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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 11, 2018 16:58:28 GMT -5
I feel like I should read Connie Willis, but it just doesn't appeal any time I've looked at the books.. someday, perhaps. Seetee Ship Jack Williamson (originally as Will Stewart) c 1951 (adapted from stories from 1942-3) An interesting mix of sci fi and a Romance.. the first 1/2 of the book is very reminiscent of the Space Merchants. We have our main Character,Rick, going to work for the big evil corporation instead of his dad to try to make a difference, only to get disenchanted when his work gets turned to weapons. The 2nd half is mostly a romance between the actual main character, Anders (who was Rick's boss and was chasing him) and the spunky girl secretary/pilot for Rick's dad's company. The setting is very 'cold war in space'.. the Russians take over Jupiter.. the Germans Mars, the Japanese Venus, then there's the 'Interplanet' corporation, which seems kinda like the US. (some nice forsight to make the Russian communists the main bad guys in the end.. but maybe those were the parts added to make it novel length). The sci-fi part is the seetee (anti-matter).. everyone wants to harness the matter/anti-matter reaction, but how to do it when they explode on contact? Plenty of plausible science around a society that still uses film cameras and telephone operators and has periscopes to drive their space ships. The main points off was the focus on a massively predictible romance and not much of an ending.. but that may happen in the next one.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 16, 2018 15:52:25 GMT -5
Dream Factories and Radio Pictures by Howard Waldrop This one collects Waldrop's short stories dealing with movies, TV and radio (up to the time of publication). Most of them are fairly tenuously SF, being alt-history stories where you kind of have to seek out the point of divergence. "Fin de Cyclé" looks at the very early days of motion pictures, the Dreyfuss Affair and Parisian culture. "Flatfeet!" finds a local police force dealing with a variety of movie monsters over a few years. "Occam's Ducks" looks at the filming of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as a "race film." "Der Untergang des Abendlandesmenschen" finds Bronco Billy and William S. Hart fighting vampires in Weimar Germany. That's just a sampler. This is the sort of thing that Waldrop does. He plays with popular culture and gives us well thought out and intellectually stimulating alternatives. He's a treasure.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 18, 2018 15:56:51 GMT -5
The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion Loren Estleman
The concept of this book is pretty fun... a group of actor/thieves that cover their robberies with their performances, but it doesn't really make sense. It shouldn't take too long to connect things. And it didn't.. alot of the book is about an extremely generic train robbing outfit that our main characters come across, and the Pinkerton detective that figures out their game.
Estleman's writing is far better in the Page Murdoch books I've read... here he goes to 3rd person, and gets way to descriptive for ordinary things that don't need describing. The detective was quite fun though, and the characters all unique and interesting.. this COULD have been an excellent book, it just didn't quite pan out (alot like the actual plot, really).
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 19, 2018 10:51:02 GMT -5
Dane Curse by Matt AbrahamThis is a hard book to review. It wasn't bad. But it wasn't particularly compelling either. I don't feel bad about reading it. But I wouldn't highly recommend it. It was just...okay. This is a prose super-hero book. The closest analogy is probably Astro City...without as much heart. And upon further review, the protagonist reminds me a bit of Steeljack. Dane Curse was a "black cape" the supervillains of this world. He's mostly turned over a new leaf acting as a P.I. investigating mostly the deaths and disappearances of black capes to bring some closure to their families. But now he has the biggest case of his life. The Sindicate wants him to find out who killed Pinnacle (Samaritan/Superman) before the "white capes" find out he's dead and rain destruction on the black cape community. Again...it's not a bad book. It just didn't grab me. I've just seen it all before.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 22, 2018 10:09:33 GMT -5
That sounds very much like Steeljack... is it an ongoing sort of thing? (seems like the cover wants to be, but I know sometimes that doesn't happen as authors and publishers wish)
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 22, 2018 12:19:37 GMT -5
That sounds very much like Steeljack... is it an ongoing sort of thing? (seems like the cover wants to be, but I know sometimes that doesn't happen as authors and publishers wish) There’s been one prequel. I haven’t read it. Both are free to read with Amazon Prime.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 22, 2018 16:41:26 GMT -5
I've never been one to read on a screen.. I probably should try though, Amazon does seem to have some good stuff for free.. and I know a few series I've read have short stories out there that are probably included as well. Conanby REH/Carter/De Camp Re-Reading these in anticipation of Marvel getting the comic book license back (one hopes they'll let Roy Thomas have one last crack at him). With all the various versions of some of these stories that now exist, it was really nice to get back to the originals... truly great stuff. Howard really does amazing things with the setting, so you can really believe that he's writing about a real world (perhaps our own in the distant past). Conan is a very more interesting and complex character than he's ever gotten to be in the poor attempts at movies, and those he interacts with can often be just as interesting. That's what makes the big different between the original works of Howard and the later stories by Carter and de Camp.. Howard manages to de-emphasize his lead character in a way that makes him seem even more important and interesting... he's not even named in 'Tower of the Elephant' until half way through, yet his presence still dominates the story even as the other inhabitants of the world get the spotlight. Lets hope this next set of writers that attempt to imitate one of the masters of the genre have done their homework and can re-create some of that
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 22, 2018 17:19:02 GMT -5
I've never been one to read on a screen.. I probably should try though, Amazon does seem to have some good stuff for free.. and I know a few series I've read have short stories out there that are probably included as well. Conanby REH/Carter/De Camp Re-Reading these in anticipation of Marvel getting the comic book license back (one hopes they'll let Roy Thomas have one last crack at him). With all the various versions of some of these stories that now exist, it was really nice to get back to the originals... truly great stuff. Howard really does amazing things with the setting, so you can really believe that he's writing about a real world (perhaps our own in the distant past). Conan is a very more interesting and complex character than he's ever gotten to be in the poor attempts at movies, and those he interacts with can often be just as interesting. That's what makes the big different between the original works of Howard and the later stories by Carter and de Camp.. Howard manages to de-emphasize his lead character in a way that makes him seem even more important and interesting... he's not even named in 'Tower of the Elephant' until half way through, yet his presence still dominates the story even as the other inhabitants of the world get the spotlight. Lets hope this next set of writers that attempt to imitate one of the masters of the genre have done their homework and can re-create some of that At this I would much rather read on my kindle than read an paper book. The exception is art books. At the risk of being pedantic...or a snob...those old Lancer paperbacks are far from the original version of Conan. Admittedly they were the introduction to the character for most of us (if it wasn’t the comic) but de Camp and Carter re-wrote and added their own pastiches to Howard’s work.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 22, 2018 19:47:17 GMT -5
yeah, that's true... but that's about as original as I can get. I didn't think they changed any of the ones actually written by Howard, did they?
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 22, 2018 21:04:40 GMT -5
yeah, that's true... but that's about as original as I can get. I didn't think they changed any of the ones actually written by Howard, did they? De Camp changed a comma here and there in Howard’s originals, and re-wrote a few paragraphs from The Black Stanger so that it would fit as a prelude to Conan becoming king of Aquilonia. He and Carter also wrote new stories, either from scratch (Black Tears, say), completing Howard fragments (The Snout in the Dark) or adapting unpublished Thongor tales (The Lair of the Ice Worm). They also turned a few non-Conan stories by Howard into Conan ones by altering names and introducing some supernatural element (The Flame Knife, The Road of the Eagles). I see no reason for de Camp to have altered the originals, but his changes made no difference whatsoever. As far as I’m concerned, they were just disrespectful; they didn’t turn the stories into crap.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 22, 2018 21:14:37 GMT -5
Factfulness by Hans Rosling, or why we’re wrong about almost everything.
That’s a book that really needs to be read by anyone who thinks our world is headed towards armageddon. Rosling shows how certain natural biases lead us to believe that things are getting increasingly worse on our planet, either economically, socially or environmentally. The reality is that it’s the exact opposite. on pretty much any scale we can conceive of, things are not only getting better... they are getting better amazingly fast.
Many of my preconceived notions were torpedoed by that simple book. The demographic bomb I was so worried about is actually defusing itself as we speak. The distinction between “developed” and “developing” countries is an artefact from the ‘60s, and totally superfluous today. There is no such thing as a “western” way of life, economically speaking.
Rosling is not a preachy kind of author; he’s actually quite self-deprecating and humorous. His figures and numbers are taken from readily available sources, and he makes a very good point about how we let the fact that things aren’t perfect yet distract us from the fact that they are getting better quickly.
I look forward to discussing that book with my extended family during the holidays! (We have a wide range of political opinions, going from socialists to Trump supporters).
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 22, 2018 21:50:11 GMT -5
yeah, that's true... but that's about as original as I can get. I didn't think they changed any of the ones actually written by Howard, did they? De Camp changed a comma here and there in Howard’s originals, and re-wrote a few paragraphs from The Black Stanger so that it would fit as a prelude to Conan becoming king of Aquilonia. He and Carter also wrote new stories, either from scratch (Black Tears, say), completing Howard fragments (The Snout in the Dark) or adapting unpublished Thongor tales (The Lair of the Ice Worm). They also turned a few non-Conan stories by Howard into Conan ones by altering names and introducing some supernatural element (The Flame Knife, The Road of the Eagles). I see no reason for de Camp to have altered the originals, but his changes made no difference whatsoever. As far as I’m concerned, they were just disrespectful; they didn’t turn the stories into crap. I haven’t run the numbers but my understanding is that de Camp rewrote something like 40% of The Black Stranger. I won’t diss de Camp too much. Without his work REH could well be as forgotten today as Seabury Quinn. But I have zero interest in revisiting the expurgerated Howard, especially with the Del Rey editions readily available.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 23, 2018 8:09:11 GMT -5
De Camp changed a comma here and there in Howard’s originals, and re-wrote a few paragraphs from The Black Stanger so that it would fit as a prelude to Conan becoming king of Aquilonia. He and Carter also wrote new stories, either from scratch (Black Tears, say), completing Howard fragments (The Snout in the Dark) or adapting unpublished Thongor tales (The Lair of the Ice Worm). They also turned a few non-Conan stories by Howard into Conan ones by altering names and introducing some supernatural element (The Flame Knife, The Road of the Eagles). I see no reason for de Camp to have altered the originals, but his changes made no difference whatsoever. As far as I’m concerned, they were just disrespectful; they didn’t turn the stories into crap. I haven’t run the numbers but my understanding is that de Camp rewrote something like 40% of The Black Stranger. The only differences I noticed when reading either The Black Stranger or The Treasure of Tranicos is that the sorceror who’s plaguing Valenso is turned from an unnamed Juju man to Thoth-Amon (because de Camp wanted Thoth to be Conan’s arch-nemesis) and that at the end, the boat that rescues Conan and the girls from the Pictish coast is not a pirate ship but one manned by Aquilonians who were searching for the Cimmerian, meaning to get him to lead their rebellion. If de Camp’s rewriting was extensive, it sure didn’t impact the story. Same here! I find de Camp’s work on Conan to be unnecessary at best and downright awful at worst! “Conan and the spider-god” is an abomination, and it is fitting that it’s the last Conan story de Camp wrote. Plus there’s the blatant disrespect shown by de Camp... who the #@$ is he to decide that Howard needed an editor? His rewriting was just a feeble excuse to associate his name with a property likely to generate a lot of profit if handled right, and to get his name on the cover of books where it had no business to be. I am very grateful for the publication of the original material, and for the fact it has now become the standard and universally accepted version; that is just how things should be. But even so, when it comes to stories like The Tower of the Elephant, Red Nails or The Scarlet Citadel, the original versions or the edited ones are essentially the same. Certain writers who claim that they couldn’t get into Conan in the 60s and 70s because they only had access to the de Camp-edited tales and that they discovered that Howard was a genius when finally getting access to the unexpurgated versions are, in my opinion, either quoted out of context or being disingenuous for emphasis's sake.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 23, 2018 8:20:22 GMT -5
I've not particularly liked de Camp's stuff outside of Conan, but I think it's decent enough. Definitely his marketing impact can't be denied. I'll probably get the newer printing that have just the Howard stuff at some point, but I do like those Frazetta covers alot AS far as the editing goes, besides the obvious (wanting to be associated with the property), I think de Camp was trying to make the stories into a more connected whole that would work better for Conan as a property and franchise.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 23, 2018 12:21:54 GMT -5
Bad Chili by Joe R. Lansdale. Hap returns from a stint working on an oil rig to find that Leonard and Raul have broken up again and Raul has taken up with a new biker boyfriend. Unfortunately that can't be all he bad new for our fearless duo. Because Raul's new boyfriend is found dead and suspicion falls on Leonard. Local cop Charlie Blank tries to help the boys out, but his hands are largely tied by the structure of local law enforcement. So the boys are thrust into a web of murder and blackmail that they are ill-equipped to handle. Just another day in the life of Hap and Leonard. There's a lot to like in this one, though I found it a shade weaker than the previous installments. Again Hap and Leonard are thrust into detective mode...a job they aren't terribly suited for And it's nice to see the mistakes they make along the way. Hap, in particular goes off half-cocked at one point and it's nice to see Leonard be the voice of reason. Hap also takes up with a foul-mouthed nurse by the name of Brett with a past that puts her in good company with the boys. It's also nice to see some character development for Charlie, who keeps becoming a more endearing character. I don't want to fault the book when I say it is a bit weaker than the preceding tomes. This is still a great fun read that puts the boys through the ringer yet again. It just had tough acts to follow. Anything by Lansdale is worth reading. And this is a damn fine book that looks like it could be a turning point for the boys. I think this was the last Hap and Leonard book I read when they were coming out. So from here on out it's new territory for me.
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