Category: Books

— by Wombat-socho

This week we have something old (but repackaged) something new (but also repackaged) and something else new that isn’t repackaged, all from the shelves of the Fairfax County Library. Let’s start with the oldest of the three, A.E. van Vogt’s Transgalactic, which is interesting for a number of reasons. First, van Vogt himself was one of the premier authors of SF’s Golden Age, with classics such as Slan, The World of Null-A, and The Weapon Shops of Isher. Many of these were “fix-up” novels, cobbled together from short stories originally published in Astounding, and Transgalactic inverts that in an interesting way by reprinting the stories that made up Empire of the Atom and The Wizard of Linn as the separate short stories they once were. Harshly criticized by Damon Knight, Empire of the Atom and its sequel are of course riffs on Robert Graves’ classic I, Claudius, except that Clane Linn’s world is a post-apocalyptic “Rome” where atomic science has become a religion, examples of lost technology are everywhere, and the barbaricum is on Mars and Venus. In my opinion, this is the best part of the book; the other two parts – two short novels about men and the extremely lethal ezwal of Carson’s World, and three more from The Mixed Men weren’t nearly as interesting. Still, if you enjoy old-fashioned SF where the Big Idea tends to drown out the plot and the characters now and again, you could do a lot worse than pick up Transgalactic.

Hugh Howey has become one of the authors on the front lines in the current kerfluffle between Amazon and legacy publisher Hachette, and his novel Wool is one of the reasons. Originally rejected by major publishers, Howey published Wool with a small press and then on Kindle Direct Publishing, which is where it took off, selling so well that Simon & Schuster eventually offered him a contract to publish Wool – which he took, but wisely retained the e-publishing rights. The book itself is a fascinating dystopic tale of a city built in what sounds very much like a scaled-up missile silo, with tight controls on behavior and breeding and the ultimate punishment being assigned to “cleaning” – going out into the uninhabitable outer world and cleaning the lenses that give the silo its view of the outside. The wheels start coming off when several people discover that IT has been sabotaging the cleaners’ suits and faking the views of the outside. The first two citizens to find out that IT’s been faking the view -the silo’s Sheriff and his wife – are sentenced to cleaning and die, but the third one, a new Sheriff appointed from the ranks of the maintenance technicians, figures out the sabotage and manages to get a suit prepared that doesn’t break down…and not only refuses to do the cleaning, but manages to make her way to another silo that seems to be abandoned – or wrecked by rebellion. It’s a compelling story, and although Howey paid attention to his readers’ reactions as he was writing, the book definitely doesn’t seem written by committee. I enjoyed it, and I expect you probably will too.

Finally we come to Mark Van Name’s One Jump Ahead. I wasn’t sure what to expect, since my only previous exposure to Van Name’s work had been “A Clear Signal” in the anthology Foreign Legions, and that hadn’t moved me much one way or the other. Still, David Drake seems to think highly of him, so I figured I’d give it a try. It’s about a man (Jon) with the ability to create and coexist with nanobots in his body (something the science in this book holds to be impossible) who comes into possession of a light cybertank with spaceflight capability (Lobo) after taking care of a kidnapping for a corporate exec. While trying get the parts to bring Lobo up to 100%, Jon becomes aware that a bounty’s been placed on his head, and he spends the rest of the novel -in contrast to the title – one jump behind, saved on several occasions by his cybernetic partner and a former comrade he’s hired for the job of snatching the exec he thinks is trying to have him killed. It was an okay novel, definitely passable brain candy, but it didn’t make me want to run right out and grab the sequel.

And if science fiction doesn’t interest you, there’s always this. 😉

— by Wombat-socho

This week I want to talk about books that don’t necessarily have a Deep Message or Big Idea – or if they do, are well-written enough that the author and his characters aren’t beating you over the head with it every few paragraphs. One series of these books is Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series, which begins with The Lost Fleet: Dauntless and has since split into two spinoff series, Beyond The Frontier and The Lost Stars. I spent a few days this week with Beyond the Frontier: Invincible and Beyond the Frontier: Guardian, in which the legendary Admiral “Black Jack” Geary leads his weary fleet home through systems full of hostile aliens and Syndics seemingly determined to carry on the war with plausible deniability, only to find Alliance politics may prove at least as deadly as the genocidal aliens. I don’t want to give the impression that these are simple space operas; there are a mess of subplots and complications that in the hands of a lesser author (or lazier editor) could have bloated these books into doorstop size. As it is, they’re tightly written tales that will keep you engaged, yet at the same time qualify as fairly light reading.

Allen Steele’s Coyote Rising, on the other hand…not so much. This is a novel that wears its libertarian colors on its sleeve, which was pretty much guaranteed from the get-go since the struggle between the socialist rulers of Coyote’s biggest colony and the refugees from the Alabama who fled into the forests to escape them takes up most of the book. Steele does a good job allowing his characters to tell the story from their own, individual perspectives, and does a better job of it than in the original Coyote, for what my opinion is worth.

Long before Frank Herbert gained fame and fortune (and set upon us a seemingly endless parade of sequels, thanks to his son) with Dune, he wrote a chilling little Cold War psychological thriller, The Dragon in the Sea. In a different future from ours, the Cold War has turned hot, and to keep the war machine running, the US Navy has taken to stealing oil from the Eastern Bloc with submarine tugs – but the last twenty subtugs have all been lost. Ensign John Ramsey of BuPsych is put aboard the Fenian Ram as the electronics officer to find out if there’s an East Bloc sleeper agent in the crew, or something else betraying the subtugs. Herbert does an outstanding job conveying the claustrophobic nature of submarine operations, played out in an environment where not only the enemy, but the sea itself is trying to kill you. Most of Herbert’s novels I can take or leave, but I think The Dragon in the Sea is every bit as good as Dune – and a damn sight shorter. 🙂

As much as I liked its predecessor, John Ringo’s Islands of Rage and Hope is EVEN BETTER, and I say this as someone who, as you know, has a complete distaste for the whole zombie apocalypse genre. Perhaps this is because Islands of Rage and Hope, like its predecessors Under a Graveyard Sky and To Sail a Darkling Sea aren’t so much about the zombies as they are about how a ragged band of survivors, stiffened by a handful of military personnel, adapt, react and overcome despite the problems presented by the ad hoc nature of the “Navy” and “Marine” forces, and the arguably deranged teenage women leading those forces. Contains extremely graphic descriptions of zombie (and human) deaths, royalty, horrible ethical dilemmas, porn stars (well, the next best thing), spec ops legends in deep cover, royalty, massive maternity issues, ballistic missile submarines, Gurkhas, and Dutch Marines. Does not contain: dull moments, frothing about GLBTWTFBBQ issues, or anything else likely to get this book a Nebula nomination. Highly recommended if you like zombie stories, carnage a la John Ringo, or just plain good action.

Amazon.com – Read eBooks using the FREE Kindle Reading App on Most Devices

— by Wombat-socho

I didn’t get much reading done last week, what with a lack of money for new books, a lack of time to stop by the library, and a lack of spare time to actually read what I did pick up last week thanks to the truck breaking down for a day – which, thanks to Northern Virginia’s idiosyncratic transit network, meant a day and a half wasted on bus and Metro riding that I could have spent reading.

Anyway, I finally got around to Variable Star, which is billed as a collaboration between Robert Heinlein and Spider Robinson. For those of you unfamiliar with the backstory on this, apparently RAH had written the outline in 1955, but never done anything else with it. When it was found (less its last page) after Virginia Heinlein’s death, Robinson was asked to finish it in his own style, which he did, and the result is something that’s neither fish nor fowl. As Nicholas Whyte said in Strange Horizons, “This is, frankly, not a great book.” I have to agree with him; with its many references to events and characters from Heinlein’s other works, and shameless Tuckerizations, it’s amusing for people who like that sort of thing, but the opening chapters are painful to read and the deus ex machina that saves the day is downright infuriating. Also, contra Whyte, the book seems as obsessed with sex and sexual relations as any of Heinlein’s later, lesser works, which is an annoying distraction since it all seems rather forced and gratuitous, a signal by Robinson that he, too, is hep, cool and with it. It’s not nearly as bad as For Us, The Living, but that’s damning with faint praise. If you really like Spider Robinson and view him as the obvious heir to Heinlein’s legacy (I don’t) then you’ll probably enjoy the book; if not, then you might want to read it once and move on.

And then we have Iver Cooper’s 1636: Seas of Fortune, which is a different kettle of tropical fish altogether. In the old days, Seas of Fortune would probably have been called a fix-up, since it began as a series of short stories, but here forms a pair of short novels dealing with a USE colony in the Guianas (and a refugee marrano from Brazil who plays an important role) and the Japanese colonization of America’s Pacific Coast with exiled Christians under the rule of daimyo Date Masumune, who was not himself Christian. Both stories are entertaining, but whether they’re worth almost nine bucks is another question, especially since the paperback is less expensive. What’s up with that, Baen?

Finally, a couple of short stories. First, Sarah Hoyt’s The Price of Gold, which is an amusing little romantic fantasy that dances along the edge of horror without falling in. The plot concerns a secret high school for magicians, the misfit boy who apparently can’t do magic at all despite his parents both being wizards, and the precocious girl whose magical skills are exactly the opposite – she’s so good, not even her teachers know what her limits might be. When the misfit boy disappears, and nobody else seems to care, our heroine sets off to solve the case – and finds the boy may have a talent their teachers aren’t equipped to appreciate.

Much less sweet (and considerably more frustrating) is Marko Kloos’ Measures of Absolution, a story set in his Frontlines universe that returns us to the hostile slums of Detroit which we previously saw in his debut novel Terms of Enlistment. This time the story is from the POV of Andrew Grayson’s squadmate Corporal Jackson, who finds out why her squad almost got wiped out – but the question is whether she’ll survive to let anyone higher in the chain of command know. I’d have been a lot happier with “Measures of Absolution” if it hadn’t ended abruptly at AN EXTREMELY DRAMATIC POINT, but as it is, it’s a good read but immensely frustrating. Maybe we’ll get to see the rest of the story after Marko finishes AngelsAngles of Attack. Maybe we won’t. In the meantime, if you don’t mind being left hanging, it’s a good story.

Finally, on a completely unrelated topic, it’s been a while since we all got together for drinks, snacks, and goodnatured hijinkery, and frankly, I don’t care to wait for CPAC. How many of you would be interested in getting together someplace in DC or Northern Virginia for beverages (adult & otherwise), nibblements and conversation? We can either follow the example of the recent Northern Virginia Moron Meetup, which reserved a private room and pre-ordered trays of appetizers after people chipped in money, or we can just pick a bar, restaurant, or lounge someplace and agree to meet there at a certain day & time. This would probably, tentatively happen in mid-October or later. Let me know what you think in the comments.

In case you don’t recognize the name Kevin Trainor, he is our very own Wombat, the co-blogger who compiles the daily “Live at Five” headline roundup and now the author of The Last Falangist: Essays on Culture and Politics in America — CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW.

Wombat points out in the introduction that he is not actually a member of the Franco’s Movimiento Nacional, just a very conservative Catholic from a military background. Nor is his book merely a compendium of reactionary nostalgia, despite the fact that much of it was written in the Good Old Days, when George W. Bush was president and almost nobody outside Chicago had ever heard of a guy named Barack Hussein Obama. It is a shock to realize that this time in history now seems almost as distant as the era of the Generalissimo’s rule in Spain.

How far back does The Last Falangist go, you ask? On Page 59, we find an entry from January 2005 that begins thus:

“I’ve been thinking about the long comment Allahpundit left on Michele’s old blog . . .”

Yes: In 2005, there was no HotAir.com and Allahpundit was just another dude hanging out in the blogosphere.

The Last Falangist: Essays on Culture and Politics in America
ONLY $1.99! CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!

Excuse the heavy-duty sales hype, but the purpose of publishing an ebook is to sell the ebook to people who will read the ebook, and supporting our ethos of shameless capitalism compels me to point out that such a transaction requires that you actually click the link. (Although there are still a few old-timers like Wombat and me, the online world nowadays is crawling with noobz who don’t understand how this here innerwebs stuff works.) If living well is the best revenge, surviving long enough to tell the story of the people who f–ked you over is maybe the second-best revenge, and did I ever mention that Wombat is divorced?

Hate was not an option. Hate was the enemy. Hate had to be ruthlessly suppressed, choked off, buried so deep nobody outside my skin could find it. Hate was weakness, because to hate someone, you must care what happens to them, and I no longer cared. . . .
The only option was to soldier on, show the hard face, and cultivate apathy like a poisonous plant. F–k It. Drive On.

This is not just excellent prose, it’s also an expression of Stoic philosophy. To “show the hard face,” as Wombat so brilliantly describes it, is to deprive bad people of the sadistic pleasure they ordinarily get from f–king other people over. If you can “cultivate apathy” toward the Evil Lying Bitch From Hell, you win.

The Last Falangist: Essays on Culture and Politics in America
ONLY $1.99! CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!

Of course, this isn’t Charlie Sheen-style “winning,” and if Wombat is cavorting with porn starlets half his age, he is being awful secretive about it, but what other options are available? Toward the end of The Last Falangist — Page 114, to be exact — we find Wombat returning to the subject to acknowledge the pain:

The whole point of having a mother and a father working together is so that you have backup when one of you drops the ball; the other one is there to quickly scoop up the errant pigskin or maybe make the catch and run it in. Unfortunately, divorce screws up that neat metaphor, because all of a sudden Mom and Dad aren’t really on the same team any more. . . .
When you and the Mrs. are constantly fighting over every little thing, when a lot of her energy is going toward building up the new boyfriend and tearing you down for not being a passive, enabling doormat, it becomes damn near impossible. Because the kids know what’s going on. They may not understand it, but they know.

If “the personal is political,” as the feminists insist, what is the politics of Stoicism? It might involve an indifference to the endless whining of self-declared Victims of Society, the people who insist that they are oppressed by the rest of us, as if we don’t have enough problems of our own to keep us busy, as if we had time to bother discriminating against them — Social Injustice as a hobby.

The Last Falangist: Essays on Culture and Politics in America
ONLY $1.99! CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!

Did I mention that Wombat is not only Hispanic on his mother’s side, but also Jewish? Yep: His maternal ancestry is traceable to the Sephardic “crypto-Jews” of New Mexico, as we learn on Page 81 of The Last Falangist, so if you don’t buy his book, you’re not only a xenophobic anti-Latino yanqui bigot, but also a Jew-hater. Such is the logic of the Obama Age, where all opposition to the president’s policies is explained by the mainstream media as a byproduct of some kind of irrational hate. It is therefore amusing to read Wombat’s reaction (Page 73) to a Jay Rosen essay:

His point that bloggers rely on the MSM for news collection is very well taken, but he goes astray when he elides the distinction between bloggers who attack media bias because they can’t stand the hypocritical claim of objectivity and conservative bloggers who want the Gang of 500 taken out, shot, and impaled as a warning to others who cross the Right-Wing Death Beast Party. There are certainly bloggers in the latter category, but the former type can be found all over the political spectrum, and a lot of us agree that the problem would go away for us if ABC/CBS/CNN/NBC/PBS would just come out of the closet and admit they’re a bunch of Democrats.

That was written in 2004. Sic semper hoc.

Such flashback reminders of what has changed (and what hasn’t) in the past decade are scattered through The Last Falangist, and if you won’t spend $1.99 to enjoy the excellence of Wombat’s insightful analysis, you’re obviously an agent of the Comintern.

Do not smirk, Comrade — despite the title of Wombat’s book, there are probably still a few other Falangist holdouts, and you subversives will regret it if Movimiento Nacional gets their hands on you.

 

 

— Wombat-socho

You got it.

This week, we have a plethora of novels filled with (more than) a bit of the old ultra-violence, ranging from the retail death and destruction dealt by Agent Franks of the Monster Control Bureau in Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter Nemesis through the horrific carnage in Tom Kratman’s The Rods and the Axe to the world-wrecking war depicted in Christopher Nuttall’s The Trafalgar Gambit, which wraps up the trilogy begun in Ark Royal.

Before all that, though, I want to put in a good word for Andy Weir’s The Martian, a good old-fashioned hard-SF epic about an astronaut marooned on Mars after his crewmates leave him for dead during a sandstorm. Not only is our hero not dead, he manages to kludge together the tools he needs to survive and communicate with NASA back on Earth. It’s a gripping tale of survival, bureaucratic and technical struggle, and humorous touches. Hard to believe the legacy publishers turned this down – no, actually, these days it’s not surprising at all. Currently marked down to about $5 and very much worth it.

Now let us praise famous monsters, particularly Agent Franks of the Federal Monster Control Bureau. Longtime readers of Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International series (first three books helpfully collected in The Monster Hunters) will be familiar with the Frankenstein Monster of few words who serves as the nigh-unstoppable strong right fist of the MCB, and probably have mixed emotions about the construct sworn to defend America by Ben Franklin himself. Franks has long had just one condition on his contract: that the United States never attempt to build another construct like him. When the manipulative head of Special Task Force Unicorn breaks the contract and frames Franks for a rampage in MCB headquarters, that contract is broken, and Franks sets out on what may be his last mission: destroy the “improved” constructs created by Project Nemesis. It turns out there’s a lot more to Agent Franks than anyone (except possibly that sly rogue Franklin) ever suspected, and it all makes for a gripping tale that you should definitely make time for. Five stars and a strong recommendation; I have no idea how the International Lord of Hate is going to top this, but in the meantime, if you want to get yourself an autographed copy, he’s currently on tour doing signings, starting tomorrow at Uncle Hugo’s in Minneapolis.

The Rods and the Axe is the most recent novel in the series that began with A Desert Called Peace, which on one level is about the seemingly suicidal war between Balboa (Panama) and the Tauran (European) Union, a war which Balboa has inexplicably widened to include Zhong Guo (China). Patricio Carrera is playing more than one game, though; while Balboa’s nation in arms digs in to defend itself and bleed the TU and the Zhong white, Carrera is playing a longer game against the United Nations Peace Fleet, whose Admiral Wallenstein has clawed herself up from little better than a sex toy to last defender of the corrupt oligarchy that rules Earth. A good read; if you enjoyed the first five books in the series, this will be right up your alley, and if you’re not sure this is your cup of tea, well, you can always try A Desert Called Peace for free and see if it is. As usual, Kratman pulls no punches in his descriptions of modern combat and the people who fight it. Recommended.

When we last left the British space carrier Ark Royal at the end of The Nelson Touch, the battered old carrier and her crew had returned to an Earth heavily damaged by an alien attack after losing a prince of the royal family who’d become a fighter pilot under an assumed name. Humanity is on the edge of losing the war, and survival may depend on whether our diplomats can help the aliens’ peace faction to prevail – or whether a doomsday bioweapon will have to be unleashed. Meanwhile, the Ark Royal’s CAG is being blackmailed – but by who? There’s a lot going on in The Trafalgar Gambit, and while I’m not sure I like the ending, it’s still a rather good space opera, well worth your time and money.

There’s a new Laundry novel out (The Rhesus Chart) but I think I can wait until that shows up in the library.