All Pretty Good

1st up, "Invisible Planets", by Hannu Rajaniemi, 2016, 303 pages, 83k words. Hannu is one of my favorite new authors of recent years, I can't imagine how I had not read this yet. 19 stories, the last 2 of which were composed using somewhat experimental methods. A good mix of material, some serious post-singularity stuff of course. I learned that "perkele" and "saatana" are the most popular Finnish cuss words. A great read.

I just noticed, Ken Liu also had an anthology named "Invisible Planets", which I blogged in February. Both came out in 2016.

2nd, "City Under the Stars", by Gardner Dozois and Michael Swanwick, 2020, 216 pages, 58k words. I miss Gardner Dozois, I read his Year's Best for 35 years, up until his death in 2018. Swanwick tells the story of how the novel was created: 45 years ago, Dozois wrote what eventually - 20 years later, with Swanwick - became the novella "City of God", which I think I read back in the day. They were going to do a trilogy, but it dragged on. Dozois' death prompted Swanwick to take what they had & create this novel as a memorial to his friend.

It'a a good read, an apocalyptic post-singularity tale.

3rd, "By Force Alone", by Lavie Tidhar, 2020, 461 pages, 125k words. This just came out & for some reason I decided to read it. As I was starting, I'm like, "Do I really want to read another Arthur & Merlin book?" But, I'm glad I did. Tidhar takes complete and utter liberty with the Arthurian canon - always a good thing.

He also does a fun thing making cultural references.

• Lancelot is a Judean who knows kung-fu & is a member of a Holy Grail cult. The full description:

  Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Initiate of the Inner Circle of the Venerated Secret Brotherhood of the Seekers of the Grail, Master of the Flying Sword, the Aurochs’ Charge and the Judean Lightning Strike, traveling swordsman and powerful practitioner of the ancient art of gongfu

• "attack ships on fire off the coast of Smyrna"
• "Knew the five-point palm-exploding-heart technique, or so he claimed, at any rate. Never taught it to me."
• Gongfu moves: "Monkey’s Paw and the King in Yellow and the Turn of the Screw"
• "Intruder … alert…"
• "Who knows? Who cares? They're dead."

Haha, at one point he mentioned a sword being "tempered and quenched". Steel is not "tempered and quenched", it is "quenched and tempered". I worked as an engineer at Tube Turns, division of Chemetron, a steel and other metal fittings (Stainless, Inconel, Monel) manufacturer, from 1974 to 1977. And you would never say "tempered and quenched", the phrase was "quenched and tempered". So I manspained about it on Twitter to Tidhar, and he liked it.

The book is a page turner. It focuses on Arthur's politics and rise to power. The love triangle is given short shift, as are lots of other things. The Nine Sisters, who include The Lady of the Lake Nimue and Morgan le Fay (who is not Arthur's 1/2 sister), get a fair amount of attention.

In a very interesting afterword, Tidhar traces the history of the Arthurian canon, interest in which has ebbed and flowed for centuries. Hah, Thomas Malory of "Le Morte d'Arthur" in 1485 was "a murderer, robber and rapist" - who knew?