by Thomas Pynchon Pynchon is another author I’ve been meaning to read for a long time now. Though I probably should have asked around before picking up the only novel of his I recognized by title, that “Alex luck” I seem accustomed to caused that same book to be what is widely considered one of…
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by Michael Martineck You can see the influence of authors such as Ray Bradbury and George Orwell on a work like The Milkman, but I suppose most science fiction can probably trace back to both of these authors. (Speaking with Martineck at this year’s When Words Collide, he mentioned the influences of Philip K. Dick…
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by Agatha Christie This is the first book in quite some time that I really find myself struggling to comment on. I definitely enjoyed reading through it, devouring it in a day, in fact, but I’m just as positive that Murder on the Orient Express has some major issues plaguing the story. I guess part…
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by Charles Bukowski In Pulp, we join Nick Belane, private eye “extraordinaire”––the best dick in L.A., by his own account––as he attempts to solve several cases, which quite often entails sitting there, drinking, and musing on how he should be solving cases. He meets Lady Death, who wants him to investigate a man who looks…
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by Philip K. Dick It’s been a while since I read something that felt a bit dated. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest came across that way, but for a very different reason; you could easily date Cuckoo’s Nest based on its writing style. A more fitting comparison to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?…
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by Dashiell Hammett Though I wouldn’t say I watch a lot of the genre, I believe it was Polanski’s Chinatown that showed me the possibilities of film noir, reminding me to keep an open mind for other, earlier pictures, such as The Third Man. Being more-or-less unfamiliar with detective-story fiction, however, I figured a good…
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