The Straw Men - Michael Marshall

“In a room full of victims, murderers look like gods.”

Apparently he died after a cardio-respiratory attack.

BBC News have an obituary here.

A bit scunnered on hearing this but, truth be told, 90 is a fair age to reach.

It’s an odd one when an icon, someone whose work you grow up reading, dies.

Of course, I never met the man but I still feel the loss.  Strange.

Anyways, wherever you are in the cosmos Arthur, I hope you’re having one hell of a time…

I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

“Through experiments on the dead vampires he had discovered that the bacilli effected the creation of a powerful body glue that sealed bullet openings as soon as they were made.  Bullets were enclosed almost immediately, and since the system was activated by germs, a bullet couldn’t hurt it.  The system could, in fact, contain almost an indefinite amount of bullets, since the body glue prevented a penetration of more than a few fractions of an inch.  Shooting vampires was like throwing pebbles into tar.”

(And I’m not talking about me here…  Well, only a wee bit.)

So, did the Festive Fat Man bring you anything nice this year?  Coupled with braving the sales it has been a very booky Christmas.

Children Of The Mind by Orson Scott Card, Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman, Pavane by Keith Roberts and Gateway by Frederik Pohl.

Should keep me busy for a while…

While out and about looking for other things for Ruthy’s birthday tomorrow, I happened upon The Mark of the Beast, and Other Fantastical Tales by Rudyard Kipling for a stupidly cheap price. Of course, I snapped it up.

I’ve just idly flicked through it on the bus back and at first glance it has that same fantastic style like Clark Ashton Smith.

Looks like I’ve got my reading for the next few days sorted.

A cool site I found recently is LibraryThing.

Similar to LastFM where (amongst other things) a plugin to your favourite media player catalogues what you listen to and makes recommendations based on that, LibraryThing is a place where you catalogue what you’re reading and the site recommends similar works.

That is all.

Burrowers is the first book in a series of six that he wrote for the Cthulhu Mythos.  Lumley is is better known for the Necroscope series of horror novels (it’s what I knew him for at any rate).

The Burrowers Beneath is my favourite of Lumley’s Mythos work but, even then, I feel that it’s not as good a Cthulhu Mythos tale as it could be.

The story deals with Titus Crow, who has interests in the more uncanny aspects of the world around him, and his erstwhile Dr Watson, Henri-Laurent de Marigny, and their involvement in discovering and thwarting the hideous machinations of the Great Old One, Shudde-Mell.

I’ll admit that, while it’s a great read, it doesn’t really fit in with my visions of the Cthulhu Mythos.  Lovecraft heroes were scholars or artists, and tended to reel in terror against the unescapable insanity of what they faced.  I always prefered this, the realisation of their being helpless in the face of unspeakable evil.  All my favourite Mythos stories followed that theme.

But with Lumley, his characters are able and well-versed in occult lore.  They are aware, for the most part, of what they’re up against and are armed with incantations, elixirs, the Star Stones of Mnar (the mere presence of which repels even the most foul of creatures) and the resources of an organisation, The Wilmarth Foundation, dedicated to the eradication of all things Mythos.  This is no bad thing but I think it reduces the scale of the cosmic horror they’re up against.  It becomes manageable and controlled.

And that just isn’t the Mythos.

So, I would recommend the book heartily.  It’s a great read.

But as a Cthulhu Mythos story?  It could have been better…

On Saturday, before my current bout of the flu finally kicked in, I picked up a couple of books with Christmas vouchers.

Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds and Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Chasm City is set in Reynolds’ Revelation Space universe and is the second in the series after, you guessed it, Revelation Space.

Revelation Space is a huge, magnificent space opera that rampages across the universe.  And If Chasm City is anything like it then I’m in for a treat.

And just to note:  It’s not like the story from one book continues directly to another, but it does give me an excuse to start with the first one again.

If you can find a copy I do encourage you to do so.

So the reading for this week is sorted.  And it’s the turn of Mr Vonnegut next week.

Providing, of course, that I’m not still working through Revelation Space/Chasm City by next week.  I am a very slow reader…

Cities in Flight - James Blish

“Shouting religions always strike me as essentially like pep-meetings among salesmen; their ceremonies and their manners are so aggressive because they don’t really believe the code themselves. Real faith is so much part of the world you live in that you seldom notice it, and it isn’t always religious in the formal sense.”

Good vs. Evil. Nightwatch vs. Daywatch.

It’s one of those “eternal battle” types and it’s done much better than most. The story follows Anton (for the most part), a computer programmer/analyst and Other, who is being pushed into becoming a field agent for the organisation Nightwatch (the good guys), and it shows his struggle in dealing with the less than black and white natures of each watch.

Usually I only read the Lovecraftian style of horror. You know, the “Eldritch horrors lurking beneath the flimsy veil of shadows” kind of thing. So it’s good to read something out of that kind of style that is genuinely interesting and shows a realistic “human” slant on the traditional horror concept.

And it’s not that woefully romaticised horror either which never fails to bug the pants off me.

And for anyone who has seen the film and not yet read the book, the film only covers the first third of the book and that’s nowhere near as good as the later two-thirds.

The only complaint I have is that the translation is occasionally a bit patchy, but that’s not enough to ruin your enjoyment.

There’s an english translation of Daywatch (the sequel, and that’s both for the book and the film) due out soon.