Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney

This is the classic story on which, so far, three theatrical movie versions have been based. It is more closely aligned with the 1956 version which stayed true to the novel and based it in the small town of Mill Valley. (Ed. note: There actually is a town in southern California called Mill Valley, although the descriptions of the town cannot be verified by me, since I live some 2000 miles away.)

The hero of the story is Dr. Miles Bunnel, a small town doctor who knows most of his patients rather well, as is typical of Hollywood 50's portrayals. Several of his patients have started to believe that some of their family members are not the people they seem to be, s if imposters have taken over. But ne by one, they gradually come back and say they were wrong, they had experienced a brief delusion, but now are certain that the people are who they are supposed to be.

The novel was pretty much paralleled by the 1956 screenplay, at least by my vague memory of the last time I watched it. Nevertheless, it does catch your attention rather marvelously, as is to be expected. I found Finney, long before I knew of his connection to the movie, with an old novel I pulled out of a library book sale called Time and Again, and it was reading that that lead me to other books.

The version that I got here was another audiobook, since the local library didn't have a print version. The reader was one George Wilson, who did an above par job of reading it, although I generally prefer to read them for myself. However, beggars can't be choosers.

I rate the story iotself 8 stars and Wilson's reading is great too.

Stalking the Unicorn & Stalking the Vampire by Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick is a guy who I will always think of as an editor first, because that is where I first encountered his name; as the editor of collections of stories in a themed series of books of alternate history. (Alternate Presidents, Alternate Warriors, Alternate Kennedys, etc. But Resnick is also an author, and was well before his days as an editor if I read his biography correctly.

The man as an incredibly biting sense of humor. It was his Adventures, starring a character named Lucifer Jones, that I found out how engaging a writer he could be. But I lost track of his work over the past decade since reading that, and didn't even know about the first book in the John Justin Mallory series until my library got it and the newer one this year.

Stalking the Unicorn was actually first published in 1988, so Resnick waited 20 years before writing a sequel, and a third one is in the works to be released sometime later this year according to his website. Be that as it may, 20 years is not the amount of time that passes between the two in the context of the story, so you won't encounter a doodering old detective in the sequel, thank God.

In the first book, Mallory is just beginning to celebrate New year's Eve alone in his office in Manhattan. Just as he starts in on a bottle, an elf shows up to ask for his help in locating a unicorn that was stolen from him. Thinking the elf is a hallucination, he dimisses the thing, but the elf persists, so Mallory ends up taking the case.

Much to the detective's surprise, an alternate Manhattan exist on the same plane as the real Manhattan, only one where all the fairy tale creatures are real; unicorns, elves, trolls, goblins and the like. Along the way, Mallory picks up a few followers who add comic humor and sometimes genuine help in his search for the unicorn. The funniest of these is Felina a cat-woman, who is constantly hungry.

He also encounters his nemesis for the novel, the Grundy, a demon who seems to be as interested in the unicorn as he is. What happens next is what makes the story great, but i won't reveal the twist here. you'll have to read it to find out.

Stalking the Vampire picks up a couple of years after the story ends in Stalking the Unicorn. In the interim, Mallory has picked up a partner in his detective office, Winnifred Carruthers. It's All Hallow's Eve, the biggest event of the year for the fairy tale Manhattan. At the start of the story, Carruthers' nephew, Robert Newton, has come for a visit from Europe.

Somehow he is not very healthy and it is determined that he has been bitten by a vampire. Several times, in fact, an obviously on the boat trip from Europe. Fortunately he is not entirely converted to vampirism. unfortunately, however, someone kills him.

Mallory and Carruthers are on the case. Seeking out this European vampire becomes and adventure, taking Mallory all over the place trying to find him. Again, as with the first, he picks up several helpful (and not-so-helpful) characters along the way before his final encounter.

I liked both books, but I have a partiality to the first one simply because of the introduction to a rational human from this world into that alternate reality.

Rate Stalking the Unicorn 8 stars.
Rate Stalking the Vampire 7½ stars.

Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse by Victor Gischler

One of the more fascinating genres of science fiction is post-end-of-the-world stories. These can range from classics like Walter M. Miller, Jr's A Canticle for Liebowitz to more offbeat stuff like this little jewel. The story begins with our "hero", Mortimer, living in isolation in the mountains of Tennessee, where he took up residence prior to the "apocalypse".

He has been out of touch with what he world has become for some time, but it comes crashing in on him due to the accidental killing of three intruders into his fortress of solitude. He makes a decision to go into town to track down his estranged wife, whom he has not seen in 10 years.

The world has changed completely in his absence. A mercenary group called the "Red Stripes" runs roughshod over the existing enclaves of villages that still try to exist. The villages, formerly such big cities like Atlanta, are primarily formed around a chain establishment of strip clubs called Joey Armageddon's Sassy-a-Go-Gos. The height of rich life is having a few Armageddon dollars to spend in these bars.

But Mortimer is not interested in lap dancers, he wants to find his wife. So he teams up with a cocky cowboy named "Buffalo" Bill and a feisty girl named shiela to make the trek from Tennessee to Atlanta where she was last seen. Along the way he has to deal with cannibals, the Red Stripes and renegade gangs on speed. Will he make it? I will say, this its a real page-turner.

I rate it 8 stars

How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove

Being a lover of history in general, it was quite natural for me to find the science fiction subgenre of alternate history so appealing. One of the reasons was the number of good writers out there who write on the subject so well. Harry Turtledove was not my first foray into the genre (that honor goes to Philip K. Dick, author of The Man in the High Castle), but it was his work that kept me coming back to him. The first was The Guns of the South, a story totally unrelated to this one, in which the South was able to win the Civil War due to the intervention of mercenaries from the future bringing them AK47s.

Here, circumstances which had led to the North's victory in the real world did not happen the same way, and the South was ultimately successful in separating themselves and becoming an independent nation. That is the previous history, before the novel starts. At the beginning, Mexico has sold portions of its country to the Confederate States, giving the CSA a border that extends from Texas all the way to the Pacific.

People in the USA are not pleased with this and are chomping at the bit to go to war over th situation. What is really interesting is that most, if not all the characters are real people from the time period, including a Lincoln who was not assassinated, but had been unceremoniously voted out of office after the loss of the first Civil War. Many of these characters are entertaining to say the least. How Turtledove depicts Theodore Roosevelt is the most entertaing part of the book for me.

It is a disservice to give away the ending, I suppose, but in this case, I don't see how it could be a big surprise, since about 10 follow up sequels have been published. Over the course of the next couple of years, I hope to get around to reading and reviewing them too.

I rate this one 8 stars