I tried to put more F’s in the title.

I’ve always been intrigued by pseudonyms. They seem like an interesting way to become someone else. In modern publishing, there are a few reasons for use of a pen name, some more reasonable than others, including: to avoid publishing too many books per year, to determine if a novel stands on its own merits rather than on the author’s name, to break into new markets without jeopardizing current readership, or because the author wishes to set a more serious or humorous tone for their works with their name (eg. Mark Twain). There’s a further category: authors whose names aren’t considered suitable for publication. Somehow publishers, and often authors, don’t think a name like Erasmus Q. Fishmonger will sell books, and so the unfortunate Fishmonger would opt, either by choice, or from publisher pressure, for a more ‘reader friendly’ nom de plume. I always dislike this use of a pen name. Frankly, just once, I’d like to read a book by someone named Fishmonger.

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Portuguese Nobel-laureate José Saramago died on June 18, 2010. Most recently known because of the movie adaptation of his novel Blindness (which I found atrociously bad), Saramago’s work featured elements of the fantastic, such as in Blindness when an entire country is struck with ‘white blindness’. Although dead, Saramago left behind a large corpus of excellent work.

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Harry Stephen Keeler is one of the best worst writers you’ve never heard of. Confused? Let me explain. Keeler wrote prolifically, mostly Roman Noir and Science Fiction, in the early to mid 20th Century, during the pulp era.

The novels featured odd titles (I Killed Lincoln at 10:13!, The Case of the Barking Clock, The Man with the Magic Eardrums, Find the Clock) and his catalogue has a disturbing number of skull related MaGuffins (for example in The Skull of the Waltzing Clown, or The Riddle of the Travelling Skull). Sounds great, right?

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I recently heard about Salman Rushdie’s donation to Emory University. It contains a number of his early computers and the files containing some of his novels. The University had difficulty in deciding what to do with Rushdie’s works. They ultimately settled on preserving the computers, as well as the files, to show Rushdie’s method, as well as the documents. The article got me thinking about the problems of digital book publication process. Although the use of computers makes the process far easier than in the past, it raises some real problems about maintaining the ability to publish works in the future.

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Since the remake of Clash of the Titans opened recently, I thought I'd give a few recommendations for anyone interested in reading more about Greek myth. These books serve as enjoyable introductions to the myths, and many can serve as stepping stones to the world of the Ancient Greek authors.

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