Kurt Pankau Dot Com

🐉 Oh No, They Say He's Got to Go... Hey, everybody. I already mentioned that I'm going to be at Archon this weekend. Well, this will also be the launch of a book that I co-authored with my very good friend Kathy Bailey. It's got science, feminism, laughs, and at least one vehicular explosion, and it can be pre-ordered on Amazon . ]{p

🐺 I'm on the Hunt I'm After You... The Crime:  Black Leopard, Red Wolf The Guilty Party: Marlon James Overview: There is not a content warning big enough... Why I Hate It... When this book started hitting the hype circuit, the pitch was " Game of Thrones  in Africa" and I was so  excited for it. I don't know if I can overstate how much I loved the first three Song of Ice and Fire  books, and taking literary epic fantasy and transplanting it into a world that isn't just another boring analog of Medieval England ( or a world populated by dinosaurs for that matter ) is catnip for me. And I'm not terribly well-versed in African folklore, so I was eager to read a large-scale fantasy rooted in that tradition. Well, unsurprisingly, the book did not live up to the hype for me, meaning I am now 0-for-2 in books that use Game of Thrones  as a comp title in their pre-launch marketing. I'll start by saying that, if nothing else, the prose is elegant. The texture ...

🇺🇸 All of Which Are American Dreams... The Crime:  Crippled America The Guilty Party: Donald Trump Overview: He certainly did Why I Hate It... This book was originally published as promo material in advance of the 2016 election. It was almost immediately re-issued under a different title,  Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America . I listened to the audiobook when it was new and the review I wrote at the time is reproduced below. I think the review stands, so I haven't altered it except for minor grammatical tweaks. My feelings have changed slightly, given the context of history, but I'll save those thoughts for afterwards. So without further ado... 90% of this books is exactly what you'd expect: a laundry list of conservative talking points. They're a bit more polished than his stump speeches, but no less simplistic or condescending. The running themes are familiar. Everyone is an idiot except Donald J. Trump. People think you need experience and a nuanced view o...

🦖 Open the Door, Get on the Floor... The Crime:  The Dinosaur Lords The Guilty Party: Victor Milán Overview: A waste of a good premise that absolutely does not earn its epic jacket-quote. Why I Hate It... It's hard to explain just how excited I was for this book based on the cover alone. I mean... just look at it. That is a knight riding a freaking allosaurus. Look at the art style of that image, that somehow takes a knight riding a freaking allosaurus and makes it look even more bad-ass. Hell, the premise alone is worth the price of admission. A medieval epic with dinosaurs in it. How did no one think of this before? This could be its own sub-genre. So from the moment I was aware of this book's existence right up until its release, I was hyped  for it. Which, of course, means there was no way it could live up to expectations, right? But this book goes beyond disappointment. This book offends me as a writer. It starts well enough with an epic dinosaur battle sequence--a ...

🐰 I'm-a the Freakin' Pope... The Crime:  Red Rabbit The Guilty Party: Tom Clancy Overview: A spy thriller is short on thrills but long on didacticism. Why I Hate It... The arc of Tom Clancy's career is interesting. His debut novel, The Hunt for Red October , is a legitimate classic that blew up the technothriller genre. It stars Jack Ryan, an all-American Mary Sue who's also an aerophobic CIA analyst, who gets in way over his head helping a Russian submarine commander defect from the Soviet Union. The novel spun off a series in which Ryan's exploits get more heroic as the the stakes get ever higher and the novels get ever longer. By the 90s his books were being turned into blockbuster films and video games, at which point Clancy was firmly a genre unto himself. And then it sort of dropped off around the time Jack Ryan becomes the president of the United States (due to a succession of large-scale terrorist attacks that he failed to stop). The books were overlong by ...

🏛️ Like the Deserts Missed the Rain... The Crime:  The President is Missing The Guilty Party: Bill Clinton and James Patterson Overview: A quote-unquote "thriller" is mired in contextual cringe and eye-rolling political drivel. Why I Hate It... You can see how this would seem like a good idea on paper. James Patterson writes schlocky potboilers, and pairing up with a living ex-president allows for, ahem , unprecedented insight into what a crisis at the highest levels of government looks like from the inside. The result could have been a compelling hybrid of Vince Flynn-style political thriller and Tom Clancy-esque technothriller, and with presidential pedigree on the marquis to boot! Instead, the result is bad. Just… bad. The story opens with President John Duncan being grilled by senators from the opposing party over some kerfuffle that in no way resembles Benghazi. He pulls himself away in order to don a disguise and meet with some foreign operative absent his secret servi...

🕹️ Players Gonna Play, Play, Play, Play, Play... The Crime:  Ready Player Two The Guilty Party: Ernest Cline Overview: A clumsy retread of Ready Player One  that wants to make damned sure we know its author isn't actually a bigot. Why I Hate It... This book is kind of a fascinating failure. It has some enjoyable moments and it ticks off all the boxes of what you would expect in a sequel--same characters, same setting, similar story and tone, higher stakes, bigger and broader obstacles, that kind of thing--and yet it mostly doesn't work. I loved Ready Player One.  I fully acknowledge that the criticisms around representation are 100% merited, and yet I still had a great time reading it. At the end of that book, the protagonist Wade is basically a god in the world of the Oasis, having ascended to the role that Oasis-creator James Halliday had originally taken for himself. So where does a sequel go from there? I would think there are interesting questions to be asked about ...

💊 I'm Pushing An Elephant Up The Stairs... The Crime:  Addicted to Outrage: How Thinking Like a Recovering Addict Can Heal the Country The Guilty Party: Glenn Beck Overview: Beck goes full stream-of-consciousness for 400 pages ignoring his own very obvious framing device and, my god, did anybody  edit this? Why I Hate It... The last 20% or so of this book is pretty good. Beck makes an impassioned argument for reaching across the aisle and he offers some practical advice for how to do so, using addiction and AA as a metaphorical framework. I disagree with a lot of his base assumptions and feel like he leans too hard on his own pop philosophy, but those are relatively minor things in the long run. He admits that he built his career stoking outrage, comes dangerously close to actually apologizing for that, and his basic thesis of be-less-of-an-asshole-to-people-you-disagree-with is thoughtful, well-reasoned, and feels like it's coming from a place of honesty and good intent...

🌱 Feed Me, Seymour... The Crime:  In Defense Of Food: An Eater's Manifesto The Guilty Party: Michael Pollan Overview: Read words. Mostly books. Not this one. Why I Hate It... There's some good advice in this book. The cover, for instance, has the words "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." That's pretty sound advice, if you ask me. And you can pretty much just stop at the cover. This one angered me more or less from page one. I went into it expecting to like it, and I was immediately repulsed. At least a portion of the blame must go to the narrator Scott Brick, who performs the audiobook with maximum condescending smarm. It's whatever the exact opposite of charming  is. But Brick was reading from a terrible script, and the end result was bad enough that I found myself constantly reacting against it--even during the times when I knew Pollan's facts were right. He correctly, for instance, dives into the technical obstacles of doing good food science and ...

🕺 I Like To Move It, Move It... The Crime:  Keep Moving: And Other Truths About Living Well Longer The Guilty Party: Dick Van Dyke Overview: The more you learn about Van Dyke's personal life, the more he comes off as a gigantic douche. Why I Hate It... I have a lot of affection for Dick Van Dyke. I grew up watching Mary Poppins  and reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show . (Yes, especially the walnut episode!) So I borrowed this from the library expecting it to be charming and familiar and warm and fuzzy--like a favorite bedtime story as narrated by Morgan Freeman. Ostensibly a how-to guide for the nonagenarian, I thought it would secretly be a blend of philosophy and memoir with a dash of the self-deprecating humor and unflinching geniality that was the core of his appeal as a young actor. What I got instead was rambling Hallmark-channel dreck, overwrought and presented in seemingly random order with such wide-eyed sincerity that it begins to slip into self-parody. Is this......

⛪ Tie Your Mother Down... The Crime:  The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice The Guilty Party: Christopher Hitchens Overview: A world-class iconoclast directs his ire at one of the most revered then-living religious figures on the planet and delivers an overly catty disorganized rant. Why I Hate It... Let's get this out of the way right at the top: I'm not here to defend Mother Teresa. That is not what's happening here. Even a cursory glance at the criticism section of her wikipedia page will let you know that this woman was highly problematic. If someone wants to take her down a peg by highlighting her decades of misappropriating funds, denying care to the needy because she thought suffering would be good for their souls, and converting them  without their consent , I'm here for it. I was eager and excited to read this book. Here's the thing, though. If you're going to aim your pen at such a beloved and iconic figure, you need to have a...

🤡  He Talks in Maths, He Buzzes Like a Fridge... The Crime:  The Math Myth: And Other STEM Delusions The Guilty Party: Andrew Hacker Overview: An Oxford Emeritus Professor expounds on the idea that American schools are over-emphasizing mathematics and argues his point with some of the most questionable logic I've ever read in a real book. Why I Hate It... I have a degree in mathematics, I work with technology, and I use math routinely in my job, so when I picked up Andrew Hacker’s anti-STEM manifesto, I expected to hate it. So I was actually surprised to find the overview section compelling. Hacker’s thesis is that STEM is over-emphasized in American education and that this does more net harm than good to students. I disagree, but I like to be challenged, and I was on board with this book for the first ten pages or so. I was eager to see his arguments. Unfortunately for his cause, Hacker puts on an exhibition in fallacious logic, questionable reasoning, and outright dishonest...

🚰 A Friend Who'll Tease Is Better... The Crime: Purity The Guilty Party: Jonathan Franzen Overview: Ostensibly a re-imagining of Great Expectations , Purity  tells the story of Purity "Pip" Tyler, only instead of actually telling that story it kind of wanders around that story for 700 overwrought pages. Why I Hate It... I don't know who the target audience for this one is, but it sure ain't me. There are so many levels on which this book just didn't work. Where to start. Let's start with character. Purity  doesn't have characters. It has named assemblages that were hastily constructed at the literary quirk factory. I never found myself sympathizing with them or caring about their journeys, and it's a good thing too, because so much of those journeys happens off-camera. With the exception of Andreas. We get to see all of his oddities up close and personal, that is until he is dismissed away as being mentally ill. The protagonist, Purity, goes from ...

🤖 Domo Arigato... Hey everybody, I've got a couple of book announcements to make. So lately when people ask me what I write, I've just been saying that I write "mostly silly stories about robots". Which is more or less true. And I've come to realize that a lot of my stories just aren't readily available. They're paywalled, or they're in an anthology that's out of print, or they've succumbed to link rot, etc. I tried the reprint markets without much success (read: any  success) and it occurred to me that I have enough of them that I could just package them up in an ebook and make them available that way--especially if I could come up with a witty title and find an adequately adorable cover at a reasonable price. So with all of that said, I'm putting out an ebook of short stories with an adorable cover and a witty title. This will be coming out... soon. I need to make sure everything in there is out of exclusivity, and I want to put a few no...

I've seen this meme passed around on Facebook, and while I hate propagating those things, I was intrigued by the question, so here goes. In no particular order and without thinking about it too much, here are ten books that "touched" me. I Am Not A Serial Killer  by Dan Wells This is the only book that I've ever read in a single sitting. I finished it at four in the morning. "Single sitting" is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, because I tried a few times to put it down and go to bed, but I couldn't. This was before I had kids, obviously. The Hunt For Red October  by Tom Clancy Hunt  more or less invented the genre of techno-thriller. Clancy's later oeuvre tends to, ahem, disappear up its own ass, but this one is still highly readable. It features Jack Ryan when he was a lovable, well-meaning data-nerd who turned out to be the only person who could solve a submarine crisis. And the movie's pretty great too--Alec Baldwin is the best  Jack ...