NEWSCAST
by
HARL VINCENT
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dark culture, movies, books, toys, papercraft.
Tag Archive for 'Science Fiction'
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Welcome to Steampunk/Alternate History week at Dark in the Dark. I’m joining a group of book bloggers who have united to declare their support for Steampunk/Alt History authors such as D.M. Cornish, Jenny Davidson, and Ysabeau Wilce. Check out this link here for more details and a list of participating blog posts.
I love D.M Cornish. I’m not going to spend too much time talking about him, because instead you can read my review of the first two books in D.M. Cornish’s Monster Blood Tattoo series (now re-titled “The Foundling’s Tale” series). It is worth noting that the third book in the series is out
Personally, I think that it’s impossible to talk about Steampunk without mentioning Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. This trilogy is comprised of The Golden Compass (which you probably know was made into an awful movie), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. This series gets a little weird in the last book. And when I say weird, you know that it means weird, and usually when I say “weird”, I mean AWESOME. They stand out as some of the most memorable books I’ve read over the past few years. They have it all: Intricate clockwork technology, dirigibles, talking polar bears, deranged adults, you name it!
More books that I’ve reviewed here which I think belong under the Steampunk/Alternate History moniker:
- The Amazing: Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson – Woo hoo! You should read this now! NOW!
- Awful Dreck: Baltimore by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden – I just re-read my review and I can’t believe how mean I was.
- Disappointing: Seance for a Vampire by Fred Saberhagen
But enough about me and my opinions. As I mentioned above, there are other blogs with Steampunk/Alt History stuff going on. Bookshelves of Doom is having a cover illustration contest (which ends today – oops). Also don’t forget to stop by Chasing Ray to see what other bloggers are writing about this week.
You may or may not be surprised to find out that I collect a little art here and there. There are a couple of artists that I’m interested in and I buy prints mostly, but every once in a while I splurge and buy a piece of original art. What with the economy like it is, we monsters with large savings accounts and/or diabolical ways of procuring our day-to-day needs can afford some art here and there. And I like it. Most of the time original art is way better than prints or photos.
Knowing that, you’ll probably understand that I was pretty excited when a piece by one of my favorite artists, Jaime Zollars, was being auctioned recently to benefit 826LA, “a Los Angeles-based nonprofit writing and tutoring center fronted by a fully-functioning convenience store for time travelers.” When the bidding started, I was ruthless and succeeded in intimidating the other bidders with my persistent bidding, and also my winged monkey army.
I don’t know what it is about Zollars’ art. She has this way of portraying fairy-tale-like heroines in interesting ways. I have a handful of her prints and a few original pieces in my collection. Gallery Nucleus has just started selling prints of one of my favorite pieces by her, Garden Secret. The art on auction was part of a larger group of art by children’s book illustrators inspired by the book Oh No (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World) written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Dan Santat. Each auction also included an official police report filled out by the artist, a copy of the book Oh No! (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World) signed by Mac Barnett and Dan Santat, and an exclusive limited edition print.
After winning the auction, I spent what seemed like months on pins and needles waiting for my delivery. I just had to share with everyone when it finally came.
The Package
Woo Hoo!
A Copy of the Book
Awesome Story and Art
Bonus 826LA Brochure and Letter of Thanks
The limited edition print is really awesome.
The official police report.
And finally, the Zollars piece!
You can see a close-up of the piece here. The book, Oh No, is available here
It seems like a meme that’s been coming up a lot lately, for me at least, has been: Two great flavors that go great together. This is definitely the case with this book. Great Flavor Number One being: aliens. Great Flavor Number Two being: Exploring ancient ruins, haunted houses, and/or derelict ships. If you’re anything like me, when you first saw the movie Alien, the most fascinating part of the movie was when they went into the giant derelict space ship and found H.R. Giger’s “space jockey”. That was one of those moments where you remember exactly where you were when you first experienced it. Of course it helps that I was in a movie theater. That was awesome!
The title of this book is Spacewreck – Ghostships and Derelicts of Space and it was published in 1979. The author, Stewart Cowley, wrote a couple of these that all went together and were called “Terran Trade Authority Handbooks”. They’ve become something like collectors items over the years. Besides Spacewreck, there was Starliners, Great Space Battles, and Spacecraft 2100 to 2200 AD. None of the other books held as much interest for me, though, because they didn’t have ruined civilizations, scientific experiments gone horribly wrong, or haunted planets.
Illustration from Spacewreck by Tony Roberts
In addition to the great stories, the book is lavishly illustrated. To me, this is like an extensive catalog of exotic vacation spots. I would definitely pay money to visit a quarantined space derelict where an ill-advised agricultural experiment went awry and took the lives of an entire crew.
Illustration from Spacewreck by Tony Roberts
Another place I would pay to visit is a planet with numerous giant derelict space ships that are worshiped as holy places by the strange humanoid inhabitants. Are they the descended from the space voyagers, or did the unlucky visitors meet their fates on the planet, and leave massive crumbling hulks of alien technology?
Illustration from Spacewreck by Bob Layzell
One place that sounds too horrible to visit is a planet where the wars got out of hand and thrust the population back to stone-age civilization.
Illustration from Spacewreck by Fred Gambino
Of course, none of these places are real, but a monster can certainly dream. Here’s a list of illustrators who contributed to this book (links go to artist websites): Alan Daniels, Peter Elson, Fred Gambino, Colin Hay, Robin Hiddon, Bob Layzell, Angus McKie, and Tony Roberts. It’s interesting to see what these artists are up to thirty years later.
This isn’t so much a book review as it is a “look at this cool thing. Wow!” article, but my OCD is forcing me to grade this book in the normal manner.
Creepy Factor: 3 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 2 out of 5 (short stories)
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 5 out of 5
Final result: Look at this cool thing. Wow!
Spacewreck – Ghostships and Derelicts of Space by Stewart Cowley – Hamlyn Publishing – 1979
Buy Spacewreck at Amazon
Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. See you next time!
More mini reviews to put a further dent into my horrible book review backlog. Those pressed for time may wish to check the executive summaries (in italics) at the end of each mini where I rate each book for creepiness, suspense, violence, and erotic factor. Each executive summary ends with a one word summary of the book.
Several years of writing regularly has made it clear to me that it is deceptively hard to be entertaining. Roman Dirge is among those gifted with the ability to make even the weakest plot sing with life (or death, as the case may be). Read LENORE – WEDGIES to keep up with what dead megalomaniac little girls are up to these days. This book is the graphic novel equivalent of doing things like taping firecrackers to tomato worms, playing how-and-tell with scab collections, or putting a deceased, mummified lizard on a giant ant pile to see what happens. THRILL! As Lenore spends three pages playing with a dead frog. GASP! As Lenore realizes she pickled a fairy queen. LAUGH! As Lenore sends a bacteria-eating slime monster back to hell with a plunger. Creepy, funny, violent, and repulsive. Rotten. (Titan Books, 2010) Lenore: Wedgies on Amazon
As usual, Tim Powers carefully piles painful injures on his protagonist in DINNER AT DEVIANT’S PALACE. When Greg Rivas is hired by a brandy baron in post-apocalypse Los Angeles, he discovers that his mission is to rescue and deprogram his first love, who has been kidnapped by a dangerous religious cult. Along the way, he discovers the truth in the Residents lyric: “The only really perfect love is one that gets away.” As mentioned before, he also collects a dizzying array of non-fatal injuries, and we swoon as part of his skull becomes squishy. This being a dent left by a falling architectural feature after his meeting with the Deviant, who I can’t tell you about without spoiling the book. I thought the book was OK. Published right after THE ANUBIS GATES (still my favorite by Powers), this book was the 1985 Philip K. Dick Award winner and a Nebula Award nominee. Creepy, suspenseful, violent, and more about love than sex. Painful. (Ace Books, 1985) Dinner at Deviant’s Palace on Amazon
When I read the second novel in the Detective Inspector Chen series by Liz Williams, I wondered if the second was inferior, or if the novelty had worn off a little and made it seem not quite as stellar as the first. PRECIOUS DRAGON, the third book in the series, has made things clear by being made of awesome and dark fantasy based on Chinese mythology with strong female characters. If anything at all must be clear by my continued celebration of this series, it is that I am in love with it. You readers thirsting for truly imaginative adventure should really check it out. Start with SNAKE AGENT. See my reviews of the first two books, here and here. Creepy, suspenseful, can be violent, not really sexy. Awesome. (Nightshade Books, 2008) Precious Dragon on Amazon
Richard K. Morgan turns in another fine hard-boiled Takeshi Kovacs thriller in BROKEN ANGELS. After loving his novel ALTERED CARBON and hating THIRTEEN (see my review here), I was curious but a little worried. Protagonist Kovacs goes AWOL to help a group of rouge archeologists investigate a priceless alien artifact that leads to a massive abandoned space ship. It makes for a fascinating story with an almost nonsensical ending. Morgan includes a lot of gratuitous exposition about power, war, politics, and violence, which is rather thinly disguised as dialogue. There was enough of this that I got a little annoyed, but unlike THIRTEEN, some people in this book have a sense of humor. I liked it. Slightly creepy, rather suspenseful, ultra-violent, and hyper-sexual. Hard-boiled. (Del Rey, 2004) Broken Angels on Amazon
Many thanks to Titan Books for the review copy of Lenore – Wedgies.
Fhtagn Spoken Here.
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