Kage Baker, 1952-2010

Kage Baker, short story writer and novelist, died today at age 57, far too young. I don't think it's hyperbole for me to say that, of all the science fiction and fantasy writers I reviewed during that awful decade from Jan. 1, 2000 to Dec. 31, 2009, Baker afforded me the greatest amount of unalloyed reading pleasure.

I tend not to get caught up in long-running sf/f series, like those by George R.R. Martin or Robert Jordan. As good as individual installments might be, most multi-volume sagas run out of steam or become so unwieldy with plot complications that it becomes a chore to keep up with them to the bitter end. Even Stephen King's "The Dark Tower," which amazed and delighted me for most of its 3,000 pages, wound up something less than I had imagined.

Not Baker's novels about The Company, though. She kept every damn promise she made in that first book, "In the Garden of Iden." She found a glorious new wrinkle in time-traveling immortal cyborgs, and she played fair with it across 10 volumes, adding complications and fresh faces with panache, but never betraying her premise or her characters or her readership. By the time she reached the final volume in the main sequence, "The Sons of Heaven," she had tied up all the loose ends and delivered a climax and denouement worthy of all the delicious build-up.

I came to The Company novels late, foolishly starting with "Mendoza in Hollywood." It didn't particularly grab me, so I'm glad I persevered with "The Graveyard Game." That did the trick, making me go back to the books I'd missed. From that point, I was hooked, and I eagerly awaited each new volume. None of them disappointed.

I saw Baker at the World Fantasy con in October. I'm not very out-going, and it often takes some real effort for me to introduce myself to a stranger. But I approached her and let her know how much I enjoy her work.

I'm glad I did. I had no idea her time with us would be so short. I'm just glad there will be a few more books and stories with her byline, starting with a new Company novel, "Not Less Than Gods," to be published by Tor in March.

If you haven't read any books by Kage Baker, start with "In the Garden of Iden" or the story collection, "Black Projects, White Knights." If you want just a small taste, Subterranean Press has posted a new story, "The Bohemian Astrobleme," online.

If you're already a fan, read Marty Halpern's lovely appreciation of her and her work.

A Superfluity of Neat Stuff

Somehow, I didn't expect the early months of 2010 to be filled with so many good books deserving my attention as a reviewer. In last week's column, I covered three recent science fiction/fantasy releases, including Peter Straub's "A Dark Matter," "Things We Didn't See Coming" by Steven Amsterdam and Barbara Roden's "Northwest Passages."

Straub's "A Dark Matter," scheduled to arrive in stores on Feb. 9, is the best of the bunch. A tricky tale of five high school friends revisiting a terrible event that occurred 40 years earlier, it's Straub's first novel since 2004's "In the Night Room," continuing his long string of literate and ambitious supernatural thrillers. You can watch book trailer/teaser above.

With that column behind me, I thought I would have a little breathing room, but that's not the case. February brings horror/fantasy novels by two heavy-hitters in the field, Owen Hill's "Horns" and Dan Simmons' "Black Hills." Not to mention two new books by Michael Shea: "The Extra" from Tor and "Copping Squid" from Perilous Press. Plus, "Blackout," the first half of Connie Willis's World War II time-travel epic, is due any day now and really ought to be considered. Charlie Huston's "Sleepless" occupies the borderlands between science fiction and crime, so it, too, is tempting to throw into the mix.

Finally, in March Tor will publish "Not Less Than Gods," Kage Baker's latest book about The Company. Baker is one of my favorite authors, and a new novel from her would normally be a cause for unalloyed celebration. She is, however, near the end of her struggle with cancer.

Which puts the problem of having too many good novels to read into perspective, doesn't it?

Arts & Culture Junk Direct Marketing Mail

Because I occasionally buy tickets for plays, concerts and other artsy things, I wind up on mailing lists and receive more direct mail marketing pieces than I can stand. I wrote this goofy little piece a few years back as a reaction to all those earnest, yet somehow annoying, solicitations.

For its 2009-2010 season, the Symphony of Greater California has gathered the most innovative artists in the West to perform an exhilarating repertoire of international classics and exciting new music. Under the baton of Music Director Seiji Tilson-Williams, the symphony and its guest artists will deliver an unparalleled musical experience for anyone willing to pony up 75 bucks per ticket.

The season is sponsored in part by the Pecksniff Charitable Trusts and HyperCorp. International -- "We Know What's Good for You"

September 10 through October 15
THE EVOLUTION OF MUSIC
Follow the progress of world music, from two wooden sticks struck together in a Paleolithic village to a Web page that plays an endless loop of "My Heart Will Go On." See how Darwinian theory applies to everything from the symphony orchestra to your local skiffle band. Discover how the wily and agile violin schemed its way to the top, while the slow-witted and awkward bassoon took a turn down an evolutionary dead-end. Witness a duel to the death between a harpsichord and a clavier. Program may be too intense for young children.

October 20 through November 15
THE GERMANIC GIANTS
A three-concert series, consisting of "Mostly Mozart," Basically Beethoven" and "Completely Weill."

November 26 through December 24
BABES IN ICELAND
Our Children's Holiday Program
Does the thought of sitting through yet another production of either "Peter and the Wolf" or "The Nutcracker" cause you to break into hives and uncontrollable muscular spasms? Then you're in luck this Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Solstice season! Based on Gunnar Gunnarson's 15th-Century, 34-volume epic poem, this 45-minute program brings Scandinavian folklore to life, complete with live reindeer, on-stage ice skating and freakishly huge marionettes of Glinka the Frost Witch and the evil ice dragon, Frigidaire. With a lively score by Bjorg Bjorgenson and the Umlaut Quartet, "Babes in Iceland" is sure to entertain privileged children for generations to come. Special guest Robin Williams will perform the part of Snorri, The Annoying Troll Who Weeps and Grins Simultaneously.

January 5 through February 20
MASTERS OF ATONAL MINIMALISM
An evening of no discernible harmonies or melodies, using as few notes as humanly possible. Highlights include Bromffman's "Amplified Dripping Faucet" and Chayefsky's "The Sensory Deprivation Blues."

Here are just a few of the rave reviews this program has garnered.
Minimalist Monthly: "This music is good."
Tortured Intellectual Weekly: "Never before has a white-noise generator been taken to such rhapsodic heights!"
Elmer Hobart, long-time subscriber: "For the love of God, kill me now!"

February 28. One Night Only.
TOM WAITS PERFORMS "THE RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN SONG BOOK"
America's favorite sandpaper-voiced troubadour interprets tunes from "Oklahoma," "The King & I" "South Pacific" and "Carousel." The highlight of the show comes when Waits dons a wimple to sing "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" from "The Sound of Music." Special guest Lou Reed provides a touching rendition of "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair."

March 1 through April 15
CORPORATE BRANDING TOONAPALOOZA
You hear them on the radio, on TV, at the movies, even through your computer speakers. They're the songs that have been co-opted by giant, faceless corporations to promote their products, services and Orwellian ideologies. Now these tunes have been woven into a musical tapestry that will set your toes tapping and put your mind in a free-spending groove. Selections include "Rhapsody in the Public Domain," "Fanfare for the Common Consumer," "Sixties and Seventies Sell-Outs" and "The Music from That Volkswagen Commercial Where Everything's Moving to the Beat of the Windshield Wipers."

Tickets for all concerts may be purchased at the box office, online or through an antiquated and vaguely frightening voice-mail system. Subscribers will eventually be harassed with dinner-time telephone solicitations, while one-time ticket buyers will be left to contemplate their cheapness in ominous silence.

RIP Robert B. Parker

I was saddened to learn of the sudden death of Robert B. Parker, author of "The Godwulf Manuscript" and 37 other mysteries featuring the Boston PI known only as Spenser. For a long while, Parker was one of my very favorite mystery novelists and, even if I haven't pick up a new book by him in nearly a decade, I still have a lot of respect for him and his prodigious output.

I started reading Parker in my late teens, probably around the time of "The Judas Goat." Part of his appeal for me lay in the fact that he was a "local boy," that he wrote about Boston, a city only an hour away from my hometown. But there was plenty else to appreciate about those early books -- their wit, the pared-down prose, the way Parker worked in, and reacted against, the traditions laid down by Hammett, Chandler and Ross Macdonald. Like two other literary New Englanders hitting their stride at that time, Stephen King and Gregory Mcdonald of "Fletch" fame, he was demonstrating that old forms of pop lit could be given fresh, interesting spins.

The first dozen Spensers are the best, and a few -- "Mortal Stakes," "Looking for Rachel Wallace," "Early Autumn" -- rank with the best crime novels of the 70s and 80s. "A Catskill Eagle" in1985 seemed to me to be a turning point, the book where the conversational byplay started to turn into shtick, where Hawk and Susan and the supporting cast grew more predictable, where Parker seemed to give in to the temptation to set his word processor on Cruise Control and just let the new installments roll out.

I continued to read new Spenser books as they became available, and some of them were enjoyable. I have vivid memories of parts of "God Save the Child," "Ceremony" and other early entries, but I don't think, however, that I can recall any individual scene from any novel post-"Taming a Seahorse." After "Potshot," I gave up. I could deal with the increasingly insufferable Susan Silverman, put up with the recycled plots, but it was Spenser's damn dog Pearl that finally did me in. The magic was gone, but I didn't particularly mind.

But I'm sorry he's left us. The reports indicate that he died at his desk, and that's as fitting a conclusion to such a durable and distinguished career as I can imagine.

Lots of others are weighing in with tributes. Check "Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind" for a thorough round-up.

5 Writing Lessons from H.P. Lovecraft

Another reprint, a bit more tongue-in-cheek than the previous.

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Howard Phillips Lovecraft is now regarded as one of the pre-eminent figures of twentieth century horror literature. Born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, he wrote some of the genre’s most influential stories and novellas, including “The Call of Cthulhu,” “At the Mountains of Madness,” “The Rats in the Walls” and “The Dunwich Horror.” His vision of a hostile universe, in which humanity survives at the whim of terrible Elder Gods, still holds considerable power 70 years after his death from intestinal cancer.

Here are five writing lessons I’ve learned from H.P. Lovecraft:

1. Be polite to editors.

In March, 1923, Chicago publisher J.C. Henneberger and editor Edwin F. Baird inaugurated “Weird Tales,” a pulp magazine devoted to horror fiction. Lovecraft submitted a stack of material with a cover letter almost guaranteed to alienate its recipient:

“If the tale cannot be printed as it is written, down to the very last semicolon and comma, it must gracefully accept rejection. Excision by editors is probably the one reason why no living American author has any real prose style…”

To his credit, Baird didn’t tell Lovecraft to take a flying leap. Despite his bizarre sense of salesmanship, Lovecraft sold five stories to “Weird Tales” with that submission.

Kids, don’t try this at home…

2. Sometimes tone and mood are the most important elements of a story.

I defy anyone to read “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” my favorite Lovecraft tale, and not be creeped out by it. The prose is clunky, the characters stereotypical, the premise queasily racist. But Lovecraft puts you right in the middle of that haunted, decaying seaport and makes you believe that hideously devolved fish-men are going to rise up from the depths if you don’t watch out.

Although frequently overwritten and often repetitive, Lovecraft’s stories are unique in their ability to convey a sense of cosmic horror, that the universe is inhabited by beings whose enormity could crush the human mind. And that’s a good thing.

3. You really ought to learn how to write realistic dialogue.

Lovecraft’s attempts at dialogue are sometimes laughable. It’s almost certain that no one has ever spoken like Zadok Allen, “the half-crazed liquorish nonagenarian” who tells tales of old Innsmouth. A tiny sample:

“Them things liked human sacrifices. Had had ‘em ages afore, but lost track o’ the upper world arter a time. What they done to the victims it ain’t fer me to say, an’ I guess Obed wan’t none too sharp abaout askin.”

Lovecraft admitted that he didn’t much like people below his perceived social class. As he wrote in a letter, “I could not write about ‘ordinary people’ because I am not in the least interested in them.” In addition to being morally repugnant, this attitude prevented him from creating dialogue with any kind of verisimilitude to actual human speech.

4. A solid social network is crucial.

Although reclusive by nature, Lovecraft maintained elaborate correspondences with mentors and protégés alike, including Robert E. “Conan the Barbarian” Howard, Robert “Psycho” Bloch and Fritz “Fafhrd and Gray Mouser” Leiber. During his career, Lovecraft wrote more than 100,000 letters. Think of what he might have accomplished with Twitter.

5. You never know how you’ll be viewed by posterity.

It’s likely that Lovecraft held no hope at the time of his death that his work would be remembered by a general readership. But his friends August Derleth and Donald Wandrei formed Arkham House and published “The Outsider and Others” in hardcover in 1939. Other editions followed, and eventually Lovecraft’s work was reprinted in paperback and circulated around the globe. Many of the modern masters of horror, from Stephen King and Peter Straub to Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell, have paid homage to him, and the Cthulhu Mythos continues to inspire novels, comics, movies and plush figures.

Is This Your Homework, Larry?

I saw "A Serious Man" over the weekend, did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would, but am still mulling over its implications. Here, however, is a reprint dealing with a Coen Brothers film that I unreservedly admire.

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In the wake of the Oscars and the multiple achievements of “No Country for Old Men,” I’ve been thinking about the Coen Brothers a lot lately. Especially about what good writers they are. They do all kinds of things with dialogue and structure and symbolism that really shouldn’t work, but because they’re really good literary craftsmen, they pull them off with aplomb.

Over at Ken Levine’s blog, screenwriter Bob “Back to the Future” Gale instigated a brouhaha with a post about all the perceived lapses in logic in “No Country.” Some of the nitpicks I can agree with, but I think Gale is really misreading the movie. “No Country” only looks like a conventional cat-and-mouse thriller. Worrying about why Anton Chigurh chooses to carry around that cattle gun is like wondering why the eponymous protagonist of “Barton Fink” isn’t at all concerned about the inferno raging in the hallway outside his hotel room at that movie’s climax. There are bigger issues at hand.

If I had to choose a favorite Coen Brothers movie, I think I’d have to select “The Big Lewbowski.” For me, it delivers the highest ratio of laughs to lines of most movies I can recall. It’s a film that truly improves with each viewing.

I recently picked up “I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski and What-Have-You,” a book by the guys who organize LebowskiFest. It contains interviews with members of the cast, bits of trivia, a glossary of Lebowski-speak. It gets a little repetitive, but like the Dude himself, its heart is in the right place.

The best part of the book, however, speaks to why the Coens are such smart writers and where they find their inspiration. The authors investigate the origins of one of the movie’s signature sequences, when Walter (John Goodman) and the Dude (Jeff Bridges) interrogate Larry, a silent junior high school student, about a piece of homework found in the Dude’s car, which had been stolen and recently recovered. I can’t do justice to it in summary, but the scene starts in a suburban living room containing a man in an iron lung and ends with Walter destroying a sports car with a tire iron while screaming, “This is what happens when you f* a stranger in the a*!!!!” (Or as the censored version on Comedy Central would have it, “This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!!!”)

It’s hilarious. Trust me.

What’s great, though, is that this scene is based on a true incident, at least according to “I’m a Lebowski…” Twenty-odd years ago, USC film professor Peter Exline had his car stolen, got it back and found some fast food wrappers and a kid’s homework assignment in it. He and a friend, private detective “Big” Lew Abernathy, tracked the kid down, visited him at home one night and tried to get him to confess. Just like in the movie. There was even an old man confined to a hospital bed in the living room, the boy’s father, elderly screenwriter Everett Freeman, author of “Larceny, Inc.” and “The Glass Bottom Boat.”

The Coens heard this story from Exline and, without telling him, vowed to use it someday in a movie.

The ultimate kicker is that the authors of “I’m a Lebowski…” contacted the “real Little Larry,” who was not a joy-riding delinquent and did not learn what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps. And as they report, “…until we called, he had no idea that the day in his living room when two strange men arrived with his homework in a baggie had been a pivotal inspiration for ‘The Big Lebowski.’” The interview with 32-year-old Jaik Freeman proves to be one of the book’s highlights.

I don’t know why this convoluted anecdote told from multiple perspectives tickles me so. I guess I just like the sheer improbability of it, the way the most absurd aspects of real life can be transmuted into — wait for it — art. With the Coens, there’s no use looking for logic, because what you’ll find in its place is a whole lot more interesting.

5 Writing Lessons Learned from Donald Westlake

I wrote this a few years ago for a blog that died a-borning. I'm re-printing it here as part of an effort to tidy up the various facets of my online presence, and also because Westlake has been on my mind recently. He passed away unexpectedly on New Year's 2009.

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Donald Westlake, screenwriter of “The Grifters, author of “The Hot Rock,” “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” and many other novels, is one of my favorite thriller writers. Pick up any of his books at random, and you can learn something valuable from it, as well as be guaranteed hours of first-rate entertainment.

Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, Westlake also writes about no-nonsense thief Parker. The character has appeared, always with a different name, in a handful of movies, some of them good (”Point Blank”) and some of them not (”Slayground”). There are currently 23 Parker novels, and many of them epitomize what their author does best. They’re fast, lean, gripping and darkly, darkly funny.

Here are five lessons I’ve learned from Westlake/Stark:

1. Choose a strong title.
   Some of the early Parker novels have titles so terse that they don’t really stick in the memory: “The Score,” “The Outfit,” “The Seventh,” “The Hunter.” I have trouble keeping track of them in my head. But after a 24-year break from writing about Parker, Stark brought him back in “Comeback.” Which was followed by “Backflash.” Followed by “Flashfire,” “Firebreak” and “Breakout.” The titles are down to one word, but they’re evocative and the progression from one to the next is clever without being distracting.
2. Waste no time getting the story started.
   In the early books, the first sentence always started with “When…”
   When the woman screamed, Parker awoke and rolled off the bed. He heard the plop of a silencer behind him as he rolled, and the bullet punched the pillow where his head had been. — “The Outfit”
   When he didn’t get any answer the second time he knocked, Parker kicked the door in. – “The Split”Even without that gimmick, the openings are always active and compelling.

   Parker jumped out of the Ford with a gun in one hand and a packet of explosive in the other. — “Slayground”

   These aren’t books that begin with long ruminations about the weather. There’s action on the very first page.

3. Understand structure.
   Many of the Parker books are organized around a four-part structure. The first two parts are from Parker’s perspective. The third offers multiple viewpoints of a critical plot turn. The final portion wraps things up, again from inside Parker’s head.It’s a particularly effective technique. The third-person limited perspective keeps everything focused and leaves little room for extraneous business. The late-in-the-game breakout from the protagonist’s perspective allows the author to ramp up the suspense by dramatising conflicts that Parker can’t foresee.
4. Don’t be afraid to change your style. Westlake has said that he once grew frustrated with a draft in which Parker kept losing the thing he was trying to steal. Rather than bull his way through a book that wasn’t working, Westlake decided to turn it into a comedy, thereby creating his long-running character John Dortmunder, who first appeared in “The Hot Rock.”
5. If you don’t work to avoid obsolescence, you may wind up having to kill someone to keep working. Although not published with the Stark pen-name, “The Axe” is one of the bleakest novels Westlake has ever written. The tale of a middle-aged middle-manager who strikes back against downsizing by killing off his competitors, “The Ax” is cautionary tale for anyone who has become too complacent about their job security.

5 Trilogies Worth Re-reading

The short days and cold nights put me in the mood for longer, more involved storytelling. I just finished Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who Played with Fire," the middle volume of the Milllennium Trilogy, bookended by "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and the forthcoming "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest." (Larsson planned 10 volumes in the thriller saga but died after turning in only the first three.)

These books are clever and absorbing, with a dynamic female protagonist. But I doubt I'll ever want to re-read them, no matter how good the final book turns out to be. Their clumsy translations, eye-glazing info dumps and the ridiculousness of the male protagonist's irresistibility to the opposite sex are likely to prevent me from picking up the books for a second go-round.

There are some trilogies, however, that, at various intervals, spur me to re-read up to 2,000 pages. I've made it through three of the following multiple times, and the other two are on my One of These Days, Soon list. Only one is an out-and-out fantasy, and it's not very well known, even within the genre.

1. The Quest for Karla by John Le Carre
These may be the best three espionage novels of the last quarter of the 2oth century. (The first volume was published in 1974, but close enough.) I could read again and again "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," the story of George Smiley's search for the Russian mole within British intelligence. "The Honourable Schoolboy" takes an entirely different tack and takes some getting used to, but it has its deep pleasures, especially the scenes in Asia. The overly talky "Smiley's People" is in some way the least successful of the three, but it does bring everything to an extremely fitting, and moving, end.




2. Game, Set, Match by Len Deighton
Deighton made his name with the "unnamed spy/Harry Palmer" books, beginning with "The Ipcress File" in 1962. As good as those swinging-Sixties novels are, I believe they are eclipsed by "Berlin Game," "Mexico Set" and "London Match," from the Reagan-era Cold War. Old Berlin hand Bernard Samson is pulled away from his desk job and back into the field when Brahms Four, one of his informants on the other side of the Wall, wants out. Samson's investigation brings to light the presence of, what do you know?, another mole. Only this time the betrayal is intensely personal for Bernard.

Deighton takes a cheekier, more working class attitude toward the spy novel than does Le Carre. He's also more slippery in his narrative. Samson is not a reliable narrator, over-confident in his own talents and too quick to dismiss his blue-blooded superiors.

These books constitute the first of three trilogies, the other two being "Spy Hook, Line and Sinker" and "Faith, Hope and Charity." The sequence, published well past the dismantling of the Soviet Union, runs out of steam before the end, but all of the books have their interesting bits, and there's a huge reversal in "Spy Line."

3. The Blue Rose Sequence by Peter Straub
Straub didn't intend for "Koko" and "Mystery" to be part of a trilogy, not until he dreamed up "The Throat" and saw how the third book could swallow the other two whole.

"Koko" follows a group of Vietnam veterans as they discover that one of their former platoon-mates has become a serial killer, hunting journalists who have written about a massacre that occurred in a village called Ia Thuc. "Mystery" is set on a Caribbean island and in the Midwest, where a young man nearly killed in a car accident investigates two sets of murders. In "The Throat," Tim Underhill, the secret hero of "Koko," reveals his connection to the characters in "Mystery" and then solves, once and for all, what have come to be known as the Blue Rose murders.

You can read an extended interview with Straub that I conducted during his tour for "The Throat." In it, he discusses the origins of the books and of the short stories that are peripheral to them.

4. The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
I haven't read "Fifth Business," in nearly 25 years, so perhaps it's time to go to the garage and dig it out, along with "The Manticore" and "World of Wonders."

A boy throws a rock-filled snowball at this friend/rival. The friend ducks, and the missile strikes a pregnant woman, causing her to give birth prematurely. Out from that simple set of actions spirals a saga that comes to span decades and continents, touching on subjects as diverse as Jungian psychoanalysis and stage magic.

Davies -- journalist, academic, playwright -- was particular fond of three-book sequences. Also of interest are the Salterton Trilogy and the Cornish Trilogy.



5. The Chronicle of the King's Tramp by Tom DeHaven
DeHaven is the author of a trilogy about the history of comics, consisting of "Funny Papers," "Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies" and "Dugan Under Ground," of which I've read only the middle volume. (It stands well enough on its own.)

"Walker of Worlds," "The End of Everything Man" and "The Last Human" make up DeHaven's other trilogy, an out-and-out multiversal fantasy that rivals Zelazny at his best. I'm not sure I can begin to give a decent summary of it. It features sentient dogs, evil monks, mud monsters, homeless savants and whole bunch of weird stuff. It's a kick from start to finish.

The Posthumous Crichton

Michael Crichton, author of "The Andromeda Strain" and "Jurassic Park," died of cancer last year, but there's a new novel out with his name on it. "Pirate Latitudes" was apparently found in his files as a completed manuscript. Indeed, it doesn't read like something patched together from notes, drafts and narrative stitching provided by some after-the-fact collaborator. It's creepiness factor is therefore pretty low.

It actually feels like a throw-back to some of Crichton's early work, either the potboilers penned under the John Lange byline or the historical novels published under his own name, including "The Great Train Robbery" and "Eaters of the Dead." It's a pirate novel, all right, but not an ironic pirate novel. There's no outrightly fantastic element in it, as in Gene Wolfe's recent "Pirate Freedom." What you expect is pretty much what you get.

"Pirate Latitudes" is entertaining, though, and that opinion is reflected in my review of the novel in this week's Sunday Chronicle. And, as a bonus, here's a link to the appreciation of Crichton I wrote for The Chronicle at the time of death.

Holiday Books -- Science Fiction/Fantasy 2009

The San Francisco's Holiday Books section will be published on Sunday, but you can already read my column online at SFGate.com. It's not really a "Best of the Year" list, though some will view it that way. There's just too much good material and too little time for me to say definitively, "Yeah, these are the genre's finest selections, no doubt about it."

And for the first time, I've hedged my bets a little, adding a handful of books I've heard good things about but which I have not found time to review. Check it out, and consider adding the latest from Richard Kadrey, Cherie Priest, Jeff VanderMeer and others to your shopping lists this summer.

In Defense of Stephen King

My review of Stephen King's "Under the Dome" ran in today's Chronicle, and it was not 100% positive. The book's too long and filled with too-familiar characters and situations. On a "weird doings in Maine" scale from the atrocious "The Tommyknockers" to the sublime "'Salem's Lot," I place it squarely in the middle. I enjoyed it well enough but will never be tempted to read it again.

My review prompted a reader to write and inquire about my opinion on why King has become a "literary darling." My correspondent threw around the words "hack" and "onanistic."

Stephen King is probably my favorite living writer. There are others whom I admire more and who have disappointed me less, but I can't imagine a time will ever come when a new King novel arrives and I'll just shrug and put it aside. I was imprinted on his prose too forcefully, at too early an age, to ignore what he offers.

I clearly remember sitting on our back porch in Portsmouth, NH, one summer day and reading a library copy of "'Salem's Lot." I was maybe 15, and I had no idea what the book was about. Not a clue, because the jack copy didn't give it away. The frisson I experienced in the instant when I suddenly realized that it was about vampires in Maine, set little more than an hour north of where I sat, remains one of the most delicious thrills I've ever enjoyed as a reader.

In quick succession, I read "The Shining," "Carrie," "The Stand" and "Night Shift," and I was hooked for good. I met him face-to-face at a signing for "Firestarter" at the Portland Mall and attended a press conference with him in Santa Cruz, when he was touring for "Insomnia" via motorcycle. One of my regrets is that I've never been able to arrange a one-on-one interview with him. I tried with "Under the Dome," but he's not coming to the Bay Area. So, sorry, Charlie.

"Hack" is one of those dangerous words like "nymphomaniac," used to judge people who give or get more than we think is proper. Whatever he may be, King is not a hack; he clearly cares about language, about his readers, about his characters, about the fate of the novel and the short story. Few critics recognize how experimental a lot of his work is, how willing he is to set new challenges for himself. He can be clumsy, sloppy, distracted and too in love with his own voice, but there's no doubt he means what he says.

At The Chronicle, I've reviewed at least 20 of King's books -- many good, many not -- during the past 25 years. I imagine I'll keep doing so as long as he, the newspaper and I are all still functioning.

From Garp to Twisted River

I've been reading John Irving for just a tiny bit more than 30 years. I picked up "The World According to Garp" in paperback during the second semester of my college freshman year, and I was enraptured by it. I couldn't put it down and didn't want it to end. It was one of the most purely pleasurable reading experiences of my life.

Of course, I think I read it at exactly the right moment, at 19, in 1979. I hadn't read much mainstream literary fiction at that point. I did fancy myself as a writer, so I liked the stories-within-a-story and the debates about the differences between fiction and autobiography. I was thrilled to read a book by someone who shared my experience as a resident of New Hampshire, who wrote about Exeter, a town only a few miles from my own.

I re-read "Garp" five or six years ago, and it holds up pretty well, though its mid-Seventies attitudes about feminism seem a little off and more than slightly creepy. What still works perfectly, though, is the tour de force "Walt Catches Cold" chapter, in which Garp tries to deal with his two obstreperous sons while his wife attempts to break up with her weaselly lover. Everything in that chapter is perfectly calibrated, balancing humor and suspense and irony and foreboding. Its last lines are among the most heart-stopping I've ever read, and Mr. Irving will forever be cut a lot of slack on my part because of how masterful that chapter and its aftermath are.

Unfortunately, I've never quite found an Irving book I like as much as "Garp." Some are just awful. I couldn't get more than 3o pages into "Until I Find You," and does anybody love "The Fourth Hand"? Others seem overly self-important, especially "The Cider House Rules." But I hold "A Widow for One Year" in high esteem, and though I'm not ga-ga about it like some readers, I see the appeal of "A Prayer for Owen Meany."

When I heard about Irving's new novel, "Last Night in Twisted River," I lobbied to review it for The Chronicle. (Truthfully, there didn't seem to be much competition.) And I'm glad I did. It gave me everything I want in a John Irving novel, but without most of the elements that make his lesser novels so irritating. Read the review and, if you're a fan of "Garp," see if it doesn't sound like something you'd enjoy.

Housekeeping

What with the Twitter and the Facebook and other distractions, I took a long time away from blogging and am trying to get back into the rhythm of it.

Since July, I've contributed but two book columns to The Chronicle. The first covered new novels by Lev Grossman and Richard Kadrey, plus a graphic novel written by Ian Rankin, creator of the Inspector Rebus mysteries. I wholeheartedly recommend the first two and was less than impressed by Rankin's interpretation of one of my favorite comics characters, John Constantine.

Earlier this month the paper ran my round-up of recent kids'/YA books of note. I covered the latest from Kage Baker, John Connolly and Laurence Yep. All three are good, but Connolly's is the stand-out, I think.

I should have plenty to post in November. I'm doing full-length reviews of John Irving's "Last Night at Twisted River,"Michael Crichton's posthumous "Pirate Latitudes" and Stephen King's "Under the Dome," as well as another round-up featuring new releases from Iain M. Banks, Anne Rice and Peter Straub. Plus, I'll be doing some kind of version of my "holiday books/best of the year" column.

And still the books keep coming...

Five Semi-Obscure Horror Novels Worth Your Time This Halloween

A couple days ago, I played with one of those Facebook widgets that let you pick your favorite five things in a certain number of categories. The topic was Great Haunted House Novels and I made five respectable choices: The Shining, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The House Next Door, lost boy lost girl (get the capitalization right, LivingSocial!) and Ghost Story. Later on, though, I started fretting that those are very obvious choices, that anybody fond of horror fiction would already be aware of them.

So, here are five more horror novels – from the 1970s and early '80s -- that can make your Halloween that much creepier. They may, however, take a certain amount of effort to track down. I live in a place blessed with great bookstores and libraries, and few of these selections were readily available in the obvious outlets.

1. The Auctioneer by Joan Samson

Set in small-town rural New Hampshire, the novel focuses on John and Mim Moore, farmers struggling to look after their young daughter and John's elderly mother. When new auctioneer Purly Dunsmore comes to town, folks are happy to drag junk out from their cellars, attics and barns and donate them for a sale said to benefit the local police. But as the weeks drift by, Purly and his friends on the force become more demanding in their requests for donations, and soon John and Mim find themselves making sacrifices they truly can't afford.

"The Auctioneer" is Samson's only novel. She died of cancer before the book became a best-seller in paperback. But it's a very accomplished first effort – astute in its understanding of mob dynamics and the lure of conformity. If you've read Stephen King's "Needful Things," you can see Samson's clear influence on him.

I originally read "The Auctioneer" as a high school junior and didn't see anything scary in it at all. Then I re-read it near the end of George W. Bush's seemingly never-ending second term and thought, "Oh, yeah. Now I get it."

2. The Ceremonies by T.E.D. Klein

When I got out of college and was rummaging around for a career, I thought T.E.D. Klein had the coolest job in the universe as the editor of "Twilight Zone" magazine. I've since learned that years of reading slush pretty much extinguished his enthusiasm for horror fiction, but those are the breaks, I guess. "The Ceremonies" is his only novel, but it's a good one.

An expansion of his novella, "The Events at Poroth Farm" (recently reprinted in the very fine "American Fantastic Tales," edited by Peter Straub), "The Ceremonies" follows academic Jeremy Friers as he leaves New York City for the summer, renting a house in the rural community of Gilead, NY. Friers intends to spend his time preparing for a course on supernatural literature, but he doesn't sense that he's being manipulated by an elderly sorcerer who wishes to facilitate the return to Earth of a vast, ancient and malevolent entity. Also caught in the sorcerer's snare are Friers' virginal girlfriend and his hosts, the deeply religious Poroths.

"The Ceremonies" isn't an easy read. It's overlong, repetitive and the characters are all rather chilly and unpleasant. But Klein nails the sense of dread that can be elicited in the face of raw nature, where human intelligence doesn't mean much of anything. (The book also includes one of the nastiest felines in the genre.) The more you're familiar with the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen, the more you'll take away from "The Ceremonies."

3. All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By by John Farris

I haven't recently re-read this gonzo Southern gothic by the author of "The Fury," but it certainly made an impression on me. Not very many novels open with a wedding scene in which a good portion of the participants either go insane or are decapitated with a military saber.

"All Heads…" is about the slave trade and a legacy of terror that extends from Africa to the American South in the 1940s. It may be one the best supernatural novels about vodoun ever written, and it almost defies summarization. Maybe it's best to come to it with no expectations, because Farris finishes by up-ending all of them anyway.

As a bonus, the Tor paperback edition features one of my favorite covers, boasting an Ann-Margret lookalike as a bosomy snake-goddess!

4. The Other by Thomas Tryon

Along with ""The Exorcist," Thomas Tryon's "The Other" ranks as one of the most popular horror titles in the period between Ira Levin's "Rosemary's Baby" and Stephen King's "Carrie." It may be the best "freaky twins" novel ever published.

Holland and Niles are born 20 minutes apart, but their temperaments are vastly different. Born with a caul over his face, Niles seems the more empathic of the two, while Holland is more prickly and secretive. Growing up on a Connecticut farm in the mid-1930s, the boys are inseparable, but do they also share dangerous psychic powers? And by the way, who's responsible for the various fatal "accidents" that happen around the homestead? (I'll never forget that baby floating in the wine bottle!)

Tryon was an actor before turning his hand to fiction. (Apparently it was the tyrannical Otto Preminger who provided the last straw that made Tryon dump his Hollywood career.) The neatly plotted "The Other" is a fine debut, and Tryon continued his streak with other well-received novels, including "Harvest Home," which is kind of an Americanized version of "The Wicker Man."

5. Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco

Stephen King provided the essay about "Burnt Offerings" in the original "Horror: 100 Best Books," edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman. He ranks Marasco's book just below Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House" in the "haunted house novel" sweepstakes. That seems a fair assessment.

Eager to get out of the city, the Rolfe family – Ben, Marion, son David and Aunt Elizabeth -- finds a summer rental that seems almost too good to be true. The country house owned by the peculiar Allardyce siblings is a bit run down, but the rate is cheap. Old Mrs. Allardyce lives on the top story, but she's no trouble at all, never venturing from her rooms.

The horror in "Burnt Offerings" is the quiet kind. As the house begins to mysteriously regenerate itself, the Rolfes always have the option of leaving. But even when the worst things happen, they fail to do so. If "The Auctioneer" is a fable about the dangers of letting go of what's valuable, "Burnt Offerings" is a cautionary tale about being imprisoned by what's not essential.

Quickie Review -- Fragment

I was going to review Warren Fahy's "Fragment" in my last San Francisco Chronicle column, but I ran out of both space and interest.

This first novel is a Michael Crichton-esque scientific thriller about a mysterious island in the South Pacific that's actually a fragment of a lost continent. Cut off from the rest of the world's on-going process of natural selection for half a billion years, Henders Island is home to bizarre and super-lethal lifeforms that would chew through the rest of the planet's eco-system in nothing flat. And guess what's headed right toward Henders? That's right, a TV reality show crew!

There are, of course, human characters in "Fragment," but none of them are particularly compelling and some of them make no damn sense at all, so I'm not going to bother to list them. The real attraction is, of course, the monsters, and Fahy does a fine job of concocting some truly wild evolutionary throwbacks and developing action sequences around them. I don't know whether the biology lectures he uses as exposition are a bunch of hooey, but they work well enough dramatically.

"Fragment" seems to have aspirations to be this decade's "Jurassic Park." It's not up to that challenge, but it might be a welcome diversion for a dreary day at the seashore.

Link Salad Surgery

No time. No time. No time. So just a smidgen of links...

Justine Larbalestier on what happens when your book's cover betrays its story.


Thanks, David J. Montgomery. I'm reading "Chinaman's Chance" by Ross Thomas, and it's great!


Scott McCloud has interesting things to say about David Mazzucchelli's "Asterios Polyp."


The good folks at Making Light point the way to the worst author intro ever.

Spilling Your Guts Online

I regard Penelope Trunk, author of "The Brazen Careerist," with nearly equal amounts of admiration and dumbfoundedness. Sometimes I find her advice useful and clear-eyed, and sometimes I regard what she writes as absolutely, well, nuts. A nod of agreement, a wince of embarrassment -- those are my two main reactions to her columns.

Take her latest post -- How to decide how much to reveal about yourself. Pretty powerful stuff. I could never be that forthright online. But given her history, perhaps Trunk has no other choice:

So what I’m telling you here is that I’m scared of secrets. I’m more scared of keeping things a secret than I am of letting people know that I’m having trouble. People can’t believe how I’m willing to write about my life here. But what I can’t believe is how much better my life could have been if it had not been full of secrets.

My life has been nowhere near as dramatic as Trunk's appears to have been, but I make a distinction between secrets, which are destructive, and private matters, which, with any luck, are not. Call me an uptight New Englander with a metaphorical stick up his fundament, but I keep a close watch on how much personal information I put online. Although I'm free with my opinions, I don't post pictures of my kids, complain about my parents and even acknowledge my birthday on Facebook. (You do know that it's fairly easy to predict a SSN given a place and date of birth, right?)

I don't delude myself into believing that anyone with sufficient interest (or a powerful resistance to tedium) could build a fairly thick dossier on me from public sources, but neither do I feel a compulsion to make the task easy on them.

Books You Oughta Read -- The Land of Laughs

It may be memory playing tricks on me after a quarter century, but I still consider Jonathan Carroll's "The Land of Laughs" to be one of the books that welcomed me to California. It may not have been the first paperback I purchased here, but I can't remember any others that preceded it.

I know I bought it at Dark Carnival, then located on Telegraph Avenue, where it intersects with Stuart Street. The store was within walking distance of my apartment, and when I arrived here in 1983 with no job, no car and few friends, I spent a lot of time checking out the local bookstores. I have a clear memory of reading "The Land of Laughs" while commuting on BART, so perhaps it was the promise of a steady paycheck that allowed me to feel sufficiently flush to unlimber my wallet.

In any case, it was the David B. Mattingly cover that attracted me to the book. It's weird and whimsical and menacing, from the George Boothian bull terriers to the shadowy figure glowering through the front door. But what instantly sold me on the book is its voice, the assured cadence of its first-person narration.

"The Land of Laughs" is the story of Thomas Abbey, slacker son of a fabled movie star, who decides to ditch his teaching job and write a biography of his favorite author, Marshall France. The reclusive France died young and left behind a magical series of children's books, including "The Land of Laughs." Abbey and his girlfriend Saxony Gardner travel to France's hometown, Galen, Missouri, and, having been told that they might not be welcome, find themselves unexpectedly embraced by France's daughter and the other townspeople.

Of course, nothing in Galen is as it first appears. To say much more would be to spoil the pleasurable twists and turns of a plot that combines elements of mystery, fantasy and horror. Everything builds to an inevitable, yet shocking conclusion. It's a very well-constructed first novel.

Jonathan Carroll is one of my very favorite writers. His books wrestle with the big questions about life, death, the imagination and the hereafter, but with an easy humor and a cockeyed perspective that's unmatched. I always find something of value in each of his books, but the ones I especially like include "After Silence," "Bones of the Moon," "Sleeping in Flame" and "The Wooden Sea."

I recommend them all, but if you're coming to Carroll fresh, why not start with "The Land of Laughs"? And then start following his Twitter feed, checking his blog and reading the assorted short stories at his site. You're not likely to be disappointed.

Link Hodgepodge

Here's a small mishmash of links. Enjoy responsibly.


Nabokov, on TV in the Fifties, talking about "Lolita."

The final issue of Ellis and Cassaday's "Planetary" is on its way, swear to God!

Hard Case will publish a posthumous novel by the late, great Donald Westlake.

Your brain enjoys learning.

"The Friends of Eddie Coyle" is the quintessential Boston crime novel. The film adaptation is pretty good, too.

Who's better informed, newspaper readers or web surfers?

Precautionary Measures

So, I'm taking a course through SFSU, "Introduction to Internet Marketing," and part of the weekly assignment is to write a blog post every single day.

And that partly explains the sudden burst of activity here.

And the brevity of this note.