The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

Author: John Wyndham | Page Count: 241

"You know, my dear, while it's proper for us to be concerned, the responsibility for a remedy isn't ours. If it ever was, and that is highly questionable, the authorities took it away from us a long time ago."

Wikipedia classes the 1950s as a 'transitional period' in the history of science-fiction literature, sitting between the 'Pulp' of the 20s and 30s and the 'New Wave' that gained popularity in the 1960s and 70s. It may lack a classy name, but the 50s wasn't short of genre classics.

Isaac Asimov's I, Robot (1950) and its first two sequels; Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953); Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (1953), Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination (1956); and Wyndham's own The Day of the Triffids (1951) are some examples. Sci-fi literature fans will probably recognise them all.

I don't feel that The Midwich Cuckoos is quite as good as most of the books mentioned above, but it's certainly worthy to occupy a shelf directly adjacent them, as its enduring popularity proves.

The Dark Tower: Book I: The Gunslinger (1982)

The Dark Tower: Book I: The Gunslinger (1982)

Author: Stephen King | Page Count: 212

'No one ever really pays for it in silver, he thought. The price of any evil – necessary or otherwise – comes due in flesh.'

Book I is our introduction to Roland Deschain, aka Roland of Gilead, the titular gunslinger and a man obsessed with reaching the Dark Tower. That goal carries him across Mid-World, the land of his birth.

Mid-World is a familiar amalgamation of our own recorded history and a romanticised version of the same. It's the type of fictional reality that fans of King's other works will feel right at home in.

King is best known for horror works, but Dark Tower is fantasy merged with the old-fashioned western. It's still populated with the kind of well-defined characters that the author is good at. Love him or loathe him, you can't deny his strengths.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence: After the Long Goodbye (2007)

GitS 2: Innocence: After the Long Goodbye (2007)

Author: Masaki Yamada | Translators: Yuji Oniki + Carl Gustav Horn / Page Count: 197 

"I'm not all that popular. At the same time, I hardly ever meet someone I like. In that sense, my life is balanced out."

A prequel to the second Ghost in the Shell feature film, Innocence (2004). Unlike most TV and film tie-in novels, this one is actually good - damn good.

It creates a singular narrative that doesn't rely heavily on the film, but it remains referential and respectful to it. Knowledge of the characters is obviously necessary to fully appreciate the small intricacies, but the text also manages to stand on its own two feet, admirably.

It's told first person, from the cyborg Batou's perspective. Batou isn't the most intelligent or passionate of individuals, so it may come as a surprise to find that his sensitive side, a secretive part of himself that he reserves for mostly one person in the films, could be so well-developed without compromising the integrity of the character. It gets deep into the mind of the man, the only part of him that's still human, to explore the themes of self that René Descartes popularised. That self-analysis is the novel's greatest strength, and what Ghost in the Shell is perfectly suited to.

Babylon 5: To Dream in the City of Sorrows (1997)

To Dream in the City of Sorrows (1997)

Author: Kathryn M. Drennan | Page Count: 278

'Under his leadership, the Anla'shok were the most efficient and deadly fighting force the galaxy has ever seen. But Valen also recognized a danger in this. He knew that without an enemy to fight, such a group could become restless and dissatisfied...'

Excluding the novelizations of the TV Movies, City of Sorrows is the only Babylon 5 book that is one hundred percent part of the five year canon. It's fully sanctioned by creator J. Michael Straczynski and is penned by his then wife, Kathryn M. Drennan.

It's the story of what happened to Commander Jeffrey Sinclair after he left the station. It relies heavily on your knowledge of the TV series and as such is stuck between having to remain faithfully tied to it and trying to present something exciting and independently new.

The Wicker Man: Novel (1978)

The Wicker Man (1978)

Authors: Robin Hardy and Anthony Shaffer | Page Count: 285

The phrase 'never judge a book by its movie' is generally applied one way, to defend a good book from the damage done to its reputation by a bad movie, but sometimes the opposite perspective is needed. Judging by how good The Wicker Man (1973) film is, I imagined the book to be at least equal in terms of impact, given that it's written by the film's director, Robin Hardy, and uses much of the dialogue from Anthony Shaffer's excellent screenplay verbatim. I've only myself to blame for that assumption not panning out as hoped.

The protagonist is Police Sergeant Neil Howie. On the surface he's an honest, steadfast Episcopalian Christian respectful of the laws of man and God.

Beneath that he's forceful and secretly judgemental of others. It's possible to view him as a haughty zealot who's quick to strike down those who challenge his beliefs, but that's only half the story. Deeper still, hidden from the world, he's inexperienced and fearful of his own desires.

The Drowned World (1962)

The Drowned World (1962)

Author: J.G. Ballard | Page Count: 175

'Free of vegetation, apart from a few drifting clumps of Sargasso weed, the streets and shops had been preserved almost intact, like a reflection in a lake that has somehow lost its original.'

Ballard's first novel, expanded from an earlier magazine novella, is rife with symbolism and connectedness. Set in the year 2145, it explores the reactions of a group of research scientists stationed at a lagoon that in the not-too-distant past was a human populated city, before massive global warming caused rising sea levels.

The environmental extreme is due to increased solar radiation, not, as is often the case in post-apocalyptic sci-fi, a consequence of something that mankind did, but the result is much the same, meaning once-habitable locations are now inhospitable to mankind and are instead home to a burgeoning animal population.

The environmental upheaval has had a peculiar effect on certain species of flora and fauna, causing some plants and reptiles to grow larger than normal.

Chocky (1968)

Chocky (1968)

Author: John Wyndham | Page Count: 164

"An open mind is a difficult thing to keep."

My first experience of John Wyndham's fiction was the 1984 children's TV drama adaptation of his Chocky novel. Now, a great many years after that memorable encounter, I enjoyed it again in its original medium.

It's the story of an adopted eleven-year-old boy named Matthew Gore. Like many youths his age, Matthew has an active imagination. When his father overhears the boy holding what seems to him to be one side of a two-way conversation, he suspects it's that aspect in play. The truth, however, turns out to be much stranger.

The father, David, is the narrator of events. We learn about Matthew both through his personal observations and those of his wife, Mary, when the two compare their feelings and fears about the boy's changing behaviour.

Let It Snow (2008)

Let It Snow (2008)

Authors: Maureen Johnson / John Green / Lauren Myracle  |  Page Count: 368

'It's such a disaster, whenever, in the course of human relationships, someone begins to chisel away at the wall of separation...'

A collection of three novellas, one from each of the authors mentioned above, with a different take on the theme of 'holiday romance'. The holiday, which you've likely already guessed, is Christmas. The individual stories are linked by location and certain events overlap more than once, so it's more like a novel with changing authors as opposed to a traditional anthology.

Appropriately, snow blanketed the ground on the three days that I'd set aside to read the book. My windows were closed tight and the curtains purposefully drawn to lessen the chill, but I knew it was there and I'd been caught in it a few times whilst out walking.

It may sound ridiculous, but I believe that being cold helped me better appreciate the situations that the characters found themselves in. I'd hoped for some emotional warmth from the text to counteract the chilly settings, and in all three cases it was delivered; although the levels at which it was apparent did vary from one to the next.

Star Trek: The Return (1996)

Star Trek: The Return (1996)

Authors: William Shatner / Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens  | Page Count: 371

'For a silent moment after, even the rain stopped. When it began again, it felt gentle. Warm. Slow as tears.'

Like The Ashes of Eden (1995) did before it, The Return opens on Veridian III and continues the story of the Star Trek: Generations (1994) film. It's not a flashback narrative this time, though, it's the real deal, an actual continuation of current events.

It engineers a ridiculous scenario that brings together aspects and crew of TOS, TNG and DS9 for a ret-conning adventure that's thick with melodrama and action movie clichés. Some of the connections made are mind-blowing and may have fans either happy-clapping or furiously fighting. Either way, some of the reveals in the last quarter are extremely memorable. It's unfortunate that a large portion of the remainder of the book is such a damned chore to get through.

Star Trek: The Ashes of Eden (1995)

Star Trek: The Ashes of Eden (1995)

Authors: William Shatner / Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens  |  Page Count: 309

'He gulped a mouthful of Scotch. Felt it burn his throat — ice cold and fire hot at the same time. That was his poetry. Sensation. Being alive.'

TAoE begins just a few hours after the ending of the Star Trek: Generations (1994) movie, so you'll need to have seen it first. But to really get the most from the book you'll need to have seen all the TOS movies because the story is one of reflection on what's passed as well as a look to the future. Even though it's technically set post-Generations, ninety-nine percent of it is a flashback to an era before Kirk stepped aboard the Enterprise-B, shortly after the political upheaval that occurred at Camp Khitimer (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)).

Without a ship to command Kirk is a little lost, as if his reason for living has been suspended, and daily Starfleet duties do little to assuage the feelings. He's secretly hungering for adventure, and more often than not someone with that goal will either find what he's looking for or set it in motion himself.

Let the Right One In (2004)

Let the Right One In (2004)

Author: John Ajvide Lindqvist | Translator: Ebba Segerberg | Page Count: 519

'They could give a number of reasons for why they had to torment him; he was too fat, too ugly, too disgusting. But the real problem was simply that he existed, and every reminder of his existence was a crime.'

Swedish author Lindqvist has been described as 'the new Stephen King' in the press. It quickly lets you know that you're getting a well-written horror novel, but it isn't just a lazy journo way of getting an idea across: he really does write like King. His character development, his plotting and his reliance on the reader to fully invest in the magic realism of the world are uncannily similar.

He also has almost identical failings as King: the awkward wording at the end that ruins an otherwise perfect paragraph (but to be fair, some of that may be in part due to the translation?), the over-indulgence, the pop culture references that date the work, etc.

Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis (2018)

Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis (2018)

Author: Yoshikazu Takeuchi | Translator: Nathan A. Collins | Page Count: 216

'I'm coming to meet you. I promise I'll come to you soon. I'll come to you, and I'll save you.'

Kirigoe Mima is a Japanese pop-idol. Three years in the business makes her a veteran, but her popularity, and therefore her career, is at something of an impasse. With so many hopeful idols (i.e. potential rivals) on the way up, Mima explores new avenues.

Her manager believes that moving away from her innocent image is the answer. He suggests that Mima explore paths that are more daring and seductive.

But not all members of the dedicated fan base that the pop-idol phenomenon attracts are accepting of their idols' life choices. For a small number of them, sometimes 'dedication' can cross a line and become 'obsession'. One fan in particular believes Mima ought to stay the same forever. He makes it his duty to ensure that she does just that; and if she refuses his selfless help, then it follows that it's his duty to punish her for her wicked betrayal, too.

Doctor Sleep (2013)

Doctor Sleep (2013)

Author: Stephen King  |  Page Count: 485

"When you couldn’t sleep, when you were afraid to look around because of what you might see, time elongated and grew sharp teeth."

A very belated sequel to King's The Shining (1977) novel. While many of the author's current fans probably weren't born when the first book came out, it's assumed that anyone reading Doctor Sleep will have read the previous book, and I'll be proceeding under the same assumption, so there will be at least one major SPOILER for The Shining hereafter.

For anyone that actually wanted a sequel, thirty-six years is a long time to wait. A similar amount of time has passed for the book's main protagonist, Danny Torrance. Despite his experience as a boy, Danny has taken on some of the more vile traits of his father, including his self-destructive alcoholism.

But for much of the novel Danny is a hospice worker in a small town in New Hampshire, attending to the terminally ill. It's a role in which his peculiar ability, his 'shining', can play a productive part.

The Shining (1977)

The Shining (1977)

Author: Stephen King |  Page Count: 512

'A shaft of light coming from another room, the bathroom, harsh white light and a word flickering on and off in the medicine cabinet mirror like a red eye, REDRUM, REDRUM, REDRUM— '

The Overlook Hotel, aptly named in more ways than one, has an attic filled with memories and a basement filled with recorded history, printed and imprinted, patiently waiting to be rediscovered.

Sandwiched between the two catalysts are the guest rooms, impersonal spaces haunted by deeds more permanent than the people that temporarily occupied them. They say every hotel has its ghosts, but the Overlook's are more active than most other places.

As struggling writer Jack Torrance receives the details of his winter assignment at the Overlook, the reader gets a detailed rundown of the building, albeit from a biased perspective. It's an efficient device that also gives us our first insight into Jack's thought process. He's a quick-tempered, ex-alcoholic who's seriously lacking in paternal skills.

The Martian Chronicles (1950)

The Martian Chronicles (1950)

Author: Ray Bradbury | Page Count: 305 [1]

'The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye...'

TMP is Bradbury's account of mankind's attempts at colonising and taming the mysterious red planet. Like some of his other books, it's a 'fix-up novel', a collection of individual short stories that were penned over a number of years and later collected together with a newly written bridge narrative, a kind of literary glue.

He revised a few of the shorts and added intercalary chapters to help it better fit a novel's structure, but some discordance remains - none of which, it must be said, is enough to belittle the concept, in general.

Bradbury's Mars isn't the dusty, desolate, and craggy landscape that we've come to accept as the norm in modern sci-fi stories. It's ornate, delicate, an organic but equally stylistic extension of the planet's mystery and its peoples' imagination, which manifests as the kind of harmony that seems to exist perpetually out of mankind's reach.

Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Author: Ray Bradbury | Page Count: 227

"And when he died, I suddenly realised I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again..."

Ray Bradbury's masterpiece tells of an unspecified future time when the written word is considered anathema, books are burned for their heretic meanings and too much knowledge is strictly forbidden.

If one man is smarter than another, it makes the other man feel shame and inadequacy. The state doesn't want that. They want everyone to be happy, and to achieve that they must make everyone the same. They want no one to question the equilibrium or to protest against the unfairness of the world that they've help create.

Television is the dominant information medium, a permanent fixture in almost every home, delivering sound and fury but saying nothing and somehow meaning even less. Life for the populace slithers along under a coloured blanket; the colour is grey and occasionally the colour of flame, but only if you try to think for yourself, if you risk going against the established order.

Crash (1973)

Crash (1973)

Author:  J.G. Ballard | Page Count: 185

"The intimate time and space of a single human being had been fossilized for ever in this web of chromium knives and frosted glass."

Crash is a subversive novel about a film-maker named James Ballard (the same as the author) who meets a deviant named Robert Vaughan. The longer Ballard spends in Vaughan's company the more influenced by him he becomes. He's soon happily entwined in a secret world of car crashes and illicit sex, and as a result his own sexual ideals begin to change dramatically.

Robert Vaughan is a character seen previously in The Atrocity Exhibition (1970). He was a perverted weirdo there and he's much the same here. He surrounds himself with like-minded individuals, the reasons for which will become clear the more of the book you read.

Fellside (2016)

Fellside (2016)

Author: M.R. Carey  |  Page Count: 496

'He saw her life as a three-act tragedy with opiates in the role of major antagonist. And her face mesmerised him. It had something better than beauty or symmetry. It had transparency.'

Jess Moulson wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of who she is or how she got there. It's a clichéd, uninspired middle school plot device that I've encountered literally dozens of times before – I even used it myself when I was eleven! Things don't look good for Fellside, but sometimes the quality of the writing can make even that situation interesting again, right? Sadly, that's not the case herein.

A second device runs alongside the first, a situation in which Jess is characterised as much by the thoughts of the people that attend to her as by her own hazy recollections; in essence, we learn about the observer, the observed and the recollections of the latter at the same time as she does. It's all well and good in theory, but Jess is semi-conscious for a significant portion of the book's first quarter, which leads to a lot of similar observations time and again, very few of which are what I'd classify as enthralling.

ICO: Castle in the Mist (2008)

ICO: Castle in the Mist (2008)

Author:  Miyuki Miyabe  |  Translator:  Alexander O. Smith  |  Page Count: 370

'Whatever it was that dripped from the cage, it was blacker than pitch, the colour of melted shadow.'

The story as presented in the ICO video game (2001) was purposefully vague. It encouraged players to speculate about the backstory of the characters.

The act of filling in the blanks gave rise to a more personal experience for the player, making us not just the protagonist but also the teller, the narrator of the story as it was being lived/directed in real time.

Reading someone else's version of those same events, comparing and contrasting them with your own, can be an interesting or even rewarding undertaking for some folks. But when put into context, isn't a published version of such simply fan-fiction being sold at RRP?

Regardless of whether or not that's a fair assessment, I made sure while reading to judge the work for what it did well (or otherwise) with regards world-building, characterisation, etc, and not for being different to my own interpretation of the game's story; to have did otherwise would be a disservice to everyone involved.

George's Marvellous Medicine (1981)

George's Marvellous Medicine (1981)

Author: Roald Dahl  |  Illustrator: Quentin Blake  |  Page Count: 96

'She had pale brown teeth and a small puckered-up mouth like a dog's bottom.'

More than two decades of insomnia has hammered my brain so much that some days I can barely remember what I did the previous afternoon, which makes it all the more amazing that I can still recall easily the first time I read about George Kranky's Marvellous Medicine; Roald Dahl's storytelling has that kind of power.

It was a long time ago. I was aged ten. Four separate classes in the school that I attended (and loved) were gathered together in one room for an important presentation. As usual, I positioned myself next to the bookcase. It was there that I spied the book. After checking to make sure that I wasn't under scrutiny by anyone important, I borrowed it from the shelf.