recommended reading

Some changes have occurred.

I've picked up some new reading material in preparation for my (eventual) departure to East Asia—a lot of new reading material, actually.

Also, I need to tell you what I've gotten through lately.

First, I've dropped The Dinosaur Heresies. No offense to the good Dr. Bakker, but I had to prioritize. A weighty scientific volume might make good reference material or even some didactic bedtime reading, but I'm really delaying the rest of my reading list by committing to it. Plus...well, I hesitate to admit it, but compared to the other stuff I could be reading, Heresies is just a little bit dull. Bakker is witty, light-hearted, and occasionally sardonic, which puts him head and shoulders above such stuffy characters as Charles Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould, but the fact remains that he's writing a book about why dinosaurs are more avian than reptilian. Compared to something like Starship Troopers or Black Hawk Down, with explosions and gunfire and war machines and whatnot, paleontology goes flat.

(I won't even really need to brush up on the avian-reptilian dinosaur debate until I sit down to write the sixth book in my series, where I introduce the reptilian-avian character. Remember this, children. You can reference this post when I get accused of retroactive continuity.)

That having been decided, I launched myself into one of my more recent acquisitions, something I picked up at the used bookstore earlier this summer and had never heard of before: David Houston's Alien Perspective.

And this is the cool part: the copy I bought has been signed by the author.

Pretty nifty, eh? Even if I've never heard of the dude, it's nice to know he made enough of a name for himself to sign somebody's book. It's something else for me to strive for, as long as science fiction as I know it doesn't go by the wayside by the time I get published.

Ahem...

Alien Perspective has one of the neatest and most unique plots I've come across in a SF novel, despite being packaged as just another five-dollar paperback. It concerns not one, but two alien ships—exploratory vessels sent from a dying planet to seek out new worlds to colonize. Well, they did—except one of them picked up a greyish, gooey parasite that stifles and kills everything it comes in contact with. After a few deaths, the first ship gracefully decides to commit suicide and render itself a harmless, drifting hulk. The problem is, some of the precocious alien children on board decide they're too young to die, lock the adults out of the command center, and take control of the ship. Not knowing what to do about the parasite, the alien children elect to land on the closest inhabited planet and ask for help.

The closest inhabited planet just happens to be called "Earth."

It was a supremely suspenseful story. The taglines and synopsis I read on the back cover totally belied the pace of the book. The aliens don't even land on Earth until three-quarters of the way through the book. The first 75 percent of Alien Perspective is split between two points-of-view: that of Himi, the alien captain of the second exploratory vessel, who is trying to figure out why the first vessel didn't rendezvous with him as planned; and human astrophysicist William Reid and his colleagues, who are trying to figure out who the aliens are and what they want. Complications arise in the form of Senator Copalin, known as "The Black Blot" for his habit of slashing funds to any program he deems "unnecessary" (Reid's project is at the top of the list); and Leon Hillary, an eccentric millionaire and the leader of the Alienites, a cult which fervently believes that the incoming aliens are our divine creators.

A suitably entertaining tale of intrigue, mystery, adventure, trials, errors, and unseen perils ensues.

For myself, I was somewhat let down at the end. Perhaps I've grown too accustomed to reading James Rollins, whose adventure novels are jam-packed with explosions, monsters, sinister third parties, and imminent catastrophes. By comparison, Houston's book proceeded rather calmly. That being said, there was enough to hold my interest. Alien Perspective reminded me why I love good old-fashioned science fiction: the breathtaking beauty of space is undiminished; the physiology and culture of alien nations is speculated upon; amazing technological marvels abound (both above the Earth's surface and upon it); and I can confidently say, without spoiling the ending, that a rapport is established between human and alien at the end. I never fail to find such themes refreshing. At its heart, Alien Perspective is classic, true-to-form sci-fi: ordinary people battling extraordinary obstacles with advanced technology, backed by the power of logic and reason. 

Satisfied?

All right, here's a list of new works I've acquired over the past few months. Some of them I bought; others I dug out of boxes. Some of these I've mentioned here before, but I want to list them again, since I'll be taking them to Korea with me and I'll undoubtedly review them later.

To begin, some classic fiction:

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding 
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  
• Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean
• Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden
• The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna
  

Next, some sci-fi, both well-known and unknown:

•  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
• I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
• Transgalactic by A.E. van Vogt
  
• Into the Storm (Destroyermen, Book One) by Taylor Anderson
• The Seventh Carrier by Peter Albano
• Winged Pharaoh by Joan Grant
• Phaid the Gambler by Mick Farren

And finally, some promising nonfiction:

• Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux
• The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux
• Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King
• The Great Shark Hunt (The Gonzo  Papers, Vol. 1) by Hunter S. Thompson

This should be adequate literary sustenance to nourish my mind on bus rides, international flights, and subway trains, not to mention my tiny apartment in Seoul on those quiet weekday evenings. I can't wait.

To be clear, I read Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies in high school. That was almost ten years ago, though. I feel the need to reacquaint myself with these works in a more, ah, enlightened frame of mind.

The Sand Pebbles is the newest addition to the list. I found it in a box which my parents were planning to take to the thrift store (??!?!!). It looks incredible, and I can tell it's infecting me with an obsession with all things naval and Chinese. The book concerns Jake Holman, a young sailor, who is assigned to the aging gunboat San Pablo on the Yangtze River...right before the Kuomintang begins the Northern Expedition of 1926, which will eventually lead to the fall of the Beiyang Government and the unification of China.

Sounds kind of tame, right?

It isn't.

China explodes into war. Racial tensions and anti-foreign sentiment boils over, and Jake (who has been gradually forming a mostly positive opinion of the country) is now ordered, along with the San Pablo, to battle his way upriver and rescue two white Catholic missionaries from an oncoming horde of Nationalists. In the midst of this madness, Jake must contend with his shipmates (who believe him to be a Jonah, and would like nothing better than to throw him overboard) and his own heart (which has fallen for the missionary's pretty daughter).

The story is a sweeping historical epic, which beautifully and masterfully encompasses the political, cultural and social landscape of China in the mid-1920s, as seen through the eyes of a down-home American boy. It also skewers the superstition and ignorance of the uneducated; exalts the loyalty and determination of lower-class Chinese over the bigotry of the Westerner; and divulges triumph and tragedy, despair and hope, honor and depravity in a single stroke.

It was made into a 1966 movie with Steve McQueen, but the book looks like it's going to be better. Books always are.

Riding the Iron Rooster is another latecomer. I picked it up for two bucks in a used bookstore in San Diego. It was written by one of my favorite travel authors (perhaps my very favorite), Paul Theroux. Where most travel writers wax poetic, florid, or downright sappy, Theroux remains delightfully crotchety. He hates people. He loves trains. So he rides trains, venerates trains (and the lands they pass through) and denigrates the passengers. Riding the Iron Rooster is an account of Theroux's passage through China, as part of a larger train trip through Asia (which he recounted in The Great Railway Bazaar, a book I read and loved). Just the title gets me going. Riding trains is fascinating and fun even in a familiar setting, but throw in the mysterious, misty, mountainous terrain of China, a country thousands of years old, with food and customs as otherworldly as can be, and—

—ooh, I've got goosebumps.

See what I mean? I'm getting China on the brain. Next thing you know I'll be forgiving the Chinese for being dirty Communists and sucking up all our national debt and limiting their poor citizens to one child per couple and being greedy, callous, polluted, industrialized buggers in general.

Anyway, that's the list. If you see anything on there you're curious about, drop me a line and I'll give you the skinny. I heartily encourage you to Google (or better yet, Amazon) some of these and see if they're worth checking into. I'm sure you'll find something you like.

One last thing:

Now that I'm done with Alien Perspective, I'm quite stumped as to what I should read next. I did Moby-Dick, followed it up with a few works of science fiction, took a short detour into scientific discourse, and then tripped lightly back into SF.

Where next? Suggestions, please.