Brilliant, Witty, and Playful: The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

"Playful" isn't a word you usually connect to murder mysteries, except maybe in a sadistic, Jigsaw-kinda way, but for this book, I really mean it. Soji Shimada pops in twice to tell you to sit down and solve the mystery before you go on, and the solution is so clever and out there that you might never get it!

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is a classic Japanese murder mystery from 1981. I read it in grad school maybe 15 years ago, and it's been hard to get a copy affordably until recently, since the book had such limited printings in English. Fortunately, a recent printing makes this book accessible at a relatively low price, which was just the opportunity I was waiting for.

Hot and Cold on Hodgson: Review of "The House on the Borderland"

Today's topic is The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson, published in 1908. I decided to read this book based on Lovecraft's evaluation of Hodgson in his "Supernatural Horror in Literature" essay. Lovecraft said that Hodgson's writing was "Of rather uneven stylistic quality, but vast occasional power in its suggestion of lurking worlds and beings behind the ordinary surface of life... perhaps second only to Algernon Blackwood in his serious treatment of unreality."

Further, Lovecraft called this book "Perhaps the greatest of all of Mr. Hodgson's works."

And, to be honest, I find myself agreeing with Lovecraft's evaluation, in both the positive and negative aspects.

A Fun Scientific What-If Story: Journey to the Interior of the Earth, by Jules Verne

There is more to Jules Verne's famous book about traveling into the Earth than I thought! This is what I learned when I went back to the second issue of Amazing Stories and saw the first part serialized there.

The original was published in French in 1864, then re-published in an expanded version in 1867. Then, the first English version was released in 1871, but here's the kicker: that first English version was drastically altered from what a straightforward translation would have been! The character names were changed, which may have been forgivable, but the structure of the story was actually pretty different, too. That "localized" English version was Journey to the Centre of the Earth.