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defrogWe be getting the reading done up in here, yo.
Space Hawk, Inc. by Ron Goulart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Another Goulart book I hadn’t read yet. This one is part of his Barnum System series, a sort of brokedown, fouled up universe providing a background full of pestholes, lizardmen, catmen, faulty androids and government shenanigans. This one features Kip Bundy, scion of tech company Bundy Komglom Enterprises (BKE), who is tasked by his rich uncle to travel to the planet Malagra to clandestinely repair some android butlers. Because the androids were diplomatic gifts, Bundy must go undercover as a detective for Spacehawk Inc (a BKE subsidiary), which is how he also ends up looking for the missing brother of the lovely April Arthur with the help of boob-obsessed pro photographer Palma (a recurring character in some of the Barnum novels). The template is typical Goulart, but this one has more of the madcap humor, running gags and general silliness that got me into his writing in the first place. Good fun.
Normal by Warren Ellis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This novella was originally released as a four-part digital serial, but I elected to binge-read the print version. The premise: professional futurist Adam Dearden is sent to Normal Head, a posh privately funded mental facility exclusively for professional futurists suffering from depression – a consequence of being paid to “gaze into the abyss” of the future and inevitably concluding that we’re all doomed. The narrative is driven by a locked-room mystery – the sudden and mysterious disappearance of a mysterious inmate at Normal Head. However – like most of Ellis’ books – the plot device and indeed most of the principal characters serve mainly as vehicles for Ellis to execute a brain-dump of futuristic ideas and organize them into a bigger (if incomplete) picture. Which in this case covers the various scenarios that futurists specialize in (urban planning, drone warfare, climate change, etc) and why they can drive you insane if you follow them to their logical dystopian conclusions. That alone is worth the price of admission, and Ellis’ vivid, thought-provoking imagination and grim humor keep it interesting.
Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home by James Tiptree Jr.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’d never read James Tiptree, Jr before, but I knew the legend – that “Tiptree” was a brilliant SF writer who was also completely anonymous until “he’ was finally outed as Alice B. Sheldon, who used a male pen name for the simple reason that SF was generally thought to be a man’s game. Most of her work is out of print, so when I came across this at a second-hand bookstore, I jumped at the chance. It’s her first book, a collection of previously published short stories that cover a lot of ground – space opera, time travel, alien invasions, alien sex, aliens mimicking humans, a world dedicated to alien racing, and heaps of satire including a day in the life of a government-run office that arranges shipping of products to alien worlds and a bored rich kid who spends the summer whipping some well-intentioned cultural imperialism on a primitive warfaring planet. Not every story worked for me, but the ones that did were brilliant. What's also striking is the wide variety of imagination here – Tiptree/Sheldon didn’t limit herself to a particular subgenre of SF, and no idea seems too out-there for her to play with. I’d love to read more if anyone cares to start reprinting more of her work.
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
bedsitter23 tipped me off to this book, which chronicles the rise and existence of American “sundown towns” – towns and suburbs where African-Americans (and often other non-white, non-Christian minorities) were not allowed to live, or even stay after dark. The book covers a lot of ground, providing a capsule history of the Nadir of racism that enabled sundown towns, how they came to be, and their effects on both whites and blacks. The two biggest surprises for me were: (1) sundown towns are not really a Southern thing – in fact, you’re more likely to find them outside of the South, and (2) some of them are still sundown towns today (though not obviously so), while others that no longer are only dropped such practices as recently as the 1990s.
Which brings up one problem with the book (albeit one that Louwen frequently admits) – the US Census makes it easy to identify all-white towns and suburbs, but not all of them are that way intentionally, and determining which ones are requires a lot of on-the-scene legwork and interviews. While Loewen estimates there are thousands of such towns, only a fraction had been verified when the book was published in 2005. So it’s best to approach it as a starting point rather than a complete history. (For the record, Loewen’s research is ongoing, and he has a website that invites people to help with more research identifying and confirming sundown towns.)
Anyway, I highly recommend this to anyone who wants/needs valuable perspective on the scope of the racism problem in America, especially in light of current events.
View all my reviews
When the sun goes down,
This is dF
Space Hawk, Inc. by Ron GoulartMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Another Goulart book I hadn’t read yet. This one is part of his Barnum System series, a sort of brokedown, fouled up universe providing a background full of pestholes, lizardmen, catmen, faulty androids and government shenanigans. This one features Kip Bundy, scion of tech company Bundy Komglom Enterprises (BKE), who is tasked by his rich uncle to travel to the planet Malagra to clandestinely repair some android butlers. Because the androids were diplomatic gifts, Bundy must go undercover as a detective for Spacehawk Inc (a BKE subsidiary), which is how he also ends up looking for the missing brother of the lovely April Arthur with the help of boob-obsessed pro photographer Palma (a recurring character in some of the Barnum novels). The template is typical Goulart, but this one has more of the madcap humor, running gags and general silliness that got me into his writing in the first place. Good fun.
Normal by Warren EllisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This novella was originally released as a four-part digital serial, but I elected to binge-read the print version. The premise: professional futurist Adam Dearden is sent to Normal Head, a posh privately funded mental facility exclusively for professional futurists suffering from depression – a consequence of being paid to “gaze into the abyss” of the future and inevitably concluding that we’re all doomed. The narrative is driven by a locked-room mystery – the sudden and mysterious disappearance of a mysterious inmate at Normal Head. However – like most of Ellis’ books – the plot device and indeed most of the principal characters serve mainly as vehicles for Ellis to execute a brain-dump of futuristic ideas and organize them into a bigger (if incomplete) picture. Which in this case covers the various scenarios that futurists specialize in (urban planning, drone warfare, climate change, etc) and why they can drive you insane if you follow them to their logical dystopian conclusions. That alone is worth the price of admission, and Ellis’ vivid, thought-provoking imagination and grim humor keep it interesting.
Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home by James Tiptree Jr.My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’d never read James Tiptree, Jr before, but I knew the legend – that “Tiptree” was a brilliant SF writer who was also completely anonymous until “he’ was finally outed as Alice B. Sheldon, who used a male pen name for the simple reason that SF was generally thought to be a man’s game. Most of her work is out of print, so when I came across this at a second-hand bookstore, I jumped at the chance. It’s her first book, a collection of previously published short stories that cover a lot of ground – space opera, time travel, alien invasions, alien sex, aliens mimicking humans, a world dedicated to alien racing, and heaps of satire including a day in the life of a government-run office that arranges shipping of products to alien worlds and a bored rich kid who spends the summer whipping some well-intentioned cultural imperialism on a primitive warfaring planet. Not every story worked for me, but the ones that did were brilliant. What's also striking is the wide variety of imagination here – Tiptree/Sheldon didn’t limit herself to a particular subgenre of SF, and no idea seems too out-there for her to play with. I’d love to read more if anyone cares to start reprinting more of her work.
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. LoewenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
bedsitter23 tipped me off to this book, which chronicles the rise and existence of American “sundown towns” – towns and suburbs where African-Americans (and often other non-white, non-Christian minorities) were not allowed to live, or even stay after dark. The book covers a lot of ground, providing a capsule history of the Nadir of racism that enabled sundown towns, how they came to be, and their effects on both whites and blacks. The two biggest surprises for me were: (1) sundown towns are not really a Southern thing – in fact, you’re more likely to find them outside of the South, and (2) some of them are still sundown towns today (though not obviously so), while others that no longer are only dropped such practices as recently as the 1990s. Which brings up one problem with the book (albeit one that Louwen frequently admits) – the US Census makes it easy to identify all-white towns and suburbs, but not all of them are that way intentionally, and determining which ones are requires a lot of on-the-scene legwork and interviews. While Loewen estimates there are thousands of such towns, only a fraction had been verified when the book was published in 2005. So it’s best to approach it as a starting point rather than a complete history. (For the record, Loewen’s research is ongoing, and he has a website that invites people to help with more research identifying and confirming sundown towns.)
Anyway, I highly recommend this to anyone who wants/needs valuable perspective on the scope of the racism problem in America, especially in light of current events.
View all my reviews
When the sun goes down,
This is dF
