ENDLESS BLUE, by Wen Spencer

I wish this intriguing book weren't so exhausting due to its multiple themes. I counted at least twenty-eight. Even ANONYMOUS REX, a complex science fiction/noir detective combination reviewed earlier, has perhaps eight themes. FINAL CUT, the Charlie Salter detective novel just reviewed, has even fewer, about four. ENDLES BLUE has five or six gigantic themes, any one of which could almost be a book in itself.

MIKHAIL VOLKOV, an officer in the Novalya Rus, Russian derived union of worlds, investigates the strange appearance of a spaceship engine which returns to normal space without its ship and covered in coral. He desperately needs to find a weapon which can be used against the Nefrim, humanity's genocidal nemesis, and hopes the engine's origin may point the way.

VOLKOV's foster brother TURK, an officer on his ship, is a Red, one of several types of manufactured, "adapted" humans. Adapted humans provoke endless discussion about racism, slavery, sexual exploitation, finding love, etc.

When VOLVOV's ship jumps through a worm-hole, it crashes in a mysterious space ship graveyard world, the SARGASSO. It's an earth-like universe whose ecology is like the South Pacific, with startlingly different physics. PAIGE BAILEY, the captain of a fishing ship, rescues TURK, then struggles with her relationship with him. PAIGES's ability to communicate with multiple alien species is a vital thread in the book.

I really like the book, despite its many flaws. If the measure of success of a writer is the desire he creates to revisit his world, SPENCER succeeds in ENDLESS BLUE. Next time I'll bring a compass and a sextant.

Commentary:Books as comfort food and obsession. byCeeViews

Yesterday I added another book to my car books pile. A DYING LIGHT IN CORDUBA, is a Marcus Didius Falco Roman mystery by Lindsey Davis joined LOVE LIES BLEEDING, a China Bayles mystery, by Susan Wittig Albert, a young adults book, and several professional magazines. Oh, and a little book on obsessive compulsive disorder. These books met my criteria for a car book.

It should be no surprise that I also have purse books, a greater necessity than ones loose in the car.The current occupants are SF paperbacks by John Barnes, and by Wen Spencer, both authors new to me. I have two books because I'm close to finishing one and don't want to be caught bookless.


I got my love of reading from both my mother and my father. My mother read mainly popular books, mysteries, romances, books on the top ten list. She always settled down with a book in the evening. My father read less often, but his choices were more eclectic, including humor books, Shakespeare, and the old West.

I'm not sure when it became essential to have books with me at all time, or when the number began growing. This habit may be a tiny bit obsessive now, but I would never have become the person I am today without books as my friends.

FINAL CUT, by Eric Wright

FINAL CUT is a mystery featuring Staff Inspector Charlie Salter, of the Toronto Metropolitan police. Salter has an desirable odd-jobs position in the Special Affairs Center. In FINAL CUT he has a sweet assignment, baby-sitting an American-directed film set in Toronto, warmly depicted here. He gains the director's cut view of the craft behind the magic. The villain's escape may be unrealistic, while the contents of a grocery bag are precisely detailed.

The job looks a cinch until various acts of sabotage occur during the filming. After several occurrences, the screenwriter is killed. The pushy young star, the grouchy cinematographer, the unappreciated assistant director, the autocratic continuity manager, and all the others are suspects. Salter investigates with quiet competence, the complete opposite of the flashy car chases of the movie.

A subplot of the novel is Salter's relationship with his teenage son Seth, who wants to dance professionally. Salter is uncomfortable with this decision, though he keeps it from Seth. He wants better for the boy, and doesn't want others, including his police brethren, falsely stereotyping his son as gay. Salter gets Seth a chance to visit the set, where he's fascinated by meeting a famous actor, Henry Vigor. Vigor has made a career playing villains. He's a Nazi in this film, although he escaped from them in real life. Seth idolizes the old man, and by the end of the novel, may have a new career choice.

The noir detective has to walk alone; Salter has his wife and family. That's another reason I love this series. The family relationships are quite real, neither idolized nor demonized.

A CARNIVAL OF BUNCOMBE, by H.L. Mencken, non-fiction

H.L. Mencken was mentioned recently in Connie Willis' INSIDE JOB, and, honestly, I'd barely heard of him before. He wrote from 1899 until 1948, producing an estimated 5,000,000 words. He generated political articles, public health crusades for his beloved Baltimore, and a gigantic work on THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE.

A CARNIVAL OF BUNCOMBE collects 69 of the articles written for the Baltimore EVENING SUN newspaper. His editors caution that his "vivid violent style and...his droll fakery tend ...sometimes to obscure or crowd an astute observation."

In an August 25, 1924 column about the 1924 Presidential campaign, he says of Vice-President Davis, one of the candidates, "Is he in favor of shoving men into jail without jury trials or is he against it? No one knows." Imagine how Mencken would explode about the Patriot Act.

His next column, September 15, 1924, tears into Calvin Coolidge, "He is the favorite of all (Wall Street's) jackals. They believe they will be safe if he is elected, and they are right."

Continuing his slam against Davis and adding Calvin Coolidge "....The money changers greatly prefer a ductile ignoramus, eager for flattery...Dr. Coolidge has been tried (by flattery). And found satisfactory."

He ultimately states that he will vote for Senator Robert M. La Follette, widely hated because of his opposition to WWI. The Senator from Wisconsin had broken away from the Republicans (yes, the Republicans) to form a Progressive party endorsed by the Socialists.

Mencken admires La Folletee for sticking to his principles, but lambasts him. "La Follete (is) busy with his archaic visions of monopolies and his lamentable schemes to curse the country with more and more (political appointed) jobholders."

In a column just before the elections he says of La Follette,  " I shall vote for him unhesitating, for a plain reason: he is the best man in the running, as a man...There is no ring in his nose. Nobody owns him...Does it matter what his ideas are? Personally, I am against four-fifths of them, but what are the odds?"

I don't know of anyone today except possibly Jon Stewart who slams all sides. Even Stewart couldn't get away with Mencken's criticism of former President Warren G. Harding's writing. "He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges ... it reminds me of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights."

He goes on for three pages, not neglecting to slam Harding's target audience as "morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables."

And you thought the 21st century had produced great rants.

ANONYMOUS REX, by Eric Garcia

Raymond's Chandler's Simple Art of Murder. “But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.”
Or, down these means streets a dinosaur must go. In this quick-paced witty novel, Vincent Rubio is a noir-style California private eye with a bad herb habit. He's also a Velociraptor in disguise, one of the 16 species of dinosaurs which have survived the great extinction and insured their future existence by secretly moving into the human world. In a wildly complicated plot Rubio must avenge his dead partner and solve the murder of Raymond McBride, a prominent Carnatour entertainment mogul. There's a dame with secrets, lethal minions, forbidden love between different dinosaur species, and a terrible basil addiction to fight. Garcia has created a wonderful world about hiding and coming out, and the one regret is that he can sustain it in only three books.

WELLSTONE, by Wil McCarthy

In this space yarn, nanotechnology in the ubiquitous form of wellstone, a programmable material, creates everything from buildings to clothing. Fax machines provide instantaneous travel and convert matter into food, boats, or anything else desired.

The Prince of Tonga leads a colony of over-privileged boys, more Peter Pan than Lord of the Flies, to an escape from the summer camp planet where they've been exiled. They discover the raw edges of their universe, not in a Star Wars-like cantina, but a wood-faced coffee shop in Denver. When these rowdies mess up the cafe, the Queen and King of Tonga take note. The Queen of All Things sends them back to a harsh world where there are no flush toilets and their dorky uniforms can't be programmed into anything stylish. The locked fax machine thwarts any travel. It serves only s'mores and frank'n'beans, leaving them to climb the dangerous peach pie trees for any variety to their diet. The defiant Prince plots his next escape with passion but no practicality.

I'm not sure in what wild brainstorming session Wil McCarthy conceived his universe, but it's a splendid one with chuckling references to the cone of silence and adamantium. Youthful rebels dash across the solar system, while only Conrad Mursk, the prince's best friend, argues for reason. When the defiant teens fail to calculate the dangers of their journey, the trip turns deadly.