Video: Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold

Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold (bottle)
Cleveland, OH
5.8% ABV

This one was in honor of Harvey Pekar, who died while I was in Prague and didn't have access to American beer. Pekar was from Cleveland, and so I thought a fitting tribute to him would be to review a beer from a microbrewery in Cleveland, even though so far as I know Harvey wasn't a beer drinker and didn't have any particular connection to Great Lakes Brewing.

Anyway, this was a very nice dry malty lager, with lots of complexity and a crisp hoppiness. I'd definitely buy it again.



My numerical rating: 7.0/10

SF&F Novels You Must Read

There's this meme floating around in which you take the newest list of "books you must read" and bold the ones that you've actually read. I'm also going to do what the poster I got the link from did, and italicize the ones I own or plan to read soon.

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) And have seen the BBC version and the USA (Martin Freeman) version of the film.
Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951) I've read all of the sequels as well, but have yet to read the prequels.
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
JG Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
JG Ballard: Crash (1973)
JG Ballard: Millennium People (2003)
Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995) Interesting pick. This might be my favorite Stephen Baxter book, but it doesn't get a lot of love.
Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (1999)
William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956) Personally I prefer The Demolished Man, but this one is also excellent.
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)
Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and
Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) I almost shouldn't count these, since I read them when I was about ten.
Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) Started it but got sidetracked. Been meaning to get back to it ever since reading (and loving) The Yiddish Policeman's Union.
Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End (1953) Is there a more perfect example of a great SF novel from the fifties?
GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000) Own it, haven't read it.
Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967) I bought several Delaney novels used in Chattanooga, but so far I've only read Nova.
Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962) No Flow My Tears...?
Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum (1988)
Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984) Which reminds me, I really need to review Pattern Recognition.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915) From the Project Gutenberg etext.
William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974) But neither of the sequels.
M John Harrison: Light (2002)
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) If you're only going to read one Heinlein, this should be the one. And on a bad day I might just tell you to only read this one....
Frank Herbert: Dune (1965) Been wanting to re-read for awhile now.
Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925) Own it, haven't read it.
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966) Read it when I was a kid and even saw the movie that was based on it a few years ago.
Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961) But haven't seen either of the movies.
Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)
MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)
David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954) Bought it when the movie came out, haven't read it.
Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006). Blech.
Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)
Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970). It's on the list, I promise!
Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
Flann O’Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996) Is this really SF?
Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) The whole series? No, but I've read the first and have heard they get much better from there.
Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000) Love 'em.
François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000) Yes, recently, in fact.
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997) All seven read in about six weeks after the seventh book was released.
Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992) This has more historical importance, but I don't think Snow Crash is his best book.
Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) Once.
Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889)
Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959) Not Slaughterhouse V?
Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951) No, but I've seen the movie.
John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

Lots of interesting stuff. The whole point of these kinds of lists is to start discussions and arguments, so any comments?

Foundational

The Unshelved Book Club has rarely been more up my alley than with this entry:

I don't actually think that George Lucas specifically ripped off The Foundation Trilogy when he wrote Star Wars, but clearly Lucas's most famous works rely greatly on science fiction tropes and ideas that were utilized so well in Asimov's work. (For that matter, Asimov could hardly claim to have invented a lot of those same tropes, since E. E. Smith's Lensman series did it decades before Asimov.) While I don't consider any of the Foundation books to be Asimov's masterworks, they're among the most famous works of the early days of science fiction, and it's always nice to see them getting their props.

It's ironic that this was posted just as this news came out:

Columbia won an auction late Thursday for screen rights to "Foundation," Isaac Asimov's ground breaking science fiction trilogy. The film will be developed as a directing vehicle for Roland Emmerich.

Emmerich and his Centropolis partner Michael Wimer will produce the film. The deal was mid six-figures against low seven figures.

Roland Emmerich? Directing Foundation? Okay, so this isn't the absolutely worst news that we could hear -- it could be Paul W.S. Anderson at the helm. But with such a classic piece of SF that's been in and out of development for at least a decade, I wish that we could get someone with a little bit more vision for the themes of the story rather than relying on spectacle -- we need a Peter Jackson to tackle this project, and instead we're getting the guy whose best movie so far is Independence Day.

Who do I think could tackle this and give it the respect it deserves? Personally I'd vote for Darren Aronofsky, but that's just a pipe dream...

My Year in Review, Books

I read a lot of books in 2008, although I unfortunately didn't get around to reviewing too many of them. This is a list with commentary of just a handful of them that affected me the most or that I enjoyed (or simply that I'm still thinking about).

(Note: I was planning on re-reading and writing booklog entries for all of Pynchon's works, in the order in which they were published. I got about halfway through my re-read of GR when other things came up, and I never got back to it. Maybe I'll try and finish the project this year, maybe not.)

Oil!, by Upton Sinclair (1927). I read this way back in January -- it's the book that There Will Be Blood is (loosely) based on. It's easy to read this as a socialist screed (and I'm sure that Sinclair meant it to be such) but it's also an involved study of a naive young rich boy's transformation into a socially-responsible young man. Every character is portrayed humanely, even the "evil" oil-magnate father that became Daniel Plainview in the film. Worth a read by any fan of the film or anyone simply interested in the political literature of the early twentieth century. (Original review here.)

The Start of Darkness, by Rich Burlew (2007). This one is really only for fellow fans of the amazing webcomic The Order of the Stick (link goes to the first comic -- they get way better than that one, I promise). This isn't because the book doesn't tell a complete story, or that it wouldn't work at all for those not familiar with the comic, but most of the joys of The Start of Darkness derive from the way that Burlew provides a brilliant prequel to the events of the comic without "pussifying" his characters at all. The story of how Redcloak became the goblin he is in the comic is one of the most heartbreaking and amazing things I read all year.

1632, by Eric Flint (2001). Holy shit, I'm sticking this on my list? Yep -- I read this way back at the beginning of the year, and it still resonates in a strange way. Far from literary fiction, this piece of modern pulp SF has one of the hokiest premises imaginable... and it's executed so well that you forget that fact within a mere handful of chapters. No one would claim 1632 is great literature, but it's one of the most entertaining books I've read in a long time. Exactly what a good cheap paperback should be. (Original review here.)

Before They Are Hanged, by Joe Abercrombie (2008). I'm not sure if I read Abercrombie's first book in this series (The Blade Itself) this year or at the end of the last, but both the first and second books deserve placement here. The Blade Itself was a brilliant piece of fantasy revisionism filled with gritty characters and desperate men and women -- my favorite was the conflicted torturer Glotka who sublimated his own immense physical pain into his work. Before They Are Hanged continues the story of Blade, and while it doesn't give quite the same kick that we get from meeting all the fantasy archetypes from the first book, it more than compensates by giving the reader a depth and heft to the worldbuilding that was missing in the first. Before They Are Hanged is half "road movie," half war novel, either half of which would have been so entertaining that I wouldn't have been able to put it down. I bought the third novel The Last Argument of Kings a few days ago and without even opening the first page I fully expect it to end up on next year's version of this list.

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson (2008). This is one of those books that throws the famous xkcd comic off its curve. It's easy to get caught up in the strange terminology and re-imagining of pre-Enlightenment thinking shown in Neal Stephenson's latest, but the author is deft at getting the reader to accept his terminology at his pace, and once the first 250 pages have set up the world the real story begins. Physicists may quibble with some of Stephenson's scientific extrapolations, but to me the whole thing fit comfortably within the confines of SFnal speculation. The finale of the novel leaves plenty of unanswered questions and the ending (despite being emotionally cathartic) feels a little flat, but there are few books out there that even attempt the kind of scope of Anathem. Stephenson is to be commended for even attempting such a ballsy nerd novel as this, and the fact that he so regularly succeeds makes up for many of his missteps.

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace (1996). Including footnotes, this book is more than a thousand pages long. I flipped the book open to a random page and counted 430-odd words. Which means that this book is something like 400,000 words long -- your average doorstopper SF novel is about 100,000. And I can't say that the book is riveting for its entire length -- Shana could tell you stories of my frustrations will Wallace's endless meandering about his characters' psychological ministrations. But there is a method to the madness and at the end of the day the month or so I spent reading Infinite Jest were well-spent -- the world lost one of its most brilliant and perceptive writers when he killed himself earlier this year. It's hardly a quick read, but it's an amazing one, and I'll be reading more from DFW in 2009 for sure.

Hopefully next year I'll review books as I read them so I don't have to resign myself to these short paragraphs about such great books.