What non-Go book are you reading right now?

[Conrad_Melville]

I doubt there is any single book we could suggest that would “sell the genre” to someone except by pure luck, just as there is no single book that would be certain to sell fine literature to someone. Fine literature and SF are both too vast in scope to be encapsulated in a single book. We don’t know what your story interests are (adventure, social drama, personal drama, comedy, etc.) nor what your narrative preferences are (encompassing plot, style, characterization, atmosphere, etc.).

If you want a near-future, hard science, survival story, you can’t do better than The Martian by Andy Weir (made into an excellent movie in 2015).

Next, I will mention my five favorite SF novels in no particular order after the first one. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart is the finest post-apocalypse story ever. But it is 317 pages, not short by my reckoning. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr., also a post-apocalypse story highly regarded by fans and academics alike, is considered the best SF novel dealing with religion (316 pp.). Much shorter are the next three.

Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (219 pp, ) is a catastrophe story with great characterization (forget the idiotic 1963 movie; but the excellent 1981 BBC adaptation follows the book closely). Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore (211 pp.) is a time travel story widely regarded as a classic. Its use of two levels of plot to illustrate the theme (that one can’t be merely an observer of life) is without peer. Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (193 pp.), an awesome book in every way, is the oddest alien “invasion” story ever. Some unseen aliens briefly stopped on Earth and left behind a bunch of trash, which has hugely disrupted civilization. The only trouble with recommending RP is that the ending is extremely enigmatic; nevertheless, everyone in our book group (12-14 people) liked it.

@noob42

Earlier this year I read a fiction book called “Life of a Stupid Man” by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Next fiction I think that I’ll read is “Demian” by Herman Hesse.

I very much liked the Akutagawa Ryunosuke stories I’ve read, collected in Tales Grotesque and Curious (The Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1938) and Rashomon and Other Stories (Charles E. Tuttle Co., Tokyo, 1952/1983). I picked up those books because of my love of the Kurosawa film Rashomon. I’m also a fan of Hesse and found Demian to be a very interesting character study.

[Samraku]

If you lean libertarian, Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” is very fun: Luna is a penal colony and starts a war for independence from Earth. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time” is a very enjoyable treatment of its high concept: a bioengineered nanovirus designed to accelerate Evolution to the point where monkeys seeded with it can meet their human creators on equal terms inside a millennium. Alfred Bester’s “The Stars My Destination” takes inspiration from Le Comte d’ Monte Cristo, but sets it in a burgeoning scifi-cyberpunk world socially and economically upturned from the discovery of human teleportation

[Conrad_Melville]

I’m finally reading another Octavia E. Butler novel, Clay’s Ark (1984). It’s hard to find her books in used-book stores, perhaps because she is so popular. This is the fifth and last of her Patternist series, which were her early novels, but it is actually a prequel to the others, so I guess it’s good that I’m reading this first.

Set in a dystopian future that seems somewhat dated, it tells of an alien virus that changes people into a more animalistic species (when it doesn’t outright kill them), absolutely compelled to reproduce and survive (goodbye morals). A small enclave of the infected isolate themselves in the desert, not wanting to infect the human race, but also not wanting to die.

Because of Butler’s excellent writing and characterization, this rises above sensationalism, but the narrow scope makes it seem very much like a dress rehearsal for Butler’s masterpiece, Dawn, which I read and discussed almost two years ago (What non-Go book are you reading right now? - #528 by Conrad_Melville).

Both novels involve “body horror,” stories featuring the alteration or transformation of the human body, Most BH stories—about vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example—present a fait accompli that evokes little if any visceral revulsion concerning the transformation, as distinct from the danger to others. There are exceptions. Guy Endore’s excellent The Werewolf of Paris (1933) depicts the moral and physical revulsion of the protagonist. The original Outer Limits TV series had two 1963 episodes of effective BH: “The Architects of Fear,” in which a volunteer is gradually transformed into a pseudo alien in an attempt to perpetrate a false-flag operation to unite the world; and “A Feasibility Study,” about aliens who kidnap humans for a medical experiment, a story so grotesquely weird that the TV censors blocked its broadcast for 9 months, despite an ending that is one of the most beautiful and inspirational in SF film history.

In the horror field, Edward Lucas White’s “Lukundoo” (1907) really evokes BH cringe in ways exceeding Poe, I think. Lovecraft touched on BH in the Cthulhu mythos and in “Cool Air,” but lacked the writing ability to put it across as well as modern writers.

Historically, science fiction rarely dealt with real BH. Campbell’s Who Goes There? (1938), the basis for John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), focused on the paranoid suspense and the problem-solving of the blood test to determine who was human, rather than on the BH emphasized in the film. George Langelaan’s 1957 story, “The Fly,” the basis for the film versions, may be the first real BH story in SF although some people may regard it as too over-the top. I’ve generally thought of Greg Bear’s novella, “Blood Music” (1983, expanded into a novel in 1984), as the beginning of SF body horror (even scarier today than when it was written).

Today, BH is everywhere. Most notably in the film 28 Days Later (2002), in M. C. Carey’s The Girl with all the Gifts (2014, made into a movie in 2016, and spun off into a TV series, The Last of Us), and in Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (2014, made into a movie in 2018).

My personal pick for the most effective BH film is District 9 (2010). where the gradual transformation into an alien never fails to viscerally horrify film reactors (people who record their first viewing of a film for their YouTube channel).

[Atorrante]

Reading Robert van Gulik’s Necklace and kalabash.

About the plot (taken from wiki): Judge Dee is a magistrate in the fictional Poo-yang district, a wealthy area through which the Grand Canal of China runs (part of modern-day Jiangsu province). The Emperor’s daughter lives in the district at the Water Palace, which falls under a special administration run by the military commander. Judge Dee goes to the area for a few days of relaxing fishing but soon meets with a strange Taoist hermit; next a body is found in the river. Then the Emperor’s daughter appeals to Judge Dee for aid. The mysteries keep building up, and Judge Dee has to tread very carefully to avoid serious political fallout from his investigations.

In another post/thread I already mentioned Robert van Gulik.

Playing Go in Literature (Books, Comics, etc.)

In Robert van Gulik’s book The Chinese Lake Murders go plays a crucial role in solving a crime. In this book there is a diagram with a go problem (chapter 5). Actually it is not really a problem, but a code that opens a hidden lock, that leads to a secret hideaway. Here Judge Dee finds the evidence he needs to solve this mystery. In this chapter there are also some interesting observations on the game of go. [Scherm­afbeelding 2025-05-21 om 10.30.23] In the view of another thread I am wonder…

Van Gulik claims that the Chinese detective stories predated the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle by more than a handful centuries.

Recently I wrote a little article about this for the Dutch Go Bulletins and there is so much more to tell about this. Maybe some other time.

Reading the Dutch translation.

[Conrad_Melville]

@Atorrante

Van Gulik claims that the Chinese detective stories predated the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle by more than a handful centuries.

Maybe. That would depend on how one defines “detective.” Usually, the actual critical claim is that Poe invented the modern detective story, whatever that means.

However that may be, the Bible features the first “Locked Room” mystery, but doesn’t say whether it was solved at the time. Even today, commentaries rarely take up the question, perhaps out of delicacy.

In Judges 3:12-30 (written c. 1050-1000 B.C.), we read of the assassination of King Eglon by Ehud, in the king’s private audience room (the “roof chamber”). Ehud’s short sword penetrates the king’s sphincter, “letting out the dirt” (line 22). Ehud locks the doors to the chamber and then escapes. The guards delay entering apparently because of the smell, thinking the king is “relieving himself” in the “cool chamber” (the toilet; line 24).

Ehud presumably escaped through the toilet, by descending into the room below, where, based generally on palace archeology, a large chamber pot was positioned and would be periodically emptied by servants. Whether Ehud got his feet dirty, or swung out to avoid the pot, we don’t know. I suspect the latter, otherwise he would have been too easy to track.

[Conrad_Melville]

I must correct an embarrassing omission. When I was thinking about body-horror stories for my earlier post (What non-Go book are you reading right now? - #727 by Conrad_Melville), I did remember Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novelette, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (J&H). However, in the course of writing my post, I forgot to include it, perhaps because I couldn’t decide whether it should be with the horror stories or the SF stories. J&H was a tremendously influential story in both fields, leaving behind the supernatural tropes of older horror fiction and exploiting then-new ideas about the psyche. It is certainly body horror of a kind, especially in the great 1932 film with Fredric March, who won the only best actor Oscar ever given for a horror role (IIRC).

[Feijoa]

Rescued this from the library book sale last week and finished it just now. I don’t think the author is necessarily trying to make this point, but I find it very convincing that these are skills that could benefit anyone.

It’s not a self-help book, and i knew most of the described techniques already but am newly encouraged to work on them now. So I’ve finally committed the major system to permanent memory (thanks to some denim relish goof-ups at the cafe), memorized my family’s social security numbers (which evidently involve a lot of smoking and food in the lobby of our local bank), and revived my quest to file away all Chinese characters in various places around my hometown.

I wonder if anyone has had notable success using these techniques for Go.

[Atorrante]

Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Dee Goong An) An Authentic Eighteenth-Century Chinese Detective Novel

In 1949 Robert van Gulik translated an eighteenth century Chines detective novel by an anonymus writer. Apparently he was intrigued by it, because a few years later he started writing his famous Judge Dee series.

The intro, the outro

With an extensive introduction (Translator’s Preface) and a Translator’s Postscript as the outro, which both are full of interesting information.

The intro, the outro?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcrUuCDFLOQ

[PRHG]

The Veiled Sceptre by Anne Twomey

It’s all about the reserve powers of heads of state, and their vice regal representatives, in Westminster systems of government.

I felt like I didn’t know much about my own country’s system of government so I decided to read the Australian constitution. I was surprised at the powers exercisable by the governor general, who I always viewed as a kind of figurehead, so I sought out a book that discussed the powers in greater detail, which led me here.

It’s interesting to learn about the extent of the reserve powers. I was also surprised that the threat of use of the reserve powers, whether explicit or implicit, has influenced government decisions and sometimes even made the government of the day reverse course. I think a lot of people in Australia are under the assumption that outside of a constitutional crisis, like in 1975, the reserve powers don’t have any impact on government.

Edit: The author has a great youtube channel. It’s mostly about the constitution, and is intended for a general audience: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3EJDfpqrtS0cX-uptWe8dg