Good Reads, October 2024

Hello and welcome to this blog post. It is about books I've read rather recently.

So, where to begin...? We'll begin with a novel.

Gordon R. Dickson. The Final Encyclopedia (1984). -- A mid-80s sf novel, and as such one of the last of the readable mainstream sf works there is. After that mainstream sf went south into weirdness, irony and PC.

This novel isn't perfect but it's interesting. It tells of a hero in the 24th century, it tells of grand politics, of Faustian life in the galaxy. A little bit like Dune in stressing archaism along with spacetravel and all that.

It also tells of different cultures focused on respectively old-school religion, wisdom, and mercenary services. The latter is represented by the Dorsai clan of elite soldiers, and a previous novel in the series was the eponymous Dorsai (1959), which was excellent. After that Dickson tended to repeat himself but he stays GOOD ENOUGH throughout the series for me to enjoy it. -- Dickson was a bit like his contemporary and friend Poul Anderson, though with more edge.

More about Dickson in this "Good Reads" post.

So for another novel. The one illustrating this post with the photo above.

Robert Holdstock. Mythago Wood (1984). -- A mysterious forest beckons a modern man, entices him to enter and interact with figures from myth... I'd say, this is our situation today, we must heed the call of the MYTHAGO WOOD.

You could say that Mythago Wood is an historical-legendary abyss: the deeper you look into it, the deeper it looks into you... enter and have a hands-on rendez-vous with myth.

I portrayed this novel rather meticulously in Science Fiction Seen From the Right (2016). That was based on my first read in the 80s. Now, in 2024, I've bought the book and reread it. The experience was interesting: "wiser and older" I could still appreciate it, yea, even marvel at stuff. This is just an incomparable fantasy, topical for today's pagan revival.

That was two novels. To round this off, hereby two biographies.

It is about two great bios on two interesting Americans: Albert Goldman's Elvis (1981) and Russell Miller's Bare-Faced Messiah (1987), the latter about L. Ron Hubbard.

Both books are predominantly critical of their subjects. Nonetheless fascinating portraits are painted... with notable co-stars too... like colonel Tom Parker, the Memphis Mafia, Sam Philips, Tom Jones, Priscilla, and all the pertinent movie stars... and regarding LRH, John W. Campbell, van Vogt, Heinlein, Asimov, and Jack Parsons.



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Good Reads, June 2022
Good Reads, March 2019