So hey. I’m not officially back on duty yet — I’ll be back sometime in the next couple of days — but I thought I’d seed a little discussion here with what I’m calling The Official We Hunted the Mammoth Book Recommendation Thread.
Which is pretty self-explanatory, so have at it! Any genre, old or new. I will probably gather up the various suggestions for a later post or page.
And, yep, the book in the pic up there is a real book that exists, written by a fella named Peter Cheyney, and which you can buy on Amazon for the low, low price of $2,986.69. No, really.
That’s for a new copy. If you’re some kind of cheapskate, you could pick up a used copy instead, for a relatively thrifty $86.90.
Here are the first couple of paragraphs of the book, courtesy of Amazon, so you can have some idea what you’ll be getting for your money:
Is it hot!
I aint never been in hell, but Im tellin you that I bet it aint any hotter than this Californian desert in July.
I am drivin along past Indio an I figure that soon I am goin to see the Palm Springs lights. An I am goin some the speedometer says eighty. If it wasnt so hot it would be a swell night; but there aint any air, an there was a baby sand storm this afternoon that caught me asleep an I gotta lump of the Mojave desert or whatever they call it stuck right at the back of my throat
I strongly urge you to go to Amazon and click on the “look inside” tab to read more of Mr. Cheyney’s hardboiled prose.
Within the few short pages available in Amazon’s preview, the book’s narrator (tough guy private dick Lemmy Caution) not only manages to eat a lump of sand; he also orders a hamburger (at a hot dog joint) and some ham and eggs (at a second joint). It’s not clear if he eats any of the hamburger before splitting, but you’ll be glad to know that he at least starts eating the ham and eggs.
Oh, he also calls a guy a “sissy” and gets his ass kicked.
I know the book sounds truly amazing, but before you click the “buy” button, let me make a little counteroffer: if you’re really intent on spending $2,986.69 on a book titled “Dames Don’t Care,” pay me that amount, and I will write an entire new book by that name in the style of the original, more or less. For $86.90, I will write a (very) short story in the same style.
Or you could post book recommendations in the comments below. That’s good, too.
Here’s the full cover for Dames.
David, I don’t have two and a half thousand dollars to donate, but if somebody does, I’ll throw in a cover for it in the style of the original (or as close as I can manage).
I’ll recommend just about anything by Jon Ronson. Especially if you get them on audio-book narrated by the author. I especially enjoyed The Psychopath Test.
@ reimalbario
I love Jon Ronson. His books are great (Men who stare at goats being a particular favourite) but also his documentaries. The one where he’s discussing with a KKK guy on the best washing powder for their hoods is especially funny “I can see how important it is to you to get everything nice and white”
ETA: Louis Theroux can come across as a bit too ‘knowing’ but Jon plays the naive innocent just perfectly.
@Alan:
Please don’t use dark matter as a MacGuffin. You’ll make the universe angry, and you won’t like it when the universe becomes angry.
I recently wrote a piece on the binary star system WR104, which absolutely could kill us all at any moment, along with the rest of life on earth, our atmosphere and our oceans.
https://thebeautifulvoidblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/d-25-luck/
That might serve your purposes.
Disclaimer: WR104 will probably not kill us all at any moment. So we’re probably all going to be fine. Don’t you feel reassured now?
@ EJ
That was really interesting. Weirdly I first heard of Wolf-Rayet yesterday! (Isn’t there a term for that phenomenon?)
For my purposes I need something that can be instantly triggered. Dallilama’s solution is good because it’s actually plausible with real world technology.
If its ok with you I wouldn’t mind nicking some of your ideas though to revamp my original gamma ray burst story. I’ve been told it needs a re-edit anyway. Don’t suppose you know of any potential gamma ray source candidates that might have been a danger 65 million years ago?
@David
I can’t wait to read your short story! It’s nice that you got the commission up front.
Reginald Evelyn Peter Southouse Cheyney — somehow he doesn’t sound like a writer from the USA.
Based on the little I read, he definitely has a style. But he uses too many apostrophes when his (definitely, totally All-American) PI talks.
It reminds me of the Beatles song “Rocky Raccoon,” another definitely, totally All-American guy. Lennon & McCartney stuffed all the Americana they could think of — the Black Mountain hills of Dakota, Gideon’s Bible, hoedown, etc., into that song. Unconvincing. Leave that stuff to the Beach Boys. Or Loretta Lynn. Johnny Cash is dead now, but his all-American songs could make you laugh or weep. I wish he were here now to write a bitter, scathing, actually populist song about Donald T.
@ kat
I have a magic Rocky Raccoon (that I bought from top magician and professional misanthrope, Jerry Sadowitz). He is great fun in restaurants; but I wish I was as good with him as this guy.
https://youtu.be/xMLVbgCgx1o
The most recent book I’ve read is My New American Life by Francine Prose (now there’s a name for a writer!).
A young woman from Albania emigrates to the USA and, although she has no green card, finds a job as a nanny in the ‘burbs of New Jersey. Lula has left behind a life in a repressive country. She’s charming. She’s optimistic. She’s an American now!
8 out of 10. Would totally dance to it.
Seconding the recommendation for Malazan, books of the fallen.
If you like GoT for it’s complexity you’ll love these. If you are easily disturbed however you may not. It’s a compelling series, but it has a lot of depictions of the suffering caused by war, including that of children.
But it’s an amazing fantasy series.
@Alan:
Wolf-Rayet stars are very rare and therefore very badly understood. It’s entirely plausible that any of the post-supernova stars we see in the sky today had been WR stars in their earlier life and had created a focused gamma ray burst. As such, if you say “there was one 65 million years ago” we can’t call you a liar; and I am entirely happy to give you a signed note to that effect.
As for triggerable destruction: I need more information. How much destruction do you need? Are you only trying to kill all complex life on a planet, or are you trying to remove bacteria too? Do you need the oceans to remain in place? What about the atmosphere?
You are going to use this information for peaceful purposes, I hope?
@Alan Robertshaw
Ha, ha! That guy is talented.
@ kat
In fairness it’s the raccoon doing all the work.
Alan:
Baader-Meinhof effect?
Often see him around my locality, including in my local Waitrose. Nothing damages your enfant terrible cred quite as much as shopping at Waitrose.
@Alan Robertshaw Ronson’s trip to Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones in “Them” is fascinating.
Unsurprising Spoiler:
Ronson sees a bunch of powerful people letting loose in private and acting like drunk frat boys, Jones sees pure satanic evil.
@ EJ
Much appreciated! How come the axes of supernova can point in different directions anyway? Shouldn’t conservation of angular momentum mean they all face the same way; at least on a galactic scale?
Was going to just use the info for the story. But now it seems it’s actually achievable; hmm? (Hey, I already look like Gru so I’m half way to being a supervillain).
Basically though my premise is that a North Korean type state is believed to be trying to develop that sort of super weapon. Our protagonists try to stop that but they’re hindered by the fact that the regime has set up what is a quasi religion/cult. The cult is becoming increasingly popular everywhere, as no matter what outlandish predictions it makes, they always come true and they are victorious in every struggle no matter what the odds; and the dear leader type figure is now being seen around the world as infallible. (As a physicist you can probably figure out how he’s doing that)
@ moggie
Oh I dunno, their salad bar is pretty hardcore.
@ JoeB
Yeah, I especially liked Jones going on about how covert and clandestine it all was, just before they were waved through the entrance.
Another few books I’ve read or been reading are
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson which was what help turn me into and environmentalist
Whipping Girl by Julia Serano which covers what the author calls transmisogyny. Its an interesting read but I haven’t been able to go more than a few chapters so far without getting depressed
Each individual star can rotate on whatever axis it happens to be rotating on, and that isn’t a problem. Conservation of angular momentum means that once it’s spinning on that axis it’s going to stay on that axis unless it’s acted upon by a force. This means that when it becomes a supernova it will still spin on that axis, and afterwards when it becomes a white dwarf, neutron star or black hole, it will still spin on that axis.
The galaxy itself rotates, and each star orbits its centre, but this is a different rotation from that of the stars within it. The axis of each star doesn’t have to point in the same direction as the axis of the galaxy.
As for devices of mass destruction: Let me have a think. Is it your desire to have it wipe out all life instantly; or to have it wipe out all life except for the local followers of said dictator? The latter may be much harder.
Cloudiah! If you’re still reading, it was very nice to see you.
Weird! I saw that very edition in a second-hand bookshop a few days ago.
Hello.
Yeah, Lemmy Caution is known in France through his interpretation by Eddie Constantine. It was a time where having a american actor in a french production drew a huge audience (even if the movies where not that good).
There have been a fistfull of Caution movies here. I believe it was surfing on the “Sam Spade”/Humphrey Bogart wave.
Have a nice day.
@ EJ
That’s the bit I have trouble getting my head around. I’ve presumed that galaxies form when the original post Big Bang matter starts to coalesce and that in doing so it will start to rotate. Then within the collapsing cloud that forms the galaxy there’ll be local coalescences that form solar systems. To me it seems that they should be on the same axis as the galaxy; the way the planets are more or less on the same plane and axis as the Sun.
I can see how there’d be a bit of minor variation from random perturbation but I’m given to understand conservation of angular momentum is pretty powerful (I’ve seen a bloke be pulled over just trying to move a spinning bicycle wheel off axis) so I’d have though that generally our galaxy would have an ‘up and down’ that was more or less common to everything.
[As to the other thing; it needs to kill everyone, but they mustn’t be aware of it]
@Alan
I’m pretty sure that the scenario you are looking for involves women being allowed to express opinions online or maybe LGBT characters in games. IIRC you should be find a number of totally plausible scenarios at RoK or the MGTOW reddit.
Long time lurker, first time poster.
I’d heartily recommend N. K. Jemisin’s “The Fifth Season”–best book I’ve read this year, and in my opinion deserves to win this year’s Hugo. She has great stuff. Also, Kameron Hurley. Her fiction is great, but I’m looking forward to reading her collection of essays “Geek Feminist Revolution”. Guy Gavriel Kay has a new book out and anything by him is good, as is anything by Lois McMaster Bujold. Ann Leckie’s Ancillary trilogy is fantastic. There’s a reason the first one won the Hugo award that year.
Interestingly, in the time since I posted that blog link above, I’ve already had one comment.
I’m very bad at answering comments (my apologies, Orion) but this one I chose not even to publish. That’s partly because it was inordinately long; partly because the foreword to it said that the author had been thrown off skeptical websites for being too MRAish (which is hard); but mainly because he claimed that if published, it would “destroy feminist academia forever.”
You will be relieved to hear that feminist academia has been saved by my “trash” button.
Trying to post this as a comment on a feminist’s blog is just a little weird. Trying to post it as a comment on a blog entry about astronomy is very weird. Is this a comment that anyone else has had submitted to them? I assume he didn’t write it just for me.
OT
“The Kidnapped Bride”
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/kyrgyzstan/thestory.html
This is what the denizens of the manosphere want. Or at least what its advocates think they want. Kind of. Because when push comes to shove, they probably don’t want to support a family. Or put up with a pregnant wife. Or children.
Women without rights: The situation might look good to men but in fact is extremely dangerous to everyone.