I have to apologize for my lack of presence this past week, but I felt like death warmed over and after diverting my energy to keeping myself and my children alive, there just wasn’t any left to fuel the creative process.   I’m feeling almost normal, today, however just in time for another Sunday Favorite.

It took me a while to decide on this series, but I decided to go with this one because it’s unique in its scope. Anne McCaffery’s Pern universe spans novels, novellas,  short stories, anthologies and companion books written over a period of over forty years, from 1968 to 2007.  It has also spawned  a comic, two games and a CD.

One of the features of series which often frustrates me so much, is the fact that the reader  has to wait for the next piece of the story.   If they’re really unlucky, they have to wait for years before the next comes out, meaning by the time it has, they’ve forgotten what came before it.   This is exactly what caused me to give up on the Wheel of Time series;  I just stopped caring because I forgot what the story was about, and the series was just too long to go back and read over again.   In some way I wonder if this delay between books is intentional, in order to sell more books, because it forces people to buy and read again, before they can go on.   But I digress…

The Pern books are an exception to this, and it’s one of the reasons I like them so much.  The series is not written in chronological order, so if you can’t find the next in the series or you forgot what happened in the previous one, it’s okay.  Anne McCaffery suggested the books be read in the order they were published, but I took great pleasure in reading them in chronological order, starting with the discovery of Pern by the original settlers and the creation of the Dragons.  I found a great website which helped me out with this, and turned to it whenever I wanted to know which book to read next.

Anyway, while there are some novels which continue the story of Pern (settlement, Dragonrider origins, Life on Pern and discovery of settlement history being the major story themes), a lot of novels, particularly the Harper and Dolphin novels, are simply stories about people who live on Pern, with the Pern universe as it’s background.

The Universe itself is fantastic, and the concept is brilliant.  At first, the novels appear to be a fantasy; it’s the typical pre-industrial age that is seen in most fantasy novels.  What makes it a fantasy is that there are teleporting dragons and dragon riders that protect the settlers from ‘thread’ a horrible parasite that falls from the sky and strips flesh instantly as it falls on you, and kills all life.  However, as the novels slowly delve into the history of the planet and settlement, you discover that it’s really a science fiction as the dragons and their riders discover the old settlement, links to the space ship above, and machines that teach them how to use them to save the planet.

The combination of fantasy with science fiction is something that I really enjoy, and I’ve been searching out other novels which combine the genres.   I have a vague memory of a fantasy novel I read as a teenager; the main character could use magic, but there was a scene where the group explores a tunnel and finds old parking meters.  I can’t remember the name of the novel, but the idea has intrigued me ever since.

The first three novels, Dragonflight, Dragonquest and The White Dragon can all be found in The Dragon Riders of Pern and all the other Pern books can be found on this page.

Alrighty folks, here’s my entry for #shortstorysaturday, a sci-fi/space horror yarn that I wrote a few months ago (yeah, okay, I cheated a little for the first SSS but I really like this story so I wanted to share) called Eulogy. I hope you enjoy, please post yours and let us know here or on Twitter under the tag #shortstorysaturday. Thanks for reading!

========

CLASSIFIED, EYES ONLY

**** TRANSMISSION C-101-988F ***START***START***START

Source: SS VALIANT – SECTOR 9F/11 ASTRO. REF. 2C – OFF MISSION – TRANSCRIPT.

(static)

Sig said we’d make it. All along he maintained that we were well trained, our systems were the best ever built and our resolve as unshakable. Even when everything started to go to hell he kept it up, reassuring us all that we’d be okay. We had food stores, water, air, everything we needed for them to mount a rescue mission and come save us. He really helped keep our heads on straight.

(coughing)

I ate the last of Sig a while ago. The hunger gnawing at my gut makes it hard to maintain the disposition he always tried to instill in us. Sig lasted almost as long as I have. It took me three months to eat him. The long term exposure to weightlessness had wasted his muscles away, made them tough and chewy. By the end it was like eating beef jerky, at least that’s what I try and tell myself. Does it shock you that I ate my commanding officer? What did you expect when you left us alone out here a hundred million miles from civilization?

After we ran out of food and ENCOM stopped answering our pleas for help Conners wanted to just vent the ship; said that it’d be best if we all just died together in the cold; said it would be fast and easy. Sig didn’t let him do it. I wish he had, Conners had the balls to do, not like me. I sit here every day now, alone, staring at that airlock; staring at the gun. One button push; one pull of the trigger, that’s all I’d have to do and end it but I’m a coward. Conners wasn’t a coward. He volunteered for an EVA and never came back. He just unclipped himself from the ship and pushed away. We watched him float off for a week before we lost sight of him, I still dream about him floating out there on a near parallel course with the ship. Just a tiny frozen ghost forever chasing a ship full of bones.

(silence, 154sec.)

I don’t know what they told you back there at home. Maybe they made up some story of us going down in the Martian atmosphere in a blaze of glory. Or maybe we suffered a massive catastrophe after we made orbit. The truth is we just plain fucked up. Dr. Bally made a mistake in his conversions, our approach slope toward Martian orbit was wrong, instead of falling into a nice parabolic orbit we slipped right out of the gravity well and slingshot ourselves toward the edge of the solar system.  It only took the boys back home in Houston twenty five minutes to deliver what we already knew: there was no hope. Even with a full burn of all the fuel we had left we couldn’t halt the momentum we had and get us turned back around to make Martian orbit, or any other sort of orbit. We were lost out here in the cold.

Bally was inconsolable. All he could do was apologize. We didn’t really feel any animosity toward him, we knew this could happen. We all came out here knowing it might be a one way trip. He stopped eating after the first month, just hung there in the now useless science lab. After a couple days he stopped talking, wouldn’t respond to much of anything. We hauled him into the crew living areas but he was catatonic. He was the first to die. During the sleep cycle he pried back a panel on the HVAC system and cut his wrists on the sharp metal. We found him floating in a sea of his own blood. He’d written ‘I doomed us to darkness’ on one of the walls in his blood. It’s still there, faintly, but I can read it. I’ve scrubbed it off countless times but it keeps bleeding back through.

(silence, 12 seconds)

There are a lot of things that I can still see that I shouldn’t.

(silence, 215 seconds)

(sounds of someone moving about, unidentified items crashing around)

(silence, 2143 seconds)

The ship is full of ghosts. They talk to me in my sleep, whisper things in my ear that I don’t want to hear.

(silence, 7 seconds)

I know.

(silence, 14 seconds)

Not yet, I have to finish the story.

(silence, 8 seconds, sound of metal scraping on metal)

We put Bally into the science module then sealed it and shut down the heating system in there. It was my idea, even then when we still had a vain hope of someone coming for us and months of food left I knew there might come a day that we had to do the unspeakable. I didn’t intend to just starve to death once the food ran out. I don’t know why I wanted to live; even then just a month after we’d overshot the target I knew there was no hope. ENCOM was still talking to us, the delay getting longer and longer, telling us that they had some ideas for firing off a fuel system to us. Then something about firing the science module off back toward Earth. I could see they were all totally infeasible solutions; they were just paying us lip service to keep us from going off the deep end.

Sig held us together when ENCOM stopped responding after month 3, and until the food ran out at 4 months. We shared the last ration in the crew module, it was beef stroganoff and had too much salt in it. It tasted like ashes in my mouth but I’d give just about anything right now to have real food.

After it was gone Dr. Enbridge pleaded for Sig to do something. It was the first time he didn’t have anything to say. All he could do was hang is head and turn from us. That’s when Conners had the idea to flush us all out the airlock. We voted it down 4 to 3 after I made a somewhat impassioned plea to keep us alive. Conners took his little stroll amongst the stars the next day when the auxiliary water pump needed a filter change.

(static)

(silence, 118 seconds)

I killed Dr. Enbridge in her sleep five days after Conners went out the airlock. I held her nose and mouth shut with my hands. As badly atrophied as my muscles were I could still hold the small woman and keep her from thrashing about too much. I didn’t want her deteriorating too badly, the more muscle mass she lost the less I’d have to eat.

I let them find her the next morning. She was the only trained medical officer so nobody else noticed the signs of a violent end to her life. They figured she just expired from lack of food and the stress we were all under. That night as we drifted about I made the suggestion that we should eat Dr. Bally. Dr. Ko and Dr. Canton both disagreed. Ko made some sort of speech about us not being savages, that he wouldn’t go out like that. Lt. Kershner and Sig were both with me, survival instincts are bred a little better in the military men it would seem. We hauled his body out of cold storage and started taking it apart.

Eventually hunger overcame Ko and Canton and we managed to make Bally last for almost a month and a half. Dr. Ko wept every time we ate and while Canton held it together better it was very clear he wasn’t feeling very good about himself. When we pulled Dr. Enbridge out a couple days later Ko finally lost it.

Lt. Kershner and I were bringing her body out and found Ko waiting for us. He had an animal look in his eyes and was even gaunter and then I remembered him looking from that morning. He screamed something about us being animals, said he’d show us how animals acted. Before I could reason with him he launched himself at Kershner in a savage attack. They slammed into the side of the module and blood started leaking from Kershners head as they spun around, fighting in the weightless environment of the ship. Finally the young lieutenant screamed and Ko pulled away from him with a sizable chunk of Kershners neck between his teeth.  Arterial blood sprayed the hatchway to the cold science module. Ko seemed to stare though me as he slowly started chewing the lump of bloody ragged flesh he held in his mouth. By this time Sig and Canton had heard the commotion from the command module and arrived on the scene. Canton did what he could to stop the bleeding but Kershner died quickly.

Sig tried to talk Ko down but he just hung in the corner of the room, coiled up against the hull looking like a snake about to strike. There was little humanity left in him, all he’d respond with were angry snarling sounds. We had a gun on board; Sig used it on Dr. Ko.

(silence, 168 seconds)

Ko, Enbridge and Kershner lasted the remaining three of us just over 6 months. It would have been longer but both Ko and Kershner had suffered from pretty severe atrophy.  They all tasted different. I wish I didn’t know that that Enbridge had an almost spicy flavor to her, whereas Kershner’s flesh was plain and slightly greasy. Ko almost tasted like chicken.

(laughter, 47 seconds)

Ironic isn’t it?

(silence, 92 seconds)

I wanted to do it the day we finished Ko off. By that time we were all keeping to our own parts of the ship. Sig had mostly barricaded himself in the command module and I left Canton to the crew module while I keep myself company in the aft near the science module/food storage. None of us had talked in weeks, it was clear the others had gone mad.

Canton talked to himself full time. He drifted around muttering about environmental readings, something about plant life on the surface of Mars, and strange little rumblings about gas ratios in the air in the crew quarters.  I was afraid he was going to do something stupid like vent the atmosphere into space so I figured I’d just get rid of him right away and get Sig and me something more to eat.

He was hunched over one of the computers in the crew consol and I was hanging on to the wall by my feet with a metal bar poised to crush his skull when Sig came out of the command module and caught me. Canton was oblivious as Sig pulled me in to the command module and gave me a stern talking to.

(laughing, 4 seconds)

He went on about chain of command and acting like a good officer. We’d been alone for over a year now. Everyone had to assume we were dead. I didn’t see any point in chain of command. I just drifted away from him and left him ranting to himself in the command module. Sig watched me after that so it was hard to kill Canton but I finally got him a week later. Malnutrition was getting to Sig more than it was getting to me so when he finally fell asleep one day I took the opportunity to slash Cantons throat with a scalpel from the medical kit. Sig awoke to the aroma of baked environmental specialist.

(silence, 1248 seconds.)

(unintelligible, sounds of whispering – see auxiliary audio analysis 1B)

Sig talks to me the most. I guess that makes sense. We were close; he’d been my commanding officer on several missions before this one. He always tried to keep the men and women under him safe so it only makes sense that he was the one that told me to cut off my leg. It was yesterday, or the day before? I can’t remember. Before I started broadcasting this tale.

He told me how to tie it off so I wouldn’t lose too much blood. Told me what saw to use that would best get though the bone. It was his idea to use the sample oven to cauterize the wound. The leg had almost wasted away to nothing anyway. It was hardly worth the effort in the end. At the most it has gotten me two days worth of food. I’ve been thinking about taking the other one off but I’m past the point of caring about staying alive.

(silence, 19 seconds)

Okay, okay, just let me finish

(clicking sounds)

Sig and I shared the last of Canton the same way we shared the last of the real food. We hung in the crew module for a long time him and I, just looking at each other. He finally asked me if I had the greater will to survive. I said I did, I couldn’t lie to him. He pulled the handgun that he’d been keeping on him since Ko lost his mind and just left it hanging in the air between us. He told me to end it, put him out of his misery he said. I couldn’t do it just then, it seemed too soon, too cold a thing to do. Truth is, I didn’t want to look into his eyes when I did it.

He went back to the command module and I took the gun. Sometime later that day cycle the acceleration hit me. Sig had fired the engines. Full blast. I was pinned to the wall for almost ten minutes before the fuel finally ran out and weightlessness returned. I rushed to the command module and found Sig with his head on the engine controls. The last thing he said to me was “there’s really no going back now”. I put a bullet though both his head and the console, I didn’t need either anymore.

(silence, 128 seconds.)

They’re all talking to me now, all at once like a mad jumble of words spinning though my head.

(silence, 12 seconds)

This ship is full of blood.

(silence, 37 seconds)

Dr. Xian Ko, Dr. William Canton, Dr. Taresa Enbridge, Dr. Enrico Bally, Lt. Marc Kershner, Lt. Gary Conners  and Commander Sigmund ‘Sig’ Rasmussen. This is their eulogy.

(silence, 93 seconds)

Okay, okay, I’m doing it.

(silence 5 seconds)

(sounds of deep breathing)

(gunshot)

(silence 97 seconds)

(inaudible, whispers – see auxiliary audio analysis 3F, 4J and 12B)

***** TRANSMISSION ENDS *****

DATE: 8/18/2033

RECORD SEALED

Yes, Dune once again. I know it’s been just a little over a week since we last talked about it but after the wife and I watched the movie I felt the need to actually read the book. I’d made my first attempt at reading Dune when I was somewhere around thirteen and the rather long winded tome was too much for my young mind to wrap itself around and I gave up after the first few chapters. These days I tend to read some rather massive books so the size of Dune was no longer a challenge. However, Herbert’s style of self-reflection and soliloquy still took a little getting used to.

Dune is the story of the rise to power of young Paul Atreides, a.k.a Paul-Muad’Dib, a.k.a Usal. Set some 21,000 years in a future where humanity has spread wide across the galaxy and faster-than-light travel is facilitated by use of the ‘spice malange’, a powerful drug that gives the user longer life and in large doses the ability to see into the future. Dune, or Arrakis, is the only world where the spice can be found and as such whomever controls the spice, controls the galaxy. The novel opens with Paul and his family, House Atreides, poised to take over governorship of the planet Arrakis from the evil House Harkonnen. However, it’s made clear that this move is not one that is without great peril for the Atreides. The Emperor, Shaddam IV, has come to fear the Duke Leto Atreides because of the power and influence he holds in the Landsradd — the collection of great houses of the empire — and now plots with the Harkonnens to lure the Duke to Dune so that he can assassinate him and be rid of the Duke once and for all. From the get go this is made clear to the reader and the plan succeeds exactly as it mapped out with one exception, Paul and his mother Jessica escape to the desert where they are taken in by the Fremen, a wild band of warrior nomads that are the true rulers of Arrakis.

Jessica is a Bene Gesserite, a highly specialized and trained class of women who have learned how to read people so well they can come to control them by use of their voice alone. The Bene Gesserite are an ancient order who have survived by planing myth about themselves on every populated world. This allows Paul and Jessica to be accepted by the Fremen and for Paul to rise quickly as their leader for the legend has been planted that a powerful prophet will come one day as the son of a Bene Gesserite Reverend Mother. As the same time Paul realizes that he’s the outcome of a ninety generation breeding program that the Gene Gesserite have been running to produce the supreme being, the Kwisatz Haderach.

This all culminates with not just Paul becoming ruler of Dune but also wresting control of the galaxy from the emperor who wronged him. With the fanatic Fremen warriors backing him Paul places himself on the throne by forcing the Emperor to allow him to wed his daughter.

Dune is often described as a sweeping epic, however I found that to be more contained then that. Yes, there are many arms to the story but at it’s core its the tale of a young man, a boy really as the story starts when he’s 15 and ends when he’s 18, who is struggling to understand what he is. He’s the end result of a breeding program that sought to create something that the Bene Gesserite could control but he’s not that, he’s also not the leader of the bloody jihad, the Lisen al-Gieb, that the Fremen see him as. He is something else. Thoughout the novel he struggles with his visions of the future, a vast Fremen army of mad fanatics sweeping across the galaxy in a jihad against the Houses carrying before them the banner of the Atreides. His only way out is to claim his mantel as the supreme being and wrest control of the empire and the Landsradd.

One of the best parts of Dune is the world it creates. There’s a richness to the desert planet of Arrakis that is hard to find in other novels. Herbert does an excellent job of conveying how the environment shapes the people that live within it. From the awe at Paul shedding tears over a man he’s killed, to the rich descriptions of the ‘stillsuits’ the people wear to reclaim their lost water you get a true feeling of how parched this world is and what kind of currency water can become in a world such as this. At the same time Hurbert edges at the greater universe that exists outside Arrakis, an empire run on the spice that Dune produces. Great Houses warring against each other and the Spacing Guild in the middle holding them all hostage with a monopoly on space travel.

In the end Dune presented a satisfying story but one that seems unfinished. I want to know more about Paul, I want to know more about the universe he lives in and the great Houses allied with him and warring against him. I want to learn more about their history, how the Spacing Guild came to be and how the Bene Gesserite rose to such hights of superstition. There’s an extremely rich world here and I hope the sequals and prequals build on that as well as Dune set it up.

***

Dune, 40th Anniversary Edition

There aren’t very many movies I can think of that I watched before reading the book, usually I read a book and then the movie comes out, which I just have to see so I can compare the two.   When I first watched this movie, however, I wasn’t even aware that the novel existed.  Nonetheless, it quickly became one of my favorite movies.

I was 19  when the movie came out, in 1997,  and I was initially encouraged to watch it because Casper Van Dien was so incredibly hot as Jonny Rico, even though he was a 29 year old playing an 18 year old.  I ended up liking the movie so much because I saw it as a plausable view of the future.  Marketed to teenage audiences,  it begins with high school graduation and deals with issues such as leaving home.  It’s a coming of age story, with just enough science fiction (space travel and aliens) that any lessons to be found aren’t stifling as they’re hidden behind the action and aliens.

The society portrayed in the movie I also found interesting: Public floggings and execution  for crimes, military personnel having more privelidges, such as being able to have children.  All of these were ideas that I had flirted with in my idea of a ‘perfect society’ that could sustain itself.   I’m also a fan of how the movie presented information in a news form, as if on a computer, “Do you want to know more?”

The characters were also undeniably attractive and had honest relationships; how many of us have promised to “always be friends, no matter what”, before going out in to the world only to find that high school friendships and romance rarely survive the realities of grown life.  Add to the story a war with massive bugs, rife with heavy casualties, action and adventure and it’s a great movie!   It’s really too bad the sequels were so incredibly horrible.

Now, imagine my surprise when required reading for my Science Fiction English course in University included Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.  One of my favorite movies is a book!  I was ecstatic, because all things considered, I’ll take a good book over a good movie, any day.  Except it quickly became obvious that what I was reading was not the movie I had watched dozens of times.

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein was written as a young adult fiction for boys, in 1959.  Similar to the movie, the novel follows Jonny Rico’s military career in a future where the earth is at war with the Bugs.  Unlike the movie, however, the military is better equipped with powered body armor allowing improved fire power and movement, when compared to the guns  and foot power the infantry of the movie had to rely on.

This isn’t the only difference, however.  As I was reading through the book, desperastely searching for my favorite characters and plot lines I was surprized to find that Dizzy, the strong female character of the movie, who joins Jonny in the mobile infantry, exists in the book only briefly as a male character who goes off course and has to be rescued by Jonny.  Any other female characters were completely lacking as well;  there wasn’t anything even close to a romantic back story or any love interests.

What this novel is really about is politics.  It is a commentary on society and how Heinlein envisioned politics of the future, eerily similar to my own imagined ‘perfect society’, except that my vision includes women.   In Heinlein’s predicted future, anyone who is responsible for anyone else – doctors, nurses, police, teachers, even parents – must first serve in the military for one term before given the responsibility of looking after others.  He also has a lot to say about discipline, advocating public executions and town square floggings as an incentive to prevent crime.  While all of these ideas were reflected in the movie, they acted only as setting for the plot.  In the novel, however, the plot acts as a delivery device for these ideals.

That’s not to say that this is a bad novel, because it isn’t.  Like the movie it is a coming of age story, however instead of appealing to both sexes is meant to teach young boys about the responsibilities inherent in growing up and taking their place in the world.  The way it ends demonstrates how children inherit the earth (and responsibility) from their parents, as Rico discovers his dad is alive and a new recruit under his command.

If I was to make a complaint about the novel, despite it not being what I expected and that’s the movie producer’s fault, no the author’s, its the same complaint I have with all of Heinlein’s books:  its outdated.  It’s really hard to read a book about the future when the characters behave like it’s the 50s.  I feel the same way about Stranger in a Strange Land; I could only read so much before I got tired of the mysoginist male characters.  Never the less, this is a good book, a classic even, and the politics it puts forth are intriguing.  As such, it remains one of my favorites and is my standby novel when I have nothing else to read.

You can find the movie here: Starship Troopers

and the novel here:  Starship Troopers

I first discovered Jack Whyte after reading a very satisfying trilogy, The Authurian Trilogy by  Mary Stewart, about the life of Merllin.  The series wet my appetite and left me craving more about Arthur, Merlin and the mythical world of Camelot. (Incidently, research for this post has shown me that there was a fourth book about Mordred that I never read!  I am now sorely tempted to pick up the series, again).

Now, at the same time, I had had sitting on my bookshelf a very old and faded book given to me second hand by an Aunt, which had been left over after a garage sale.   It was so faded and stained, possibly crusted in something that used to be sticky, that the appeal of picking it up and reading just wasn’t there.   Hence, when I began searching for new novels to read after finishing The Last Enchantment I was surprized to see that the first book in an even larger series was already in my library, if barely recognizable as such.

That book was The Skystone and it did more than open me up to another series about aurthur, it fueled a fire for early European history, which spread into a blaze so great, that I went on to minor history for my teaching degree.  What’s special abouot this series is that it’s more than just another tale about Aurthur, Merlin and all the other characters we’ve become familiar with.   This series is a journey back into history that is so incredibly well researched as to almost be an instruction manual.

The story starts with the history of Publius Varrus, a roman soldier in England and his experiences with the legions.  This goes as far as describing the setup of the legions, battle techniques,  weapons, the technology of the roman empire in building roads and other structures, as well as the Roman government prior to 500 a.d.  I had to admit that there were times when all of this description became a bit dry, as I really didn’t care about how many men made up a legion, or how a camp was laid out (complete with maps!).

However, the story begins to move along when Publius is nearly fatally injured and has to quit the legions.  He begins his life as an ironsmith and begins to make plans, with is friend, and former General, Caius Brittanicus for what he feels is the inevitable end of Roman occupation in England.  Spurred by rumors of his grandfather finding a piece of sky stone from which he created a small blade, Caus and Publius go on a search for more stone and discover it at the bottom of a lake. After many hears of work, he discovers how to smelt it, and from it he creates a goddess statue and calls it The Lady of the Lake.

This is just the beginning of a multi-generational saga of nine books that begins with Publius, and ends with Aurthur Pendragon, his great granddson.   Throughout the series the Aurthur story is taken out of fantasy and explained what at the time may have seem magical. Camelot (Camulod) Excalibur, Merlin and the Sword in the Stone are all explained away to make perfect sense.

While the history of the novels is the obvious attraction for me, the characters are easily likable and the reader really becomes invested in the family.  As you move through the novels you find that you develop relationships with the characters and grow old with them.  I felt real saddness and regret when characters came to the end of their lives, like I was seeing the passing of an era.

Apart from the main story of the Varrus/Brittanicus/Pendragon family in Camulod, we learn about the fall of Rome, are lead through the evolution of Christianity, and experience the fight to keep England from invading hordes, including the discovery and development of military technology.  The only part of the novels that I found slightly unbelievable was how every advancement in weapons seemed to come from Camulod.

Despite there being aspects of the novels, particularily military history,  that I occasionally found a bit long winded, this is the only series I’ve ever read that brought the myths to life.   These stories make it possible to imagine Arthur and Merlin as the really could have been in life.  It’s because of this that I have read the entire series over and over again, and why they never get old.

It’s because of this that I’ve also picked up Jack Whyte’s latest series about the Templars. While I really enjoyed the first book, Knights of the Black and White, I found the second book to be a disappointment. While it was as meticulously researched as all his others, the story wasn’t involved and interesting enough to disguise the history from being dry and boring.  I haven’t read the third book yet, however, so maybe it picks up.

You can find the Camulod Chronicles (known as the Dream Of Eagles saga in Canada), here:  Camulod Chronicles

I was pondering, in agony, really, what I could write about today.  I just wasn’t feeling inspired by any of my googling, so I turned to good old Twitter for some inspiration, where Crown Publishing directed me to a video preview, on YouTube, for the book Aftermath: Surviving Apocolypse 2012.   Now, I’m an apocalypse denier.   I don’t think that the world is going to end, during my life time, at least, by any natural disaster such as 2012.   I even have a hard time believing that something unnatural, such as Nuclear war, will get the job done.  Although I can acknowledge that there is a greater possibility of that than any of the other theories.

The end of the world continues to be a very popular sub-genre of science fiction, however, and while I don’t believe it will happen, I do enjoy reading about the possibilities.  My husband takes it even farther and says he’d like to live through the apocalypse.  Apparently he has his survival plan all figured out.   Unfortunately, I’m the type of character who would die within a week, either from a zombie attack or roving bands of violent bandits, so I don’t share his enthusiasm.

My favorite end of the world stories are those in which the author chooses a unique form of destruction, or at least chooses an old method and gives it a fresh twist.  So, I decided to look at just how the world ends in literature, incase there are any sci-fi authors out there who are looking for a new idea, or want to steer away from the ‘same-old’.

Ways the world will end:

1. Catastrophic event (natural) – meteor, climate change, 2012, sun death, universe death

It’s actually not very often that novels are written where the end of the world is a result of a natural disaster.  Movies take advantage of this, more often, because natural disasters are more unpredictable and therefore scary and dramatic for audiences.   The one novel that immediately comes to mind when I think of ‘natural disaster’ however, is The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard.

This is a novel, written in 1962,  about a world after the icecaps melt, putting Northern Europe and North America under water.  The novel follows a biologist and his team as they explore the tropical lagoons and struggle against the de-evolution of the environment.   I read this novel in a university course and found it to be quite a difficult, complex, layered read, though anyone into hard science fiction would probably enjoy it.

2. Catastrophic event (unnatural) – nuclear war, alien invasion

Nuclear war is probably the most common written about natural disaster responsible for the end of humanity.  This probably has a lot to do with the fact that it’s a real fear for a lot of people.  Like I said, it’s the one possibility that even I feel has some potential; however, it’s been over done.   Alien invasion is still a good one, though, cuz everyone likes aliens.  The one that comes to mind which the movie completely destroyed all credibility of was Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.   The novel follows the struggles of Jonny Goodboy Tyler as he discovers and fights against the aliens who wiped out almost all life on earth, 1000 years previous, in order to mine earth for it’s resources.  Unlike the movie, however, the book doesn’t stop with the one major victory, but goes onto, at great length, establish man’s place in the universe.

3. Biological – Disease, zombies, vampires, human evolution

I think that most of my favorite end of the world stories take this route.  Disease or infection either kills almost everyone (such as Steven King’s The Stand and Robert McCammon’s  Swan Song) or wipes out a certain percentage of the people, or makes people infertile such as in The Children of Men by P.D. James.  And of course, we can’t forget the zombie apocalypse such as in World War Z by Max Brooks or death by vampire in I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.  If  you’ve only seen the movie of this one, you don’t know what you’re missing.   The movie completely changed the entire feel of the story and created a hero when instead there should have been the end of humanity, as we know it, and the rise of something else.

4. Technological – advanced space travel, computer AI take over

The last scenario involves the technological, and is usually a ‘far in the future’ scenario, also popular in movies,  the Matrix and Battlestar Galactica, in particular, have gained cult popularity.   The one novel that immediately comes to mind, however, is I Robot, by Isaac Asimov, another novel destroyed by the movie.  The novel, actually a collection of short stories, is essentially about a world in which people have become obsolete because the world is run by robots, and how such a society would operate.

So there you go, authors.   The world is open to you to destroy in a variety of different ways.   Have at it!

For today’s book-to-movie combo I decided to tackle a classic. I say ‘tackle’ because everyone is bound to have an opinion on a classic and its inevitable that I won’t manage to cover all my bases. I encourage discussion though, so if you have something to say, say it!

Alright, so the classic up for discussion is Frank Herbert’s Dune. I first read the book so long ago that I can’t remember when I read it; it was either high school or university. The interesting point is that I didn’t read for my own pleasure, but for a class of some sort. I also remember, however, that I went on to read at least one of the sequels, because I enjoyed the original so much. Now that I’m thinking about it though, I don’t think I found the sequels as good as the original, because despite the many years since reading the books, Dune is the only one that has stuck in my memory.

If there’s anyone out there who hasn’t yet read this classic, here is an (extremely) basic synopsis: In the year 10,000+ humans rule the universe because of something called spice, which allows them to bend space and hence, travel between planets. Spice, however, is only found on one planet on the universe, Arrakis. A feud between to ruling families, the Atreides and Harkonnen leads to the Harkonnen taking over the planet, which the Atreides were running, and sending the son and conqubine of the Duke into the desert to die, where they meet up with the indigenous people. The duke’s son, Paul, becomes the prophesied savior and ruler of the universe, eventually, after using the planet to defeat the Harkonnen.

This is an extremely basic synopsis because there are so many layers of history, politics and ecology that make up very important parts of the story, that to explain it all would mean to go on for pages. I’ll just leave it by saying that the novel won Frank Herbert the Hugo award and the Nebula award and is considered by some to be the world’s best selling science fiction novel.

How does it translate into movie form, however? That’s the brilliant part, Dune has inspired somany producers that it has spawned numerous cinematic versions including two movies and a miniseries; there are even rumors of a remake coming up . The movie that I watched last night was the original 1984 version. It was a whopping three hours long, a length which, in all honesty is needed to stay true to the book, and that’s what this movie does. Only the most minor changes are made, and the ending is changed, or at least left out, to appeal more to audiences. In fact, the director went out of his way to explain, through prologue, narration and character asides to explain the history, political dynamics and character motivations. This ensures that the audience doesn’t feel left behind by not understanding, however, it could get a little tedious for those who know the story.

Interestingly enough, the movie didn’t do well in theaters. Perhaps the length or the depth of the film scared people off. It was a good movie, however, even despite the incredibly cheesy 80′s era special effects, and I can certainly see how it would profit from a theater revision. However, when I mentioned this to my husband he reminded me of the mini series that was done most recently. Still, I’d like to see what someone could do with this, today, in movie form.

If you haven’t read this book, then you’ve been living under a rock, so go get it here:  Dune

The original 1984 movie can be found here:  Dune (1984)

After finishing the last novel I reviewed, which seems ages ago, I was wondering what to read next when my husband suggested “The Passage”;  he had downloaded it for himself to read, but still had to finish his current novel.  So, I decided, why not?   I picked up this book without knowing anything about it, not even the genre.   I never looked up a synopsis or at any other reviews and, because I was reading it on my ereader, I didn’t even have an idea of the length.

The first thing I saw when I opened up the book was the length – 845 pages.   Wow, I said to myself, big book.  The second detail I noticed was the font size (unchangeable on my Kobo), which was tiny.   So, long book plus tiny print equals , not a novel, but a tome; an epic, even.  This explains why I’ve been reading it for two weeks and depriving you of fresh, new updates.   Believe me, it was painful to be engrossed in the story for an hour and find I’d barely made a dent in it.  The good thing is that it was truly worth the time it took to read.

Like I’d said before, I knew absolutely nothing about this novel before I started reading.  So, when I started reading the book I was a bit confused as to how a researcher in the rain forest, a FBI agent and a six year old girl, abandoned by her mother, could ever have anything in common.  The first three hundred or so pages were spent on the back story to what appears to be an end of the world.

A similar idea to “I Am Legend”, the end of the world by vampire is a refreshing idea that takes the reader back to the basic principles of the vampire, which some might say is a welcome respite after reading and watching ‘vegetarian’ vampires that sparkle.   Although, to be fair, these vampires do glow.   In “The Passage”, however, unlike “I Am Legend”, good intentions do not go bad, rather a military experiment overpowers its creators.  The menace spreads quickly, we learn through newspaper clippings, to take over all of North America, except for a few fortified camps.

The middle of the novel jumps forward approximately one hundred years, and is the story of the (apparent) last remaining settlement; how they live and govern themselves, their relationships, etc.  This is where we get introduced to the main characters for the rest of the novel, mainly Peter, Theo, Alicia, Sara, Michael, Hollis and Mausami.  We learn about their places in their society and their relationships with each other.

Very gradually, however, their society begins to fall apart as members have strange dreams and thoughts.   A trip to the power station is a pivotal event, as Peter meets Amy, the aformentioned six year old girl, changed by the army with the same virus which created the vampires a hundred years before.   She is not a vampire, but she is different.  She saves Peter’s life and follows him to the compound, where everything quickly goes to hell.

The third part of the book encompasses months as the main characters travel to Colorado, where the entire disaster began, in order to hopefully return Amy to those who would know how to use her.  The time passed in this section is done brilliantly through journal entries by Sara, obviously salvaged by people of the future, (1003 a.v.) and referred to as ‘The Book of Sara’.  Incredible action and discoveries occur between these entries as they make their way to Colorado, and by the time they get there, there’s still two hundred pages of novel left, to tie everything up!

I’m going to save the ending for you, because I don’t want to give everything away.  Just be assured that it’s gripping and satisfying, just like the rest of the novel.  In the end, I can completely understand why this novel is such an epic length; there’s just so much that happens, and the story is so engrossing that you don’t want it to end.   My husband tells me that this novel is the hottest thing in sci-fi at the moment, and already has a movie deal.  If that’s true, then I’m eagerly awaiting it; it has perfect movie potential.

You can find this novel here:

The Passage

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Stephen King has been one of my favorite authors for a good number of years. It’s in my blood, when I was growing up my mom always had a Stephen King book on her nightstand so when I became a reader on my own I was naturally drawn to his work and engulfed in his Dark Tower universe. Once he finished The Dark Tower however I felt that his work was a little lost, he didn’t really seem to know what to do with himself. However, with Under the Dome King has returned to form what a massive tome filled with human drama and the supernatural that King does so amazingly well (Full disclosure however, I haven’t read Duma Key yet, I hear it’s good too).

The story opens on ‘Dome Day’ when the little Maine town of Chester’s Mill is sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible dome. We meet Dale Barbara as he hike out of town after a violent run in with the son of the towns behind-the-scenes dictator ‘Big Jim’ Rennie. From there the story twists and turn as the townspeople learn the secrets of the dome, Big Jim tries to gain control of the town while keeping his own dark secrets, and his son goes mad. Everything culminates in a few epic chapters that will grab on to you and not allow you to set the book down until it’s all said and done.  Hang on though because you’ll lose people you came to care about, but if you’ve read any Stephen King you know this is par for the course. While the novel leaves you guessing early on about the nature of the dome there’s really no ‘big reveal’, the characters come to it naturally and it fits in well with the novel. There’s no big twist, King lays everything out there and lets your own imagination flesh everything out.

This is easily the best book Stephen King has written since he finished The Dark Tower — Cell is a close second — it may come in at over 1000 pages (paperback) but it really doesn’t feel that long. Both myself and my wife roared though it in record time and when it was done it felt like just the right length. As with all of Kings work the characters are extremely well developed and the setting is rich and colorful. You feel for these people by the end of the book and there were many points where I found myself holding my breath hoping they’d make it out okay. Under the Dome is a powerhouse of a novel by one of the greatest writers of the 20th/21st century, go buy it.

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Under the Dome

Tony Chu is a cop with a secret. A weird secret. Today we depart a little from standard book reviews and delve into the world of comic books. As I mentioned in my review of the iPad, it’s a brilliant device for reading comics on and one of the comics I discovered was Chew published by Image Comics and written by John Layman and drawn by Rob Guillroy.

Chew is set in an alternate time line where the bird flu actually became the pandemic some thought it would. As a result chicken has been banned and the FDA (yes, the US Food and Drug Administration) is now one of the most powerful police forces on the planet with the mandate of enforcing the chicken ban. Then main character Tony Chu, Tony is a Cibopath. A what? A Cibopath is someone who, when they consume food, will get images and feelings about everything that happened to that food from it’s growth to it’s preparation. What does that mean? Not much if you eat a banana, you’ll see the plantation, the workers that cut it down and the trucks or boats it rode on to get to you. If you eat a burger? Well you get to see how the cow died in an industrial slaughterhouse. Needless to say, Tony is a vegetarian.

His unique talent also allows Tony to be a great murder investigator, you see if he takes a bite of a corpse he can see how the person died. This leads to many great sequences in the books where Tony has to consume something quite unpleasant.

The writing in Chew is top notch. There is a brilliant mix of humor — food puns abound — and suspense that keeps you wanting more. Since it was originally slated to be a 5 issue mini-series they’ve stuck with that style of story telling. Now on issue #11 we’re into our 3rd distinct story line. While the characters and their experiences carry over from the previous serise there is a clear deliniation of story-lines that you don’t get in a lot of comics giving this book a nice tidy feeling.

In addition Rob Guillory has a very unique artistic style. His character drawing is almost abstract, Tony is a skinny rod of a man with stringy muscles while his partner at hte FDA, the massive Savoy (another Cibopath, one of only 3 known) is a hulking gorilla of a man with a massive chest and skinny legs. The environments are richly detailed with lots of little ‘easter eggs’ tossed in here and there (Rob and/or John are clearly LOST fans).

Overall Chew is one of the best comics I’ve ever read. After a long hiatus from reading comics Chew and the iPad comic experience really sucked me back in. Sadly they’re only doing a 60 issue run so we’ve only got about 4 years of Chew goodness left, but oh well, I’ll enjoy it while I can. Pick Chew up in your favorite comic shop, grab the awesome Comics iPad/iPhone app and buy it on there, or pick up the volume 1 & 2 anthology issues at Amazon below.

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Chew Volume 1: Tasters Choice

Chew Volume 2: International Flavor