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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2016 15:09:10 GMT -5
I still need to read Pohl's 1984 sequel, The Merchants' War ... which of course now has been out for the same number of years as those between it & the original. Time is strange.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 30, 2016 15:16:32 GMT -5
I still need to read Pohl's 1984 sequel, The Merchants' War ... which of course now has been out for the same number of years as those between it & the original. Time is strange. Yeah, seems odd that a sequel was written some 30 years later... I'll probably check it out at some point. Also... the Score by Richard Stark Slam nailed it... definitely the best one so far. This one was just EPIC. Parker joins (and essentially leads) a team of professionals to knock over an entire town.. one that sits in a valley and is enclosed on 3 sides.. only 1 road in and out. Despite it breaking alot of cardinal rules, Parker is bored and ready for a caper, and it seems like it could work... until the guy who's idea it was turns out to have a few secrets. The one broke the formula a bit.. there alot less background on the 'bad guy', and there wasn't really a gotcha moment. Instead, we get some real insight into Parker's world of professional crime, and some really nice profiles of some of the guys that he works with... from the blind gun dealer to the safe cracker to the guy that likes to dress up in uniforms.. all interesting characters that I suspect we'll see again. Not to mentions a few fun nods to the other stories. Definitely the best so far.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 30, 2016 16:08:56 GMT -5
The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth c. 1952 Incidently, what's up with the cover.. and the title? There's no merchants involved at all (only ad execs and consumers).. and very little space. Sure,they're TALKING about Venus, but 98% of the book is on Earth, and when there is space travel it the 'sleep-through-it-and-get there' kind, not the Battlestar Galactica kind as shown. I wonder if there were alot of people that were looking for an entirely different novel and were disappointed at the time.. hard to believe, since it's so good, but if you were looking for space action and didn't give it a chance... No idea what is up with the cover. As too the title...It was originally serialized in Galaxy under the title Gravy Planet. Pohl had a very hard time finding someone to publish it as a monograph. It was finally picked up by Ian Ballantine who had just started up Ballantine Books. My guess is that the title The Space Merchants was viewed as more commercial. It really is a fabulous and in some ways ground-breaking SF novel. It was very well reviewed and was considered a seminal part of the SF genre at least through the early 80s. I do think it has kind of fallen by the wayside in recent years, like a lot of classic SF.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 30, 2016 16:13:47 GMT -5
I still need to read Pohl's 1984 sequel, The Merchants' War ... which of course now has been out for the same number of years as those between it & the original. Time is strange. Yeah, seems odd that a sequel was written some 30 years later... I'll probably check it out at some point. Also... the Score by Richard Stark Slam nailed it... definitely the best one so far. This one was just EPIC. Parker joins (and essentially leads) a team of professionals to knock over an entire town.. one that sits in a valley and is enclosed on 3 sides.. only 1 road in and out. Despite it breaking alot of cardinal rules, Parker is bored and ready for a caper, and it seems like it could work... until the guy who's idea it was turns out to have a few secrets. The one broke the formula a bit.. there alot less background on the 'bad guy', and there wasn't really a gotcha moment. Instead, we get some real insight into Parker's world of professional crime, and some really nice profiles of some of the guys that he works with... from the blind gun dealer to the safe cracker to the guy that likes to dress up in uniforms.. all interesting characters that I suspect we'll see again. Not to mentions a few fun nods to the other stories. Definitely the best so far. I really think it's the best of the series. The next two are very solid. Then The Handle is fairly weak. But after that they are all very solid until Butcher's Moon which is the last of the original series. Honestly, it's amazing that Westlake was able to maintain such consistent quality over a fairly long series.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Mar 30, 2016 17:52:21 GMT -5
The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth c. 1952 One of the earliest SF novels I read and led me to buying everything I could find from the individual authors together or separate. In the case of Pohl, that's a ton of books
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2016 8:27:17 GMT -5
I became a Kornbluth fan early on, thanks to his story "The Silly Season" in the landmark anthology Tomorrow, the Stars (which also introduced me to the above-mentioned Jack Finney via "I'm Scared"). It didn't hurt at all that one of the segments involves, IIRC, a newspaperman covering federal court in Little Rock.
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Post by Rob Allen on Mar 31, 2016 18:43:40 GMT -5
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 31, 2016 19:40:17 GMT -5
I'm Not Happy Til You're Not Happy by Ryan Sayles Short story collection from neo-noir writer Ryan Sayles. Includes two stories of P.I. Richard Dean Buckner. The stories hit the right notes. A transvestite beating up her drug dealer. A guy with a dead hooker in his trunk and a lot of traffic. They aren't all hits. But it's they're all base hits...with a bat to the head.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 1, 2016 21:54:01 GMT -5
Thought this deserved a big pic... since it's Steranko Police Your Planet by Lester del Rey (as Erik van Lhin) A bit of a note...my copy (from 1975) lists the authors as 'Lester Del Rey and Erik van Lhim'.. the later being one of Lester Del Rey's pen names. This isn't so much a sci-fi story as a 30's Chicago mobster story set on Mars to make it easy to take everything to massive extremes. The main character, Bruce Gordon, is sorta half Elliot Ness and half Al Capone. Fun story, but a bit too much 50s male power fantasy.. the romantic lead, Sheila, is really a scary character in that this is what a man in the 50s that teenagers wanted women to be like. There were a few bright spots (the supporting characters were great), and it was a pretty fun book overall, just not a masterpiece or anything.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Apr 1, 2016 21:59:32 GMT -5
I got that book but I like your cover better. Here's mine
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 2, 2016 10:36:09 GMT -5
Definitely more appropriate to the story, yes. I'm a fan of Steranko trippiness, though
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 3, 2016 22:43:07 GMT -5
The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Jungle Lord starts his third tale in London where he has moved Jane and infant son Jack. But Rockoff and Paulovitch are lurking in the woodwork and make Tarzan, Jane and Jack captives in various ways. Tarzan is made castaway on a jungle island where he tames a group of great apes and the panther Sheeta who accompany him as he tries to save Jane and Jack. Of course we know that all will be well in the end. I had read this one not super duper long ago and liked it better than I did this time. I think I was more discerning this time. Really one of the major problem here is "plot-induced stupidity". I can almost buy that Tarzan's time in the city have dulled his senses since he frequently fails to use the vaunted senses of smell and hearing that allowed him to be the Superman of the Jungle. But he and Jane both trust people who they think are untrustworthy over and over and over again. Tarzan fails miserably at trailing Jane and Rockoff a number of times. And, of course we have the pretty ridiculous romanticism that is a hallmark of Burroughs' work. Rockoff, of course, must have Jane for his wife...apparently because she despises him. Still...it's fun to see Tarzan and his jungle hoard of great apes and a panther pursuing the evil ones through the jungle. No...it's not by any means the best of Burroughs or of Tarzan. But it is enjoyable.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 8, 2016 15:37:03 GMT -5
Veeck, as in Wreck by Bill Veeck and Ed Linn
Funnily enough, this book seemed to mirror Mr. Veeck's career.
At the beginning, it was brilliant. Great writing style, and it could easily serve as a marketing textbook not just for baseball, but really in general. I felt like I was sitting down to have dinner with the man, and he was engaging me with stories of his career and imparting his wisdom.
About half way through (right about the time the baseball establishment got sick of his antics and/or jealous of his success) the book turns into rant after rant about the various American League owners and officials that vexed him in his time with the Browns and out of baseball. Here, he turns into a grumpy old man complaining about the world, and playing the unappreciated genius. Now, granted, he was a baseball marketing genius, and, in fact, was right about many things (just as games being too long, the rise of football, Interleague play, etc), but saying so and pointing out who was wrong seems alot like sour grapes.
Then there's a weird 40 pages or so in the middle about the social scene in Cleveland in the early 50s, which seems like it should be in a different book.
Overall, though, a great book to read to start off baseball season.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2016 16:16:55 GMT -5
The Veeck book was almost certainly one of the first non-juvenile baseball books I ever read, back in 6th grade or thereabouts. Joe Garagiolia's (RIP) Baseball is a Funny Game was another one.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 20, 2016 22:41:38 GMT -5
Red Rising Pierce Brown
I had a bit of a Roller Coaster experience with this book. The back cover sounded great.. an old school novel about colonizing Mars written recently? Class struggle? Sounds great.
I should have known by the blurbs comparing it to Hunger Games... what we get inside is a made-for-YA-Movie color coded classes, and some truly ham fisted plotting. The psychology was really good, though, so I kept with it, even though they later show us houses picked by personality and war games to place children in society. I was just waiting for the revelation that it was all real.. clearly the author took Hunger Games, Ender's Game, and Harry Potter and tossed them in a blender in hopes of a someone picking up the movie rights of the next 'whichever'.
If you can get past that,though,it's actually a really good book.. really more of a dark mirror of Ender's Game if you're going to compare it to other stuff than anything. (In fact, there's a line in the book that is listing conquerers that goes 'An Alexander, a Napoleon, a Wiggin' as if Ender's Game isn't fiction. Of course, in that context its referring to Peter and not Ender, but I digress...) Sure, there's a under class rising up against it's oppressors, but giving credit for that trope to Hunger Games is like giving it credit for having kids fight to the death.. both happened before (and in more entertaining novels). The main character, Darrow, is like a not-quite-as-bright version of Ender.. he has the rage, the people skills, the intelligence, and the leadership of Ender, but doesn't realize how arrogant he is, and fails repeatedly because of it... ironic, since that's the one thing he aspires not to be as a former slave. There's actual near-direct analogues for alot of the characters from Ender's Game.
Overall, while I was hoping for a bit more originality, the psychology and character development definitely made it a good read, and the action certainly made it a page turner... I'll definitely read the next one.. which could very well morph into Game of Thrones in space if I'm guessing correctly.
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