Late last year, I started blogging about the books I read. It was easy — I was on vacation. But I had hopes of continuing to do that into this year…those hopes lasted about one week. Even though my reading pace fell off substantially with the return to work, my blogging pace fell off even faster. But I hung on to the dream and kept books that I finished on my dresser, at least the ones I didn’t borrow from the library, knowing that I’d get around to blogging them some day.
Eventually, though, the pile of books got big enough to become unstable, and I had to do something.
I could simply have shelved the books and gone about my life, but that would have been too easy. Instead, I put them into my inbox (yes, I have been paying too much attention to Getting Things Done
lately), and now it’s time to deal with them.
So, in no particular order, and with no guarantee of completeness, here are Some of the Books I’ve Read This Year:
- Great Science Fiction by Scientists
I picked up this book at Rasputin Books in the ex-Tower Records in Palo Alto; Groff Conklin’s anthologies almost always have several good stories, and for 95 cents, how could I go wrong? Some of the stories show their age (1930-1962), but there are classics, too. My favorite in this collection is Miles Breuer’s “The Gostak and the Doshes”, the only SF story I can think of based on grammar, but Clarke’s “Summertime on Icarus”, and Ralph Cooper’s “The Neutrino Bomb” are worthwhile, too. And did I mention I only paid 95 cents?
- All the Colors of Darkness by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
I first borrowed this book (and its sequel, whose name escapes me) from my elementary school library. It shone more brightly in memory than in the rereading, but I don’t regret spending the time (or the 95 cents). The story here is simple — humanity is developing teleportation machines, which will lead inevitably to self-teleporting spacecraft and our going out to the stars. However, the Powers That Be out there don’t believe we are worthy, and send a team in to sabotage our efforts, by making the teleportation system appear unsafe by making sure that some number of passengers (all They, of course) don’t arrive at their destinations. Our hero, Jan Darzek, investigates, figures out what’s going on, follows one of Them closely, and winds up on their Moon base. Moral dilemmas follow.
- The Best from F&SF, Sixth Series
Another Rasputin find, with good stories from Kornbluth (“The Cosmic Expense Account”), Pohl (“The Census Takers”), Anderson (“The Man Who Came Early”), and Sturgeon (“And Now the News…”).
- Three Worlds to Conquer, by Poul Anderson
A not terribly exciting story of rebellion in the outer Solar System. It feels like it’s three short stories glued together, but the colophon doesn’t list any previous publication data. Perhaps having read it will come in handy at “Trivia for Chocolate” during Denvention — they often ask questions about Anderson’s stories.
- You Can Negotiate Anything, by Herb Cohen
I picked this book up at last year’s IBM Technical Leadership Exchange — they offered a couple of hundred books for “free” (in other words, the charges were picked up at a level above your department), and they shipped them for you, so I erred on the side of grabbing anything which seemed interesting. This year, the model was different — you had to put the books on a credit card (to be reimbursed on your expense account), and you had to haul them home with you — so I was much more careful in what I chose. And I probably wouldn’t have chosen this book this year.
The book was published in 1980, and the language shows it, as do many of the examples, but the principles are still valid. Worth a read.
- Power Mentoring, by Ellen Ensher and Susan Murphy
Another book from TLE 2007. The key insight in this one is that you can have more than one mentor and be a mentor to more than one protege. Not terribly surprising, but there it is.
- Dealing with People You Can’t Stand, by Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner
The last of the TLE 2007 haul, at least in this batch. A good tool for understanding what to do about people who drive you nuts — helps you see where they’re coming from, why you can’t stand them, and how to react.
- Work-Life Balancing, by Paul Baffes, Ph. D.
I must confess to some bias here — I know Paul and work with him occasionally, and I got the book free by asking a question in his session at this year’s TLE. But despite that, I think I can objectively recommend the book — Paul writes about the methods he uses to make his work and the rest of his life support one another instead of being in conflict. The details may not fit your life exactly, but the ideas are sound, especially being “selfFIRST”.
Now I have to figure out where to shelve these books…there’s always something….
and Charles Fort Never Mentioned Wombats (Doubleday science fiction)
, both by Gene DeWeese and Robert “Buck” Coulson, fall into the genre of con mysteries, told by authors who love cons, mysteries, and have fun with their ideas. Only the second book actually takes place at a Worldcon, but both were quite enjoyable.
by Barry Malzberg writing as K. M. O’Donnell. This is an Ace Double that proves that more is not always better. Gather in the Hall of the Planets is cute, if very dated — the protagonist, a fading SF writer, has to figure out who at the Worldcon is an alien, or the aliens will destroy Earth. Very much a work of its era (1971), with the obligatory badly-written sex scenes and inner turmoil. The stories in the other half of the book are, to put it kindly, unreadable.
, was recently released but I haven’t read it yet — I intend to, though.
is the first in a series set on a Nantucket Island which mysteriously is displaced back to the Bronze Age. Unlike the 1632 (The Assiti Shards)
series from Eric Flint, not all of the castaways are good guys — far from it. Strongly recommended.
, by John D. MacDonald: This is one of MacDonald’s rare SF novels; it shows its Cold War origins very clearly, but it’s still an interesting read.
by John D. MacDonald: A collection of MacDonald’s SF shorts, written between 1948 and 1968. You can see his maturation as a writer over those two decades. Some of the stories are minor classics, like “Spectator Sport”; others are good fun, like “Ring around the Redhead” and “The Big Contest”.
, edited by Lester Del Rey. The title is accurate. My favorite story in this collection is Norman Spinrad’s “A Thing of Beauty” (especially after having walked across the thing in question last month), but there are many winners, and almost all of the stories have aged well.
by C. M. Kornbluth, revised by Fred Pohl. I remember reading the original version of the book when I was in high school; it was amazingly chilling, and, unlike most SF, drove me to the dictionary. Pohl revised the book in 1981 to “remove glaring anachronisms”, but I’m not sure what those revisions were — the book is, thank God, very dated indeed. Read it along with Heinlein’s Sixth Column
for an overwhelming sense of Cold War gloom and doom!
by Frederik Pohl. This is the sequel to Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants
; the books take place in a world where advertising has gone wild (yes, even more than in our world), but where the Venusians offer an alternative prospect. This was a good one to read during the campaign: “How can we win with truth?”
by Poul Anderson. Dated, but an enjoyable read — like almost everything Poul Anderson wrote.
by A. E. van Vogt. Yes, it’s a Classic of SF. Yes, Fans are Slans. But most of the plot points make no sense, and the dramatic revelation at the end wasn’t. Read it because it’s a classic, but don’t expect it to meet today’s standards.
by James Gunn. This is three novellas under one set of covers, telling one somewhat contrived story. What would the world be like if happiness could be ensured? Not happy, that’s for sure. Still, worth a read.
by Poul Anderson. Chee Lan, Adsel, and David Falkalyn at work, with Nicholas van Rijn along to save the day. Serendipity, Inc., provides a service much like Google — but they are definitely evil. Well worth a read, along with the rest of the Polesotechnic League series.