I have a fondness for old SF paperbacks, and it is very hard for me to pass one by should I see it at a book sale or op shop or similar. This one came in a set of six vintage titles on which I successfully bid at filking convention’s silent auction in Atlanta — “filking” is, essentially, making music about nerd stuff, and I went to a convention of same because I was living in Atlanta at the time and Seanan MGuire told me to — and is the first one of them I have actually read.
Set on a world struggling to lift themselves out of economic collapse, it tells the story of the enterprising Conn Maxwell, who returns from a university stint on Earth and tells his compatriots that a long-rumoured super-computer known as MERLIN does, in fact, exist, and is buried along with much other disused weaponry in the planet’s wastes. He employs some people to help him dig, and more people dig, and all of a sudden the desolate planet with no hope is buzzing with industry and purpose. It’s very pro-capitalism (there are a lot of ltd. companies created in this book, plus holding companies and shell companies and companies of every kind, really), and also very anti-worker’s rights — they get whipped, if you please — so that’s kind of problematic. I mean, I like capitalism as much as the next business owner, but come on.
Still, it’s a pretty inventive story from a stalwart of SF’s golden age, and as I have not read any of H. Beam Piper’s other works, and given that he wrote dozens of books and short stories, I am just glad to have, at last, sampled his offerings. I’m not sure I’ll be rushing out to read any more of them, however.
There are only so many board of directors’ meetings and formation of LLCs that a sci-fi fan can take, after all.
SCORECARD
TBR DAY 149: The Cosmic Computer by H. Beam Piper
GENRE: Classic SF, SF
PUBLISHED: 1963
TIME ON THE TBR: ~ 9 years.
PURCHASED FROM: A filking convention…
KEEP: Yep.
A middle grade book about a vampire world existing parallel to our own, with a vampire hero who feels different to those of his race — because he is — and the reckless human girl who endangers herself and others with her determination to prove the existence of vampires (because, sure), this book is weirdly addictive, mainly because the mystery surrounding its protagonist is so damned oblique.
I have long loved Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber, a sci-fi/fantasy series of depth and breadth and significant scope. But strangely, those ten books are the only Zelazny I have ever read, probably because I once attempted reading Lord of Light, another of his works, and couldn’t get past the first chapter. (It really is awful.)
This book so, so, so long for me to get into it. And it particularly confused me as I read, because I felt like I knew the world in which it lay, or at least kind of did, but I was certain I’d not read this book before, and it was most assuredly a standalone novel.
My stepmother Angela gave this book to me for Christmas several years back, and it is a mark of how well she knows me that it is exactly in my wheelhouse. It’s a post-apocalyptic dystopia, told through the eyes of the ickily-named Spaz, who ekes out an existence in the slums and fights to save the life of his one-time foster sister with the help of the elderly Ryter, an adorable orphan child, and a privileged scion of the utopian Eden.
This is just the kind of unchallenging and easy-going Fantasy that is sometimes exactly what you need when you’re looking for a break from too much density of worldbuilding and complex magical systems. I think that’s actually why I initially bought it — I was deep in Glen Cook’s Black Company books at the time, and felt like I needed something still in the same genre, but a little lighter. The fact that Trudi Canavan is a fellow Melbournian, and I found this book on the shelves of a New York bookstore, sealed the deal.
I should have hated this book. There are so many things in it I simply cannot bear. A woman desperate for a husband. Horrible cruelty forgiven far too easily. And public humiliation so profound I had to stop reading several times, because second-hand embarrassment is just painful and the worst and why, world, why?
Michael McIntyre is such a stalwart of UK stand up that it is hard to remember that there was a time when your Newsfeed wasn’t flooded with his clips. But this memoir takes us back to his beginning, to a privileged but disjointed childhood, to his attempts at higher education and decision to pursue comedy (like his father) and his early failures at open mics and small gigs.