When The Closer closed up shop last summer, Diane and I were wary of the spinoff, Major Crimes. Could Mary McDonnell replace Kyra Sedgwick (not quite, but it’s close). The familiar cast made the transition almost seamless. I was not fond of the troubled teenager, Rusty, but Diane was. One of the casualties of the end of The Closer was the diminishment of Jon Tenny (Brenda’s stoic husband and FBI agent) role in Major Crimes. So it comes as no surprise that Tenny and the talented Rebecca Romijn launch a new crime drama tonight. I’ve deliberately avoided all the hype about this show. I just want to let it unfold tonight with preconceptions. If you’re in the mood for this kind of diverting entertainment, check the times for these TNT shows in your area.

Believe it or not, I’ve made it to 64 (of course, I feel like I’m 12). Thanks to all my doctors my health is good. Diane keeps me on the path to righteous behavior (though I tend to stray from time to time). I have a wonderful wife, great kids, good friends, close family, and a job I enjoy. And a few thousand books I need to read Real Soon. Life is Good.

This review of Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance is an extension of yesterday’s tribute to Jack Vance for Forgotten Books Friday. In 2009, this celebratory collection was published to positive reviews. A “Who’s Who” of SF and fantasy writers wrote stories in Jack Vance mode to express their respect for one of the great writers of the 20th Century who influenced them. From Dean Koontz’s laudatory INTRODUCTION, to Jack Vance’s PREFACE, to the excellent stories that follow, this brilliant collection shows the fondness these writers have for Jack Vance and his magnificent work. Last week, Subterranean Press published Dan Simmons’s The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz, the short novel that was included in Songs of the Dying Earth. I’m happy to own both editions. If you’re a fan of Jack Vance, these stories will delight you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Thank You, Mr Vance –Dean Koontz
Preface –Jack Vance

The True Vintage of Erzuine Thale –Robert Silverberg
Grolion of Almery –Matthew Hughes
The Copsy Door –Terry Dowling
Caulk the Witch Doctor –Liz Williams
Inescapable –Mike Resnick
Abrizonde –Walter Jon Williams
The Traditions of Karzh –Paula Volsky
The Final Quest of the Wizard Sarnod –Jeff Vandermeer
The Green Bird –Kage Baker
The Last Golden Thread –Phyllis Eisenstein
An Incident in Uskvesk –Elizabeth Moon
Sylgarmo’s Proclamation –Lucius Shepard
The Lamentably Comical Tragedy (or The Laughably Tragic Comedy) of Lixal Laqavee –Tad Williams
Guyal the Curator –John C Wright
The Good Magician –Glen Cook
The Return of the Fire Witch –Elizabeth Hand
The Collegeum of Mauge –Byron Tetrick
Evillo the Uncunning –Tanith Lee
The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz –Dan Simmons
Frogskin Cap –Howard Waldrop
A Night at the Tarn House –George R R Martin
An Invocation of Curiosity –Neil Gaiman

The late, great Jack Vance left us dozens of masterworks. Vance was an unpretentious, brilliant writer. His science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels possess a style and sensibility unique in those genres. I started reading Jack Vance back in the 1950s. The first Jack Vance novel I read was a Winston juvenile, Vandals of the Void. Later, I read Vance’s work in Astounding and Galaxy. I bought his paperbacks and read them the same day. As the decades passed, it was clear to me that Jack Vance was a genius. If you haven’t read Jack Vance, I urge you to remedy that. I’ve provided a handy list of many of his works to help you in book selection. All of Jack Vance’s works are available as ebooks. Subterranean is reprinting Jack Vance’s short stories, mystery novels, and SF novels. You can check out the new deluxe edition of The Dying Earth here. I envy those of you who haven’t read Vance’s award-winning novels: The Dragon Masters, The Last Castle, and The Man in a Cage. Click on the covers above to check out the artwork.

Next week, I’ll finish up my review of Ed Gorman’s “My Favorite John D. MacDonald Standalone Novels.” This tribute to Jack Vance, one of the great writers of the 20th Century, took precedence.
Series
Dying Earth
1. The Dying Earth (1950)
aka Mazirian the Magician
2. The Eyes of the Overworld (1966)
aka Cugel the Clever
3. Cugel’s Saga (1966)
aka Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight
4. Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)
Morreion (1968)
The Seventeen Virgins (1974)
The Bagful of Dreams (1979)
The Laughing Magician (1997)
The Tales of the Dying Earth (omnibus) (2000)

Big Planet
1. Big Planet (1952)
2. Showboat World (1975)

Demon Princes
1. The Star King (1964)
2. The Killing Machine (1964)
3. The Palace of Love (1967)
4. The Face (1979)
5. The Book of Dreams (1981)
The Demon Princes : Volume 1 (omnibus) (1997)
The Demon Princes: Volume 2 (omnibus) (1997)
The Demon Princes (2005)

Nopalgarth
1. Son of the Tree (1964)
2. The Houses of Iszm (1964)
3. The Brains of Earth (1966)

Magnus Ridolph
The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966)
The Complete Magnus Ridolph (1984)
Magnus Ridolph (2012)

Tschai, Planet of Adventure
1. City of the Chasch (1968)
2. Servants of the Wankh (1969)
3. The Dirdir (1969)
4. The Pnume (1970)
Planet of Adventure (omnibus) (1993)
The Chasch (2011)
Tschai (2012)

Durdane
1. The Anome (1973)
aka The Faceless Man
2. The Brave Free Men (1973)
3. The Asutra (1974)
Durdane (omnibus) (1989)

Alastor
1. Trullion: Alastor 2262 (1973)
2. Marune: Alastor 993 (1975)
3. Wyst: Alastor 1716 (1978)
Alastor (omnibus) (1995)

Gaean Reach
1. The Gray Prince (1974)
2. Maske: Thaery (1976)

Lyonesse
1. Suldrun’s Garden (1983)
aka Lyonesse
2. The Green Pearl (1985)
3. Madouc (1989)
Lyonesse II: The Green Pearl and Madouc (omnibus) (2003)
The Complete Lyonesse (omnibus) (2010)

Cadwal Chronicles
1. Araminta Station (1988)
2. Ecce and Old Earth (1991)
3. Throy (1992)
Cadwell Chronicles (omnibus) (1987)
The Cadwal Chronicles (2012)

Ports of Call
1. Ports of Call (1998)
2. Lurulu (2004)

Miro Hetzel
The Dogtown Tourist Agency (2012)
Freitzke’s Turn (2012)
Miro Hetzel (2012)

Novels
Vandals of the Void (1953)
The Five Gold Bands (1953)
aka The Space Pirate
To Live Forever (1956)
The Languages of Pao (1958)
Slaves of the Klau (1958)
aka Gold and Iron
The Man in the Cage (1960)
The Dragon Masters (1963)
Monsters in Orbit (1965)
Space Opera (1965)
The Blue World (1966)
The Last Castle (1966)
Emphyrio (1969)
Bad Ronald (1973)
Galactic Effectuator (1980)
The Grey Prince (1990)
Night Lamp (1996)
Clarges (2011)
The Domains of Koryphon (2011)
The Magnificent Showboats (2011)
The Wannek (2011)
The Rapparee (2011)
The Deadly Isles (2012)
Bird Isle (2012)
The Dark Ocean (2012)
The Flesh Mask (2012)
The Fox Valley Murders (2012)
The House on Lily Street (2012)
The Pleasant Grove Murders (2012)
Strange People, Queer Notions (2012)
The View from Chickweed’s Window (2012)
The Miracle Workers (2012)

Collections
Future Tense (1964)
aka Dust of the Far Suns
Eight Fantasms and Magics: A Science Fiction Adventure (1969)
The Worlds of Jack Vance (1973)
The Moon Moth: And Other Stories (1976)
Fantasms and Magics (1978)
The Best of Jack Vance (1978)
Green Magic (1979)
Nopalgarth (1980)
Lost Moons (1982)
The Narrow Land (1982)
Light from a Lone Star (1985)
Demon Prince: The Dissonant Worlds of Jack Vance (1985)
The Augmented Agent: And Other Stories (1986)
The Dark Side of the Moon: Stories of the Future (1986)
Bird Isle and Take My Face (1988)
Chateau D’If: And Other Stories (1990)
When the Five Moons Rise (1992)
The Jack Vance Treasury (2007)
The Jack Vance Reader (2008)
The Men Return (2009)
Wild Thyme, Green Magic (2009)
Hard Luck Diggings (2010)
The Dragon Masters and Other Stories (2011)
The Houses of Iszm and Other Stories (2011)
Son of the Tree and Other Stories (2011)
The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (2011)
The World-Thinker and Other Stories (2011)
Dream Castles: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Two (2012)
Golden Girl and Other Stories (2012)
Sail 25 and Other Stories (2012)
Wild Thyme and Violets: And Other Unpublished Works (2012)
Desperate Days (2012)
Magic Highways: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Three (2013)

Drug novels continue to be published on a regular basis. One of my favorites, Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers presented a Vietnam soldier with a brick of cocaine. But, of course, other people wanted it, too. That’s the basic premise behind The Carrion Birds by Urban Waite. Ray Lamar is a professional criminal who’s trying to go straight. But he gets sucked into a drug deal that goes bad. Enforcers from the drug cartel show up and there’s plenty of shooting and dead bodies. Ray Lamar and his injured partner are hunted down. You can probably fill in the blanks. I found nothing surprising about The Carrion Birds. The writing carries the reader along to a predictable place. GRADE: C

Bill Crider certainly knows who Agnetha Faltskog is but you might not. Agnetha Falskog was a member of ABBA, the Seventies Swedish super-group. ABBA broke up in 1982 and the members more or less retired. But, then there was the ABBA musical Mamma Mia (and the inferior movie version). And, now Agnetha Falskog is back with a new CD. If you love ABBA music, you’ll love this new album.
TRACK LIST:
1 The One Who Loves You Now (3:31)
2 When You Really Loved Someone (3:31)
3 Perfume In the Breeze (3:31)
4 I Was a Flower (4:08)
5 I Should’ve Followed You Home (4:04)
6 Past Forever (3:30)
7 Dance Your Pain Away (4:10)
8 Bubble (4:21)
9 Back On Your Radio (3:43)
10 I Keep Them On the Floor Beside My Bed (4:08)

I consider The Road Warrior–the middle movie in the Mad Max Trilogy–to be one of the best post-apocalyptic films I’ve ever seen. Mad Max is okay. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is over-the-top. But casting Tina Turner in the movie was a bold move. Special features include: Mad Max – Commentary by Jon Dowding, David Eggby, Chris Murray and Tim Ridge, Mad Max: The Film Phenomenon Featurette, The Road Warrior – Commentary by Director George Miller and Cinematographer Dean Semler, Introduction by Leonard Maltin, and Theatrical Trailer. If you’re a fan of these movies, you’re going to want these remastered copies.

My fondness for caper novels sometimes skews my reviews so take that into account when you consider my reaction to Roger Hobbs’s Ghostman. If I could give Roger Hobbs advice, I’d tell him to read the Parker caper novels of “Richard Stark” (aka, Donald Westlake). The first-person narrator of Ghostman (who goes through multiple identities and cell phones like a glutton at KFC) talks too much. He explains in too much detail which swells what should have been a 200 page book to 321 pages. A good editor could have improved this promising novel. Hobbs gives us not one but two capers. The first caper, breaking into a massive vault in Malaysia, sets up the premise for the second caper. The second caper involves a casino robbery in Atlantic City that goes wrong. The Ghostman is called in by the architect of the botched Malaysian bank robbery to “fix” this casino caper that has also gone wrong. Double-dealing and treachery abound. Unlike the Parker novels, Ghostman isn’t lean and mean. It’s too chatty with too many explanations. Readers can figure out the motives of a character, they don’t need a lot of back story. The more complicated a caper, the more that can go wrong. Ghostman is good, but it could have been a lot better. GRADE: B+

After two season on AMC, The Killing was supposed to be canceled. Despite the strong cast, the glacial pace of the program discouraged many viewers. I hung on and watched The Killing to what I thought was the end. Then, a few months ago, I heard rumors that The Killing was coming back with a few “changes.” In the first two seasons, The Killing took a 24-like approach: each episode was supposed to be a day in the murder investigation of a young girl. So, 24 episodes (or days) isn’t unreasonable for a murder investigation. But we live in a hyper state of TV watching. Instant gratification is the order of the day. So The Killing seemed to be taking FOREVER to solve the case. With this new Season Three starting tonight and a new investigation of a serial killer, I suspect the pace will accelerate. Mireille Enos (Sarah Linden) and Joel Kinnaman (Stephen Holder) return in tonight’s 2-hour premier episode. Check out the excellent trailer below.

The urologist I’d been seeing for over a decade retired and I had to find a new, younger replacement. After talking with friends in the medical community, I made an appointment to meet with Dr. Philip Swiantek. Our initial meeting went well. Dr. Swiantek reviewed my medical history and medications. And, at the end of the appointment, he sent me for a PSA (Prostate-Specific Antigen) test which is still the best tool to detect prostate cancer. It’s a simple blood test that requires no fasting or other preparation. A few days after the PSA test, I called in for results. The rule-of-thumb for the PSA is that scores under 4.0 are Good. Scores 4.0-9.9 are a warning sign, and double-digit scores are Bad. My PSA score was 1.1! Whoo hoo! I attribute my scintillating score to eating pizza on a regular basis. The lycopene in the tomato sauce protects the prostate. So, if you’re a guy, get your yearly PSA and eat pizza. If you’re a woman with a Special Guy in your life, make sure he gets his PSA checked at least once a year and take him out for pizza from time to time.