4) Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison

This is the famous follow-up volume to the even more famous Dangerous Visions, which I read almost exactly three years ago; an anthology of 41 stories, mainly by the leading lights of sf as it was in 1972, with vast amounts of prefatory material by editor Harlan Ellison and an afterword from each author, and nice art from Ed Emshwiller introducing each story.

But what is striking is how unmemorable and self-indulgent most of the stories are (also true of Ellison's long-winded prefaces). The three best are definitely Ursula Le Guin's "The Word for World is Forest", Joanna Russ's "When it Changed", and James Tiptree Jr's "The Milk of Paradise"; interestingly all three have the same basic plot, of an unspoilt planet being wrecked by us humans. Many of the others are just silly, Kurt Vonnegut being particularly proud of Using Rude Words To Be Grown-Up. In fact, the only other one I enjoyed was James Blish's erotic pastiche "Getting Along", which parodies numerous High Gothic writers - I particularly liked his riff on The Moon Pool.

But four memorable stories out of 41 is a very poor strike rate. I couldn't in all conscience recommend anyone to spend money on this collection, and I am wondering, heretically, if it is really such a shame that the third volume of the series never appeared.

28) City of Illusions, by Ursula Le Guin

One of Le Guin's early books, which I had not previously heard of; I thought it was rather impressive, though. Set in a far future depopulated American continent, the protagonist, Falk, has appeared out of nowhere with no memory and goes on a quest to recover / discover his identity. The first half of the (short) book is an Odyssey-style journey across the continent, the second half, after his arrival in Es Toch (the city of illusions in the books's title), is his attempt to outwit the sinister Ching and fulfill his quest. It is a little pulp-ish in design and execution, but I really am surprised not to have heard more about this as part of Le Guin's œuvre.

2) Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman.

Previously noted by pickwick here, sinclair_furie here, and Cheryl Morgan. (No serious spoilers on any of those.)

I love Neil Gaiman's writing, though I was disappointed to discover that both American Gods and Coraline had hidden shallows, in that neither of them moved very far from his previous work, and neither had a really profound message despite the flashy packaging. Anansi Boys is different, taking a new look at Gaiman's old themes of family, death, divinity and identity and doing it very well, with an impressive dollop of humour throughout. I creased up with laughter at the story about President Taft in the first few pages (OK, my sense of humour is peculiar) and basically couldn't put the book down last night once I had started it properly. Yeah, it takes a wee while to get going (the plot only really takes off on page 146, when Daisy goes to work); yeah, the fact that all our characters are going to converge in the same place at the end is signalled so far in advance that I don't think saying so can possibly count as a spoiler (but at least that makes it look more like Fate than Coincidence); yeah, it's a bit corny that I got the "special edition" a la DVD (with a deleted scene, author's note book, interview with the author, and discussion questions to make sure you're read it properly); but I loved it. Cheryl's prediction that it will win lots of awards is, I suspect, a good call.

( more with spoilers on mythology, girlfriends and race )

Apparently Lenny Henry is going to read the audio-book. I'm not into those as a rule, but I just might get this one.

13) The Wind's Twelve Quarters, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Under heavy work pressure at the moment, so I'm returning to basics. I've read the collection a couple of times before, but it was nice to be reminded of, say the early Earthsea story, "The Rule of Names", with that great couple of sentences ending the penultimate paragraph:

But they did stop talking about it, three days later. They had other things to talk about, when Mr Underhill finally came out of his cave.

Which will mean nothing to you unless and until you read the story. There are a number of other cool stories in the book, such as "Nine Lives" and "Vaster than Empires and More Slow". And one or two that still appeal to the teenage geek in me such as "April in Paris".

The other issue that interested me - really because of my recent exchange with fjm - was Le Guin's claims about her own feminism. Her introduction to "Winter's King" certainly sounds as if she defined herself as a feminist in 1975, but also as if she felt she had not been sufficiently conscious to gender issues when the story was first published in 1969 (a point she makes explicitly, for different reasons, about the first publication of "Nine Lives" in 1968 - in Playboy). I'll obviously have to read more of what she says about her own work.

Here. Or, more briefly, here.

...after three weeks away. So seen in passing:

38 dishonest tricks to win an argument

The Museum of Hoaxes

Ursula Le Guin is backing Kerry (scroll down, a long long way)

How to present complex issues to President Bush

What if the government fell, and nobody noticed?

Thanks to the usual suspects.

A train to Paris, followed by a trans-Atlantic flight, is a good way to make further inroads into the books bought the other week in London. I'm typing this up on my laptop during a stopover in JFK; it's approaching 10 pm here, which is 4 am by the European clock. I slept very badly last night (Sunday night, that is) in Paris, and didn't get a lot of sleep on the plane either (though I did have the luxury of three seats to myself to stretch across). So once I finally get to my hotel in Washington I will tuck in for a damn good night's sleep, even though it will be my usual getting-up time. (Who knows when I will be able to post this? I hope the hotel has broadband in the bedrooms - the modem on this laptop is pretty dodgy.) I also still have a stinking cold (see lj entries for the last week or so) which should help the sleep process, though it didn't really facilitate my participation in the Paris conference and won't really help me in DC.

Anyway, to the books:

( 1) On, by Adam Roberts )

( 2) Changing Planes, by Ursula Le Guin )

The author comments that "this book was written when the miseries of air travel seemed to be entirely the doing of the corporations that ran the airports and the airlines, without any help from bigots with beards in caves". ( New York reflections )

( 3) Maul, by Tricia Sullivan )

( PS )

1) with Ray Bradbury
2) with Ursula Le Guin

Both here thanks to Bookslut. If you haven't bookmarked her, why not?