Ted Mahsun

Martin Vopenka's novel, though given the label of science fiction, reads more like a magical realist escapade through philosophy, sprinkled with liberal doses of space-time theories. The result is a novel that reads more like Milan Kundera rather than something more traditionally placed in the realm of science fiction. The Fifth Dimension starts out promisingly. A Czech man, Jakub, who built a successful career in construction after the fall of Communism suddenly finds himself broke after his business prospects vanish one by one. Desperate, he answers a mysterious ad from an equally mysterious organization that promises him US$200,000 if he takes part in an experiment that involves spending a year in solitude out in the mountains of Argentina. He takes with him only one book, Black Holes & Time Warps by Kip Thorne , and so spends his time lost not only in loneliness and paranoia but also in multidimensional physics theories. Unfortunately, the plot takes too long ...

It's very rare for a book to grab my attention on the first page, then proceeds to drag me through a fast-paced, action packed SF romp. Adam Rakunas's Windswept sweeps you through a plot involving labor unions, edge-of-space boondocks, space elevators, and sugarcane byproducts, which of course, includes rum. Lots of rum. Padma Mehta is a union recruiter grappling on the edge of sanity who only wants to fulfill her recruitment quota so she can retire and buy her own rum distillery. When an opportunity presents itself so that Padma can finally fill her quota, she takes it despite her better judgment. But instead of the forty people she expected to quit their labor contracts, only five of them come tumbling down the space elevator and one of them happens to be dead. What happens next is a series of increasingly insurmountable problems for Padma to overcome. Besides the breakneck speed of the prose, I found the witty banter and the often hilarious situations entertaining,...

Southeast Asia is a region rich with legends and myths which hasn't been explored enough by writers, even those residing here. But this is probably partly because we don't have that many venues in which to share these stories. It goes without saying then that The SEA Is Ours, a steampunk anthology featuring writers from all over Southeast Asia, is a timely anthology that fills the need to showcase stories from authors we don't normally hear from. The two editors, Jaymee Goh and Joyce Chng, have made great choices in selecting the stories that went into this anthology. There were only a couple of stories that didn't really grab my attention, but that's par for the course for any collection of stories. It's rare that I find myself liking all the stories in an anthology. The ones that did really stood out for me were Timothy Dimacali's On The Consequence of Sound , which, rightly, is the opening story and features humongous giant whale catfish sweeping...

My review of Haruki Murakami's Wind/Pinball was published in the Sunday Star on 16 August 2015 and appeared on the Star2.com website on 18 August 2015 . Author: Haruki Murakami Translator (Japanese-English): Ted Goossen Publisher: Alfred A Knopf Finally, famed Japanese author Haruki Murakami has deemed it fit for English-speakers to read the two novellas he wrote in the late 1970s that launched his career. Wind/Pinball is a collection of two novellas: Hear The Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 . Murakami is on record for saying that he’s embarrassed by these novellas because, by his reckoning, they were his early books and are not that good. He’s even mentioned in interviews that he had had no plans for them to be released outside of Japan. English translations did exist, though. Published by Kodansha and translated by Alfred Birnbaum, the rarities were only ever intended to be used in English language classes in Japan. Print runs were limited and English-reading ...

It's always wonderful when you discover a wonderful new author. But this author I've found is hardly new and he is hardly obscure, having won three Hugo awards as well as a Nebula. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the SFWA. No, far from obscure, Clifford D. Simak is one of the masters of science fiction who wrote and published his stories during the hallowed Golden Era of SF. And the book that I've discovered by him is the fantastic, far-reaching and truly epic novel, City . Like many SF novels of that period, City is a novel that is patched together with previously published unconnected short stories, very similar to what Bradbury did with The Martian Chronicles and what Asimov did with I, Robot . What makes City unique--I'd go so far as to say fascinating --are the interstitial "notes" that tie the stories together into one continuous narrative. And these notes are often equally as intriguing as the stories they introduce. But I'm ge...

A solar flare causes an accident on a routine mission around the Earth's orbit. This causes astronaut Travis Hill to take extreme measures by leaping out of the craft and into an escape pod, effectively becoming the first astronaut ever to jettison to safety from space and make a reentry back to Earth. This amazing starting sequence in the novel, Starfire by Paul Preuss, hooked me straight in and kept me turning the pages, wanting to know what would happen the thrilling moment next. Unfortunately, as action-packed as the opening was, the rest of Starfire left me wanting. Several years after Travis Hill's amazing escape from the solar flare accident and his daring descent back to Earth, he has been deemed unfit to go back to space. But when he hears about an asteroid that makes a near pass to Earth and is heading towards the Sun, he spies an opportunity to get back to space. With NASA launching the brand new spaceship, the titular Starfire, very soon, plans are made to...

So now my latest short story e-book is out for the consumption of the masses! Don't everybody rush to the bookstores at once! There's enough for everyone! Because they're e-books dammit! Here's a summary of what you're in for: When Sayyid opted to become an organic Volkswagen farmer, he did not expect the Volkswagens to misbehave and break out of his backyard. Now those crazy air-cooled vehicles are running loose in the neighborhood and only Sayyid can stop them. But the situation gets even more out of hand when they invade the home of cranky old Mrs. Winters and take her hostage. In this action-packed and absurd short story, all bets are off as to whether humans or air-cooled Volkswagens survive to see another day. The Dangers of Growing Air-cooled Volkswagens in Your Backyard can currently be found at the following outlets: Amazon Google Play Smashwords iTunes Barnes & Noble Kobo  and Barbra Streisand knows where else. Every time I push o...

Wow. This is big news. J.K. Rowling has announced she will be publishing a book for adults with Little, Brown later this year: "Although I’ve enjoyed writing it every bit as much, my next book will be very different to the Harry Potter series, which has been published so brilliantly by Bloomsbury and my other publishers around the world. The freedom to explore new territory is a gift that Harry's success has brought me, and with that new territory it seemed a logical progression to have a new publisher.  I am delighted to have a second publishing home in Little, Brown, and a publishing team that will be a great partner in this new phase of my writing life."

I am currently (actively) reading these books: At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson I loved Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and when I discovered he had written a book that's the exact opposite of that one, I pounced upon it. Instead of a macro view of history like the previous book, Bryson instead takes us on a journey that documents the history of normal and mundane household objects, ones we usually take for granted. What follows is an epic journey across most of the Victorian era with the occasional trip to the height of the Roman Empire and some other notable periods of time in human history. A good read, even if you have only enjoyed Bryson's numerous travelogues. The Technologists by Matthew Pearl Matthew Pearl's latest historical fiction will only be released on 21st February but I managed to get my hands on a preview copy. The book is set in the mid-Ninteenth Century, during the initial years of the Massa...

I've noticed a lot of talk about crowdsourcing in the past week, especially with projects funded using Kickstarter . There has also been several threads about crowdsourcing novels on the Kindle Boards lately. Today, an indie author I admire, Lindsay Buroker, wrote a blog post about the whole crowdsourcing thing . She explains a little about what crowdsourcing actually is and how you can use it to fund your own novel as well as how she plans to use it to fund her podiobooks. (Podiobooks are audiobooks delivered as free podcasts.) A very good read, especially if you're an aspiring author wanting to self-publish and wondering where you could get some money to fund it. I would like to add a caveat for those thinking to use Kickstarter to fund their projects. If you're outside the US, you won't be able to use it. (People outside the US can give money towards projects, but can't create projects themselves.) Instead, consider Indiegogo.com , which does allows p...

Goodbye, Goddess by Breanna Teintze is a beautiful and well-written collection of high fantasy short stories that I would not hesitate to recommend to my friends. I loved how even though the stories were self-contained, the world described in them seemed to be larger than it appeared and while the stories had a small element of "sensawunda" they really focused more on the characters rather than the fantastic. One of my favourite stories in this collection was about a rogue mage who is reluctantly asked by some villagers to investigate a recent murder. It's at once a fantasy story, a Western story, a whodunnit, rolled into one and even has a big showdown in the end. Brilliant! My other favourite story is about a village idiot who is asked to slay a dragon. The story is simple, but the loving care in which it is written and the humourous but logical way in which the dragon is ultimately vanquished makes this one memorable. That's not to say the other stories in...

I stopped at Chapter 13 of Book 1.

Steampunk. Time travel. Dinosaurs. These three things make Robert Appleton's Prehistoric Clock a book after my heart. And does it capture it? Does the book provide a fun and engaging story along with its interesting premise? Yes. Yes it does. And thank goodness for that. When I read the synopsis, I so wanted to like the book, but I worried it wouldn't live up to its potential. Set in 1908, Prehistoric Clock is told from the perspectives of three main characters, Verity Champlain, an acting captain of an airship, Lord Garret Embrey, an aristocrat wrongly accused in a conspiratorial trial, and Cecil Reardon, the inventor who creates the time machine that drives the plot behind the novel. Though Reardon's scientific experiments are sponsored by a shady organisation called the Leviacrum (which we are given to suspect also controls the British empire), he secretly builds a time machine which he intends to use to go back in time to save his wife and son from dying s...

I've admired fantasy author Glenda Larke 's work for some time and I have her blog subscribed in Google Reader so I can always read her latest posts. But I never knew she just lived down the road from me! I randomly met her on Friday evening in a restaurant near where we lived and recognised her from her pictures on her blog, so I went over and said hello. We had a short chat and then she asks me, "Would you like some reading matter?" Turns out Glenda's cleaning her house out and is culling some of her books from her personal library. Well, obviously, I'd be happy to help! The next day, I was over at her house with four shopping bags and look what happened: Cataloguing this will be very interesting, to say the least. 188 books. 10 books in each stack, except for one stack which has 8 books. That's altogether 188 books, mostly fantasy but there are some science fiction (finally, I have a copy of Frederick Pohl's elusive Gateway !) and ...

Anne Lamont's wonderful book for writers, Bird by Bird , isn't a how-to book for writers. Rather, it is a book about the joys of writing as well as being an inspirational guide on the life of writing. The book opens with an anecdote that retells a childhood story of Ms. Lamont's brother who has to write an assignment for school. The assignment requires him to write about birds but when finally the day before the assignment has to be submitted, he cries in frustration that the task is impossible because there are just too many birds to write about. The father comes over, takes a look at the assignment, then gives one small but important piece of advice: "Take it Bird by Bird, son. Bird by Bird." (I haven't read the book for years, so forgive me if this isn't exactly verbatim.) It goes without saying that this is excellent advice. Recently, I met with fellow writer, Elizabeth Tai , and we chitchatted about books, reading and writing. After a whil...

Every time I reach the last day of the year I chastise myself yet again for not having finished writing a novel. It's been happening for nearly a decade now. Well! The year isn't over yet so maybe I will manage yet. You will know tomorrow if I succeed, I am sure. As for the year that is past, what can I say? It's been a somewhat challenging year for me but there were lots of good mixed in with the bad. But in general I would call it the year Ted discovered the eReader . I've been somewhat vocal on my dislike of ebooks, if not on this blog, then in conversation with fellow readers and friends. My dislike for them was borne out of a time when Amazon had not yet launched its Kindle, and the only eReaders available on the market were expensive, bulky and most terribly, impractical to buy books for. This was also a time when people still thought that eBooks were a thing you read on your computer screen. I thought this a terrible thing, and still do. Reading a 150,000...

I started out reading Murakami's behemoth of a book, 1Q84 , but when a friend gifted me an e-book copy of Stephen King's 11/22/63 , I read the first few pages to check it out... and was hooked. Now I cannot go back to 1Q84 . Well, at least for now. King has me caught in his death grips of superb writing and excellent plotting.

Okay. I can now admit it. I love e-books. Digital ink. O! glorious digital revolution, let it wash over me and cleanse me of my perve for paper! A friend let me testdrive his Kindle some time back and ever since then I've been slowly falling in love with the idea of digital books. Today, I had a trial run of sorts with my iPad loaded with Stanza and Naomi Novik's Tongues of Serpents by taking it on my daily commute to work, and it's been brilliant so far. Enjoying very much the ability to define words as I read them. Vocabulary +1!

Well, I just bought something: Thing is, as huge a Murakami fan that I am, I wasn't planning on buying it so soon. I felt I had outgrown Murakami and didn't really feel like reading a huge tome, especially if it was a meandering one like Kafka on the Shore. Not that I do not like Kafka. Far from it. It's just that, well, I want to read other stuff too. But it seems the God of Books has other plans and sent fate to intervene? I was made aware of some excerpts of reviews with statements such as "his best work since Wind-up Bird!" and "the opus that would define his oeuvre!" I realise this might be hyperbole but come on! I had become intrigued. And then today a colleague said he had it for his Kindle and had already started reading it. He said it was great so far. That was the last straw. I knew I had to read it as well. So, one trip to Borders... and here I am. I haven't even ripped off the plastic wrapping yet. I am savouring this delight o...

I like the thinking that 1Q84 is pronounced "Q-teen eighty-four". It rolls off the tongue much nicer than "one Q eighty-four". I'm not sure where I read this first but I'm guessing it's Literary Saloon . I'll have to check (but I won't cos I'm lazy today. Well, I've always been lazy. Anyway, I digress.) I'm guessing the huge tome will be making its way to the English-speaking shores by the middle of next year. In a recent interview at asahi.com , Jay Rubin (one of Murakami's translators) revealed that he'll be finishing his translation of books 1 and 2 of 1Q84 by mid-November and Philip Gabriel is supposed to finish book 3 by then. So my first reaction to this is, "yay! There's finally some real progress and I can hope of reading it soon(ish)!" but my second reaction is more important, which is, "WHAT, there's two translators working on this???" Now I understand why they chose to go this rout...