There Will Be Time (to Read): Books I Read in 2024

Two years running! 

For the second year in a row, I've read 100 books in 12 months. That number used to be what I considered a minimum annual number for me, but as chronicled here at The Earliad, my speed and focus have diminished somewhat with the growing responsibilities and waning capabilities of middle age. Maybe I'm rebuilding to what used to be my old normal? 

OVERVIEW

In 2024, I read

• 83 works of fiction and 17 works of non-fiction
• 52 science fiction novels, 15 Star Trek media tie-ins, 11 mainstream, three horror, and two fantasy
• 33 books by women and 67 books by men
• 28 books from the 2020s, 18 from the 2010s, 18 from the 2000s, 13 from the 1990s, six from the 1980s, eight from the 1970s, 4 from the 1960s, 3 from the 1950s, and one each from the 1940s and 1890s. 
• Eight books by Hugh Howey, six by Catherine Asaro, four by Stephen Baxter, and three each from Robert Silverberg, Jo Walton, and Connie Willis

   COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

Of the books I read this year, 30 were re-reads from authors including Jo Walton, Connie Willis, Stephen King, Robert Heinlein, Patricia Highsmith, Stephen Baxter, Les Daniels, Isaac Asimov, and others. 

I also revisited several works by Catherine Asaro while at the same time reading her newest novels for the first time. Prior to this year I hadn't read her first novel, Primary Inversion, since it was released as a mass market paperback in 1995. I was still in my 20s! The horror. I found myself surprised by how much plot is crammed into Primary Inversion; I could have sworn at least a couple of its major events occurred in later books of the Skolian Empire series. 

Speaking of the 1990s, I picked up B.F. Skinner's Walden Two at the Wee Book Inn sometime during that decade. It sat on a shelf until Skinner's name came up in the infamous orientation film featured in the season two premiere of Lost. Having read only the back cover to that point, I figured I'd read the book to see if there were any clues to what might be going on in the world of the show. Unfortunately, Skinner's prose is incredibly dry, so I put the book aside until, well, this year. Walden Two is really more manifesto than novel, and reads like a professor's self-assured polemic against the status quo as it was back in the 1940s. His solution, which in hindsight absolutely informed the Dharma Initiative backstory for Lost, was utopian social engineering, a method for creating self-sufficient communes free of want and violence. 

Walden Two was something of a curiosity for me this year, so I'll turn to the books that really impressed me (for good or ill) in 2024: 

• The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson, 2020. This near-future SF novel begins with a catastrophic heat wave in India that kills millions and triggers, at last, serious global action on climate change. It's a harrowing read, because Robinson describes an all-too-plausible future of diminishing resources and increasing violence. The titular Ministry is tasked with overseeing a kind of holding action against the collapse of civilization, and he goes into some fascinating detail about the societal changes required to achieve a best-case scenario that, from our perspective today, remains terrifying to contemplate. 
• System Collapse, Martha Wells, 2023. Another Murderbot tale, yay! 
  
• Demon Daughter and Penric and the Bandit, Lois McMaster Bujold, 2023 and 2024. More Penric and Desdemona adventures, yay! 
• The Road to Roswell, Connie Willis, 2023. A lovely comedic tale of love, aliens, and UFO enthusiasts pratfalling around the deserts of the US southwest. Seems timely in the wake of all the UAP buzz in the news this year. 
  
• Shift and Dust by Hugh Howley, 2013. I read Wool, the first of Howley's Silo books, way back in the teens, but only finished the series this year. I really enjoyed Shift, which explains the origins of the mysterious silos, and Dust was a satisfying conclusion, though the series epilogue in the Silo collection left something of a bittersweet taste in my mouth. 
• Shadrach in the Furnace, Robert Silverberg, 1976. I've been working my way through the Hugo and Nebula nominations for years now, and Robert Silverberg has his share of those nominations, of which I read three in 2024. Shadrach in the Furnace was my favourite, a psychedelic fever dream of body horror, totalitarian dystopia, and state surveillance. 
  
• Never Let Me Go, Kzuo Ishiguro, 2005. In science fiction there are several examples of a peculiar trope involving societies that grow clones strictly to harvest their organs to extend the lives of the rich and powerful. Ishiguro weaves a dreadful poignancy into the trope, gently bringing us into the world of several such clones who are conditioned from birth to accept and embrace their fate. It's heartbreaking, as any such inhuman system should be. Inhuman? No. All too depressingly human, and something that could plausibly happen someday...if it hasn't already in some dark corner of the world. 
• Planet X, Michael Jan Friedman, 1998). Not all media tie-in novels are bad. Planet X is bad. Very bad. Imagine a world in which Marvel's X-Men meet up with Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise to investigate the sudden appearance of new mutants springing up on a non-aligned world in the Star Trek universe. The original X-Men comics have been rightly identified as a solid vehicle for telling stories about prejudice and othering, and that's the theme Planet X tries to take. It's not an awful idea on its face, but the novel reads like a kid playing with random action figures, mashing them together with sound and fury. 

MONTH-BY-MONTH

January

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (John Godey, 1973) 

Dawn of Rebellion: The Visual Guide (Pablo Hidalgo and Emily Shkoukani, 2023)

The Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson, 2020)  

The Jigsaw Assassin (Catherine Asaro, 2022) 

Double or Nothing (Kim Sherwood, 2023) 

The Lost Worlds of 2001 (Arthur C. Clarke, 1972)

The Turning of the Screw (Henry James, 1898) 

Voyage (Stephen Baxter, 1996) 

System Collapse (Martha Wells, 2023) 

The Zombie Survival Guide (Max Brooks, 2003) 

February
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (Max Brooks, 2006)  

Demon Daughter (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2023)

There Will Be Time (Poul Anderson, 1972) 

Moonseed (Stephen Baxter, 1998) 

The Star Fox (Poul Anderson, 1965) 

The Spacetime Pool (Catherine Asaro, 2008) 

Life After God (Douglas Coupland, 1994) 

The Road to Roswell (Connie Willis, 2023) 

Superman: The Complete History (Les Daniels, 1998) 

Primary Inversion (Catherine Asaro, 1995) 

March

Turtles All the Way Down (John Green, 2017) 

The Last Hawk (Catherine Asaro, 1997) 

More Than the Sum of His Parts: Collected Stories (Joe Haldeman, 2020) 

Wool (Hugh Howley, 2012) 

Shift (Hugh Howley, 2013)

Dust (Hugh Howley, 2013) 

Silo (Hugh Howley, 2020) 

Girls, Interrupted: How Pop Culture Is Failing Women (Lisa Whittington-Hill, 2024) 

Space (James Michener, 1982) 

Just the Nicest Couple (Mary Kubica, 2023) 

April

Firestarter (Stephen King, 1980)

Walden Two (B.F. Skinner, 1948)

Homecoming (Christie Golden, 2003) 

The Giver (Lois Lowry, 1993)  

Batman: The Complete History (Les Daniels, 1999) 

Flood (Stephen Baxter, 2008) 

The End of the World Is Just the Beginning (Peter Zeihan, 2022) 

The Farther Shore (Christie Golden, 2003) 

The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories (Isaac Asimov, 1976)

Burn (Bill Ransom, 1995) 

May

A Choice of Catastrophes (Michael Schuster and Steve Mollmann, 2011) 

Crisis of Consciousness (Dave Galanter, 2015) 

Savage Trade (Tony Daniel, 2015)

Beacon 23 (Hugh Howley, 2015) 

With a Mind to Kill (Anthony Horowitz, 2022)  

Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005) 

The Downloaded (Robert J. Sawyer, 2024) 

When the Sparrow Falls (Neil Sharpson, 2021) 

Shadrach in the Furnace (Robert Silverberg, 1976) 

The Stochastic Man (Robert Silverberg, 1975) 

June

Thorns (Robert Silverberg, 1967) 

You Like It Darker (Stephen King, 2024) 

Half Way Home (Hugh Howey, 2010) 

Wonder Woman: The Complete History (Les Daniels, 2000) 

Sand (Hugh Howey, 2014)

The Speed of Dark (Elizabeth Moon, 2002) 

Black Fire (Sonni Cooper, 1983) 

Finding Serenity (Jane Espenson, 2004) 

July

Across the Sand (Hugh Howey, 2022)

Foundation’s Triumph (David Brin, 1999) 

Ark (Stephen Baxter, 2009)

Planet X (Michael Jan Friedman, 1998)

Mr. Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise (Shane Johnson, 1987) 

The Three-Minute Universe (Barbara Paul, 1988) 

No Time Like the Past (Greg Cox, 2014) 

August

Penric and the Bandit (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2024) 

The Incident Report (Martha Baillie, 2009) 

Nuclear War: A Scenario (Annie Jacobson, 2024) 

Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again (Shiguru Kayama, 1955) 

The Man Who Saw Seconds (Alexander Boldizar, 2024)

Serpents in the Garden (Jeff Mariotte, 2014)

The Ministry of Time (Kaliane Bradley, 2024) 

The Rings of Time (Greg Cox, 2012) 

The Last Day (Andrew Hunter Murray, 2020)  

S.H.A.D.O. Technical Operations Manual (Chris Thompson and Andrew Clements, 2022)

September

The Twin Paradox (Charles Wachter, 2020) 

The Down Deep (Catherine Asaro, 2024) 

Report from Planet Midnight (Nalo Hopkinson, 2012) 

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Patricia Highsmith, 1955) 

October

Humans: An A to Z (Matt Haig, 2014) 

Pawns and Symbols (Majliss Larson, 1985)

What Entropy Means to Me (George Alec Effinger, 1972) 

Cast No Shadow (James Swallow, 2011) 

Half Past Human (TJ Bass, 1971) 

Here (Richard McGuire, 2014) 

November

Tunnel in the Sky (Robert Heinlein, 1955) 

The Hollow Man (Dan Simmons, 1992) 

Farthing (Jo Walton, 2006) 

Ha’penny (Jo Walton, 2007) 

Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan (Robin Maxwell, 2012) 

The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger, 2003) 

Half a Crown (Jo Walton, 2008) 

December

Miracle and Other Christmas Stories (Connie Willis, 1999)

The Art of the Amazing Spider-Man (John Romita and Stan Lee, 2024) 

Fantastic Four: Full Circle Expanded Edition (Alex Ross, 2024) 

Time Tunnel (Murray Leinster, 1964) 

DC Comics Style Guide (Paul Levitz, 2024) 

The Wailing Asteroid (Murray Leinster, 1960) 

The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy (David E. Hoffman, 2009) 

The Life Impossible (Matt Haig, 2024) 

And finally, here are Bruce and Leslie's stats for 2024! 

That's it for 2024. Happy New Year, all. Keep fighting the good fight. 

The Good, the Bad, and the Needs Revision

Midway through one of my political science courses at the University of Alberta, my professor pulled me aside for a chat after class. 

"What happened with this essay? You've done very well on your exams, so I know you can do better than this. It reads like a Time magazine article." 

For a second, I was confused. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of "Isn't that good?" 

"No, no," he said. It's well-written, but it lacks depth. There's no real analysis here, it's just a shallow summary of the subject matter. You need to dive deeper, think harder about the subject matter, do some extra research, develop your own thoughts." 

Those may not be the professor's exact words, but that was their spirit, and they hit me hard--because I knew he was right. Sometimes, when I'm not motivated or invested or I've left an assignment to the last minute, I can get lazy and produce material that doesn't reflect my full potential. It still happens on this very blog! 

A little over a decade later, my friend Bruce (then my supervisor), criticized a story I'd written for our gardening magazine in much the same way, comparing it to a freelance article I'd written about Superman. The words he used were different, but his point was the same--and like my professor, Bruce was right. 

During my time at the University of Alberta and at my corporate writing jobs across the years, I've written plenty of stories and speeches that I'm quite proud of. But there's also a large collection of pieces I know could have been better. 

I feel especially bad to have let my professor and Bruce down, back then, and I'm sure those weren't the only instances when a teacher or colleague or client was disappointed by my work. 

It makes you wonder if writers of, say, Hemingway's caliber have drawers full of old articles and stories that they look upon with a bit of self-loathing. 

On the bright side, it's a real pleasure when you stumble upon a work you've forgotten and think to yourself, "Hey, I wrote this? I did, and wow, it's pretty good." 

When I look back on my career, I hope I can say I wrote more good stories than bad. 

Nothing Lasts Forever: Books I Read in 2022

Note: Blogger glitched at the wrong moment and erased most of yesterday’s original post, so I’ve reconstructed it from what little remained plus whatever my frazzled brain can remember of what I wrote. Because this post was supposed to come out yesterday, there are a couple of temporal references that don’t make sense. 

In 2022 I read a paltry 61 books, a performance only slightly better than last year's all-time low. As with last year, the stresses contemplating existential threats to civilization hampered my ability to focus on reading and blunted my enjoyment of reading for pleasure's sake. I spent far too much time doomscrolling, which in all likelihood represented the majority of my reading this year. 

Overview

Fiction v. Non-Fiction

Fiction: 54
Nonfiction: 7

Genres

Fantasy: 7
Horror: 2
Mainstream: 5
Science Fiction: 25
Star Trek: 12

Books by Decade

1890s: 2
1950s: 1
1960s: 1
1970s: 2
1980s: 7
1990s: 5
2000s: 6
2010s: 16
2020s: 19

Gender Split

Books by Women: 14
Books by Men: 47

Commentary and Analysis

Parity between men and women authors slipped away from me this year, and once again I avoided much of the new and retreated into familiarity. About a third of the books I read this year--23 out of 61--were rereads, including most of Michael P. Kube McDowell's output, several favourites by Lois McMaster Bujold, a handful by Nancy Kress and H.G. Wells, and a few old (and new) novels by Stephen King. 

Science fiction dominated my reading as I sought escape from these times, defeating my ongoing efforts to read more mainstream and literary works. Once I had dreams of reading everything in the western canon; now, not so much. As I get older, I’m finding that, more and more, my reach exceeds my grasp. See? Hoary metaphors, the last resort of the lazy and uninspired. 

I didn’t read much nonfiction this year, aside from matters related to pop culture. I feel bad about that, because I used to read serious, long-format non-fiction as a matter of course, feeling it part of my duty as a citizen to be well-informed. For now, it’s too much for me. 

Enriching Reads

Roderick Thorp's 1979 detective thriller Nothing Lasts Forever was one of my favourite surprises of the year. Nothing Lasts Forever is most famous for serving as the story for the 1988 action film Die Hard, and while Die Hard is one of the best examples of the form, the original novel, in my view, has it beat. Nothing Lasts Forever has all the suspense and thrills of the movie, and if you've seen the movie you already know the plot (with a few key differences in character motivations, backgrounds, and relationships. But the novel's great strengths include considerable emotional heft and a poetic cynicism that actually hurts to read--in a good way. Joe Leland is an ex-fighter pilot and detective, and while he does battle with the terrorists that take over the Klaxon Oil building, we dive deep into Joe's current terror and rage and explore the personal traumas that brought him to this point. There's no “yippee-kai-yay” here, just a bruised, broken human being trying to salvage a little bit of happiness for what's left of his life. 

As an aside, I'm currently reading Roderick Thorp's first novel about Joe Leland, 1966's The Detective. I won't finish it before the clock strikes midnight, so it'll more than likely be the first book I complete in 2023. I'm about a quarter of the way through it, and I'm impressed, so far, by Thorp's handling of Leland's character arc; the younger version of Leland is still a bit cynical, but he's definitely more vital and less ravaged than the man we follow in Nothing Lasts Forever. The Detective, like its sequel, also has a film adaptation: Gordon Douglas' The Detective (1968), starring Frank Sinatra, which I screened earlier this year. Sinatra declined to appear in the film that became Die Hard; on such butterflies does the history of cinema change. 

84K, by Claire North, was the novel that depressed me most in 2022. It's a fine novel of a near-future dystopia and one man's effort to find some absolution in a horrible world he helped create, but the problem is North's supercapitalist nightmare is all too plausible; it's a society where corporations run everything and crimes are punished strictly by fines, effectively giving the rich freedom to do whatever they want to whoever they want and shackling everyone else. It took me forever to read this, because I had to keep putting it down in order to retain my mental health. 

On the other hand, I loved two recent novels by Naomi Novik: A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate. Both follow the adventures of a group of students working to graduate from a university that teaches magic, but I found Novik's prose, characterization, and worldbuilding considerably stronger than the most famous series based on this trope. (And I enjoyed the Harry Potter books!) Novik really makes you care about her characters, and the jeopardy they face is often horrifying. And yet, these are fun books. I groaned when I reached the cliffhanger ending of The Last Graduate to discover there was, at the time I read it, an as-yet-unpublished third book in the series. As I was writing that last sentence, I checked and I'm thrilled to say the third and final book, The Golden Enclaves, has come out and I just bought it. So that'll probably be the fourth book I read in 2023. (Numbers two and three will be a pair of books Leslie gave me back in August.) 

Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Preston Neal Jones is one of the most interesting behind-the-scenes chronicles of the filmmaking process I've ever read. Though published in 2014, the personal anecdotes that make up the bulk of this huge tome were captured by the author way back in the late 1970s, during the film's famously tumultuous production.

I read another notable Star Trek-related work of non-fiction this year: 2021’s Star Trek: Designing the Final Frontier, by Dan Chavkin and Brian McGuire. Chavkin and McGuire cover the efforts of the propmasters, production designers, and other talented artists who sourced and modified the furniture, décor, and other set dressing during the filming of Star Trek back in the 1960s. The book is full of gorgeous behind-the-scenes colour photographs and episode stills, and you’ll even learn a little about design principles and history as you read. I never imagined I’d find this particular topic interesting, but the authors did a great job of explaining how mid-20th century design trends informed and shaped the look of Star Trek’s imaginary future. I’ll never look at the show the same way again. 

I took great pleasure in reading Chris Thompson’s Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual, which cleverly serves as an in-universe prop that might have existed on Moonbase Alpha itself; it’s written as a guidebook for new inhabitants of the base, with new material covering the disaster that flung the Moon out of Earth’s orbit in the fall of 1999. The prose elements are crisp, detailed, and meticulously researched, while the graphic design and artwork are really stunning. It’s a gorgeous book, one of the few physical books I bought this year (Designing the Final Frontier being the other notable example). 

I loved this book so much that I pre-ordered the special edition of a follow-up work using the same in-universe conceit: the S.H.A.D.O. Technical Operations Manual, also by Thompson, which describes the technical workings of the fictional anti-alien defence organization featured on UFO, the spiritual prequel to Space: 1999. I haven’t read it yet, but you’ll doubtless see my reaction to it next December 31. 

And finally, in 2022 the two gentlemen who write pseudonymously as James S.A. Corey wrapped up their long-running SF series, The Expanse, with Leviathan Falls. This series pleasantly surprised me from book one, and this series finale is fitting, logical, and bittersweet—a great sendoff for a world and characters I’ve come to really enjoy. It was a series with grand SF ideas and, more importantly, flawed but authentic heroes who were trying to do the right thing in a universe filled with terrible choices. 

Disappointing Reads

Tie-in fiction is a crap shoot at the best of times, but Pocket Books’ recently wrapped up the long-running Star Trek “litverse” because new shows such as Picard and Discovery wrecked the continuity established by the last couple of decades of novels Trek novels. Pocket wrapped things up with a messy, violent not-very-Trek-like trilogy that saw the novelized versions of 90s-era Trek characters sacrifice themselves to prevent a temporal anomaly or some other such nonsense to prevent the destruction of the universe, resetting continuity to allow for more tie-in novels that can take advantage of the new shows. Nonsense, but not a great loss; out of hundreds of novels published, there are maybe two dozen of legitimate quality beyond breezy entertainment. 

Normally I enjoy Philip Pullman’s work, but I didn’t get much out of Serpentine (a His Dark Materials tie-in), The White Mercedes, or The Broken Bridge. None of these books were bad, but they just didn’t engage me as much as some of his other work. In this case, I suspect the problem is me, not Pullman. He’s a gifted guy. 

Because I’d read Nothing Lasts Forever, I figured I may as well read Walter Wager’s 58 Minutes, the inspiration for Die Hard 2. Surprise: 58 Minutes is a better book than Die Hard 2 is a movie, but the decline in quality from Thorp to Wager is pretty much parallel to the decline in quality from Die Hard to its first sequel. Not that Thorp and Wager have anything to do with each other; they just happen to each have written novels turned into movies from the same series. 58 Minutes is engaging for what it is—a high-stakes thriller—but it doesn’t have any of Thorp’s nuance or gift for in-depth character study. 

That’s it for my commentary—here’s what my year in reading looked like, in order of books completed. Scroll to the end for one final thought and a couple of links. 

Month-by-Month

January: 8
Beggars in Spain (Nancy Kress, 1993) 
Beggars and Choosers (Nancy Kress, 1994) 
The Time Machine (H.G. Wells, 1895) 
The Quiet Pools (Michael P. Kube-McDowell, 1991)
Leviathan Falls (James S.A. Corey, 2022) 
The Future of Another Timeline (Annalee Newitz, 2019) 
Dangerous Visions (Harlan Ellison, 1967) 
A Deadly Education (Naomi Novik, 2020) 

February: 9
The Last Graduate (Naomi Novik, 2021) 
The Galactic Whirlpool (David Gerrold, 1980) 
The Art of John Buscema (John Buscema, 1978) 
John Buscema: Michelangelo of Comics (Brian Peck, 2010) 
Star Trek Coda: Moments Asunder (Dayton Ward, 2021)
Star Trek Coda: The Ashes of Tomorrow (James Swallow, 2021) 
The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells, 1897) 
Star Trek Coda: Oblivion’s Gate (David Mack, 2021) 
Star Trek Shipyards (Ben Robinson, 2018) 

March: 12
The 22 Murders of Madison May (Max Barry, 2021) 
Emprise (Michael P. Kube-McDowell, 1985)
Enigma (Michael P. Kube-McDowell, 1986) 
Empery (Michael P. Kube-McDowell, 1987) 
Exile (Michael P. Kube-McDowell, 1992) 
Alternities (Michael P. Kube-McDowell, 1988) 
Gwendy’s Final Task (Richard Chizmar and Stephen King, 2022) 
Beguilement (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2006)
Sky Captain and the Art of Tomorrow (Kevin Conran, 2021) 
Legacy (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2007)
Passage (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2008)
Horizon (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2009)

April: 2
The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury, 1950) 
The White Mercedes (Philip Pullman, 2017) 

May: 4
The Tumor (John Grisham, 2016) 
Underground Airlines (Ben Winters, 2016) 
Space Station Down (Ben Bova and Doug Beason, 2020) 
The Art and Soul of Blade Runner 2049 (Tanya Lapointe, 2017) 

June: 1
A History of What Comes Next (Sylvain Neuvel, 2021) 

July: 2
84K (Claire North, 2018) 
Fitzpatrick’s War (Theodore Judson, 2004) 

August: 4
Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Preston Neal Jones, 2014) 
Star Trek Department of Temporal Investigations: Shield of the Gods (Christopher L. Bennett, 2017) 
The Sins of Our Fathers (James S.A. Corey, 2022) 
Serpentine (Philip Pullman, 2020) 

September: 3
To Everything That Might Have Been: The Lost Universe of Space: 1999 (Robert E. Wood, David Hirsch, and Christopher Penfold, 2022) 
Fairy Tale (Stephen King, 2022) 
Star Trek: Designing the Final Frontier (Dan Chavkin and Brian McGuire, 2021) 

October: 3
Christine (Stephen King, 1983) 
Klingon Bird-of-Prey Haynes Manual (Ben Robinson, 2012) 
Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual (Chris Thompson, 2021) 

November: 6
The Broken Bridge (Philip Pullman, 1990) 
Nothing Lasts Forever (Roderick Thorp, 1979) 
U.S.S. Enterprise Haynes Manual (Ben Robinson, 2010) 
Klingon Bird of Prey Haynes Manual (Ben Robinson, 2012) 
58 Minutes (Walter Wager, 1987) 
Vectors (Michael P. Kube-McDowell, 2002) 

December: 5
The Lexington Letter (Anonymous, 2022) 
Too Many Tribbles! (Frank Berrios, 2019) 
I Am Mr. Spock (Elizabeth Schaefer, 2019) 
I Am Captain Kirk (Frank Berrios, 2019) 
Marvel Universe Map by Map (James Hill, 2021) 

Conclusion

That is the year that was for Earl J. Woods and his shrinking library. Nothing lasts forever, truly. 

Head on over to see what Bruce and Leslie had to say about 2022. 

It's All Been Forgotten Before

A few days ago, my friend Bruce shared this video of Surrender's "It's All Been Done Before." I'd forgotten that this song had ever existed, which is surprising given how much I enjoy it. Thanks, Bruce!

New Selection of Bonsai

I shot this just after I started working for the publishing department of Hole's in St. Albert, back in 1998. Bruce encouraged me to wander about the property in search of stories, to learn about the way the greenhouses operated, or just to clear my head. It was a nice perk, and I believe it helped the books I contributed to.

This would be a better photo if the Hole's sign itself weren't so underexposed. Maybe it's something I can fix with Photoshop; it would be nice if you could see more of the cloud reflections in the sign. I like the lens flare.

It's hard to believe I was in my 20s when I shot this, almost 19 years ago. I didn't buy any bonsai. 

Edmonton Skyline 1998

Back in 1998, I obtained permission to shoot some photographs from the top of Fort Garry House on Saskatchewan Drive. Bruce and Akemi handled the actual professional photography while I puttered around with my own camera, resulting in this underwhelming, backlit skyline of Edmonton's downtown as seen from across the North Saskatchewan River. I "fixed" the image as best I could with Photoshop, but it's still pretty bad. One day I'll learn how to be a real photographer...

iMac Flashbac

Here I am sometime in the late 90s working on one of the first iMacs; this one was aqua-coloured. Presumably I was ghostwriting one gardening book or another. My desk at ATCO is even messier than this. Bruce or Jim probably shot the photo; I was trying to finish a roll of black and white. Yes, this was shot...on film. 

2058 Films

Ever since Bruce and Leslie asked me how many books I thought I read in a year, I've felt an increasingly overwhelming urge to catalogue not just what I'm reading now, but everything I've ever read. This mild obsession has extended to cataloguing every film I've seen and television series I've completed.

I've been using Letterboxd to log the films I've seen, and tonight I crossed the 2,000 film mark; indeed, I've catalogued 2,058 films, and I know that doesn't cover every film I've ever seen because I keep remembering more. Only tonight did I realize I'd forgotten to log Zero Effect, Xanadu, Vamp, Stripes, The Mummy, Red Dawn and many others. Remembering which films I've seen recently is relatively easy compared to digging out memories of movie nights from decades ago.

Letterboxd has a wide range of cool features, but I discovered one tonight that I really like a lot: it will sort your list of films by decade or even year. It's easy to see how many films you've watched from each of the dozen or so decades of the art.

So here's my list - at least as it stands today:

1900s: 4
1910s: 15
1920s: 22
1930s: 96
1940s: 109
1950s: 179
1960s: 207
1970s: 245
1980s: 335
1990s: 347
2000s: 300
2010s: 196

It's an almost disappointingly linear increase through the decades, with the exception of a small dropoff from the 1990s to the 2000s and a bigger drop from the 2000s to the 2010s (although to be fair, this decade is only a little half over).

As for individual years, the winner is 1998; I've seen 44 films released from that year. They are: The Thin Red Line, Shakespeare in Love, A Simple Plan, Star Trek: Insurrection, Babe: Pig in the City, Enemy of the State, American History X, Apt Pupil, Soldier, What Dreams May Come, Antz, Pleasantville, Rushmore, Elizabeth, Ronin, Run Lola Run, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, The Avengers, Ever After (which I reviewed in The Peak), Saving Private Ryan, The Mark of Zorro, Pi, Armageddon, The X Files, Free Enterprise, The Truman Show, Godzilla, Bulworth, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Deep Impact, Tarzan and the Lost City, The Big Hit, From the Earth to the Moon (HBO miniseries), Lost in Space, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Dark City, Burn Hollywood Burn, The Big Lebowski, The Replacement Killers, Zero Effect, Gods and Monsters, and Great Expectations. Of these, of course, I caught most on DVD or Blu-Ray or movie channels after their initial release; but I did catch a few of these films in theatres, including Shakespeare in Love (with Leslie, maybe, or do I just associate her with Shakespeare?), A Simple Plan (with Allan, I think), Star Trek: Insurrection, Soldier, What Dreams May Come, Antz, Pleasantville (with Kim, I think), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (with Parvesh in California), The Mark of Zorro, The X Files, The Truman Show (with Allan and Leslie, I think), Godzilla (with Sean?), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Tarzan and the Lost City (in St. Albert's theatre for some reason), Lost in Space (again with Allan, I think), Dark City, The Big Lebowski, and The Replacement Killers (maybe with Pete, Mike and Jeff Pitts?). Quite a year.

Several years are only represented by one film: 1900 (Cyrano de Bergerac), 1903 (The Great Train Robbery), 1917 (Bucking Broadway), 1918 (Take a Chance), 1921 (The Kid), 1922 (Nosferatu), and 1926 (The General). And of course, there are several years from the 1900s and 1910s from which I've seen zero films. But not for long - thanks, YouTube!

So there's my pitifully small sampling of the world of film as it stands today. As I continue to pore over my records and memories, I'll improve the list's fidelity. Let's see how many I've racked up by the end of the year...

Fort Garry House Memories...Such as They Are

For a very brief time that lasted, perhaps, from sometime in 1997 to sometime in 1998, I lived in Fort Garry House, up where Calgary Trail meets Saskatchewan Drive. I had a one-bedroom apartment on the seventh with no balcony, and I remember virtually nothing about the place except that Colin visited once and Bruce and Leslie visited once. Oh, and Bruce and Akemi came by once to shoot photos on the rooftop for I'll Never Marry a Farmer.

There are more photos from that rooftop shoot than I have of my apartment itself; there might be five or six photos, including the one above, clearly taken before I had finished unpacking.

I was living here during the time I transitioned from my job at the Western Board of Music to Hole's - certainly one of the most important moments of my life, at the very least from a career standpoint.

And yet, I can barely recall the place itself. I'm not sure why that makes me sad, but it does. 

Power Puff Earl

Inspired by Bruce and Leslie, who have each made Powerpuff Girl avatars of their own, I present Powerpuff Earl. 

Earl and the iMac

From the spring of 1998 to the fall of 2005, I wrote gardening books and articles for Hole's Publishing in St. Albert. Most of that work was done on this first-generation iMac. (I never took to the Mac OS even after working with it for half a decade.)

This photo was probably taken by Bruce or Akemi, and quite early in my tenure at Hole's for as you can see my bald spot has yet to appear. This image required a lot of cleanup, scanned as it was from a pretty dirty, beaten-up slide; it could still use some work. 

Earl's Ebooks

When my friend Bruce published the list of books he read in 2013, he also noted his steadily evolving reading habits - to wit, most of the stuff he reads comes in electronic form now.

Most of the books I read in in 2013 were physical books, but a growing number came in electronic format. I downloaded the classics on the list (The Jungle Book, The Art of War, The Metamorphosis, White Fang) from the app store, while all the Tarzan books I read after Tarzan and the City of Gold (as well as the Pellucidar novels) were found on Project Gutenberg Australia, where the Tarzan novels have fallen out of copyright.

I still far prefer physical books over e-books, but I'm willing to admit that in a pinch - say, for example, when you simply can't find a physical copy of what you're looking for - they do the job.

This year, then, 10 of the 112 books I read were e-books. At this rate, I'll probably still be reading physical books on my deathbed.

Cypress Hills Pelican

When I posted a photo similar to this one on Facebook, I misidentified the bird as a heron. It is, apparently, a pelican, as my friend Bruce immediately pointed out. Well, I'm no biologist, I just take pictures and write stuff. In any event, I photographed this fine pelican as it was floating on Reesor Lake in Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park - a gorgeous place. I'd planned to visit the official dark sky preserve on the Saskatchewan side of the park to try my hand at astrophotography, but the sky was too cloudy. Still, I'm pretty happy with the snaps I wound up with.

100 Books a Year 2012

In 2010, Bruce and Leslie asked me if I thought I read 100 books a year. As noted, I tracked my reading in 2011 and came up a little short. But I kept tracking my reading this year, and as it turns out I finished the year's 100th book earlier this afternoon.

Here's the list, in order of completion:

Shoeless Joe (W.P. Kinsella, 1982)

The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937)

The Wild Girls Plus… (Ursula K. Le Guin, 2011)

Star Trek The Next Generation: Indistinguishable from Magic (David A. McIntee, 2011)

In War Times (Kathleen Ann Goonan, 2007)

Directive 51 (John Barnes, 2010)

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories (Tim Powers, 2011)

Daybreak Zero (John Barnes, 2011)

Star Trek Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock (Christopher L. Bennett, 2011)

Who Has Seen the Wind? (W.O. Mitchell, 1947)

Icehenge (Kim Stanley Robinson, 1984)

40-Year Evolution: Planet of the Apes (Lee Pfeiffer & Dave Worrall, 2008)

7^th Sigma (Steven Gould, 2011)

Fuzzy Nation (John Scalzi, 2011)

The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made (David Hughes, 2008)

Colonel Sun (Kingsley Amis writing as Robert Markham, 1968)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling, 1998)

Worlds Apart (Joe Haldeman, 1983)

Worlds Enough and Time (Joe Haldeman, 1992)

Wonder (Robert J. Sawyer, 2011)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling, 1999)

Hex (Allen Steele, 2011)

Tales from Development Hell (David Hughes, 2011)

Star Trek Department of Temporal Investigations: Forgotten History (Christopher L. Bennett, 2012)

In Search of the Multiverse (John Gribbin, 2009)

Fevre Dream (George R. R. Martin, 1982)

Carte Blanche (Jeffery Deaver, 2011)

The Hallowed Hunt (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2005)

All the Lives He Led (Frederik Pohl, 2011)

The Scarlet Plague (Jack London, 1912)

The Wind Through the Keyhole (Stephen King, 2012)

Forsake the Sky (Tim Powers, 1986)

A Bridge of Years (Robert Charles Wilson, 1991)

Vortex (Robert Charles Wilson, 2011)

A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories (Ray Bradbury, 2010)

The Call of the Wild (Jack London, 1903)

The Night Sessions (Ken MacLeod, 2012)

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Edgar Allan Poe, 1841)

Feed (Mira Grant, 2010)

The Complete Peanuts 1983 to 1984 (Charles M. Schulz with an introduction by Leonard Maltin, 2012)

The Walls of the Universe (Paul Melko, 2009)

Surfing the Gnarl Plus… (Rudy Rucker, 2012)

Report from Planet Midnight Plus… (Nalo Hopkinson, 2012)

Tin Woodman (David F. Bischoff and Dennis R. Bailey, 1979)

Year’s Best SF (David G. Hartwell, Editor, 1996)

The Company of the Dead (David J. Kowalski, 2012)

Year’s Best SF 2 (David G. Hartwell, Editor, 1997)

After the Golden Age (Carrie Vaughn, 2011)

Omnitopia Dawn (Diane Duane, 2010)

Year’s Best SF 3 (David G. Hartwell, Editor, 1998)

Dandelion Wine (Ray Bradbury, 1957)

Farewell Summer (Ray Bradbury, 2006)

Florida Roadkill (Tim Dorsey, 1999)

Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels, 1985-2010 (Damien Broderick & Paul Di Filippo, 2012)

Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (David Pringle, 1985)

Super Sad True Love Story (Gary Shteyngart, 2010)

Year’s Best SF 5 (David G. Hartwell, Editor, 2000)

Firebird (Jack McDevitt, 2011)

Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)

Hammerhead Ranch Motel (Tim Dorsey, 2000)

This Dark Endeavour (Kenneth Oppel, 2011)

Orange Crush (Tim Dorsey, 2001)

The Poison Belt (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1913)

Triggerfish Twist (Tim Dorsey, 2002)

Star Trek New Frontier: Blind Man’s Bluff (Peter David, 2012)

Star Trek Voyager: Unworthy (Kirsten Beyer, 2009)

Star Trek Voyager: Children of the Storm (Kirsten Beyer, 2011)

Triggers (Robert J. Sawyer, 2012)

Fifty Who Made DC Great (Barry Marx, Editor, 1985)

The Adventures of Superman (George Lowther, 1942)

The Stingray Shuffle (Tim Dorsey, 2003)

Carnelians (Catherine Asaro, 2011)

The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane, 1895)

Star Trek Voyager: The Eternal Tide (Kirsten Beyer, 2012)

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall (Nancy Kress, 2012)

The Toynbee Convector (Ray Bradbury, 1988)

Klingon Bird of Prey Owners’ Workshop Manual (Rick Sternbach and Ben Robinson, 2012)

The Nerd Who Loved Me (Liz Talley, 2012)

Osama (Lavie Tidhar, 2011)

The Stepford Wives (Ira Levin, 1972)

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, 1884)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum, 1900)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)

Through the Looking-Glass (Lewis Carroll, 1871)

The Complete Peanuts, 1985 to 1986 (Charles M. Schulz with an introduction by Patton Oswalt, 2012)

This Perfect Day (Ira Levin, 1970)

The Boys from Brazil (Ira Levin, 1976)

Rosemary’s Baby (Ira Levin, 1967)

Son of Rosemary (Ira Levin, 1997)

The High Crusade (Poul Anderson, 1960)

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Walter Benjamin, 1936)

An Introduction to Studying Popular Culture (Dominic Strinati, 2000)

211 Things A Bright Boy Can Do (Tom Cutler, 2006)

The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway, 1952)

Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad, 1899)

Star Trek: The Next Generation 365 (Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann, 2012)

Federation: The First 150 Years (David A. Goodman, 2311)

Year’s Best SF 6 (David G. Hartwell, Editor, 2001)

Dancing with Bears (Michael Swanwick, 2011)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling, 2000)

Fiction: 89

Nonfiction: 11

Science fiction: 47

Fantasy: 14

Romance: 1

Star Trek: 10

Peanuts collections: 2

Mainstream: 16

Female authors: 13
Male authors: 60

Top Authors
Tim Dorsey (5)
David G. Hartwell (5)
Ira Levin (5)
Ray Bradbury (4)
Kirsten Beyer (3)

J.K. Rowling (3)
John Barnes (2)
Christopher L. Bennett (2)
Lewis Carroll (2)
Joe Haldeman (2)
David Hughes (2)
Jack London (2)
Tim Powers (2)
Robert J. Sawyer (2)
Charles M. Schulz (2)
Robert Charles Wilson (2)

Books by Decade
1840s: 1
1850s: 0
1860s: 1
1870s: 1
1880s: 1
1890s: 2
1900s: 2

1910s: 2
1920s: 0
1930s: 2
1940s: 3
1950s: 2
1960s: 3
1970s: 4
1980s: 8
1990s: 10
2000s: 17
2010s: 40
2310s: 1

Oldest Title

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Edgar Allan Poe, 1841)

Newest Title

Federation: The First 150 Years (David A. Goodman, 2311)

Final Thoughts

As might be expected, my list is a little genre heavy. Gender and temporal balance are also askew. Next year I'll see if I can increase the number of women authors and mainstream titles, as well as older works and nonfiction.

Tim Dorsey is my favourite find of 2012. His novels about murder, mayhem and mental illness in Florida are uproariously funny, but they can also be quite moving and insightful. I have another five of his books in my library, and I look forward to devouring them.

After having long read about Ira Levin, I finally sampled the man's work, reading five of his seven published novels. It's too bad he didn't write more; Levin's one of very few writers who can make me angry, and he did so in both The Stepford Wives and Rosemary's Baby, both of which centre around good women betrayed by their husbands.

This year I also knocked a few of the essential classics off my longstanding to-read list: The Old Man and the Sea, Heart of Darkness, Shoeless Joe, The Hobbit and a few others. The Hemingway was wonderful, but I found the Kinsella a little too syrupy, the Conrad too overwrought, and Tolkien, despite his nerd cred...well, maybe he's just not my sort of thing, but I'll give The Lord of the Rings a go in 2013 anyway.

After a three-decade break from Ray Bradbury, I returned to one of the greats this year and found his work as compelling (if sentimental) as ever. I read three of the four Bradbury titles on this list before he died, and I felt irrationally guilty about it. Maybe he would have lived if I hadn't picked up another of his books, or if I'd never stopped reading his work. Crazy, of course.

A few of the books on this list were duds, notably some of the media tie-in novels, but that's to be expected; as Theodore Sturgeon famously wrote, "Ninety percent of everything is crap." But we keep reading in search of those hidden gems.

Speaking of reading, thanks to everyone who read the blog this year - there seem to be more of you, and I'm happy that you're finding something entertaining here.

Happy New Year!

Northern Chopper

Leaf Rapids had (and possibly still has) a helipad. As a boy I was fascinated by this blank expanse of concrete, a small island of man in the middle of northern Manitoba's vast boreal forest. Only rarely did a chopper ever touch down; this one seems to be from the Northwest Territories, judging by the barely visible logo on the cockpit. It would appear that this model can land on water, if those big grey cylinders are pontoons - a handy ability given the thousands of lakes and rivers in the area.

Despite its small size, Leaf Rapids was rich in opportunities to explore. I wandered to the helipad often during my adventures, imagining that UFOs or Federation shuttlecraft might also pay visits to our isolated community.

Only years later did I ever ride in a helicopter: once in the early 2000s for an aerial photo of Hole's Greenhouses (thanks Bruce!) and once in 2008 in Hawaii, when Sylvia and I took a helicopter tour of the island.

Worth every penny.

The Sentimentalist Version Two

Judging by its view count, not many people read last month's short story, The Sentimentalist. Two who did read the story remarked that they liked it, but judged it unfinished. This is fair criticism, so I've attempted to flesh out the story and give it some polish with a few carefully considered alterations. The story remains essentially the same in tone and theme, but I've tried to give it a little more weight and colour. Have I succeeded? Perhaps not, but I found the exercise very valuable, so thanks to Bruce and Jeff for their comments. 

The Sentimentalist

Six hundred years after she lost her one true love, the young woman in the faded blue jeans and the tan leather jacket returned to Cherryville. She’d stopped to shed her last vengeful tears at the way station ten miles back; now, cheeks dried and eyes clear and hard, she was ready.

She rolled into town on a weathered black sociable, its left seat long ago removed and replaced by a battered old rivercane basket, currently filled with an assortment of dried fruits, nuts, jerky and a faintly glowing data tablet, resting languidly atop this humble bounty. 

Her tires kicked up dust and small stones as she braked to a halt in front of the first of three skyscrapers that loomed over Cherryville’s only street. In thirty seconds' ride she could put tiny Cherryville over the horizon behind her, but duty and destiny demanded their due.

She leaned her sociable against a hitching post and stepped onto the boardwalk, pausing a moment to stamp the dust from her black over-the-knee boots. She removed her black Stetson and with an offhand, almost lazy gesture flung it to land precariously balanced atop her sociable’s handlebars. For a moment it seemed a gust of wind would topple the battered old hat into the road, but the breeze subsided as if in deference to the visitor.

She gazed up at the towers of glass and steel before her. GENERAL STORE, pronounced the easternmost tower in bold block letters of carved and cracking obsidian. SALOON, read the middle tower in fading jade. And POST OFFICE, read the last in letters of worn marble. High above the skies began to roil, clouds of ochre and violet twisting impatiently beneath the silent glittering starscape waiting at altitudes incomprehensible, waiting on her and on Cherryville. Over the horizon other clouds rumbled their discontent, and she knew she’d allowed time to grow too short.

And yet she hesitated before the saloon doors and the murmuring voices beyond. One slightly callused but meticulously manicured hand brushed against the pistol holstered at her hip. Its deadly weight was cold comfort, leeching the heat from her body, a malevolent force pregnant with ugly potential. It had been her partner for half a century, and there was no ending their dark contract now. She took a breath and entered the saloon.

The skyscraper was mostly empty space, its one hundred fifty floors merely ringing the inner walls, ornate balconies of gilt stone open to the interior. On the ground floor hundreds of townspeople lined the bar or lounged at round oak tables as they dined, played cards, or, more commonly, ignored each other in favour of consulting their smart phones, eagerly devouring distractions that had ceased to matter centuries gone. There was no music, only the low rumble of conversation.

She stood at the saloon entrance until, one by one, all eyes were fixed upon her. At that moment she pulled her jacket open to reveal the large, polished black opal pinned to her blouse. The last echoes of conversation died away.

She spoke in the old formal tones, her voice initially cracking from long disuse.

“Hello,” she said. “At precisely noon today the extension granted you by the Confederation of the Living expires. Per the agreement, you will now surrender yourselves for conversion in an orderly fashion.”

She attempted a smile, a way to soften the blow.  

“Congratulations on your perseverance. You are among the last corporeal –”

But the crowd didn’t let her finish. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the first terrified citizen drew his primitive sidearm, his blue eyes bloodshot and bulging with panic, beads of sweat glistening on his pale skin.

He was only halfway out of his chair before the young woman and her gun were one being once more, her arm extended, eyes half-open, her expression serene but sad. The first conversion slug burped from the barrel of her pistol and sailed across the room and through the citizen’s heart, its recording devices transmitting the sounds and sights of the man’s death to the young woman’s tablet on the street outside.

She would have preferred if the first violent conversion could have persuaded the others to surrender, but this crowd was too attached to this plane. Bullets, flechettes, darts and bolts crisscrossed the room in search of her flesh. She felt something bite sharply into her left side; an instant later another missile grazed her cheekbone, leaving a shallow gash that oozed a slow trickle of blood.

It wasn’t enough to distract the partnership. Her body moved with the grace of a dancer, long dark hair whipping in an arc as she pirouetted through the saloon, conversion slugs ripping through guts and brains and faces and lungs, every atrocity duly recorded. Once or twice an especially gifted citizen nearly managed to kill her, but her reflexes and the gun’s silent psychic warnings kept her injuries to a shameful minimum.

It was over in minutes. The carpet was soaked with blood that squelched under her boots as she left the saloon.

The Cherryville postman was standing beside her sociable, holding her data tablet, eyes agog. He looked up at her as she stepped down from the boardwalk, taking the tablet back.

“Anyone else in town?” she asked, gesturing with her chin at the post office and the general store. Her eyes were wet again, her vision blurred. Tiny rivers of blood dripped down her pale cheek to her jawline.

“Just me,” he said. “Everyone else was waiting for you in there. They thought maybe they’d have a chance if everyone...well. I thought I’d go with a little dignity.”

She nodded, wearing her mask of indifference through the tears. She reached out with her left hand, the polished black surface of her pointed nails shifting and whirling to reveal vast star fields, a universe on every fingertip. But before she could touch his grizzled cheek, he raised a hand to ask a question. She waited.

“Why do you take those awful pictures?” he asked. “Surely it’s not necessary, and who’s going to watch them...you?”

Her thin lips twisted in a sad smile. Tomorrow night she would indeed watch the replays, as she had watched all the others to remind herself of what she’d stolen, what she’d given, and what she’d sacrificed. When Earth at last was empty, someone must bear the burden of remembrance.

 “I’m a sentimentalist,” she said.

The postman frowned, light years from understanding. Then starry fingertips graced his cheek and he burst into wisps of silver smoke, lost on the wind.