In this fascinating volume, Curtis tells of the radical transformations within the publishing industry over the past several decades: the transition from mass market paperbacks to trade paperbacks; the absorption of hundreds of independent publishers into a few publishing conglomerates; the growth of behemoth bookstore chains and their superstores and their subsequent collapse as Amazon began to dominate the industry; the rise of e-books and audio books; the changes in manuscript submission and distribution procedures with the rise of the internet; the effect of e-books and print-on-demand technology on independent publishing; and the devastating impact of artificial intelligence on the creative arts. He alternates between a historical account of these changes and a memoir of his own experiences as an agent and publisher. His perspective as a publishing insider and as an advocate for writers makes him well-qualified to tell this story.
His account of this tumultuous era in the book business clarified for me some of the background to what I was going through in my own experiences as a writer from the mid-1990s to the present. After a hiatus of almost two decades, I started writing again when my young family settled in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first I had to type up my stories, print them out, and send paper copies to markets in the States and the U.K. When they sold, I would receive paper checks in the mail. Later, when we got our first internet connection with a noisy modem that hooked up to our phone line, I was able to forego the paper copies and send digital stories to editors electronically. Still later, after Amazon set up the CreateSpace print on demand self-publishing platform, I studied blog posts and how-to books by pioneers such as Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch and learned to publish my own books. During this time I was aware of the changes the publishing industry was going through, but I was far removed from it, at the eastern edge of Europe, and could only catch snippets of the background details.
Digital Inc served me up a whole heap of nostalgia, as I was reminded of those challenging days when I was selling my first stories and publishing my first books. It clarified for me some of the history I only obscurely realized back then due to my perspective from overseas. It also brought back a lot of fun memories of those exciting times.
The most valuable aspect of this book for me personally, though, is Curtis’s lucid explanation of what transpired during those tumultuous, uncertain years. It is helpful to be able to put it all in perspective as a writer and a hybrid publisher and to perceive at a deeper level where the publishing industry is today and how it got that way. The wild card at present is, of course, the intrusion of AI into a field that relies heavily on human creativity. Near the end, Curtis mentions lawsuits that creators have brought against the owners of large language models for copyright infringement, but some of these suits are still pending, so the book leaves this topic hanging. All in all, though, Digital Inc is a well-written, well-organized study of the modern book industry, and I recommend it to both writers and readers – to anyone who comprehends the inestimable value of books.
Although the ancient Library of Alexandria is the most famous library in history and the United States Library of Congress in Washington D.C. is the largest library in the modern world, for me personally the Seattle Public Library system is also worthy of legendary status. It has served me well in several stages of my life, including the present stage, during which I have scant resources to be able to buy books but my appetite for reading is as ravenous as ever. I am profoundly grateful that my local branch is within walking distance; I usually go there at least a few times a month, and sometimes as often as once a week in my insatiable quest for reading material.
This infatuation began when I was a child. Once I learned to read, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t crave books. I would receive them sometimes as gifts on birthdays and at Christmas, but my main source was the local public library, where my parents would take me and my siblings with fair frequency so we could browse the shelves and check out books to bring home. Back then the system was not digitized, of course; to find specific books we would have to go through large cabinets containing the library’s catalogs; each book had its own typed index card entry. Paper sleeves were glued into the books; these contained a card that the librarian would stamp with the date of return. As a child my tastes were eclectic, but I especially enjoyed reading about ancient animals such as dinosaurs and modern animals such as tigers. My preferences continually evolved, though, and later, after I discovered my destiny as a writer during my one abortive year of college at the University of Santa Clara, after returning home I was thrilled to find a shelf at my local branch containing several volumes of Nebula Awards anthologies issued by the Science Fiction Writers of America (now known as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association).
Recently I have been exploring Seattle and its environs in an attempt to rediscover its multifarious wonders. This weekend I had planned to wander through an outdoor sculpture park near the waterfront; however, the forecast called for wind, rain, and lightning storms, so I instead searched for an indoor activity. And then it struck me: I was in need of some new books to read; instead of going to the local branch, why not head downtown to the Central Library and browse its vast collection? I hadn’t been there for a long time, and the building itself, with its ornate architecture, is like an ostentatious palace, worthy of exploration even if I didn’t find any books to check out.
The light rail system was undergoing repair, so I had to take a long, tedious bus ride and then hike up some steep hills to the library entrance. No matter. It’s all part of the experience. Realizing that I could not possibly browse more than a tiny portion of the library’s immense collection, I decided to focus on four areas: the Friends of the Library bookshop, the Peak Picks display of newly arrived books, the biography section, and the travel section.
Within the jewel-like multi-windowed edifice there are ten levels connected by elevators, escalators, stairs, and ramps. Just inside is the entrance to a spacious auditorium where on numerous occasions (before COVID) I had attended author readings. The Peak Picks section was near the entrance too, but I quickly realized that it was leaner than the one at my local library, probably because of the many more visitors the central branch received. I tried to orient myself by studying the signage, but I eventually had to (several times) ask librarians for assistance.
Before commencing my exploration I thought I would use the public facilities after my long sojourn on the bus; however, the library had just opened and the ground floor men’s room was crowded with homeless people. This didn’t upset me; I have been homeless myself, and I’m glad that the library permits those in need to use the restrooms. Later I found an emptier men’s room upstairs.
A long escalator took me to the Friends of the Library bookstore. It is set off to the side in a corner of the Fifth Avenue lobby. In the past, the Friends of the Library would hold enormous warehouse-sized book sales of all the excess volumes that the library didn’t need. For a time these were held near Magnuson Park in the neighborhood of Sand Point just down the hill from our apartment in Wedgwood. My youngest son and I would grab backpacks and hike down the steep incline, spend hours browsing for used books and DVDs, and then hike back up the hill as we staggered under the weight of our purchases. Later the sales were held at an enormous auditorium at the Seattle Center. In recent years, though, these sales have ceased. I asked an attendant at the bookshop about this, and she told me that the library no longer gave the Friends its excess books; she wasn’t sure what was done with them.
This visit renewed my joy of browsing. When I asked a librarian where the biography and travel books were, he told me but then asked for more specifics of what I needed. I said I was looking forward to being overwhelmed. “Well,” he said, “then you’ve come to the right place.” He wasn’t wrong. My local branch has a shelf or two of travel books, but at the central branch were aisles and aisles of shelves filled top to bottom with travel memoirs and guidebooks to any place on Earth you can imagine. For a time I wandered, amazed, but in fact there was no way I’d be able to browse every title even in the travel section alone, so I aimed for regions and countries I was especially interested in. I did the same in the vast biography section, aiming for books on specific people I was especially interested in reading about.
After I’d located a few books I thought I’d check out, I took the elevator to the tenth floor reading room. The entire exterior of the library is a multifaceted window that somewhat reminded me, as I looked out from the inside on the downtown buildings and the streets far below, of how things must appear to a fly with its compound eyes.
I hope that you’re a bibliophile like I am; I can’t imagine life without books. But even if you’re not in need of reading material, a visit to the Seattle Public Library Central Branch is a marvelous thrill in itself because of its unique architecture and elaborate, maze-like interior. Then again, books are the mystic portals to the knowledge and imagination of humankind. Be sure to pick up a few while you are there.
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If there is such a thing as literary comfort food, this science fiction novella qualifies. It tastes good and goes down smooth and easy. Ostensibly it’s a dystopia; after all, California has recently broken away from the rest of America, and after a brutal war it has formed its own independent country. Four sentient robots have been abandoned in a closed-down restaurant, and when they awaken after months of inactivity they must learn to fend for themselves without human assistance. Their plan? To get the restaurant up and running again featuring hand-pulled, or rather robot-pulled, noodles. The mechanical heroes encounter their share of difficulties, including internet trolls who try to inundate their establishment with one-star online reviews, but the dangers seem to be superficial. The story never loses its cute, cuddly, feel-good vibe.
Besides being an ode to the power of friendship, it is also a tribute to San Francisco. Despite its partial destruction in the war, the city comes across as warm and nurturing to its human and robotic survivors. Newitz notes, in the acknowledgments section at the end, that “many of the places, businesses, and institutions I love in present-day San Francisco managed to survive the war of independence to flourish in these pages.” I can understand the sentiment. San Francisco used to be one of my favorite cities too, especially back in the early seventies when I frequently hitchhiked up and down the West Coast. At the time, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood was still bursting with countercultural anarchism, and the rock venues featured some of the greatest bands of all time; I’ll never forget, for instance, experiencing the Grateful Dead live at Fillmore West in 1971. For me, San Francisco was magical. It lost its allure, though, when nearby Silicon Valley blossomed into existence, prices skyrocketed, and I couldn’t afford to visit anymore. Still, Newitz’s descriptions, even of the partially ruined city, brought on a wave of nostalgia for the city I once loved.
One issue that comes up again and again in the story is robot rights, something that I find difficult to take seriously at face value. It is difficult to surmise whether the author does either, or whether instead the robots are anthropomorphic representations of disenfranchised human minorities. Either way, it is easy to ignore these subtleties and relax into the story – as if watching a feature-length cartoon. I don’t mean this as a criticism, either. Escapism is a valuable thing; it’s fun to get lost in a tale of unlikely heroes who, despite the obstacles and difficulties, you just know are going to be all right in the end.
And Newitz is a fine writer. One reason I picked up this book is because I had so much pleasure reading their earlier effort: The Terraformers, a complex exercise in world-building that features all sorts of non-human characters. I would recommend Automatic Noodle, then, as a light, fun read – perfect for when you want to escape into a future that is radically different in some ways and yet in other ways is uncannily similar to our own time. We need more uplifting stories like this to offset the gloom in this poor, sad world of ours.
This book was not what I expected. Going by the title alone, I supposed that it would be a travelogue in which the author describes his adventures on some of the world’s great hiking paths. There is some of that, but Moor also spends much time discussing the philosophy of trails. To accomplish this, it seems to me that he often veers widely away from the subject at hand. It starts with a bang in a long prologue in which the author tells of his through-hike on the Appalachian Trail. The walk from Georgia to Maine takes him several months, and he shares gems such as this: ” Some days, after many miles, I would slip into a state of near-perfect mental clarity – serene, crystalline, thought-free. I was, as the Zen sages say, just walking.” In fact, the book begins and ends with descriptions of the Appalachian Trail: the United States version in the prologue, and the International Appalachian Trail, a new concept under construction, in the chapter before the epilogue. For me, these were the most riveting sections of all.
After his fascinating account of hiking the Appalachian Trail, Moor dives deep, deep into the past with a study of the first blob-like prehistoric creatures to form pathways. From there he moves forward to trail-making ants and caterpillars. In the course of detailing the trail predilections of sheep, deer, and other animals, he devotes long sections to his immersive research into herding sheep on a Navaho reservation, stalking deer with a dedicated lifelong hunter, and visiting a rural Tennessee elephant sanctuary and a Six Flags safari zoo. One fascinating section deals with preserving indigenous culture by discovering and mapping old trails leading to significant places in personal or tribal memories. At first I was disappointed by most of these digressions, but then I realized that as a reader I had to take the author on his own terms. That’s Moor’s style: to start out on track and then take off down any side-paths that strike his fancy.
On Trails introduced me to the International Appalachian Trail, a concept I had never heard of before. In the 1990s it was first proposed to extend the U.S. trail into Canada. Later the trail was expanded even further to include remnants of the Central Pangean Mountains, of which the Appalachians formed a segment before the supercontinent Pangaea broke up and drifted apart. There are now chapters of the IAT in Greenland, Scotland, England, and continental Europe, culminating in Morocco. The author describes a guided hike through the Atlas Mountains in Morocco searching for the appropriate location for the IAT trail terminus.
On Trails is a mixed bag. As I explained above, there are some parts of it I enjoyed and savored more than others. It helps if you approach it not as a traditional travel book, but rather as a hodgepodge of philosophy, travel, history, paleontology, and nature study. Moor is a good writer, and part of the pleasure of the book is the frequent uncovering of gems of little-known esoterica. It is as if you are hiking along a trail and keep discovering all sorts of things that you’ve never heard of before.
This new piece of fiction by George Saunders is marketed as a novel, but it is shorter than most novels and it reads more like a novella – or a short story that got out of control. And that’s a good thing. Saunders is a master of the short story. I always look forward to his collections, of which I have read and enjoyed several, including Liberation Day: Stories, Pastoralia: Stories and a Novella, and Tenth of December: Stories, not to mention the brilliant master class on short Russian fiction A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.
Vigil takes place in a single night. A spirit named Jill Blaine, the narrator of the tale, is sent to Earth, to Dallas, Texas, to comfort a dying billionaire, K.J. Boone, who made his fortune in oil. Although the world is manifesting the extreme effects of global warming, Boone is unrepentant despite his aggressive business tactics contributing in a significant way to the current disasters. It is not Blaine’s purpose to castigate or punish Boone, but rather to make his transition to the next stage easier. In fact, she empathizes with his plight and is able to see things from his viewpoint. She says: “My charge had been born him. But had never chosen to be born him. That just happened to him.” And of his multifarious business misdeeds: “It did not seem strange to me but inevitable. An inevitable occurrence upon which it would be ludicrous to pass judgment.” But numerous spirits that seem trapped in a limbo-like state between life and death do appear and pass judgment. They arrive, sometimes one by one and sometimes in groups to confront Boone (who in his coma-like state can mentally communicate with them) with what they consider his grievous sins.
More than once, Blaine gets fed up with Boone’s recalcitrance and leaves; she even makes a trip to her hometown, several states away, where she died as a young woman of twenty-two. However, it seems injurious in a sense for spirits like her to delve too deeply into their pasts; it distracts her from her current assignment.
The main theme of Vigil is environmental degradation caused by corrupt business practices, but the sermonizing is expertly cloaked by the entertaining fantasy. The underworld of ghosts in various stages of the afterlife reminded me of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Even more, though, it reminded me of the novella An Earth Day Eulogy by my son Nestor Walters, published in 2024, in which various spirits castigate the main character on Earth Day for his indifference to environmental issues.
At first I found Vigil a bit befuddling. You have to give it some time so that you become accustomed to the ground rules of the afterlife Saunders is presenting. But if you persevere past the initial confusion, you soon get into the flow of things and it becomes a lot of fun. Saunders, in this seemingly light fantasy replete with all sorts of idiosyncratic characters, cloaks a powerful message of the class differences in America and the obliviousness and callousness of the upper class to the damage they are causing to the rest of humankind. What could be better? You get a fun fantasy and a moral tale in a succinct, easy to absorb story. Highly recommended.
It all starts with mental comparisons of the present time with the late sixties and early seventies when I was growing into manhood. There was a war then: the Vietnam War, just as there is a war now. Until American troops were withdrawn in 1973, the conflict split the nation, just as the nation is split now.
It is a myth that politicians are among our finest people. Throughout human history this has almost never been so. Humankind has most often created its great religions, institutions, ideas, and works of art despite political situations, not because of them.
In the sixties, for instance, a renaissance of great music, literature, and social movements erupted in the midst of the chaos. The world’s greatest artistic masterpieces have often been born out of despair, trauma, warfare, persecution, poverty, oppression, injustice, discrimination, and intolerance.
I’m not making sense. At least not enough sense. Nevertheless I will continue, albeit senseless.
I’m not only talking about art, either; I’m talking about spirituality, about the awakening of consciousness. Why is it that insight often arises out of deep dark experiences?
It’s not that the world is more full of evil than it has been in the past; evil has always existed. The difference is that now, in this era, we have the ability to obliterate everyone and everything, to eliminate all life on Earth. And some folks would rather do that than share what they have, or what they crave, with others.
In the greatest darkness light shines clearer. I am watching for that light. From whence will it emerge?
We cannot control what happens in the higher echelons of government. They have their own agendas, which often do not align with the needs of the people they are supposed to be serving. But we have control of our own psyches, our own minds and hearts.
A perennial nomad travels in thought as well as on foot. The spirit roams freely even if restrictions are placed upon the body.
But that’s not all of it. The analogy that comes to me is of childbirth. “A woman when she is in travail has sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembers no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.” Is humankind in the throes of childbirth or on the verge of apocalyptic disaster? Or both?
As Yeats wrote in his poem “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” So it often seems as “the worst,” with fervor and force, are hell-bent on leading us to inglorious destruction. But this cannot be the final word. What we wait for, then, is an awakening of truth, of righteousness, of gentleness, of peace, of prosperity for all and not just for those brandishing the most powerful weapons.
What prompted this rereading of Vineland was director/screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson’s assertion that the Oscar-winning film One Battle After Another was based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel. I had read Vineland several years ago, and I couldn’t see the similarity. For one thing, in the book the character that Leonardo DiCaprio plays is very minor; he shows up for the first fifty or so pages (of an almost four hundred page book) and then is scarcely mentioned again until the end. He never embarks on a quest to find his daughter; that’s a Hollywood add-on. I’m not going to go into a point by point comparison of the book and the film; the differences are too vast and too numerous. Suffice it to say that Anderson took some of the hip, bizarre, flamboyant, outlandish, zany, and anachronistic elements from Pynchon’s novel and used these ingredients to create something with a more traditional, streamlined plot line. The names of people, locations, and groups are all different, and though Pynchon’s story alternates between the sixties and the eighties, the time period of Anderson’s tale is not as evident. In fact it is best, for me at least, to see the novel and the film as two separate entities that have a few things in common but ultimately are only vaguely related.
One Battle After Another has a clear, strong story line, while Pynchon’s appeal is not so much the story as all the intricate gags and wordplay he throws out along the way. And these are the bits that are ultimately not filmable. In my previous review of Vineland, I compared the novel to an extended Cheech and Chong skit, a Quentin Tarantino screenplay, a series of sketches from Monty Python’s Flying Circus or Saturday Night Live, and Doc Brown in Back to the Future throwing anything at all into his time machine, even garbage, to make it go. Pynchon’s style is all of that and more. And, as I wrote in my previous review: “In a way, the style of writing also reminds me of the works of Henry Miller. Especially in Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, Miller takes a description or a topic and makes an art form of adding details, one after the other, phrase after phrase, on and on, long after other writers would have given up and gone to the next plot point. That’s what Pynchon often does in Vineland: he’ll tell you what’s happening, and then add a detail, and then another, and that thought gives way to another, all in a very stream-of-consciousness sort of way. He does this with individual sentences, in paragraphs leading one into another, and sometimes with entire passages. A description of one character leads to their entire life story, and then the life story of another casually mentioned side character, and on and on it goes.”
This time around, even though I’d read the book before, I still sometimes got lost trying to keep track of Pynchon’s wildly eccentric characters. (It was obviously a good film decision to drastically trim these digressions.) I kept going in fascination, spellbound by Pynchon’s dazzling prose expertise, even though a lot of it didn’t seem to make sense. In some parts I can’t even say that it was a pleasure to read; it was more like being on an acid trip, enduring the exaggerated sights and sounds, helpless to break away until I came down.
The phrase pseudo-profundity came to me a few days ago while I was listening to a hit song from the seventies that seemed to have very deep and intricate lyrics. I eventually realized that the lyrics were bullshit; they didn’t make any sense at all. But they had verisimilitude; in other words, they gave the impression of depth and significance without imparting any kind of real worthwhile message. And then I realized that Vineland had a similar sort of pseudo-profundity. Much of it is a kind of literary slapstick, like early Charlie Chaplin before he burst out with masterpieces such as Modern Times.
Would I recommend Vineland? That depends. If you are into gags and wordplay and an idiosyncratic look at the sixties and eighties, maybe. Personally, I found some parts obscure and some parts easier to follow, and I have to confess that I enjoyed the most coherent parts best. I also have to say, though, that in my opinion, there are enough literary gems to make the mining of them worthwhile.
This is a fascinating and deeply absorbing travel book, but one with a most unusual theme. The author roams the world searching for pockets of natural darkness. Along the way, he makes a compelling argument for the inestimable value of the night. As he points out: “In ways we have long understood, in others we are just beginning to understand, night’s natural darkness has always been invaluable for our health and the health of the natural world, and every living creature suffers from its loss.” An overabundance of artificial lighting is driving away the beautiful mystery of night, and as it does, it also eliminates the overwhelming sense of wonder we derive from viewing uncountable stars in the firmament above us – because light pollution is blinding us to them.
It is only recently, with the advent of electricity, that over-lighting has become a threat. In the past, for most of human history, people witnessed the true dark. Vincent van Gogh’s classic painting The Starry Night epitomizes the wonder of the darkness with its extravagant pinwheels of light in the night sky. Bogard writes that “this is a painting of our world from before night had been pushed back to the forest and the seas, from back when sleepy towns slept without streetlights.” He does not claim that a modicum of lighting doesn’t deter crime, but he does present a compelling argument that the crass over-lighting that many modern populations centers indulge in not only has the opposite effect, but also costs us much beauty in the process.
At fault, of course, is our often irrational fear of darkness. I personally am not immune to this fear; I have always slept with a nightlight on after waking up in a pitch-dark room in India and sensing a ghost-like presence. But Bogard rightly asks: “What do we lose – men and women alike – when we are so afraid of darkness that we never experience its beauty or understand its value for our world, while allowing our lights to grow ever brighter?”
To understand what’s at stake, he journeys to locations such as Paris, the so-called City of Lights, to London, to Toronto, to the Canary Islands, to Walden Pond, to various remote astronomical observatories and U.S. national parks, and to many other locations. In the course of his interviews and research on these sites, he uncovers many fascinating facts. For instance, night shift workers such as doctors and nurses in emergency rooms are never able to fully adjust to their abnormal schedules. Even if they have been working these shifts for decades, the unusual hours continue to take their toll physically and psychologically. And over-lighting is detrimental to local ecologies as well, because the natural rhythm of animal behavior is closely linked to the patterns of light and darkness. As an example he looks at misunderstood and maligned bats, which are misrepresented as evil but in fact play vital roles in their ecosystems. He also emphasizes that cultural differences account for various attitudes toward night. Western cultures fear the darkness, while various indigenous cultures recognize the night as a completion of the day, as a chance for the earth to rest, as a time of wandering spirits, as well as an opportunity for our own spirits to grow by entering dream worlds.
Bogard writes: “I have often wondered how hard anyone should have to work to simply see a truly starry sky, to simply know a truly dark night.” He laments that “what was once a most common human experience has become so rare.” As he interviews active members of various dark sky societies, the common refrain is that what they are attempting to accomplish may be too little and too late. He is concerned that habitations of the future may be so saturated with bright lights that children to come may never even be aware of the wondrous beauty of the night sky. This book is a wake-up call. Take heed. We spend much of our lives attempting to fend off the darkness of night. Instead, why not embrace it as it is: the quiet, lovely, bejeweled alter-ego of the day?
There’s no better time than today to pick up a copy of the thrilling fantasy novella “An Earth Day Eulogy” by Nestor Walters. Here’s a quick teaser:
Jacob Wilder has nothing against Earth Day — he just has ‘real responsibilities’ and can’t be bothered by it. But on Earth Day Eve, the ghost of Wilder’s old platoon buddy, Eddie, announces that three spirits will visit — those of Earth’s past, present, and future — and he warns that one of two things will have to die: Earth, or our old way of life.
This pleasant, well-written book begins with the author’s admission that after he was diagnosed with epilepsy he was no longer allowed to drive. This caused him to rely on walking to take him from place to place. As a result, he became fascinated with paths and trails not only in his local area but around the world. Mixed with the depictions of the author’s own wanderings are descriptions of literary accounts of paths and walking as well as accounts of renowned walkers traversing some of the world’s longest hiking trails. He writes that “all of them say the same thing about it: you enter into an inner state that you have never been in before and from which, after awhile, you never wish to emerge.”
As he delves into the history of human migration, Ekelund shares that “emigration and immigration are not unnatural; rather, staying in one place is. And yet our culture can hardly tolerate the nomadic way of life.” Ekelund is Norwegian, and I’m reading an English translation, but by “our culture” he is referring to western culture in general. Somehow the wanderlust has been denigrated, but many of us feel that intense longing to roam freely.
Since his conversion from motor vehicles to walking, Ekelund figures he walks around fifteen hundred to two thousand miles a year. That’s roughly four to five and a half miles a day. Not all of these miles are merely to and from work, though; Ekelund offers fascinating accounts of extended hikes through the beautiful Norwegian countryside. These hikes are aided by the “freedom to roam,” which he describes as “a state-mandated right in Norway in which all citizens can travel freely through the wilderness regardless of property lines.” To make it even easier for walkers to enjoy the country’s abundant natural beauty, communities of volunteers work hard to clear the hiking trails and keep them open.
“The path is the perfect metaphor,” says Ekelund. “It can contain all of the emotions and longings in the world.” And: “The metaphorical implications of the path are obvious and easy to understand because, in a way, life is all about choosing the right way.”
It is refreshing to read about these things from a European perspective – to vicariously explore another part of the world – to realize that people everywhere are very similar. Whether you wander a city, countryside, or wilderness, walking frees you and allows your mind to break out from the strictures within which society and culture sometimes traps it. As Ekelund takes his walks, he allows his thoughts to meander to books he has read, memories, and so on, all of which add depth to his narrative. “Thoughts arise when you walk.” He emphasizes that whenever thoughts occur to him, he stops and writes them down because “if you don’t immediately take note of such thoughts, they will slip away into the great void and be gone forever.” I have found this to be true on my own walks. I always carry a small notebook and pen with me. You might argue that I could use my phone; however, getting the most out of a walk involves minimizing technology and maximizing awareness. I have seen some people walking from one place to another in my neighborhood and elsewhere who the entire time have their noses buried in their phones; they are completely oblivious to what is going on around them. I’ll take the occasional photo while on a walk, but most of the time my phone is safely ensconced in my pocket. Ekelund recounts one walk he took into a trackless forest with a friend; at the beginning they agreed to bury their phones and GPS devices in the bottom of their packs and not get them out for two days. They got lost, all right, but they also learned a lot about elementary orienteering. Sometimes you have to get back to the basics to really do it right.
I recommend In Praise of Paths to anyone who enjoys walking, or anyone who is contemplating becoming more ambulatory but perhaps needs a little extra nudge to make it out the door. Once you take those first steps, you’ll never look back.
A collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories
Thoughts from the Aerie
Memoirs and essays on a range of topics
Silent Interviews
Stories about the mysterious Telepathic Guild
Invisible People
A thrilling novel of time travel, alien invasion, and mysterious portals
A collection of science fiction and fantasy stories
The Relocation Blues
A memoir of life's transitional experiences
Adriana’s Family
A novel about alien contact.
The Woman Who Fell Backwards and Other Stories
A collection of science fiction and fantasy stories.
Apocalypse Bluff and Other Stories
A collection of science fiction and fantasy stories
The Senescent Nomad Hits the Road
An aging science fiction writer abandons his apartment and hits the road full time.
Invasive Procedures: Stories
A collection of science fiction stories.
Heroes and Other Illusions: Stories
A collection of science fiction and fantasy stories
Bedlam Battle: An Omnibus of the One Thousand Series
A compilation of four novellas comprising the One Thousand series. Hippies and benevolent aliens pursue psychotic killers.
After the Fireflood
After the Earth's surface is obliterated in an apocalyptic firestorm, human survivors from the moon and outer colonies attempt to rebuild.
Caliban’s Children
Humans must ally themselves with true beasts to overcome a dark power that morphs humans into animals and binds them to its will.
The Fantasy Book Murders
Surreal and deadly hunt for a serial killer.
Opting Out and Other Departures
A collection of fantasy and science fiction short stories about wanderers and unlikely heroes.
Sunflower: A Novel
A woman's odyssey, first through America and then across continents, in the dark, post-Altamont days of the early 70s.
America Redux: Impressions of the United States After Thirty-Five Years Abroad
Memoir of my return to the States after thirty-five years overseas.
Fear or Be Feared: Fantasies
A collection of fantasy short stories.
Writing as a Metaphysical Experience
Essays on a life-long quest for voice, inspiration and excellence in writing.
Reviews and Reflections on Books, Literature, and Writing
A collection of book reviews and essays on books, literature, and writing.
The One Thousand: A Novella
Science fiction thriller. A man possessed by alien entities recruits convicts for a murderous rampage.
The One Thousand: Book Two: Team of Seven
Sequel to The One Thousand. A fellowship of alien-possessed psychopaths throw a party at which they plan to slaughter all the guests.
The One Thousand: Book Three: Black Magic Bus
Sequel to The One Thousand Books One and Two. In southern Europe, the Team of Seven hunt a busload of alien-possessed psychopaths intent on unleashing a deadly pathogen in a major city.
The One Thousand: Book Four: Deconstructing the Nightmare
Fourth novella in The One Thousand Series. The Team of Seven finally confront the alien-possessed psychopaths they have been hunting.
After the Rosy-Fingered Dawn: A Memoir of Greece
A memoir of my life in Greece.
The Misadventures of Mama Kitchen: A Novel
A hippy girl's adventures in a wilderness commune, Haight/Ashbury, and Woodstock.
Dark Mirrors: Dystopian Tales
A collection of dark science fiction stories.
Love Children: A Novel
Young people raised by aliens return to Earth to seek their parents.
Painsharing and Other Stories
A collection of science fiction stories.
The Dragon Ticket and Other Stories
A collection of science fiction stories mostly set in India.
John Walters 