Professor Tanhauser
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Cool booksOne thing that initially attracted me to the beatnik scene recently was the fact that, unlike many, the beatniks seem to respect intelligence and to practice literacy, as opposed to the masses who seem to view being a "brain" as the ultimate curse and mock the idea of reading.
So to celebrate literacy, let us come together and recommend cool books for one and all to peruse and derive joyous mental sustenance from!
First on my hit parade is a voluminous tome entitled "The eternity artifact" by one L.E. Modessit, Jr.
TEA is a heavy read, made more so by the fact it uses multiple first person perspectives. (I.E., each chapter is written from the POV of a main character, and the chapters rotate thru a list of characters.)
Also the book uses some rather obscure terms that might have one reaching for a dictionary from time to time.
The plot is that in the far future, a massive artifact of indisputably alien origin is discovered travelling at the edge of the galaxy on a course that will soon put it beyond human reach. An expedition is hastily assembled to explore this unique item. (Humans seem to be the only "intelligent" life in the known universe at the time...)
There's a real mixed bag here, with all sorts of characters including a professor who is verbose to the point of near obscurity and a pilot who is terse to the point of brusqueness.
Politics dominate the book, since humanity found no aliens to fight, it fell back to it's time honored trait of Balkanizing and fighting among itself, with a multitude of social-religious-political factions vying to posses the artifact or destroy it.
There are two major theocracies, one based on militant catholicism, one based on militant islam. Both are portrayed in a negative light, perhaps to avoid cries of "persecuting" one religion over another, or, perhaps, the author shares my view on theocracies: There are no good ones.
An interesting point raised thruout the book is that the mere fact the artifact proves intelligent alien life exists, or existed, is likely to be of greater importance and impact than any science or technology that could be derived from the artifact.
While TEA is a challenging read, it's a rewarding one and I recommend it to those who enjoy a challenging book.
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Poe Man Poe
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"Poon Takes a Holiday" by Horace Mottun with introduction by Frank Stallone. A collection of short stories about poon. A good read.
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moleman
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"Frank Stallone Does It By The Radiator" by P. Une Tang. Available from Amazon.
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Poe Man Poe
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"He Can't Put it Away" by Tercine Embarcadero.. This is a character study of baseed on the life of Tans Denfame, the inventor of the latex enema bag. The story is a good read, however, the author tends to digress when trying to include rationale for including fictional characters based upon people who may have been in the company of Embarcadero when he made this important discovery.
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