"Bullet Points" - Wastelands: The New Apocalypse (Story 1)

This is the first in what may become a series of “Apocalypse Monday” posts featuring short stories from Wastelands: The New Apocalypse, each of which are set during or after an apocalyptic event. I’ve been a fan of, and have read, stories like these all my life, and I still love them as much as I did when I was a boy.  I’m also a huge fan of short stories, generally,  because short story anthologies allow me to sample and learn about so many writers I would otherwise never experience. So, this may quite possibly turn into the first 34-week, 34-part, book review I’ve ever written, one in which I feature every short story in the collection. 

Elizabeth Bear’s “Bullet Point,” the lead-off story in Wastelands, is told from the point of view of a young woman who believes she may be the last person on Earth…or at the very least, the last person in Las Vegas. The funny thing is that there are no dead, decaying bodies anywhere to be found, only empty homes, stranded automobiles, and all those empty casino/hotels the city is known for. If there was indeed a Rapture of some sort, our narrator seems to be the only one in town who didn’t make the cut. 

And then one day as she’s riding down the Strip on her bicycle, Isabella spots a guy on the street. She knows better than to get too close to him, but over time he wins her trust and convinces Isabella that he represents no threat to her safety. The two of them start living together even though Isabella senses that he needs her company more than she needs his — and that’s when his cracks begin to show.

So now, the question for you, the reader, to think about is this one: what would you do if the only other person left on Earth (as far as you know, anyway) is your total opposite in every core belief you hold about yourself, the ones that makes you, you? How much could you, would you, or should you tolerate from someone you can’t stand being around even if they may be the only other person left on the entire planet? 

Bottom Line: “Bullet Points” is an amusing tale about the end of the world in which the “last woman” on Earth and the “last man” on Earth turn out to be a bad match — and what happens next. The seventeen-page story was published for the first time in 2019’s Wastelands: The New Apocalypse, a collection of thirty-four short stories with apocalyptic themes written between 2013 and 2019. 

Elizabeth Bear, author of some thirty novels and over one hundred short stories is a Massachusetts-based writer who can claim the prestigious Hugo award among the awards she’s won.  

The Best Man to Die - Ruth Rendell

The Best Man to Die (1969) is the fourth novel in what would turn out to be Ruth Rendell’s twenty-four book Inspector Wexford series. The twenty-four novels were written between the years 1964 and 2003. Rendell, who died in 2015, may be best known for the Wexford novels, but the prolific author also wrote numerous standalones and short story collections under her own name or using her Barbara Vine pseudonym. All told, Rendell produced near eighty books.

The Best Man to Die begins with a stag party held in the Kingsmarkham and Districts Dart Club, one of the pubs in Inspector Wexford’s own stomping grounds. A small group of friends has gathered to boozily celebrate the next-day marriage of one of the men. They have been there for a while — and it shows — when the last of the group finally shows up and starts flashing a wad of cash around as he buys several make-up rounds for the others. The men only stop celebrating, and drinking, when the pub closes down for the night.

The next morning, while walking a dog his adult daughter has brought with her on a visit to her parents, Wexford himself discovers the dead body of the man who had been bragging about all the cash in his wallet. It all appears simple enough. The man has been bashed in the back of the head, stripped of his cash, and tossed into the river…a typical mugging of a man with too big a mouth for his own sake. Wexford, however, will soon learn that this is not just a mugging gone bad. Charlie Hatton’s is, in fact, just one murder in a string of murders that, according to the book’s jacket, involve “small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women.” 

So where does Charlie Hatton fit in, and who wanted him dead?

Bottom Line: The Best Man to Die is a solid murder mystery, one that gets surprisingly complicated considering that it is barely 200 pages long. But what surprised me most about it is how different this 1969 novel is in style from the style Rendell later developed. This one has a rather old-fashioned feel to it that is exaggerated by the period in which it is set. Looking back, the 1960s do not seem all that long ago, but this novel is a reminder that, for many, life was still much as it had been in the 1940s and 1950s. It is also a reminder of how rapidly the world was already changing. 

Ruth Rendell

The Times Have Never Been Better for Readers

The 3 shelves beneath each of these groups of 4 are equally stuffed beyond capacity.

Do you guys ever get the feeling that, even though you are probably reading more right now than you ever have, the stacks of un-read books you have waiting around for your attention are growing faster than ever, too? I spent some time this morning sorting through the unread books I have acquired this year, and I can guarantee you that's the case with me. All of the shut-in time resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has given me the time to read more book blogs, newspaper book sections, and book magazines than ever before. The result: I'm buying books way faster than I can possibly read them, and I probably won't ever get to some of them at all. 

So far in 2021, I've acquired:

• 18 Hardcovers
• 10 E-books
•  5 (electronic) ARCs
•  7 (physical) ARCs

In addition to these 40 books, I have a grand total of 17 library books waiting to be read before check-out time runs out on them. While all the bookstores were shut down, I really got used to making use of my library system's search engine and the fact that the system has a reciprocal agreement with two of the neighboring counties to share books across county lines. So much choice...and that was even before the bookstores reopened. Now, it's really crazy. 

The scary part of all this is that I've read a grand total of 8 of the 40 books I've acquired so far this year - and I've abandoned one other of them for good out of sheer boredom. That leaves 31 unread books, and the year isn't quite halfway over yet. Oh, I know it's a nice problem to have (other than the space required and all), but at this pace, I'll soon be searching for a Book-Addicts Anonymous meeting somewhere around here. 

In addition to all the books I learn about from my fellow book-bloggers, I'm constantly learning about the books that are hot in Britain right now from my Times of London subscription. Almost everything that catches my eye in the paper's book section is available in this country, too, and if that weren't already bad enough, the book editors kindly sent me an email or two every week just to make sure that I don't miss all the books they couldn't squeeze into the paper itself. Then there are The Great Courses (available for free on Kanopy), classes like the 19-hour one on "Mysteries and Thrillers" that have led me to countless classics and series (there's that word again) from the past. And, I don't want to forget all the British and European television series I watch on services like Acorn, BritBox, Prime, Tubi, and Walter Presents that end up leading me in whole other directions after I learn they are based on a book or series of books I had not heard of beforehand. 

In other words, life is pretty good for readers right now. We are all very lucky to live in such an interconnected world. Make the most of it.

Mean Spirit - Linda Hogan

Linda Hogan’s 1990 novel Mean Spirit is a fictionalized version of real life events that took place in Oklahoma during the early 1920s after oil was discovered under land owned by members of the Osage Indian tribe. Almost as soon as the oil was discovered, white men schemed to take the newfound wealth for themselves by forcing the Osage families from their homes or by marrying Osage women who held the mineral rights in their own names. Multiple members of the tribe were murdered, and whole families were forced to flee the region in fear of their lives. Even today (this quote is from 1990), according to Hogan, “Non-Indian shareholders still receive Osage Indian annuity checks, shares in the Mineral Trust, and unwarranted benefits as shareholders.” Mean Spirit tells the story of the people from whom the “non-Indians” stole all that money.

The beautiful Grace Blanket never expected to become the richest woman in the entire Oklahoma Territory, but after oil is discovered beneath the otherwise worthless reservation land given to her family by the US government decades earlier, that is exactly what she is. The Blankets have so much money they are running out of things to spend it on — and some of the other Osage families who live near the Blanket family are having the same problem. But that is not the only problem the Osage families have because, unbeknownst to them, the struggling white families living in the nearest town, the various oil men who come to the territory, and the very government agents responsible for protecting the rights of the Osage tribe all want that money for themselves — and some of them will do anything it takes to get their hands on it. 

When members of the tribe start committing “suicide,” dying from “heart attacks,” and otherwise dropping dead all over the reservation, other Indians like the Blankets and the Grayclouds are at first a little slow in realizing just how much danger they are all in. It is only after their pleas for help are ignored by Washington D.C. officials, and the bodycount continues to rise, that they realize they are under a relentless siege by outsiders that will not end until all of the oil money has been stolen from them. The more traditional among them literally pack up and move to the hills where they feel safer; the less traditional families load up all of their belongings and leave the area completely, abandoning their property in the process. 

Linda Hogan tells the story from the points of view of multiple characters who struggle to deal with the reality of what is happening to their family, friends, and neighbors as they are picked off one by one by the scavengers around them. The Indians have no place to turn to for help because even the one agent from Washington who has their best interests at heart, himself an American Indian, is treated by his fellow agents as if he is losing his mind. By the time the Osage get some semblance of justice and protection, it will be way too late. There is no just compensation for murder and theft of this scale when no one really seems to care.

Bottom Line: Mean Spirit is based on a shameful segment of American history that even today too few people know about. It covers the same events that, twenty-seven years later, became the basis of David Grann’s well-received nonfiction book on the same subject, Killers of the Flower Moon. Before writing the novel, Linda Hogan (who is herself a member of the Chickasaw tribe) spoke to people who are still separated from the land that is rightfully theirs because their ancestors fled the area in the middle of the night. The story that Mean Spirit tells is a moving one, but Hogan’s fiction style is somewhat labored and, as a result, the book’s 375 pages do make for slow reading. This one requires patience, but it is well worth the effort.

Linda Hogan

The Book Chase June 2021 Reading Plan

Looking back at my May 2020 reading plan, I see that I read five of the eight books I listed. I also see that I read seven other books that were not even much on my radar going into May, making me wonder if all this planning is anything more than just a jumping-off point for the upcoming month. Of the initial eight, I read: Lonesome Dove, Earthlings, The Real Cool Killers, Not Dark Yet, and Hombre. Of the other three books on that list, I'm still reading Philip Roth: The Biography, America, and (sort of reading) Under the Wave at Waimea. I plan to read America this month, but it is unlikely that I'll finish the Roth bio in June or that I'll finish Under the Wave at Waimea at all unless that one gets a whole lot better very quickly. I'm just not into the whole surfing lifestyle, and the first 60 pages have been a struggle for me. I only decided to try this one in the first place because I'm a big admirer of Paul Theroux's writing - and it's just not working yet.

These are the others I already know that I want to read in June:

I'm well into Linda Hogan's 1990 Mean Spirit already and this will probably be the first book I finish this month. Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw writer and university professor who may be primarily known as a poet. Mean Spirit is her fictionalized version of what happened to a group of Native Americans after oil was discovered under land they owned, and lived on, in Oklahoma in the early 1920s. Author David Grann told the same story in a 2017  nonfiction book titled Killers of the Flower Moon that many of you will remember. If I had not read the nonfiction version first, I would have found it difficult to believe that the things described in Mean Spirit could have happened in the 1920s.

Like Linda Hogan, up above, Sherman Alexi is also a Native American writer. The Indian Killer title of this one can be read two ways: either someone is killing Indians or there is an Indian killer out there...and in this case, it's the latter. "A serial murderer is terrorizing Seattle, hunting and scalping white men. And the crimes of the so-called Indian Killer have triggered a wave of violence and racial hatred." Alexi, too, is known as an exceptional poet, so this one is something entirely different for him. It was published in 1998.

Havana Blue is book one of Cuban author Leonardo Padura's "Four Seasons" or "Havana Quartet" (it is referred to both ways). The other three books are titled Havana Gold, Havana Red, and Havana Black. The short series has done especially well in Spain, France, Italy, and Germany and features Inspector Mario Conde. The books do not appear to have been published in the order I listed them above, so I'm assuming that the four crime novels work equally well as standalones. Havana Blue was the third of Padura's books to be made available in English.

 I am not sure how I heard about Hazel Gaynor's When We Were Young & Brave, but I'm willing to bet that it was featured on one of the book blogs I regularly read. The cover, alone, is enough to stop me in my tracks, though, and I would have to pick this one up wherever I ran across it. From the book description: "But everything changes in an instant when Japan declares war against the United States and Britain following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and soldiers march into Nancy's school, placing it under the control of Japanese forces." I was hooked after reading that.

The Best Man to Die, published in 1969, was Ruth Rendell's fourth Inspector Wexford novel. I'm reading a paperback copy of the novel that has this cover on it, and I'm still trying to figure out the significance of the image - if there is one. The short blurb on the back says: "Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be a prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? But it was - and Charlie's death sentence was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women." 

Becoming Inspector Chen is Qiu Xialong's latest Inspector Chen novel. The series is new to me, but I know that it's a series that some of you have been enjoying for a while now. It sounds, in this one, like the inspector has reached a point in his career where his entire world might be falling apart. The book jacket description ends this way: "Has fighting for the Chinese people and the morals he believes in put him in conflict with the Party? Why is he being kept away from the new case? As well as his career, is his life now also at risk?"

The Essence of Nathan Biddle by J. William Lewis is a book being published sometime this month. I decided to give it a try, despite knowing nothing about the book or the author, when I saw it described as a "Southern Gothic-esque coming-of-age tale that unfolds on the Alabama coast in the 1950s." That sounds like a great combination to me. I just looked at the first page, and found this opening sentence: "On the first anniversary of Nathan's death, we went to the sea." Looks like a lot of flashback ahead.

I've been holding off reading James Lee Burke's Another Kind of Eden because it will not be published until August, but my will power is faltering now, and I'll probably read this one before the end of the month. The novel seems to be a rather dark look at the American West of the 1960s (most of Burke's books are dark, so that's no surprise) and "the menace and chaos that lay simmering just beneath the surface." This is a continuation of Burke's multi-book, and multi-thread, Holland family saga. I've read everything this man has ever written and he very seldom disappoints me.

So those are the nine target-books, but I also plan to make big dents in the Philip Roth biography (now that I finally have a copy with all of its pages) and the Paul Theroux novel I mentioned earlier. And who knows what will pop up out of nowhere and demand to be read in June - especially as I finish up the Great Courses lessons on Mysteries and Thrillers (only 6 of the 36 segments to go now). My TBR list has grown by leaps and bounds since I began watching those lessons.

Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

If you like a lot of science and math in your science fiction novels, Andy Weir is just the SF author for you. And that means that you will almost certainly love Weir’s latest novel, Project Hail Mary, because there are equally heavy doses of both science and math in this one. Heck, Project Hail Mary even includes a full-page illustration of the components of the spaceship in “thrust configuration,” along with another full-page illustration explaining how the ship transforms into centrifuge mode and what happens after it does that. But as much as I enjoy science and math in science fiction novels (if maybe not quite as much as Weir includes here), what I really enjoy in them is human contact with a space alien culture. And, I’m happy to tell you that if reading about alien-contact is as high on your list of favorite reading experiences as it is on mine, you are in for a treat. 

The story opens when Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher, wakes up to a robotic voice asking him “What’s two plus two?” over and over again. Grace has no idea who he is, where he is, or why the irritating robot-voice won’t just shut up and let him go back to sleep. Maybe, though, his confusion will temporarily be a good thing because it turns out that Grace (as he eventually figures out) is the lone survivor of a three-person crew launched from Earth toward a distant star years earlier to gather the information that hopefully can be used to save humanity from its impending doom. That’s bad enough, but adding to the larger problem is the fact that Grace is the least qualified of the three scientists sent on the mission — and that even the better qualified scientists who died would have found the job near impossible on their own. 

The good news is that maybe he won’t have to do it all alone, after all, because he’s not the only one in the area trying to figure out why his home planet is dying. "Rocky" is there, too. 

Bottom Line: Project Hail Mary is a book about what makes us human, with all of our strengths and weaknesses on display, but it is also a heartwarming story about one of the deepest, if least likely, friendships imaginable. Main character Ryland Grace is a flawed individual who surprises even himself by what he is willing to do for others even though he didn't exactly volunteered for the mission he wakes up to. The book is perhaps a bit overlong, and it can sometimes get a little bogged down by the math and science at its heart, but it is one that readers are going to remember. Next, I would love to read a novel about what was happening back on Earth during the 26 years it took to get answers back to scientists there.

Andy Weir