1st, "The Goblin Emperor", by Katherine Addison, 2014, 514 pages, 139k words. Recommended by Doctorow or someone else whose opinion I respect. You've got pale-skinned elves & dark-skinned goblins. A half-breed prince becomes emperor after his father & older brothers are killed (suspiciously) in an airship crash. Ignoring sage advice & conventional wisdom, he acts in a much more egalitarian manner, treating everyone he interacts with with kindness & dignity. It mostly works out. A refreshing read - a protagonist who is notable for trying to be nice to everyone. There is follow-up trilogy based on a 2ndary character - I bought the 1st book, not in a hurry to start it.
2nd, "The Heaven Makers", by Frank Herbert, 1967, 189 pages, 54k words. Another old Herbert I was offered for $1.99 or somesuch. OK, enough of these! This is a story of immortal little grey humanoid aliens who use human history as an entertainment channel - and they don't mind vigorously tweaking the plot. Definitely reads like cheap, pulp sci-fi.
3rd, "Birthright: The Book of Man", by Mike Resnick, 1982, 360 pages, 98k words. I'm guessing another 1 I was offered for cheap. I remembered Resnick from the Year's Best days as having written some good short stories. This book is actually a collection of 26 short stories, strung together by intros, with a prologue & an epilogue, tracing Mankind as, over millenia, it creates a galactic empire, which it then of course finally loses. The various phases leading to and from empire are very sketchily described, very comic book.
Most of these stories are kind of repugnant. Mankind is kind of like the Earthlings in the movie "Avatar" - unrepentant, planet-destroying, alien-subjugating, out-of-control, capitalistic assholes. Can you imagine watching "Avatar" and cheering for the Earthings?
1 thing that was weird was that he mentions that they are still on a precious-metals-backed currency, so of course they need to vigorously extract gold & silver from every planet they encounter - conquistadors, For The Loss!
Resnick lived 1942-2020. He apparently smoked cigars, as cigar-smoking appears in several stories. And WTF is up with "14: The Biochemists": "My bedroom is usually filled to the brim with the fattest, nakedest women money can buy." ?????
I'm currently on the magazine stack. As mentioned above, next up a long review of an "economics" book.
