The books of 2005

1. Salt - Adam Roberts

So, this is a book about how two societies clash. It's also a book about two people, and about colonizing a strange planet. Both of the narrators describe the same thing from very different viewpoints. It's a neat way of narrating a story, and since both of their tales are very different it allows the author to show his characters, worldmaking and ideas in many ways. Elegant. The world is a harsh one, with little water since most of it is saltdesert. The descriptions of the world reminds me of Red Mars in its descriptions of barren beauty. The societies we get to read about are both very stylized, more like ideological thought experiments than real societies. Anyhow, even though one of the protagonists is a vain and strung-up military man I did like him best. He at least worked for the common good, as he saw it. The other one, a rapist and murderer, was one of the most uncoth, disgusting pieces of shit I ever encountered in a book! How I despised him. Their world degenerate into war, and the dream of a new world collapse. A depressing tale, and the last chapter was terribly unfocused. Well written, and provided some food for though. But one character sure made it an unpleasant book. I think I'll need some more entertaining read after this one.

2. Alkemisten - Paulo Coelho

The cover blurb says this book have been translated into 56 languages. What I don't understand is why? It's a story about a boy that leaves his comfortable life as a shepherd to go to the pyramids of Egypt to find the treasure of his dreams. During his travels he grows wise and learns the mysteries of life, to listen to his heart. Is this profound, or just plain banality? You decide. The author tells us in his postscript that he in his search for magic came upon the secrets of alchemy, and this book is a symbolic retelling of those mysteries. I'm not all that impressed. Sure, live life so that everything matters. Calm down and listen to your heart and dare to follow your dreams. If that's magic and alchemy, then I guess it has some merits. How come this book have been so popular? Are those "revelations" that new? Maybe I'm to wise already, or just didn't get it. One thing I did like was the atmosphere of hushed life, in respect of nature. Read it in one go, or at least with as few pauses as possible to retain the feeling until the end. Otherwise it looses direction and becomes a bit bland. Nice, but nothing more.

3. Carmilla - Sheridan Le Fanu

Golden oldie? This vampiric yarn is frankly quite dusty. No great suspense or drama served here. It's not the melodramatic posing or the purple prose that make it boring, but the lack of them!

4. Use of Weapons - Iain M. Banks

I read this book since Jesper told me that I'd probably like it, being fond of The Bridge. It is indeed just as well structured as that novel, with every move by the protagonist plotted precisely. Two strands of the tale revolve around the twisted life of the protagonist, chronologically forwards and backwards. At last they meet, and sparks fly. Banks know how to plot a novel, and how to build upon gross and gory details a portrait that's as human as needed for a proper emotional punch. It hits you, squarely between the eyes when you no longer thought anything of that power was left standing. Exquisite craftmanship, and it left emotional marks. Try not to think of chairs. It's even more unpleasant than Salt!!

5. Satan's World - Poul Anderson

A far future, with business as usual in the galaxy. Schemes and hard bargins as a world is thawing up, getting close to its star. Opportunities arise and Falkayn goes yonder and deals with aliens and the problems of space and dangerous territories. Adventures and spaceships. What more can you wish for?

6. For Love and Glory - Poul Anderson

Not too different from Satan's World, but the characters acted like they were in a movie without sounds. Grand gestures and emotional drama which is just preposterous and quaint. Probably old Poul thought fully fleshed out characters in a novel meant emotions all over the place. Maybe it's just because the main protagonist is a woman. A fun read anyway of adventure in space, treasure hunting for precursor artifacts and the usual scheming robber barons of Anderson's future fantasies.

7. Attentatet i Pålsjö skog - Hans Alfredson

What if Hitler had invaded Sweden? What would cause it to happen? How about a sabotaged train, with German soldiers and a few select civilians - all killed? Let's say one of the civilians was Frau Eva Braun. A interesting, and not too unplausible scenario that reminded me about the brutal horror of the war. Show it to your kids, and let's never forget about the terrible crimes comitted during the war. An important book.

8. Fandom Harvest - Terry Carr

Sometimes when I read fanwriting I feel an amazing feeling of creative energy. You just want to sit down and write! Terry Carr had a lightness of style, and the heart of a storyteller that I can't stop admiring. If I only had that wit, and humour. This is as good as it gets.

9. A Winter Haunting - Dan Simmons

Back to horror fiction for Dan Simmons. Welcome back, Dan! This is a ghost story with class. A haunting and almost painfully sad story about lost opportunities and love. There are some scary scenes in this book, and many surreal and tense happenings that live in the borderland of psychological breakdown and the supernatural. Thick with atmosphere and a good read. Horror defines so clearly the line between unhuman and human by fuzzing the border, for thrills and reflection. Simmons is amazingly good at it.

10. The Time Machine - H.G. Wells

For some reason I haven't read this book until now. It was better than I though, and not at all that dull even though it's as much about it's own age as the far future. Amazing scenery and fairly well thought out and plotted. Time to read som of his other books I have been ignoring, perhaps.

11. Childhoods End - Arthur C. Clarke

I read this book almost twenty years ago, and it spoke to me then. It still does. Terrible and beautiful, poetic and majestic. This is the sought after "sense of wonder" condensed in one short novel. Clarke is a much better writer than I remembered. I wish people would forget about "Rendevouz with Rama" and just read this one. Sure, the persons portrayed are not complex or psychologically deep, but they act believable and carry the plot with all it's emotion forward. I'll re-read this one again, twenty years from now.

12. The Space Merchants - Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth

Some classics takes time to read. This one did take a long to to finally reach my hands, but didn't stay there long. A fun read, and I enjoyed it much! It was an easy read, thus fast. Maybe the satire was a bit heavyhanded sometimes, and I never really felt the characters behaved in a truly beliveable way. But, it worked. Relentless exploitation of natural resources and rampart capitalism destroying everything, even the grounds for its own existence, isn't gone yet. Maybe we still need this book.

13. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin

When you read some books, you are not ready for them. Maybe they sometimes change, or it might be me. This book was dull, rambling and unfocused when I tried to read it some ten years ago. Now it was something else. The prose is sometimes alive in the same sense rocks are alive - slowly changing with the beating of the weather. Even the protagonist sometimes feel dull like rock. A sleeping, eating and feeling rock. I canåt really say I liked this book, but still, it was a good read. I have rediscovered the qualities of the book. So, what would it be like if men and women were just men - mankind? What can we say about such matters now that we are same but different? I think the populistic media, the gross lies and dishonesty of politics is making every intelligent conversation on the matter seem distasteful. Thank God there is art, to make us feel, think and connect with the universe and each other. This one felt right.

14. The Female Man - Joanna Russ

You might wonder if the books Michael Moorcock has written the latest years are possible to understand at all, being so personal and quirky as they are. Russ has acomplished a similar feat. A fragmentary book without any strong plot, just impressions and thin timeslices from multiple focal points. While a stylish and elegant book, I'm a bit amazed that she wrote a book with so much, and strong, a message in such a way. It's a good book, but not very easy to like. I found the parts where the narrator talks about this being a book quite jarring and pointless.

15. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick

Once again time for a re-read. I had the voices from the movie cast in my head and sometimes it was hard to keep them apart. The novel is actually more coherent than I remember, and the theme is well worked out. Fabrication, reality and the empathy with other living things. You can't help empathize with the protagonist when he stumbles in his faith and how happy he is when he has bought a goat. Once again Dick proves himself to be a very human writer.

16. Neuromancer - William Gibson

How this book became such a mega hit is hard to understand. It's a good story, and there's enough odd and funky ideas to chew on, but still. It's a treasure hunt and a mystery which never is solved to satisfaction. The poetic power of the visuals and the dense noir mood is enjoyable. After a while it grabs you, and you almost start to care for the rather misable protagonist. Sometimes it feels a little bit to thick and the stylishness becomes just posing, then it the feeling passes. I had actually forgotten how much of the action that takes place in orbit. It's more of a "space novel" than gritty streetlife than I remebered. It's better than I remebered it! But, the Swedish Translation that I read was sometimes really grating on my nerves. It deserves a new edition and a revision.

17. The Book of Dreams - Jack Vance

As have been said, Vance often don't end his series with the same verve that he begins them. This novel had its faults, mainly being less of a chase and more of a silly jest. The demon prince in this book was just a petty, schizoid loon who turned megalomaniac after being harassed as a kid. Still, the setting was as exotic and interesting as ever and the characters as quirky as expected. A fun read, but I will remember the series from the first two books.

18. I'm alive and you are dead - Emmanuel Carrére

How can one not be facinated by the life of a man like Philip K. Dick? This is a book that tries to tell his story from the inside so to speak. The author tries to build a picture of how Phil might have felt, and how some of his ideas developed from event in his social and emotional life. Thanks to the amount of data available on Dick I guess it isn't to far fetched to do such a thing. Combined with the other biograpical material I have read it paints the picture of a very warm and gentle man, with many phobias and doubts about himself. Many of those inflicted upon him from a very curious upbringing and his very special way of analyzing himself and the world from every angle. I also got a better view of the religious Philip Dick. His life is in many way a tragedy in the classical sense. Read about it, and read his books, and find katharsis.

19. The man in the high castle - Philip K. Dick

I have to follow my own advice, haven't I? After the biographical book it was time to read a novel. It shows clearly how confused Dick must have been about what it was all going to end. It is a book about evil, about the triumph of the most psychially twisted mind of nazism. It's not really about about alternate history, but at the same time it is a well though out view of a world changed and how thinking itself have changed. The plot is really not intersting and it finally just dissolves, but the character in the book are as humane and intersting as can be. Maybe they are not always belivable, individually, but together they show normal human beings coping with a world gone mad and their own place in a world were nobody fit in. Some of them could even be called noble. It shows Dick's weaknesses and strengths. I want more.

20. Stalking Darkness - Lynn Flewelling

Time for some fantasy. I want my fantasy nasty, brutish and short. This is fantasy when it's finished in one book and the plot is free to take a new turn if there appears new books. It's also the fantasy equivalance of a spynovel. I think this book expands upon the earlier experiences of the protagonist without forcing you to read about them. It was fairly grim and dark as well. The forces of evil felt like they was worth fighting. The romantic developments were not hindering the action, and felt like they fit in. It was less spying this time, and some more fighting evil necromancers. Killing off one the main characters was neat. Few writers dare that. I tip my hat to Flewelling for that. It felt bad, like it should.

21. The Affirmation - Christopher Priest

What is real? Is this a book about a man insane, lost in a fictional account of his life, or a book about a book about the life of a man who writes a book? This didn't even feel as sf most of the time, and felt more like a symbolic or psychological novel. Very well written and clever. It sure gave me a few moments of wonder and made me think about what I remember about my life. Dickian in a way.

22. Militära Misstag [Military Blunders] - Saul David

Stupidity that hurt. Interesting and enlightening about a few military campaigns I wasn't that well read about. Custer still have the honour of being the most vile and disgusting of all incomptetent military men. Considering what company he had in this book, that is no mean feat. Reading about the charge of the Light Brigade made my heart ache for the poor bastards that got caught up in such misery with the power to make a difference. Interesting, but sad.

23. Jhereg - Steven Brust

After a few years I've finally read a book by Steven Brust. It felt a bit like the Nightrunner books by Lynn Flewelling. Strangely enough, it also felt a bit like a Hercule Poirot novel! The main focus was a tricky social puzzle, and the protagonists were coming and going, discussing clues to the mystery when meeting. If it wasn't for the fact that the puzzle was so devillishly clever and the setting so intriguing it might almost have been silly. Now, is this litterature? Probably not, but it was entertaining. I have a few more too read and I intend to enjoy them.

24. Yendi - Steven Brust

More of the devious plots and politics. More of the history of some of the main characters is brought to light. It was a fun read, bit I hope not all nine books are more of this since this can be repetetative. Still fun.

25. Envoy to New Worlds - Keith Laumer

More a collection of short stories than a novel. Considering it is one half of a Ace Double I guess it's not unlikely that's what they are. A bit like the picareques of Jack Vance. Fun and hilarious romps in outer space when a bold and courageous diplomat cut through red tape like a swashbuckler by sharp wit and a agile intellect. The endless making fun of authorities is a bit tireing, though.

26. Rosens Namn [The Name of the Rose] - Umberto Eco

An interesting read, with many depths. I learned a lot about monastic orders, and it gave me a dose of history. The end is so sad it hurts. It will, sadly, make my recollection of a great book be tinted by bitterness. The burning of a library just makes me cry, even if it was all made up in a novel. It is a book that means something, about humility and the nature of good and evil. Now I will mourn.

27. Teckla - Steven Brust

The story of Vladimir Taltos continues. A war between gangsters, and once again I read about social revolutionaries in a fantasy novel, just like in Wagner's Conan novel I read some years ago. Brust writes fantasy that reads like mystery novels. There's a problem of some kind, many conspiracies and eventually revelations. The story as such isn't that interesting, but the society is and Vlad himself as the narrator has the same kind of tone that Fritz Leiber uses to great effect in his Lankhmar stories. You care for the protagonist even though you might chuckle a bit when he gets mixed up in his own schemes. The marriage of Vlad is a bit annoying. His wife acts like a total fool and Brust clearly shows, consciously or not, that in order to have a working relationship you must be able to talk about what you feel and what you do.

28. Seven American Nights - Gene Wolfe

A different time, a different culture. Some things have changed, much. This is from start to finish a truly lupine text. The narrator is from Teheran, on a voyage in the desolate lands of America. He writes in his journal, part of which is the text we are presented. Cleverly Wolfe disguises the truth about what has happened by thus forcing us to read the story not as facts, but as a edited account, found out of context in the wilderlands in the ruins of a far of world. The world is arabic, or persian. Nobody knows what happened, but a catastrophy is hinted at. Genetic deformation is rampant in America and the final mystery imply degenration and horror. What did that scholar from the old world really see? Why is so much of the story about theater? Is the drugged eggs the source of all the strange things that happen? Time and identity is once again the colours Wolfe paints, on the canvas of a world were the unkown and strange is the new America. Worth reading, and re-reading.