I'm doing no better a job than ever at communicating with the world at large. I'm sure a lot of you were beginning to suspect that I was dead, disappeared off into a debased world of sexual slavery, or had fled the country after the unfortunate incident with M. R______. One or more of those might have been the case, indeed, but here I am, attempting to provoke and delight you with concise (not to say terse) summaries of what I've read over the last month. Enjoy or do not enjoy, as is your whim.

Ghost In The Shell 2: MANMACHINE INTERFACE by Shirow Masamune (Dark Horse). Manga at its densest and least transparent; cyberpunk so sophisticated in its preoccupations and philosophy that it can only be compared to John Clute's baroque, near-impenetrable Appleseed for its ability to regurgitate enormous wads of genre without sacrificing its fetishism, style, or cool police procedural atmosphere. Motoko Aramaki, fractured cyberspatial child of The Major from the original Ghost in the Shell, shows all of the accountability, moral restraint and reach of a 21st century corporation as she tries to decipher the events surrounding a seemingly mundane bit of industrial terrorism. Plays Baudrillard (or de Landa) to Neal Stephenson's Kierkegaard. Features more cameltoe than every 80s Spandex metal video combined. Don't even try to get everything the first time through.

Phoenix vols. 1-5 by Osamu Tezuka (Viz). Tezuka's “masterwork” finally translated into English. Fidgety, pedantic, Buddhist, recursive, overdetermined, and masterfully rendered. Tezuka isn't called the God of Manga for nothing, and all of his considerable talents are cranked up to maximum in this seemingly endless exploration of greed, misery, essential human nobility, and the equally strong human desire to fuck up the things we want most. Probably best not read in 5-volume chunks.

Buddha vol. 5 by Osamu Tezuka (Vertical). Effortlessly achieves what Tezuka was trying to do with Phoenix with immeasurably greater economy and elegance. Every so often I come across a new work of Tezuka's and I think it's the best thing he ever did. First it was the goofy and incredibly alive Black Jack, then it was Adolf, and now it's Buddha, a work of religious biography that leavens a good deal of not exactly historically authentic storytelling into the Buddha myth to illustrate why Siddartha Guatama was important and what India was like at the time. What all three series share in common is Tezuka's incredible gift with characterization and his well-developed ability to simplify a story without condescending or watering down its emotional strength. Chester Brown's Louis Riel is probably the closest any Western comic artist has gotten to doing the same thing for Jesus. A good place to start with Tezuka if you don't know much about his work or manga in general. Plus the Vertical edition is designed by Chip Kidd, which makes the books hott little artifacts all on their lonesome, if you're into that kind of thing.

War for the Oaks by Emma Bull (Tor). I think I may have missed the optimum time and place to read this book, but it's one of the benchmark novels about the modern age colliding with Faerie, and Bull makes it entertaining without being twee. The only grating part: reading her descriptions of the process of rocking out. Then again, I never heard her band Cats Laughing, and their particular variety of stylistic trainwreck seems to have been near-perfectly captured in this book. I mean that in a good way, in case it's not clear. Also gets points for injecting some class consciousness into the battles between the Courts Seelie and Unseelie.

1610: A Sundial in a Grave by Mary Gentle (Gollancsz). Is Mary Gentle destined to be one of those authors remembered by posterity (like Frank Herbert) for their one freakishly good work, which towered proudly over a mostly mediocre crop? I sure hope not, but so far the evidence isn't encouraging. This Jacobean potboiler manages to rope together a French courtier assassin with A DARK PAST, a young swordsperson with A DARK SECRET, and a Japanese samurai who wishes the gaijin would just get over themselves, all trying to get out from under the shadow of a form of quasi-scientific divination used by an alchemist who makes Hari Seldon look like a punk. Yeah, it sounds good, and it mostly delivers, but after a while it starts to get a little too preposterous, and Gentle's anachronistic writing style, so refreshing in (her masterpiece) Ash, feels a little lazy and inconsistent here. But it's got some de Sade to go with its Dumas, which might titillate those into that kind of thing.

The Other Hollywood by Legs McNeil (10-Speed Press). For a substantial portion of you, all I have to say is, “This is an oral history of porn films by the guy who wrote Please Kill me.” Which it is indeed. Probably the most important and urgent book I've read all year, this book is full of portraits of some truly appealing, messed up people (most of whom are incorrigible liars and / or egotists), a ton of raunchy anecdotes, and probably too much written about the gigantic hard-on the FBI has had for busting pornographers. Anyone with even a vague interest in sex American-style or the debate over pornography (which is, what? all of us?) will be mesmerized by this book, which leaves no easy answers for the innumerable questions it poses, and covers an amazing amount of ground in its 600+ pages. NOTE: there aren't many pictures, and this book will give boners to only the most naïve, perverted, or easily aroused readers. It will, however, make you laugh out loud right before making you feel incredibly guilty for finding anything funny about a deeply sad situation. The porn industry is like that.

He lives! And reads! (Like I should throw stones.)

I've only read one non-Ash book by Mary Gentle, Grunts!. It's mildly amusing for the first fifty pages, maybe a hundred, but it goes on after that for quite a while. People I know who have read other, more typical, Gentle say that it doesn't really intersect well with Ash. Which is a shame.