discoveredinalj | Member Posts

From the New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Horns comes this award-winning collection of short fiction.

Imogene is young, beautiful . . . and dead, waiting in the Rosebud Theater one afternoon in 1945. . . .

Francis was human once, but now he's an eight-foot-tall locust, and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . .

John is locked in a basement stained with the blood of half a dozen murdered children, and an antique telephone, long since disconnected, rings at night with calls from the dead. . . .

Nolan knows but can never tell what really happened in the summer of '77, when his idiot savant younger brother built a vast cardboard fort with secret doors leading into other worlds. . . .

The past isn't dead. It isn't even past. . . .

As with many anthologies, the stories were a mixed bag. There were good stories, and not so good stories, but 20th Century Ghosts, Pop Art and Voluntary Committal makes the book well worth reading. There are several other stories that come close to great: dark, satisfying stories. They certainly run the gamut, so there’s probably something for everyone.

Do you like a kid turned into a locust? There’s something for you? A zombie movie that brings people together? Again, something for you. Even some actual ghost stories.

Joe Hill is fast becoming one of my favorite writers. I’ve read several of his books and have rarely been disappointed. This book just solidifies his place on my list. He’s fast gaining on his dad.

( Mount TBR 2025 Book Links 1-35 )

36. The Regulators by Richard Bachman (Pseudonym), Stephen King
37. Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn
38. The Nun's Story by Kathryn Hulme
39. The Bones Beneath My Skin by T.J. Klune
40. They Thirst by Robert McCammon
41. Blue World: And Other Stories by Robert McCammon
42. Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell
43. Run by Blake Crouch
44. Babylonia by Costanza Casati
45. What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees by Stephen Buchmann
46. A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and Its Implications by Carl Sagan
47. 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Goodreads 53

A Ghost Story
1. For Fear of the Night by Charles L. Grant
2. 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

2025 Key Word.jpg

OCT – Bury, Ghost, Chain, Glass, Moon, Last, One, Street

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

tinturtle

Hello, everyone. My journal has been very quiet, hasn't it?

Over the past few months, I've been putting a lot of my fannish energy into writing The Wind and the Rain, the 13,000-word story that is my contribution to this year's Professionals Big Bang. I've been reading a little bit of fic, too, but not in the organized way that lends itself to write-ups.

Last night, I finally posted The Wind and the Rain. I'm elated. I'd been working on it since March, and it's the longest fic I've ever written by a factor of ten. Indeed, I think it's the longest piece of any kind I've ever written, including everything I wrote in college.

A banner for the story The Wind and the Rain by Tin Turtle.

As I bask in the glow of my finished fic, I'm also looking forward to having more time for reading again. For the rest of the month, that time will be dedicated mostly to reading the other Pros Big Bang fics, but after that, expect a return to your regularly scheduled program. At least until I have a new idea for a story. :)

gilda_elise

The spread of nuclear weapons to unstable third world countries means that despite the dramatic improvement in US/Soviet relations, we are living in a time of unprecedented danger of nuclear war.

In 1982, Professors Sagan and Turco made known their discovery of the concept "nuclear winter", a widespread cold and dark, resulting in agricultural collapse and world famine, that would be generated in even a "small" nuclear war. It was a landmark discovery that revealed in the starkest terms how vulnerable our civilization is to the long-term environmental effects of nuclear war.

Carl Sagan, Pulitzer prize-winning science writer, and Richard Turco, tell the personal story of their findings, and how, despite the much-heralded thawing of the Cold War, there are dangerous inadequacies in nuclear policy and doctrine that need to be addressed.

I’m slowly rereading all of Sagan’s books. Most I’ve found a real joy to reread, so many years after the initial reading. But my own pessimism seems to stand in the way with this one. Time has not been kind to the human race.

It’s unfortunate that so many of Sagan’s hope for the future, that “path where no man thought,” never came to fruition. Given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and now its drone incursions into NATO countries, we may be even further from that path than we were then.

I found especially interesting those parts that deal with the nuclear winter studies themselves. Studies that the International Council of Scientific Unions found sufficiently convincing to endorse. And though there are parts of the book that may seem dated, it’s more relevant than we may think.

SEPT – Borrow, Survive, Listen, Where, Sleeping, Crash, Please, Count

A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and Its Implications by Carl Sagan

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20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

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A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and Its Implications by Carl Sagan

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