melannen | FMK# 31: I heard it on the internet

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FMK# 31: I heard it on the internet

The mysteries F winner was the cat detectives. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked. I have already read one of the stories in it, and there were not nearly as many cats as advertised. :( The K winner was the Garrison Keillor, which is helpful because it means I don't have to keep wondering if I want to read it or not, you people have informed me I don't.

I have not read any other new FMK this week because I have been catching up on comics and other stuff. Also I saw Thor 3! That was an EPICALLY silly movie. I approve. EPICALLY silly is the only register in which Marvel Thor stuff ever works and they don't hit it nearly as often as I'd wish.

Today's is a mixed batch on the rather nebulous theme of Someone On The Internet Said I Should Read This. Will the internet contradict itself? Let's find out!

How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.

Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)

Poll #19072 FMK #31: I heard it on the internet

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 61

View Respondents

Dawn by Octavia Butler (1987)

F
24 (58.5%)

M
16 (39.0%)

K
1 (2.4%)

Homeland by Cory Doctorow (2013)

F
14 (45.2%)

M
1 (3.2%)

K
16 (51.6%)

Half Magic by Edward Eager (1954)

F
17 (50.0%)

M
13 (38.2%)

K
4 (11.8%)

Black Ships by Jo Graham (2008)

F
27 (69.2%)

M
9 (23.1%)

K
3 (7.7%)

The Stepsister Scheme by Jim Hines (2009)

F
11 (39.3%)

M
4 (14.3%)

K
13 (46.4%)

God Stalk by P. C. Hodgell (1982)

F
12 (44.4%)

M
8 (29.6%)

K
7 (25.9%)

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (1961)

F
15 (34.9%)

M
27 (62.8%)

K
1 (2.3%)

The Doom That Came to Sarnath (anthology) by H. P. Lovecraft (1971)

F
8 (29.6%)

M
3 (11.1%)

K
16 (59.3%)

First Test by Tamora Pierce (1999)

F
21 (65.6%)

M
10 (31.2%)

K
1 (3.1%)

The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault (1956)

F
12 (48.0%)

M
9 (36.0%)

K
4 (16.0%)

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Ruseell (1996)

F
12 (38.7%)

M
8 (25.8%)

K
11 (35.5%)

Old Man's War by John Scalzi (2005)

F
23 (54.8%)

M
2 (4.8%)

K
17 (40.5%)

Illuminatus! Part 1: The Eye in the Pyramid by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (1975)

F
11 (39.3%)

M
1 (3.6%)

K
16 (57.1%)

The Book of Lost Tales by J. R. R. Tolkien (1983)

F
9 (30.0%)

M
8 (26.7%)

K
13 (43.3%)

The Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede (2009)

F
15 (45.5%)

M
2 (6.1%)

K
16 (48.5%)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I really love God Stalk. It's wonderfully weird and has a very appealing dark/quirky humor. Also, it stands on its own though it does have sequels.

I hated Old Man's War so much that I never read anything else by Scalzi other than his blog, which I like. Cool premise is totally ignored for the entire book, which is generic shoot 'em up in space with nothing that I enjoy in that genre.

I also hated The Sparrow. The plot element the entire story revolves around makes no sense, and many other plot elements also make no sense. Some cool ideas but generally manipulative and annoying.

Dawn is very good and thought-provoking, if dark/sad, with fascinating worldbuilding; also, tentacled aliens breeding humans!

I remember enjoying Half Magic, First Test, and The Phantom Tollbooth, but have not re-read recently.

I haven't reread God Stalk in years, but I remember loving it when it first came out while I was in high school. I didn't care so much for the sequels because I found less humor and weirdness in them. I think I've got two or three of those on my TBR shelves.

But I remember that, when the third book came out, it was only available in a very limited print run from Meisha Merlin.

I spent YEARS hunting down the other Hodgell books before Baen finally picked up the series and reprinted it. Love those books though, especially the first one.

I find it very interesting that I have read many people talking about God Stalk and yet still the only thing I know about it is that it's weird, and dark, and funny. (Is it SF or fantasy? I don't know! But it is definitely dark and weird and has humor.

I think I bought Old Man's War back when I was religiously reading his blog but then never got around to reading it.

Probably because the best parts are more fun discovered as you read, and a completely non-spoilery synopsis sounds a bit generic. However... it's fantasy. Jame, an amnesiac woman with retractable claws and some strange possessions, stumbles out of a creepy zombie-haunted wasteland and into Tai-Tastigon, a lively God-haunted city. There she becomes embroiled in domestic drama at the quirky boarding house she lives in, gets apprenticed to a reclusive master thief, and has lots of adventures.

Here's a non-spoilery and typical excerpt, in which the widow Cleppetty tries to make Jame useful around the boarding house by teaching her a spell to make bread rise:

Apprehensively, she recited the charm. It usually took Cleppetty half an hour to ready her bread for the oven; Jame's rose in five minutes. When the widow sliced into the baked loaf, however, they discovered that its sudden expansion had been due to the growth of rudimentary internal organs.

That was the end of Jame's apprenticeship in the kitchen.

I thought The Sparrow was beautifully written but also deeply stupid, probably because of that main plot element you mention. (Does it have to do with people making assumptions? Because wow, that was the stupidest thing.) It also pinged my "SF but not really SF" buttons really hard. It felt to me like she never really cared enough about the world to make it make sense.

YES. YES IT DOES. I could see (and even agree with) the political point she was trying to make, but her set-up made no sense. That was the ONE situation in which no one would have ever made that assumption!

I generally felt that nobody in the book behaved like a real human being. Their reactions and decisions all seemed engineered to make points or to make the plot work. That went for the aliens too - they didn't seem alien, they seemed nonsensical in the same way the humans were nonsensical. As you say, it made more sense as satire/allegory than as sf (but didn't work on that level either, as that isn't actually how the issues work either.)

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