Win the Ultimate Shakespeare getaway!

Airfare to Stratford, Ontario, accommodations and two tickets to three of the Shakespeare Festival's offerings. Details here.

Feminist Fiction Friday--CJ Cherryh

I started reading CJ Cherryh's books in the mid-70s but somehow (denial is a powerful drug), it never occurred to me that she would now be ... coming up on 70.  (September 1, as a matter of fact.) I always figured that she used her initials instead of her full name (Carolyn Janice) because most science fiction writers at the time were men. It never occurred to me that "Cherryh" was not her real last name. According to Wikipedia, she added the silent H at the end of Cherry because her then-editor (Donald A. Wolheim) thought "Cherry" sounded too much like a romance novelist.
Well, nobody mistakes her for a romance novelist now--not after 60 science fiction and fantasy novels, a clutch of Awards (including the John W. Campbell award and a couple of Hugos).
And did you know she taught Latin and Greek after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Oklahoma and recieving a Master's Degree from Johns Hopkins where she was a Woodrow Wilson fellow.
Cherryh has never pigeon-holed her writing into any specific genre or sub-genre. (In fact, she's gone on record as being very much against that kind of categorizing.) She has written books from alien points of view. She has written books in shared worlds. I am a huge fan of Cherryh's fantasy and the first book of hers I read was the first of the books about time-traveling Morgaine, The Gate of Ivrel. I always thought the time-gates of her Morgaine books were much more interesting than any of the Stargates. I also loved Cyteen, which was a genre mash-up on a grand scale, featuring a cloned scientist trying to avoid the fate of her original.

Shakespeare's Top Ten--According to Listverse

Twelfth Night

A contributor named Herojax put together this list which has Othello at number 10 and Hamlet at number one. It's worth looking at because the list-maker found a lot of cool old illustrations to accompany the text. Here's the list.

Review of GreenMourning by G. Wells Taylor

A serial killer called “Pinocchio” is stalking Metro, collecting perfect body parts so he (or she) can construct a perfect body and be a “real boy.” Pinocchio is hiding inside the ranks of the “Variant Squad,” an elite group tasked with protecting the city against a new outbreak of Variant, which in its most virulent form turns ordinary citizens into skin-eating zombie-type monsters.

And meanwhile, a billionaire whose personal agenda involves evolving to a new, Variant-enhanced human 2.0 is manipulating everyone around him to force that outcome sooner rather than later.

It’s enough to make anyone go crazy and the people who make up the Variant Squad aren’t the most solid citizens around. There’s alcoholic Borland who forges a bond with a troubled orphan who gets under his skin in spite of himself. There’s Beachboy who numbs himself with sex and drugs and alcohol—“cranking” in Squad parlance. There’s Hyde, who literally has skin in the game, having lost his epidermis in the last Variant outbreak. And then there’s Marisol, whose own presentation of Variant Effect caused her to literally eat part of herself. Singly and together, these characters are original and memorable, and their interaction is intense, sometimes hilarious and often truly scary.

As any good horror novel should be.

GreenMourning is a sequel to G. Wells Taylor’s novel The Variant Effect, and while that book was good, this one is great, with every aspect of the story and characters amped up a notch. The relationship between Hyde and Marisol plays out in a way that’s breath-taking in its honesty and her “tough love” stance in the face of his reticence is impressive and admirable. Their interaction alone is worth the price of the book.

The various officials who are manipulating events are all very plausible character constructs, and the goings on at the GreenMourning company are convincingly conveyed. Taylor knows a little bit about manipulation himself, and he knows how to whip up his readers with anticipation and mysteries (who IS Pinocchio, for example) while taking them deep into a story that turns the zombie mythos on its head.

The novel ends on a cliff-hanger that will leave readers panting for more. People we like will die. People we thought we knew will surprise us.

No one is safe in the world of this book.

And the Variant Effect is back, and worse than ever.

If you like your horror cinematic and character-driven, you need to check out GreenMourning.

Happy Birthday America

AdAbraham Ortelius. Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. Antwerp, 1595. Shelfmark G1015 O6 1595 Cage. Folger Shakespeare Libraryd caption

The Folger Shakespeare Library has a page devoted to "Shakespeare in American Life." There are some interesting factoids there--did you know Thomas Edison almost became a Shakespearean actor?--and some general trivia connecting Shakespeare to America. (Remember, he knew about America and referenced it in The Tempest when Miranda says, "O brave new world..." Check out the site here.

Just Passing Through Shakespeare

Shakespeare, New Mexico is a ghost town. Here's more information about it.

Andy Griffith and Me...

I was once in an elevator with Andy Griffith. He smiled at me and asked which floor I needed. I told him and he pushed the button for the floor. I said thank you and he smiled again.
Andy Griffith punched my elevator button!!!
I once interviewed actor Joel Higgins, who costarred with Andy Griffith on a television show called Salvage-1. Higgins told me that of all the people he'd met in show business, Andy Griffith was the person who was most--"what you see is what you get." He admired him.
I watched The Andy Griffith Show and wanted to live in Mayberry.(Years later, while going to college in North Carolina, I used to pass by Mt. Airy, Griffith's hometown and the basis for Mayberry. It's still a small town, with a population of around 10,000 people.)
\I later learned that Andy Griffith could do a lot more than the folksy stuff he did in the Andy Griffith Show and later, in Matlock. (A big fave with my father, who was not unlike Matlock himself.)
He was terrific in a television movie called Savages, which was a riff on The Most Dangerous Game.
And he was outstanding in A Face in the Crowd.  Made in 1957, A Face in the Crowd is about a hobo who becomes an overnight media sensation and then begins to act like a monster. It's scarily relevant to today's celebrity culture. If you've never seen it, you should. It costars Patricia Neal, Lee Remick, Walter Matthau, Tony Franciosa and a slew of character actors you'd recognize.
Goodbye Andy...