Ron Hill Artist

This year I am trying to read books that are fun, interesting, non-fiction or genre, but most importantly: ones I never read before, or that I, for one reason or another, should have read before...
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The Library of America publishes "America's best and most significant writing." Philip K. Dick is the first science fiction writer to be included in this prestigious library. I never read anything besides a few of his many-times-over anthologized short stories, so I have been reading a few of these recognized novels. I started 2010 with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968). It is much better than the movie, which is pretty darn good. Pulpy, but definitely thoughtful and prophetic of society's ills at the same time.

The fourth and final installment of the series begun with the Kubrick collaboration for the movie, 2001 A Space Odyssey. Clarke was good at imagining the future in short, clear but "sense of wonder" insights. 3001 The Final Odyssey (1997) was a good fast read for my second book of the year. It is definitely the end of the monoliths...

This Science Fiction Book Club edition has been sitting on my shelf for over 30 years, and is signed by the Good Doctor himself, who I met as a sophomore in high school after a speech he delivered at Cleveland State University. Asimov always maintained that science fiction needs to present plausible scientific problems that threaten humans; then the drama of the story is how the characters solve that problem. The Gods Themselves (1972), the Nebula Award winning novel, demonstrates exactly that. The problem is one that is uncomfortably similar to the shortsightedness of today's energy politics and climate change debate...

Two Graphic Novels for the
Graphic Novels high school class class I "co-teach":

A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld is excellent. Very well drawn, paced, factual, created from first-hand interviews... suspenseful and journalistic.

Pride of Baghdad, by Brian Vaughan with art by Niko Henrichon: Good story, loosely based on some lions escaped from the Baghdad Zoo after the Americans bombed the city in the 2003 invasion. A study of life's unpredictability and the cost of freedom. Excellent art, definitely not your child's "Lion King" or Disney-esque at all.

Comics!

Batman Unseen, 5-issue story: Excellent "comic noir," drawn by the incomparable Kelly Jones.

HellBoy: The Bride of Hell, written by Mike Mignola and illustrated by Richard Corben, of Heavy Metal fame.

Thor #604-606 was fun. A short story arc. The problem I have with lots of these titles is they get too much like a soap opera. This story had Thor and Dr. Doom... classic, and not too taxing on the side events. Good art.

All I can say is: "Wow."

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) is the 2001 Pulitzer Prize winning novel about friendship, comic books, super heroes, love, golems, American dreams of success, and the holocaust, for starters. Come on, any book that has Salvador Dali dancing in a deep-sea-diving suit at a swank New York party in 1940 is worth 640 pages of excellent writing. One of my favorite sentences (of many): "Many of them, it must be said, could not even draw a realistic picture of the admittedly complicated bodily appendage with which they hoped to make their livings." Again: read Michael Chabon's masterpiece.

Never read much Heilnlein, and I never saw the movie from the 90s, either. Starship Troopers (1959) is a quick read. The book was written after the Korean conflict, and became popular as Vietnam got worse. I keep thinking of the mire the US is currently trapped in over in Iran and Afghanistan .I guess it's true: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The book is similar to one I read back in the late 70s: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

I have been reading The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF) on and off for 35 years, since high school. I subscribed from 1976-1981, then sporadically from the newsstands, then I re subscribed in 1999, and have been reading it since. Good mix of fantasy, science fiction, and bits of horror. Everything from good old ghost stories, sword and sorcery, high fantasy, and real odd, quirky stuff. I think it's the best of the last three professional digests left. It's a bi-monthly digest now, with 250 pages of longer stories and a few short ones. Back in the day I remember reading "The Gunslinger" by Stephen King, "The Brave Little Toaster" by Thomas Disch, "Jefty is Five" by Harlan Ellison, and "The Pale Brown Thing" by Fritz Leiber; now I look forward to fiction by Matthew Hughes, Robert Reed and Albert Cowdrey, and all the other talented contemporary crew of word-smiths... This issue for January/February was as excellent as usual, my favorites being: "Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance," "Nanosferatu," "Songwood," and "Writers of the Future."

TThis book has been sitting on my Bradbury shelf since 1990. I buy everything he publishes in hardcover, the only author I do that for. I started it when I first bought it, but got sidetracked about 30 pages into it; about time I finished this second "mystery" by Bradbury, as he imagines it a tribute to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Reads more like Bradbury, to me, and that's good...

Seven of the best Graphic Novels of 2009...
There are some interesting parallels in what was published last year,
with these works falling into in three (sometimes overlapping) categories:
fiction, journalism and memoir... I read these book in two weeks:

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzuchelli is a fiction work about an architect and how he finally grows up and starts to reassemble his life after a tragedy. Excellent work, uses the medium very creatively, this is a book to truly enjoy and think about.

George Sprott, by Seth, is similar to Asterios Polyp in structure and subject, kind of like a "Citizen Kane" look a media mogul's life. Beautiful design and intriguing.

Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco is an unflinching and exhaustively researched look at a mass murder in the '50s that have become footnotes in the history of Jewish and Arab relations in the Middle East. Fantastically detailed artwork, this took years to produce and includes illustrated interviews with the Palestinians and Isrealis who took part.

R. Crumb's work in Genesis Illustrated much like Footnotes in the art style and painstaking detail, but it is pure Crumb visually, and at the same time truly faithful to the stories of the first book of the Bible, it also took 5 years to illustrate, like Footnotes.

A Drifting Life is an 800-page memoir by a master of manga. Yoshihiro Tatsumi chronicle's the birth of manga after World War II, using humor and his experience as a young cartoonist navigating the pitfalls of building a career. Very cool stuff here, very funny and heartbreaking. Any creator who struggles with the economics and craft of his art will relate to this piece, and despite the size of the book it is a quick read.

David Small's personal memoir, Stitches, is a disturbing account of the author's neglect and abuse at the hands of his parents and his fight to overcome the emotional damage. Interesting watercolor wash style fits the gritty subject.

Monsters was quite disturbing to me, yet a fascinating memoir that reads like a "pornographic PSA" about herpes. Not for the faint of heart. It has been called important by some critics and reviewers, but I wasn't impressed with Ken Dahl's ending to the main character's narrative.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June, 2001

The Diamond Pit by Jack Dannwas an excellent novella. I have been looking for more novellas: it's easier to read a 40-50 page story than a novel, with my work schedule.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March, 2002

The Diamond Pit by Jack Dannwas an excellent novella. I have been looking for more novellas: it's easier to read a 40-50 page story than a novel, with my work schedule.

Kurt Vonnegut is a writer who I have never read much of until recent years. I plan on making up for this as soon as I can.

Al Stewart wrote a song in the early 70s with the same name as this book; now I can say I understand what the lyric "I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all" means. Well, at least as much as anyone whor reads Vonnegut can claim to know what anything he writes means. I also know what the harmoniums are and what the Army of Mars is.

Drive
Daniel Pink
I read Pink's other book, A Whole New Mind. This one is about motivation, and how it can be killed by carrots and sticks in business and education.

Venus on the Half-Shell
Kilgore Trout
(Phil Jose Farmer)
Kilgore Trout is a recurring character in a number of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's, novels. He serves as an alter-ego for Vonnegut. This book is reputedly written by Philip Jose Farmer, and he appears to be trying to write in the blue and purple prose thatKilgore Trout favors in the Vonnegut stories. Trout is said to have written 117 trashy paperback sci-fi novels, and never made a dime off of the sales. It's a pretty amusing parody of a self-parody, and a break from the Vonnegut jag (sort of) I find myself on these days.

Medusa
Clive Cussler, with Paul Kemprecos
I stopped reading Clive Cussler back when he only wrote about Dirk Pitt. But I goy a bag of these fat, franchise novels for $3.00, so what the heck. Fun, Doc Savage-y pulp stuff, perfect for this summer when we go to Maine.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Kurt Nonnegut, Jr.
This is my "travel-book"; it fits in my school bag, for when I am early to appointments, maybe lunch-time, whatever. Excellent parody. It was published in 1965, but it's savage depiction of heartless American millionaires could be describing Goldman Sachs executives CEOs...

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