Review: The Fall

The Fall by Albert Camus
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

More a lesson on Camus' contribution to existentialism than an actual story, The Fall is about a man who realizes how absurd existence is, and he has a fall from his higher position because of it. The thing is, unlike other books by lesser authors, the protagonist in this book doesn't feel constrained or defeated because of his fall. He actually feels slightly liberated.

At first, the story is annoying since the protagonist spends all his time talking about how great he is, and why he felt more intelligent than everybody else. But in the end, you realize how important all that truly was so you can understand how the events that happen lead to his eventual fall. It's certainly not what you're thinking (I thought he had murdered someone or something). It's a highly perplexing book, and one that takes much thought once you wrap your head around its philosophies. I would give it a higher score, but I usually prefer a true narrative to philosophy disguised as narrative. Even so, I read it in one sitting, so that's saying something.

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Review: The Martian

The Martian by Andy Weir
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Okay. The Martian is a great book. A towering achievement in realistic science fiction. It's just not for me. The part that bored me was the actual science . It was interesting in the beginning, but after awhile, even I had to admit to myself that I really didn't care about the science and math. I just wanted to get more to the danger. Is it any wonder that the parts I looked most forward to were when we weren't with the protagonist and were instead with his crew and the people at NASA?

That being said, I can understand the love for this book, especially from males who don't normally read. This might be a newsflash to you, but lots of men do not read fiction. They think it's boring and a waste of time. But give them a book that seems like it MIGHT ACTUALLY HAPPEN, and they lap it up like cake frosting. It's the novel for people who don't like fiction!

Actually, that's not entirely true, because at its heart, its a story about survival and perseverance, and who doesn't love that?

So, yeah, it's a great book and all. It's just not MY kind of book. If that makes any sense. Read it if planting potatoes on alien soil sounds interesting to you.

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On releasing free books on Amazon

Well, I've released my third free story of the summer. This one is a doozy. It's a full novel and it's called, The Interdimensional Subwoofer: A dimension hopping, time traveling, science fiction novel. Why release it for free? Especially when it took two years of my life to write? Well, it's to find an audience, which is something that has eluded me ever since I started pumping books out. I read a short book called, Reader Magnets (Also free), which talks about all the benefits of putting out free books, mainly in getting people to sign up to your mailing list.

So far, it hasn't worked. I put out two short stories, Clean Hands, and Q: Are We Not Human? A: We Are Corpses!, which have been downloaded thousands of times but have only gotten me 20 subscribers, and haven't gotten many reviews. But this is an actual novel, and hopefully will show up on more people's recommended screen. In the end, I guess I'm just saying the same thing that any struggling artist says these days: The struggle is real.

Deleted Preface to new short story, A Father's Fears

My short story, A Father's Fears, will be out soon. But in the meantime, here is a chapter I have since eliminated from the book. I hope you dig it.

Prelude

Lord Imagination sauntered through the room of dreams with his hands clasped behind his back. The colors around him drifted like the liquid in a lava lamp. These colors were mankind’s dreams.

This was always his favorite room in the skyscraper. From the inception of human consciousness, mankind has always dreamed. Over the years, this room has changed in a multitude of ways. The dreams have become brighter and more elaborate with the passing of time, and now, the wavy lines snap about like bullet trains. In simpler times, the multicolored strips would trail across Lord Imagination’s vision slowly like currents in a lazy river. He didn’t even have to squint to see what individuals were dreaming about. Hell, if he wanted to, he could even dip his hands into the strips to provide his own images. This wasn’t, of course, the same thing as altering dreams to inspire a specific result. He would need Lord Instinct to do that. Lord Imagination still occasionally thought about that one time he had to surf the currents of dreams to locate Instinct’s soul after a mishap had occurred. It had been like wading through knee-high mud with the wind constantly pushing him back. He never wanted to endure that again.

But he did want to have some fun. And later today, a man in the outside world named Jeff Haunt was going to go on an adventure. What humored Imagination was that Jeff Haunt had no idea that his life would be changed forever in only a few hours time. Neither did his wife, Marigold, who slept right beside him in bed.

Lord Imagination searched the strips to find Jeff Haunt’s dreams. When he located them, he plunged his arms deep into the yellow tide. He swirled his hands around and moved events to suit his liking. It wouldn’t inspire Jeff Haunt to do anything when he woke up, but it would fill him with doubt and uncertainty. Like a great sculptor admiring her achievement, Lord Imagination grinned at his creations. The weaver of dreams could do no wrong.