Category: Books

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “The Martian Chronicles” – Michael Whelan

When I was a public school kid back in the 1980s, I used to spend hours at the bookstore, mostly looking at science fiction books. It wasn’t just the stories themselves that interested me, but the cover art. Back then, before the internet gave one an endless supply of great sci-fi concept art of any kind, the only way to get one’s imagination going was to head to the bookstore.

So, it’s probably inevitable that I would regard that time as a golden age of sci-fi cover art. And I do. When I look at sci-fi books today, there is usually no cover art to speak of, but just an exercise in graphic design. The title goes in this font 38 point; the author’s name goes in this font at 28 point; etc.; with some blurry, abstract notion of an alien planet or a futuristic city. Back in the pre-digital days, sci-fi cover art consisted mainly of actual paintings, made by actual painters.

One of the best actual painters was (and is) Michael Whelan. His work has that perfect blend of realism, action, and whimsy that I always looked for in a good sci-fi cover. For five decades, he created some of the best covers ever made, and they earned him a place in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

One of my favorites is the one above, his cover for the 1990 Bantam/Spectra edition of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. If you haven’t read it (and you should), it’s an allegory about the loss of ancient wisdom, the horrors of capitalism, and even the conquest of the American West. Haunting the work are the ghosts of the Martians themselves, who once-great civilization is helpless in the face of the invading Earth-men, with their guns and disease and endless greed. I love this cover because it gives you a sense of that lost majesty, but it also makes you curious about the story.

In other words, it kindles the imagination.

Nerds in the News: Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson

The latest entry in my continuing series celebrating Nerds in the News (STEM nerds, mostly, as opposed to book nerds, of which I am one) goes to these two young, awesome math nerds. Back in 2022, using nothing but trigonometry (which, as it happens, was the only class I failed in high school), they came up with an entire new proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. Even more incredible, these two mathematicians were both teenagers at the time. And they still are!

Now, they have updated their original proof with five new variations.

I am, of course, terrible at math, but I am endlessly fascinated by it. One of my favorite non-fiction books of all time is Simon Singh’s excellent Fermat’s Enigma, which recounts master-mathematician Andrew Wiles’ quest to solve Fermat’s Last Theorem, which eluded math nerds for hundreds of years. (Wiles solved it in 1993.) Coincidentally, that problem also directly concerned the Pythagorean Theorem, and Singh recounts the story like a centuries-old mystery. One interesting point about the tale is that many advances in the hunt for the solution were made by amateur mathematicians, which is exactly what Ms. Johnson and Ms. Jackson are. (This is due to their youth; I have a feeling they will go on to have great careers after…you know, they graduate college).

Congratulations, Ms. Calcea Johnson and Ms. Ne’Kiya Jackson!

Shameless Plug: Free Sample of “Twice the Trouble” Audio Book now on Youtube

Anyone who is all interested in mystery fiction might avail themselves of this long (three chapters!) sample of the audiobook version of Twice the Trouble. It’s free on Youtube from Google Play. Check it out…!

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “The Left Hand of Darkness”

Ursula K. Le Guin was one of our finest science fiction writers, and The Left Hand of Darkness is probably her best book. Not only did it anticipate by half-a-century the seismic cultural shifts that are currently roiling Western society regarding issues of gender-identity and sexual orientation, it’s also just a damned good sci-fi story.

Set in the far future, it takes place on Gethen, a wintery planet with a post-industrial civilization. Genly Ai is an Earth-man who is sent to Gethen on a diplomatic mission, hoping to convince the locals to join the Ekumen (basically, Le Guin’s version of the United Federation of Planets). Genly’s efforts are frustrated by long-standing, internecine conflicts between the Gethenians themselves, and also by his own difficulty in relating to the local people. People on Gethen are, it seems, are androgenous—serially androgenous, actually, existing as one sex for a part of the month and as females for the other. (As Le Guin beautifully describes, they subtly change their outer physiognomy, depending on which gender they are currently occupying, appearing to be “men” some of the time and “women” at others.)

Even now, it’s a pretty far-out concept, but it was totally mind-blowing in 1969 when the novel came out. Trust me, though—it’s a very exciting book. Genly soon finds himself caught between warring nations and is arrested as a potential spy. He is rescued by Estraven, the former prime minister of one of the countries, who helps Genly escape. They set off on a life-and-death adventure, sledding across the frozen wilderness of Gethen and trying to get to safety. In the process, Genly is forced to come to terms with his own deep-rooted conceptions of sexuality, while Estraven faces the prospect of Gethen being just one small planet in a vast, strange galaxy.

Le Guin is often described as a literary science fiction writer, and it’s true. Her prose and descriptive eye were top-notch, and she was able to weave Big Ideas (Feminism, Taoism, etc.) into her fiction without it feeling like a Humanities 101 lecture. The edition I read had this great cover by veteran illustrator Alex Ebel, which might seem a bit cheesy today but was striking and evocative at the time. I love the way it captures one of the major visual motifs of the novel, that of linked-opposites (light and dark, male and female, good and evil, progressive and reactionary). It’s a great, surreal representation of a great novel.

The Enchanting Labyrinths of Vortex Fiction

Of all the categories of genre fiction that I’ve consumed over my lifetime, fantasy has probably best the least represented. Sure, I love The Lord of the Rings, and The Narnia Chronicles, and the works of Ray Bradbury that I consider to be dark fantasy (see Something Wicked this Way Comes). But I don’t keep up with many modern fantasy writers nor read many contemporary fantasy novels.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I took a chance on Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, a fantasy novel that made quite a splash when it came out in 2020, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. It’s a fascinating story of a man trapped in a labyrinth that he calls The House, and which is composed of endless Greco-Roman halls lined with innumerable statues and vestibules. There is a sky above and ocean tides below, which often flood the lower levels. The man is called Piranesi by the only other person (i.e., “the Other”) in The House, an older man who seems able to leave somehow, only to return with key supplies like vitamins and batteries, which he shares with Piranesi.

It’s a fascinating book, and unexpectedly suspenseful, too, especially when Piranesi begins having flashbacks of who he is and how he came to be in the House. This happens about the same time as the sudden appearance of mysterious, written messages that are scattered throughout the House. They seem to have been left by another, recent intruder (one who seems interested in helping Piranesi escape).

For me, at least half of the appeal of Piranesi lies in this whodunnit factor. Like the protagonist himself, I was caught up in the mystery of how he came to be there, who he is, and how he might get out. But the other half lay in the dizzying, intricate nature of the setting—the endless labyrinth that Piranesi inhabits. Such dreamlike settings are more common in literature than one might think, and their appeal is very much like that of a vivid, fabulously detailed diorama, of the sort that all children love to gaze into (and imagine themselves inside).

Capriccio Illustration by Giovanni Piranesi

 I don’t know what it is, exactly, about mazes, labyrinths, and castles that evokes the power of imagination, But I think it has to do with their endless novelty, the promise of infinite rooms and corridors that we, like children, would love to explore. More to the point, such structures also symbolize the power of imagination—especially the child-like imagination that each of us still harbors. That’s why there is such a grand tradition of castles and mazes in fantasy literature and mythology, from the Minotaur’s labyrinth to the vast, rambling ruins of the Gormenghast trilogy.

Clarke herself acknowledges this tradition in her main character, Piranesi, who is named after Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the 18th Century illustrator who was famous for his drawings of impossibly grand and complicated imaginary buildings. His most famous works are a series of etchings titled Carceri d’invenzione (Imaginary Prisons), and these are, themselves, part of a much older tradition of so-called capricci, drawings that depict architectural fantasy.

Continue reading “The Enchanting Labyrinths of Vortex Fiction”

From The Mahabharata to the Marvel MCU: The Sub-Genre Taking Over Hollywood

Back in the early 1990s when I was a poor graduate student, I used to stay home on Saturday nights and watch my little black-and-white TV. I couldn’t afford cable, of course, but thankfully there was always PBS, so I watched a lot of documentaries and episodes of Great Performances. On one such night, I saw a filmed performance of Peter Brook’s stage play The Mahabharata. The play is, of course, a dramatic adaptation of the great Hindu epic, the tale of a feud between two groups of royal cousins, the Pāṇḍava princes and their arch-nemeses, the Kauravas. As epic tales are wont to do, the feud escalates into a civil war so catastrophic that even the gods are pulled into the conflict (in the same way that the Greek gods Mars, Apollo, and Venus involve themselves in the The Illiad).

Being a filmed staged play, Brook’s TV version is low on special effects (this was before CGI) but packed with minimalistic, highly-stylized interpretations of sweeping battles, multi-armed demons, and flying chariots. Somehow, it all works, and I found myself obsessed with both the film and the story. A few years later I would finally read a popular translation of The Bhagavad Gita, which is really just one portion of the much larger Mahabharata.

Continue reading “From The Mahabharata to the Marvel MCU: The Sub-Genre Taking Over Hollywood”

Middlemarch Video (1 of 2)!!!

Ash’s and Margaret’s Latest Video

In this latest episode of Read a Classic Novel…Together!, Margaret and Ash discuss the first half of George Eliot’s 1872 classic Middlemarch. We discover that Eliot was not even a man (her real name was Mary Ann Evans) and that she was probably everyone’s favorite, super-smart aunt of the 19th Century. Also, we agree that the characters of Fred and Rosamund are not-so-great people (especially Fred, who is a real jerk). Bonus: Margaret looks up the word “pillulous” in her big-damn dictionary and reveals its actual meaning. (Hint: if “The Matrix” had been made in the 1870s, Neo would have taken the red pillulous.)

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “Dune” (1977 Berkley Edition)

Frank Herbert’s Dune is arguably the most successful science fiction book ever published, kicking off a series that (thanks to his son and other writers) continues to this day. Actually more a work of epic science fantasy than hard sci-fi, it was amazingly inventive and original, and it surely would have been a huge hit regardless of how it was packaged. However, I personally believe that its success was greatly increased by the brilliant marketing work done by Berkley Books in the 1970s. Specifically, their brilliant use of a font called Davison Art Nouveau that, with its swirly, vaguely Arabian vibe, perfectly captures the spirit of the books. The font was also used on all the sequels, creating a visual unity for Berkley’s Dune brand.

Even more striking, to me, was the sublime cover art by the legendary Vincent Di Fate. This is the edition of Dune that I read in high school, which means I’ve been looking at for four decades, and I never once suspected that it was done by Di Fate. Di Fate was, after all, a sci-fi artist primarily known for his space opera-style covers. He was already famous for these back in the 1970s, so much so that I my parents gave me a book of his cover art for Christmas one year. (Yeah, I was that nerd.) But his cover for Dune seems totally atypical for him.

Nonetheless, it’s a great cover. Putting a dune on the cover of Dune might seem like a no-brainer, but Di Fate’s choice here really gives the reader a sense of the book’s setting—the mysterious, pitiless desert planet of Arrakis. And if there was ever a novel where the setting becomes a character in and of itself, it’s Arrakis. The ghostly white figures depicted are obviously Fremen, the fierce native people of the story (never mind the fact that the Fremen in the book where black still-suits and not white robes). The fact that they seem to be crossing out of the desert and into the town is significant, too, because so much of novel involves the intersection of wilderness and civilization (the desert people being more “civilized,” in some ways, than those of the town).