Moe Lane

I’m going to go with Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day. Because it’s insane that this scheme actually worked. Even if you believe that Admiral Canaris was in on the whole thing, which isn’t really supported by the text of that book.

And so, adieu to The Delirium Brief.

The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross is the latest in his Lovecraft-meets-espionage Laundry series, and it’s… well.  How do I put this nicely?  Charlie Stross — who is from Great Britain — has clearly been scared spitless by three specific current events since 2014 (two domestic and one foreign from his point of view, and you can almost certainly guess what those events were), and his horrified reaction to at least two of them clearly comes across in the book.  The effect is much like reading “The Horror At Red Hook” when you’re not a racist; you don’t get the same effect as you would from reading about stuff that actually scares you, but the horror that you pick up from the author still gives a certain frisson.

There. That should be polite enough.  After all, I do buy Charles Stross in hardcover. (more…)

Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time is, of course, a classic; but it’s also a children’s book — and one the first science fiction stories that I got to read.  Which makes it a favorite of mine.  :narrowed eyes: Not to mention a subject of some concern, given that Disney is making a movie of it.

…And it had better be a good movie, too.  Some things may not be borne.

And so, adieu to 1636: The Kremlin Games.

Moe Lane

Been reading the 163x Grantville alternate history series again, mostly because I wanted to. 1636: The Kremlin Games (authors Eric Flint, Gorg Huff, and Paula Goodlett) is a reasonably standalone novel in that series, and pretty engrossing.  Russia’s always an interesting locale to put a speculative fiction story, not least because the place seems half-fantastic to Western readers anyway.

And so, adieu to The Day of the Triffids.

John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids is of interest to me not just because of the book, but because for some reason I thought that I was thinking of the 1962 movie version of it when I was actually thinking of the 1981 BBC miniseries. Which makes more sense, because I was wondering how 1962 could have possibly managed to make a movie that was actually faithful to the book. Short answer: it didn’t, of course.  Anyway, good book, well worth revisiting’ but just remember that it was written in the 1950s.

And so, adieu to A Civil Campaign. (more…)

I’m kind of unsure whether I should make Lois McMaster Bujold’s A Civil Campaign the Book of the Week.  I mean, yes, it’s bloody brilliant. The Vorkosigan series generally is, and Bujold has a remarkable capacity for precipitating out genuine hilarity from the most unpromising of sources. I just don’t know whether or not it’s the best gateway to the entire Vorkosigan series.  Of course, most people here don’t really need to be told to buy this book, do they?  You already know. You probably already have.

Ach, well, maybe somebody will see this post someday in a Google search.

And thus, we say adieu to The Hunt For Red October. (more…)

I got turned on to Tom Clancy novels by a buddy in college. The Hunt For Red October was maybe the first one I read, because of the movie (which is, of course, excellent, and not least because it boasts a remarkably good cast). It was about then, I think, that I started coming to the (at the time) uncomfortable realization that maybe Ronald Reagan wasn’t an amiable dunce after all.  …Much followed, from that.

And so, adieu to Hard Magic. (more…)

This is my week for getting back to books that I inexplicably put down and didn’t pick up again.  In this case: John Myers Myers’ The Alamo (I don’t need to explain to you what the book is about, right?).  I wonder how Mr. Myers felt about the fact that — despite the fact that he was primarily a writer of history, with a focus on the American West — he’s remembered today primarily for Silverlock.  Then again, it’s not like he didn’t write Silverlock, now is it?

And so, adieu to Sweet Silver Blues.

Sweet Silver Blues is Glen Cook’s first book in his Garrett, PI series. It’s basically hard-boiled detective fiction set in a fantasy medieval city, only not in a gimmicky way because it takes seriously the detective portion of it and the doesn’t use the fantasy portion of it to cheat on the plot.  The series also has the nice quality of allowing the setting to keep evolving; the world is significantly different at the end of the latest book than it was at the beginning of the first. Check it out.

And so, adieu to The Berlin Project.

Gregory Benford’s The Berlin Project asks the question: What would have happened if my* father-in-law had had the chance to have the high-speed centrifuge method be chosen as the Manhattan Project’s primary method for uranium enrichment? And the answer is apparently We would have had the Bomb in time for D-Day.  Which is arguably true, and certainly interesting. And probably a better situation all around, assuming that you weren’t living in… well, read the book.  Although you’ve probably guess what happens, just from the title.

And so, adieu to The Weapon Shops of Isher.
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Because the right to buy weapons is the right to be free.

And so, adieu to This Perfect Day.

The Weapons Shops of Isher, A.E. van Gogt

Ira Levin didn’t write overmuch in the way of science fiction, but This Perfect Day was a pretty good dystopian future novel in the style of, and sometimes in critique of, Brave New World. God only knows how you’d put it on the big screen, though. Which is odd, because Ira Levin had a knack for writing books that could be usefully made into a decent movie.

And so, adieu to Jurassic Park.