Good Reads

On a whim I threw a couple titles into my 'what I'm reading' sidebar that, truth be told, I read months ago. But they're good. That's the point. First, a pair of novels by Haruki Murakami, Wild Sheep Chase and Dance, Dance. What can I say? Daniel Pinkwater meets Yukio Mishima. The Snarkout Boys Who Fell From Grace With the Sea While Listening to Lizard Music. Something like that, atmospherico-thematically.

Robert Charles Wilson's The Chronoliths was a fun beach read. It feels - pleasantly - like a late-60's Childhood's-End-type tale. Science-fiction that got written while everyone was sort of preoccupied by hippies. This sounds like a distinctively backhanded compliment. But I don't mean it unkindly. And it isn't even a Childhood's End-type tale, now that I think about it. And there aren't any hippies in it. It's obviously new. Yet it feels pleasantly antique to me.

John Clute's Appleseed flayed me linguistically. It's a tremendous delight. It's probably one of the 10 best sci-fi novels of the last 25 years. I just made that up. Don't ask me what the other nine are. But Clute's Amazon sales standing - 765,915 - is a mathematical travesty of his book's virtue. If ten of you out there run out and buy it, we could probably shave 20,000 off that ranking.

What's the book like? Short version: this is what Michael Moorcock's Cornelius Chronicles would have been if, instead of being bad, they had been good. Vladimir Nabokov rewrites Ada as The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy. I'm really giving him extra points for sheer, kick you in the teeth uniqueness. Gives you that special, reaching for your dictionary with a masochistic 'thank you, sir, can I have some more' glee feeling. I'm going to try to find the time to write a long appreciation. But not tonight.

If linguistically tangled and difficult works give you a pain, give it a pass.

Zoë did a spontaneous review, based on the cover. 'Baby robots walking on beach.' It does sort of look that way, but actually there's nothing like that inside.