My goodness time flies. January is behind us.
I haven’t read a whole lot in the last two weeks. I did read another five Asimov stories in the Future History Project, but the goal was ten, so now I’m a week behind. The five stories I read were “Segregationist”, “Let’s Get Together”, “The Tercentenary Incident”, “First Law”, and “Runaround”.
These stories were all vaguely familiar and very enjoyable. My favorite was “The Tercentenary Incident”, in which the president of the future United States (which is now part of a bigger Earth government) is assassinated right after giving a Tercentenary speech on July 4, 2076. The method of assassination was interesting; the president simply disappeared in a “glitter of dust”. Clearly a Q36 Explosive Space Modulator. Shortly after that, the same president reappears and gives a different speech. Now we know one of the two presidents is a robot, but which one? Lots of that kind of thing coming as we move forward with Asimov’s stories.
Three of the next five stories are Susan Calvin stories. I’m looking forward to them!
I read Dan Simmons’ first published story, a horror tale called “The River Styx Runs Upstream”. It reminds me of Bradbury, but darker. In the story, the mother of the family dies for an unknown reason. The father spends a great deal of money, a financially ruinous sum, to have “The Resurrectionists” reanimate the corpse in some kind of technological way. The mother is now present physically, but not at all present in spirit. She walks around but doesn’t respond to interaction. I won’t spoil the story further, but it’s unsettling. This family is not at all well.
In the introduction, Simmons talks about Harlan Ellison reading this story during a workshop, and how he felt being taken seriously by both him and other writers.
I’m also well into Njal’s Saga for the second time. I’m loving it again, and look forward to reading other Icelandic sagas. I have a big book full of them right over there. We’ll talk about it on Good Story soon, but first we’ve got a movie to discuss: “Master and Commander” starring Russell Crowe, which was a terrific movie that reminds me of a whole mess of books I’d like to read.
And I still haven’t forgotten about Mignola’s vampires. Huzzah!
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