The books of 2002

1. The Bridge - Janine Ellen Young

An interesting book with a new twist on a familiar theme. It's a first contact story, but the aliens way of communicating by viruses unfortunately starts off a planet wide plague. The author has done a good job of captivating the feel of a deserted world and the changes society goes through when such a dramatic thing happens. Nobody is unharmed or unchanged and the drama of peoples in transformation is strangely touching. I'd recommend it as a well thought out and nicely written first contact novel.

2. Elvis och jag (Swedish Title) - Priscilla Beaulieu-Presley & Sandra Harmon

Who has not heard of the King of Rock n'Roll? This is the biography written by the woman who has made it her career to be Elvis wife and mother of his child. She is a shrewd business woman and if you're interested in the life of the King you should read it, but do balance it with another book or two.

He still is one fascinating man, EP. Go read this book, long live Elvis... :)

3. Tordyveln flyger i skymmningen (Swedish title) - Maria Gripe

A book for children's/young adults, but very readable. It's a ghost story and well told. A small village with an old mansion, and a love story that goes beyond the grave. True to the form, even ancient Egypt has a part to play. Good stuff.

4. Min skugga (Swedish title) - Christine Falkenland

This is the first novel I've read by Christine Falkenland, having read mostly her poems before. She has a feeling for the bare, brutal and sometimes stark power of language devoid of embellishments. It's very descriptive, and full of emotions and even has a strange backwards looking narrative which makes it almost necessary for you to reread the book when you've finished it. It's first at the last page that the meaning of the first page becomes clear. It's a story about a handicapped woman and her very twisted and bitter life. I'm not sure I liked it, but maybe it's because it's so depressing. Art(TM) like Serious Stuff(TM) in this country seems to always be that way. Should we blame Bergman?

5. The Rose - Charles L. Harness

This is a short novel, almost a novella, and to my surprise two short stories filled out the volume. I couldn't find any trace mentioning the other two stories in the book, anywhere in or outside the book. The title story is about some timewarping event that's about to happen when science and art take their differences to the battlefield and the world is transformed. It's both a book about conspiracies and the place of art in society. It tries to be a little to much at the same time and doesn't really succeed. But sometimes it almost rises to Dickian levels of absurdity and you get a glimpse of how good it could have been.

6. The Werewolves of London - Brian Stableford

A friend of mine read this book a few years ago and he told me it was a most strange experience, but that it was a good book. I've met Brian and he is a fun and chatty fellow, but for some reason he never gives the impression of having written any interesting books. And after reading the entry about him in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, I felt that this was a writer that knows a lot and have a very short attention span. At least it looks that way, since the Encyclopedia mentions that most of his books are part of some series or another and that they often becomes less interesting the more he writes.

This book is very strange, and parts of it are very heavy with in character academic writing and other rather pretentious and stuffy writing from the main characters. Other parts are filled with feeling and evokes the mists of Victorian London and occult mystery. It's both a book about some supernatural characters and their history and a occult history of the world. Filled with discussions of the nature of religion, faith and knowledge make it an interesting book even when the pace slows down. It's really one of a kind, and I wonder if the two other books in this series can add much to it.

7. Shadrach in the furnace - Robert Silverberg

During some years Silverberg wrote some really good books, some say they are depressing but I like them. One of these if this one. It portraits a world were almost everyone is suffering from the plague of organ rot and only the ruling elite in the permanently revolutionary committee have the antidote. Strangely enough this is a world were Mongolia has been transformed into a new world power, where the great khan Genghis II Mao IV rules the world. It's a nice twist to resurrect the ancient power of the mongols in a futuristic fantasy, and Silverberg does it with grace and wit. Basically is it a story of how a megalomaniac and some power-hungry persons transforms into something much more symbolic and by their acts change the world. Robert Silverberg is an excellent writer and he knows how to use powerful imagery to drive home some good points. Elegant and cold, his language is constrained and succeeds in telling the story without being heavy with emotions and cheap dramatic thrills. The power in this novels come from the place each and every character plays in this drama of symbols, where humanity and power is deconstructed in a very enjoyable literary format. It's a fun and sarcastic read, light while taking on heavy subjects like the death of all of mankind. I liked it a lot, and think that it deserves to be in print together with his masterpiece Dying Inside. Read it!

8. Conan: The Road of Kings - Karl Edward Wagner

To start this small review I have to say that the first reason I bought this book was because I'm interested in Karl Edward Wagner. I think that most of the Conan stories written by somebody else than R E Howard are lacking that special touch he had. This is a good Conan book though. It's a novel length story wherein Conan is shown as a rough barbarian in one of the civilized kingdoms. He is able to take profit and succeed where others fail not only because of his strength or physical prowess, but mostly because he has a savage code of honour and knows when he is out on a limb and should take care. Wagner thus avoid falling in the trap that many do, and Conan in this story is rightly a man of nature and his fear of magic and the supernatural is part of his personality. He is a savage power with a culture of his own, not only the best fighter in the civilized kingdoms. He should not always win, and do it with his strength alone. In this book he also gets the chance of learning about the traps of power and the nature of it. Action is not lacking and all the colour you expect are there. Good Conan, nothing less. The only thing I miss is that desperation and hint of destruction that Howard can evoke. Wagner writes more in the decaying gothic vein, which is not bad but different from Howard.

9. I Babylon (Swedish title) - Marcel Möring

This is a grand book! It's basically a book about a family, a large and sprawling crowd of people and their history of the ages. The narrator is stuck in the old house of his uncle, because of a snowstorm. He is writing a biography of the uncle, but it's also a great remembrance of his own life and the family at large. Since he is a writer of folk tales, he very often starts to elaborate and once in a while forefathers dead for centuries appear and chat with him and explain the adventures of the family. It's an engrossing tale, well told and with marvelous characters! It's hard to pin down what's really so special about it, but I do like it and heartily recommend it to anyone who like jewish family tales with strong symbolical elements. It's originally written in Dutch and is probably also available in English. It should be!

10. Invisible Eagle - Alan Baker

After long having an interest in the question of the occult influences on the leaders in the Third Reich, I jumped at the opportunity to read this book. Baker does a good job of showing the occult undercurrents flowing through the cultural landscape of Vienna and Germany at large at the end of the 19 century. I think you need some knowledge of the occult traditions to fully understand all the people and ideas referenced, but in all it's a very clear and concise history of the völkisch ideas and the rise of racism on a basis of weird theories of ancient empires and sunken continents. The SS and Heinrich Himmler appears as more or less deranged and it sounds like they had a very personal view of history and their place in the world. It's fairly easy to see how Hitler made fun of Himmler and his crackpot ideas. It's a very good book both for debunking idiotic ideas of a neo-nazi conspiracy, and oddball versions of history where the leading nazis wielded mystical powers. It's a true testament to the power of imagination and how ruthless people like Mdm. Blavatsky and L. Ron Hubbard can fool and con their fellow men to commit atrocities and believe in the most outrageously strange fabrications.

11. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

Since Pratchett is one of the most popular authors amongst many of my friends, and I have read books of his that are really funny I had high expectations for this one. Neil Gaiman does his best when writing in the borderline between the fairy land and the familiar world we all live in, so in this book they together really couldn't fail, could they? Well, they don't. That don't mean I think the book is really as good as I had hoped. It starts out good, with the apocalypse approaching and a demon and an angel working together to avert the fate, since they have become very fond of the world. Then when the hilarious parts end and the apocalypse really grows upon the world, the story gets bogged down and the fun comes not in a constant stream, but in small doses. It's a fun take on great matters as good and evil and some very cool stuff about the four horsemen of the apocalypse and the scariness of kids. What I missed was more of the great feeling I got from the beginning of the book. Now it actually felt like it ended more serious than it started out as. Maybe I just had to high expectations, that's all.

12. Jag. Du. Vi. En bok om Proust (Swedish title; Me. You. Us. A book about Proust [my translation])- Kristoffer Leandoer

A nice little booklet written by a reader and critic who not only knows how to grasp for the suble qualities of Proust's, he also succeeds in showing how much he loves to read Proust's work. A very unpretentious book, that contains the essence of Proust and the joy of reading his work. I did start to read a few other books about him and his work, but I only felt this book to be worth the efford. Nice.

13. Flowerdust - Gwyneth Jones (unfinished)

To little happens in the first third of the book and no characters seems to be worth the wait until the end of the story. To sad since I liked the author when I met her and would love to have liked this book. Maybe her other books are better.

14. Sacrament - Clive Barker

Once again I read a book by this master of modern fantasy. His later books have been better and better, showing his marvelous sense of the fantastic meeting the mundane. In this book it takes the reader a long time until the supernatural enter the scene. When it does it is in a dreamlike way which almost fools you into believing it wasn't anything after all. It's a more human story about life, death and our relation to all things living. I think I liked it a lot, since it has time and again surfaced in my thoughts after putting it down. Basically it's about a mystical hideout and the quest for enlightenment. You could blame Barker for using that troupe once too often but it is more than in which Barker examines the pain and pleasures of living in his tales of horror and fantasy. All great artist sooner or later finds their favoured form and then refines it for the rest of their lives. I think Clive Barker might have found some archetypes and ideas which he likes to stage with them. He might surprise us still with what can be done with them. Or something else for that matter. Watch this guy, he is an artist of surpreme fantsy. Recommended!!

15. Rommels krig i Afrika - Ökenrävar mot ökenråttor (Rommels War in Africa - Desert Foxes against Desert Rats [my translation]) - Wolf Heckmann

Interested as I am in the war in Africa, I really couldn't like this book. It contains a great deal of anecdotes of bravery and foolishness and long lists of units and regiments and where they maneuvered and met their fate. But, the lasting impression of this book is that Rommel, contrary to his reputation, was bno great commander. He had no grasp on how to sustain a military campaign, to caught up in small tactical victories. He was a tactical genious, indeed. But his way of driving his men beyond the limits leaves a sour taste in my mouth. As does his megalomaniac braggings in the letters to his wife. He seems to have as much grasp on reality as had his master, Hitler. More than once he speaks of panzerthrusts way beyond Suez and of conquering the russian hordes from the Caucasus. Madness indeed! I have gotten a new view on Rommel, but after awhile the lists of military units and how they moves gets tiresome. I never finished the book.

16. Luck in the Shadows - Lynn Flewelling

This was one nice book to read! I had been away from the field of fantasy for awhile and ow it felt good to again read a fantasy novel that both felt just like I wanted, but still original. I think being original is one of the hardest things for a fantasy writer. Lynn Flewelling has not fallen in th trap of making it like an everyday fantasy, with new names. It actually feels fresh. It's a low magic world, and after finishing the book you still feel a lot of mystery is left. Perhaps that's one of the things I liked so much, that it feels like strange. The interplay of characters is what drives the plot forward, and while the young man growing up is the calssical fantasy protagonist he doesn't feel too much like a cartoon character. Since most of the plot is political scheming and rougish tricks I almost get a feeling I'm back in the world of Nehwon of Fritz Leibers classical tales of Lankhmar. So, it's a good read, with smooth flowing language and no excessivly flowery prose. It works. It has a gritty feel to it, while still being enthralling and fun. If you like your classical fantasy a little more thick in intrigue but still low key, this is a book for you. I note with pleasure that even though there are more books in the series, they are fairly stand alone and not too thick. Recommended!

17. Dust of Far Suns - Jack Vance

Being a collection of four stories, it's a little hard to summarize. I only can say that for once I think Jack Vance succeeded better with restraint than he is known for. To clarify that sentence I'll have to point out that Vance is most known for, and have gather many of his fans, for his flamboyant prose. In these four stories he shows very little of that baroque language of his, but crafts some very memorable stories of poignant and memorable character. Two of them seems mostly like parables about the human mind and what shapes his humanity. The other two are more like classical science fiction pieces where a setting is introduced, a problem arises and when it is solved, ingeniously, something about the setting itself has been expanded upon. All are very good, to the point and told in a engaging way. The best is probably Dodkin's Job about the futility and hopelessness one can feel at work and how a society of red tape and meaningless hierarchy kills all life and meaning. The only problem with these tales is that I feel a little sad from the the bleak view of man Vance seems to have. He is not much of an opptimist, really.

18. The Ship of Ishtar - A. Merritt

Having read a modern fantasy novel fairly recently, it was a nice contrasting experience to read this oldie. The oldest copyright notice in my book says 1924. It doesn't feel like any modern book. The language is very dense and awkward, with a lot of hackneyed phrases and long passages where significant pieces of back story gets told as "lectures" between the protagonists. Very much like old times. What it do have is intensity. Everyone is aflame with passion and say and do rash things all the time. Gods appear nilly willy and fight awhile before they dissapear again. Is is a parallell world of people from the ancient world set amidst a conflict between the godess Ishtar and the god Nergal. Naturally the women are fair and succumb to the hero, who is noble and strong. If it wasn't that the daring adventures flowed with such gusto over the pages I would have been bored to death a thousand times over from their cliched behaviour. I'm not sure it was good, or really bad either. It was an experience to read, and I like to put modern fantasy in perspective with the older masters. That sure was fun.

19. Mysteriet med det utbytta ansiktet (The Case of the Substitute Face) - Erle Stanley Gardner

Usually I don't read mystery novels. Before reading this I haven't read one since I was at least ten years younger. But since I loved the Perry Mason television series with Raymond Burr I felt I could at least read one book to see how the original was. I was delighted! Mysteries surely can be fun sometimes. My wife sometimes acuses me of reading books to fast, just to get to the end. I admit that I sometimes get hooked and feels very strongly that I want to know how the story ends, skipping nice prose in between. For once it felt good to read a novel where plot development was everything and the point of reading it was to read faster to get to know who the guilty party was. Great fun and fairly decently written. Some things have changed since 1949 when the book was published, but that just gave a nice historical feeling. Who knows, after this I might even start reading historical novel or, god forbid, more mysteries...

20. Bevingaren - Dénis Lindbohm

This is one book I have longed to read. My wife used to read many of Dénis' books when she was younger and have talked about how some of them really moved her. Since Dénis is the most prolific and most original of the, very few, Swedish science fiction writers I felt that I had quite a few reasons for reading one of his books. I can't say I regret it, but I'm not sure I liked the book! It's basically the same story as the more famous Childhoods End by Arthur C. Clarke, even though I might to both of them an injustice comparing them like this. It's about how mankind grows up and learns a lot about how much of our ideas about society are subject to change. Lindbohm is, contrary to Clarke, a very political writer. When Clarke let humanity grow up to fit in the mystic cosmic unity Lindbohm spends a lot more time on the change in itself. It's a story about how the state and the individual clash, how order and chaos meet. It's more a book about pacifistic anarchism throw the physical transformation of humanity than about cosmic unity. I loved Childhoods End when I read it a long time ago. I'm not sure I will look at it again in the same way after reading this book.

21. Lud in the Mist - Hope Mirrlees

Since I like fantasy, I should familiarize myself with the classics, right? Convenient enough there was in my bookshelf one unread classic waiting! This is not the Tolkien stuff rehased. Nope, not at all. It's about fairies, fairy fruit and a protagonist who isn't a young man growing up. The language is flowery, blooming and almost too much to stand. Some, like my wife, found it setting the mood perfectly while I almost started to get frustrated by all the cute and flowery description. I'm pretty sure it was intentional by the author, to properly establish the cozy and sleepy little land. Thus to sow the seeds of doubt about where fairyland really began and reality ended. It did work, but I could just barely stand the stuffy little people living their lives in the middle class smugness. You almost feel they deserve it when the world come crashing down. Almost. After having read most of it I had been charmed after all, only to be totally confused by the last three chapters. The resolution was dizzying, and turned the tables on me as a reader. I suddenly felt that this book was about something, not quite grasped by me. Thinking a little, reshuffling my thoughts, it felt like the whole novel was about a trip of LSD. The only problem was that it wasn't invented when the book was written in the 1920's! I think it's very psycheological and written with focus and intent. I hope I someday might understand what it was really about. I don't buy the political explation.

22. Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds

Whew! That was a close one. I finished it without loosing my mind. I haven't read such a beast of a cosmic page-turner in a long time! It has nano-tech of the most fantastic kind, replicating machines and personality simulations. High-tech so unbelivingly cool you felt you just had to slow down the reading and bath in the amazing future world where such things existed. The only thing stopping you is that the plot is such a gripping yarn of cliffhanger action that you had to read on, getting to the next reliving climax of plot before it plunged further on, cosmic scale. The only thing I've read in recent years that comes even close to capture the same feeling is the brilliant Hyperion by Dan Simmons. The only problem I had with this books is that while it was cool, it didn't provide as much food for thought as Simmon's book and considering the high stakes gambled on I guess the final had to be kind of over the top strangeness. Thos of you who have seen the film 2001 - A Space Odyssey know what kind of ending I'm talking about. Anyway, I still liked it and will read more books by Alastair Reynolds!

23. Drakar, Gudar & Andar i den kineniska mytologin (Dragons, gods & spirits from Chinese Mythology) - Tao Tao Liu Sanders

I started to read this book after having seen a film about the adventures of the monkey king. It was great fun and I wanted more wild stories from the mythic China. Great fun!

24. Downward to the Earth - Robert Silverberg

Hmmm... I think I have read this book before. Maybe that isn't so strange, since during the late sixties Bob Silverberg wrote a string of books of similar style and content. I love some of those books and the themes explored therein. This is a book about funny coloured elephants, or aliens who look like that. It's also a short little piece about transformation of the self and of trancending your horizons. It wasn't a gently flowing tale, sometimes the storytelling felt a little bit heavy handed. But it worked and it's another Silverberg story, from his most experimental period, about another form of christ. The only problem is Bob has written about this before, and done it better.

25. Dark Rivers of the Heart - Dean Koontz

I must say I was surprised by this book, in many ways. It is the book I had heard was Dean Koonts "serious" book. It was, and at the same time it was the same old page turner. Strangly enough, when some political messages appeared they almost felt out of place and sometimes they didn't fit in really. The theme of the book carried through, it was loud and clear. What felt strange was the small stabs in between when some guy or other, of the omnipresent author talked about government or let loose a jibe or two at something. But it still felt like an important book.
Let's see if I can get in down without re-writing the book. It's about government, and about we willingly or not are loosing our freedom. He paints a picture of how the structures of our society can be used against us. How computers and modern technology can make you traceable throughout everything you do, and how unscrupulous people can use this technology to within legal limits make a living hell for sombody they just don't like. This of course reads like one of his usual thrillers, but often the dialog is centred on some of these issues. It works most of the time, and it is a very frightening tale. It's not about monsters, but about the seeping in in the very system that is built to protect us. Very much is it also a book about how power corrupts, and how madness and good intentions sometimes goes hand in hand. Now when "anti terrorist laws" are passed in many countries we should stop a minute and consider what Koontz is telling us in this novel. Are we giving away our freedom, and voting for a world of state tyrrany and the total loss of privacy? I'm not all for the abolishment of state, I think it has a role to fill. But the point of a state is to protect the citizens and guard their rights, not to guard the state against the people. We are dangerously close to crossing the line. Go read this book!