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Post by Rob Allen on Jun 30, 2018 23:28:54 GMT -5
War with the Robotsby Harry Harrison I love the cover for this one... it's fantastic! I don't think i really related to any particular story, but what a great piece! Its by John Schoenherr, which doesn't sound familiar to me. Schoenherr was a prolific artist in the science fiction magazines of the 60s and 70s as well as doing children's books and wildlife illustrations. In the SF field, he was the illustrator of the first couple of Dune books and the first few Pern stories. He won a Hugo and a Caldecott Medal in his career and was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
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Post by brutalis on Jul 2, 2018 8:18:44 GMT -5
Monster Hunter Siege by Larry Correia.
Owen Z Pitt comes up with the idea to go big and rather than respond to monster incursions he creates an attack/rescue mission for MIA's and to strike first against the new horror emerging from the nightmare dimension. Calling on the Monster hunting teams across the globe and going to war it is D-day in the lost dimension.
Started this one up Sunday morning and couldn't put it down. Read through the entire 512 testosterone gun toting, blow em all up monster horror/science fiction/fantasy/adventure in one day. Ending this one on a cliff hanger was dagnabbit all frustrating! Just when the action is boiling to a fine simmer waiting to blow your taste buds away. Though it is understandable since the entire 1'st half of this one is plot driven and dedicated to setting up the large scale invasion. Half a book detailing the war would be a let down so it is natural that Correia would choose to grab you by the gonads and squeeze you until the next book comes out. Hopefully it won't be 3 years like what happened between book 5 and this one book 6.
It carries all the hallmarks of the entire Monster Hunter series: great weapons, detailed explicit action, lots of monsters and incredible characters faced with making the hard decisions in life and war. Always a fun and interesting read.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 2, 2018 23:16:52 GMT -5
War with the Robotsby Harry Harrison I love the cover for this one... it's fantastic! I don't think i really related to any particular story, but what a great piece! Its by John Schoenherr, which doesn't sound familiar to me. Schoenherr was a prolific artist in the science fiction magazines of the 60s and 70s as well as doing children's books and wildlife illustrations. In the SF field, he was the illustrator of the first couple of Dune books and the first few Pern stories. He won a Hugo and a Caldecott Medal in his career and was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Interesting... it's totally different style wise from the Pern books.. I'll have to see if the ones I'm thinking of are his... that's definitely some impressive versitility if so. I guess when I look at names they only stick in my head if they're comic book artists!
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Post by Rob Allen on Jul 3, 2018 10:55:52 GMT -5
Schoenherr was a prolific artist in the science fiction magazines of the 60s and 70s as well as doing children's books and wildlife illustrations. In the SF field, he was the illustrator of the first couple of Dune books and the first few Pern stories. He won a Hugo and a Caldecott Medal in his career and was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Interesting... it's totally different style wise from the Pern books.. I'll have to see if the ones I'm thinking of are his... that's definitely some impressive versitility if so. I guess when I look at names they only stick in my head if they're comic book artists! I'm not sure if he illustrated the Pern books - I meant the initial publication of the Pern stories in Analog magazine.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 3, 2018 22:02:06 GMT -5
ahhhh.. I gotcha... just look'em up... wow, those are cool! The Limehouse Text by Will Thomas This feels like the end of the beginning as far as the story goes... we got alot more background on Barker, though in alot of ways the answers led to more questions. I'm thinking at some point they'll get around to the mystery of where he gets his Bruce Wayne-like fortune, too. And yes, I've decided that this is much more analagous to Batman and Robin in Victorian times... there's even a potential Batgirl in this one. Plot and action wise, the story was definitely the best of the 3 so far, with some great action, an intriguing mystery, and some really great new characters. The only down side was the overplaying of the Chinese stereotypes. On the one hand, I get it, through Llewelyn's eyes, he's going to see those, and through the story you can see the parts that are his prejudices, but it's REALLY exaggerated in this one.. to the point where it almost loses the historical realism. As Llewelyn himself says at the end of the story, I hope we move on and don't see them for a story or two. The food focus has been straightened out, which is good, so it can add to the mood without being annoying. I'm looking forward to see where the story goes next.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 4, 2018 10:41:44 GMT -5
The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend by Glenn Frankel. I really enjoyed Frankel's book about High Noon. And The Searchers is usually in my top five list for favorite movies. So this book seemed like a no-brainer. And it's not that it was a bad book. It was just...not great. To analogize, it was the proverbial "Jack of all trades, master of none." Frankel gave us a bit of everything. But none of it was particularly new...and none of it was in-depth enough to make it stand out as definitive. First off, if you're familiar with the abductions of Cynthia Anne Parker and the life of Quanah Parker then a good 40% of this book is going to be a re-run. It does appear that Frankel had access to some family histories that may not have been available before. But I didn't really find anything here that was groundbreaking. The background of John Ford and John Wayne, certainly the two biggest players in The Searchers isn't a mystery to most film buffs (and really who else is going to read this book?). So that leaves a couple of chapters looking at Alan LeMay who wrote the novel The Searchers on which the movie was based and the making of the film itself. And honestly it's the latter part where the book really falls down. Frankel covers the making in a cursory, rather than in-depth fashion. There wasn't a huge amount here that was terribly interesting and I went to IMDB afterward and found some information that wasn't in the book (I'll admit that one has to be somewhat skeptical of what one finds on the interwebs). I'm not saying I'm unhappy I read the book. Overall it was a decent read. But it was also in many ways very disappointing.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 4, 2018 13:59:58 GMT -5
The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend by Glenn Frankel. I really enjoyed Frankel's book about High Noon. And The Searchers is usually in my top five list for favorite movies. So this book seemed like a no-brainer. And it's not that it was a bad book. It was just...not great. To analogize, it was the proverbial "Jack of all trades, master of none." Frankel gave us a bit of everything. But none of it was particularly new...and none of it was in-depth enough to make it stand out as definitive. First off, if you're familiar with the abductions of Cynthia Anne Parker and the life of Quanah Parker then a good 40% of this book is going to be a re-run. It does appear that Frankel had access to some family histories that may not have been available before. But I didn't really find anything here that was groundbreaking. The background of John Ford and John Wayne, certainly the two biggest players in The Searchers isn't a mystery to most film buffs (and really who else is going to read this book?). So that leaves a couple of chapters looking at Alan LeMay who wrote the novel The Searchers on which the movie was based and the making of the film itself. And honestly it's the latter part where the book really falls down. Frankel covers the making in a cursory, rather than in-depth fashion. There wasn't a huge amount here that was terribly interesting and I went to IMDB afterward and found some information that wasn't in the book (I'll admit that one has to be somewhat skeptical of what one finds on the interwebs). I'm not saying I'm unhappy I read the book. Overall it was a decent read. But it was also in many ways very disappointing. Yes. His High Noon was much better, and of course, Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon was outstanding. I think you're right about The Searchers. So much has been written about it that nothing much ever seems new. However, a book that I've been dipping in and out of lately, John Wayne's America (1998), by Garry Wills, does a nice job, not just on The Searchers, but on several of the Wayne-Ford movies, as well as other Wayne Westerns. Wills does a nice job weaving them together, almost as if they're one story, to show Wayne's development as both actor and icon. He does a nice job comparing the novel and film versions of both The Shootist and True Grit, elucidates Liberty Valance, rescues Big Jake from its traditional third-tier designation, and goes into The Quiet Man, which he regards as essentially a Western done up in brogues and greenery. Fair warning: I enjoy almost anything Wills writes, though, whether it be on politics, religion, history, or movies.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 5, 2018 0:12:03 GMT -5
Outlaw World Edmund Hamilton c. 1945 A few things stuck me with this one... I wondered why was there no mention of Captain Future on the cover? The magazine ran for a LONG time, after all, he had to have some name recognition.. were they hoping people didn't realize it was stories from the magazines? If this was out today, it would have a big ole banner with some trade dress consistent through all the books. Pretty decent space opera, it was fun to see the characters actually have to solve problems rather then luck into stuff and be heroic. It was also kinda wild that Earth was pretty much just not mentioned... it was clearly there, but it was neither very important or ruined or whatever, just not mentioned. It does suffer from some serious 'all damsels have to be in distress', but that's from being written in 1945. My big complaint is that despite the setting, it really felt like someone wrote a Blackbeard novel, changed all the sea references to space and all the island references to planets, and dubbed it sci fi. I think I'd like Captain Future better if he was a Hornblower-esque naval guy. It definitely made me want to find the anime though.. that'll be happening at some point.
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Post by berkley on Jul 5, 2018 4:21:39 GMT -5
As part of my effort to catch up on some of the SF classics I missed reading as a kid, I just finished Isaac Asimov's The Currents of Space. I'd say this was by far the best of the three Galactic Empire novels (the other two are Pebble in the Sky and The Stars, Like Dust - both enjoyable even if they don't quite live up to the beautiful titles, BTW).
I also read the third of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series, Vengeance is Mine: highly entertaining in itself - I mean as a straight story - but also fascinating in how it hearkens back to the first of the Hammer series and how both reflect the cultural attitude of the time (but is it only of that time?) towards women and sexuality.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 5, 2018 9:42:55 GMT -5
As part of my effort to catch up on some of the SF classics I missed reading as a kid, I just finished Isaac Asimov's The Currents of Space. I'd say this was by far the best of the three Galactic Empire novels (the other two are Pebble in the Sky and The Stars, Like Dust - both enjoyable even if they don't quite live up to the beautiful titles, BTW). I also read the third of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series, Vengeance is Mine: highly entertaining in itself - I mean as a straight story - but also fascinating in how it hearkens back to the first of the Hammer series and how both reflect the cultural attitude of the time (but is it only of that time?) towards women and sexuality. I re-read Pebble in the Sky fairly recently and found it a tough go. I postponed a re-read of the other two for the foreseeable future. Spillane's Hammer books are incredibly brutal by today's standards. The early ones were actually fairly controversial at the time they came out, as well. The kind of book that teenage boys kept hidden from their mothers and their teachers because they weren't appropriate reading. The success of I, the Jury was one of the precipitating factors in the growth of the paperback format.
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Post by brutalis on Jul 5, 2018 13:31:20 GMT -5
Finished off another Bernard Cornwell novel. Sharpe's Eagle book 8 wherein Lieutenant Sharpe and his riflemen are at Talavera, Spain in 1809. The commander of the newly minted Essex Squadron makes a mess of things losing the Regimental colors and places the blame upon Sharpe. Sharpe actually managed to save one of the 2 colors of the Regiment and Wellsley gives Sharpe a battlefield promotion to Captain and demotes the Essex Squadron to a special detachment under Sharpe. His only hope for keeping the Captaincy is for doing something spectacular. So of course he does such in deciding to capture one of the French's army's Roman Eagles. And yes our man Richard finds yet another lovely lady upon the warfield in a besmirched Portuguese noblewoman to protect and woo. As expected she only enjoys Sharpe's charms until finding another with money and prestige befitting her nobility. Our favorite Green Jacketed rifleman does that which he is best at; beating the odds and kicking the Napoleonic Froggies butts. Excellent read and fun throughout the book.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 8, 2018 11:21:30 GMT -5
The Axeman of Storyville by Heath Lowrance. Gideon Miles, the black U.S. Marshall and sometimes partner of Cash Laramie is back. Only this time he's in New Orleans in 1920, retired and running a popular jazz club. And because he's an ex-U.S. Marshall he gets pulled into a series of ax murders of Creole prostitutes in Storyville. The Black Hand is also involved. Lowrance is known for his weird westerns and horror, though he did do the earlier Gideon Miles short-story Miles to Little Ridge. I've liked what I've read of his and this was no exception. It's a tight little novella with a bit of action, a bit of jazz, a bit of character growth for Miles. If I had one complaint it's that this is one instance where a Miles/Laramie story could be expanded into a longer work. For the most part the writers on this series have cut their teeth in the short form in neo-pulp. But this is one that cries out to be a novel. There's just so damn much here to work with. But that's a weak complaint. This is a fun quick read. And it's well worth the little bit of time it takes.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 8, 2018 12:11:37 GMT -5
Apocalypse Soon by Garnett Elliott The second collection of stories about time cops Kyler Knightly and Damon Cole. Well...two of the three are about them. The third is an unrelated short SF story. The first story finds the agents chasing a rogue worker who has gone back to the beginnings of the North American apocalypse, circa 2035. The second finds them in ancient Babylon to stop the theft of antiquities before they're antique. The third unrelated tale finds post-apocalyptic scavengers finding more than they bargained for. Overall the book is marginally better than Carnosaur Weekend. But the protagonists still have little to no discernible personality. These stories are pretty much pure plot. Which is fine. But it's hard to really get excited about the heroes when they aren't very exciting. After reading a reasonable amount of Elliot's writing I have to say that I really like his noir and his more pulpy works. But his SF just does not set my world on fire.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 9, 2018 0:02:59 GMT -5
The Oracle Year by Charles Soule
The crazy cover and the fact that it's a comic book writer I have sometimes enjoyed writing a novel made this one jump out at me at the library... then the back cover sold it... I mean, what a great idea for a novel!
Sadly, the execution is downright terrible. The story starts as a slog through the preliminaries, then all of a sudden there's two wars going on, one possibly nuclear, and the main characters are all about to die. The book starts out with it seemingly routed in the real world, with just the Oracle as the fantasy factor, but quickly spirals out of control.. between the Coach, the super-computer-virus, and Hamza the super investment banker, to the simple premise that the main character can't be found (until he is) makes it feel like it's really in the a comic book universe, where technology can do whatever it needs to, and everyone is pretty super.
The one character that was really interesting, Josiah Branson, was quickly demonized and made into a typical evil villain... a real shame, since he could have been the lead in to a truly interesting discussion about modern religious philsophy.
I'll say one thing, it certainly had me turning the pages, but more in a 'maybe the ending won't be so bad' kinda way more than anything.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2018 0:27:54 GMT -5
The Oracle Year by Charles Soule The crazy cover and the fact that it's a comic book writer I have sometimes enjoyed writing a novel made this one jump out at me at the library... then the back cover sold it... I mean, what a great idea for a novel! Sadly, the execution is downright terrible. The story starts as a slog through the preliminaries, then all of a sudden there's two wars going on, one possibly nuclear, and the main characters are all about to die. The book starts out with it seemingly routed in the real world, with just the Oracle as the fantasy factor, but quickly spirals out of control.. between the Coach, the super-computer-virus, and Hamza the super investment banker, to the simple premise that the main character can't be found (until he is) makes it feel like it's really in the a comic book universe, where technology can do whatever it needs to, and everyone is pretty super. The one character that was really interesting, Josiah Branson, was quickly demonized and made into a typical evil villain... a real shame, since he could have been the lead in to a truly interesting discussion about modern religious philsophy. I'll say one thing, it certainly had me turning the pages, but more in a 'maybe the ending won't be so bad' kinda way more than anything. I tried reading this last month, but gave up about a third of the way through. Same thing for me, interesting idea poorly executed. I put it down to take a break and never picked it back up before it was due at the library, so never finished it. -M
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