Reviews

Horns, by Joe Hill

Posted on by Patrick

Horns is a page-turn­er.  Most nights the only rea­son I stopped read­ing was because I had to make a choice between find­ing out what comes next and being use­ful at work in the morning.

The sto­ry con­cerns one Ignatius “Ig” Per­rish, who wakes up one morn­ing after an ill-remem­bered night of drink­ing to dis­cov­er that he has grown horns overnight.  They look a bit like dev­il horns, and they hurt to touch.  He dis­cov­ers the horns seem to have giv­en him cer­tain pow­ers, too:  peo­ple can’t help but reveal their dark­est secrets to him, and they don’t seem to remem­ber talk­ing to him.

Ig’s girl­friend Mer­rin died about a year ago, a hor­rif­ic sex-mur­der; all the evi­dence seemed to point to Ig as the cul­prit, but he knows he did­n’t do it.  The evi­dence con­ve­nient­ly van­ished, and no one was ever con­vict­ed.  The towns­folk all assumed Ig’s rich par­ents bought off the jus­tice sys­tem to pro­tect the fam­i­ly name.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Horns, by Joe Hill” →

“Exit Interview” reviewed

Posted on by Patrick

A web­site called Dia­bol­i­cal Plots has tak­en it upon them­selves to review pret­ty much any­thing and every­thing that Dai­ly Sci­ence Fic­tion pub­lish­es.  In the last week or so, they got to the August 2011 sto­ries, which include my short sto­ry, “Exit Inter­view”.

In short: they liked it.

When I was asked to review “Exit Inter­view” by Patrick Johan­neson (debut 8/3 and reviewed by Anony­mous), I was pleased as I clear­ly remem­bered read­ing it the day it arrived in my inbox–always a good sign. I enjoyed it as much read­ing it a sec­ond time.
More »

They also point­ed out that no less a lumi­nary than Mike Resnick — Mike Resnick! — has sold a sto­ry to Dai­ly SF. That’s some esteemed com­pa­ny to be in, methinks. (For those not in the know — Mike Resnick has been nom­i­nat­ed for more Hugo Awards than any oth­er sci­ence fic­tion writer.  Includ­ing Grand­mas­ters like Asi­mov, Clarke, and Heinlein.)

So.  How’s your day been?

Review: Black Bottle Man

Posted on by Patrick

Black Bottle Man

Black Bot­tle Man

Rem­brandt is ten years old when his life is turned upside-down.

It’s 1928, and the Great Depres­sion has yet to begin. Rem­brandt’s entire world is his extend­ed fam­i­ly, three house­holds of farm­ers who live very close to each oth­er, as farm hous­es go. He’s the only child in three fam­i­lies, and his aunts both want a child very badly.

So bad­ly, in fact, that they’ll cut a deal with the Dev­il to get what they want.

To save his aunts’ souls, Rem­brandt, his pa, and his uncle Thomp­son have to take to the road, nev­er stay­ing in any one place longer than twelve days. Because on the thir­teenth day, the Black Bot­tle Man will come for them…

* * *

This one took me by sur­prise; it built so steadi­ly, and so qui­et­ly, skip­ping from Rem­brandt’s youth to his 90-year-old dotage, that I did­n’t real­ize until the end just how much I had invest­ed in it. The cli­max caught me off guard with just how much emo­tion it wrung from me. Not many books have made me tear up. This one did­n’t, either, but man it was a near thing.

My only com­plaint would be that I found a few gram­mat­i­cal quib­bles, here and there, but on the whole this book is high­ly recommended.

Writ­ten by Craig Rus­sell, based on his radio play of the same name, Black Bot­tle Man is pub­lished by Great Plains Teen Fic­tion, an imprint of Great Plains Pub­li­ca­tions. My copy is signed because I went to the book launch at Pen­ny­wise Books here in Brandon.

Get it…
from the publisher
from Chapters/Indigo
from Amazon.com

Movie review: Moon

Posted on by Patrick

About an hour ago, the cred­its rolled on Moon. I went into the film know­ing very lit­tle: the only trail­er I’d seen fea­tured Sam Rock­well look­ing disheveled, and had Kevin Spacey as a HAL-style AI that com­mu­ni­cat­ed via a com­bi­na­tion of even, sooth­ing tones, and smi­ley faces.

I won’t post any spoil­ers here, but suf­fice to say that I quite liked the film. It had echoes of 2001: a space odyssey, Blade Run­ner, Gat­ta­ca, and Alien. All of those films are includ­ed in what I con­sid­er the canon of excel­lent sci­ence fic­tion, which should tell you some­thing about how thor­ough­ly I enjoyed Moon.

Sam Rock­well plays Sam Bell, com­ing into the tail end of his three-year solo stint as the human over­seer at a min­ing sta­tion on the moon’s far side. He keeps tabs on the unmanned rovers that comb the sur­face of the moon for He3, the fuel of the future.

Three years is a long time to be alone, and Sam’s look­ing for­ward to head­ing home to his lov­ing wife and young daugh­ter. He’s due — per­haps over­due — for a fur­lough. He might be going just a lit­tle tee­ny bit crazy. At the very least, he’s start­ed to see things, peo­ple, that can’t real­ly be there…

The movie explores lone­li­ness, ill­ness, loss and sor­row, anger, and evil. But every­thing’s done with a light touch. Some things are only hint­ed at, leav­ing the audi­ence to fill in the gaps, trust­ing that the audi­ence mem­bers are smart enough. Even the end­ing is sneaky: you have only a cou­ple sec­onds’ knowl­edge that the dénoue­ment has come, and then the cred­its are already rolling.

Moon is a refresh­ing SF film, one that encour­ages you to use your brain, to think around the cor­ners. It requires that you watch the film with your mind in gear, instead of in neu­tral. It’s a refresh­ing change.

Moon
…on IMDB
…on Rot­ten Tomatoes
…where I saw it

Next time (prob­a­bly): » Kata at the shore

The last few days

Posted on by Patrick

On Thurs­day we went to the Corb Lund con­cert at the West­man, and it was fan­tas­tic. The open­ing acts were quirky and alt-coun­try, so they meshed well with Lund and his band. The head­lin­ers played a lot of my favourites, which made me hap­py. All in all, there was near enough not to mat­ter to three hours of live music. We sat 7th-row, stage right, which were fine seats.

Fri­day we got invit­ed out to a “black tie” mar­ti­ni par­ty at Lady of the Lake. I got gussied up in a suit, K put on her new Lit­tle Black Dress, and we ven­tured forth with X and X (no, I’m not kid­ding, I know two peo­ple whose ini­tials are X, and they were both in the back seat of my car on Fri­day night). Live music by Poor Boy Roger, a local blues/swing band, danc­ing, mar­ti­nis of all descrip­tions (includ­ing one with a choco­late-cov­ered espres­so bean at the bot­tom like a prize), and deli­cious appe­tiz­ers. It was a hoot.

Sat­ur­day we ran into The City so I could take part in the U of M’s week­end judo class. An hour of warmup left me sweat­ing pro­fuse­ly — I thought I was going to die dur­ing the hand­ball game — and then I was shown the first two sets of ju-no-kata, along with some help find­ing the kata’s nar­ra­tive, which helps. I also had one of the sen­seis drop a pearl of wis­dom in my ear that I’ve been turn­ing over in my mind ever since: “All throws in judo come from sumi-oto­shi or uki-otoshi.”

Sun­day: off to MacG for fam­i­ly fun times with T, A, and their new boy B. Hav­ing a cold, I felt it was unwise to hold the baby, so K end­ed up with my turn. Not that she com­plained one whit.

Tonight: Watched a cow-ork­er’s copy of The Fall, which was a fan­tas­tic movie, in all sens­es of the word. It was visu­al­ly stun­ning, well-shot, it cap­ti­vat­ed my atten­tion, and it pro­vid­ed an inter­est­ing look at the process of cre­at­ing a sto­ry. It was also a mov­ing dra­ma, and brim­ful of fine actors in fine roles.

And then, tonight as well, I sub­mit­ted two more sto­ries to mag­a­zines: “After the Mis­sile Rain”, a <1k “flash” piece, to Flash Fic­tion Online, and “Nei­ther Bang nor Whim­per”, 2700 words that I wrote in under 24 hours for a con­test, to Fan­ta­sy Mag­a­zine. Wish me luck!

And with that: good night.

Indy

Posted on by Patrick

I went and saw the new Indy Jones pic­ture-show* tonight, and…

…well…

…it was­n’t the film I was hop­ing for, but I sup­pose it was the film I was expect­ing.

Too many know­ing nods to the audi­ence; too many hat-relat­ed gags, like they’re try­ing to work an entire tril­o­gy’s worth into one script; too much of Shia Leboeuf**—who may be a fine actor in his own right, I have no idea, but he’s not up to par with Har­ri­son “Hen­ry Jones Jr.” Ford; and an over-the-top cli­max that made me feel like they were try­ing to out-every­thing everything.

It almost felt like they made the movie, watched it, and said, “Needs more… some­thing.” So they crammed it right full of in-jokes, winks, and armies of CG mon­keys, ants, and gophers, when what it need­ed was more, let’s see, coherence.

Indi­ana Jones and the King­dom of the Crys­tal Skull: It’s like Raiders of the Lost Ark, with more cowbell.

____

* You know. The talky.
** I’m sure I spelled that wrong, but I’m not inclined to look it up.

Dragons of Babel, by Michael Swanwick

Posted on by Patrick

AwesomeThis nov­el arrived in the mail about a day before I head­ed west, after I’d wait­ed the bet­ter part of two weeks for it (and even longer, if you fac­tor in the fact that I pre-ordered it, but that’s a whole ‘nother sto­ry, as they say).

I start­ed read­ing it on the train, and I fin­ished it in the base­ment liv­ing room of my sis­ter-in-law’s house. It’s an engross­ing read; as I neared the end, I had to force myself to slow down, to not miss any of the fan­tas­tic* details hid­den in very near­ly every sin­gle sentence.

The nov­el­’s set in the same indus­tri­al-faerie uni­verse as The Iron Drag­on’s Daugh­ter, but it’s by no means a sequel. The sto­ry starts off with Will le Fey watch­ing war drag­ons arc across the sky over his small vil­lage, bound for con­flict in some unimag­in­able war. One is shot down, and drags itself, flight­less, to Will’s vil­lage, where it declares itself ruler. It makes Will its lieu­tenant, in part because Will, unlike any­one else in town, is half-human.

Will par­takes in the priv­i­leges and the awful respon­si­bil­i­ties of his role, and in short order the entire vil­lage is set against him. When the drag­on’s grip on the vil­lage is final­ly bro­ken, Will is sent into exile.

He makes his way across a Faërie beset by the rav­ages of war, and winds up in a refugee camp. From there he trav­els to Babel itself, the great tow­er that stands high as Heav­en, and joins in a con­fi­dence game that trades on the iden­ti­ty of the absen­tee King of Babel to make a lot of mon­ey. But there’s a twist; there’s always a twist…

This book is dense with infor­ma­tion, and every sen­tence serves to nudge the plot for­ward. There’s a depth and a human­i­ty to the char­ac­ters, and we see peo­ple at their best and at their very worst, some­times on the same page. Noth­ing is irrel­e­vant; every detail has its place and its pur­pose. The world of Babel is rife with betray­als, dis­ap­point­ments, tri­umphs, and tragedies.

Michael Swan­wick very much needs to be more well-known than he is. It’s a shame that hard­ly any­one will have heard of this book, much less read it.

______

* In every sense of the word.

Bone

Posted on by Patrick

If you haven’t read Bone yet, you real­ly should.

I won’t say any more*, because I should be writ­ing my own zom­bie-lawyer epic, but here are pas­sel of reviews.

* Except this: I did­n’t want it to end. As I approached page 1200**, I found myself torn: I could­n’t wait to turn the page and see just how every­one was going to get out of this jam, but I want­ed to pace myself, because I did­n’t want to get to the end­ing. No mat­ter how good an end­ing it was (and I feel it was just about per­fect), it would still be The End. I want­ed to stay with all of them—the Bone cousins, Thorn, Gran’­ma Ben, the red drag­on, even the stu­pid, stu­pid rat creatures—just a lit­tle longer.

It’s been almost for­ev­er since I read a book that made me feel that way.

** Yes. It’s a com­ic. Yes. It’s clear of 1300 pages long.

Lamb

Posted on by Patrick

Lamb, a nov­el by Christo­pher Moore.

The sub­ti­tle on this one is “The Gospel accord­ing to Biff, Christ’s child­hood pal”, so right off you should know if you’re the type that will enjoy this sto­ry, or the kind that maybe should­n’t pick it up. Me, I’m the type that would enjoy this story.

Hav­ing read Moore’s nov­el Coy­ote Blue years ago, I knew that he was fun­ny. Appar­ent­ly I’d for­got­ten how fun­ny. I chor­tled all the way through this book (well, till I got to the last sec­tion, titled “The Passion”).

The sto­ry is large­ly con­cerned with the “miss­ing years” of Christ’s life. Biff (whose real name is Levi bar Alphaeus) and Christ (whose real name is Joshua bar Joseph) grow up togeth­er, fall in love with the same girl (Mary the Mag­da­lene, referred to here as “Mag­gie”), and have all kinds of adven­tures and mis­ad­ven­tures togeth­er. When events con­spire to put Mag­gie beyond their reach for­ev­er, Joshua and Biff sad­dle up and head off to the East, look­ing for the Wise Men that had showed up on the night of Josh’s birth.

They track down Balthasar, Mel­chior, and Gas­par, traips­ing from Israel to Afghanistan, Chi­na, and India in the process, learn­ing kung fu, Zen Bud­dhism, and Hin­du asceti­cism along the way. (Well, Josh learns; Biff is more into the ladies, and he learns quite a few items from them, most­ly relat­ed to the Kama Sutra.)

The sto­ry is packed with laughs, both overt and sly (at one point, Biff says to Josh, as they trav­el toward Dam­as­cus, “Well it’s not just going to come to you in a flash here on the Dam­as­cus road, Josh. That sort of thing does­n’t happen.”

As good as he is at telling the fun­ny stuff, Moore does­n’t flinch when he tells the sad sto­ries; the grim and grue­some parts of the tale are equal­ly well-told. The Pas­sion and the Cru­ci­fix­ion are espe­cial­ly heart-rend­ing when told in the voice of a man forced to watch his clos­est friend die.

When I came to the epi­logue, I found myself wish­ing there was more, much more. I think I’ll have to get some more Christo­pher Moore nov­els into my house.

Some quick reviews

Posted on by Patrick

It’s been a busy few days.

Thurs­day: we went to Super­man Returns. The movie was okay, but I think it could have been a lot more fun. Super­man was dull and flat, and Lois was just depressed. For­tu­nate­ly, Lex Luthor was a show-steal­er, and pro­vid­ed most of the laughs (though there were moments where Jim­my Olsen’s imper­turbably pos­i­tive world­view made me think of Will Fer­rell, in a good way).

Fri­day: I bought Clone Wars Vol I and II and Mike Pat­ton’s lat­est project, Peep­ing Tom.

Peep­ing Tom is an eclec­tic mix of tunes. Mike Pat­ton (lead singer for the now-defunct Faith No More, among oth­er things) teams up with a bunch of dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Appar­ent­ly the sound files were trans­ferred via email between the var­i­ous par­tic­i­pants dur­ing the album’s ges­ta­tion peri­od. I enjoy the tunes; some­where online I read that the project is “pop music as Mike Pat­ton would like to define pop music”.

Giv­en that Pat­ton’s voice is one of the rea­sons that I liked Faith No More so much–he’s got a range from gut­tur­al, death-met­al low reg­is­ters, all the way up to a nasal falset­to, and he sounds par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty when he’s stage-whispering–it seems nat­ur­al that I would like this album. And I do.

Inter­est­ing note: One of his co-con­spir­a­tors is Norah Jones. And she swears.

Peep­ing Tom on Conan O’Brien, per­form­ing “Mojo”, the album’s first sin­gle Tak­en off of YouTube due to copy­right violations.

We also rent­ed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which was a fun, vio­lent, swear-filled romp. It was a lot of fun to watch, sort of in the Pulp Fic­tion vein (in more ways than one, really).

And tonight I watched Vol­ume II of Clone Wars (I’d already seen Vol­ume I at my sis­ter’s place, cour­tesy of my bro-in-law). Vol­ume II was just as well-done as Vol­ume I. Why o why could­n’t the pre­quel tril­o­gy have been this good?

One of the extras on the DVD was a short film called Revenge of the Brick. It’s bril­liant. Espe­cial­ly the orches­tral bit at the end. Enjoy!

Oh, one more sort-of Star Wars relat­ed item. A cow-ork­er for­ward­ed this to me, and now I’m con­tem­plat­ing buy­ing the album. It’s a song called “Crazy”, by a band called Gnarls Barkley.