In a recent blog conversation, the topic of old favorite books came up. Someone mentioned Andrea Alton’s Demon of Undoing. I was surprised because I had thought the book long out of print and pretty hard to come by even when I found it years ago in a used bookstore. Well, it’s baaack! Demon of Undoing  All thanks to the wonders of self-publishing. It’s a great book, featuring an alien world from the alien point of view and dealing with humans as rarely seen, dangerous, mysterious beings that are very puzzled  that simply asking questions causes so much trouble. It is frequently funny and full of adventure and derring-do.

Another old favorite, Sorcery & Cecelia, has been available in reprint for a while–but the ebook is currently a mere $2.99. Considering my original paperback is literally falling apart (I love not wisely but too well…) I immediately snapped up a copy. It is a novel of letters, in a Regency England where magic is just one of the things a Lady of Quality might dabble in. When she is not making midnight excursions to kidnap a goat.

I have discovered a new genre. Funny hard science fiction.The Martian, by Andy Weir, is the story of an astronaut engineer with a warped sense of humor who is accidentally (no, really!) abandoned on Mars when the rest of his team has to do an emergency exit back to Earth. LOTS of cool science as he tries to stay alive using his chemical and engineering knowhow to kludge together the things he needs to survive. His will to survive, on the other hand, is nearly mortally wounded when he discovers the only music left behind is the mission leader’s extensive collection of ’70s pop tunes.

THRILL to the importance of bacteria! MARVEL at using old Mars probes to send x-rated ASCII art! BOGGLE at the humble potato! (It becomes clear in the book, trust me).

And you can’t beat the price, currently a mere 99 cents!

UPDATE: link now works. Thanks Anachronda!

One of the nifty things about reader reviews for my books is they sometimes are kind enough to mention authors with a similar style. Firstly it inflates my ego ;-). Secondly, sometimes I go “who?” and look them up and discover a wonderful new author. Such a one is James S.A. Corey, the collective name for a collaboration between Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Leviathan Wakes is a classic space opera with noir overtones, featuring lots of nesting conspiracies, alien biotech, sociopathic CEOs, planetary wars, and vomit zombies. To tell you how good it is, I usually don’t like tales of interlocking sordid multilayer conspiracies, and yet I loved this book.  Now I’m reading the second book, Caliban’s War, and anticipating yet another good story.