Jared Shurin's Blog, page 118
July 16, 2013
Charles Stetzle on the Bulwarks of Booze
Extracts from Charles Stetzle'sWhy Prohibition?(1918):
America needs patriots not only those who will
go to the battle line in France, but also men and women, too, who will strengthen the hands of the boys who have gone to the Front.
Our greatest peril is that of waste and the greatest waster in our country is the liquor traffic. To strengthen America by precept and practice is a distinct obligation resting upon every citizen of this Republic.
This book is written to point out the perils...
July 15, 2013
Underground Reading: Bust by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr
This is the latest installment in my steady quest to review each and every Hard Case Crime publication, one every week (more or less).You can follow along here.
Bust(2006). By Ken Bruen and Jason Starr.
Well, that was crazy.
Let me try that again.
So, Bustis the story of four characters, not one of them pleasant. Max is an IT entrepreneur type, sleazy to the core, who likes to seal the deal with hookers and uses the word "classy" without reallyknowing what it means. Dillon is a former IRA hi...
July 14, 2013
Post-script: Shopping, SpaceWitch and A Fantastical Librarian
First, as always, the shopping:
Selvedin Avdić's Seven Terrors. One of the finalists in this year's SF & Fantasy Translation Awards. I've tried to track down most of the finalists (it is surprisingly, depressingly difficult - most come via the US and are surprisingly expensive), this is the first to show up. (Abebooks)
Ira Levin's This Perfect Day. I think Levin deserves more credit as a genre-hopping, er... "hack" isn't the right word, "proficient"? Between Rosemary's Baby, The Boys from Br...
July 12, 2013
Friday Five: Five Books That Read Like (Tabletop) Games
One of the most fascinating books I've read lately has been Neal Tringham's Science Fiction Hobby Games. Released this May, Mr. Tringham has written an astounding survey of the world of science fiction roleplaying, tabletop, card, postal, board and war games - not just a history of the field, but an exhaustive review and analysis of all the most important games.
From Shadowrun to d20, Fighting Fantasyto Gamma World, Heroclix, Illuminati and RoboRally... no science fictional gaming stone is...
July 11, 2013
The Kitschies: The First 60 Days
The Kitschies have been open for submissions since early May, and the first two months have been busy ones.
On the literary side (Red and Golden Tentacles), the prize already has 63 books for consideration. Of these 63:
15 are debuts
6 are books in translation
26 imprints are represented (with "self-published" counted as a single imprint)
(It is worth noting that some of these books have been submitted by publishers, but not yet received by the judges.)
We made a couple of small tweaks to...
July 10, 2013
Review Round-up: 7 x Prologue Books
Prologue Books. Brilliance - I know nothing about them other than it seems a dedicated effort to bring back everything from Gold Medal. And being that Gold Medal was the epitome of publishing, I am 100% ok with that. [No, seriously - they were. Gutsy, courageous, commercial andinventive, brilliant authors, edgy topics, glorious covers - best publisher ever. DISCUSS.]
Anyway, I've been rather systematically looting their selection of ebooks, and here are some quick reviews of what I've read to...
July 9, 2013
Post-script: Upgrading, Downgrading and Giving Away
Latest books in:
Richard S. Prather'sThe Peddler- a funny one. This is Hard Case Crime #27. I'm looking ahead and plugging the gaps in the collection as I meander through my (ostensibly) weekly reviews, and this was one I'm missing. The weird thing? (Perhaps to me.) I've been trying to collect all the Hard Case crime reprints as their originals. In this case, I've got the Gold Medal edition around, but now feel the need to make sure I've got the reprint so it matches all the others. Like the...
July 8, 2013
Why The Terminator's Sarah Connor is the Best Sarah Connor
I know Sarah Connor tops everyone's list of hardcore badass
female characters, but they're usually referring to T2 Sarah Connor, or the Sarah
Connor Chronicles Sarah Connor. And that Sarah Connor is totally, 100% an
amazing hardcore badass character.
But for my money the most amazing Sarah Connor is the Sarah
Connor of The Terminator - the nice,
normal, soft young woman who is confronted with an unbelievable, extraordinary
situation, a situation in which she is hunted by a serial killer who...
July 7, 2013
SF vs Fantasy, Cthulhu vs Godzilla, Vampires vs Zombies - Answered!
Just discovered the Google Ngram Viewer, which searches out keywords in books, and displays them as trends over time. Sadly it only goes up to 2008, but this is still a lot of fun.
Click any of the charts to enlarge them - and more after the jump.
I'm not suprised that ghosts dominate, but I wonder if zombies give vampires a closer run for 2nd in the post 2008 period...
Obviously relevant to more than genre fiction, but still kind of interesting. I wonder what the modern equivalent of atom...
July 6, 2013
The Lowest Heaven - Extra Credit Reading
If you like The Lowest Heaven, why not try more stories from the anthology's amazing contributors?
Sophia McDougall ("Golden Apple"): Her Mars Evacuees series starts in 2014, but you can find more of Sophia's short work in, amongst other places,Dark Currentsand Magic. Plus her Romanitas trilogy is great for more character-focused SF. (Her story for Jurassic London, "Not the End of the World" appeared in Stories of the Apocalypse and as a separate novelette. Both are out of print, but if you...
