The Lovecraft Code - Peter Levenda

 Finally, let's dive on things that I truly love. 

Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors. Not much for his work, which I understand, it's not always that good, it's deeply racist and sometimes just silly. But the mythos? The mythology he created? That mixture of ancient words, ancient and inhuman gods, sci-fi, pure and abject horror... Oh man. That's pure joy for me. 

Talking about Ancient Mysteries, oh boy. I love it. I had read a lot of books on this subject: did a worldwide flood occurred in the past? (Answer: according to a lot of scientists, yes. There's plenty of proof that a comet hit the ice cap around 14.000 years ago and created the Great Flood. No. I don't believe in Noah, but the facts are pretty strong.) Who came to America first? Columbus, Vikings, Greeks or Sumerians? (Hint: all of the above). I love to read this subject. By the way, I'm not a "Ancient Aliens" supporter. I believe in the human race being able to do all of that. 

And then, other of my great passions: Conspiracy Theories. Oh boy, how I love it. From the insane and utterly ridiculous (I'm talking to you, Dulce Base believers), to the not that ridiculous and maybe possible (Nazi infiltration on the US? You don't believe? Look for "Operation Paperclip", "Nazi bell" and the ties between IBM, Hugo Boss, Ford and the Nazi Party. Just google it. You would be shocked)  to the dark and gritty cover ups that where proven, or close to it (MK Ultra, Operation North Woods, and if you have the stomach, the Franklin Cover up. I'll be back on the later with a book review).
Don't get me as a crazy tin hat conspirator. I have common sense, a great deal of critical thinking and a logical nature. I don't buy shit easily. But that there's a lot of weird stuff happening, all over the world, all the time, oh. I can assure you that.

This brings me to this book. 

I love, (and hate), to listen to one of the greatest podcasts ever: The Higherside Chats. 

(One of the greatest, but not The Greatest Podcasts Ever. That honor lies with the freaks from The Last Podcast on  the Left. Love you Ben, Marcus and Henry. Hail Satan!) 

I love Greg Carlwood. Great guy. Great interviewer. The guests... Some I hate. Really? Vaccine conspiracy? Fuck you. You discovered the super "satanic plot" by talking to Baphomet via an Ouija board? Shove it up your ass, you retarded piece of...
BUT, sometimes some great stuff appears. Damn, lots of times.
Like this guy.
The author of this book.

Peter Levenda.

 The Lovecraft Code - Peter Levenda

I'll probably review another book from this guy, since some of his non-fiction books interest me. Yeah, I like it ok? The Nine? WTF was that? The Nazi infiltration in South America? I'm from Brazil, where Mengele died. I visited his freakish twin city... It was weird as hell.
But now, let's address this book.
He mixed Lovecraft with Conspiracy theories and Ancient Mysteries. How could I resist??
I found and read this book as soon as I could get my hands on.
And... well, it's complicated.

Let me address the elephant in the room: no. Lovecraft never believed in his work. He created it all. He was an atheist. But damn, some of his stuff is spooky enough, like the correlation of his "Call of Cthulhu" dates and the dates of Crowley in one of his biggest rituals. Maybe it was premeditated by Lovecraft, maybe not. Either way its weird.
So... if you are a great fan of Lovecraft, studied his life, (including his growth as a person and how he changed his racists ideas), you will get angry with some parts of the book. I got really angry in a particular point of the book, that kinda linked Lovecraft with some nazi ideas, which at the time, it was the complete opposite: HPL mellowed a fucking lot in the 1930's. The idea of him being antisemitic is complicated. He was married to a jewish woman (which was a bad bad relationship, totally in his fault), he defended some rabbi on his letters, was great friends with Loveman (who was jewish) and at the same time that he called Hitler a clown, he liked some of his ideas. I know, ok? HPL was a racist, but so what? In his time, most people were. I'm not justifying, just stating the obvious. Lots of people were racist. Are we going to refute all their work? Remember that most medical discovery where made by torture in concentration camps in China and Germany. I don't care if he was a racist. His work is amazing.
And the way Levenda displayed him, wasn't nice. Not nice at all.
In general, I really disliked the portrait of HPL in this book.
And since I listened a lot of interviews with Levenda and know that he is aware of what I said above, it makes me a bit resentful of the author.

Alright. Now that I take it off my chest, let's discuss it.
The book is good. Surprisingly so.

The amount of real information in it is amazing. Yedizis in a real perspective. Fuck, all of the Middle East is well represented. The area is a total mess. People say that Islam is "one nation under Allah" has no idea what the fuck he's talking about. Islam is a mess. There are sects everywhere, be it open and accept full of the messiah, or simply nodding and keeping their old beliefs under the tunic. 

Not only that, the analogy of Cthulhu and the Quadhullu, of Islamic belief is an amazing way to connect Mythos with reality. 

But... As a Lovecraftian story? No. No way. No feeling of dread, of unspeakable fear, unnamable things. 

If I'm to be honest, it's a mix of a low level Indiana Jones mixed with National Treasure and a hint of Lovecraftian Mythos. 

I won't even go into the plot. If I did, you could know the ending way before reaching the middle of the book, like I did. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the real history mixed into the fiction. 

So much that I decided to read his non-fiction books!

Read it. It's very well researched and a insightful way to look at the Middle East conflicts. 

See ya in the desert skies

When HARLIE was one by David Gerrold

When HARLIE was one - David Gerrold

Ok. I finished this book a while ago.
But I didn't wrote a review. Why? Coz I don't like to bash authors.
It's rarely a thing. Usually I analyze how the plot develops, how the characters were created, how they grow thru the book.
This...
This book was terrible.

And I feel bad about it. Don't get me wrong: I love the idea.
The first AI to pass the Turing test, in the middle of the 70s, was created by a private company. And then... How it grows? Love it!
I LOVED the way Mr. Gibson treated it in his Neuromancer trilogy. The way the AIs mingle with each other, on a speed we can not even comprehend...
Here? Not so much.
Hell... Not at all.
It was a piece of shit.

Yeah. I know, I know... It's a precursor to the whole AI idea. Like I said, don't get me wrong: I love sci-fi. In particular short future sci-fi. But this? Ugh...

Ok. Let's address some stuff first.
I read it in Portugal portuguese. I'm fluent in it. And I didn't like it.
Then, I searched and read it in Brazilian portuguese. Maybe it was a bad translation. It was worse.
Then I went and read it in the original. I enjoy reading in the original language whenever possible. After all, so much is lost in translation. And it was even worse.
No. I REALLY dislike the way the author wrote. I searched for other books, more recent works... Damn, I really disliked his style.

That being addressed, let's begin.

Imagine this guy as your main character. Yeah...

The monotone. Fuck, how bad is the monotone. What? What is monotone? Well... Imagine that every one around you talk the same way, using the same expressions, the same cadence, you got the idea. Yeah. The whole book is like that. Except the AI. At first, it seems like a nice idea, the AI is different from all the others. It makes the book a pain in the ass to read, but hey! Style over quality, right?
No. I hate that idea. And reading other stuff from him, he writes like that.

Other thing that I dislike. When things get dated. Like all those jokes in the "Cat in the hat" with Mike Meyers. This book suffer from that malady. Everyone is smoking pot, which was legalized in this world, like cigarettes. Yeah... It's that kind of writer. Also, the pedantic way everyone talks in this book, ugh... So. Fucking. Pedantic. The whole book has a condescending tone that really got in my nerves.

Another thing that I hated was the exposition. Oh Gods. So much exposition. And in a condescending tone. In a pedantic way. I believe if I have met the author while I was reading the book, I would punch him. Hard.

OK. The cast. We have a retarded pot headed psychologist, which by some random luck get to be the head of the AI development team (you didn't read it wrong: he became the boss by a coin toss. Yeah.) We have the engineer, the sub/co-head of the department.
Then the fuck toy, ops, the romantic interest of the pot head, the AI, and the "enemy": the new president of the company and the financial department. The only developments in the characters is that the pot head got an epiphany (a really shitty one) from having sex with the woman (one fucking time) and realizing that he's in love with her (yeah, for real) and that the AI goes from the emotional state of a preteen to a pretentious teen.
Yeah. That sums it up.

Plot. AI is created. Financial department wants to shut it down, because it's a black hole for the assets of the company. The pot head don't want to, because he sees the AI as his son. AI don't want to be shut down/die. Then they came up with a plan to make it make money. AI basically invents a new computer, which proves to be useless for us, but meanwhile he'll try to manipulate information to generate income. Oh, and input the attitude of "stick it to the man" from the hippies and you got your book.

Really, I summarize the whole book. If you read this, don't read the book. Everything is here. If you want a lot of exposition with all the other problems I mentioned before, please go ahead. I can recommend you to a few nice S&M clubs also.

Anyway... It's bad. I know, it's "important" for the genre. But, unless you really live sci-fi, AI and similar, don't waste your time.
It's not worth it.

See ya in the desert skies

Old Man's War - John Scalzi (Old Man's War #1)

Hey there.
Yes, I'm alive. 

NO, it's not Strange in a strange land.
Working hard, not much studying (no more info on that. Sorry.)
But I felt the need to read, as I often do. So... Here I am.
I won't promise to update this weekly as once was. I'll update when I read something.
So... No further a do: Old Man's War. 

Old Man's War - John Scalzi

Considering the fact that my most used nickname is Old Man, you can imagine all the jokes about my bed to read this book.
And I love it.
Yes, there's a lot of patterns in this book, but I enjoyed it.
The basic concept is nice: humanity went to space. The Colonial Forces don't bow down to earthly government and have access to technology way over what we have on earth.
As you get old, 75 years precisely, you have the one chance to enlist.
No info is given, but people assume that something must be done, after all, no war is fought by old bodies.
And it is. But no one knows it on land.
You are given a new enhanced body. And obvious, lots of sex and adventures ensue.
Interesting plot device I must say.

What I liked is that on the second part, the first chapter destroys the light hearted feeling. It is war. Have you been in a war zone? In an area of conflict? No? Well, NO MOVIE show what it really is to be there. Maybe Full Metal Jacket. And a strong MAYBE. Because Kubrick still had a little of romanticism in his view of war.
The way the drill Sargent says "I consider a success if when you die you won't take anyone else with you" is beautiful.
And the focus on "destroy your 75 years of bad habits and entitlement" is amazing. I have no words to express how nice it is to hear that.

The ending of Chapter 11 of the second part is that point exactly. When you have fought long enough, you snap. You lose your sense of self, you lose your link to what is human. Perry goes thru this, but then a human incident reminds him of how disgusting we are. Humans are as bad as the aliens, so... What's the point of feeling unconnected? We all can be, and true madness can connect us better than acts of kindness.

By the way, the way the book treat aliens is beautiful. It simply states what they look like and their culture, briefly. Not an in depth look, but what a soldier would see and know, which have it a sense of reality that made it even better. Our worse. Depending on your standing on war & conflict.

What's better is that the 'world building' never stops. We are preserved with interesting concepts thru the end of the book, in particular how fucked up religion can be.
NO more info on that. Read the damn book.
Believe me, is worth your time. 

I know it was a short review. But I really don't want to spoil the book.
Yeah,it's THAT worthy to me...

Next: something that I'm kinda enjoying and kinda disliking: When Harlie was One.

See ya in the desert skies...