In Dreams, He Walks: David Lynch, 1946-2025

When you exclude family and friends from the equation, my approach to life is upheld by three great pillars: Superman's altruism, Star Trek's optimism, and David Lynch's surrealism. And as much as I adore Superman and Star Trek, it is the works of David Lynch that bring me closest to understanding--or at least appreciating--the great mysteries of existence. 

My first exposure to Lynch was The Elephant Man, followed a few years later by Blue Velvet--both incredible films that pitted cruelty against compassion, a common theme in Lynch's work. 

But it was Twin Peaks that captured me, heart and soul, way back in 1990. I saw in Dale Cooper, Deputy Andy, Deputy Hawk, and Sheriff Truman the kind of men I aspired to be. I saw in Bob my terrible weaknesses and darkest thoughts. And in the world Lynch built, one of awe and mystery, compelling and unknowable, wondrous and terrifying, I saw the landscapes of my dreams. 

Much of Lynch's work is rife with violence and misery of the harshest kind in settings that seem rational on the surface, but hide corruption and malignancy. Thankfully, the evil in his worlds is matched by figures of great kindness, integrity, and valour, and forces of light that help in the limited ways they can.  

Lynch's heroes often fail, Dale Cooper chief among them; as revealed in The Return, his saviour complex ultimately dooms him, along with poor Laura Palmer, "saving" her from her true salvation to the forces of light in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. 

Or that's one interpretation. Lynch's work is full of delicious ambiguity; it demands our full attention and cries out to be re-watched for new meaning. Despite that ambiguity, though, I believe a couple of themes shine through his body of work. 

First, David Lynch loved people and felt deeply about the cost of human suffering. Second, David found amazing beauty in the universe, even if that beauty was contrasted with terror; perhaps he felt one was necessary for the other. And third, to paraphrase Stephen King, I think David Lynch suspected there are other worlds than these. I hope he's exploring them now and creating new art. 

For these reasons and so many others, I felt a deep connection with David Lynch--though I'd never met him, and never will, except in dreams. 

Thank you, David, for the gift of your art, in all its baffling and wondrous forms. Rest in mystery. 

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. 

Last But Not Least: Books I Read in 2023

 

Finally!

Here we are at what has become the traditional final post of the year here at The Earliad: the list of books I read over the course of the last 365 days. As seen in the Goodreads screencap at the top of this post, I have at last crawled my way back to my baseline minimum of 100 books a year, a goal I've failed to achieve for the last few years now thanks to COVID-19, stress, and depression. 

But hey! The world is okay now. COVID-19 is behind us, human rights and decency are ascendant, the wealth gap is steadily shrinking, and we've turned the tide in the fight against climate change. 

. . . 

All right, nothing in that last paragraph is true, but somehow I managed to read 100 books this year anyway.

Overview

In 2023, I read

• 82 works of fiction and 18 works of non-fiction
• 52 science fiction novels, 21 mainstream, five horror, and four fantasy
• 40 books by women and 60 books by men
• 32 books from the 2020s, 29 from the 2010s, seven from the 2000s, five from the 1990s, eight from the 1980s, 10 from the 1970s, three from the 1960s, one from the 1950s, three from the 1930s, one from the 1980s, and one from the 1810s
• Seven books by Charles M. Schulz, five by Kate Beaton, five by Matt Haig, five by John Scalzi, four by Stephen King, four by Nancy Kress, three by Sandy Petersen, three by Katherine Anne Porter, two by David Brin, two by Mona Clee, two by Diane Duane, two by Steven Konkoly, two by Jack McDevitt, and one by each other author on this year's list

Commentary and Analysis

Repeating my experience in 2022, I reread a lot of old favourites in 2023, including novels by Ray Bradbury, Mona Clee, Suzy McKee Charnas, Diane Duane, Daniel Keyes, Stephen King, Nancy Kress, Kate Wilhelm, and Connie Willis. I have only one thing to say about these rereads: I wish Mona Clee had written more novels. The two she published--Branch Point and Overshoot--are wonderful soft-SF tales of human folly and our efforts to do better and be better.

As promised last year, I read Roderick Thorpe's first novel about detective Joe Leland, a character Hollywood adapted twice--once as a straightforward adaptation of this novel starring Frank Sinatra, the second an adaptation of the sequel, Nothing Lasts Forever, as the action hit Die Hard. The Detective is more meditative and slow-paced than its sequel, but still worthwhile, and gives the character's journey added depth. I wish I'd read the two books in order. 

Last year Leslie gave me a novel for my birthday and one for Christmas. I don't remember which book was meant for which occasion, but I read Matt Haig's The Comfort Book first, and it really gave me an emotional lift when I needed it. Haig's style is warm and welcoming, and so is his subject matter, whether he's writing non-fiction, as in this case, or fiction, as in the other Haig books I devoured this year in response to the good feelings granted by The Comfort Book. Those books were The Midnight Library, How to Stop Time, and The Humans, works of speculative fiction with a common theme: making connections and dealing with trauma through empathy and a conscious choice to pursue understanding. All four reads left me feeling better about the world, and they were light but thoughtful. I'll be following Haig's work. 

The other book Leslie gifted me was Gnomon, by Nick Harkaway, a dense science fiction detective story about artificial intelligence, simulated worlds, and history's throughlines. It's a fascinating, nested, interweaving narrative, one I'll revisit again in a few years. 

I've long been a fan of cartoonist Kate Beaton's website, so this year I purchased all of her available works. The most notable was Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, an autobiography covering Kate's time in Fort McMurray, a place I'm familiar with through a couple of personal visits and my work in the public and private sectors. Knowing what I know about the working environment in Fort McMurray, I went into this book hoping that nothing bad would happen to Kate, but . . . well, one very bad thing does happen, and I wish I hadn't anticipated it. It made me wish that I could send Kate a message back through time telling her to pursue other opportunities. The book is very worthwhile and I'm glad I read it, but it's rough going in some places simply because Beaton doesn't shy away from the realities of her experience. 

In 2023 I read three books by fantasist Naomi Novik. The first, The Golden Enclaves, is the finale of a trilogy of works about a university of magic with campuses across the globe. I didn't find the conclusion of the series as satisfying as the first two books, but it was still engaging and enjoyable, and doesn't preclude further exploration of the world. I was more impressed by a pair of standalone novels by Novik: Uprooted and Spinning Silver. They explore the usual fantasy tropes, but Novik's command of characterization and structure make them both entertaining, breezy reads. 

Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream is grotesquely violent, absurd, and troubling--as it should be, because Spinrad posits an alternate world where Adolf Hitler was a science fiction writer instead of the mad dictator of our reality. The book's most chilling section, though, is the framing material, which expounds upon the outsized influence of this alternate Hitler's novel on his world: he achieves a cult-like following which has, if you read between the lines, influenced his world in reactionary directions that might, in the long run, do more damage to humanity than our Hitler achieved in the real world. It's a scary book. 

I stumbled across a fun experiment in 2023--an opportunity to read Bram Stoker's Dracula across the course of the year via emails sent out on the date of the letters and journals that make up perhaps the world's most famous epistolary. (There are some editorial allowances made for the long out-of-sequence section describing what happens on the Demeter.) Reading the book this way really connected me to the characters; it was like I had to wait for the various letters and newspaper clippings just as they did. 

The Road is my first experience with the work of Cormac McCarthy, and he certainly lives up to his reputation. Dystopic, bleak, hopeless, and sparse, this is one of those works that really captures the mood of the 2020s, even though it was written in 2006. McCarthy builds a vivid world, though; even though his prose is sparing, his choices depict his chosen milieu with crystal clarity. 

I had the most fun this year, though, with Leslie Vermeer's Last But Not Least: A Guide to Proofreading Text. As with her earlier The Complete Canadian Book Editor, Last But Not Least is written with great authority--Leslie knows her subject matter backwards and forwards--but just as critical to the book's value is the way Leslie expresses that authority with empathy, kindness, and authenticity. She also peppers her texts with fun little in-jokes, this time with an emphasis on cultural touchpoints in Edmonton, British Columbia's lower mainland, and Vancouver Island. They're lovely touches that don't distract from the message, and fun Easter eggs for those who spot them. 

It must be said that I've known Leslie for years, so I'm predisposed to enjoying her work. Despite this, I'm confident in predicting that Last But Not Least will be incredibly useful to working communications professionals. Indeed, as one such professional, I've had to perform my share of proofreading jobs over the years; in fact, I have a very large proofreading task coming up in January. Leslie's book does an incredible job of clearly and carefully defining the role of the proofreader, its importance to publishing credible text, and how proofreaders can succeed at the task. Last But Not Least will be by my side for my January task and others to come. 

(I did not proofread this post, by the way; had I followed Leslie's excellent guidance, this blog would be error-free, or nearly so. Blame the student, not the teacher.) 

Plus, Leslie was kind enough to include me in the acknowledgements for my teeny-weeny contribution to the book. How cool is that? I'm genuinely thrilled. What a lovely way to end the year! 

Month-by-Month

January: 11

The Detective (Roderick Thorp, 1966)

The Comfort Book (Matt Haig, 2021) 

High School Journalist, Promoter, Jester - Kurt Vonnegut in the Shortridge Daily Echo, 1937-1940 (Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 2023) 

The Effort (Claire Holroyde, 2021) 

Hark! A Vagrant (Kate Beaton, 2015) 

Step Aside, Pops (Kate Beaton, 2015) 

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (Kate Beaton, 2022) 

The Princess and the Pony (Kate Beaton, 2015) 

The Midnight Library (Matt Haig, 2020) 

Fractured State (Steven Konkoly, 2016) 

The World of Star Trek, second edition (David Gerrold, 1984) 

February: 10

Rogue State (Steven Konkoly, 2017) 

They’d Rather Be Right (Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, 1954) 

Village in the Sky (Jack McDevitt, 2023) 

The Golden Enclaves (Naomi Novik, 2022) 

Uprooted (Naomi Novik, 2015) 

Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik, 2018) 

The Official Art of Big Trouble in Little China (Tara Bennett, 2017) 

The Art of Tron: Legacy (Justin Springer, 2010)

Robotic Existentialism: The Art of Eric Joyner (Eric Joyner, 2018) 

Tomb of Annihilation (Christopher Perkins, 2017) 

March: 10

How to Stop Time (Matt Haig, 2017) 

Old Venus (George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, 2015) 

The Dead Zone (Stephen King, 1979)

The Toynbee Convector (Ray Bradbury, 1988)  

Branch Point (Mona Clee, 1996)

Overshoot (Mona Clee, 1998)

Music of the Spheres (Margaret Wander Bonanno, 1990) 

Probability Moon (Nancy Kress, 2000) 

Probability Sun (Nancy Kress, 2001) 

Probability Space (Nancy Kress, 2002) 

April: 8

The Iron Dream (Norman Spinrad, 1972) 

We Think, Therefore We Are (Peter Crowther, 2008) 

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (Kate Wilhelm, 1976) 

Gnomon (Nick Harkaway, 2017) 

Fallout 4 Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide (David S.J. Hodgson, 2015) 

Dark Mirror (Diane Duane, 1994) 

Intellivore (Diane Duane, 1997) 

The Postman (David Brin, 1985) 

May: 10

The Art of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos (Pat Harrigan, 2006) 

S. Petersen’s Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters: A Field Observer’s Handbook of Preternatural Entities (Sandy Petersen, 1988)

S. Petersen's Field Guide to Creatures of the Dreamlands: An Album of Entities from the Land Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Sandy Petersen, 1989) 

S. Petersen's Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors: A Field Observer's Handbook of Preternatural Entities and Beings from Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Sandy Petersen, 2015) 

The Actual Star (Monica Byrne, 2021) 

Murder by Other Means (John Scalzi, 2020) 

Travel by Bullet (John Scalzi, 2022) 

Wondrous Beginnings (Steven H. Silver and Martin H. Greenberg, 2003)

The Simultaneous Man (Ralph Blum, 1971)

A Deadly Affair (Agatha Christie, 2022) 

June: 12

Alien3 (Pat Cadigan, 2021) 

Old Mortality (Katherine Anne Porter, 1937)

Noon Wine (Katherine Anne Porter, 1938) 

Pale Horse, Pale Rider (Katherine Anne Porter, 1939) 

Observer (Nancy Kress and Robert Lanza, 2023) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1952-1955 (Charles M. Schulz, 2013) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1956-1960 (Charles M. Schulz, 2014) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1961-1965 (Charles M. Schulz, 2015) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1966-1970 (Charles M. Schulz, 2016) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1971-1975 (Charles M. Schulz, 2017) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1976-1980 (Charles M. Schulz, 2018) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1981-1985 (Charles M. Schulz, 2019) 

July: 6

The Shining (Stephen King, 1977) 

‘Salem’s Lot (Stephen King, 1975) 

Down to a Sunless Sea (David Graham, 1979) 

The Practice Effect (David Brin, 1984) 

Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes, 1966) 

The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K. LeGuin, 1971) 

August: 10

The Last President (John Barnes, 2012) 

Hope Rides Again (Andrew Shaffer, 2019) 

How It Unfolds (James S.A. Corey, 2023) 

Void (Veronica Roth, 2023) 

Falling Bodies (Rebecca Roanhorse, 2023) 

The Long Game (Ann Leckie, 2023)

Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach (Nnedi Okorafor, 2023) 

Slow Time between the Stars (John Scalzi, 2023) 

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, 1960) 

Lincoln’s Dreams (Connie Willis, 1987) 

September: 4

Dr. No (Percival Everett, 2022) 

The Kaiju Preservation Society (John Scalzi, 2022) 

7TV Cinematic Skirmish Rules (Karl Pelleton, 2023) 

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818) 

October: 10

The Humans (Matt Haig, 2013) 

Artwork from Baldur’s Gate (Joachim Vleminckx, 2023) 

The Radleys (Matt Haig, 2010) 

Starter Villain (John Scalzi, 2023) 

King Baby (Kate Beaton, 2010) 

Holly (Stephen King, 2023) 

Return to Glory (Jack McDevitt, 2023) 

On His Majesty’s Secret Service (Charlie Higson, 2023) 

To Be Taught, If Fortunate (Becky Chambers, 2019) 

Walk to the End of the World (Suzy McKee Charnas, 1974) 

November: 2

Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897) 

The Machine Never Blinks (Ivan Greenberg, 2020) 

December: 8

The Road (Cormac McCarthy, 2006) 

Touch Not the Cat (Mary Stewart, 1976) 

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (Various, 1986) 

Upright Women Wanted (Sarah Gailey, 2020) 

The Defector (Chris Hadfield, 2023) 

Maybe There—The Lost Stories from Space: 1999 (David Hirsch and Robert E. Wood, 2023) 

Last But Not Least: A Guide to Proofreading Text (Leslie Vermeer, 2023) 

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. 

Books I Read in 2022: The Fail Edition

 

Blogger wiped out about 80% of what had been a 2,000 word post right before I could save it. And no, I didn't write it in Word first, like an idiot. 

I was pretty happy with what I'd written, too, and flew into a fit of angry depression thereafter. Happy New Year to me. Bah. 

Hopefully I can muster up the desire to rewrite this post in a couple of days, based on what little was saved. Sigh. 

Books I Read in 2021

In 2021 I read 58 books, a personal all-time low. As you'll see from the list below, I didn't attempt to tackle anything particularly challenging. The stress of 21st-century existence leaves me with diminished capacity; escaping into film taxes me far less than slipping into a book these days, a truth that profoundly saddens me, but one I can no longer deny. Silver lining: for the first time, I read as many books by women as by men. 

In 2021 I sought out escapist fare, often re-reading old favourites that took me back to comfortable alternate realities and in some sense to a more vital past self. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the books I read are non-fiction, mainly covering topics in popular culture. 

A couple of novels stand out. Severance, by Ling Ma, uncannily anticipates the COVID-19 catastrophe and, like the real disaster, reveals the silliness and futility of the ways we live and work in the modern world, how the systems we've built serve only a select few. Come Closer, by Sara Gran, is one of the scariest novels I've ever read, and one of the most heartbreaking. It's the internal monologue of a woman who is either going insane or is genuinely being slowly and methodically possessed by a demon, and Gran's touch is so deft and sure that the moments of terror come out of nowhere, seeming to slip between the sentences so that by the time you realize what's happening to you and the protagonist, it's too late to brace yourself for the abyss. 

Martha Wells continues to impress with her Murderbot diaries, and I'm still enjoying my journeys through the works of Jo Walton. I indulged in a couple of near-legendary works of dreadful fan fiction: Jim Theis' The Eye of Argon and Tara Gilesbie's My Immortal. Anyone who enjoys art gone wrong will love these. 

Thanks to Leslie, I learned that I'd fallen behind on Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric series. Catching up was like going on a short trip with an old friend, carefree and pleasant. Bujold remains a favourite, and I hope she keeps writing for a long time. 

Finally, I was delighted to discover that Ulrich Haarburste released his cycle of Roy Orbison in clingfilm stories, expanded to novel length. If you don't feel like buying the book, sample some of the stories. 

Here's the list of what I read this year: 

January: 10
Or What You Will (Jo Walton, 2020) 
Star Trek Adventures Quickstart Guide (Modiphius, 2017) 
Axiom’s End (Lindsay Ellis, 2020) 
The Vanished Seas (Catherine Asaro, 2020)
Lightning Strike, Book One (Catherine Asaro, 2014) 
Lightning Strike, Book Two (Catherine Asaro, 2020) 
Carrie (Stephen King, 1974) 
Way Station (Clifford D. Simak, 1963) 
The Wounded Sky (Diane Duane, 1983) 
My Enemy, My Ally (Diane Duane, 1984) 

February: 7
The Lightest Object in the Universe (Kimi Eisele, 2019) 
DC Comics Covers (Nick Jones, 2020) 
DC Comics Supervillains: The Complete Visual History (Daniel Wallace, 2014) 
Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Phil Szostak, 2020) 
The Big Lie (Julie Mayhew, 2015) 
Passage (Connie Willis, 2001) 
The Romulan Way (Diane Duane and Peter Morwood, 1987) 

March: 6
The Eye of Argon (Jim Theis, 1970) 
My Immortal (Tara Gilesbie, 2006) 
Later (Stephen King, 2021) 
Star Wars Complete Vehicles New Edition (Kerrie Dougherty, 2020) 
To Lose the Earth (Kristen Beyer, 2020) 
Severance (Ling Ma, 2018) 

April: 3
The World of Cyberpunk 2077 (Marcin Batylda, 2020) 
Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, with Illustrations (William B. Jones Jr., 2001) 
Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth (Fredric Wertham, 1954)
 
May: 3
The Ten Thousand Doors of January (Alix E. Harrow, 2019)
Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (Martha Wells, 2020) 
Fugitive Telemetry (Martha Wells, 2021) 

June: 2
Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm: Plus additional stories (Ulrich Haarburste, 2019) 
Forbidden Knowledge: 101 Things No One Should Know How to Do (Owen Brooks, 2019) 

July: 3
Critical Failures (Robert Bevan, 2012) 
Living Memory (Christopher L. Bennett, 2021) 
Come Closer (Sara Gran, 2003) 

August: 5
The Physicians of Vilnoc (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2020) 
Masquerade in Lodi (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2020)
The Assassins of Thasalon (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2021)
Billy Summers (Stephen King, 2021) 
The Princess Saves Herself in This One (Amanda Lovelace, 2016)

September: 2
Then Everything Changed (Jeff Greenfield, 2011) 
The Stand (Stephen King, 1980) 

October: 2
Available Light (Dayton Ward, 2019) 
Knot of Shadows (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2021) 

November: 7
The Apollo Murders (Chris Hadfield, 2021)
Visiting Friends: Or, What I Did on My Summer Vacation (Jo Walton, 2021) 
Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir, 2021)
2034 (Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, 2021) 
Untold Horror (Dave Alexander, 2021) 
The History of Science Fiction: A Graphic Novel Adventure (Xavier Dollo, 2021) 
Forever and a Day (Anthony Horowitz, 2018) 

December: 7
The Steranko History of Comics, Volume One (Jim Steranko, 1970) 
The Steranko History of Comics, Volume Two (Jim Steranko, 1972)
All in Color for a Dime (Richard A. Lupoff and Don Thompson, 1970) 
Comix: A History of Comic Books in America ( Les Daniels, 1971) 
The Psychology of Time Travel (Kate Mascarenhas, 2018) 
The Grownup (Gillian Flynn, 2014) 
Hench (Natalie Zina Walschots, 2020) 

Fiction: 42
Nonfiction: 15
Poetry: 1

Genre
Fantasy: 8
Horror: 3
Mainstream: 11
Science Fiction: 14
Star Trek: 6

Top Authors
Lois McMaster Bujold: 4
Stephen King: 4
Catherine Asaro: 3
Diane Duane: 3
Jim Steranko: 2
Jo Walton: 2
Martha Wells: 2

Books by Women: 29
Books by Men: 29

Books by Decade
1950s: 1
1960s: 1
1970s: 6
1980s: 4
2000s: 4
2010s: 16
2020s: 25 

The Words Behind the Pictures

I don't know exactly how Letterboxd defines a writing credit for the purposes of their database, but I suspect it's broader than just screenplays, judging by some of the names on my list of most-seen films written by these people. 

Having seen all the films that Charlie Chaplin has directed, I suppose it's no surprise that he's also my most-seen writer, too, given the amount of control and involvement Chaplin had in his films. 

The next three names in the list--Maltese, Foster, and Pierce--all wrote a bunch of Looney Tunes shorts. 

Ben Hecht, next on the list, has a fascinating filmography, writing superb films like Notorious, Spellbound, Scarface, Design for Living, Stagecoach, The Thing, and Strangers on a Train, but also z-grade stuff like Queen of Outer Space, the 1967 version of Casino Royale, and Switching Channels. 

Felix Adler wrote Three Stooges shorts. 

Ian Fleming makes the list thanks to James Bond and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. 

David Lynch, of course, writes or co-writes most of the material he directs.

Clyde Bruckman is another writer of Three Stooges shorts, but also features from comedy greats such as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. 

Woody Allen, like Chaplin and Lynch, writes much of his own material. 

Stephen King makes the list, I suspect, because of "story by..." credits for the many adaptations of his novels and short stories. 

Laurent Bouzereau produces short documentary "making-of" subjects that appear as special features on many of my discs. 

Orson Welles, again, is another film polymath. 

George Lucas makes the list thanks to Star Wars, Indiana Jones, American Graffiti, etc. 

Sylvester Stallone, I suspect, is here thanks to the Rocky and Rambo franchises. 

Elwood Ullman is another Three Stooges writer. What a fun job that would have been...

Richard Matheson is a well-regarded prose fantasist, SF author, and contributor of teleplays to The Twilight Zone, among other shows. Here for adaptations, much like King, I suspect. 

Ethan Coen is of course one-half of the famous Coen Brothers writing-directing team.

And finally, David Cronenberg is another director who writes much of his own material. 

 

This Stand Doesn't Deliver

I don't envy anyone who tries to adapt Stephen King's magnum opus, The Stand. The book's greatness doesn't lie in its good vs. evil plot, but in the tremendously evocative way King captures the downfall of the world and the impact of Captain Trips on the survivors scattered across the United States. Journeying with the survivors as they seek out each other and try to rebuild some semblance of civilization is a genuinely satisfying adventure. 

Even the main storyline - the confrontation between the forces of Mother Abigail and Randall Flagg - is tense, exciting, and even surprising on first read. Yes, the deus ex machina resolution of that confrontation still makes no sense, but almost everything before and after is full of taut drama, wonderful characterization, and some delicious philosophizing on the nature of good, evil, and civilization. 

Unfortunately, no film or miniseries can do justice to the world King builds in The Stand. In this 21st-century adaptation, we barely get to know the main characters before they're gone. Some important secondary characters disappear entirely, or are replaced with hybrids. Many of the most evocative scenes are lost so as to cram the bare bones of the plot into a few hours. (Stu's return west is just one example.) Frannie Goldsmith is woefully miscast for the second adaptation in a row. And for some unfathomable reason, the first half of the narrative is presented non-linearly--a choice that certainly works in some contexts, but woefully out of place for this story, which depends so much on the unfolding events of the plague. 

This adaptation's bright spot comes in the last episode, a new coda written by Stephen King that explores the conversation Stu and Fran have at the end of the original, shorter version of the novel. King sends Stu and Fran back to Ogunquit to see if they might not be better off starting their own little civilization rather than staying in Boulder, which shows hints of returning to the old ways that ruined the old world. As in the expanded version of the novel, King brings back Flagg, but he also brings back a new incarnation of Mother Abigail, along with a test of Fran's character. In this new coda, King adds new meaning to the title of his novel, putting the Stand in personal terms; still a conflict between good and evil, but on individual terms. There comes a time when we all have to take a stand. 

I would have given this review another star had the miniseries ended here, but instead King couldn't resist including the tacked-on "gotcha" ending of the expanded version of the novel, in which Flagg returns to conquer an isolated indigenous tribe, suggesting the cycle will one day start all over again. As it did way back in 1990, this feels more like a cheap horror film trope than an effective way to end the book. Does God really feel it necessary to purge the Earth every couple of thousand years? I thought he promised there wouldn't be any more floods...maybe we took that too literally.

Carrie Cherry, Carrie Noir

Books I Read in 2018

For the second year in a row, the number of books I read over the course of the year has declined, down to 86 books this year compared to 123 in 2017 and 135 in 2016. Even worse, my ratio of women to men authors has declined drastically, as has my ratio of genre to mainstream (or "literary") works.

There are a few reasons for this, some new, some carried over from 2017. First, hardly any of my lunch breaks at Stantec are devoted to reading books; instead, I'm either playing Dungeons & Dragons or catching up on Reddit politics threads over lunch. I'm also screening a lot more films than I used to. And finally, Dad's passing and the stress from the quickly unfolding global sociopolitical/environmental catastrophe has made reading more difficult for me; I don't have the same focus I used to.

What reading I did manage this year veered strongly toward nostalgia and escapism. I managed to whittle down some Hugo and Nebula award winners this year, and finally read Isaac Asimov's Lucky Starr juveniles and the first of his R. Daneel Olivaw robot novels. I also knocked off James Blish's Cities in Flight books, something I've been meaning to do since about grade six.

Here's the list:

January: 11
Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction (Grady Hendrix, 2017)
The Collectors (Christopher L. Bennett, 2014)
Miasma (Greg Cox, 2016)
Q Are Cordially Invited (Rudy Josephs, 2014)
When Angels Wept: A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (Eric G. Swedin, 2010)
Surrounded by Enemies (Bryce Zabel, 2013)
BFI Modern Classics: Easy Rider (Lee Hill, 1996)
Once There Was a Way (Bryce Zabel, 2017)
The Returned, Part 1 (Peter David, 2015)
The Returned, Part 2 (Peter David, 2015)
The Returned, Part 3 (Peter David, 2015)

February: 6
The Dispatcher (John Scalzi, 2016)
The Power (Naomi Alderman, 2016)
Sidelines (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2013)
Shadow on the Sun (Richard Matheson, 1994)
Absent Enemies (John Jackson Miller, 2014)
A Lot like Christmas (Connie Willis, 2017)

March: 4
The Home for Wayward Parrots (Darusha Wehm, 2018)
The Bronze Skies (Catherine Asaro, 2017)
The Outer Limits: Season One (David J. Schow, 2018)
The Klingon Dictionary, second edition (Marc Okrand, 1992)

April: 1
The Berlin Project (Gregory Benford, 2017)

May: 6
Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman (Paul Levitz, 2018)
Those Were the Days (Marty Kaplan and Tom Shales, 2012)
Thor Meets Captain America (David Brin, 1986)
The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era (Vernor Vinge, 1993)
The Flowers of Vashnoi (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2018)
4 3 2 1 (Paul Auster, 2017)

June: 8
The Outsider (Stephen King, 2018)
Grammar: The Easy Way (Dan Mulvey, 2002)
A Girl in Time (John Birmingham, 2016)
Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace (Joseph M. Williams, 2003)
Adventure: The Atari 2600 at the Dawn of Console Gaming (Jamie Lendino, 2018)
Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B-Movie Actor (Bruce Campbell, 2017)
Wool (Hugh Howley, 2011)
Buying Time (Joe Haldeman, 1989)

July: 18
All Our Wrong Todays (Elan Mastri, 2017)
After the Fact: A Guide to Fact-Checking for Magazines and Other Media (Cynthia Brouse, 2007)
The Stuff of Dreams (James Swallow, 2013)
Artemis (Andy Weir, 2017)
Infinite (Jeremy Robinson, 2017)
sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1990)
American War (Omar el Akkad, 2017)
The President’s Brain is Missing (John Scalzi, 2017)
They Shall Have Stars (James Blish, 1956)
A Life for the Stars (James Blish, 1962)
Earthman, Come Home (James Blish, 1955)
The Triumph of Time (James Blish, 1959)
Behold the Man (Michael Moorcock, 1969)
The Fifth Head of Cerberus (Gene Wolfe, 1972)
The Planet on the Table (Kim Stanley Robinson, 1986)
The Tale of the Wicked (John Scalzi, 2012)
Slow River (Nicola Griffith, 1995)
Powers (Ursula K. LeGuin, 2007)

August: 11
David Starr, Space Ranger (Isaac Asimov, 1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (Isaac Asimov, 1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (Isaac Asimov, 1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (Isaac Asimov, 1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (Isaac Asimov, 1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (Isaac Asimov, 1958)
Change Agent (Daniel Suarez, 2017)
Terminal Event (Robert Vaughn, 2017)
Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You (Charles Taylor, 2017)
Trigger Mortis (Anthony Horowitz, 2015)
The Sirens of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut, 1959)

September: 10
The Keep (F. Paul Wilson, 1981)
Hope Never Dies (Andrew Shaffer, 2018)
Flight or Fright (Stephen King and Bev Vincent, 2018)
The Fountains of Paradise (Arthur C.  Clarke, 1979)
Legacies (F. Paul Wilson, 1998)
All the Way with JFK (F.C. Schaefer, 2017)
The Boat of a Million Years (Poul Anderson, 1989)
Superpowers (David J. Schwartz, 2008)
All My Sins Remembered (Joe Haldeman, 1977)
The Coming (Joe Haldeman, 2000)

October: 5
Hadon of Ancient Opar (Philip Jose Farmer, 1974)
Mockingbird (Walter Tevis, 1980)
The Dreaming Jewels (Theodore Sturgeon, 1950)
The Consuming Fire (John Scalzi, 2018)
Head On (John Scalzi, 2018)

November: 3
Nightflyers (George R.R. Martin, 1985)
Strangers (Gardner Dozois, 1978)
Flight to Opar (Philip Jose Farmer, 1976)

December: 5
Elevation (Stephen King, 2018)
The Caves of Steel (Isaac Asimov, 1954)
Star Trek: The Book of Lists (Chip Carter, 2017)
The Massacre of Mankind (Stephen Baxter, 2017)
Star Trek: Lost Scenes (David Tilotta and Curt McAloney, 2018)

Nonfiction: 16
Fiction: 70

Genre
Science Fiction: 46
Mainstream: 11
Star Trek: 8
Fantasy: 3
Horror: 3

Top Authors
Isaac Asimov: 7
John Scalzi: 5
James Blish: 4
Peter David: 3
Joe Haldeman: 3
Stephen King: 3
Lois McMaster Bujold: 2
Philip Jose Farmer: 2
F. Paul Wilson: 2
Bryce Zabel: 2

Books by Women: 10
Books by Men: 76

Books by Decade
1950s: 12
1960s: 2
1970s: 6
1980s: 7
1990s: 7
2000s: 6
2010s: 48

Stephen King's The Outsider

Stephen King must be closing in on 75 or so published titles, so I hope it doesn't seem like I'm damning with faint praise when I say there's nothing wrong with his latest, The Outsider, but it feels like he's retreading some old ground. Specifically, the first quarter or so of the novel feels very much  like The Dark Half (1989), in which an innocent man is accused of a murder, with tremendous evidence to prove it, but he also has an alibi so impossibly airtight it's clear the supernatural must be involved. To be fair, there's a twist in the tale, but even though King's prose feels somehow sharper and tighter than it has been in a while, the story itself isn't terribly compelling. Maybe Elevation, coming later this year, will be stronger. 

June 2015 Review Roundup

I screened a mere five movies in June: two low-budget time travel movies, two long-standing recommendations from Allan Sampson, and a well-regarded thriller of recent vintage.

My friend Allan recommended horror classic The Wicker Man (1973) many years ago, but only last month did I finally sit down to watch it. It was worth the wait. Though nothing supernatural happens in the film, its performances and premise make for a truly chilling experience. My favourite scene is one of the musical numbers, in which the hapless protagonist, an uptight, religious and virgin police sergeant, fights off the seduction of Willow, who sings and dances in the nude, beckoning like a succubus. He very nearly succumbs to temptation - and ironically, his faith and resolve ultimately doom him. Sometimes it's better to give in to the vampires...

Some years later Allan sang the praises of Three Kings (1999), a movie set in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. The movie still works as a war dramedy, but loses some of its lustre in the face of the unfortunate xenophobia and economic devastation wrought by the never-ending, so-called "War on Terror."

Nightcrawler (2014), is a showcase for Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays a petty criminal drifter who builds a new career for himself in the cutthroat world of electronic news gathering. While the news business has been an easy target for criticism going back all the way to Network (1976), Nightcrawler approaches the subject in a new and interesting way, from street level, as it were. It's well worth your time.

Project Almanac (2015) is a mostly forgettable by-the-numbers time travel film, but it's a decent way to spend a couple of hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Time Lapse (2014) tackles the same subject in a more interesting way; three roommates discover a camera that takes pictures from a day or so in the future, which leads to interesting questions about free will and predestination.

I read a few more books in June than disastrous May, though still not enough to meet my target. Three Mira Grant biomedical thrillers (Deadline, Blackout, and Parasite) provided reasonable thrills and interesting twists on old horror tropes, but nothing more than that. Stephen King's Finders Keepers is the second mainstream novel in a row for one of the world's most famous genre authors; it's refreshing to see King pursue more grounded work. Canadian SF great Robert Charles Wilson has a new book out this year, The Affinities, which takes the phenomenon of social media and spins it into a thought-provoking socioeconomic thriller.

Jo Walton has been around a while, but she's a relatively new favourite for me; I quite enjoyed Among Others earlier this year, and followed it up last month with the sad and delightful My Real Children and a collection of essays, What Makes This Book So Great. I've picked up a few books from Walton's back catalogue, and I'm looking forward to exploring more of her many worlds.

A couple of middling Star Trek tie-ins rounded out June's reading. 

Books I Read in 2014

Since 2011, I've been tracking the books I read. As in other years, I read heavily within my preferred genre, science fiction, and I read more Star Trek books than usual in an effort to catch up with a backlog - though given the uneven quality of media tie-in novels I sometimes wonder why I bother. (I did enjoy David Mack's Cold Equations TNG mini-series.) As ever I try to dabble in mainstream titles, and this year I finished reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan novels. Stephen King and Connie Willis were my most-read authors this year, both because I was playing catch-up; King released three novels this year, and I found some of his ephemera. Willis was the year's real joy; I've been familiar with her short stories for some time and she has a stellar reputation, but until devouring nearly all of her novels and collections this year I hadn't been aware of just how good she really is.

This year I finally explored Jack Chalker's Well World books, and the first of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series, filling in a couple of genre gaps.

Thanks to the help of friends, I finally tracked down all of the Martin Caidin Cyborg novels and the Logan's Run books; it was a great deal of fun diving back in time to enjoy these pulp adventures.

Books by men once again dominate my list this year; only 22 of the books I read were written by women, with Willis accounting for nearly half of these. Clearly I have to work harder to broaden my oeuvre.

Nearly half the books I read were published in 2000 or later; the bulk of the rest were published in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. The oldest books I read this year were two titles by Jane Austen.

Despite my best intentions, I did not finish the Harry Potter series this year, nor did I get to The Lord of the Rings. Maybe this year. In fact, I think I'll tackle the Potter in January.

Here are the 126 books I read in 2014:

January: 12

Glasshouse (Charles Stross, 2006)

Tarzan’s Quest (Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1936)

Tarzan and the Forbidden City (Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1938)

Halting State (Charles Stross, 2007)

Tarzan the Magnificent (Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1939)

Rule 34 (Charles Stross, 2011)

Burning Paradise (Robert Charles Wilson, 2013)

Iterations and Other Stories (Robert J. Sawyer, 2002)

Wireless (Charles Stross, 2009)

Tarzan and the Foreign Legion (Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1947)

Tarzan and the Castaways (Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1965)

Saturn’s Children (Charles Stross, 2008)

February: 12

Midnight at the Well of Souls (Jack L. Chalker, 1977)

The Final Solution (Michael Chabon, 2004)

Star Trek Enterprise The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor’s Wing (Michael A. Martin, 2009)

The Human Division (John Scalzi, 2013)

Exiles at the Well of Souls (Jack L. Chalker, 1978)

Doctor Sleep (Stephen King, 2013)

Murder in the Dark (Margaret Atwood, 1983)

Spacecraft: 2000 to 2100 AD (Stewart Cowley, 1978)

Quest for the Well of Souls (Jack L. Chalker, 1978)

Spacewreck: Ghostships and Derelicts of Space (Stewart Cowley, 1979)

Great Space Battles (Stewart Cowley and Charles Herridge, 1979)

Starliners: Commercial Spacetravel in 2200 AD (Stewart Cowley, 1980)

March: 6

The Return of Nathan Brazil (Jack L. Chalker, 1980)

Star Trek Enterprise The Romulan War: To Brave the Storm (Michael A. Martin, 2011)

Red Planet Blues (Robert J. Sawyer, 2013)

Twilight at the Well of Souls (Jack L. Chalker, 1980)

Star Trek Enterprise Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures (Christopher L. Bennet, 2013)

Star Trek: The Complete Unauthorized History (Robert Greenberger, 2012)

April: 6

Throne of the Crescent Moon (Saladin Ahmed, 2012)

Faithful (Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King, 2004)

Green Eyes (Lucius Shepard, 1984)

Borders of Infinity (Lois McMaster Bujold, 1989)

You Went Away (Timothy Findley, 1996)

In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (Margaret Atwood, 2011)

May: 12

Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, 1818)

Foundation and Chaos (Greg Bear, 1998)

The Man from Primrose Lane (James Renner, 2012)

Ur (Stephen King, 2009)

Darker Than You Think (Jack Williamson, 1948)

John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood (Michael D. Sellers, 2012)

What Might Have Been Volume 2: Alternate Heroes (Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg, Editors, 1990)

Six Stories (Stephen King, 1997)

The Einstein Intersection (Samuel R. Delany, 1967)

Lincoln’s Dreams (Connie Willis, 1987)

Elleander Morning (Jerry Yulsman, 1984)

Scratch Monkey (Charles Stross, 1993)

June: 9

Fire Watch (Connie Willis, 1985)

Mr. Mercedes (Stephen King, 2014)

Doomsday Book (Connie Willis, 1992)

Solo (William Boyd, 2013)

Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It (David M. Ewalt, 2013)

Syn (Raymond F. Jones, 1969)

Impossible Things (Connie Willis, 1993)

Uncollected Stories (Stephen King, 2003)

The Leftovers (Tom Perrotta, 2011)

July: 12

The Compete Peanuts: 1991 to 1992 (Charles M. Schulz with an introduction by Tom Tomorrow, 2014)

Mile 81 (Stephen King, 2011)

A Face in the Crowd (Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan, 2012)

In the Tall Grass (Stephen King and Joe Hill, 2012)

Throttle (Stephen King and Joe Hill, 2012)

The Dark Between the Stars (Poul Anderson, 1981)

To Say Nothing of the Dog (Connie Willis, 1998)

The Clockwork Man (E.V. Odle, 1923)

Uncharted Territory (Connie Willis, 1994)

Bellwether (Connie Willis, 1996)

Star Trek Enterprise Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel (Christopher L. Bennett, 2014)

Passage (Connie Willis, 2001)

August: 11

Daemon (Daniel Suarez, 2006)

Freedom^TM (Daniel Suarez, 2010)

Kill Decision (Daniel Suarez, 2012)

Cyborg (Martin Caidin, 1972)

Operation Nuke (Martin Caidin, 1973)

High Crystal (Martin Caidin, 1974)

Logan’s Run (William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, 1967)

Logan’s World (William F. Nolan, 1977)

Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome (John Scalzi, 2014)

Logan’s Search (William F. Nolan, 1980)

Cyborg IV (Martin Caidin, 1975)

September: 10

Tau Zero (Poul Anderson, 1970)

Warped Factors: A Neurotic’s Guide to the Universe (Walter Koenig, 1997)

Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming (Christie Golden, 2003)

Star Trek Voyager: The Farther Shore (Christie Golden 2003)

Twin Peaks: Access Guide to the Town (David Lynch and Mark Frost and Richard Saul Wurman, 1991)

Bowl of Heaven (Gregory Benford and Larry Niven, 2012)

Rogue Moon (Algis Budrys, 1960)

A Case of Conscience (James Blish, 1958)

Star Trek Voyager Spirit Walk: Old Wounds (Christie Golden, 2004)

The Long War (Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, 2013)

October: 5

Universe 1 (Terry Carr, Editor, 1971)

The Broken Universe (Paul Melko, 2012)

Star Trek Voyager Spirit Walk: Enemy of my Enemy (Christie Golden, 2004)

Star Trek: The More Things Change (Scott Pearson, 2014)

Universe 2 (Terry Carr, Editor, 1972)

November: 14

Flatlander (Larry Niven, 1995)

Star Trek Voyager String Theory: Cohesion (Jeffrey Lang, 2005)

The Adam West Scrapbook (Adam West, 2014)

Star Trek Voyager String Theory: Fusion (Kirsten Beyer, 2005)

Universe 15 (Terry Carr, Editor, 1985)

Star Trek: The Art of the Film (Mark Cotta Vaz with a foreword by J.J. Abrams, 2009)

Star Trek Voyager String Theory: Evolution (Heather Jarman, 2006)

The Stainless Steel Rat (Harry Harrison, 1961)

As Big as the Ritz (Gregory Benford, 1986)

Fugue State (John M. Ford, 1987)

Chase (Nancy Springer, 1987)

The Martian (Andy Weir, 2014)

Remake (Connie Willis, 1995)

A Dance with Dragons (George R. R. Martin, 2011)

December: 16

Star Trek The Next Generation Cold Equations: The Persistence of Memory (David Mack, 2012)

Exo (Steven Gould, 2014)

Miracle and Other Christmas Stories (Connie Willis, 1999)

Star Trek The Next Generation Cold Equations: Silent Weapons (David Mack, 2012)

Starhawk (Jack McDevitt, 2013)

The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon, 1965)

Revival (Stephen King, 2014)

The Drawing of the Dark (Tim Powers, 1979)

Ships of the Line (Michael Okuda, 2014)          

The Complete Peanuts: 1993 to 1994 (Charles M. Schulz with an introduction by Jake Tapper, 2014)

361 (Donald E. Westlake, 1962)

Killing Castro (Lawrence Block, 1961)

Nightmare Alley (William Lindsay Gresham, 1946)

Escape From New York (Mike McQuay, 1981)

Star Trek The Next Generation Cold Equations: The Body Electric (David Mack, 2013)

Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813)

Genre

Fiction: 118

Nonfiction: 8

Science Fiction: 61

Star Trek: 16

Mainstream: 15

Horror: 8

Fantasy: 8

Tarzan: 5

Peanuts collections: 2

Top Authors

Stephen King: 11

Connie Willis: 10

Charles Stross: 6

Edgar Rice Burroughs: 5

Jack L. Chalker: 5

Martin Caidin: 4

Stewart Cowley: 4

Christie Golden: 4

Gregory Benford: 3

Terry Carr: 3

David Mack: 3

William F. Nolan: 3

Daniel Suarez: 3

Poul Anderson: 2

Margaret Atwood: 2

Jane Austen: 2

Christopher L. Bennet: 2

Joe Hill: 2

Michael A. Martin: 2

Stewart O’Nan: 2

Robert J. Sawyer: 2

John Scalzi: 2

Charles M. Schulz: 2

J.J. Abrams: 1

Saladin Ahmed: 1

Stephen Baxter: 1

Greg Bear: 1

Kirsten Beyer: 1

James Blish: 1

Lawrence Block: 1

William Boyd: 1

Algis Budrys: 1

Lois McMaster Bujold: 1

Michael Chabon: 1

Samuel R. Delany: 1

David M. Ewalt: 1

Timothy Findley: 1

John M. Ford: 1

Mark Frost: 1

Steven Gould: 1

Martin H. Greenberg: 1

Robert Greenberger: 1

William Lindsay Gresham: 1

Harry Harrison: 1

Heather Jarman: 1

George Clayton Johnson: 1

Raymond F. Jones: 1

Walter Koenig: 1

Jeffrey Lang: 1

David Lynch: 1

George R. R. Martin: 1

Jack McDevitt: 1

Mike McQuay: 1

Paul Melko: 1

Larry Niven: 2

E.V. Odle: 1

Michael Okuda: 1

Scott Pearson: 1

Tom Perrotta: 1

Tim Powers: 1

Terry Pratchett: 1

Thomas Pynchon: 1

James Renner: 1

Michael D. Sellers: 1

Lucius Shepard: 1

Nancy Springer: 1

Tom Tomorrow: 1

Mark Cotta Vaz: 1

Andy Weir: 1

Adam West: 1

Donald E. Westlake: 1

Jack Williamson: 1

Robert Charles Wilson: 1

Richard Saul Wurman: 1

Jerry Yulsman: 1

Books by Decade

1810s: 2

1920s: 1

1930s: 3

1940s: 3

1950s: 1

1960s: 9

1970s: 15                              

1980s: 16

1990s: 15

2000s: 20

2010s: 40