Read mystery novels to learn chemistry —

Deborah Blum — my favorite expert in the fine art of poisoning — writes a fascinating piece about the way mystery writers like Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers approached the chemistry in their stories with an almost mind-blowing accuracy. Not only did they get the symptoms of specific poisons correct, they were actually describe common chemical tests and techniques right in the narrative. — Maggie •

I never get tired of reading novels about life on Earth following a disaster that wipes out 99.9% of the human population. Earth Abides and I am Legend are two of my favorites in this sub-genre. I like these stories fro several reasons: I'm fascinated in seeing how people figure out how to survive after their modern conveniences have been taken away from them. It's also interesting to see why the remaining inhabitants struggle to go on with their lives, and to read about their encounters with people who might or might not want to eat them.

After reading The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller, I'm adding it to the top of my twilight-of-the-human-race-novels list. The story takes place about 30 years in the future, nine years after a deadly flu has killed almost everyone on Earth. Hig is one of the survivors. He lives near a small airport in Erie, Colorado (I know the place well, having grown up a stone's throw from the small town east of Boulder). He's teamed up with a no-nonsense, survivalist type named Bangley who is armed to the gills, but seems to be somewhat unhinged. Hig, who lives in fear that Bangley might consider Hig to be a liability rather than an asset, owns a small plane that he uses to patrol the flatlands for invading hordes of starving people armed with knives, broken bottles, and crossbows, who would happily kill Hig and Bangley to take their food stockpiles, garden produce, and ammunition. They have to constantly look over their shoulder to make sure no one is sneaking up on them. Fortunately for Hig, Bangley is a good shot. He and Hig have had to shoot quite a few people in their years together. Hig has learned how to make human thigh-meat jerky to feed his elderly, but useful, watchdog Jasper.

Hig and his dog sleep away from Hig's house, outside behind a berm, covered in quilts. Whenever invaders are lured to the house's LED porch lights (which run on solar-charged batteries) Jasper wakes up and alerts Hig with a low growl. Hig, in turn, gets on the walkie talkie with Bangley, who shoots the trespassers with a sniper rifle.

The scenes where Hig and Bangley encounter other people (who are almost always "Not Nice," as Hig says) raised the hairs on the back of my neck and sent my pulse racing. Hig freely admits he doesn't have the survival skills or the take-no-prisoners attitude that Bangley possesses, and when I read Hig's descriptions on these intense encounters I know I'd make the same potentially deadly mistakes that Hig makes.

It's a grim life, and that explains why Hig likes to get away from the airport to go fishing and hunting in the mountains west of Boulder. Bangely doesn't approve because it puts both of their lives at risk, but Hig can't help himself. He's sad that the trout have died off due to global warming, but there's carp. They don't put up a lively fight like the trout did, though.

Written in the first person from Hig's point of view, the text is fragmented, and almost poetic. I was a bit put off for the first 15 pages or so, but I got used to the writing style and grew to appreciate it.

There's no reason to describe what else happens. I'll just say that there's a plot, and it's a good one. There's also humor and hopefulness, which make the story, more, not less interesting.

The Dog Stars

Matthew Mather says:

As the world moves online, why not virtual children too? Childplay is the second novella in my #1 best-selling Atopia Chronicles collection. It explores what life would be like raising a family with virtual children, and is offered free this Friday to Sunday (Aug 17-19). The full six book series is also offered at half price for $2.99 in the compilation Complete Atopia Chronicles.

"So great, I wish I'd come up with it myself," said Hugh Howey, NY Times and USA Today #1 best-selling author of Wool. "The Atopia series is one of those that will stick with me for the rest of my life."

Congratulations to Ernie Cline for winning the 2012 Prometheus Award for Best Novel! His book, Ready Player One, shared the prize with The Freedom Maze, by Delia Sherman. Both Cline and Sherman will receive one-ounce gold coins (what else would you expect from the Libertarian Futurist Society?).

Delia Sherman's young-adult fantasy novel focuses on an adolescent girl of 1960 who is magically sent back in time to 1860 when her family owned slaves on a Louisiana plantation. She's mistaken for a light-skinned slave fathered by a plantation owner. She endures great hardships, commiserates with others suffering worse, works in the household and the fields, and sees the other slaves demonstrating their humanity in the face of incredible adversity. In the process, she comes to appreciate the values of honor, respect, courage, and personal responsibility.

Ernest Cline's genre-busting blend of science fiction, romance, suspense, and adventure describes a virtual world that has managed to evolve an order without a state in which entrepreneurial gamers must solve virtual puzzles and battle real-life enemies to save their virtual world from domination and corruption. The main characters work together without meeting in the real world until near the end of the story. The novel stresses the importance of allowing open access to the Internet for everyone.

Ready Player One and The Freedom Maze win the Prometheus Award for best novel (Thanks, Tom!)

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Guido Mina di Sospiro and Joscelyn Godwin, authors of The Forbidden Book, wrote about five novels and their occult inspirations for Boing Boing:

How do you find works of occult fiction that are not just fantasies? We have just published one of them: The Forbidden Book, released as an e-book by The Disinformation Company. It is a murder mystery, a romance, a political conundrum, but above all an account of magick in action. We think of it as belonging to a rare strain of fiction by authors who actually know occult traditions and the philosophies behind them. That way the reader is not just playing "let's pretend" but learning some insights into reality that are potentially life-changing. See below for more about The Forbidden Book.

Here are some other novels that we admire:

Zanoni, by Bulwer Lytton, is the premier occult novel of the nineteenth century. Lytton was a novelist and playwright, a dandy, a politician, and eventually a Baron. He is supposed to have been initiated into a German Rosicrucian order, and to have been in the Orphic Circle, a London group that used child clairvoyants. Dickens and Disraeli were his friends, but they didn't follow his arcane interests. For instance, they weren't with him when French occult author and ceremonial magus Eliphas Levi, in Lytton's presence, evoked the spirit of the Greek Neopythagorean philosopher Apollonius of Tyana on a London rooftop. Zanoni is a description of initiations by one who has evidently passed through them. It is famous for introducing the themes of the "Dweller on the Threshold" who tries to block the aspirant's path, and the "augoeides" or luminous self. The novel tells about two men who have gained the secret of eternal life. One of them is content to rest on the accumulated wisdom of his 5,000 years, but Zanoni voluntarily gives up his immortality. He finds that human love is more precious still, even though death is its inexorable price.

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RECOMMEND: Follow RUBEN BOLLING on the twitters.

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In 2002, The Economist writer/editor Emily Bobrow gifted me a copy of Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai and my life changed forever. It’s one of those novels that you can go back to every couple years anew, discovering and rediscovering with each re-read. Not to be confused with the Tom Cruise movie of the same name, DeWitt’s story centers on a single mother in London raising her child-prodigy son.

The genius in her latest novel, Lightning Rods, is DeWitt herself, who cooks up one of the funniest stories I’ve read in recent memory. It’s a highbrow version of the movie Office Space with a Jonathan Ames-esque plot. Read my exclusive, in-depth interview below with DeWitt about the new novel, as well as her writing habits and her tips to would-be novelists.

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