship crashed.  Hint: it’s not Star Trek where everyone is still a genius.  I loved this one and how the language had devolved. Real or fake, he can write language!
  • The Goobers was straightforward and fun, loved the ending
  • The Power of Every Root … I feel like I should have guessed the ending based off the title but I had gotten too lost in Davidson’s depictions of everything.  As I said, the stories influenced by his travels are my favorites and I’m pretty sure he loved Mexico

Give me a couple more weeks and I’ll read the Seventies! I am reading this collection through a hardcover that I bought years ago, and partially through Audible as the book is currently free with membership. That small print gets me after a while! As always, all opinions are my own

Categories
Science Fiction

SPSFC Semifinalist Review: Heritage by S.M. Warlow

Well well, here we are in the semifinalist round! If you haven’t been following along, I’m a member of team At Boundary’s Edge and like to post my individual reviews.  My opinions are mine alone and don’t reflect those of the team nor anyone else.  Anyway, let’s look at the book then you can see my first review out of six to come before the end of April!

Bookish quick facts:
  • Title: Heritage
  • Series: Tales of the Phoenix Titan, #1
  • Author: S.M. Warlow
  • Publisher & Release: Self, 2022
  • Length: 622 pages
  • SPSFC score: 6/10
Here’s the synopsis from Am*zon:

Heritage is the debut novel from S.M. Warlow and the first instalment of the Tales of the Phoenix Titan series. This space opera is perfect for fans of Firefly, the Expanse, Star Wars and Mass Effect.

Make them proud, son of Earth.

25 years after the fall of Earth, the Commonwealth is locked in a vicious, galaxy-spanning war against the Revenant. Countless worlds have been lost in the fighting, and now one crew must come together and stand in the way of galactic annihilation.

Nathan Carter is an efficient criminal, but when he’s hired to steal supplies from a Commonwealth warship, what starts as an easy job soon transforms into something that could change the course of history. Now, Nathan must work with a group of unlikely allies to protect a woman whose heritage is the key to everything.

My thoughts:

One sentence TLDR: this is a good space opera adventure with plenty of action that had an unfortunately rough editing & presentation.  

The thing with Heritage is that while I genuinely enjoyed the plot, this is a 622 page long book that is absolutely riddled with presentation issues. There are punctuation typos involving commas, colons, and semicolons on every single page. The book repeats itself constantly and the character names keep changing spelling.

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My last gripe is that the text changed sizes inconsistently to emphasize inner monologue, epigraphs, and anything else the author thought should stand out. Anything structurally, I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to my EPub reader.

So now let’s pretend that all didn’t happen and talk about the story itself.

The plot is interesting.  We get to see a crew come together and meet quite a few different species of intelligent life.  Everything from cats that can operate sniper rifles with giant paws (what?) to doglike creatures, human types, droids, and many others.  The book certainly isn’t hurting for alien diversity. Between the ships and weapons and history there is a lot of good sci-fi material in there too.

There are many different plot lines to keep things moving.  Some are political and hint at conspiracy.  Others involve drawing moral similarities between different warring factions.  We are tracking down alien artifacts, building a crew, fighting bad guys, pulling off heists; there’s a lot going on.

(That’s a semicolon, in this case used like a super comma to designate a similar main clause that needs more separation than another comma could indicate).

There were a ton of characters too.  I wasn’t believing the romantic aspects but other than that, I liked the crew.  They worked together well despite being from different backgrounds and formed a fairly interesting dynamic.

My last main point is about the quasi cliffhanger. I’d love to read the next book to find out what happens, but I’m not a big enough fan of cliffhangers to read forward unless some form of editing is going to be involved.  I’d like a little more closure from Vol, Russell, and Gordon for where they are going next.  Also I really don’t think Jack’s storyline got enough closure for the amount of time we spent repeatedly hearing about it.

Would recommend for space opera fans that can take the editing

Thanks for checking out my SPSFC book review of Heritage by S.M. Warlow.  I was provided an e-copy for judging purposes and as always, all opinions are my own. Stay tuned for more team reviews!

Categories
Science Fiction

The Hermes Protocol by Chris M. Arnone (ARC Review)

Thanks to Bookish First for my copy of The Hermes Protocol.  If I hadn’t used points to claim this book I wouldn’t have read past the first chapter. I just utterly disliked it. I took some time to think about whether I disliked it due to personal bias regarding pronoun pandering and the book’s ridiculous level of PC content including a drawn out m/m sex scene in chapter one, but no, this is just not a good book.

Let’s look at the book info and my remaining thoughts.

Bookish quick facts:
  • Title: The Hermes Protocol
  • Series: —
  • Author: Chris M. Arnone
  • Publisher & Release: Castle Bridge Media, January 2023
  • Length: 300 pages
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐ there is probably a niche audience for this but it’s not the sci-fi crowd
Here’s the synopsis via Am*zon:

“Hello? Who are you? Where am I?”

Elise Corto-Intel is an Intel Operative sent on what should have been a routine job to break into a luxury high-rise, crack open a safe, and take what’s inside. But as soon as she touches the tiny microchip, a voice crackles to life in her comms revealing an artificial intelligence named Bastion. In a city-spanning adventure, they must work together in a race against the clock to recover Bastion’s stolen chip, escape from a maniacal hitwoman, and untangle the web of players chasing this illegal artificial intelligence before Elise is terminated from the Corto Corporation, her employer that is also her home, family, and her life.

Chris Arnone’s work of cyberpunk science fiction, THE HERMES PROTOCOL, follows an intelligence operative with cybernetic enhancements as she races through the futuristic otherworldly Jayu City, on a mission that challenges her ideas of family, loyalty, and what defines life itself

My thoughts:

Unfortunately I didn’t read the entire excerpt before requesting this book. I got as far as the cover and being a cyberpunk fan said: “oh cool, this looks awesome”.  Erk, well that’s why I finished it.

The one thing I’ll give Arnone credit for is not lecturing us regarding gender, identity, and whatnot. He hyperfixates on pronouns and confuses me with “they” and does a lot of other things that I don’t want to read about, but at no point does he lecture, which is how he earned two stars.

Besides that, I just didn’t like the book.  The AI gives away it’s entire game as soon as we meet it, so that there’s nothing to build on throughout the text.  I kept wondering what else would be built on the AI & ethics storyline, and the answer is nothing, all the way through to the anticlimactic ending.

The action throughout wasn’t that bad and the book was fast paced, but you can’t convince me that the characters are in danger when they’re more worried about pronouns than the danger.  The action scenes are fairly decent though.

There’s also a bit of a mystery storyline. Who hired who? Who wants the AI chip? Who is this mysterious person?  Looking forward to some epic twist, I was disappointed because the book gave some half assed answer to the who & why, then magically resolved everything.  There are hints at future complications but that does nothing for the story’s current resolution.

Lastly, another issue throughout is that (one would assume) the main character is supposed to be a pretty decent intelligence operative? For all the mishaps, fails, forgetting of situational protocol, not being able to fight, and other flops… I just never got the impression that Elise was good at her job.  She should be able to seduce someone. She shouldn’t gawk when she’s impersonating security. In every single situation she seemed like a crappy operative.

Overall, even though I’ve thoroughly examined the fact that I might just dislike this book because of the content, the truth is that it’s just not as good as a lot of other cyberpunk that I’ve read.  It’s PC Mr Potato Head with these cybernetic limbs and while there are some cool aspects, overall I can’t recommend The Hermes Protocol. (Oh, and for all of the stress related to the protocol, it magically became not a big deal at the end).

Thanks for checking out my book review of The Hermes Protocol by Chris M. Arnone.  I claimed my copy through my Bookish First points, and thank the website and publisher for my arc in exchange for an honest review. As always, all opinions are my own ♥️

Categories
Literary Fiction Science Fiction

The Avram Davidson Treasury: The Fifties

I’ve been following the SFF community for a few years now, four of which I’ve been fairly active online, and I can honestly say that I’ve never once seen Avram Davidson mentioned in any sort of bookish dialogue.  I’ve been trying to read more short stories, sample different American authors, and I’ve been holding onto the Avram Davidson Treasury for years now without reading it too closely. I tend to gravitate towards authors who are eclectic, are known to clash with publishers, and have found another to feature on veterans day as Davidson was a medic with the Navy in WWII.

Anyway, over the past few weeks I’ve read a story here and a story there, and have finally finished the first section: stories from The Fifties.

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This is a cool book though. The cast of science fiction authors who selected and introduced stories are a true who’s who of everyone, sharing fun facts about the author himself and the stories within. I don’t know if I would have picked up on a lot of idiosyncracies and plot points without those comments, and I feel like I’m learning a lot about early SFF in general

Peter S. Beagle calls our attention to the careful language used in ‘Ogre in the Vly‘, a theme that I did notice throughout. Davidson tends to pay a lot of attention to accents and language in general.  The Hugo winning short story “Or All the Seas With Oysters” is introduced by Guy Davenport, saying how the story lives on through plagiarism and it’s tenacity in making everyday objects into something so sinister.

Some I really enjoyed (Help! I am Dr. Morris Goldpepper and The Golem), some were sad (Now Let Us Sleep) and others I had to read a few times before grasping but laughed at the end (Author, Author).  Others just went over my head, like Dagon, Ogre In the Vly and Take Wooden Indians. I can see where Or All the Seas With Oysters won a Hugo but also, some of these are just good reading. Others, uh, not so much.

This post just deleted half of itself somehow and I can’t even think of what is missing, send help… I know I had commented in general that short stories are hard.  Trying to glean meaning and “what I’m supposed to be getting out of them” can be hard, especially when it’s 2023 and these were written in the fifties.  That’s why I liked the author introductions so much.  I always feel dumb reading short stories because I forget them SO quickly too.

If I missed anything I have four more eras to write about here and am curious to see how his writing changes over the years.  I’d also be interested in checking out the episodes of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that he edited, to see what eclectic types of stories he brought in.

Categories
Author Interviews & Guest Posts Science Fiction

The Sunday Brunch Author Interview Series Features JCM Berne!

Hey everyone, Brunch is back! Don’t confuse it with the guy on YouTube who started a new brunch, this is the Sunday Brunch Author Interview Series! We are now into year three of interviews featuring indie and traditionally published SFF authors hanging out and talking books, publishing advice, nerding out, random everything, and of course Brunch.

Episode 28 features indie author JCM Berne! He is the author of the Hybrid Helix series, a wonderfully readable and witty sci-fi space opera adventure with superheroes!

Read on for JCM’s thoughts on superhero sci-fi roots, sentient AI, his favorite Star Trek, and so much more. Enjoy!

🥞Welcome to the Sunday Brunch Series! As an introduction, can you tell everyone an interesting thing about yourself that isn’t in your author bio?

🎤My college and grad school roommate, John Chu, is a Hugo award winner. It’s extra funny because we weren’t really involved with writing at the time – it’s not as if we were in a creative writing program together; he was an electrical engineering student and I studied philosophy. I have one biological child and one adopted child; my wife, who I knew in high school (a very long time ago), also has one biological and one adopted child. All coincidence!

🥞What’s your brunch order today?

🎤 I’ll start with a bottomless mimosa and I’ll end up on the floor. Something about brunch mimosas makes them irresistible to me!

🥞Hmm let’s jump into talking about The Hybrid Helix and your superheroes in space, space opera! I love the concept of bringing big action figures into sci-fi. What led you to this mashup?

🎤I don’t really think of it as a mashup! Superheroes and sci fi have always gone together. Superman came here from another planet in a spaceship. The Fantastic Four got their powers from an accident in space. Jim Starlin wrote stories set entirely on other planets with no human characters whatsoever back in the 70’s (he invented Thanos and told a ton of Warlock stories that were amazing). More recently you have films like the 3rd Thor movie and Guardians of the Galaxy. I wanted to tell stories that honored those antecedents, mostly because I think superheroes fighting spaceships is cool. I do it in prose form because I can’t draw and because I’m too much of a control freak to share my vision with other people (like artists!)

🥞 This had me thinking, and he is 100% right! So much superhero content that we know and love is based in sci-fi. It’s cool, it works, it’s classic

Ok, so did you have any part of the whole series mapped out when you started, or was it a play by play writing each book?

🥞I get ideas for future books as I write. When I started writing Wistful Ascending I knew I wanted Rohan to grow and change, but I wasn’t sure how. I thought of the rough outline for Return of The Griffin while writing WA, and so on. Right now I have a very detailed outline for book 4 and a very loose idea for 5 and scattered bits and pieces for later books. I know how I want the series to end, and I thought of that while writing Return. So it’s a combination – I know what I want the characters to be in the broadest sense, but I didn’t try to fill in every detail before writing the first book.

🚀💢🚀Book….5? I love that more is coming🚀💢🚀

🥞One of sci-fi’s long running themes with first contact stories, is, I guess – who or what else is out there? I liked your bear-people (and their anatomy 🤣), how did that alien race form in your mind?

🎤I’m not entirely sure! There was a manga I read back in the 80’s or early 90’s in which a bunch of characters had animal heads – wolves, bears, etc. – for no apparent reason. It wasn’t explained, not that I remember, it was probably just something the artist thought was cool. (I want to say it was Outlanders but honestly I’m not sure). I remember a scene of a bear-headed character with his mouth hanging open, shocked by something, and it stuck in my head. I have no idea why. It wasn’t even my favorite manga or character.

I didn’t really intend for the Ursans to be a big part of the series past the first four chapters or so of Wistful Ascending. But they became useful, and now I’m stuck with them! But they’re fun to write, so no complaints.

I’ll tell you a secret – when I wrote them I didn’t have a clear idea about their origin. I figured that out while plotting Blood Reunion.

As far as that particular anatomical detail… I’m pretty sure Ursula was teasing. Never rely on narrators in my stories!

(🤣I took it as Canon 🤣) You’ll have to read to find out what this refers to

🥞Your ships and space station were sentient! What characteristics should a well written sentient AI have?

🎤I love this question. All organic things have such a vast array of drives that we evolved with. Hunger, thirst, pain, etc. An artificial being doesn’t have to have any of that. Their drives are going to be whatever they were designed to have – maybe an urge to serve, or to be useful, or to follow orders – and/or drives they choose themselves, if you imagine that they can self-program.

Which just means that a well written sentient AI has to have desires and needs, but there’s no reason to make them similar to organic creatures. You have a blank slate! If you think about whoever designed and built them you can figure out a lot about how they’ll behave.

Then, it’s always fun to have them malfunction in some way. After all, not every organic creature works ‘right.’ So I throw in a few AI’s that are not quite sane.

🥞I love audiobooks and I’ve heard it’s a bit hard for indie authors to connect with good narrators and have a good production experience, can you talk about yours at all or offer any tips?

🎤 My narrator, Wayne Farrell, did a fantastic job. I’m not sure whether finding him was skill or luck. I simply put my book up on ACX and offered money, listened to 50 auditions, and he was the best of them all. And while he’s worth every penny, I had to shell out quite a bit to pay him, and that came out of pocket. I’m lucky to have a fairly well-paying day job. Not every indie author has those kinds of resources.

I think if I had less cash to invest I’d try to find someone with less experience who would be willing to work more cheaply or for profit sharing. I know a couple of narrators looking to break in right now!

🥞Wormholes, sentient space stations, and the mention of a transporter incident in Wistful Ascending ‘s book plug… Would you like to share your favorite Star Trek series and why 😆

🎤 Hmm… probably DS9! I was raised on the original series and I haven’t really watched the shows that have come out over the past five years, just because I don’t subscribe to the right streaming services. I like DS9’s level of grit and the way the setting (a space station instead of a traveling ship) allowed for long term stories to develop. With something like Voyager, the recurring stories felt very forced – after all, the ship was traveling in a line, trying to get home. I’m a fan of big plots, not standalone episodes.

🥞 💯💯💯💯. Yep. DS9 is the only acceptable answer in my book 🤣

🥞 What other nerdy things are you into right now?

🎤 Generally, I read a lot of comics (mostly Marvel and a few independents), manga, manhwa, and sci-fi and fantasy novels. I watch a lot of martial arts and science fiction movies and tv shows, South Asian action movies and comedies, and cartoons from all over. I go through phases. My eyesight deteriorated a little in the past decade and I’ve read a lot less print than I did when I was younger (it’s nothing serious, just makes it inconvenient). I played quite a bit of D&D in my younger days, but not recently. On the creative side, all I do is write – I don’t paint miniatures or anything like that. I’m not much of a gamer, either.

🥞Do you have a favorite book, author, series of all time? (I know how hard that question is😅)

🎤I  don’t know! Probably Malazan Book of The Fallen. There’s so much depth and complexity to it, if I could only read one thing for the rest of my life, that would be it.

“Favorite” is such a tough word. Master of Kung Fu comics were super meaningful to me when I was young, but I don’t know that they hold up as well as some other things. I really like the first 35 or so volumes of Naruto. Jhereg, Dresden, and P.I. Garrett loom very large in my mind

🥞Thank you so much for taking the time to interview! This last is an open forum for you so feel free to talk about anything else you might want to say!

🎤Thank you so much for this opportunity!

Book 4 of the Hybrid Helix, Shadow of Hyperion, should be out this year. I’m hoping for September.

I just finished a wuxia fantasy novel that is very strange. I’m not sure if it will ever see the light of day, but if it does, you can bet I’ll plaster it all over social media.

It’s been an absolute thrill to become part of the indie book community this past year! Reviewers are so important, because without you, readers have no easy way to find stories that will work for them. I’m so grateful for you all!

You can find the author online at

Thank you so much for tuning into the Sunday Brunch Series!  I’m opening back up to authors so do feel free to contact me if you’d like to feature.  As always, thank you all for supporting indie authors and do check out the link if you are interested in JCM’s books!

Categories
Science Fiction

SPSFC2 Quarterfinalist Review: The Empyrean by Katherine Franklin

The Empyrean by Katherine Franklin

The At Boundary’s Edge team has narrowed our original allocation down from 28 books to 7 “Quarterfinalists”, all of which we are now reading in full and scoring out of 10 points. The top three books will move forward as semifinalists. As always, this is my own review and reflects only my own individual opinion and score, not that of the team

As one additional note here, the first round is now complete! We chose to read seven full books and you’ve seen my reviews for each of those.  Soon there will be semifinalist announcements from the competition and I’ll know which six books we are reading next!

Alright everyone, my last “quarterfinalist” review is for a space opera called The Empyrean! Let’s take a quick look at the book first and then I’ll share my thoughts.

Bookish Quick Facts:
  • Title: The Empyrean
  • Series: Galaxy of Exiles #1
  • Author: Katherine Franklin
  • Release: Self pub, 2022
  • Length: 478 pages (Paperback length)
  • SPSFC Rating: 5.5/10
Here’s the synopsis via Am*zon:

Emotion is a weapon. Harnessing its power could destroy worlds.

Palia’s emotions are in turmoil. After watching her son succumb to Empyrean fire, she barely escapes the same fate. Guilt ridden and alone, she will not stop until his killer is brought to justice.

The Protectorate forbids Ferrash to have emotions. That suits him, since he cannot avoid the people who control the Empyrean. Making this sacrifice prevents them from hijacking his feelings and using them as a weapon against him.

When Ferrash spots Palia’s ship venting atmosphere, he is forced to save her. Having an enemy from the Hegemony on board could see him accused of treason. But when the Empyrean reveals its potential as a destroyer of worlds and Palia’s link to it, Ferrash knows he can’t let her leave.

With billions at risk of succumbing to the Empyrean weapon, can the enemies join forces and prevent the same fate that killed Palia’s son?

My thoughts:

I first want to add the disclaimer that I purchased the audiobook (I can only stare at an e reader for so long). I physically read the first 150 pages in order to judge technical presentation, editing, etc.  The fact that I listened to the rest is not affecting my score nor am I going to comment on the experience, other than that it was a decent production and James Alper seems like a solid narrator.

So, about the book! I liked the overall idea quite a bit.  The story opens with a planetary explosion and utter devastation, vivid imagery, and it was enough to snag my attention from the get go.

Broadly, I can appreciate the plot regarding interstellar weapons potential and the fact that emotion could be harvested as a source of power, magic, fire. The Empyrean is full of interesting concepts.

It’s also got a few likeable characters and, my favorite part, a hilarious but all too brief episode with a rather large animal companion.

Where this story ended up falling flat for me was in execution.  There were some big, overarching mysteries hinted at throughout, and the thing is that for an author to hold onto those mysteries and just keep dropping hints, the reward has to be worth it.  I really truly hate to say that the “answers” fell flat for me and that the entire final resolution was a bit of a weak setup for the next book in the series.  Many characters and events appeared and vanished throughout without the page time they needed to land an impact.

While individually I liked Palia and Bek, Farrash felt pretty out there. The romance felt more like a proximity attraction without much to ground it on, so the … Uh … Pinnacle of Action scene didn’t land either. The concept did, I get what the author was going for, I just couldn’t see it.

I’m smacking myself because this sounds harsher than I mean it to.  For editing and presentation this is one of our stronger books, and if I had spent a tiny bit less time feeling lost I would have enjoyed it much more overall.  It’s a great plot that just got lost in the execution.

(Plus, I’m one of those blind-ish people who endlessly appreciate books that are turned into audio and made affordable).

TLDR: Overall – The Empyrean held a great idea and a lot of wonderful imagery, but overall it didn’t hit home for me.  I’m rating 5.5/10 for SPSFC purposes and would recommend for fans of space operas with broad scopes!

Thanks for checking out my book review of The Empyrean by Katherine Franklin! I was provided a free digital copy for judging purposes, although I purchased the audiobook on my own to help me finish our books (and save my eyes) within the allotted time frame. As always, all opinions are my own 🚀