Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter

 After reading a lot of articles on Reddit about Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence, the consensus was that his novels are an "acquired taste" and not for everyone who doesn't feel like waddling through dozens of pages of bad prose while tries and fails to build relatable characters. The Reddit users recommended his "connected" collection of short stories "Vacuum Diagrams".

This collection consists of many short stories written over the span of decades, most of them connected to the Xeelee, at least tangentially, and brought together by the first story where the Silver Ghosts are conducting a new forbidden experiment, and the protagonist's dead wife retells him the entire human story in the current universe, starting from billions of years ago and finishing a billion years in the future when the Photino Birds finally win and extinguish all Baryonic matter in this universe.

Some of the stories are silly, and can be seen that they were written long time ago, when the author was young.  Some are pretty good, but overall it is a very enjoyable book, since each story (almost) has different characters which cannot be developed in the given length, so you don't really miss them as you would in a novel. 

Many of the stories are the beginnings of the large novels Baxter wrote.  For example, the story "Raft" is the first chapter of the novel "Raft".  If you enjoy  the Xeelee concept with its technology on a super-advanced level that is barely comprehensible today, but do not want to wade through thousands of pages of boring characters as in the novels - this book gives you an overview of the entire timeline and just the nuggets you want.

Raft by Stephen Baxter

I started this book as it is the first in the "Xeelee" sequence, which is supposed to be one of the most far-fetching SciFi ever written, helped with Baxter's background in Physics, but it is just too much of a torture.  Kindle says I'm 29% in and I am calling it quits. It is just a badly written book.  Rees is probably one of the most boring characters ever created, along with the Pilot and the Scientist.  The two women (only two) in this novel are caricatures. The science of the Nebula, the Belt and the Raft is passably interesting, but it could have been a 5-page short story (yes, I know this novel is based on an earlier short story).

Even though the Xeelee do not appear in this book, just like the Heechee, they are more interesting when read about in a Wikipedia article than a novel.  Just like the Heechee kids are wearing a metal diaper for microwave radiations, the Xeelee seem to have a penchant for black holes and baryonic (?) matter.  Baxter is just a bad writer.  His prose is bad. The few interesting ideas here and there cannot compensate for the ennui of wading through his cumbersome and uninteresting prose.

I think I am going to switch back to detective fiction for a little while. 

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

 This is the first book in the "Culture" series, which consists of about a dozen novels and a bunch of short stories, which Banks worked on until his death a few years ago.  Banks said that he was tired of dystopian version of the future in sci-fi literature where machines and AI rise against man, so he wanted to create a world where the machines and AI are benevolent, help the humans and protect them.  He built "The Culture" with that basic idea in mind, but also set it in a realistic universe where there are other races, civilizations and alliances which are against the ideas of the Culture and there are brutal, bloody wars. This book in particular is about the Culture-Idirian war, which had close to 900 billion casualties. 

My general idea of the style of Banks' writing is that it is somewhere between Star Wars and Hitch-hikers' guide, the second being foundational British Sci-Fi and Banks is Scottish.  Although technology is emphasized - it is definitely not at the level of Asimov, but more emphasis is placed on adventure, swash-buckling heroes (Horza) who get themselves into difficult situations and the bravely, and by the skin of their teeth, get out of them victorious.  Btw, my personal preference is for short, dynamic, explosive descriptions of fight scenes, but Banks has completely opposite idea, where single fight of 10-14 mins is described over 4-5 pages, with every minute detail described profusely. 

This first book is about a Changer, Horza, who work for the Idirians against The Culture, and Balveda, a Culture Agent from "Special Circumstances" (basically military intelligence).  The Culture has no military and uses no money since it is 'coordinated' rather than 'ruled' by "Minds" which are advanced, sentient AIs which exist in multiple dimensions, think faster than light, and have storage capacity the size of an average planet.  Changers are humanoids which can change their outer appearance (over several days) to ideally represent any other humanoid they've observed.  The lore says they are a remnant of some genetically-modified population from some forgotten war, thousands of years in the past.  They are living weapons, having venomous teeth and nails and can also spit venom. 

Idirians are tri-pedal giants with saddle-like heads and redundant organs for every function, a result of evolving on an extremely inhospitable planet, which gives them biological immortality (i.e. no aging or disease death, but definitely death from being murdered or destroyed in an accident).  They are a theocracy and religion/God is the main pillar around which their society and personal lives are organized.  This makes them natural enemies of The Culture, which is Atheist by nature, and also proselytizing their ideas across the Galaxy. 

There are many adventures throughout the book that Horza gets himself in, like with the Eaters, Game of Damage, Kraiklyn's Free Company, Balveda's infiltration and Horza's escape from Culture's transporter.  Horza is not the typical Star Wars hero, as he is at times selfish and murders to achieve his goals, but we still end up sympathizing with him.  The background onto which he exists is much more murderous and self-aggrandizing, so he comes out as a moderate by comparison.

Horza dies at the end.  His entire species of Changers is completely destroyed by the end of the Culture-Idiran war and does not figure in future books, except as a remembrance. 

High WIndow by Raymond Chandler

 This is the first novel Chandler wrote that is not based on some previous short story.  It was made into a movie called "The Brasher Doubloon" but the plot was different somewhat, and Marlowe was not played by Bogart. All move adaptations have simpler plots as Chandler's novels get really complicated at times.  In "The Big Sleep" about 1/3 of the plot was cut out and the ending is completely different from the book. 

The "High Window" is a story of a rare coin from early USA stolen from an old rich lady with an attitude adjustment problem. Her secretary is the one that hires Marlowe and her son's wife is the one who is suspected of stealing the coin.  There are some local goons involved because the son has a gambling habit and the mom is just not dying. 

Eventually, a denture maker and old coin collector are killed in the same building and the secretary comes to Marlowe to confess to a murder she didn't commit.  Marlow finds the real murderers who were making copies of the doubloon with the denture maker's casts and returns it to the old lady, but now there are several of them already. 

Marlowe finds evidence that it was the old lady who pushed her ex husband through a high window and framed her secretary for it.  The secretary is free and Marlowe escorts her to her parents in Idaho. Pretty good book. 

Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

 "You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell."

Probably some of the most philosophical ontological words ever written in Pulp literature.  That's what I like about Raymond Chandler, as opposed to Dashiell Hammett.  Chandler is a philosopher, connoisseur, while Hammett is just a bare craftsman.   Marlowe is refined in his own way, thinks about life, the meaning of it all, his place in the universe.  Spade is a lowlife brute, who couldn't tell Plato from a platoon. 

This time around I read the written book, as opposed to the last review when I read the audiobook while commuting to work and much of the finesse was lost in the jungle and jumble and rumble of public transportation. Luckily, since the Pandemic, I am 100% remote and no more commuting for me. I think I'd like to keep it that way permanently.  It is just too much of a wasted time, even though it gets me out of the house.  As a Project/Engagement Manager I found out I can be just as successful without ever meeting the clients in person, and sometimes not even seeing them on video.  Voice is enough. Fuck the extroverts. Let them crawl up their extroverted rectums.

Anyway, this is still one of my favorite books. Not just detective, pulp or noir books, but books in general, in any category.  One day I'd like to make my own version in film.  I love Bogart, but his version has plot that leaves a lot of out, especially towards the ending.  I'd be the script writer, director, producer, editor and casting.  I know exactly how I want it.  It will be rated M for mature.  No family movie, this one. 

Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

 A quick and flowing read compared to Carrion Comfort by Simmons! Not everybody's cup of tea. Sam Spade's attitude towards women (even those he claims he loves) is decidedly mysoginistic by today's standards, and by a long shot.  There are three developed female characters (plus G's daughter, who only appears on a couple of pages), but they seem to be very stereotyped, and not much real humans.  Miss Wonderly (to use her first alias) is the caricature of a femme fatalle, who uses her physical beauty and sexual favors to manipulate and conquer men to use for her own purposes, while not shying from putting a bullet in their brains when they are of no more use to her.  Iva Archer is the stereotypical suburban housewives whose feelings for her husband died off long time ago (if they even existed beyond her imagination and wishful thinking) and now wants to reinvent herself and get a chance for a fresh start with an affair with her husband's business partner.  Effie is the gregarious secretary stereotype, who is street smart but still has deep feelings, especially for men in positions of authority, like her boss. 

Hammett has a quick and flowing style, especially well crafted dialogues, quick proceeding plot and interesting twists, however his descriptions of every detail of people's clothes and the expressions in their eyes or the twisting of their lips - becomes way too much already after the first 1/4 of the book.  There is an interesting twist in the end when Spade tells out who killed his partner Archer, but the preceding part of the book reads more like an adventure novel (plus hard-boiled) than a detective one. The way the Falcon just "walks" into Spade's office is a real letdown, and doesn't give the anti-hero any chance to prove his professed detective qualities.

If people are looking for a likeable character with whom to identify or "feel for" in books - then this one is definitely not one of them. There are no likeable characters. All of them are flawed, nasty, mean and sleazy in completely unlikeable ways.  Spade, even for an anti-hero, is completely unlikeable. He is a brute, bully, misogynist, homophobe, racist, liar, swindler and many more choice epithets.  However, he is a successful detective and a good reader of people's personalities (summary: they are all rotten).

Although, I appreciate the effort Hammett put into creating Spade, and since Hammett was a private dick himself for a number of years and this would be how an ideal "real-life" gumshoe looks like, I still prefer Philip Marlowe, who is more thoughtful, more introvert, more philosophical, a bit better with women (not bedding the, but treating them) and definitely more fully developed.

The movie is also good, but the Spade there is different from what Hammett wrote in the book (John Huston rewrote many parts for his script for the movie).  From the physical side Spade is supposed to be over 6 feet, blonde, scheming, with a sly smile on his face at all times.  Bogart is 5'6'' (with shoes) , dark, direct, and with a poker face most of the time. Spade in the book calls all his women "angel", but Bogart in the movie calls all of the "sweetheart". 

Anyways, a good book, and a perennial classic, but I am going to re-read "The Big Sleep" again.  By the way, Bogart plays exactly the same character in "Maltese Falcon" and "The Big Sleep" although they are two different detectives.  Well, to come to think about it, Bogart plays exactly the same character in every movie he's been - himself.  

Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons

Yes, it took 2.5 months to read this book. It is very long.  Also it is not overly interesting or readable.  I had such quite expectations from the Hyperion Cantos, which are one of my favorite Sci Fi books, plus I enjoyed the Olympus/Ilium duology, however this book falls below both of those.  I have no idea how this book could win an award when it is so average, artificially prolonged and just plain pretentious. 

First of all, I was expecting a horror book.  This is not a horror book, unless you count the descriptions of the different character's face distortions and lots of blood and murder.  Blood and murder does not make a horror.  It could be called a thriller, but definitely not horror.  The book is also not a Sci Fi book either, since nothing scientific is really described.  Probably we can call it Speculative Fiction, at best, but still mostly a very prolonged, very slow-burn thriller. 

The BS with the FBI agents being 'conditioned' to work for Brother Christian and all past American presidents being in cahoots, event landing US Navy destroyers to guard Brother C.'s personal island, is just too far fetched.  Such thing has never happened in the history of the US, and, in all probability - never will. 

One note - this book was written in the late '80s, so some things that were acceptable then, are not really acceptable today in 2022.  First is racial slurs.  The N-word is peppered all over, and although I get it that the bad guys are using it - it still feels like too much.  Also, the description of rape (by Tony), and I mean physical rape, not just the mental one, and the description of the fear and humiliation the women experience during, was also a bit too much.  I get it, again, it is the bad guy doing it and he is a piece of shit, but less graphic and disturbing descriptions would benefit the plot just as much if not more. 

The best part of the book is Saul Laski and the Holocaust descriptions, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the murder of millions of innocent Jews by the Nazi monsters (Willi being an exaggerated example).  Saul is the only character I found interesting and could feel for.  The other characters were paper-thin marionettes, with no real existence.  Especially ridiculous is the Southern Sherriff who dies half-way through, without having any impact, neither on the first nor the second half of the narrative, but being a kind of caricature which has no meaning attached to its existence. 

The "mind vampire" concept is novel, to be sure, but I fail to see how "Using" is the same as "Feeding" and to what extent? It seems that the "Ability" is independent of any "Feeding" as it stays at the same level/strength and although there is some rejuvenation and life extension for the mind-vampires - that seems to be marginal, and far from the "immortality" of the actual vampires in literature. 

The action/fight/battle scenes are just way too long.  It seems like an inexperienced writer tried his best to write the most epic battles/fights and it ended up being forced, verbose and boring.  Although Simmons has a lot of disdain in the foreword for the Goth Girl Editor who told him to cut the book in half - that advice is definitely valid for the fight scenes, as they are the most boring part of the book, and include descriptions of materials, expressions, sounds and thoughts that are completely superfluous and boring.  Sure, make it "sensory", but within limit; use some common sense. 

So, after 800+ pages and 2.5 months of daily (nightly) reading, I don't feel much richer, neither intellectually, nor life-experience-wise.  I think I am going to give reading the rest of Simmons' books a pause.  A long pause.  A very long pause.