Ellis - Less Than Zero

Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis, Vintage, 1985.
It begins as an odd little book, then draws you in and becomes fascinating, and finally a bit disturbing. At first the style may be a little off-putting, but very quickly the reader is drawn in. Ellis has a great ear for dialogue, and for choosing detail, sparse but effective, to build a scene.
The book features many parties, but Ellis makes each seem different. The action is varied within the repeated framework of parties and dinners and clubs.
There is a fairly large group of main characters, but Ellis handles them well, and the reader is never lost thinking 'who is that again?'
The only problem is the author's unnecessary need to 'top himself' late in the book; the characters have shown so much hedonism throughout, that Ellis goes over the top in the final chapters to create a climax. He needn't have bothered, to have maintained the status quo of the earlier chapters would have suited the novel and the ending much better.

Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut was most famous for his novel Slaughterhouse Five, the story of a man, circa post-WWII, traveling at random through time, re-living the events of his own life, including his death, multiple times. The hero knows he is time-traveling as he repeats the events of his life, but he can do nothing to change events, or choose when or where in his life he will travel, or stop his time traveling. Eventually he accepts his fate, adopting the philosophy of fatalism, and in doing so he acquires peace.

Recurring themes throughout Vonnegut's work are determinism, iconoclasm, humanism, and fatalism, revealing much about the author's own attitudes to the world, and to life and death. He was also a great literary experimenter. Vonnegut's plots are disjointed, and many of his characters are more thematic devices than characters. He also used metafiction, using sections of a novel to write about the novel, sometimes appearing as himself in the narrative. For example, in Breakfast of Champions, one of his bestsellers, we get the great humorous exchange:
"This is a very bad book you're writing," I said to myself.
"I know," I said.
This novel is also a sort of all-star novel, featuring many cameos by characters from several other of Vonnegut's works, including, for example, the frequently appearing Kilgore Trout, an unsuccessful though prolific sf writer.

Charles Bukowski

So many sites about or including Charles Bukowski. He was a post-beat, beat generation writer. For ten years he worked in the Post Office, then quit to write - primarily poetry. Referred to at times as the Poet of Skid Row, he lived close enough - just below or just above - the poverty line to know what he was talking about. He wrote poetry, short stories that are often prose poems (as are many of his poems) and novels that belong in the category called fictive biography. www.rooknet.com/beatpage/writers/bukowski The Beat Page gives a good intro to Bukowski's work. It is a relatively old site dedicated to Beat writers. There are links to other beat-related sites, bios of beat authors, and a list of top ten beat books.

Masamune - Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell. Shirow Masamune. Kodansha Ltd (Japan), and Dark Horse Manga (U.S.) 2004.
The manga 'Ghost in the Shell', comes securely wrapped in cellophane, with a parental advisory warning label on the front c over. Yes, it includes a little of everything you would expect when seeing a parental advisory.
It is an excellent book. Basically it is a serious, adult science fiction (cyber-punk or post-cyberpunk) illustrated novel. Or put another way, it is an adult comic book. The setting is a future in which the technology and the human have begun to overlap. Some humans chose to have their bodies partially or entirely replaced by robot bodies, making them cyborgs. These bodies are indistinguishable from human bodies (except for the weight), and in some cases they have enhanced strength, hidden attached weapons, and other devices. Also there are robots which likewise look, and largely behave, like humans. The difference can often only be determined by a scan to detect a 'ghost', basically the spirit, residing inside the body.
The main character is Major Motoko Kusanagi, of 'section 6', a special forces unit of the Japanese police. Most of the story is an excellent police/military/spy thriller-adventure. But inlaid with the action is philosophic-scientific speculation on several questions, primarily: 'What is human?'. Masamune references engineering, biology, chemistry, Buddhism, the Kabbalah, western philosophy, etc.
The main characters are interesting but not always sympathetic, because in their crime-fighting journeys, they are sometimes jaded and unsympathetic toward the victims. Does this simply mean they are sometimes assholes, or is Masamune suggesting their partial or total mechanization is making them less human?

Stableford - Journey to the Center

I recently looked again at Journey to the Center, by Brian Stableford. This was one of the first sf books I ever purchased. It is the story of humans who live on an artificial planet, built by some unknown race millennium earlier. The planet has endless levels and passages honeycombing its interior. The center has never been reached, and in the circumstances of the plot, one explorer who makes his living searching for artifacts within the planet, is caught between several factions who desire to journey deep into its interior.
It is a book that holds up well. I did not realize until recently that Stableford had eventually written two sequels, now out of print. Seeking them out is on my agenda.
Stableford is or should be considered an sf master. He has published more than 50 novels since the seventies, and is also an editor, non-fiction writer, and translator. In these past five years, last I read, he has no contract with a publishing house yet continues to write novels on a publish-on-demand basis. I wish some publishing house would pick him up and give his latest books wider distribution, both because he is an excellent author and out of respect for a master author of sf and fantasy.

Cussler - Pacific Vortex

Pacific Vortex. Clive Cussler. Bantam Books. 1983.

The author introduction states that this is the first Dirk Pitt story. He says it was never before published, that he was reluctant to submit it because it did not have the intricate plots of later Pitt adventures. True, as I read, I saw it did not have as many sub-plots as other Pitt novels I have read. At 270 pages this edition, it is a moderately long book, even without a lot of intricate plotting. And in fact the book seems much shorter. It flows, it speeds along. Most of the sequences are enjoyable and well-paced, the characters that appear, even in cameo, are largely interesting and get interesting things to say and do.

I enjoyed this novel more than the other Pitt books I have read so far. The lack of many lengthy subplots with their extensive plotting actually helps the stories momentum and keeps Pitt himself in the thick of the action; In other Pitt novels he, Pitt, disappears for long stretches and at times seems like a minor character. In this one he is definitely the hero, and his actions drive the story forward.

The only major problem is an early scene in which Pitt enters the Admiralty office wearing bathing trunks. The anger and threats tossed around go way over the top. After that small stumble it's all good.

Lewis - Jack Returns Home

Jack Returns Home, Ted Lewis, Pan Books, 1971.

English mob enforcer Jack Carter returns to his home town to investigate his brother's murder. It is a classic setup, and used brilliantly here. The book covers roughly three intense days from a Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. Jack digs through his past, meeting old friends and old enemies. He gets closer to the truth of his brother's death. His bosses send people to order Jack to stop his activities. When he refuses, these friends are told to bring him back any way necessary. Jack meets his niece, his brother's co-workers and mistress. He peels layer after layer off the sordid side of his old town. As the book races to its climax the action becomes increasingly brutal and unforgiving. Sub plots pile up; the tension is ratcheted ever higher. Jack has the knowledge and the capacity for violence to keep pushing forward with almost no allies against increasing number of enemies.

As Jack moves through the town he recalls his past, his childhood, old friends long gone, the old neighborhoods as they were in his youth. It reads like a memoir. How much of the author's own past is used as material in these sections? We may never know, but the detail and precision of the writing reads like the author had intimate knowledge of these people and places.

The book is as much about Jack's personality, and his relationship with his brother, as it is about the revenge plot. All the characters are effectively drawn. The dialogue is crisp, the scene setting vivid. The plot is almost flawless in its construction. 'Jack Returns Home' is one of the greatest crime novels ever written.