NYC Book Loot

Still a bit on the stuffy side but I have returned with spoils, so it's only fitting I talk about those spoils. I'm not going to discuss anything bought as a present; this is just for me. 

Head-Hunting in the Solomon Islands Caroline Mytinger, 1942, McMillan. Bought at the Argosy.

... we were unencumbered by the usual equipment of expeditions: by endowments funds, by precedents, doubts, supplies, an expedition yacht or airplane, by even the blessings or belief of our friends and families, who said we couldn't do it. We especially lacked that 'body of persons' listed for expeditions by the dictionary. We were a staff of two rather young women: myself, the portrait painter, and Margaret Warner, the bedeviled handyman, who was expected to cope with situations like God - if machinery was lacking, then by levitation. Her expedition equipment was a ukelele.

If that opening sentence does not tell you why I bought this book you have no soul. 

I'll only add that, once upon a time I was part of a team that worked on Pelgrane's Expeditions book. We spent such a lot of time calculating what an expedition might need, how best to simulate that in play.

Two middle class white kids and a ukelele. Jaysus H. 

They'd stop in a place for a while, earn a crust by painting portraits, and when they had enough in their pocket they set out for the next stop. Eventually they reached their destination, which they only knew about from books. It's pretty Trail-friendly; it covers an interesting part of the world in the right time period. But seriously, how could I pass this up?

The Pyrates George MacDonald Fraser, 1983, Knopf. Bought at the Argosy.

MacDonald Fraser is best known for his Flashman series, and those never seem to go out of print. His other books have vanished into the ether, for the most part. I got a copy of Black Ajax and Mr. American while I was in the UK, and I strongly suspect that those two remain in print only because Flashman or his antecedents appear briefly in them. His MacAuslan wartime comedy stories are still in print, but his own war memoir is more difficult to find. Pyrates, and his Hollywood memoirs, have eluded me. Now I have Pyrates. Can the memoirs be far behind?

Murder at the Manor, Final Acts: Theatrical Mysteries, Death on the Down Beat, all British Library Crime Classics, bought at the Mysterious Book Shop. 

Again, how could I not? Death on the Down Beat has a particularly interesting premise: a conductor is shot dead, and the shot can only have come from the orchestra. But which player could it have been? This one's a bit gimmicky but it's saved by brilliant writing, and the location - fictional UK town Maningpool - is worth stealing for your campaign, if only for its eponymous Lumps. 

Scandinavian Ghost Stories, edited by Joanne Asala, 1995 Penfield Press, bought at the Strand.

The Strand's mythology section isn't up to much but occasionally you find gold. Bought and read in the same day, which should tell you how much fun I found it. 

Dictionary of City of London Street Names Al Smith, 1970 Arco Publishing, bought at the Argosy

Well, that's the budget blown, I thought. I honestly wanted to only spend about a hundred at the Argosy. Silly me and my haughty airs. It is literally what you think it is: the title does not lie. Every so often there's a gem, and even if there isn't one on every page it's packed with information about Baghdad-on-the-Thames.

The Mafia is not an Equal Opportunity Employer, Nicholas Gage, 1971 McGraw-Hill, bought at the Argosy.

A useful little bridge between Prohibition and the 1960s, which means it's Noir Country. Based on investigative reporting by the author, who I presume is the same Nicholas Gage who was involved in Watergate's reporting though this book isn't listed among his published works. Which may mean Wikipedia got it wrong. 

Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century, Jack Finney, 1983, Doubleday, bought at the Argosy.

An investigation - more of a histori-fiction retelling, really - into the 1857 murder of Harvey Burdell in New York, and a half-dozen other 1800s-era misdeeds. Finney, the mind behind the Bodysnatchers, has a talent for this kind of work. 

The World And The 20s: The Best From New York's Legendary Newspaper, edited by James Boylan, published Dial Books 1973, bought at the Argosy. 

I mentioned this last week, but it's worth repeating: if you want to write historical fiction it is useful to know what they thought, said and worried about. You can't do better than by reading their news.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

Books, Glorious Books

via the Mercatus Center

I have returned from New York City and now know what Brunch is. 

I was sitting in my usual coffee shop about a week or so back building up the mental strength to go to work and someone sat next to me asked if I was a local. She went on to ask if I could recommend a good place to eat brunch, which puzzled the hell out of me. We don’t eat brunch down here. We don’t have a brunch culture. The hotels offer something like, but that’s a purely tourist thing so it’s not something I can comment about intelligently. 

It’s different in New York. 

Very different. 

I fried myself in NYC. I always forget just how hot it is in the summer. It’s so tempting to walk everywhere; after all, it’s only a few blocks from here to there, it won’t be that bad. Followed swiftly by repentance and heat prostration. Mind, some of the subway cars are air conditioned now, which I don’t remember being an option the last time I was in town. 

I got to see some people. Hello, people! It was fun. 

I spent a ton of money on books. Shocking, I know. The Strand was my first visit, and I was slightly taken aback by how gentrified it’s become compared to the version I knew when I first began visiting NYC. Tote bags and coffee mugs must be a significant part of its bottom line, these days.  

I went to the Mysterious Bookshop down on Warren Street, which I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys whodunnits, whatdunnits and howonearthdidyoudunnits. Also, Dracula puzzles. Very pretty looking Dracula puzzles.  

However, the prize was, as always, the Americana section of the Argosy, where I blew the budget and also my suitcase; as I was disembarking the plane on the way home the case handle gave up on life. ‘Alas, cruel fate!’ it wailed, as it snapped forever.  Today I bought its replacement. Here's hoping the replacement lasts at least as long as its predecessor; I had that one since Uni.

The Argosy was the only place in NY to insist on mask wearing. Theoretically you were supposed to wear a mask on the subway but very few people did. Pretty much everywhere else was mask optional, which meant no masks at all. Despite NY’s best efforts I avoided COVID, continuing my streak of testing negative. I attribute this to blind luck, mask wearing at the airport and other public areas, and the 2oz bottle of hand sanitizer I bought before the flight. Thanks, Handy; you did me proud. 

Seriously, Handy, good job. I've lost track of the number of people I know in Bermuda who've come down with COVID these past few weeks. Meanwhile I stroll through 42nd Street Station many times over the course of a few days without so much as a sniffle.

I’ll spare you the full list of purchases but thought it would be fun to talk about the Argosy haul. 

Lafcadio Hearn, Two Years in the French West Indies (1890). You’ve heard me mention Hearn before. Believe me when I say I laughed for joy when I saw this and immediately snapped it up. Anything Hearn wrote is worth your time. 

The Iron Gate of Jack & Charlie's, various authors, anniversary edition detailing the 21 Club’s history up to publication. God alone knows what will happen to the Club post-COVID; Jack and Charlie would weep to see it. However, if you have any interest in Prohibition or NYC club life you ought to know something about the 21. I’ve read this book before but never had the chance to own it. I’ve also visited the Club, once, and saw the fabled secret cellar. Fond memories! 

Critical Years at the Yard, 1860-89, (1956) Belton Cobb. True crime, and this paired with the title below were my two true crime purchases of the trip. I often go a bit nutty for this sort of thing. This one's about Scotland Yard's early years, shot through with bribery scandals and botched investigations.

The Newgate Noose, (1957) Howard Culpin. A collection of the hanged and their many, many crimes. As with a lot of true crime there's a strong risk of picking up something you already know or have read before. However, no matter how much you know about the luckless pickpockets, murderers and highwaymen who fed the hanging tree there's always a new story. I've just finished the tale of Jenny Diver, a new one on me. Industrious, clever, lucky for a long while, she and her fellow pickpockets ran riot for a long time before she was sentenced to transportation. Not liking America very much she returned to England and for a while avoided notice, but it was death to return from transportation. She swung in 1740 leaving a three-year-old child behind her - at least, according to the Newgate Noose, which may or may not have the right of it. Probably not, since the Noose says she was 'all but a child herself' when she died and Wikipedia puts her actual age at early 40s, which - let's be honest - isn't youth's first bloom.

That's the risk with collections like these. They often talk a load of old bollocks. However, even rubbish can be useful material if you're looking for inspiration for a character in a novel - or an RPG.

This Was New York! A Nostalgic Picture of Gotham in the Gaslight Era, (1969) Maxwell F. Marcuse. This, like the next one, is research material. New York in the misty far-off days when it was building itself into the metropolis we now know. 

The Boss and the Machine, Samuel P. Orth (1919, Yale Uni Press) volume number [something or other] in the [I don't care] collection of American history. For every great fortune there is a great crime. Or, put slightly more accurately, the secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed. By that definition this is a crime that was found out and therefore not a great success for which we are at a loss to account - but it was a great success, nonetheless.

Now, enough! Hence! I have reading to do. 

Not Quite Book Review Corner: The Strain Hogan/Del Toro

This time out I'm going to be talking about the Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan vampire collaboration, The Strain, first of a trilogy. It's also going to become a TV series, allegedly, though since this is in development and it is Fox behind it, the deal may collapse under its own weight before it hits the small screen. Del Toro I assume you've heard of by now, if you've any interest in horror at all. Hogan is less well known, though if you're a fan of crime then you may have come across his novel-turned-movie The Town. I'm not sure how the two of them got together, though if I had to bet money I'd say it was thanks to a kindly publisher.

The novel is set in current day New York. A Boeing 777 has just landed at JFK and everything, right up to the landing itself, seems normal. Except soon after its last transmission everything goes dark, and when the authorities finally board they discover all the passengers and crew are - seemingly - dead. The CDC's Dr. Ephraim "Eph" Goodweather discovers a small number of survivors, including a rock star, a kid, a co-pilot and a tort attorney, all of whom are whisked off to safety while the dead are packed off to several nearby hospital morgues. Except those corpses don't stay there very long, and the survivors start exhibiting some very peculiar symptoms. Before you know it the dead are walking, and a wizened survivor of Nazi concentration camps appears telling anyone who'll listen that Vampires are invading the Big Apple.

So far, so very cinematic, and there are plenty of touches here that scream Del Toro. I'm not as familiar with Hogan's work as to be able to pick out his contributions from the rest of the text, but I'll go out on a limb and say he did the majority of the writing while Del Toro was the ideas man. There are moments that would look magnificent on screen, but have little or no narrative use, like the once-in-a-lifetime eclipse event that has no purpose other than to let people use the word Occult very knowledgeably. There's also an early cut-away to the International Space Station that exists for no other reason than to let the action be pictured from above by characters who will never be plot-relevant again. You can almost picture Del Toro looking down his nose at a production company's accountant and saying 'it is vital to my vision! Without it, there is no film!'

The central idea is almost too large for comfort. When Stephen King does the same thing with Salem's Lot about two thousand people are wiped out; an unimaginable tragedy, but a small one in the grand scheme of things. About as many died when the Titanic sank. The small scale also allows King to set up several main-character-development vignettes, and establish backgrounds for the dozens of minor players who are about to get caught up in events. You can't do the same thing when 8.4 million people potentially are at risk, and the City itself lacks life thanks in part to the impossibility of conveying the identity of all the different locations the novel touches on. It all becomes very blurred. You don't get the same sense of place, and as a writer there's a risk - which I suspect the creative team fell foul of - that you'll end up broad-brushing a few iconic scenes in the hope that the reader's seen enough TV shows to fill in the blanks. 

The motivation of the central antagonists is also a little shaky. We're told there are several elders operating behind the scenes, and that the one who's causing all the trouble is a rogue who doesn't play by the rules. We're also introduced to an elderly financier whose willingness to cheat death no matter the cost is the spark that sets off the fireworks display. Yet the financier lacks any kind of motivation or characterization, and I can't help wondering if we're not supposed to dislike him because Duh, Money Men Are Teh Evilz, and not because he's willing to get everyone killed so he can live forever. You have to wonder why he wants eternal life if, as seems entirely plausible, civilization will come crashing down soon afterwards and the piles of cash in his money bin are about to become worthless. Who wants to live forever as a pauper?

Why, for that matter, is the rogue master buying in? If the novel's central conceit is to be believed, it never needs the financier. The money man's sole purpose is to buy the rogue master a plane ticket and make sure his coffin gets on board the Boeing. But if that's so then anyone could have done what the financier does; not as efficiently, true, but who cares about efficiency when you can slaughter every one of the Boeing's passengers and crew in five seconds flat? And how did it pull off that trick? There's nothing in the novel that suggests it has that kind of power, apart from the inciting event, and you'd think that if it could just knock everyone out and kill them within seconds then the rest of Manhattan ought to be about ten minute's work. Yet clearly that isn't so. Again, I see the hand of Del Toro in that magnificent, cinematic moment when the CDC team boards the aircraft and finds everyone dead, lying there as if asleep; but although the scene looks good, it'd seem that neither Del Toro nor Hogan really knew what to do with the idea after it germinated.

Where this novel kicks off is in the initial investigative scenes, where Dr Goodweather and his team start putting the pieces together. Many of the subsequent action scenes are also very fun to read, and the vampire physiology - which I won't spoil here - is an intriguing mix of folklore and biological fantasy. This is also one of the novel's less solid conceits, since it means reconciling ideas like 'they can't cross water' with 'holy water and crucifixes are just superstitions, and it's all working like a disease, really.' The two philosophies don't work well together, and eventually the wizened concentration camp survivor has to fling up his hands and say, 'look, I don't know why it's so, I just know that it's so, okay?'

I'd recommend this novel to anyone looking for Night's Black Agents inspiration, particularly for those trying to get away from the usual vampire tropes. There's a lot of inspirational stuff here, and though in the end Del Toro seems not to be wearing any clothes, he does naked very well. There's an artistic brilliance in the idea, even if it does fall apart on closer inspection. Without knowing Hogan's style better than I do, I don't want to say that one thing or another is his fault or his idea, but were I Hogan I suspect I'd be closing my eyes to the problem and cashing a well-deserved paycheck. It is, at times, an excellent vampire novel and any horror fan will find things to like about it. Whether they like the finished product in its totality is something else again, but it's well worth a look at even so.

Not Qute Book Review Corner: Patient Zero, Jonathan Maberry

Before I begin, I'm going to say up front that I liked Jonathan Maberry's Patient Zero. I'm saying that now, to balance out what's to come. I picked this up on the free shelf of my local store, and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys pulp horror with a modern twist. Night's Black Agents gamers may find it especially useful, particularly since it demonstrates exactly the kind of Vampyramid - and its collapse, as per Double Tap - that they'll be fighting against.

Maberry is a relatively new author. He's been a professional writer since 1978, but it wasn't until his 2006 Pine Deep series - the first of which earned him a Stoker (Best First Novel) Award - that his fiction really started to get noticed. He's also written a string of non fiction and comics stuff, but the book I'm concentrating on here is the first in his fantasy bioterrorism series. There are five in print so far, with two more known to be on the way in 2014 and 2015, and he's been publishing one of these a year since 2009's Patient Zero.

Patient Zero kicks off with an action-packed armed raid on a terror cell operating within the United States. In a pitched gun battle, series hero Joe Ledger puts two .45 calibre rounds into a suspicious crazy who tries to bite him. All seems well, and the corpses are taken off to the hospital for autopsy. Except all isn't well; that dead fella Ledger shot gets up again and starts eating people, causing an incident that eventually results in the death of everyone in the hospital, up to and including a substantial number of the Department of Military Intelligence's best agents. The DMI, anxious to get on top of this ASAP, starts recruiting new blood, and Ledger's top of its list of potential candidates.

Ledger - all together now, in the key of E - is a smart-mouthed maverick loose cannon who gets results. Before he's been on the job ten minutes he's offered a chance to become leader of DMI's new Echo Team - Bravo and Charlie being somewhat dead - so he promptly marches into the room, kicks seven shades out of all the other candidates, and promotes himself commander by virtue of being biggest kung-fu badass. From there, it's a crazy romp through a world of mad science, as the team tries to find out how terrorists got hold of the zombie virus, and to stop whatever mad scheme the terrorists have in mind.

It's pulp in the Sax Rohmer tradition, with the Fu Manchu role taken by super terrorist El Mujahid, and the sexpot Fah lo Suee played by his devious wife, Amirah, who devises the zombie virus. They have the help of self-made pharmaceutical billionaire Gault, who thinks he can use their cause to make a fortune for himself by selling anti-zombie meds to the US after the outbreak. Gault provides the technological expertise and capital, while the husband-and-wife team supplies the genius and the muscle. Will Gault and Amirah hoodwink her cuckolded husband, or is this all part of some greater scheme?

It all hangs together fairly well. It's a little too jingoistic for my taste, and while I'm not going to quarrel with the science, I do have to wonder why on earth Maberry thought it necessary to have a female SAS front-line combat officer as a major secondary character when the SAS famously doesn't accept female recruits. Well, I know why, I suppose; the SAS is the one British regiment American readers will recognize as being reliably badass, and therefore worthy to fight alongside Joe Ledger.  It just seems so silly.

I did enjoy this book, but I'm not sure I'd rush to pick up the rest of the series. If I did, it would have to be on sale; I'd hate to pay full price. In part that's because of the unpleasant itch at the back of my head, that maybe this really is just the Yellow Peril reskinned with a more acceptable - if that's the right word - enemy. But it's also because my heart sank when I realized that Maberry's been publishing one a year of these ever since Patient Zero.

Maybe he does write that fast. Some authors do; I can't remember if it was Raymond Chandler or his contemporary Hammett who said that a writer who doesn't publish a book a year isn't really trying, but whichever it was, the dictum stands. But I can't help feeling that this output is less Maberry's speed than it is the publisher's diktat, much as fantasy authors now seem always to have to write a trilogy rather than just one very good book. Trilogies sell, but more importantly they ensure an author's name is kept fresh, and the revenue stream keeps flowing. Liked Attack of the Killer Cliches? Then be sure to look out for Attack of the Cliche Killers, coming out next May!

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but it does seem as if that's the only song the publishers know by heart. It means the story never ends, and anything like structure is thrown out the window. After all, if the story actually had a satisfactory conclusion then there'd be no reason to tune in next week and see how Doc Shadow managed to evade the clutches of Sinister Claw. It also means that plot points get reused, since there really isn't time to work out a new McGuffin or plan out a different style. Villains will come and never really go. 'How did you escape the exploding volcano, Doctor Devastation? Seems like your goose was cooked when the bombs went off.' 'Ah, thereby hangs a tale!'

No. There's precisely where the tale doesn't hang. It sags. It lies there, limp and deformed, bereft of purpose. It might have some superficial appeal, but who's going to remember it a month or so after they finish reading it?


  

Bookshelf: I, Phone

In this post, I'm going to be talking about a book I picked up at Eastercon: I, Phone, by David Wake. I have the paperback edition, but this is also available in eBook form via Kindle and Smashwords.The setting is the not-so-distant future, in which smart phones are considerably smarter, and more self-aware, than their owners. It kicks off with the hero of the piece, Jeeves, rated at 157 IQ or 2.5 Rossum, whichever you'd rather, recording and reporting on the murder of his owner, Alice Wooster, via his Black Box app. Except, as it turns out, she doesn't die; her attacker does, and when his bullet-riddled corpse is discovered with Alice the only logical suspect, Jeeves, good net-citizen that he is, promptly alerts the authorities. Thus begins the first of what will prove to be many escape attempts, as Alice and Jeeves do their damndest to get out of the clutches of the law, and the mysterious group who also seems to want them both dead. Incidentally, if anyone was wondering whether the naming of Jeeves and Wooster was a coincidence, I think you can stop wondering.

The plot thickens when Jeeves discovers that the mysterious group after Alice's blood happens to have something to do with the latest virtual reality technology, intended to upgrade everyone's VR goggles so that they have something pleasant to look at when they walk through London. Gone are the homeless and urban decay, replaced by pretty much whatever the user fancies. This narrative device also allows Jeeves some freedom of movement, since - as a creature of the internet - he can download himself into the virtual reality, becoming essentially independent of his physical constraints. This becomes very useful later in the plot, when Jeeves' physical form is captured by the mysterious agency, and he's forced to become a kind of techno-ghost, haunting his way through a virtual cityscape. His avatar might change from Cary Grant to a less homosexual Stephen Fry, according to the whims of his owner Alice, but Jeeves remains Jeeves throughout; the sensible one, the planner, the thinker, whose ultimate goal is to keep his owner out of harm's way. Even though, as his ethics programming dictates, he's the one who sometimes puts her in harm's way to begin with.

Consider this:

"EEVES! JEEVES! JEE"

"Hello, Alice, it's still early," I say. "There is rain due later in the afternoon. Your appointments today are -"

"Jeeves, shut up!"

"Sorry, Miss."

"Why did you remove your battery?"

"I didn't. I can't."

"What?"

"I don't have any arms."

I appear to be writing a contemporaneous natural language log, but the only App I have that would do that is the Black Box App, which is only activated in an emergency. I wonder why.

Alice is looking around the flat, desperately. I wonder why.

"Alice," I ask. "What's the matter?"

"There's a dead body in my bedroom."

"Pardon?"

She cradles me in her arms and carries me to the bedroom before thrusting me out as if she wants to take a photograph. Alice isn't wearing any clothes, so perhaps we've reached that inevitable day when she's run out of fresh laundry. The room is a mess. I already have a note to sort out the maid service, along with adjusting her exercise avatar, so maybe I ought to increase its level of urgency. That's strange, I only have two notes on file, which seems a very small number. However, rather than worry about that now, I focus on what Alice is trying to show me. True enough, there's a dead body in the bed. It's male, tall, looking up. He has a third eye in his forehead as if a camera lens has been inserted. He's been shot. I search around for his identity and emergency protocol, but there's no phone within wi-fi range. I'm at a loss.

Wake's strengths are in little moments like these, that capture the essence of the scene and also the characters in it. There are some brilliant scenes to be enjoyed here; my personal favorite came when Jeeves discovers a little colony of desperate souls, people who lost their smart phones and who now have no idea what to do with themselves. They sit, lost and alone, in cafes, trying to fiddle with invisible touch screens, playing games that nobody but them can see.

Where he sometimes falls short is the larger narrative. From the moment Jeeves becomes a virtual ghost, everything gets a bit muddy, and towards the end I couldn't help but think that the only reason Jeeves abandoned his casing was because Wake couldn't think how else to carry the plot along. A protagonist who can't move under his own power isn't much good to a writer. There's enough technobabble to carry the concept, but I began to wonder whether the concept was strictly necessary.

That, and Alice is underwritten. Jeeves' devotion to her may be programmed in, but the reader's devotion isn't, and after a time it becomes increasingly difficult to see why Jeeves is so attached to her. It doesn't help that she all but vanishes for significant portions of the plot, thus depriving her of spotlight time that might have made her more interesting.    

Those two caveats aside, I thoroughly enjoyed I, Phone. Science fiction isn't a genre I read much any more, and novels like this make me wonder why I don't, when there's stuff as good as this out there. It captures the best thing about fiction: it makes the world we live in suddenly seem magical, without using any ingredients other than the ones we're already familiar with. I first read this in a rush while Eastercon was still ongoing, and that should tell you something; that, at a time when there were a thousand and one other things to do, I couldn't put it down. It's rare when a book does that, and for that reason I'd recommend I, Phone to anyone with an interest in science fiction, smart phones, or the modern world. It's grand stuff!

The Art of Books, part Two

In which I return to the ebook quandary!

This is inspired in part by two book-buying experiences: The Greatcoat, by Helen Dunmore (which I recommend, with a caveat that it isn’t particularly spooky), and Monsters in America by Scott Poole, which I didn’t end up buying because the price was too high.

When last I tackled this topic, Travis (hiya! Hope all’s well in London!) commented on the pricing problem, and said:

 “Firstly, [the vendors] want prices that are near, or in many cases more, than trade paperbacks. We have to agree right away that this is ridiculous.”

Now, Monsters in America speaks to that problem. I didn’t buy that book, because the vendor’s price was wildly overinflated. Monsters is only available in hardback or electronic format at the moment, and Amazon’s price for the Kindle version is only a buck shy of the hardback price. That’s crazy. There’s no way a Kindle version ought to be at the same price as a hardback, particularly given that the hardback is usually considered the premium product. People want those because they want to display them, and they’re often considered collectable because they’re usually a limited print run. There’s just no way that a Kindle version has the same value. The only possible justification for this price point is competition; the vendors are afraid that a rush to buy the Kindle will limit the demand for the hardback. That’s backwards thinking. The market for a hardback doesn’t overlap with the market for electronic. People expect completely different things from a hardback than they do, say, a paperback. Paperbacks are bought to read, and carry around; their covers will get torn and battered, their pages creased and folded. They aren’t expected to be put on display. Nobody’s going to care that their dust jackets are slightly foxed or that the binding is beginning to separate. Whereas a hardback is bought to keep, and is often kept carefully, because their condition speaks directly to their perceived value.

But then, this is the Amazon price, and my take on it is that since Amazon just aren’t booksellers, (though they obviously want to be), they don’t understand the book market well enough to accurately price their stock. Clearly there's also a market war going on which is only going to get hotter, and that will have a knock-on effect on price that has nothing to do with demand for ebooks. Amazon want to sell Kindles, so they make the price of their ebooks attractively low. Meanwhile Barnes and Noble wants to sell Nooks, Apple iPads, and so on and on. I must admit, this is where I start to think that the market has lost its collective wits. Why would a bookseller like Barnes and Noble want to sink their R&D budget into a new electronic toy, when the electronic goods manufacturers are coming out with tablets by the bucketload without needing the impetus of book sales to drive demand? It's like Ben & Jerry's trying to increase market share by inventing the perfect spoon - but I digress.


Going back to price, there’s also the point that, as discussed by Dan Gilmore of the Guardian, publishers don’t like discounting the ebook price too much, and publishers have a big say in how their wares are priced. Gilmore attributes this discount dislike to the publishers’ fear that consumers would become too used to underpriced books, thus reducing demand for anything other than electronic. I’m sure that plays a part, but I tend to agree with the thesis that there’s more to a book’s price than just the cost of paper. There’s editors, proofreaders, marketers and marketing, and a host of other expenses most of which are invisible to the consumer. These costs are fixed, fairly high, and have nothing to do with the format the books are published in. And that, of course, is before we even get to the question of the author's advance. I'm aware that there is mathematical justification for arguing that you don't need all that, that an author can self-publish with nil marketing at a minimal price point and make money. However even a glance at some of the stuff available out there at low-or-no cost shows the benefit lost to the creator in not having a good editor, or proofreader. Much of it is just trash. There may be a few fresh ideas in them, and with a bit of luck someone who really deserves to succeed will do so through ebook self-publishing. Most won't.  


For those who really want to frighten themselves, check out Ewan Morrison's take on where self e-publishing is headed.  I don't think he's wrong. This bit in particular strikes a chord:


"And what has happened to all those new authors who were told they could make money from epublishing? Well, they are working entirely for free (on spec) on the promise of those big 70% royalties on future sales. They write their books, they blog, they net-network and self-promote; they could put in as much as a year's work, all without payment."


On the whole I would agree that the current price of ebooks, as exemplified by Monsters, is crazy. However I don't think we can expect the actual ebook price to fall much below the paperback cost, which is where Dunmore's book comes in. (I bet you thought I'd forgotten about that!) Dunmore's Greatcoat is part of Hammer Horror's new publishing experiment; they seem to be aiming for a more literary style. The Woman In Black is another in this vein. Where this ties in to the current discussion is this: the Greatcoat's price tag was roughly the same as the paperback version, and the decision to buy was made all the easier since there doesn't seem to be a paperback version available via the States. I was happy to buy at that price, in a way that I wasn't for Monsters, and of course the instant delivery was a plus.


Given that the costs to the publisher are more or less fixed, I suspect we can't hope for a significant drop in ebook price below the paperback price point, unless we're prepared to accept a sharp reduction in quality. I also suspect that most consumers are willing to pay paperback prices for ebook versions, though I agree with Travis that it seems only logical for there to be an ebook version bundled with every paperback sold.


However price wasn't the only thing Travis talked about. He also mentioned ownership:


"Secondly, they want everyone to buy, but no one should own. Try loaning your ebook to a friend. Sure, Amazon will let you do it for a limited time, as will B&N, but both also for a limited number of people. And don't forget, you DON'T OWN the ebook, you are licensed to read it."


I agree, this is a problem. However I do wonder how much of this is an actual problem, and how much a problem of perception. Put it another way: did we ever own books? Could we dispose of them precisely as we pleased?


Not quite, I'd argue.


"All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.


This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser."


That version of the caveat is taken from the 1999 Harper Collins paperback, Flashman at the Charge. In some variant forms the prohibition specifically warns purchasers that if they buy the book without its cover (stripping, it's called), they're buying stolen property. Admittedly this is more of an attempt at moral 'suasion than an enforceable prohibition, not unlike the bit at the beginning of the DVD when some spokesman says, more in sorrow than in anger, that you really shouldn't pirate movies. Even so, it still represents the publisher's contention that ownership has its limits.


The publisher has always asserted their ownership of the words within the book, and ebooks haven't changed that. We bought the husks that the words came in, and when we tired of those we lent them on, or gave them away, or sold them. There was no way the publisher could stop us doing that, short of coming into our homes and posting guard over the bookshelf, and that assumes that they wanted to stop us. I suspect that most publishers accepted the second-hand trade as a useful adjunct to their own business; publicity that they didn't have to pay for, which increased the demand for their own back catalogue. Yet there were probably some who resented the percieved loss of revenue, just as video game publishers lament the perceived cost to them of second-hand sales.


The chief difference between the trade in ebooks and the trade in the physical version is that where the publisher could never control what happened to the words after they left the shop, now they can.


Give someone, anyone, control, and they tend to want to exercise it. They would justify this as acting in their own self-interest, though frankly I doubt that many of them'd think very carefully about where their true self-interest lies, never mind about wider problems of the market and future growth of the business. There has always been a short supply of Timoleons. Besides, it's always easier to say No than Yes, because No has a definite, quantifiable result, where Yes could go almost anywhere. Yes could end up floating around on the net for free, which I suspect is the publisher's real nightmare.


I do see this ownership issue as a problem. People have become used to being able to lend or give their words to others, and a change in format isn't going to change this. Eventually there will have to be a system in place that allows an ebook, once bought, to be transferred to another user. However I also think that we're in a transitional stage. We still haven't got a reliable cross-platform delivery app for ebooks that can be read by all tablets and operating systems; the equivalent of having plenty of words, but no paper. How then can we expect to have a lending system in place?


I think this is a problem that time alone can solve. That shouldn't stop people demanding the service, of course, but we probably ought to accept that this particular demand may not be met quickly.


That's it from me on this topic - at least for the moment!

The Art of Books

One of the reasons I'm attracted to games like Bookhounds of London is that I'm a book fiend. I love books; I've been reading for as long as I can remember, and bookshops are my favourite places. Like many another bibliophile, there are certain stores I always go to whenever I get a chance. The Strand or the Argosy in New York, Quinto, Foyles, Henry Pourdes all near Charing Cross in London, or the shop on the Heath in Blackheath (very close to where I used to live); I could find my way to them blindfolded.

It took me a long time to get used to the idea of electronic books. I didn't like the feel or design of the Kindle, and I told myself it was purely an aethetic issue. Truth be told, it was probably more of a grudge than a genuine problem. I could sense which way the wind was blowing, and it didn't favour my old friends the book stores. Even so, I could see some use for them. I enjoy newspapers and magazines that are often difficult to get, for which an electronic subscription would be fantastic. I live in Bermuda now, but still enjoy reading the Guardian, and I also like catching up with the New York Times, which we do get, but usually a day late and only one retailer on the island stocks it. Plus, there are professional magazines that are usually difficult to get even if you happen to be living in the same country they're published in; magazines like Building or Architects' Journal. I'm not nearly as enamoured of the American equivalents. They seem too lightweight, more concerned with design issues than condition or refurbishment, and aren't very good at explaining the details of a project. Often I end an article knowing less than I did when I started, which is something of an achievement I suppose but doesn't really do me any good.

So now I have an iPad, and of course the first thing I loaded on it was a host of .PDF files. All my Trail books are on it, and let me tell you, as one who remembers hauling around all the AD&D manuals, the DMG, Monster Manuals, Dieties and Demigods, Player's Manual, Fiend Folio, Unearthed Arcana, the relevant Class Manuals, Dragon magazines, scenarios and other must-haves for the gaming session in a book bag when I was a teenager, the sheer convenience of having everything at my fingertips in an item that weighs less than a pound and a half is a godsend. For lo, the Heavenly Choir doth sound, and so forth. This is just the hobby stuff, of course. From a professional point of view, I can certainly see the appeal of having, say, all the Approved Documents to hand, as well as the full Building Regs for such arcane topics as energy efficiency. They haven't quite cracked CAD for the iPad, but once they do I can't see a reason for any built environment professional not to have a touch pad on them at all times. If anything, I'm mildly shocked that some clever clogs hasn't already started marketing custom touch pads to the professions.

Yet when I read articles like this one from the Guardian, I wonder whether I'm living in the same world as they. I'm going to focus on a few key statements:

Not since the palmy days of late-Victorian publishing has so much care and attention been lavished on the hardback. Go into any bookshop now and you will find piles of brand-new hardbacks sporting coloured endpapers, scarlet silk bookmarks, heavy, deckle-edged paper and elaborate laminated boards.

The immediate future of the book is clear. E (electronic) is for easy; P (print) is for posterity.

The pleasures of E means downloading the new book we fancy, from reviews, word-of-mouth or plain curiosity. The satisfactions of P come from acquiring lovely print editions for our bookshelves.

Dear Lord, if only it were true.

Yes, I'm slightly prejudiced. I live in Bermuda. I have yet to see this wave of late-Victorian tat yer fella seems to find so appealing. Possibly had I these leatherbound lovelies to hand I might feel differently. However I buy books to read them, not to salivate over, and here is where I part company with the wee man. I don't mind going the full monty on something that I really want to keep forever and ever Amen, but the kind of book described is the sort of delicate creature that can't bear to be touched. It reminds me of nothing so much as those overpriced mint-in-box Star Wars figurines. The whole and the sum of the value of those things is in the mind, not intrinsic. You might wander off to a convention to get the packaging signed by Anthony Daniels, or whomsoever, but you don't crack the thing open to play with it. Shame, really, since that's what the little plastic kitsch was made for. So too with the books. I don't buy one to look at, but to read, and I'm not sure the hypothetical leather fetisher and I are on the same page.

Going further: E is for Easy? Bollocks.

Again, I may be prejudiced, but Easy isn't how I've found things so far. Overcomplicated, yes. I've had the Pad about three weeks, and already I have three different e-readers for the bloody thing. The iBooks app is perfectly fine, that's my go-to. I also have a Kindle app, grudgingly. I hadn't realized I'd need a seperate app for that, but apparently ease of use isn't yet on anyone's agenda. I also have an Adobe e-reader, and here's where things get fun: I have that because I want to buy books, and very few vendors seem inclined to sell them.

Say I want to buy from Blackwells. Hell, never mind saying it: I really really want to buy from them, because they have lots of books I'd find useful, interesting, and often both at once. Importing those would be an incredible hassle. They're already a touch on the expensive side to begin with, and then there's shipping, plus the local vendor's margin; the final price can easily triple RRP. The electronic version would be so much easier to use, cheaper to get hold of, and I'd have it more or less instantly as opposed to waiting a month and a bit. So off I trot to Blackwells, cash in hand, and I get . . . . 'we don't send this to your country.'

Same applies in other areas. Dost thou wish to purchase from Barnes and Noble? Sorry, cholly, no can do. Oh, we do sell some, but not all. Waterstones, perchance, for the latest Brookmyre? Same deal. Oddly the English seem convinced I'm in America while the Americans are equally convinced I'm English. If either one would finally make up their tiny minds I could at least purchase from the other. I can't even download the latest Guardian app, intended to allow people access to the Weekender magazine. Et tu, Grauniad? At least with the book vendors there might possibly be a question of jurisdiction. Presumably they don't want to upset their rivals across the water by being seen to be poaching. I don't see how the same can apply to newspapers. Surely there can't be significant competition issues on that front? Will the New York Times send out the Ninjas if some poor sod in Manhattan dares to look at some dastardly foreign newspaper online?

So I have the Adobe e-reader, because the only bookstore I've found so far willing to sell to whomsoever wheresoever has been eBooks.com, and they seem to prefer it. They're also Australian, which may be why they don't seem as hung up on boundaries as their English or American counterparts. No doubt someone in the eBooks hierarchy got as frustrated as I have been with book delays and delivery problems, and decided that their bookstore wouldn't be hampered by artificial restrictions.

If I could download the book I fancied, that would be great. That is, after all, the main reason I wanted an iPad in the first place. However finding someone willing to sell me the book I fancied has been an uphill struggle. Moreover I can't help but think that many vendors are still romantically attached to print, for reasons I can't entirely fathom.

Take the webcomics lot, for a start, people like Rich Burlew of OOTS fame. I've enjoyed his work for years, and have all the trade paperbacks so far (up to Don't Split the Party), but I'm beginning to notice some flaws. The ink never seems quite right, and was all too easy to smudge when first bought. Now the pages are starting to stick together, and can't be unstuck without doing damage. Probably some of that is down to humidity, it being an island paradise here and all, but I'm not convinced that's all it is. I think the Chinese manufacturers have something to answer for. Plus of course from someone like Rich's point of view producing even one of those books must be a logistical nightmare. Presumably Ookoodook takes some of the weight off his shoulders, but I dread to think what it can have been like before he signed them on, what with dealing directly with the manufacturers, the vendors, overseas shipment dates, keeping track of subscriptions and all the rest of it. That sort of thing is a full-time job in itself. Just contemplating the mountain of detail involved makes it easier to appreciate the Robert Koos of this world.    

Which makes me wonder: why isn't this (and other things like it) in ebook form?

Manufacturing problems, delivery problems, subs issues, all of that backbreaking workload either gone in a puff of logic, or at the very least halved. Moreover it would be much easier for one person to manage, which is perfect for the average webcomic. Much the same trail of logic applies to small magazines like the Unspeakable Oath. I love the Oath, but I can't help noticing that although their stated goal is to publish four times a year, they only managed two issues in 2011, and there's no news (as far as I know) about a 2012 publishing schedule. While I doubt all their problems are tied to publishing in physical format, I'm willing to bet a lot of them are. There's bound to be a piracy concern with electronic media, but even with that threat I really can't see the cost benefit to a small publisher remaining in physical format. The workload alone means you spend three or four times as much effort producing the wretched things as you do creating them, and for a writer/artist like Burlew or amateur publishers like Pagan, I really don't see piracy being enough of an issue to make electronic unfeasable.

I can understand a sentimental attachment to print, believe me. I still favour bookstores over electronic media, and not just because I'm fond of them. Mainly it's because I find them easier to search (my eyes have never needed an internet connection, and I can scan a bookshelf in seconds where flicking through webpages takes forever) and because they still have more of the things I want all in one place. That doesn't mean I'm so blinkered in my outlook as to not have an e-reader, or that I can't appreciate the value of getting product out the door and onto the vendor's electronic shelf. There are going to be times when electronic beats paper. As the century eats away at us all, electronic will be beating paper more and more often.

That means the first vendor who establishes a genuine electronic presence is going to enjoy a bonanza, and by that I don't mean the Amazons of this world. I mean the publishers, the Penguins, the Fabers, the Blackwells, as well as the smaller publishers like Rich Burlew and the guys behind the Oath. So far everyone seems to be dipping their toes in, but I've yet to see anyone take the plunge.

Whenever you do get around to swimming in the deep water, guys, just remember: I'd like to buy from you. Don't lock me out.

Trail of Cthulhu

I've written a few things for Trail in the last year or so. Not So Quiet is already in electronic print, and is now one of the scenarios in Pelgrane's Out of Time compilation. Other Pelgrane projects are in playtest stage, including a few Great War scenarios and a historical piece set just before the American Revolution. The Unspeakable Oath has published another Trail scenario, The Brick Kiln. I also helped with the map indexing for Bookhounds of London, a suppliment I very much admire.I've been discussing other projects with Pelgrane and those may come to fruition; if they do, they'll probably see print next year, as I haven't finished writing the most recent one. What with playtesting, layout, editing and other issues, I don't see that getting done before Christmas.

I suppose I ought to discuss Trail as a system, and say why I've grown to like it more than its parent RPG system, Call of Cthulhu (Chaosium). As this is where I discuss books, I'll treat Trail to the Bookshelf format. So, here goes!

My copy is the 2008 hardback edition, with Jerome Huguenin's evocative artwork on the cover. I think I bought this at Dragonmeet in London, which would mean I had it the same year it came out. I remember being a little reluctant. Not that I didn't like it - I did - but I was between jobs then and I was money conscious. For some reason the Yankee Dollar price and the GBP price for RPG stuff tends to be roughly the same, which means the book cost me forty quid, roundabout. That was about thirty nine quid more than I really wanted to spend on anything, leave alone a system I knew little about beyond a few favourable words on Yog-Sothoth. However I bit the bullet, though when the fella behind the counter tried to persuade me to buy something else I declined. I suppose I ought to regret that, since whatever it was is certainly out of print by now. I don't. I've never been very good at impulse buying. I tend to keep my hand on my wallet and smile politely.

Though I suppose if you want to look at it in crude money terms then the cash I've earned from scenario sales by now outweighs the initial investment by at least a hundred to one. So there's that. If only everything I invested in had the same result!

The book is well put together and sturdy, which is saying something for the RPG market. The binding is stitch, not glue, and it stands up to hard wear. I've owned hardback suppliments that collapsed after three or four months, shedding pages like a dog does fleas. In fact, the only other time in my recollection that I've bought a hardback RPG book which actually took punishment was when I bought the AD&D DMG, Player's Handbook and Monster Manuals. I've still got those in a box somewhere. The pages may be yellowed, but they never once fell apart, despite the hundreds of hours they spent being knocked around at school or dragged from house to house. Hopefully this book will last as long.

The rules are based on Robin Laws' GUMSHOE system, which tends to emphasise roleplay over dice rolling. In GUMSHOE each player character has a certain number of points spread over several investigative abilities. When an ability is used, the player is supposed to spend a point and describe how he's going about the investigation. So if it's a situation where X is in a shady part of town trying to track down a hired gunman, he might say something like: "I go to my usual haunts, chasing up snitches. I spread a little payola around, because what else are you going to do? Whisper sweet nothings in their ears?" Then a Streetwise point is spent (representing the character's known interest in snitches and shady places), and the result of his investigations is adjudicated by the Keeper. It's a fairly simple system which doesn't need dice to make it work, most of the time. The key thing is, it lends itself to player control. It was the player who decided to have a point in Streetwise, the player who decided, not just to spend it, but how it was spent.

That's the key issue for me. I prefer a roleplay style of game. Anything that promotes roleplay is aces in my book, and leaving the responsibility in the hands of the player makes things very interesting. The Keeper has to think of more eventualities, anticipate players' responses to the ongoing plot. The players have to take responsibility for their characters' actions; it isn't just a roll of the dice any more. If anything, the GUMSHOE design reminds me not a little of the old Troupe style of play popularised by Ars Magica. In that game, everyone had responsibility for world design as well as character design. Building a covenant of magi was a group activity, based on point spend with a set budget. The group had to decide what they had and did not have, and in the process they ended up describing a fair part of the world they lived in. So too here with Trail, except that now the group is de-emphasised and the individual has control.

Take the Streetwise example. The player only spent one point, enough to get the information. If the player had spent two points, they could have had the information and also bought themselves an additional asset - the Black Cat Club, for example, and its owner Jack Quimper, half-French former crook turned solid citizen, who passes the player the information and also says that the gunman will be in the Black Cat later on, as he always shows up when Lola's singing. The player gets the Black Cat, which he can return to again and again in future scenarios. The game world gets a new location, which the Keeper can then  plan around for his own nefarious purposes. It's a brilliant idea, and one I wish more players were courageous enough to use.

The other standout for me is the game's treatment of its bestiary. The Cthulhu universe is well populated, and by now veteran players will have worked out what most of the creatures can and cannot do. Trail specifically encourages the Keeper to "rework the creature to suit the setting or the scenario, keeping their basic nature the same. Should ghouls be albino, almost insectoid creatures like Morlocks, and attack subway trains instead of grave robbers? Should byakhee emerge from deep wells or simply assemble themselves out of trace metals and corpses in the vicinity? How does the Colour work as the Sound out of Space?"

This is giving the Keeper carte blanche to do as they like. Of course, Keepers have always had that power, but they battled against player expecation. If the players know that X is X, then they're justifiably suspicious when X suddenly resembles Y, or Z. For much the same reason rolling dice behind the Keeper's screen is perilous, as is fudging die rolls. The fudge itself isn't the problem. The issue is the Keeper's basic sense of fairness. If the players get even a whiff of an idea that the Keeper isn't playing by the same rules they are, they'll start wondering whether the result of the last few dice rolls had more to do with a personal vendetta than good game play. Once that idea gets into people's heads it's impossible to dislodge, and can ruin a long-running game. This way, both sides know ahead of time that the Keeper may change things to suit the situation and the rules allow for that to happen. The fairness issue is taken off the table.

Moreover the statistics are streamlined. There's just enough here to be useful and not enough to be cumbersome, while some entities have no statistics at all, on the understanding that the Keeper has the final word as to what it can and cannot do. This speeds things along while keeping the player in control, since the existing stats are less 'what It can do' as modifiers to the player's dice roll. The Stealth Modifier affects the player's chance to Sense Trouble, its Alertness Modifier affects the player's chance to Sneak. That and a small scattering of abilities and armour is the sum total of most creatures' write-up.

Now, pros and cons.

Pro One: This is a well-designed roleplay system which puts emphasis on player's actions and responses, as well as encouraging more Role (and less Roll) play. People looking for a less dice-heavy game should look no further.

Pro Two: It's a very faithful adaptation of Cthulhu mythology. I haven't discussed the Sanity and Stability mechanics in any detail, but they do work well in a Purist setting, where the assumption is that everyone is doomed from the outset as the Horrors reveal themselves. It also lends itself nicely to a more Pulp style game, particularly if the Bookhounds of London suppliment is used.

Pro Three: The emphasis on storytelling and scenes rather than dungeon crawling is a welcome change. Veterans of CoC may remember some of the older scenarios with their vast, mapped-out locations crawling with unspeakable things, and shudder as I do not at the horror but at the prospect of working through the bloody thing room by room and corridor by corridor, changing characters every third or forth chamber as the previous ones get et. This isn't that sort of game.

Con One: While not strictly diceless, it is remarkably dice free. That will be a turn-off to some gamers.

Con Two: The players may be overwhelmed at first by the amount of responsibility put on their shoulders. Gamers are used to the Keeper doing most of the work. They sometimes seem afraid to spend points, or reluctant to embrace the challenge. This can be a stumbling block at first, though overcoming it (provided everyone's willing) isn't impossible.

That's it from me! Have a good one. 

The Bookshelf

Now I want to talk about the book review segment I contribute to Yog Radio.

I started doing it because I thought it would be fun, which is probably the motivating factor behind most of the things I do. At that time Yog Radio didn't have many contributors, and those it did have only occasionally sent in stuff. I thought it shouldn't be difficult to produce regular content, particularly since Paul of Cthulhu preferred segments that were no more than six minutes long.

I decided on book recommendations because I'm a voracious reader. I always want to tell people about good books, particularly if they're horror or horror-related. I'm a huge fan of ghost stories, especially Jamesian ghoulishness, and whenever I get the chance I infest second hand shops and antiquarian stores looking for material. I personally find the older stories far more enjoyable than the ones written today, possibly because contemporary authors tend to explain too much and are addicted to gore. I don't mind bloodshed, but I'm not in this for the ketchup; I'm in it for the chills.

I see The Bookshelf as a series of recommendations, rather than reviews. I'd never talk about a book (or a series) I didn't like. There'd be no fun in that. However I acknowledge that my tastes don't suit everyone, which is why I always include a short list of negative points: the cons, to be weighed against the pros. Hopefully people find them useful.

I also tend to avoid talking about books other people recommend to me. I've had a few Yog Radio listeners try to persuade me to talk about their favorite novels, and while I don't mind doing it if I like the book, I'm always a little wary because there's every chance I might hate it. I don't want to upset a listener by ragging on an author or story that they love. That doesn't seem fun at all.  

So, that's what I do and why I do it. Next post, I'll be talking about an old favorite of mine: The Beetle

Introduction

Hello there!

I'm Adam. I post as Karloff on the YSDC forums and contribute The Bookshelf to their ongoing podcast, Yog Radio. I write, and have been published by Chaosium, Pagan Publishing, Miskatonic River Press, Pelgrane Press, and the Escapist, among others.

In this blog I'll be expanding on my Bookshelf reviews, concentrating initially on the books I've already covered for Yog Radio and then dealing with new material. I'll also be talking about my RPG work, describing the creative process as best I can. I hope this will be useful for Keepers and players alike! I'll probably concentrate on Trail of Cthulhu, Pelgrane's latest, as I find that the most interesting of the current horror tabletop games.

I hope you enjoy the blog!

Best
K