aliens – ~*LunaSea*~

Lethem, Jonathan. The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye: stories. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1998.

I like that way Nancy Pearl describes Lethem’s style of writing. Basically she says (in Book Lust) you never get the same book twice. Even within his short stories in The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye you don’t get the same short story twice. Nothing is the same. Even the style of writing is different. Like a box of chocolates with only one candy containing chocolate…

Here’s a list of the short stories:

The Happy Man ~ a weird sort of deal-with-the-devil story about a man who is dead, but isn’t.
Vanilla Drunk ~ a story that mentions Michael Jordan over 40 times.
Light and the Sufferer ~ brothers, an alien, drugs and New York City. What’s not to love?
Forever, Said the Duck ~ a virtual party where virtually no one is who they say they are.
Five Fukcs ~ I have no idea how to describe this story. It’s all about getting screwed over…
The Hardened Criminal ~ a very strange story about a man who ends up in the same prison cell as his father…only his father is built into the cement wall.
Sleepy People ~ there is a group of people who sleep through anything…including sex.

Because of Lethem’s copyright statement I am not going to quote favorite lines (and yes, I had a few). Just leave it that I liked the entire book (even though I would have liked more description about the Sufferer from “Light and the Sufferer”).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Jonathan Lethem: Too Good To Miss” (p 145).

Lewis, C. S. Out of the Silent Planet. New York: Macmillan, (no date).

Maybe I am not used to reading science fiction, but this was one of the more unusual stories I have read. Then again, isn’t science fiction supposed to be strange?

Dr. Ransom is a Cambridge philologist who inadvertently runs into two old classmates from his school days. He never really liked them and with good reason. He likes them even less when they drug and kidnap him and take him for a cruise across the universe in a spaceship. They end up on the planet of Malacandra (traditionally known as Mars) where Ransom is to be sacrificed to one of the alien creatures. Lewis tells this story as though the reader is sitting across from him beside a roaring fire. He describes Ransom’s journey and reactions to this foreign new world as oddly detached and strangely calm. Probably the most interesting part to the whole story is how Ransom relates to his new world. He almost takes to it better than his own. He is quick to determine different species and tribes.

And yet, there is humor, too: “Ther period spent in the space-ship ought to gave been one of terror and anxiety for Ransom. He was spearated by an astronomical distance from every member of the human race except two whom he had an excellent reason for distrusting” (p 27).

Another quote I liked, “The love of knowledge is a kind of madness” (p 56).

Side notes: Oddly enough, my copy of Out of the Silent Planet [ISBN 0025707906] did not have a copyright date anywhere on it and Iron Maiden has song called “Out of the Silent Planet.” Wonder if they read C.S. Lewis. Probably.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror” (p 213). This, of course, was science fiction.