Christian

It was originally published in 2017, but wasn’t translated in to English until 2020.

I think her main influence was “A Modest Proposal”.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica-It takes place after a virus has killed off the majority of animal life on the planet. Eating humans has become legalized. However, the government has stepped in to heavily regulate the eating of “special meat”. Immigrants and the poor were selected at the beginning to serve as legal food. Now, the factories specially breed immigrants and the poor to serve as meat, and the government-approved product is no longer considered human. 
The main character works as a salesman for one of the largest meat-processing factories.

One day, a “meat” farmer delivers a female to the main character as a bribe, so that the factory will pick up more contracts from this farm. “Black market meat”, which is not inspected by the government, is highly illegal. If caught, the person convicted can lose their humanity and end up as a legal slaughter, themselves.

The main character doesn’t want a “specimen”. Little does anyone know, he’s actually a vegetarian. An act considered to be unnatural. Now, he’s stuck with this female.

With time, the main character finds himself growing attracted to this female.

It’s a well-written literary horror novel with a message.

Either that, or a lot of educated guys were fucking other guys, and they were hiding behind a screen of respectability.

I don’t see why homosexuality would have been less prevalent in the past than it is today. There were laws which could have regulated behaviour to an extent, but we all know when it comes to sex, well...

A prominent individual couldn’t be too obvious and overt about it*; otherwise, they’d end up like Oscar Wilde.

*Although, Benjamin Franklin was apparently more accepting of homosexuality than was the norm at the time.

I mean, if I were rich and could hide my indiscretions, and was also gay at a time when it was illegal, I’d hide behind the respectability excuse also.  
“Oh, am I buggering that young man? Why, no. We are just very close friends. Everyone educated writes in such a manner. Nothing to see here, good sirs.”

There were letters written between Hamilton and a younger soldier of who the two had served together during the American Revolution. Maybe they were innocent, and maybe they were not.

There was at least one letter which definitely seemed to go quite a bit beyond mere innocence.

There have obviously always been forces within society which would want to cast doubt upon the notion that any “great men” worthy of respect in a nation’s history could have been involved in same-sex relationships.

What also must be remembered within a historical context is that the concept “bisexuality” did not exist until fairly recently (the term originally meant hermaphrodite) and men with bisexual proclivities usually did not consider themselves to be in the least homosexual.  
If Hamilton did have sexual urges for another man, he certainly was attracted to females as well, so it would be likely that he would consider it unacceptable to think of himself as “gay”.

Grant Morrison is ok and all, but his GL run was just missing this certain something...

Yeah, that’s what was missing, DC.

The Amazon page shows a release date of November 2021.

OMAC is apparently shown as a member of the Authority on that cover.

It also lists a hardcover that is “out of stock”, rather than “available for preorder”, which could be a sign that it’s an old listing that isn’t going to be released now.

This book might be an error on Amazon’s part. This might have been solicited as part of DC’s original 5G event, before the new editorial team took over at DC. The new editors changed the event to Future State. So, this might have been part of DC’s original plans and just an outdated solicitation listed on Amazon.

I think there was a rumour that Superman was going to be revealed as the new leader of the Authority during that 5G event, which was canceled.

It would be weird to have Amazon listing an item before the publisher even announced it.

A US $6 comic would sell for $6 here. Screw that. 

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila-Cyberpunk from central Africa? Yes, please!

OK, maybe there’s a distinct lack of the “cyber” in the novel, but the writing style bares similarities with the William Gibson of Neuromancer.

It takes place in the very near-future. Many African nation-states have broken down.

Warlords have risen to power, and they’re only too willing to make sweetheart deals with transnational corporations for the rights to extract the land’s remaining natural resource wealth.

Tram 83 is the only bar/nightclub in one of these crumbling cities. It’s the place where everyone goes at night...the workers, foreigners, prostitutes, drug dealers...

There are two main characters. One of them is an ex-revolutionary who is now a career criminal. The other is his childhood best friend, an intellectual who left the city to go away to university. He is now coming back to visit the city, with the idea that art can make change.  
His ex-best friend knows there is no better future, and the only way out is to escape the city for somewhere else, if you can. 
The two meet up again at Tram 83.

Instead of a revolution, the ex-revolutionary has a new idea for expropriating the wealth of the rich: by blackmailing them. Like taking photos of corporate owners having sex with children.

There is some great social commentary too. In one scene, a person is eating a dog. He is thinking that he wishes he could be a dog, if that dog lived in France, because even dogs have health insurance in France.

Ha!

How does one know?  
People claim that Abraham Lincoln was closeted gay now too.

James Buchanan is considered the first gay American president.  
It’s pretty well accepted that he was actually homosexual. Members of Congress knew about it, and it seemed somewhat of a poorly kept secret amongst his fellow southern Democrat politicians, but no one thought that they needed to run to the media and let everyone know that “Buchanan is gay”.

That’s the thing. No one made a big deal about it back then, because he kept his private life private.  
Today, it would be made a huge deal, so that the media could start a partisan war between those who will definitely vote for him solely because he is gay versus those who would never vote for him because they won’t stand for a gay president.

Not that I think a person being gay should matter or that a person should have to keep it secret.

It’s not something that “respectable” people wanting to be in positions of power were upfront about at that time though. It was a different world.  
Everything a politician did in their lives wasn’t immediately posted online and discussed on Twitter. It was easier to disguise one’s private lives. There’s really no way to know the truth about all of these people.

I mean, Hamilton may or may not have been bisexual.

Some of the letters may be misunderstood, but there’s at least one reference to an euphemism involving the size of Hamilton’s penis in one of those letters. That’s pretty intimate, regardless of how innocently affectionate the letters.

It doesn’t seem like Hamilton ever consummated any of his sexual attractions to males, if such did exist.

Maybe DC Comics is trying to scam Marvel in the same manner as Marvel tricked DC back in 1971.

DC will increase the page count and price of their books to $6 for one month in the hope that Marvel will follow.

DC’s intention will be to drop the page count and the price to $5 by the next month, but in the hope that Marvel will continue with the higher page count and price.

So, readers will choose more of the cheaper $5 DC comics at the store, and also forget that DC is still charging an extra dollar.

Marvel actually did this scam in 1971, and it actually did work, true believer.

No, this is probably actually heralding the death knell of the monthly physical comic book. It probably won’t be long before comics are solely a digital subscription service and then later as a Trade market.

Much better than Batman on LSD again hallucinating that he’s a Reptoid, at least.

This is such a great book.
The only drawback, so far, is that I’m finding it hard to figure out how these stories are interconnected enough to make a novel. Rather, it reads like short fiction connected by taking place in the same city.

The first section (described as a the prologue by the author) concerns a beggar who becomes fabulously wealthy by the fact that he seems to be unable to be killed through playing Russian roulette.

The twist of the revelation as to why this man cannot lose playing Russian roulette is simply perfect.

Some of the writing style puts me in mind of Dostoevsky, but the influence of Borges is certainly apparent. 

-Let me just add how much I appreciate New Directions Press (the publisher, obviously). I dare say they are my favourite book publishing house. They have brought so many brilliant and experimental works of literature in to print for English-speaking readers.

I needed a longer text to read. I ordered a copy of Nostalgia by Mircea Cartarescu.

It’s described as akin to Pynchon meets Borges.

It’s a post-modern novel with interlinked sections symbolically tracing the history of Romania from the inter-World War period to the apocalypse (representative of dreary 1980s Romania) and beyond to the creation of a new universe.

I think the films were quite enough.  
I didn’t enjoy the Lord of the Rings books that much after a first reading. I’ve never been tempted to go back for a reread.

I’ve rarely reread any literature though (outside of short fiction or comics), since the age of 20, as I have too many books I haven’t read yet.
The only exceptions being Robert Anton Wilson’s fiction and Umberto Eco’s first two novels. I went on a RAW reread after he died, and Eco’s first two novels are too wondrous to not revisit every decade.

Ah yes, events come together much more clearly as the plot moves along. There are some definite elements of “weird fiction” mixed in there. Very much a work of Slipstream fiction.

It was nice having a novel remind me of the glory days of New Wave science fiction. Far too few newer science fiction writers remind me of the New Wave writers. Much is the shame.

I am moving on to Black Cathedral by Marcial Gala. I saw the novel listed as one of the “top five genre works of 2020”.

It tells the story of a religious preacher who preaches a compelling message about building a giant cathedral in Cuba, with the promise of the realization of an utopian community if the project is ever completed.

The novel is a commentary on Communism in Cuba, contrasting the past promises of a future utopia with the reality of present-day Cuban society.

Since it’s written by Baxter, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is better than Baxter’s book as far as writing and characterization, but much worse when it comes to ideas.

I’m not really a fan of Baxter’s writing.

Ings is grouped with names like M. John Harrison, Christopher Priest, and JG Ballard.

On to The Smoke by Simon Ings.
For those not familiar, Ings’ style is very similar to that of M. John Harrison.

It takes place in an alternate history world...I’m not totally sure why Ings chose to muddy up a complex enough scenario by also choosing this path, as it could have simply taken place in the future.
The divergence point was when the volcano in Yellowstone erupted in 1870, leaving the United States facing massive death tolls and left uninhabitable.

For whatever reason, this leads to British society developing along the lines of Steampunk and (later) Biopunk.

The First World War ends with England dropping an atomic bomb on Germany, leaving most of continental Europe in very bad condition.

Only those who turn to genetic engineering in Germany are able to survive the radiation*. This leads to the world dividing along the lines of three different species. The genetically engineered Homo Superior, regular humans who either disavow genetic engineering or can’t afford it, and a genetically engineered sub-species specifically bred as sex slaves (culled from the unemployed or Europe’s colonies).

*There is some attempt to explain this with claims that a scientist who died during the Russian Revolution survives in this alternate version of WWI (with no Communist Revolution), but it’s all quite handwave-y.

Regardless of my problems with Ings’ world-building, I still highly recommend this novel, especially if you enjoy the more bleak side of M. John Harrison.

The main character is a working class man who was involved in a relationship with the Homo Superior daughter of a powerful industrialist.

The two of them split up because he’s just a working class man and she is a member of the “master race”. He left London behind after the relationship ended. His prospects didn’t look good with increasing unemployment anyway.

Britain’s economy is seriously struggling...a world without the United States and a falling apart Europe would tend in that direction.

London has been revitalized by the space industry. After an environmental catastrophe and a horrendous major war, the writing is on the wall that the Earth probably doesn’t have much of a future.

The Homo Superior species has plans to colonize space.

London is one of the few places where good paying jobs are still available for regular humans. So, the main character decides to take his chances by moving back to London and facing the past he left behind.

Meanwhile, society continues to darken, as hostilities between regular humans and Homo Superior continues to escalate. There is a talk of a second war.

While sci-fi concepts make up a huge part of the backdrop for this novel, the main plot of the novel is far more about a down-on-his-luck working class guy dealing with a failed relationship and a questionable future.

This would have been better had it been a non-genre or even a horror novel, instead of trying to make it work with science fiction tropes. Of course, Ings does usually write Slipstream fiction. After all, it would work just as well if the woman had simply been a member of the upper-class. Still, the writing is of such high quality, it’s easy to forgive missteps.

Fans of hard sci-fi would do well to give this one a hard pass. Definitely one for those who miss the days of New Wave science fiction.

Yes, and all of their songs sounded like “Another Planet”. Not their good early stuff.

This is a weird collection. The publisher must have pasted “Elric” on the cover for marketing purposes, since that is Moorcock’s most famous creation.

Oh. Maybe they just needed extra stories to fill out one more collection, if they are putting together a comprehensive Elric series of collections. So, they padded out the second book with some random short stories.

No, Elric was not in “To Rescue Tanelorn”. So, it is an unusual choice for the title of a supposed Elric collection.

The collection does look like a random hodgepodge.

There is “Elric at the End of Time” and the non-canonical (still a nice read) “The Last Enchantment” included.

Here are the contents:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?250294

The first Mack story has definitely been collected in the Daredevil: Parts of a Hole TPB. I enjoyed that story. The art is beautiful, if nothing else, but the story was pretty good also.

Wait. There’s actually a Daredevil: The Unusual Suspects TPB from  2018 which collects Spider Man/Daredevil, the Bob Gale story-arc, the not-so-great second David Mack story-arc, and some mini-series called Daredevil: Ninja (I’ve never read that last one).

https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=47651875

It’s just an animal themed one. You can find different variations on Tarot decks at most local book chains.

Julie bought a cat themed one a few years back at the local Indigo Books.

They can be harder to use, if you care about using them for divination, if you are trained on the traditional cards. You need to have the numbers memorized from the traditional Tarot cards so you can match them up with the themed versions.

It was a Tarot deck. It’s just not one of the major recognized decks.

As long as there is a 78 card deck, and the cards can be matched up to the trumps and suits, it doesn’t really matter which cards are used.

That is Jesus who appears to John. He is the Shepherd and the Son.

Yes, the ending is sort of vague. The fact that later writers did ignore almost all of Jenkins’ run makes the ending even more problematic.

The idea that God canceled the deal with the Devil is certainly one appropriate interpretation, the most believable one. That was how I read the scene.

John also outlines how he’ll manipulate and con his way up the ranks of Hell until he overthrows the First, and then threatens that he’ll make a far more dangerous and effective adversary for God than the Devil. Which seems kind of forced and ludicrous within the context of the story beforehand.  
I think Jenkins meant it that God showed mercy on John, but John couldn’t accept it humbly after what has come before; that was simply his boasting, so it looked like he blustered his way to gaining redemption.

Jenkins’ did mess up the mechanics of his ending, but I still really like the end of Jenkins’ final story where John states, “No one died, except me”.

Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy-This is talked about as part of 20th century dystopian literature. I would say it is much more part of the 20th century “weird fiction” tradition. In fact, if the book were better known, I’d have to assume that a large amount of current horror fiction was partially influenced by this novel.

There is something off about the writing style, and I can’t tell if the fault is the translation or the author. This is apparently the only English translation of the novel and other readers don’t seem to mention the prose as reading awkward, so I’m left unsure.

It’s the story of a linguist who is supposed to be travelling to Finland, but somehow ends up on the wrong plane.

He finds himself in a megalopolis where he is unable to understand the language.

It’s a language totally unlike any he has heard before, and no one in the city can understand any of the languages he can speak.

The novel could be read on different levels, but it seems to me that it’s the story of a nameless, faceless nobody lost amidst the anomie of modern urban society.

I guess there is a scene towards the end where the main character joins a working class revolt against the government. The main character finds himself relating to the underclass, due to his own alienation from the wider culture. Some reviewers read this as hinting towards a message about Communist rule in Hungary. However, the scene seems too farcical to be read as a commentary on totalitarianism. It seems more likely to show the ennui and listlessness of modern society. It says the revolt is seemingly totally forgotten by the populace immediately after it is ended.

I liked that they reprinted It Can’t Happen Here in 2017 with blurbs taken from the demagogue-fascist president on the front cover, and a lot of it looked like direct quotes taken from a certain post-1935 presidency (the D T).