Acquired:
Our Friends from Frolix 8, Philip K. Dick
We Can Build You, Philip K. Dick
Murmurs of Earth, Carl Sagan

Offloaded:
Night Soldiers, Alan Furst
The Undying Fire, H.G. Wells
The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio, Hubert Wolf

Progress Made:
Another Green World (33 1/3), Geeta Dayal
Deus Irae, Philip K. Dick & Roger Zelazny
Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro

Finished:
The Russian Girl, Kingsley Amis
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, Philip K. Dick
Night Soldiers, Alan Furst

Once again I find myself in the awkward position of writing about a book kindly recommended by a friend, not to mention a reader, and having to say that I found it… well, not disappointing exactly. Alan Furst’s Night Soldiers is elegantly written, impeccably researched, a class act all around, and I do not regret the time spent reading it. After a bit of a slow start, it moved right along. It just didn’t scratch that special itch the way Eric Ambler’s books do.

Fortunately there are a dozen or so Amblers I haven’t read. I got a bit bogged down in Here Lies, his autobiography, especially in a section about his time in the lamp manufacturing industry; but I am persisting and should get through it this summer. I must say I’ve been surprised at how much Ambler, whose novels are lean, mean, suspense machines, has let this thing meander. Editing your own life is hard, I guess. Hopefully we will get to WWII soon and things will pick up a bit.

Flow My Tears was, I believe, PKD’s last book before his religious experience/breakdown of 1974. So it’s still relatively “normal” sci-fi by his standards, though a weird-ass piece of work by anyone else’s. Reality-bending, drugs, paranoia, showoffy classical allusions, an ending that leaves you scratching your head — all the trademarks are there. It went down quick, and like Voyager slingshotting around a planet, I went right on to Deus Irae. Which, I just now learned, had a strange and tangled history:

Dick started the novel, and then he realized that he did not know enough about Christianity to finish it. He asked science fiction editor and author Ted White to collaborate on the manuscript with him, but after reviewing the manuscript, White never began the work.

Zelazny found the manuscript in White’s home in early 1968, read it, and then contacted Dick about working on the project. Work proceeded sporadically over several years as each author, in turn, forgot about the book. The novel was completed quickly, though, in the spring of 1975, after the publisher, Doubleday, demanded either the manuscript or repayment of the advance paid to Dick. The editor discovered that Zelazny had sent photocopies of a number of the manuscript pages and demanded the originals according to Doubleday’s policy; much to Zelazny’s chagrin, he was required to send in pages stained with cat urine. Zelazny said later that he always wondered what the editor made of these pages.

And finally there is the Eno book, which has been fun to read and has gotten me back into listening to Another Green World, an absolutely unique and wonderful album. In case you haven’t heard it lately: