Patrick Johanneson

On your night­stand right now:

Fic­tions by Jorge Luis Borges, thanks to an essay in William Gibson’s Dis­trust that Par­tic­u­lar Fla­vor.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Strangely, it was prob­a­bly The For­ever War by Joe Halde­man.  I grew up in a house where my father’s sci­ence fic­tion nov­els dom­i­nated every book­shelf — and there were a lot of book­shelves.  I didn’t under­stand a tenth of what was really going on in the book, but I read it over and over all the same.

Your top five authors:

In no par­tic­u­lar order, Michael Swan­wick, William Gib­son, Joe Halde­man, Elmore Leonard, and Terry Pratch­ett.  I like lit­er­ate SF/F, I like quick, clean prose, and I like to laugh.

Book you’re an evan­ge­list for:

Sta­tions of the Tide, by Michael Swan­wick.  It’s the tale of a bureau­crat tasked with chas­ing down a magi­cian who is spread­ing pro­scribed tech­nol­ogy on a world about to be con­sumed by a great flood, and it’s based on Shakespeare’s The Tem­pest. It also fea­tures tantric sex lessons from a witch.

Book you’ve faked reading:

Hmmm.  I never man­aged to fin­ish The Da Vinci Code; I went to see the movie just to see if I had missed any­thing. (Nope.)

Book you’ve bought for the cover:

Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard.  It was the first novel of his that I read.  I was hooked by the end of the first scene.

Favorite line from a book:

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gun­slinger fol­lowed.”  — The Gun­slinger, by Stephen King.  Com­ing in at a very close sec­ond:  “We real­ize this means the destruc­tion of solar sys­tems, but con­sider the alter­na­tive.”  — A Fire Upon the Deep, by Ver­nor Vinge.  And:  “The bureau­crat fell from the sky.”  — Sta­tions of the Tide, by Michael Swanwick

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The entirety of Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga.