Catching up ... the quick and dirty version

Two things first. (Three maybe?) School has started once again in more than one way. I am firmly ensconced in the last real class of my master's degree (All I have left is a practicum and the thesis). Also all the kiddies have trotted off to be edumacated. That means that some poor unfortunate soul has to step in when their regular teacher can't stand them any longer or is sick (right teachers become immune to everything!) So between the two my reading and typing time has been restricted (who am I kidding? I read just as much but don't do the typing.) Lastly I am a homebrewer ... don't know if I've mentioned that before. Believe me when I say it, me having the brewing setup I have is like giving a kid a candy making machine. I have been spending an enormous amount of time in this endeavor. The latest batch is an homage to Russian River's Pliney the Elder. My professor friend at school, Gavin Keulks, has accused me more than once of brewing the beer from Waterland that takes you through all the stages of inebriation. My homage to Pliney is in fact that brew. Unlike anything I've had before. I know I am a true beer snob -- to satisfy my craving I have to brew it myself. The upshot here is that between schools and brewing and drinking what I brew, I haven't read as much as I did over the long and glorious summer. So looking back at the peacefulness that was my summer I have a lot of books to speak about.

Now to the 'Catching up' part of our program.


Dark December by Alfred Coppel

Fantastic vintage novel. What made it especially good is that it is set in the same part of the world as me. This book is mainly about the journey. The bulk of this novel deals when a Major attempting to find his family in the aftermath of a prolonged nuclear war the United Stated eventually won. I had a problem with the Major walking through the bomb craters and commenting about how his boots crunched over the glass the earth had been turned into. Could that happen? Could you walk through that and live? I don't know. I do know that its a great book with a bittersweet ending. I'm glad that Mr Coppel chose to have a sort of a downer ending. Good for him.


Cataclysm by Don Pendleton

When I was but a wee slip of a lad - just eight or nine years old, I wasn' t the best reader. In fact when I was a fifth grader I was having my reading lessons with the first graders. I hated that. I remember it being unbelievably stupid. Stories about living mustard and ketchup bottles and being surrounded by little kids. (yes I know a fifth grader is still a little kid but c'mon!?! Me with first graders?) It was over the summer of my fourth grade year when I discovered my dad's books (And no I don't mean his Playboys; I didn't find those till the next year). He had the whole run of the Executioner books by Don Pendleton starring Mack Bolan. So I just started in with the first one War Against the Mafia and continued reading until I either ran out of books or got bored. What ever it was I eventually stopped reading them. However, not before I had written a story for my fifth grade teacher about my hero called simply enough 'My Hero Mack Bolan'.

Quite a bit back I was looking through the sci-fi section of one of my local book stores 'Paperback Exchange'. In my possecion was more than a hundred dollars in store credit so I was willing to take a risk with free books. That's when I saw Cataclysm written by who else? My old friend Don Pendelton. I wish I had read it sooner. It was unputdownable. The plot was the same as The Hab Theory but lacked all the strange forbidden archeology tidbits like the weird metal disks and books. Also The Hab Theory ended at the end. Like the last sentence is ' Then the lights went out all over the world. Forever.' or some such. Cataclysm deals with the same sort of deal too. The world has been destroyed before and is about to be destroyed again. But the keeps going and doesn't just stop with that. If you haven't read either The Hab Theory or Cataclysm it would be pretty righteous to read Hab and then read Cataclysm. Had I but known that's what I'd've done.



The Outer Limits: The Vanished by John Peel

Ummmm .... I know this is a kid's book and all and it's very short. Also it's an 'Outer Limits' book so I should have expected some wacky twist. But it was listed on Scifan.com in the 'Last Man' section so I was expecting something other than what I got. Short version ... this wasn't apocalyptic. Don't waste your time or money with it. Since I got it from paperbackswap.com I only lost the time I spent reading it. So good news/bad news: free book but it only took me about an hour to read.



What Niall Saw by Brian Cullen

This book is one of the bleakest (most bleak?) books I've read in a good long time. It's offered as the journal of boy who is seven years and seven days old as the book starts. He gets right into the meat of the story as well. The whole family is under the stairs with their dog (a wolfhound my personal favorite dog breed) because the bombs have fallen. Over the course of the story there are more bomb detonations which Niall describes as 'shakes'. Little by little his situation worsens. They deal with hunger (them and the dog), cabin fever from being sequestered in the closet under the stairs for weeks on end, and roaming scavengers looking for food. About 3/4 of the way into the book they make their escape. The ending stayed with me a very long time. It ranks with When the Wind Blows, Level 7, and On the Beach in terms of downer endings. If you haven't read it yet find it and do so.



Why Do Birds by Damon Knight

This book is apocalyptic but ... I still recommend you avoid it. Avoid it if you're looking for a PA read that is. Sure the world ends. It is an 'end at the end' type book. That wasn't why I don't recommend it. I just hated that Mr. Knight wrote a bunch of I guess mysteries (for lack of a better phrase) that he never solved for the readers. Foreshadowings that were just left hanging. Big ones too. What was the ring? Who was visiting him at night? Where did he come from, the past or somewhere else? How did the aliens overcome the phase shift problem with suspended animation? What did the aliens do with all the people who were in suspended animation? The aliens defiantly swooped in and carted the majority of humans away but were they taken to another planet like in Knowing or did they meet an end like that of the humans from the classic Twilight Zone episode also written by Damon Knight? More questions raised than were answered. Yup ... this is an irritating book I recommend you avoid. Or perhaps I just missed it … who knows?

Why Do Birds was a book that I wished I hadn't finished. I have never stopped in mid-book and tossed it the trash but with this book if I could somehow go back in time and somehow spirit it away, that's what I'd do. The only other book I felt this way about is Blood of the Children by Alan Rodgers. When I think of horror I don't think Stephen King I think Alan Rodgers. Blood of the Children is the most vile book I've read (three times). But if you really feel you must read Why Do Birds, I'm posting it at http://www.paperbackswap.com/ and you can have it for free. Help yourself.



The Plague Trilogy by Jean Ure

These three books are: Plague 99, Come Lucky April, and Watchers at the Shrine. I loved the first one. As it starts out, Plague 99 has two friends, Fran and Harry (short for Harriet), going on a camping trip for a month. They are to have no contact with the outside world whatsoever. Harry is the outgoing one and forces Fran, who is very introverted, to go with them. At the last second Harry breaks her leg and Fran after a bit of convincing goes on without her. When Fran gets back she finds London empty, wild parties going on and that Harry has gone bat-shit-crazy. Also follows the adventures of a young man called Shahid. And of course Shahid eventually meets up with Harry and Fran just before Harry disappears.

Come Lucky April is not nearly as good as Plague 99 but it does have the extra bonus of answering the questions left at the end of the first book. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of London in ruins. Ure does a pretty fantastic job with this. The only thing I don't understand is where did all the man-hating come from? Seriously. Also I never could figure out how they sustain any population under the societal structure. I mean what the hell?

The last book Watchers at the Shrine Follows April's son as he escapes the society a decade or so after the events of Come Lucky April. It was good as well. But only because it ended the trilogy I guess. After the events of the second book I would have figured that she might lay off the whole 'men are terrible' bit just on the choice that April makes at the end of it. But no, she goes even further with how men left uncivilized are horrid creatures.

Final analysis. Plague 99 is definitely worth the price and time to read. Come Lucky April is a mixed bag at best but worth it if for no other reason than to wrap up the loose ends from the end of Plague 99. I can say with no doubt that Watchers at the Shrine can be skipped (unless you are like me and insist on completion).



The Postman by David Brin.

I can't praise this book enough. I would have read it much sooner but I am a Johnny Come Lately to the glory that is The Postman. I have only thought of it as the Kevin Costner pile of crap. I had read that he had butchered the book but I thought it has to pretty close to the book right? And it wasn't too far of a stretch for the postman to be the hero who defeats the villain in a stunning display of strength. After all that is how A Meeting at Corvallis and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe ended. I really had no idea just how great it is. I'd say The Postman is easily in my top twenty. I was almost ashamed of myself for letting it sit on The Bookself of Doom for the three years I allowed it to. To be fair I have the copy the Kevin on the front and I'd seen the movie and part of Waterworld. If you are a fan of PA fiction and haven't read this yet it's almost as big a crime as not yet reading The Stand, seriously. Yes, it's that good.



Twilight World by Poul Anderson

This is a nuclear bomb destroys the world type book with a twist. The twist is that inexplicably the weird/crazy/super power type mutations happen in the first generation. No one apparently gets cancer - they all turn into mutants some with powers. About half way through the mutants who are powerful and also smart leave the planet and colonize Mars. They figure that if they stay on Earth the mutations will just get worse so they get while the gettins good. It's a good book if you can suspend your disbelief and the thin nature of the science. I don't expect much from my book other than they be fun to read and not laden with spelling and or grammatical errors.



Year Zero by Jeff Long

I avoided this book for awhile. I knew it was out there and had seen it listed with other PA books. I even saw at a book store and read the inside flap. I was still sorta leery because of the Christian themes. I tend to avoid these type of novels that all seem to be a variation of the whole 'Left Behind' series. And to that I say 'no thanks'. All of that was true until I went into the local Goodwill. I can't resist looking at the books there any more than I can resist looking in used book stores as I pass. It was there I found Year Zero for a measly $4.99. A pretty sweet deal. I was still not sure about it though so I tucked it away on the Bookshelves of Doom and promptly forgot about it. It sat there for I don't know how long really, awhile. I picked it up and started reading couple weeks ago. Once I got into it I couldn't stop reading.

The general premise is that a very nasty, super contagious, and uniformly fatal plague is unleashed. It spreads from the tiny island of Corfu in Greece and eventually spreads all across the globe and the last bastion for humanity turns out to be Los Alamos. It starts because Niko, the collector, liked to find artifacts and the best of these in his opinion were sealed vials. He broke them open a give the ol' sniffer sniff to the rarified air of millennia past. But inside of a very intricate puzzle lies four vials filled with a nasty virus. It is invisible and as it kills you it erases you; both you and your memories.

This turned out to be an absolutely fantastic book. Like every other book that is this good and has been left to languish on my shelf. I regret not getting to it much sooner and wonder what other books have been similarly avoided for no good reason. I figure I'll get to them all in good time. I am after all nearly out of books to find and must be content to wait for them to come to me.

The book this most reminded me of was The Dying by Leslie Horvitz. Mainly just the relentless onslaught of the virus and descriptions of deserted cities. I haven't read The Dying in a good long time but as I read it I kept thinking about how it reminded me of that book.



Thus ends the update. I guess it wasn't so quick. But it least I'm caught up and was able to separate two pieces of chafe from the wheat.

An Anniversary Inspired Contest

The first post to this humble blog was Thursday, September 18, 2008. So in honor of this glorious event I will be giving away some of my duplicate books. Remember in school when there was the matching section of the test? Anyhow that will be the way in which you -yes YOU - will have in your possession the following books:

The Stand (uncut) by Stephen King
Ill Wind by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason
Plague byGraham Masterton
Afterwar by Janet Morris
Dust by Charles Pellegrino
Shiva Descending by Gregory Benford and William Rotsler
Black Sun by Robert Leininger
The Taking by Dean Koontz


Match the following books to their synopsis:



A)Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
B) Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
C) Fire by Alan Rodgers
D)Blood Crazy by Simon Clark
E)Dark Advent by Brian Hodge
F)Blakely’s Ark by Ian MacMillan
G)Dust by Charles Pellegrino
H)Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt
I) Skeletons by Al Sarrantonio

1) A crazed geneticist seeks to bring about Armageddon through the magic of science - the dead rise and The Beast is loosed upon the world.

2) The dead fight the living until there is a single man and woman left. Abraham Lincoln gets a chance for vengeance on John Wilkes Booth.

3) Sue Wanda. Fear death by water.

4)Humanity turns into a bunch of neanderthals. Did Stephen king lift the idea from this to write Cell? Perhaps.

5) A quest for the lost treasures of The Roadmakers.

6) The smallest of insects prove to be man's undoing.

7) Much like The Stand but without Randal Flagg

8) A hermit returns to civilization to find it gone. Traces him and his family as they slowly return to the cave.

9) In the aftermath of a plague a young man gets a ticket to paradise.


First one to correctly match all nine gets the prize. Happy reading. Post answers in the comments. Winner announced November 18th.

Loose ends and other ramblings

First bit of business here. I need to write about Gone by Micheal Grant. This is another of the interminable 'all the adults have died/vanished and the children have to fend for themselves' type book. The plot line was done much better in books like Empty World by John Christopher or even The Girl Who Owned A City by O. T. Nelson (even though I didn't care for the book much). This book takes a slightly new variation of that theme with the use of a giant bubble or force field or some such thing. Placed there by Alien Space Bats as far as I can figure out. I'm not giving anything away either because the author includes a handy map on the inside cover that gives all the details of 'The FAYZ' (Fallout Alley Youth Zone) and conveniently mentions that the 'zone' has a diameter of 20 miles and is centered on the power plant. Now I for one didn't read the opening teaser from the inside flap:


'The Little girl had the power. She had the power Sam had, or at least something like it.
The power he had used in panic to create an impossible light.
The power he had used and almost killed someone with.
The power he had just used again, dooming the very person he was trying so hard to save.
He was not the only one. He was not the only freak. There was -or had been- one other.
Somehow that realisation was not comforting.'

I of course like to just dive into a good post-apocalyptic book with almost no warning of what lurks within its covers. I didn't read the the inside tease until I was finished with the book and I only looked at the two maps when I was well past the middle of the book.

The only warnings I gave to myself about what was about to unfold was the blurb on the back...

In the blink of an eye. Everyone disappears. GONE.
Except for the young. Teens. Middle schoolers. Toddlers. But not one single adult. No teachers, no cops, no doctors, no parents. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened.
Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents—unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers—that grow stronger by the day.
It's a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen, a fight is shaping up. Townies against rich kids. Bullies against the weak. Powerful against powerless. And time is running out: On your birthday, you disappear just like everyone else...

and the video preview from the youtubes (since when did books begin to get their own trailer?) and the review from VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates ... I guess whoever they are): 'If Stephen King had written Lord of the Flies, it might have a little like this'.

What I'm getting at is that everything I read or had looked into gave me the impression I was in for a fantastic PA experience. Well I was wrong. I did enjoy the book a great deal. But it wasn't apocalyptic. The first couple chapters give you the impression the event in the book is an earth shattering one. There is a bit of mayhem when the kids discover the adults have all vanished but most of that is the typical 'lets pig out on junk food and drink some beers' type of shenanigans. The bully begins to flex his muscles with no fear of an adult stopping him. The guy even gets a nifty name 'Orc'. Him and a bunch of other ne'er-do-wells take control of the town and demand tribute. And because bullies are notoriously stupid they don't plan ahead and the town is retaken by a group of even stronger and much more vicious bullies from The Coates Academy.

This book is quite a lot like Lord of the Flies, except they were sealed in a bubble and not on an island. Even the bubble scenario has been done quite a bit. Firstly in the book Spin by Robert Charles Wilson the entire Earth is sealed in a bubble. In the bubble time passes very quickly and at the normal rate for the rest of the universe. Secondly it is nearly a carbon copy of the scenario in the comic book Girls by Jonathan and Joshua Luna .... well just the dome bit and not 14 and over going 'poof' and the powers and what not. Other than that it's exactly the same. Also a bit of breaking news here. Apparently Stephen King has a new novel that will be released soon called 'Under the Dome' or 'The Cannibals' depending on the sites you are reading. He said it's deals with the same sort of material as The Stand but more allegorical. Anyhow this is the first sentence from the synopsis 'On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field.' So it looks as though Mr. King is jumping on the bandwagon. I don't care if he did write the original manuscript in 1980- I am still calling him a bandwagon jumper. I figure he thinks he may just as well get it out there while the getting is good. Stephenking.com has a handy excerpt of it. I won't be reading it though because of the whole me preferring paper deal.

Don't get me wrong though ... Hunger (Gone II) is out and on my list to read. Can't wait.

Look for posting of:

The Plague Trilogy by Jean Ure

Dark December by Alfred Coppel

Cataclysm by Don Pendelton

What Naill Saw by Brian Cullen

The Postman by David Brin

The Vanished by John Peel

Why Do Birds by Damon Knight

Twilight World by Poul Anderson

** yes I've been a bit lazy in posting. I'll get to work soon and whatnot **

The Machine Stops

No this post will not be about the short story The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster. I can't I don't own it yet. This is a rare short story that is in fact quite simple to find and read on the interwebs. I haven't read it because I prefer to read the real pen and paper story. Oh well.

Last week I went on my yearly sporting event viewing with the fam. I guess I have to do this once a year to spend some quality time with my father-in-law. It's not a big deal really. Anyhow I went to the annual viewing of the local baseball team. The Salem-Keizer Volcanoes. I had a pretty good time. We got some general admission seats so I got to sit in camp chair. Let me tell you this was way better then a box seat or a seat in the bleachers. Great time was had by all.

I even brought the book I was starting to the game because we got there early and I get bored way too quickly. Anyhow I sat there reading for a bit and relaxing. That's when I saw it. There was this old dude giving me the old stink eye. I couldn't figure it out. Was he grumpy because I was reading at a ball game? Was he upset because I had smuggled in some Mike 'n' Ikes and Lemonheads? What was his deal? It freaked me out so much I left to get a soda.

Now my wife prefers diet soda so that's what I got. I couldn't help but notice the soda jerk didn't give me a lid or a straw. I asked him and it sounded to me like he said he was out. Fine whatever... I went back to my chair and sat down picked up my book again and continued to read. The whole no lid thing really bugged me. My wife being a thinking sort suggested I go to a different counter and get a the straw/lid combo from them. Great idea I say. When I stand up though my book falls and hits the cup. DAMN IT! Now the ballpark has made me scuff my book.

I keep going though. I really want that lid/straw. I get to the other snack bar and ask them for the lid/straw. Guess what? Seems the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing fugitives from evolution who are regular attendees of the ballpark (also the same sort who kick the backs of theater seats) can't be bothered to throw their trash in the proper place (and the ball park doesn't want to hire someone to do it) so the result is that the park is no longer giving out the lid/straw combo with the drinks. JUMPING JESUS ON A POGOSTICK! That's got to be the third most important element of a successful beverage enjoying occasion (#1 being the beverage and #2 being the cup). And when I got back the old guy was still giving me the ol' hairy eyeball. WTF. Hard to read when when someone is staring at you.

Woooo got that out of the way. That was a full-on Rick Emerson style rant. Wow. Anyhow the point being here is the book I started was Ill Wind by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason. It was a great book. Took me about a week to read it though. Not because it was a bad or boring book but because that week was very busy. First was the whole ball game issue. I should have known it would be a long reading process. I also had to contend with a bit of bottling my home brew and four days on the Columbia River attempting to catch the wily salmon. Not to worry I succeeded at both of those things quite handily.

On to the book discussion now. In Ill Wind by Anderson and Beason (and yes I had to keep telling people it wasn't about farts much like I had to tell my brother-in-law Matt that The Elegance of the Hedgehog had nothing to do with Ron Jeremy) the end comes about from 'The Petroplague'. After a large oil tanker 'The Zoroaster' hits the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay and begins to spill out a giant oil slick it looks like it's going to be the worst disaster the world has seen. Not to worry however because a crafty scientist has bioengineering a microbe that eats petroleum. Neet huh? Of course things go from bad to worse when the microbe gets out of control and eats everything that is petroleum based. It doesn't take much time at all and the world is back in the Dark Ages again.

It's a great book and if I had to compare it anything else I would say it is sort of a mixture of Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and the Emberverse Series by S. M. Serling. The portion of Hammer I'm talking about is the simple scientists attempting to save what technology there is and using a bunch of improvised weapons to do the job properly. Yes I am perfectly aware of all the negative reviews saying Niven and Pournell are two racist bastards. Whatever. I for one think Lucifer's Hammer was pretty terrific (Tee double e double r double i double c c c ... woot). The portion of the Emberverse Series I saw was just the fact that machines didn't operate any longer and some scientists mentioning that new Dark Ages may descend on the Earth. The Emberverse Series is pretty fantastic in its own right as well. All the PA type stuff happens in the first book 'Dies the Fire' and the rest of the books just go into nation building. The part about the series that bugged me about the series and it not that they don't take advantage of methods of energy that are not fossil fuels or the Alien Space Bats whatever. I had a big problem with everyone all over the Earth at the same time deciding 'Hey I know lets all make armor, swords and crossbows... It'd be great to live in castles too.' I kept expecting them to do it in Ill Wind as well. Well hats off to Anderson and Beason for avoiding that particular pitfall and providing my with an outstanding diversion from everyday bordom.

Oh ya ... the old stink eye dude. Seems the place we chose to set up our camp chairs was also the place where the opposing team (The Canadians? Maybe?) came on the field. The old guy was just wanting to make sure he gave them an 'attaboy' and wish them luck. Wasn't about me at all.

Apocalypse by Suicide

Alright, so I just finished The Suicide Collectors by David Oppegaard. This book is set in the near future. It's a bit hard to tell from the story but careful readers will pick up on some pretty subtle clues. Clue the First: the roads are made of a special kind of super strong concrete (I tried to remember what they call it but no luck.) Clue the Second: Cars are powered by hydrogen fuel cells and have voice recognition. Clue the Third: Factories are run by robots (people get pissed about this and riot). So the book takes place in the future but the future is still a very recognisable and not too distant place.

The end of humanity in this book comes to pass in an interesting but not unheard of way. Everyone on the planet gives up on life and decides the best option is to kill themselves. The story picks up 5 years after the malady has pretty much burned itself out and few people are left. A bit is talked about of 'The 10 Percent'. Mr Oppegaard doesn't give many details but I guess The Despair is 90% fatal and the rest of the people have a bit of resistance to it.

The majority of the book deals with the conflict between Norman and a mysterious group of people who are known as 'Collectors'. These people apparently swoop in and collect the bodies of people who have killed themselves. They're pissed because Norman kills one instead of allowing them take the body of his wife. The specific mechanism of how these collectors figure out where the dead are or why exactly they collect them are never really gone into.

As I looked about the interwebs at different reviews I found a couple interesting things. Some I agree with such as the book being a damn fine work of fiction and the Collectors being like the 'bring out your dead' folks from the Black Death. Other things I totally disagree with.

First: Some found it unlikely that water would still be operating without any human intervention. Problem a. I watched Life After People recently and I'm nearly sure they said water would be running for years, problem b. in Earth Abides the water runs for decades as does the sewer system and no one had any difficulty believing that and problem c. the BOOK TAKES PLACE IN THE FUTURE. C'mon! We believe the fuel cells, the duracrete (is that the name of it?) and the completely automated factories but balk at the water still running in five years? That was a much smaller leap than cars and helicopters running without gas in five years. Just sayin.

Second this review taken directly from the author's website:

"Just when it seems that there are no new plots left to write about, David Oppegaard has come up with a doozy. His THE SUICIDE COLLECTORS takes us to a startling theme we haven't encountered before, with every page a thrilling new surprise."

-Stan Lee, writer, editor, & former Marvel Comics chairman

That is Stan Lee talking there. I guess he never saw The Happening, the M. Night Shyamalan pile. Now if Night had ran the movie to it's logical conclusion a world like the one in the Collectors would be the result.

Also he must have overlooked The Bridge by D. Keith Mano. Humanity also kills themselves in this book. I have read reviews of it here done in a much better depth than I intend on giving it. I will say only one thing here. I don't think the book is a PETA gone wild sort of thing, I took it as being more like The Handicapper General from Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut taken to the extreme of everything being equal not just people. In The Bridge everyone dies because killing anything - even bacteria when you breath - is illegal.

Lastly he must have overlooked The Suicide Plague by Ed Naha. I haven't read this one yet but it's not too much of a stretch to guess at the basic plot of the book.

So Stan Lee, you are wrong this has been done at least twice before and perhaps a third so it is definitely not 'a startling theme we haven't encountered before'. Just so you know.

That being said, this is a fantastic book and would be an excellent addition to any PA library. Even mine.