My Mind Was Once Again Melded

SF Signal asked me to participate in one of their regular "Mind Meld" posts, in which they ask the same question of a fistful of SF luminaries (and, in this case, me as well).

The question, this time, was:

Q: Which SF&F books/series do you think are so good that it’s a shame they had to end?

My answer, along with those of Jeremiah Tolbert, Andrew Liptak, David Constantine, and several others, is now live. As usual, I started off by arguing with the core question; it's a sickness with me.

Just Keep Swimming

We all know about sharks as a business metaphor -- you swim with sharks, you dive into the shark tank to get funding, and so forth -- but there's now a competing metaphor of the dolphin.

Unfortunately, the places where I've seen it -- no links for now, so I can be expansive -- don't seem to actually understand what dolphins are like, instead thinking of them as sweet, lovable and supportive BFFs of the sea. This is, of course, not at all the case.

So, your real choice when choosing to swim with large, powerful, streamlined sea creatures -- when picking between sharks and dolphins -- is to ask one question: Do you want to deal with things that want to eat you, or ones that want to fuck you?

And you can take that last question as literally, or as metaphorically, as you'd like.

Reviewing the Mail: Week of 3/10

Int. Day: A man sits, hunched over a computer in a tastefully-appointed basement. Light streams in from small windows set high in thick walls, as if to telegraph "yes, this most assuredly is a basement." On the other side of the room, a boy laughs at YouTube videos for hours on end. Nearby, there is the sound of powerful machinery washing clothing. A stack of books teeters nearby, threatening to fall onto the man's head. He reaches over, picks up the top book, glances at it, and begins to type.


GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, Vol. 2 is the second part of Toru Fujisawa's side-story sequel to his most popular creation, Great Teacher Onizuka. (I've seen, but not read, the first volume, and never read the original GTO series.) It's coming from Vertical any minute now.

He leans back, brow furrowed. "Will they understand?" he murmurs to himself. "Will they realize that these books just arrived from publishing companies, and that I don't know much about them?" But there's no time for that; the pile is wobbling. Another book is pulled down.

The Curse of the Masking Tape Mummy is the third book collecting Scott Meyer's Basic Instructions webcomic (which you really should be reading regularly, he said pointedly), containing over 135 strips, plus original full-color stuff in the back. It's published by the well-named publishing outfit Don't Eat Any Bugs Productions, and available through both bookstore channels (via NBN) and the comics direct market (via the Mighty Diamond), beginning in May, so start hoarding your shekels now.

The man briefly considers continuing the italic comments throughout the entire post. "Nah," he decides, "That would be much too self-indulgent."

Shadow and Betrayal reprints the first half of Daniel Abraham's acclaimed four-book Long Price Quartet -- for those you who are terminally dim, that means it has two books in it: A Shadow in Summer and A Betrayal in Winter -- and is coming from Tor in trade paperback at the end of this month. Here, "acclaimed" means "a lot of people I trust love it, but it has not been as commercially successful as they hoped, and I have not read it myself, either."

And it's time once again for the monthly DAW mass-market paperbacks, this time for April:

• Alien Diplomacy, the fifth in the humorous Men in Black-ish near-future SF series by Gini Koch, continues the story of a woman named Kitty Katt, her devastatingly gorgeous husband, and the hideous beasts they both battle.
• The Shining City is the third book in Fiona Patton's "The Warriors of Estavia" series, which may end here, though I see no official word either way. (Though I should note here that we have always been at war with Estavia.)
• The Helix War is an omnibus of Edward Willett's novels Marseguro and Terra Insegura, another one of those "happy faraway world of mildly post-humans is threatened by the nasty evil forces of corrupt 'ol Earth" stories.

You knew it had to come: A Game of Groans is a parody of a fantasy series that I shouldn't have to specify, credited to "George R.R. Washington," and pretending to be the first in "A Sonnet of Slush and Soot." (Mr. "Washington" is described as the author of many novels and as a TV/movie writer producer who lives in Chicago with a wife named Natalie. So I'm sure there are folks who could track him down from that, but it's definitely not Adam Roberts, for once.) Thomas Dunne Books is publishing this on the 27th, though I always wonder what the audience is for a parody like this -- is it fans of the original, who nevertheless want to see it skewered, or the people who hate the original so much that they want to spend more time with it?

And it would be appropriate to follow that up with an indication that it's not just unrelated people trying to jump on the GRRM bandwagon: A Game of Thrones: The Graphic Novel: Vol. 1 will be published by Bantam in hardcover on the 27th. It was adapted by Daniel Abraham -- a novelist in his own right (see above) as well as the adaptor for previous GRRM projects like Fevre Dream -- and illustrated by Tommy Patterson, and collects the first six issues of the comics series. (I'm not sure how much of the novel it adapts, but I'd expect at least one more volume, and probably 2-3.)

And here's a big pile of books coming from Yen Press next month:

• Is This a Zombie?, Vol. 1 by Sacchi, adapted from the light novel series by Shinichi Kimura and using the character designs by Kobuichi and Muririn, has the most egregious panty shot I've ever seen in its opening pages -- it's really quite impressive in its blatantness. The story is about a typical teenage boy who is a reanimated zombie servant to a necromancer and then also steals the powers of a "magikewl" girl. And then he ends up living with a bunch of girls -- presumably including the former -- who, I imagine, are accidentally naked in front of him a lot.
• The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan, Vol. 5, by Puyo, is one of the less-likely brand extensions I've seen in a while. The original Haruhi Suzumiya series of light novels by Nagaru Tanigawa spawned the usual huge media empire -- anime TV series, manga series, animated movie, audio drama, video game -- and then also spawned a jokey side series in both anime and manga of stories about the lead character Kyon's dreams. So this is the fifth volume of the furthest extension of a vast media empire -- it's Haruhi's Kamchatka. If any of that was news to you, this is not a book for you.
• Spice & Wolf, Vol. 6 is another extension of a light novel series, but it's more direct -- the author of the novels, Isuna Hasekura, is writing these manga as well, working with the artist Keito Koume. (I reviewed the first volume at length two summers ago.) It's mercantile fantasy with a mostly-former wolf-goddess thrown into the mix.
• Pandora Hearts, Vol. 9 continues Jun Mochizuki's series using some ideas and characters from Alice in Wonderland in very different ways -- I reviewed the first one a few years back, if you want some background.
• Bamboo Blade, Vol. 12 is the latest installment in the school-based kendo-focused sports manga series by Masahiro Totsuka and Aguri Igarashi, though I wouldn't be surprised if there was a space princess or secret government esper group in the mix by now. (I never reviewed any of the volumes of this series, but I did cover the opening chapters when I looked at the early days of Yen Magazine, which serialized it.)
• Bunny Drop, Vol. 5 is by Yumi Unita, and I've had no contact with it before this moment. It's about a forty-year-old man raising his late grandfather's love child, who is now a high-schooler. (The intro copy says "Now, ten years later..." which may be the springboard for the entire series, or just for this volume.) This one is a josei series -- with an audience of adult women and older teenagers -- so it'll be more sedate, and actually about the lives of its characters rather than their superpowers.
• 13th Boy, Vol. 11 is the latest installment in SangEun Lee's manwha (like manga, only Korean) series about a teenage girl and the two boys in her life (and her talking cactus) -- I read and enjoyed the first volume some time back.
• A Bride's Story, Vol. 3 is the rare hardcover manga, continuing Kaoru Mori's story of life on the 19th century Silk Road. From the description, I think each volume follows the story of a different young woman, and how she gets married, but I could be misinterpreting.

Kou Yaginuma's Twin Spica, Vol. 12 is another manga project, from a different publisher (Vertical). It's a near-future SF story about kids being trained as astronauts, but that's about all I know about it. This is the final volume -- completing the story as published in Japan -- so if any of you were waiting for that, this is the time.

A. Lee Martinez's new novel, the baroquely-titled Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain, comes from Orbit as a hardcover in March, and is another one of his zippy humorous novels with pop-culture flavoring. This time, the main character is the octopoid Neptunon ex-Warlord of Earth, struggling with what to do with this time now that he's accomplished everything he ever wanted.

Jon Sprunk's Shadow's Master finishes up his trilogy (begun with Shadow's Son) as a Pyr trade paperback -- it's hitting stores this week. I still have the first two on my you-really-should-read-these-sometime-soon shelf, and this one looks just as worthy.

Yves Menard's new novel is Chrysanthe, the story of a young woman under psychiatric treatment in a world much like our own who learns she really is the true heiress to a fantasy kingdom on another world. I expect this is somewhat more metafictional and postmodern than most takes on that theme -- Menard is the author of the knotty Book of Knights -- but it's likely to be worth the effort. It's a trade paperback from Tor, available now.

There's another collection of comics about the Simpsons -- from the Bongo comics continuing series -- from Harper Design, under the title Simpsons Comics Confidential. I don't think the title means anything much -- there's probably a Big Wheel O' Titles at the Bongo offices by now -- but there's around 120 pages of Simpsons comics here, for those looking for such things.

And last for this week is Elizabeth Bear's new novel Range of Ghosts, first in a secondary-world fantasy series with a somewhat Mongolian-Asian feel -- its hero and heroine are named Temur and Samarkar. It's coming from Tor in hardcover at the end of this month.

Durarara!!, Vol. 1 by Ryohgo Narita, Suzuhito Yasuda, and Akiyo Satorigi

To continue the theme of this week, here's one last review of a manga volume. But, unlike the Confuse-o-vision posts earlier in the week, I started Durarara!! with the first volume, so it shouldn't be confusing at all.

Japan is the homeland of transmedia, or at least looks that way from my end of the Pacific. Every media property that makes it to the US from Japan has already been in at least three formats in its homeland: maybe an anime, manga, and live-action movie; or possibly a TV show, light novel series, and line of soft toys; or even an animated movie, radio show, and adult toys. [1] And so Durarara!! began as a single light novel -- similar to a normal novel, but with fewer calories -- and turned into a series of them when it was popular, and expanded into manga, anime, and even a radio show before hitting US shores semi-simultaneously in print and animated TV forms.

Your first question is: what does the title mean? I can't tell you. It's not a person, or a place, or a thing. It could be a verb, I suppose, but the book itself provides no clues as what "to durarara" might mean. Perhaps it's a contentless interjection, like "Yahoo!" I'll assume that for the moment.

Your second question is: who is the main character? There isn't one. This first volume seems to center on Mikado Ryuumagine, who has seemingly been crafted by high-powered implements to be the quintessential manga hero: he's starting at a high school in a strange place (Tokyo's Ikebukuro district), where he knows almost no one, he's a "ordinary boy," he knows very little so other people can explain everything to him, he's incredibly tentative when it comes to just about everything, and he's short and dark-haired and open-faced. But the official word is that Durarara!! is an ensemble piece; all of the characters will have a share of the spotlight -- well, probably not the one who gets killed off about forty pages in, but who knows!

Durarara!! has the ingredients of a crime story -- a secretive gang, a creepy brother and sister and the sister's secret society, and a list of people that Mikado is warned not to cross, who mostly seem to be low-level criminals of one sort or another. Oh, and I can't forget the marquee character: a black-clad motorcycle rider who, legendarily, is headless underneath a featureless helmet, and acts as a courier for a hermit unlicensed experimental doctor. This first volume is primarily for introduction and atmosphere: we meet all of these people (the wraparound cover helpfully shows all of them, though a version where they're all labeled would be even better) and get a sense of how they relate to each other and an even vaguer sense of what kind of place Ikebukuro is. Presumably, all of the various events in this volume will start to add up to something as the story moves forward, but, in this book, they're just separate moments, concerning separate people. Some of them are shocking; some of them are light-hearted; all of them are presented on the same level.

So Durarara!! left me cold: it's trying very hard to hook me as a reader, but the blizzard of hooks made me less interested in it. There may be a there there -- unlike Gertrude Stein's Oakland -- but I haven't seen it yet.


[1] I have no specific examples in mind for these; if there are properties that slot precisely into those categories, though, I'd love to know about them.

Hugo Deadline Fast Approaching

I always leave these things to the last minute, so I just submitted my nominating ballot. It's not as full, or as well-informed, as I'd like to be, but this process works best the more of us take part -- however much, and however well, we can.

So, if you're eligible, and you haven't yet done it, take a few minutes before midnight PDT tonight and fill out some of your favorites from 2011. The nominating ballot is here. It doesn't matter if you haven't read or seen "everything;" none of us have. You've read or seen some things, and if you thought some of those are good enough, nominate 'em.

My Lunacon Schedule

Hey! Lunacon is coming up in just six short days! And it's about the only SF convention I attend these days -- since my work travel is now all filled up with meetings for Valuators and Fraud Examiners and just plain Accountants -- so it's the one guaranteed place each year to see me complain in person about SFnal stuff. (Unlike this blog, where you can find me complaining virtually most days of the year.)

I'll have a table in the dealer's room, selling random books that I don't want. (You'd think last year's flood would have cured that problem, but no -- it destroyed almost entirely books that I did want to keep.) And I'll also be on several program items, which I just learned about this morning. I haven't even looked up their descriptions yet, but here's what I'll need to have an opinion on this year:

• Like Oil and Water (Panel), Fri 19:00 - 20:00, Elijah Budd
• The Future of Suburbs (Panel), Sat 17:00 - 18:00, Maple
• Science Fiction of the Past (Panel), Sun 11:00 - 12:00, Elijah Budd

There does not seem to be a full listing of program items currently online, so the titles are all we have to go on for now. Presumably, there will be somewhat longer panel descriptions available at the convention, but don't expect a lot of preparation this year.

Incoming Books: March 9th

Last weekend, I put through two orders for books simultaneously -- one from that unnamed monolithic giant of e-commerce that you'd expect (use my links to buy more stuff for yourselves, so I can get three cents in credit!), and one from what I still think as my "local" comics store (Midtown Comics, near Times Square in Manhattan), though I haven't worked in Manhattan in nearly five years and not in that vicinity since 2005. The main reason for the order was to refill the stacks of read-a-novel, earn-a-manga, since Thing Two had been burning through fantasy novels over the winter (he slowed down a bit this last week or so, maybe because Scott Westerfeld's Goliath is that long, or that much to be savored). Because of that, it turned out to be an all-comics-all-the-time double-barreled order, but I did manage to sneak in a few things primarily for myself, and these are they:

Possessions, Volume 3: The Better House Trap by Ray Fawkes. I read the first two in this series -- about a demon resident in a cute little girl, who is herself resident in the escape-proof "collection" of creepy supernatural entities owned by an eccentric old lady and curated/controlled by her preternaturally prepared butler Thorne -- as electronic editions, and reviewed them for the late Realms of Fantasy and then here. Those books are very funny -- Gurgazon, that demon, has wonderful dialogue -- and I hope to inflict them on my sons now that I finally have one in print form.

The Mighty Skullboy Army, Volume 2 by Jacob Chabot is an unexpected sequel to the original 2007 book (which I reviewed then, and noted that it seemed to be mostly strips from 2002-3) about a kid with a skull for a head who is also head of an evil corporation. This is also a funny series suitable for my kids, and they'll probably get it eventually as well.

Athos in America is the new Jason collection, with a title story that continues The Last Musketeer, and five other new stories from the master of deadpan comics.

And last was the new B.P.R.D. collection, with the unwieldy title Hell on Earth Volume 2: Gods and Monsters. It's written, as usual by B.P.R.D. creator Mike Mignola with John Arcudi, and has art by Guy Davis for one of the included stories, and Tyler Crook for the other. And, presumably, the monsters are still threatening the earth, since that's the whole point of the series.