…briefly.

「ンガイ・ングアグアア・ブグ＝ショゴグ・イハア、ヨグ＝ソトホース、ヨグ＝ソトホース……」

「イグナイイ……イグナイイ……トゥフルトゥクングア……ヨグ＝ソトホース……」

「イブトゥンク……ヘフイエ――ングルクドルウ……」

more...

…that the Lensman novels had been translated into Japanese. Also, there’s a sequel, predictably titled Samurai Lensman. Sadly, while the author’s other book covers feature sexy ninja girls and moe demon hunters, SL’s cover restricts itself to a heroic male. While this may be in keeping with the old-fashioned spirit of the Lensman universe (modulo Clarissa and the girls), it was written in 2001, and I can’t help feeling that it’s time to infuse Doc’s classics with some modern tropes: Kyonyuu Tsundere Meganekko Catgirl Maids of the Lens.

[Update: turns out the girl on the cover is holding a big gun, and she’s a scrappy tomboy who uses it quite effectively, joining forces with Our Hero. And she’s named Cat. And she’s definitely a healthy female mammal. Not a samurai or lensman herself, though, and no sign of glasses or a maid costume, but it’s still more progress than I expected. There is a gender-ambiguous pre-teen cat-person in the story, listed as one of Cat’s younger siblings (presumably an adopted Vegian), but without actually reading the book, I can’t count that one as a loli catgirl yet.]

Oh, katakana word for the day: スペオペ.

[and this picture is just too cute for words…]

more...

Please do not give Clyde Calwell any future cover-art work. Or, at the very least, give him a description of the main character beyond “lives in cool-looking city, female, long dark hair, spends time on rooftops”.

I say this because I’ve been reading PC Hodgell’s novels since 1982, and the chick on the cover of The God Stalker Chronicles ain’t Jame.

I’ll have to scan in the cover of my battered old first-edition paperback, because that is Jame.

I recently read the two new pre-Ringworld Known Space novels by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner, Fleet of Worlds and Juggler of Worlds. Very short summary: Fleet was pretty good, Juggler less so.

The big difference: Fleet is a standalone novel set in Known Space. If you have a vague memory of Ringworld and the short stories, you’ll be fine. Juggler, on the other hand, is not only a direct sequel to Fleet, but also to more than a dozen Known Space short stories (including everything in Crashlander), which are air-dropped into the story at seemingly random intervals. The “big surprise” is also so poorly handled that for several chapters you can’t be sure that a major character wasn’t just another reference. On the plus side, it gives a faint nod to the old “down in flames” story idea, which was more fun than most of the backstage views of decades-old stories.

I’ve read all of the Known Space stories several times, so I got most of the references, but the secret history of the secret history of Beowulf Shaeffer just got tiresome after a while, and it took up space that would have been better spent expanding on the interesting new characters who were the focus of Fleet. They’re pretty much reduced to spear-carriers in Juggler.

Fleet stands alone quite nicely, and adds some real depth to the Puppeteers, both individually and as a race. I didn’t dislike Juggler, but I doubt I’ll reread it.

Harry Dresden is a rather unconventional wizard, in a rather decent set of urban fantasy/detective novels. He has no significant connection to Japan, and indeed his magic is very strongly Western in origin.

So where did the glowing runes on his staff come from?

The paperback edition of Dead Beat doesn’t seem to name the cover artist anywhere, but whoever it was decided that the English loanword マトリックス (“matrix”) made a dandy set of runes.

[oh, and I just noticed that Amazon has a new “Amapedia” site…]

It’s not a bad collection of sci-fi babes, but I’m not the only one who choked on this line about Heinlein’s Starship Troopers:

One of the main plot points of Heinlein’s original novel was that all the experienced officers were killed off, leaving only the kids in charge.

What are they teaching kids in school these days?

…then it’s hilarious. I haven’t been following the new Battlestar Galactica series, even though it’s getting lots of good reviews, mostly because I simply haven’t been watching much television at all. However, while looking at the fan sites, I noticed that Grace Park’s character, Boomer, is a Cylon disguised as a human being.

Boomer. Cylon. Where are the Knight Sabers when you need them?

It’s been a while since I’ve read a novel by Mike Resnick. After finishing The Return of Santiago, it looks like it will be a while before I read another one.

It’s competently executed, and sufficiently entertaining that I did finish it, but if the plot had been any more telegraphed, they’d have had to change the title to Western Union. Maybe it’s because I’ve read four and a half other books set in this universe (I bounced hard on Widowmaker), but absolutely nothing that happened in this novel surprised me, and I’m already having trouble remembering any distinguishing characteristics of the characters.

Two things stand out: the running gag about Virgil’s sex life, which has no impact whatsoever on the story, and the fact that after Danny stumbles across the biggest secret in the history of the Inner Frontier, he cheerfully blabs it to damn near anyone within earshot, swearing them all to absolute secrecy.