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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 23, 2024 7:36:57 GMT -5
I've bought a few John Brunners and have thought about getting this one when I've seen it on the shelves, so it's good to hear this description. He has quite a few books that sound more interesting so I'll leave this one aside for now. My impression is that he was one of those very prolific writers who put more into some of his books than into others that were turned out more or less quickly to meet a deadline. I should be getting to him soon but I forget which one I have picked out to start with.
Based on my limited reading of his oeuvre (about a half-dozen books - only reviewed three of them on this forum, the one mentioned above plus another novel and a short story collection), my opinion is that there is always a baseline of quality with Brunner. Even his drier - I won't say 'boring' because he's never bored me - material is still interesting and I've never felt like I've wasted my time reading any of it. And when he's good, he's really good - e.g., a book like Stand on Zanzibar definitely deserves all of the praise it gets.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 23, 2024 1:51:33 GMT -5
Latest read: The Traveler in Black by John Brunner-this came recommended by someone who's tastes have a lot of overlap with mine, but I struggled with this one. It was more satire than story, with a wanderer going around dispensing just desserts w/o any real narrative. -M Read this about a year ago; guess I liked it a bit more than you did, as I generally found the stories pretty interesting and I liked the bits of dry humor peppered into them. However, your cover (can't go wrong with the Dillons) is much better than the lame art on the UK edition that I read.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 22, 2024 16:24:37 GMT -5
Vespers
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 22, 2024 2:25:29 GMT -5
Dylan
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 21, 2024 15:18:34 GMT -5
Zagreb's annual comic show, which the organizers insist on calling a comicon, was held this weekend - it started Friday evening and ended late this afternoon. Unfortunately, I had work commitments and also yard-work to deal with on the preceding days, so I was only able to go today, but I nonetheless went to a few interesting panels. The first was a Q&A session with Italian comics artist extraordinaire Claudio Castellini. ( that's him in the middle in case you're wondering) He talked about his start at Italy's famed comic publisher Bonelli, and then his move to working for American publishers, mainly DC and Marvel, but also others, like CrossGen, and also about his influences (if you've seen his work, you can tell he was particularly inspired by John Buscema and Neal Adams) and his process, the differences between collaborating with writers in Italy vs. the US, etc. A little later, at his table... ...he signed my battered copy of the first issue of the Croatian edition of the popular Bonelli SF series Nathan Never (which he drew): Also, the Croatian edition of AWA's Hotell was released to coincide with the convention, and it was formally presented by its artist, local boy Dalibor Talajić and John Lees, who flew in from Scotland. ( l to r: Talajić, Lees and moderator Stipe Kalajžić, also a comics artist) Lees announced that AWA has optioned the series for a movie adaptation, which is apparently already in the preliminary preparatory phase (i.e., a director has already been hired). And both Lees and Talajić signed my copies of the American editions: Nice day, all in all, as I otherwise caught up with a few of the local comics guys, not just Dalibor, but also Goran Sudžuka, who I hadn't seen in literally years.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 21, 2024 6:01:43 GMT -5
Impossible Team-up: Impossible Jones and American A.N.G.E.L. (2024) This is the fourth and, apparently, final volume of these Impossible Jones team-ups by Karl Kesel, David Hahn et al., again the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign. (My review of the preceding issue can be found here – which in turn has links to the earlier reviews). This one involves Imp having to deal with a villain named Krampus, a creepy thief who’s supposed to be dead and who was previously an ordinary guy who used gadgets, but now has apparently magical superpowers. After an initial confrontation, she barely makes it out alive… …and then enlists the aid of other supers in the city, including yet another new heroine in this universe, American A.N.G.E.L. However, pretty much all of the heroes, and anti-heroes, from preceding stories make at least an appearance here, and this one in particular has more callbacks to the preceding issue. The ending indicates that there will be more Imp stories in the future. It was, as usual, lots of fun. Also, as usual, it also has two Even Steven back-ups, the first written by Lee Allred with art by Steve Lieber… …while the second one is by Kesel and Hahn. Again, but are ‘origin’ stories which may or may not be true, and the second ends in a bit cliff-hanger, indicating that Kesel is planning to do more of these.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 21, 2024 3:26:11 GMT -5
Finally got around to watch one of *the* most talked about movies last year, Barbie...
I don't have much to add to the general discussion; I'll just say I found it generally quite entertaining, and also pretty thoughtful. And don't believe the hype from some quarters of the internets, gentlemen, it's not 'emasculating'.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 20, 2024 11:58:43 GMT -5
Rome had a good ending. (...) Many of Romans of the time would have begged to differ, methinks.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 20, 2024 7:05:25 GMT -5
Cross-posting this from the RIP thread... Just learned that John Trimble has passed away. 'Who?' you may be asking. Together with his wife Bjo, Trimble launched the letter writing campaign to save the original Star Trek from getting cancelled, so that NBC decided to shoot a third season. And that, according to the link, made it possible to put the show in syndication, where it eventually became a pop culture phenomenon and then on that basis became the mass media juggernaut that it is today.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 20, 2024 7:02:58 GMT -5
Just learned that John Trimble has passed away. 'Who?' you may be asking. Together with his wife Bjo, Trimble launched the letter writing campaign to save the original Star Trek from getting cancelled, so that NBC decided to shoot a third season. And that, according to the link, made it possible to put the show in syndication, where it eventually became a pop culture phenomenon and then on that basis became the mass media juggernaut that it is today.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 20, 2024 3:06:57 GMT -5
I have to pik a nit, MRP wanted us to post the Actual comic we own, not a scan from the internet. I've been doing that, but maybe some folks don't have easy access to the book in question (i.e., it's possibly in the bottom long-box in a big stack of long-boxes) and/or don't have time to snap a pic, so they're just going with an online image. As you can see, MRP himself used an image from mycomicshop this time around.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 19, 2024 14:20:29 GMT -5
I want my money back...
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 19, 2024 9:18:10 GMT -5
This week I'm going to go with a very old favorite, Amazing Spider-man Annual #10: For me, just that cover is so iconic, as it's the first Spider-man annual I ever had, and in fact the first annual I ever had. And I always wondered why the Fly never became a more regular fixture in Spidey's rogues gallery - he was a pretty cool and formidable opponent.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 19, 2024 7:21:05 GMT -5
By the way, I stumbled onto a really good album by an artist with whom I was completely unfamiliar on YouTube (the algorithm apparently recommended it because I was looking for tracks by, e.g., Funkadelic, Betty Davis and Quincy Jones when compiling my 1974 list):
What Color is Love (1972) by Terry Callier. I'll admit, that very alluring album cover got me to click the link, but I ended up liking the first track, "Dancing Girl" quite a bit, and gave the whole thing a listen, and ended up listening to it a few times more. It's very nice music, a sort of combination of folk and soul/R&B, with occasional jazzy elements.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 19, 2024 7:12:54 GMT -5
(...) Parks and Recreation: Boy they tried, but that whole final season was weird. Not so much weird as kind of superfluous. I'll admit that I think a lot of it is still funny, but the last episode of the preceding season was just such a perfect way to end it. And yeah, TNG had a great ending. So did Voyager. And, yes, Newhart.
A show that sort of had two endings, neither of which I liked back in the day when I absolutely *loved* it, was Magnum, P.I. Apparently, it was supposed to end with the 7th season, but then another one was added, so the last episode of what became the penultimate season ended with Magnum dying from a gunshot wound - which is a really downer way to end a more-or-less light-hearted show. Then in the actual final episode, he rejoins the navy - which I thought was almost worse than having him die.
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