Battlestar Zero

One of the first books I've read this January was Battlestar Galactica: Season Zero. This graphic novel reprints the 12-issue series by Dynamite comics, and takes place prior to the events of the TV series. So that means that Caprica is still a thriving civilization, the colonial military still has an armade of Battlestar spaceships and one Bill Adama and Saul Tigh have been assigned to command the Galactica.

I picked this one up from the library mainly out of curiosity: I don't want to spoil the TV show for anyone who hasn't yet seen it, but the on-screen drama comes from the paranoia that anyone could be a Cylon, the constant battle for survival in the depths of space with little resources, and the ongoing search for a new home. How would they conjure up any of that interest in a time-frame that preceeds the Cylon holocaust?

Well, the writers of this series have plumped for another of the show Big Themes: corruption within the military. The plot follows Adama's earliest missions as he uncovers some home truths about the top brass: controversial black ops missions and dubious decisions in the name of The Greater Good. The Cylons even crop up here but they are in no way the main storyline.

Don't worry, plenty of familiar faces show up: Dualla, Helo, Chief Tyrol, and of course Starbuck, to name but a few. Often for no particular good reason, but the characters are all still there. (Lee 'Apollo' Adama has a much smaller role than in the show, but for good reasons). The writing is choppy but has some really good scenes. The art too is inconsistent, with some of the pages on the early issues looking particularly poor. Even A-list characters - such as Bill Adama - are virtually unrecognizable in some panels - not good for a TV tie-in.

Still, Season Zero is a perfectly acceptable addition to the world of Galactica and will please fans who can't get enough raptors, vipers, Cylons and frakking. For those new to the series, this is not a good starting point and doesn't begin to reflect the complexity and depth of the TV show.

2011: The Wilderness Days Part 2

The next book I read (or recorded having read) in 2011 is #9 on my list: Stranger in a Stranger Land (Robert Heinlein, published 1961). This was part of my reading resolution to spend more time reading science-fiction: Stranger is a stone-cold sci-fi classic. Heinlein needs no introduction to sci-fi fans, but other readers will probably recognise him as the author responsible for the original Starship Troopers, the novel which influenced the 1997 film.

Stranger is about a man who was raised on Mars and his subsequent culture shock on return. In the grand tradition of science fiction, the novel is for the most part a satire of the world the author saw around him at the time, and includes swipes at organised religion, the legal system, contemporary sexual politics and the absurdities of bureaucracy and administration. It's also gone down in history for introducing several new pieces of slang into the English language: most notably Grok, meaning "to know, to comprehend/understand". It's hard to hear the word grok today without connotating it with the 60s counter-culture and the hippy stereotype.

I digress but I'm glad I read this book, although at times it was hard going and the copy of the novel I had seemed overly long. (Not surprising, seeing as I read the recent expanded edition published after Heinlein's death; he'd cut swathes of material from his original manuscript when he published the story in the 60s).

Book #10 is Love and Rockets: Ghost of Hoppers, a graphic novel reviewed here, along with #11, JSA: Black Adam & Isis (a DC graphic novel by fan-favourite writer Geoff Johns, now of Green Lantern fame).

Book #12 was a special one for me, a book that's been in my mental "to-read" pile for at least 6 years: The Call of Cthulhu (and other weird stories) by the inimitable H.P. Lovecraft. This collection was special for me because I had chosen it as a prize for an award I won in 6th form.v I distinctly remember the head teacher speaking to me after the ceremony. When I showed him the book, his only comment was "Never heard of him" (despite being an English graduate himself). (As an aside, he also looked at my friend's choice, Nietzche's Thus Spake Zarathustara, and responded with a long whistle: "Looks like heavy stuff." I wouldn't have made anything of it, but earlier in the term he'd emphasized how important it was for us Oxbridge candidates to be well-read).

All this is preamble. Cthulhu has been on my bookshelf for ages and last year I finally got my first taste of Lovecraft's writing. It's impossible to be a horror fan without hearing second-hand about this strange introverted man who's contributed so much mythology to the genre. Similarly it would take a couple of hours of solid writing to adequately express my feelings about Lovecraft's writing, but let me just say that every second-hand rumour and observation about his stories is completely true: his stories really are that mind-boggling, archaic, verbose, terrifying, mystifying, paranoid and down-right racist.

Stephen King described Lovecraft as "the dark Baroque prince of horror fiction", and he's spot-on. Despite finding modern-day acclaim and ubiquity (I can probably rattle off 4 or 5 films/novels/comics coming out in 2012 based on his stories), he was also the repressed bastard child of the genre. His works are repetitive and easily open to parody: there is always a terrible, unspeakable evil - and you can score bonus points if it "writhes horribly" ...in the shadows, naturally. It always seemed strange to me that King champions him so highly, when in his "Memoir of the Craft", On Writing, he often attacks writers who can't find the right words: if you can't find the right words to paint a picture for the reader, then maybe you should, sort of, almost like, be in another job. I'm paraphrasing, and I'm sure Stephen King would be horrified to see his own criticism used against the Baroque Prince. (Howard Phillips, to his friends.) Having said that, Lovecraft's stories are still a must-read for any horror fans.

[Interestingly enough, the PS Publishing event I went to last night at the Lancaster Waterstone's featured a discussion on Lovecraft: Ramsey Campbell pointed out that the detractors always focus on Lovecraft's obvious shortcomings, but too often to neglect how meticulously he builds up little details in the story that add up to a terrifying denouement, or the range of forms and story structures that he employs. You can say what you like about Lovecraft's prose style, he's still essential for anyone who loves to be creeped out.]

2011: The Wilderness Days Part 1

Here goes the beginning of a countdown of everything I read last year. As I’ve said before, I don’t have dates for the books I read in the first half of 2011. However what I do have is one big long list. So the first book I read in January 2011 was…

1) The End of Eternity, by Isaac Asimov (published 1959). A short sci-fi novel about time-travel, memorable for the central conceit of a time-travel elevator – each floor takes the main character to a different century. I’ve only read Asimov’s short stories before, but I get the impression this wasn’t one of his best.

2) The Walking Dead, Volume 2: Miles Behind Us, by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard (graphic novel).
2011 was the year that I was swept up in the modern zombie contagion, with The Walking Dead comics and subsequent TV adaptation at the forefront. (Funnily enough I’ve been reading The Walking Dead again today ). Kirkman’s elevator pitch for the comic is simple: this comic is a zombie film that doesn’t end; the characters must continue, must strive for survival, must keep going after the credits have stopped rolling. At its heart, this black and white series is about what humanity’s really like when it’s forced into a corner: the characters in this book are constantly making horrible choices in order to survive another day. If you like horror in any shape or form, this book is for you. Expect to see plenty more in the list later on…

3) The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood (published 1986).
It’s been a year since I read this book but I still remember being shocked. Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian tale that has more than earned its place on the bookshelf next to Brave New World and 1984. Atwood argued vehemently that this isn’t a work of science-fiction. She’s wrong, but that’s beside the point. Sci-fi or not, that doesn’t make this book any less gripping: the feminist story of a world where women’s lives are tightly controlled. The main character doesn’t even have a name; she goes by the moniker “Offred” to mark her as property of the man of the house.

4) The Weed That Strings The Hangman’s Bag, by Alan Bradley (published 2010).
One of my great discoveries of 2010 was the Flavia De Luce series of mysteries. This is the 2nd in the series – start with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Very funny, very readable, these novels follow the adventures Flavia, a precocious 10-year old with a penchant for poisons and a knack for solving mysteries. Flavia was memorably described by one journalist (link lost, sorry folks!) as a cross between Nancy Drew and The Addams Family. A lot of the stuff I read is aimed at a niche audience: comicbook heroics and horror romps. But this series of books is one I recommend to anyone who enjoys reading.

Books 5, 6, 7 and 8 were Strangers in Paradise: Happily Ever After, Vimanarama, Dororo Volume 3 and Fables: The Mean Seasons – all reviewed here, here, and here – presumably early on in the year and still feeling virtuous about blogging.

So there you have it - I began the year with a mixture of sci-fi, horror, manga, fantasy and mystery. And that's just January/February...

2011 In Review

Early on in 2011 I made a promise to myself to record and review all the books I read. This blog was going to function as my personal reading diary, showing trends and themes in my reading as well as tracking how much (or how little) I was reading. I read somewhere on 43 Things how a user had set himself the target of reading 1 book a week in order to achieve the generic goal of “read more”. That seemed like a lot to me.

I vowed that I wouldn't begin another book until I'd published a review of the last one. Fortunately for me, I shamelessly flaunted that rule. If I hadn’t, I would've read only a handful of books this year. In fact I've read around 60 (including graphic novels).

About halfway through 2011, my anal retentiveness kicked in and I began to find it necessary to record the dates I finished each books, for reasons of record-keeping and general smugness. So what I now have is a chronological list of everything I've read this year, that I haven't blogged at all.

So guess what the next couple of blog entries are going to be?

You got it, a stock-taking retrospective whistle-stop tour of everything I read last year. At least then I can start to write about what I’m reading in 2012. If I make it past February 2011 that is…

To be continued.