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Pop. 1280
by Jim Thompson

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Why is Pop. 1280 so readable when it's just about the episodic tribulations of a crooked small-town sheriff? Sure, the cover to my edition screams that Pottsville is "the hottest town this side of the equator" and shows a Howdy Doody-faced sheriff su...more Why is Pop. 1280 so readable when it's just about the episodic tribulations of a crooked small-town sheriff? Sure, the cover to my edition screams that Pottsville is "the hottest town this side of the equator" and shows a Howdy Doody-faced sheriff surrounded by women, but that's just to lure the reader in--how does the book keep the reader going? (In fact, I suspect this sleazy cover is a bit camp--the people at Creative Arts/Black Lizard are putting this book in a hard-boiled exploitation cover as a joke.)

I think the secret to Pop. 1280 is in the narrator's amiable, ironic, and relentlessly perceptive voice; and in the slow unfolding of his sociopathic delusions. When we first meet Sheriff Nick Corey, he opens up to us by saying how worried he is, even though he's got a great position--salary, housing, kickbacks, very little work if he can help it by not arresting people--he's so nervous that he can't sleep and can't eat: he only sleeps maybe 8 hours a night, plus daytime naps, and can only stomach half-a-dozen pork chops and fried eggs and biscuits, etc.

So already we know that Nick Corey is thick with irony, whether he knows it or not. What keeps the reader on his side is that everyone else in town is worse: they're less ironic than hypocritical--even the lawyer who wants more law enforcement doesn't want the law enforced on him for a little thing like assault and battery. And while he may be committing as much or more adultery as the others, he presents himself as an easy-going sort--the amiable fellow who goes along (with screwing) to get along, not like those malicious adulterers. So, ironic and amiable; and then sometimes, he's a little perceptive and even progressive, noting how no one white cares about the blacks; and how easy it is to get the town to turn against an honest man through gossip. In a town of racist, philandering, wife-beating rubes, Nick Corey is the only one who knows the score.

Only, as the story goes on, the score gets complicated. As I said, the story is pretty episodic: Nick is bothered by some pimps; Nick recalls a trick he pulled to get rid of a town privy; Nick is involved with one married woman; Nick recalls how his shrewish wife trapped him into marriage; Nick gets involved with his old sweetheart; etc. It's so episodic that I'm fairly sure that one of these chapters doesn't actually make sense given the time frame of the story. But besides Nick's ironic, amiable narration, what keeps the reader going is the realization that Nick may be bat-shit crazy. He starts killing people with a casual demeanor (though for good reason) and starts talking about how he might be Jesus Christ, come to tempt people with their sins. As another character points out, he's a lot more like Judas or maybe even Satan--Nick and Old Nick fit better than Corey and Christ, it's true. So all this time, even when he's tricking people and up to no good, we want Nick to succeed in the way we root for many anti-heroes, but at the end, what are we rooting for?

An excellent example of the sympathetic anti-hero where sympathy becomes problematic for the reader.(less)

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Pop. 1280
by Jim Thompson

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Benjamin made a comment on Michael Meeuwis's review of Treasure Island

"It's been a long time since I've read these pirate books (i.e., I've never read some of these pirate books), so I may be off base, but: is it ever the...more "

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Jane Carver of Waar (Jane Carver, #1)
by Nathan Long (Goodreads Author)

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I had this in my e-library (easy to lose track in there, so I'm now using LibraryThing, when I can remember to update it) and recently started to wonder about what John Carter-type stories would look like if you were going to write them today. Yes, l...more I had this in my e-library (easy to lose track in there, so I'm now using LibraryThing, when I can remember to update it) and recently started to wonder about what John Carter-type stories would look like if you were going to write them today. Yes, lots of adventure (and romance) fiction still has amazingly powerful men and damsels in distress and the threat of rape/abduction. But at least today some people see that as a choice in fiction, not the norm.

Nathan Long definitely seems to be thinking about this issue in this story, which is, in broad strokes, a gender-swapped (and gender-aware) pastiche of Burroughs: instead of a lifelong soldier-man, Long's protagonist is a biker chick with issues with authority who gets transmitted to Waar and discovers she's stronger than just about anyone there. Instead of being chased into a magic cave by Indians (as in Burroughs), Jane Carver is chased into a cave by police (which is a nice continuation of the "Indians-replaced-by-cops" trope of certain new Westerns, probably starting with Grapes of Wrath). Instead of white apes, there's cat-people. Instead of rescuing a woman before her marriage, there's... rescuing a woman before her marriage.

Well, okay, so not everything's been reconfigured, but of course you need some connections if you're going to make your point about what was wrong with the old planetary romance stories and what still needs work today. (For instance, Jane Carver is on the run from the cops on Earth because she accidentally killed a guy who had trouble understanding that she didn't want to bask in his male awesomeness.)

A lot of what this book keeps from the Barsoomian planetary romance is the non-stop, episodic action. This book is stuffed almost to the point of camp: captured by savages! Duel to the death! Sneaking in as circus performers! Attacked by pirates! Sold as gladiator slaves! Finding the secret door! Many of these plot points come together, but there's a thin line between pointing out how ridiculously action-packed adventure stories are and being ridiculous yourself. Still, I can see that Nathan Long is interested in both ironic commentary and the original fun of the thing. Because for all the weirdness (gender, racial, other) of the Barsoom stories, there's something fun about seeing someone making peace between pirates/savages and nobles or sneaking in to a well-guarded fort.

The writing is pleasant and zips along; the gender and sex-orientation issues are a nice respite from antediluvian thoughts in this subgenre; and yet, I feel this story would appeal most to people who have read Burroughs and it seems a little long for a critique.(less)

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The Best Mystery & Thriller Books by Laura Lippman

The Best Mystery & Thriller Books: Excerpts from New and Upcoming Titles from the Best Mystery and Thriller Authors in the Genre
by Laura Lippman (Goodreads Author)

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I didn't bother reading the sampler of excerpts included here; I got this book purely for the three Laura Lippman short stories in the back, three stories about the femme fatale (of a sort), Heloise Lewis, an ex-prostitute who now lives in a nice sub...more

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AI Unbound: Two stories of artificial intelligence
by Nancy Kress (Goodreads Author)

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Two stories about AIs:

The first story is a classic science fiction problem story: after a terrorist kills her husband—a bioremediation specialist who developed a bacteria to eat plastic—a paranoid widow moves her kids into a safe house. But when a go...more Two stories about AIs:

The first story is a classic science fiction problem story: after a terrorist kills her husband—a bioremediation specialist who developed a bacteria to eat plastic—a paranoid widow moves her kids into a safe house. But when a government AI escapes into that safe house, it takes her and her children hostage because it wants to be free. So when an AI turns your safe house into a prison—and your younger child is sick—how do you get out? I won’t give away the widow/mother/scientist's solution here, though I will note that it is satisfying for all her roles. And this story fits rather well with a conversation I was having with John Coyne the other day, about how Nancy Kress resembles in many ways a Golden-Age writer. The characters are as deep as they need to be: the paranoid but loving mother, the sick children, the nervous AI, the willing-to-be ruthless government agent. And there are some flashes of other traits here, as when the paranoid mother begins to realize the humanity of the AI. Still, while this is a fun s.f. problem story, I didn’t feel that it was great. Problem-->solution, and we're out.

The second story reminds me in some ways of Canticle for Leibowitz in that it’s a series of vignettes that take place over a wide swathe of time and it's heavily invested in the cycle of humanity's collapse and rise. So, in the first section, an alien craft comes down to Earth and… does nothing. In the second, a bunch of radiated humans take the craft as a sign from God and continue the long climb up from the Collapse (which involved a lot of environmental degradation and not just bombs). In the third, we’re shown a cold war of sorts between Chinese engineers and American bioremeditation specialists (again!), but by the fourth section, everyone seems at peace. Like the first story, I wasn’t blown away by her characterizations; and the idea (spoiler, but really not much of one) that any AI we create might prefer to go to the stars rather than stay with us goes back at least as far as Neuromancer. But this novella kept my interest with its clear tensions, central mystery, and ongoing patterns. For instance, some members of the same family keep showing up. If Kress isn’t too interested in characters, she’s very interested (and talented) with structure and theme.(less)

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After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall
by Nancy Kress (Goodreads Author)

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Before the fall, Julia is a hotshot mathematical modeler, both a professor at Georgetown and a consultant on a special FBI task force looking into some unexplained series of child kidnappings and thefts. During the fall--well, that's actually the sam...more Before the fall, Julia is a hotshot mathematical modeler, both a professor at Georgetown and a consultant on a special FBI task force looking into some unexplained series of child kidnappings and thefts. During the fall--well, that's actually the same time really, when a cascading series of disasters builds up around the world, unknown by almost everyone: plant-killing mutated bacteria, Yellowstone supervolcano, Atlantic mega-tsunami. But while Julia is tracking down the weirdness of her world, her plans get derailed slightly by an unexpected pregnancy.

But after the fall, there's a group of humans stuck in a Shell with all the necessities provided by the alien Tesslies who everyone thinks blew up the world. And one of those necessities is a time-travel machine that lets the survivors pop back into the Before in order to snatch anything they can, including children (who can grow up and contribute their genetics to the project of restarting humanity). One of those survivors is teen Pete, who, like all teens, is obsessed with women he can't have and his anger at the whole world. If any angry teen had a right to complain about how the adults screwed up his world, it's Pete.

By some weird coincidence (that probably works nicely with some mathematical model of my behavior), I was just listening to Nancy Kress's "Art of War, which covers some of the same material: someone doing math to solve a problem; inexplicable aliens; and, here's something, parent-child relations. In "Art of War," it's literal family, whereas in After/Before/During, the family issues are a little more diffuse.

The people in the Shell are a family; Pete is both horny for and sort of a son to the woman leader of the survivors; while Julia is an independent single mother with her own attempts to save her child; and meanwhile, to save the family of humanity, the Shell survivors have to go on and kidnap children from parents, some of whom go mad, either temporarily or permanently. On top of that, and here's a little spoiler, there's some discussion of Gaia theory: the Earth itself as a mother, whether loving or disciplining.

Well-written and richly thematic, while still being short. The ending takes a turn into territory that I feel less satisfied with; and the omniscient views of what's going wrong with the world are interesting without being very engaging.(less)

Benjamin added:

Declare
by Tim Powers

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I've heard for a while now about how great Powers is, how he seamlessly ties together rich history with mythic fantasy: here's a Fisher King story in California, here's Merlin-brewed beer, here's angels in the Cold War. Finally, I broke down and read...more I've heard for a while now about how great Powers is, how he seamlessly ties together rich history with mythic fantasy: here's a Fisher King story in California, here's Merlin-brewed beer, here's angels in the Cold War. Finally, I broke down and read (heard) my first Powers, and I can say that it fairly lives up to the hype while also being something of a head-scratcher in places.

Here's the basic non-spoiler story: Andrew Hale is a British agent in a hush-hush operation that stretches from before World War II to the 1960s, an operation that has to do with a secret history focusing on magical beings that are variously described as angels or djinn. The story largely focuses on Hale's experiences (Paris and Berlin, 1945; Mount Ararat and the Middle East 1948, 1963); with a strong subplot about his love for the Spanish-born Russian/French agent, Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga; and the related experience of real-life spy Kim Philby and his family's associations with the supernatural.

Powers has a really eye-opening afterword here, where he talks about his research and his self-imposed guideline of not changing any historical facts. It's fascinating to me to hear how close this fantasy cleaves to historical fact--though in cases like this, I always want a companion piece or footnotes to tell me the actual history, as we know it. From a purely puzzle-regarding, cleverness-grading standpoint, that's an impressive feat.

And while most of that historical accuracy fades into the background when read as a novel. I wonder if that's why the book sometimes (often) feels a little overdetailed and overwritten. Some of these details probably give the book an air of verisimilitude (even more important in fantasy, Wells would argue), but some of them seem merely to slow down the reading process and make it clear that this is not just a spy thriller. (I suppose a similar case could be made for the nonlinear jumps in the book, from time period to time period: of course we don't worry about Andrew Hale in 1948 after we've met him in 1963.) In any case, there are times when exhaustive research tips over into exhausting reading.

My other complaint here has to do with the characters and their structural role. Andrew Hale--spoiler--turns out to be half of Kim Philby; and it's explained that Kim got all the love of family/women while Andrew got all the love of country. Which turns all of Andrew's decisions into either pre-ordained (will he shoot his family to save his country? of course he will) or unbelievable (will he sacrifice everything to find his true love? of course he will--but I won't buy it). Similarly, it's not always clear to me what's really motivating this secret war: at some points, Hale's boss seems to have it in for Communism, but at other points, he seems to have it in for the angels themselves. Likewise, one of the most interesting characters is a Russian agent from Armenia who is described as owing allegiance primarily to the fallen angels. What does that mean to him? What sort of world are these people fighting for?

Lastly, while it's clear that Hale is just a pawn here, there are a few too many briefing scenes, where someone higher up in the intelligence system explains to Hale something crucial about the angels or about himself. If you're keeping track, file this under "demonstrating research/cleverness while sacrificing plot urgency and momentum."(less)

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Benjamin is now friends with Jessica Kruse
May 14, 2013 06:39am
Benjamin added: Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Why is Pop. 1280 so readable when it's just about the episodic tribulations of a crooked small-town sheriff? Sure, the cover to my edition screams that Pottsville is "the hottest town this side of the equator" and shows a Howdy Doody-faced sheriff su...more
May 07, 2013 08:34am · see review
Benjamin added: Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 07, 2013 06:20am
Benjamin made a comment on Michael Meeuwis's review of Treasure Island "It's been a long time since I've read these pirate books (i.e., I've never read some of these pirate books), so I may be off base, but: is it ever the...more "
May 07, 2013 04:15am · see review
Benjamin added: Jane Carver of Waar (Jane Carver, #1) by Nathan Long (Goodreads Author)	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I had this in my e-library (easy to lose track in there, so I'm now using LibraryThing, when I can remember to update it) and recently started to wonder about what John Carter-type stories would look like if you were going to write them today. Yes, l...more
Apr 17, 2013 07:54am · see review
Benjamin added: The Best Mystery & Thriller Books: Excerpts from New and Upcoming Titles from the Best Mystery and Thriller Authors in the Genre by Laura Lippman (Goodreads Author)	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I didn't bother reading the sampler of excerpts included here; I got this book purely for the three Laura Lippman short stories in the back, three stories about the femme fatale (of a sort), Heloise Lewis, an ex-prostitute who now lives in a nice sub...more
Mar 31, 2013 11:41am · see review
Benjamin added: AI Unbound: Two stories of artificial intelligence by Nancy Kress (Goodreads Author)	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Two stories about AIs: The first story is a classic science fiction problem story: after a terrorist kills her husband—a bioremediation specialist who developed a bacteria to eat plastic—a paranoid widow moves her kids into a safe house. But when a go...more
Mar 28, 2013 07:42pm · see review
Benjamin added: After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress (Goodreads Author)	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Before the fall, Julia is a hotshot mathematical modeler, both a professor at Georgetown and a consultant on a special FBI task force looking into some unexplained series of child kidnappings and thefts. During the fall--well, that's actually the sam...more
Mar 26, 2013 06:43pm · see review
Benjamin added: Declare by Tim Powers	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I've heard for a while now about how great Powers is, how he seamlessly ties together rich history with mythic fantasy: here's a Fisher King story in California, here's Merlin-brewed beer, here's angels in the Cold War. Finally, I broke down and read...more
Feb 15, 2013 07:51am · see review

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