Justin Howe's Blog, page 43
July 13, 2013
Garden 07 12 2013
Not mine, but glimpsed through alley gates on my way to work.
July 12, 2013
Matheson’s Game
Richard Matheson died a few weeks back. He’s one of those writers that people know without realizing they know. Anyways, when he died I made this quip on facebook:
Richard Matheson has died. Parents, when your child comes home with a copy of ENDER’S GAME, just go ahead and knock that trash from their hands, and give them I AM LEGEND instead.
That pretty much sums up my feelings on Ender Wiggin.
June 30, 2013
June Books
Counting books finished, ‘cause no one cares about the books stacked up on the back of the hopper/beside the bed/couch.
1. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman.
Oh wow. A book for adults by Neil Gaiman… which means it’s 10 pages of a sad man remembering being a sad kid, then a 170 pages of him as a sad kid and his adventures with the magical pixie dream girl that lived down the road, until finally ten more more pages of the sad man sighing while he looks at a body of water. Yeah, “fo...
June 14, 2013
June 10, 2013
Some Further Words Anyways
Some thoughts on the SF/F genre sparked by the recent, latest, and ongoing SFWA crack-up.
What remains remarkable to me is the genre’s continuing ability to remain stagnant and gleefully rooted in its past. We’ve had over half a century of revolutionary SF with a clear line of fiction and artwork going back to the 60s and earlier. Whether it’s Chip Delany, Ursula LeGuin, or Joanna Russ, the heritage is there for a genre informed by more than the utopian technocratic dreams it sold itself. But...
June 9, 2013
One Book, Four Covers: Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth
Jack Vance died two weeks back at the age of 96.
I loved the Dying Earth stuff from the word go, preferring Rhialto to Cugel, because WIZARDS, and I’d say his Demon Princes series is one of the best satires of SF written.
There’s been a lot written about him since his death, at least in the nerdosphere I inhabit, so it’s only apt to give him the One Book, Four Covers treatment.
Number one, by Ed Emscwiller, is my favorite. Sparse and slightly weird with its tentacled beasty. Then there’s number...
June 3, 2013
Cow
Come on in. My family tastes delicious.
June 1, 2013
May Books
1. The Witches of Karres – James H. Schmitz. A fun little Space Opera novel. Captain Pausert is your typical rogue with a heart of gold starship captain, long on luck, short on credits. He rescues a trio of slave girls and is soon caught up in a series of adventures. It’s a light-hearted book that gets more than a little wonderful in places. Occasionally it has a sour note (mostly of the precocious teenage girl that flirts with an older man that resembles her father variety), but there’s also...
May 25, 2013
May 22, 2013
Fury by Henry Kuttner
Henry Kuttner’s Fury is one of those golden age SF books full of egomaniacal supermen and the form-fitting ballgown-wearing bombshells who love them. It’s overwrought and dopey, but also wonderful and deliriously entertaining.
Here’s your sentence of world building:
“The Earth is long dead, blasted apart, and the human survivors who settled on Venus live in huge citadels beneath the Venusian seas in an atrophying, class-ridden society ruled by the Immortals – genetic mutations who live a thousa...
