Pe langa cartile de la Corint Junior ce vor aparea la targul de carte Gaudeamus – carti prezentate de amicul Shauki – vom avea parte si de cateva lansari din partea editurii Leda, dintre care cea mai interesanta mi s-a parut MAI INTUNECAT DECAT CREZI de JACK WILLIAMSON.

Desi a aparut deja pe site-ul Corint, romanul va avea debutul oficial la Gaudeamus, alaturi de alte carti pe care le puteti gasi pe acelasi site. Intr-o traducere de Monica Taliu, MAI INTUNECAT DECAT CREZI are 368 de pagini de format 13/20.

Profesorul Lamarck Mondrick s-a intors din indepartatele deserturi asiatice cu o ciudata si sinistra lada… dar inainte sa poata dezvalui lumii uluitoarea sa descoperire, ceva l-a redus la tacere pentru totdeauna.

Și in vreme ce vaduva lui Mondrick ajunge intr-un sanatoriu, iar asistentii lui incep sa moara pe rand, ziaristul Will Barbee, fost student al lui Mondrick, descopera o conspiratie ce ameninta intreaga rasa umana.

Oare exista cu adevarat vrajitori, si cine este Fiul Noptii? Va putea Barbee sa se impotriveasca sinistrului complot, sau se va lasa atras in el, intr-un chip inimaginabil?

Ce parere aveti: o coperta ca aceasta vinde cartea, nu-i asa ?

P.S. – Am inceput lectura la CIRCUL FANTASIA de MARGARET MAHY, asa ca in curand va aparea si o recenzie!

I love used book stores, simply because you can find little lost gems. Case in point:  recently, at local Tucson uberusedbookstore, Bookmans, I found a copy of Jack Williamson’s The Humanoid Touch, a 1980 sequel to his classic Golden Age SF novel, The Humanoids (first serialized in Astounding Stories in 1948). So far, it’s a great little novel, filled with the usual Jack Williamson combination of fun and thoughtfulness. The setting is human, but deeply alien at the same time. All in all, it’s promising to be one of those lost little gems that I will cherish.

It also got me thinking about religion, specifically Christianity, and certain forms of same. It struck me that there are versions of Christianity out there that give us the Humanoid promise. Williamson gives us a good reason to be terrified of it.

Let me explain that, eh?

Long before we learned to fear Skynet, there were the Humanoids. The creation of a grief-stricken man, they are sleek, black androids designed to serve man. Their Prime Directive is simple:  Protect Man. At any cost. What follows is a dark, depressing meditation on what follows from that. The Humanoids is not a novel of hope, but of warning. The Humanoids, see, are really good at what they do. And dedicated. Relentless, one might even say. Where they show up, it starts out hopeful:  they are so useful, doing all those annoying tasks that fill our days. Then the other shoe drops:  alcohol, taken way because it is dangerous. People kept from running or doing sports, because they are dangerous. Kept out of the kitchen — the hot stoves and all are dangerous! Even sex is dangerous — why, some people can have heart attacks! The Humanoids will happily play chess with you — but will always let you win, because losing would make you unhappy. But wait, you say, the people must get angry and sad and depressed. The Humanoids notice this, and have answers. Drugs, to dope people into cowish content. Brain surgery. Euthanasia, for those who won’t submit.

If you want a taste of it all, you can go and listen to the old Dimension X episode that dramatized “With Folded Hands,” the short story that chronicles the creator’s last stand against his creations. It’s one of my favorite episodes of Dimension X.

The Humanoids promise an end to pain and suffering, to strife, to striving, to everything that can cause unhappiness. Sound familiar? We’ve all heard it:  the end of pain and suffering, the promise of eternal happiness and bliss! Just give everything into the hands of Jesus, and all will be taken care of. You’re only need is to act according to his plan. To not follow his prescription brings suffering, horror, and the threat of eternal damnation.

The Humanoids illustrates why I find so many forms of Christianity not merely wrong, but downright scary. The promise is too good, and hides something dark:  a denial of humanity. We all suffer. We all have our moments when we desperately want that to end. But it’s the price we pay for something much greater — the wonder and joy of being alive, of striving to build and learn and understand and love, of being simply and fully human. We may not like losing a game of chess, but we can love the struggle to win, to understand the game better. When we beat a good opponent, it feels good. When we lose, we can admire the skillful play of our competitor.

To be fair, even the most, er, Humanoidish of Christians recognizes this on some level. This life is a test, a vale of tears, we are told, to prepare us for the next life. In this life is struggle and the possibility of pain. But what they don’t realize is that the promised reward — that eternal bliss — means giving up our humanity. It’s not an idea that comforts me. It just downright disturbs me. I’ll take the messy world, and the possibility and reality of some pain and suffering, and stay human.

(I’ll let y’all know how The Humanoid Touch turns out. It really is a rippin’ good yarn so far…)

Aquí tienen la que es, sin dada, una de las joyas de mi colección: un ejemplar original (nada de facsímil) de la revista Astounding Stories, de junio de 1936, siendo además la única portada que HPL consiguió en vida, con La sombra de más allá del tiempo. La ilustración de portada es de Howard V. Brown, que se ha reproducido hasta la saciedad. Aquí tienen las dos primeras fotos, de quien esto escribe escudado detrás de su tesoro y la susodicha portada:

El estado en general es bueno, tiene levantado el extremo inferior del lomo, y el borde inferior de la portada corta (debido al guillotinado) parte de los apellidos de los demás escritores que aparecen en la revista. Además de La sombra de más allá del tiempo (presentada como “una brillante obra descriptiva en la que el tiempo se entrelaza con la arqueología y el viaje cerebral dentro de una narración fascinante de ciencia prospectiva”), está presente la segunda parte de The Cometeers (“Giles Habibula deambula de nuevo por el espacio sideral mientras la Tierra y sus colonias se enfrentan a una temible amenaza”), de Jack Williamson, creador del término terraformación.  El resto del elenco son autores olvidados hoy en día -Nat Schachner con Reverse Universe, Warner Van Lore con Glagula- a excepción del artículo Accuracy, de John W. Campbell, Jr. Campbell fue el autor del relato Who goes there? (1948), que fue llevado al cine en 1951 como El enigma de otro mundo y en 1982 como La cosa, de nuestro viejo amigo Carpenter.

Y ahora les dejo con las ilustraciones que adornan el relato lovecraftiano. ¿Que cuánto me costó? Amigos, ésa es otra historia…

!!!

With some trepidation mixed with a smattering of self-doubt (I know, hard to believe with my ego on display), I set out to write chapter one of The Baby Dancers in accordance to my new “No Parental Cop-out Rule.” This would be my third novel, the second I would desire to publish and share.

Would I be able to write a new compelling start and have it stay true to my vision? We’re talking a mini-reset here, where the practicality of my writing goal meets my creative desires. With Bunny Trouble, I had a very clear start of the book, here; I was heading out into the great unknown.

Yes! Yes! I wrote a marvelous new beginning to The Baby Dancers. I fired off 2088 words, the literary equivalent of garlic infused “BAM!“–with flames from the sudden addition of brandy cooking the garlic to perfection.

BAM!

Yum. This morning I spied Jack Williamson’s Darker Than You Think on the shelf. It is a short little novel of the occult, sexy and creepy. It has some minor flaws, but the great thing is the main character grows. Oh he grows all right.

Did I mention it is also short? Since I am on a roll, I have vowed that The Baby Dancers will be no shorter than 65,000 words and no longer than 80,000. I want a tight story, an entertaining speculative novel of fantasy goodness.

I love writing.

BAM!

Sleepbot is bliss without a botttle: mind-medicine, explorations, other worlds. Last night, I resigned to my bed early and decided to leave Sleepbot on, which, at that time, filled the room with some kind of vocal incantation in a different language. After reading some of Jack Williamson’s “Darker Than You Think,” the light went out. The drift of a processed tone hovered in the room. This must have knocked me out. Sleep was upon me.

I must have woken up more than four times. I can’t quite clearly remember. I do remember the jazz, jazz like you might hear in a David Lynch film, the jazz of a smokey lounge. I had forgotten where I was or where the music was coming from. I also remember an ungodly hum. Surely, I thought, this is the coming of that big earthquake someone told me about earlier in the day. Then the hum changed, the progression of notes became apparent. It was only Sleepbot. I fell back asleep. My mind twisted around dreams that, at this early morning reflection, seemed all too real. Why was I trying to sell that old Nintendo filled with coffee grounds? Why did the skateboard shop only sell used books in foreign languages? What about the snow storm? Why was I so angry at the clerk? I usually don’t have dreams this intense, this real, I thought. I remember trying to run, not being able to run.

My eyes creeped open, crusted over from the night’s adventures and I realized it was morning. Sleepbot had died down into something barely audible. Saturding morning had come. I was relieved. “I made it,” was the feeling rising from my parched body. A cool 76 degrees and the coffee dripped shortly after. Listening to Sleepbot now, in the morning, in the cool of the morning, is refreshing, welcoming me back to the land of the living.

I’m not sure if I will repeat this experiment again, as I am fond of sleep without waking. The random aural “disturbances” fuel my ability to dream deeper. Sometimes it is best not to experience those hidden dimensions. Being susceptible to the music, I am now aware of the power of Sleepbot.

The 24-hour Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast can be downloaded and streamed from here:

Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast

This is the way ambient music should be. Unending.

Cuando me regalaron en navidad uno libros este la verdad me llamo la atención, el título del libro la verdad es que tiene cierto gancho. Tal vez tengas la tentación de adivinar de qué va el libro con solo ver el título, pero sin duda estarás muy equivocado. Leer la contraportada ya te da algunas nociones más de cuál es la línea argumental.

La novela trata la historia de cinco individuos que son clonados para conseguir restablecer la vida humana en la tierra tras una gran catástrofe. No desvelaré más de momento.

El libro está estructurado en bloques demasiado independientes a mi gusto. Es más bien un conjunto de relatos que guardan muy poca conexión entre ellos, a pesar de estar enmarcados dentro de la misma historia general. La parte positiva de esto es que ayuda a que la novela sea mucho más amena y fácil de leer.

En cuanto al estilo puedo decir que no soy demasiado exquisito a la hora de criticar una novela, y esta no me ha defraudado, creo que el ritmo es el adecuado con sus altibajos naturales. Los personajes que son presentados al inicio van siendo descritos durante todo el libro quedando al final bien definidos. Las historias que se presentan son bastante variadas a pesar de estar enmarcadas dentro del mismo hilo argumental.

La primera vez que a alguien se le presenta una historia completamente diferente es la vez que más impresión causa. En ese aspecto tengo que admitir que ya había leído un par de novelas en las que el tiempo de la acción es muy superior al tiempo normal de una vida, a pesar de que los protagonistas sean los mismos (o clones). Por tanto digamos que no fue una gran impresión, a pesar de que pienso que en esta novela está mucho mejor que las primeras que leí.

El argumento en si también te hace pensar y reflexionar sobre nuestra propia “civilización”, ya que no sabes si hemos sido la única que ha habitado la Tierra en toda su historia. Creo que una vez leí en algún sitio, que todas las huellas de la humanidad desaparecerían en un periodo de unos 50.000 años, una nimiedad comparado con la edad de la Tierra. Aunque todo esto es pura especulación y fantasías mías.

Resumiendo un poco, una buena novela, fácil de leer que te puede sorprender gratamente y seguro que el final del último episodio no te deja indiferente.

New Years 2008 starts off with a BANG! And acceptance/appearance no. 286.  A good old fashioned SF webzine with a plethora of wholesome reading material.  Surprising Stories.  This edition features an interview and dedication to the late Jack Williamson, too.

SURPRISING STORIES

Issue #16; January 2008

Featuring: “The Doomsday Initiative” by Lawrence Dagstine

Link: http://surprisingstories.dcwi.com/

With fiction by: Jeffrey Marzi, Joanne Tolson, Rose Gordy, Herbert Jerry Baker, Bonnie P. Newton, Ray Reents, Archie V. Taylor, Brian McGrady, Keith E. Jones, Dale A. White, Kevin Ahearn, Larry Gaffney, poetry and MORE!

 _____________________________

Also, new in Readings & Reviews:

My review of Jupiter SF #18, Themisto

Direct Link: http://ookami.co.uk/html/jupiter_xviii.html

Other New Entries: “Magazine Credits, Readings & Reviews”