Three Days in April, and The End of Ordinary. He lives in upstate New York in a cabin in the woods (not that Cabin in the Woods) with his wife, a nine pound killing machine named Maggie, and the world’s only purebred ratrantula, where he writes—mostly fiction, occasionally fact—under the watchful eyes of a giant woodpecker and a rotating cast of barred owls. In his free time, he enjoys cancer research, teaching quantum physics to sullen graduate students, and whittling.
Recently I asked Ashton about what he was reading. His reply:
I've been spending a lot of time on airplanes recently. Downside? Deep vein thrombosis. Upside? Lots of reading time! Travel is stressful, though, so I tend towards comfort reads when I'm flying.Visit Edward Ashton's website.For me, that often means re-reading books that I first grew to love when I was a child.
On my most recent trip, for example, I brought along City, by Clifford D. Simak. This book is a classic--I mean, all of Simak's books are, but this one holds a special place in my heart. It's a collection of eight separate but interrelated stories chronicling the decline and fall of man and the rise of doggish civilization over thousands of years, told through the eyes of the Webster family and their associated dogs, robots, martians, and other assorted hangers-on. Each tale is preceded by a snippet of scholarly discourse among doggish scholars arguing over whether the stories are meant to be taken literally or figuratively, and whether "man" is meant to refer to an actual creature that once lived, or issimply a part of dogs' origin myths. As someone who loves dogs, scholarly discourse, and Simak in roughly equal measure, this book is pretty much tailor-made for me.
When I'm not on the road and I'm able to read things that actually require me to pay close attention, I tend to bounce between newer SF and the wackier edge of contemporary fiction. An example of the former is Corporate Gunslinger, by Doug Engstrom. This overlooked gem from a few years back takes modern capitalism to its logical endpoint, at which any problems you might have with our corporate overlords can only be addressed by facing a customer service representative with guns drawn at twenty paces. The book follows the career of one such representative, a debt-drowned theater major who takes a gig as a professional duelist to avoid being literally repossessed by her creditors. This book has tons of action, a fair amount of violence, and a surprisingly touching ending.
On the contemporary side, I just finished Tim O'Brien's new book, America Fantastica. I first met O'Brien throughGoing After Cacciato when I was in college, and I believe I've read everything he's ever written in the interim. There are certain elements that you find in every O'Brien book--a deeply traumatized protagonist, wacky side-characters, a plot that often flirts with and sometimes crosses over into surrealism, and a biting critique of society in general and American culture in particular--and this one has all of those in spades. I described it to one of my friends as probably the most Tim O'Brien book that Tim O'Brien has ever Tim O'Brien-ed, and I stand by that assessment. It's funny and poignant and cringe-inducing by turns, and I could not put it down.
The Page 69 Test: Mickey7.
Q&A with Edward Ashton.
The Page 69 Test: Antimatter Blues.
The Page 69 Test: Mal Goes to War.
--Marshal Zeringue
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