Discovered Authors 2011

Not many new discoveries last year, but then I didnt get much reading done, slowly, towards the end of the year, going off SF altogether, with more and more books unfinished- I just seem to lose interest as the year progressed!
Hopefully things will pick up again (just started a big Heinlein book!) but in the meantime here's the list of newly discovered authors from 2011.

First up a very strange horror tale from William Hope Hodgson.
House on the Borderland is a very odd tale indeed, starting off reading like classic early 20th century horror, but soon taking an odd turn! Good stuff though!

Next up a couple of stories from adopted american Algis Budrys. I remember him for his lost-identity film Who? from the 70s but never found any of his SF works, till now! I found a couple of his stories available for free download online and gave them a read.
Algis Budrys stories
Interesting and thought provoking tales!

Many may be familiar with Walter M Miller for his seminal tale A Canticle for Leibowitz, which I've yet to read, but here is a short story, which I found quite touching!
Walter M Miller

A change of scene next with a classic haunted house story from I Am Legend author Richard Matheson. I never knew he wrote horror so when I found Hell House and read about it I had to give it a go, and it didnt dissapoint! Quality horror!

Finally another quite chilling horror story, this time with sexual themes.
The Entity is a story of demonic possesion in which a mother in her 30s is possesed repeatedly at night by someone, or something, who ritually rapes her and threatens to drive her insane! I was unsure of this book but it was on my partner's shelf for ages, and I thought I'd give it a read before it went on bookmooch. I quite enjoyed it actually, and i believe a movie was made of it in the 80s.

Thats it, here's for some prosperous reading in 2012!

Shoot the Moon!

What a quirky little book! The synopsis sounds ridiculous by today's standards; design a 900 foot cannon to shoot a huge ball to the moon using cotton impreganted with some highly flammable substance as 'fuel' (called Pyroxite)
And yet the book is laced with good sound science that one would expect to find in a modern hard SF book! The distance to the moon is known as is its orbital velocity and details such as the apogee and perigee of the moon are figured into the itineray. Its all jolly good fun with a mild poke at the Americans-even though the main characters are American and it reads as if written by an American, at times one detects the odd poke at the 'Yankees' as Verne's character refers to his colleagues.

A group called the Gun Club form with the intention of making bigger and better arms, but when peace is declared its members feel somehow deprived of an enemy to fight and so must look elsewhere. Then up pops the idea of a huge gun, bigger than anything they have seen before, and it will be used to fire a cannon at the moon to gain relations with the selenites up there (i.e. colonise!) and plant the American flag declaring the world theirs! But thats how people thought back in the day, and bear in mind this was written over 100 years before the 1969 moon landing!

All in all quite incredible and great fun!
Oh, as a sidenote I have now read all the books featured in this blog's banner! :D

The Entity by Frank de Felitta

This book has been on my partner's shelf for as long as I've known her, and I always imagined it to be a poor, cheap horror story, especially as she asked me to list it on bookmooch.com. But then I read it, and wow, it was quite good actually!

I've never heard of the author before, and he hasnt writtten a great deal but this is well written, with authority. Yes it has sexual scenes which everyone talks about but the story within is great! And creeepy!
You begin to wonder, is the entity real or is it all a psychosis?
I recommend you read it and find out.

Hell House!

This is a story about an old haunted family house led by maniacal Emeric Belasco, who would lure people into his house and engage in orgies and wild parties. Many died at his hand and years after Belasco's own death his spirit infests the place. Dr Barret along with his wife, a medium and a previous resident who survived are sent in to investigate and 'cleanse' the house once and for all...

I wasnt sure I'd like this as I'd not read this author before and I always associate him with SF (he's responsible for I Am Legend as well as the excellent B-movie from the 50s The Incredible Shrinking Man) but I can honestly say I enjoyed it! Its a typical haunted house horror story, maybe nothing new but, well it was written in the 70s when Hammer House of Horror was regularly on our TV screens, and Hell House is a prime example of that genre.
Good creepy stuff!

A bad case of Asimov followed by a dose of horror

I tried in vain to read Asimov's The Gods Themselves but I got to the second part and gave up! Its my second attempt at this book but life is too short!
Basically its about the discovery of an alternate universe in which tungsten becomes very important to its inhabitants and a way for our side to get free energy. Its in 3 parts, the first part involves the duscovery that a piece of tungsten has been transformed into a radioactive substance. The second part deals with the aliens on the other side. Sounds interesting but I found it interminally dull! And awkward!

I liked very much his robot novels and stories, but didnt like his Foundation books at all. I did enjoy his time travel novel End of Eternity though!

Anyway time for something completely different.
I started Hellhouse by Richard Matheson, the guy ultimately responsible for the movie I Am Legend as well as 50s movie The Incredible Shrinking Man. Review will follow...

A Mother's Love-not!

Just finished For Love of Mother-not, the prelude to the Pip and Flinx/Commonwealth books by Alan Dean Foster which was written in the early 80s. Foster's first novel, in 1972, was The Tar-Aiym Krang and is very much a hard SF space opera type romp. He later expanded the universe it is set in by adding more books in a series, and then he decided to write a kind of prequel, a book to explain how Flinx, and his mini dragon, came about.

For those not familiar with the series Flinx is a young lad with a Talent. He can perceive the emotions of those around him and detect someone's presence or change of mood, and he is accompanied by Pip, a kind of flying snake which shares a similar talent in as much as it can detect when Flink is angry at someone or in trouble. The story is set on one planet, Moth, but the other books are much more set in space, with various alien cultures- rather in the vein of Larry Niven's Ringworld.

Despite reading like a young adult's fantasy at times this book is a fun tale with decent characters and is a good introduction to the series.

A big trip, up yonder!

Last night I read a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, and I enjoyed it.
Big Trip Up Yonder (1954) is about a time in the future in which a drug has been developed that prevents aging. A family is sharing a house and its a family made up of generations, so there's grand sons, great grand sons, great nephews and nieces etc and at the head is Gramps, who's pushing 150. Its quite a humorous tale as the real old guys call their 60 and 80 year old comapnions 'kids', but also there's conflict between the groups and eventually it comes to a head and the group is seperated. Gramps goes missing and the rest end up in a care home which isnt half as bad as they'd feared, but Gramps gets the last laugh!

I've tried to read a Vonnegut novel years ago but failed and never tried again, but this story made me smile in the wee hours(well, midnight!)

A Bob Shaw mooch!

This came up bookmooch.com and I thought it sounded fabulous!