Day 2: Time Travel, Different Dimensions, and Free Love

Tonight (running a bit late but if I don't go to sleep, I'm counting it as the same day) I wanted to pop by and mention what I've been reading.

Working out of Boston gives me a bit of train time for reading, and I've been focused on getting through Robert Heinlein's works. For those who are unfamiliar with Heinlein, he's a speculative fiction author who frequently pushes the bounds of understanding with his glib pseudo-science rooted in actual science. He passes off time travel and dimensional travel almost as if they were a common commodity to the characters that could otherwise be based in current times (well, current for Heinlein, anyway, who wrote the last entry in 1987). I've focused on his books featuring Lazarus Long, know as his "Future History" series:

I might have started calling my cat "Pixel"

Time Enough for Love: Technically I read this years ago, but it was my introduction to the series and was a solid introduction to Lazarus long and the peculiar future in which one man is the ancestor to most of the wayward human race across time and space.

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls: A fast paced book that doesn't care if you understand what's going on as the characters are pushed or pulled from one direction to another. It's been compared to The Hitchhiker's Guide but I think that's rubbish. Maybe if you made the Guide a touch more serious with hyper-intelligent characters, humorous wordplay, and an excessive amount of *ahem* free love, maybe I could see it. But it's not quirky so much as intense.

To Sail Beyond the Sunset: In which we learn about Lazarus' immoral mother and her extensive back-story (most of which is spent in a timeline slightly different than our own but set in a similar time frame that includes World War I and II. It's Heinlein's last published work but makes a very solid introduction to his writing -- it spends a lot more time explaining how all of the characters become so hyper-intelligent and accepting of things such as incest and open (loving) infidelity. Also, the writing is just a touch more polished than other entries in the series, which could be beneficial to someone trying to get a handle on Heinlein's writing style. Also references some short stories of Heinlein's that can be found in his book Expanded Universe, which was a nice touch.

The Number of the Beast: I tried reading this one some time ago but couldn't get past the absurd speed in which the characters approached things such as marriage or other things I'd never seen done so brazenly. Entire novels could be spent around the moral dilemmas Heinlein's characters analyze and overcome in seconds. Not to mention they're all able to get fabulously wealthy and have expansive back stories before we ever meet them. This book delves a bit more into the dimensional and time travel, however, and doesn't hold back in regards to the idea of "the world as myth." The characters may or may not visit Oz. Yeah. Yellow Brick Road and all.

Don't mind the ship's name...

There are a couple more I haven't gotten to, but I'll get to them eventually. For those interested in the series, start with Time Enough for Love. It introduces Lazarus the best and, once you've accepted him and his tales, everything is a bit easier to take. Just remember, if you're left in the dust with the facts and sciences being thrown at you, roll with the punches!

In comics, I have been focusing all of my intention on Fables, which I am not up the 9th trade paper back. That's a bit more than fifty single issues. Most series I've collected for this long tend to fluctuate in quality or general interest (ie, Star Wars: Legacy or Knights of the Old Republic). Fables has, if anything, gotten better with every set of stories. They've even leapt the hurdle of revealing the big bad known as the Adversary and STILL keeping the Homeland plot interesting. If this were a TV show, they'd have to kill him off or defeat him seriously in the first season. With Fables, appropriate time is being taken to really appreciate the villains of this story, while still building individual lives for the Fable-folk set in modern day New York City.

Loving this series more and more.

The series also has my favorite romance in a comic series. I've never wanted two characters to come together quite as badly as I've wanted to see Bigby and Snow White hit it off. And Fables does it while still spanning years in mere issues.

I'm very pleased with the series and look forward to someday catching up.

Only other comic news to report, then, is that Saga still proves to be awesome, it's just coming out too damn slow for my preference.

Extra! Extra! Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novel Edition.

Welcome to this weeks Extra! Extra!

Just a reminder, this is the re-branded "Suggested Reading" weekly Monday post.

For this week, I promised to stray from the comic book path and list five Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels you should read -- I could easily do five from either of those genres, but I'll stick to my absolute favorite five from both. To make this a touch more difficult, I'm going to avoid any series that requires you to read the whole set to get the full story. IE, I'm not including Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings, though I will include other titles that do have sequels and more.

Here goes:

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold I will generally like any book if I find myself liking the characters. This story follows probably my favorite character I have ever read: Cazaril. He is a beaten and down trodden war veteran/released POW. He is finally coming back to the only place he ever knew as home, even though he has no reason to expect it to still welcome him after all this time. From there, he gets embroiled in a family's issues and their horrible curse and determines to do whatever it takes to save them, even if it would cost his life. From the very first chapter, I loved the character of Cazaril. He is NOT what you expect as a typical fantasy hero, but he is done perfectly. The supporting cast are all so different and, generally, so un-cliche that they become integral parts of Cazaril. I have read this book many times and enjoy it immensely, I can't recommend it enough for anyone who likes fantasy novels of any kind. I don't want to say more because I would hate to spoil this fantastic story in any way, shape, or form. There is a direct sequel, "Paladin of Souls", and a few novels that take place in the same universe, but none of them star Cazaril and suffer for it. Paladin isn't aweful, but I'd only suggest picking it up if you really loved Bujold's writing.
Ender's Game OR Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card This is an unusual pair. Many people have told me they've read "Ender's Game" in school, and that's awesome. It is a fantastic Sci-Fi that follows a brilliant child, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, as he is sent to the Battle School Space Station and beyond for training to defend/defeat an alien race of intelligent ant-things, known as the Formics or "Buggers". It is an amazing book and easily on of Card's best works -- and I like almost everything I've read by him. "Ender's Shadow" is set in/around the same time and deals with most of the same characters -- the different is that it is from another child at the school's eyes, named Bean. Ender is being groomed as the final hope for humanity, attempting to being turned into the typical hero. Bean is put to the side, but is secretly the back up -- he is the smartest kid on the school but is cold and logical. His background story easily trumps Ender's and makes the character really enduring. I actually read this before I read "Ender's Game", and I was no worse for the wear. I suggest you get them both. Both novels have a series of sequels after them that follow Ender and Bean on their separate paths. You can end with the novels I listed here and be happy with a complete story, but if you find yourself liking either, I suggest you hunt down the rest. I prefer Bean's (stays in the same vein as Shadow) series to Ender's (becomes much more sci-fi), but they are both done well.
Stardust by Neil Gaiman This title is something I struggled with putting here (I was going to go with another Gaiman title, "American Gods", instead). I generally like Gaiman's writing, and I really love the story of Stardust, but this is one of the few stories that I liked better as a movie. That being said, it is a story about a boy who travels to the other side of The Wall, the barrier dividing our real from the magical realm of Stormhold, to find a fallen star and win the affection of his true love. Yes, that sounds like a terrible synopsis. Trust me when I say it is all uphill from there. The major twist that I don't mind telling you here is that the fallen star is a young woman, which is par the course in Stormhold. Oh, and our protagonist, Tristran (Tristan in the movie), isn't the only one looking for her: he's unknowingly racing a trio of evil witches and the fratricidal, homicidal sons of the dead king (and their ghostly brothers). The book is still good, I just love the movie so much more. I think I'll do a post about films that I've liked better than their books soon... it should be short enough, I think.
Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein Let me preface this with stating that I am woefully under-read when it comes to Heinlein, but I'm working from it. He has a unique writing style, and I don't always appreciate it at first glance. Time Enough, however, caught me because I was so interested in the main protagonist, Lazarus Long, who just happens to be the oldest living human (which, at this point, puts him over two thousand years old). This novel is actually a series of short stories that Lazarus is telling his companions. He has decided he doesn't want to live anymore and he is only alive at this moment because he wants to tell these stories. They are all interesting stories and the characters and situations are just plain strange. And, honestly, they're better for it. Check this out even if you aren't a huge Heinlein fan, you want be disappointed if you stick through it to the end.
The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny Ok, so I'm kind of cheating here. Chronicles is actually a collection of ten different novels that make up the two main series (five novels apiece) in the world of Amber. That being said, the individual novels are fairly short, probably better called novellas. This story is a perfect end for this list because it is a mix of sci-fi and fantasy. They are all told in first person and the very beginning has us following the protagonist (of the first five, at least), Corwin, as he wakes up in a strange hospital, having apparently lost his memory in a car accident. He immediately notices something is amiss and flees. We learn along with him many things, but the most important is that he is one of the Princes of Amber, beings able to shape and create new worlds around them. It sounds far fetched buy Zelazny is in rare form and really nails this story and the characters. From the very first moment, the pace is set fast and hard and he manages to keep it up at almost all times. Every revelation is fantastic and this becomes an amazing novel of revenge, one of my favorite themes. I've read at least the first five novels many times and they are well worth it. The second cycle follows a new character, one I won't name to avoid spoilers, but I didn't enjoy it as much, it follows more in line with other works I've read and not enjoyed from Zelazny. They're still worth reading for the continuation of the Amber story, but at least the first five novels are phenomenal. You can get all ten collected in "The Great Big Book of Amber" for easy reading -- I'd suggest you pick it up ASAP!

That was MUCH harder than I expected -- most of the books I wanted to put on their were part of bigger stories. As I'm unpacking (back in to my now-renovated apartment), I'll have to check through my books to see what I missed -- I'm sure there are plenty, but I'm happy with the list here.

Eventually I'll do a Monday post for sci-fi and fantasy series (and I'll even split up the genres), but that will come later.

Next Week: We're going back to comic books, but I'll suggest five Trade Paper Backs I think everyone should have. You could get them as single issues, but these will be titles that I think work best collected.