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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 7, 2021 17:41:25 GMT -5
 Skunk Train by Joe CliffordClifford combines the teen journey with neo-noir in a tale that travels down the California coast from Humboldt to L.A. Kyle Gill is fifteen and has been raised by his cousin Deke since Kyle's mother died when he was a child. Deke is a small time drug dealer in Humboldt County (before legalization). Kyle doesn't fit in and just wants to join his Dad, who he's been told is a movie and TV director, in L.A. Following a drug deal gone bad, Kyle flees down the coast in a stolen truck with a bag full of money, pursued by Deke's partner, bent cops, and members of the drug cartel. Along the way he picks up Lizzie Decker in San Francisco. Lizzie is a poor little rich girl who decides that Kyle is someone worth her interest. I knew Clifford from a number of short stories, but this is the first novel of his that I've read. It won't be the last. Though it's not without faults, Clifford keeps the action moving and the plot chugging along. Dealing with teenage protagonists allows for the lead characters to act in some dumb ways and to ignore the obvious without causing the kind of irritation it does when adult characters do so. A quick fun read and a worthy addition to the neo-noir canon. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 12, 2021 16:15:47 GMT -5
 City by Clifford D. Simak I'm a big fan of Cliff Simak and it distresses me that he's one of the less remembered Grand Masters of SF at this point. So I've been slowly working my way back through his oeuvre. I think it's fair to say that City vies with Way Station as his most important work (though I'll always be partial to All Flesh is Grass). City was earlier, it won the International Fantasy Award for Best Fiction in 1953, and it's a very direct tie to the Golden Age of SF as it is a fix-up novel made of stories published (largely) in Astounding. And that part is important. This isn't a novel. SF novels were rare as hen's teeth at the time. These are connected stories with some extra bridging material. And they're explicitly connected, unlike, say Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, which was much more a thematic connection. The stories posit a world where humans are gone and dogs are in charge. The bridging material looks at whether the stories are historical or allegorical or a mix. Along with sentient dogs we have the robots who act as their hands and the stories of the Websters (humans) who elevated them and then went away. The scope of the timeline here is right up there with Heinlein's Future History, Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind or Asimov's Foundation. But Simak kept it to eight novelettes and then moved on to other things. As usual with Simak's themes tend toward the pastoral, but he makes it clear that he can look as deep in to the future as his contemporaries were and that it wasn't just Asimov who had a penchant for robots. This is non-violent, idea oriented SF. And it holds up very very well. Highly recommended. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 13, 2021 10:08:11 GMT -5
I should read more Simak.. so many books... so little time!
A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M Miller Jr
I was really pleased to find this at a library book sale a couple weeks back (The 1st one I had found since the Pandemic).. it was a 'fill a bag' type sale, so for $5 we managed 29 books of various types.
My copy of this one is a Batnam paperback from the late 70s and has a bit of past water damage, but is pretty good as old books go.
The book is not a novel as much as 3 novella of different time periods, each about 600 years apart. The first chronicles the fall of civilization after nuclear war, and the priesthood that attempts (largely without success) to keep knowledge alive. In the story, a young monk finds an unlooted fallout shelter that has bits of blueprints for what sounds like vacuum tubes. The main story here is a wel done satirizing of the medeval church, as the main action is not about the discovery, but how the church can use it to help it's patron, St. Liebowitz (not yet a saint to the Vatican) achieve his sainthood.
Its a very good version of the fall of man, with some great touches that reminded me of two of my other favorite version of the same... the 'Gamma World' RPG system (with it's adventures to explore the tower of 'Mike Soft' on the coast of 'Sea Battle'.)... and the Babyon 5 episode of the far future where the Rangers, Foundation-like, are visiting a monastery to monitor tech discoveries.
The 2nd book is 600 years later, and shows a world that has organized states, but still little technology and literacy.. it is a work of only the strong surviving, but the monk of St. Liebowitz continue to preserve and now try to interpret the knowledge (Memorabilia, as they call it in the story) to help the world. In the story, one of the monk develops an electric generator (Monk-powered, of course, with novices on treadmills), and a non-church scholar comes to investigate. It's intended to be the tipping point where the new society goes back to technology, and it works well for that purpose.
It also has some interesting discussions about the ramifications of nuclear holocaust.. and the people that survive a new race? Better, or worse? In story, the scholar interprets scraps of fiction about robots to imply that 'real' humans created an inferior race which they were a part (give a great excuse to why it's taking so long to rediscover technology of all sorts), while the monks call him out for interpreting with hubris, which is some great stuff.
The final story is another 600 years in the future, and the tribes of the 2nd story have become modern nations, complete with computers of a sort, and space colonies. The Monks are part of a plan with the Vatican to secretly start a new monestary to protect all knowledge in deep space, even as a 2nd nuclear holocaust loomed. Will the world learn from the past, or be doomed to repeat it? Is the theme. There's also a good bit of some heavy thinking about Euthanasia (in the context of fallout victims) which continues to be an issue today. Great stuff.. a true classic that I'm glad I finally got to!
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Post by berkley on Jul 13, 2021 20:10:32 GMT -5
I just started reading aa few Simak books the last year or two, not having read much of his as a kid apart from the odd short story in anthologies like the SF Hall of Fame. I've been going in chronological order and would agree that City is the best so far - I have Time is the Simplest Thing, Way Station, and All Flesh is Grass coming up, so can't compare with any of those yet. I've also picked up a few of his later books, from the 70s and 80s, but will probably put those off for awhile as I'll be trying to catch up on other late 50s and 60s SF first.
And one of those that should be coming up in the next few mnths is A Canticle for Liebowitz, so I didn't dare even skim wildfire2099's post - I'll remember to come back to it once I've read the book myself!
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 20, 2021 16:29:36 GMT -5
 The Dark City by Max Allan Collins Collins begins exploring Eliot Ness' time as Director of Public Safety for the city of Cleveland in this novel that looks at his earliest days in that position. Ness was famous as one of the men who took down Capone when he was hired to clean up the Cleveland police force. Collins draws from this to novelize Ness' time in that position in what is, somewhat, a spin-off from his Nate Heller series (Heller makes an extended appearance in this first novel). While this is fictionalized, the Cleveland Police Department was highly corrupt when Ness took over. And while there's a germ of a mystery here, it's not a mystery in the sense that the Heller books are, nor does it go into the depth (or the conspiracies) that Collins reaches with Heller. This is more about doing normal police work and trying to use some undercover agents to root out the many many bad apples. Collins' books are nothing if not readable. And this is a fun quick read that is well researched enough to send you down some rabbit holes of your own. I'm looking forward to the next book and his take on the Torso Murders. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 21, 2021 9:01:14 GMT -5
Spacehounds of IPC
by EE Smith
I was really surprised to find this at a library book sale... you don't see alot of EE Smith around, and a non-lensman book at that!
This was a strange mix of attempts at Hard Sci-fi (As best as one can do in the 40s at least) and Burroughs' style planetary travel.. which each planet and moon having their own biosphere and aliens.
The language and style scream the time period, when science could do anything if someone just tried hard enough and thought about it. I suspect there was written originally as a few short stories, as there are pretty distinct parts.. some space battles, some parts where the aliens take center stage (including some flying snake creatures), and a Robinson Crusoe part where two of the heroes are stuck on Ganymede and proceed to build their own ship.
Much of the tech is ridiculous.. massive techincal leaps are made in days but just reviewing alien tech, and everyone who knows science seems to know everything, but that's ok, it's a fun old sci fi book.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 21, 2021 9:22:56 GMT -5
Spacehounds of IPC by EE Smith Much of the tech is ridiculous.. massive techincal leaps are made in days but just reviewing alien tech, and everyone who knows science seems to know everything, but that's ok, it's a fun old sci fi book. I've not read that one. The every scientist is an expert in all fields of science trope is one that was less weird coming from non-scientists. But Smith was an actual PhD (in chemical engineering) and certainly knew better. |
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Post by berkley on Jul 21, 2021 13:43:08 GMT -5
Spacehounds of IPC by EE Smith Much of the tech is ridiculous.. massive techincal leaps are made in days but just reviewing alien tech, and everyone who knows science seems to know everything, but that's ok, it's a fun old sci fi book. I've not read that one. The every scientist is an expert in all fields of science trope is one that was less weird coming from non-scientists. But Smith was an actual PhD (in chemical engineering) and certainly knew better. This is a trope we comics fans should be used to - it's exactly how scientists are traditionally presented in superhero comics. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 22, 2021 10:42:01 GMT -5
I've not read that one. The every scientist is an expert in all fields of science trope is one that was less weird coming from non-scientists. But Smith was an actual PhD (in chemical engineering) and certainly knew better. This is a trope we comics fans should be used to - it's exactly how scientists are traditionally presented in superhero comics. I'm very used to the trope. But it still drives me nuts. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 22, 2021 11:09:43 GMT -5
 Jackrabbit Smile by Joe R. LansdaleI've said this a number of times, but Joe R. Lansdale has become my go-to author when I have "Reader's Block." No matter how hard a time I'm having getting in to various books, picking up something by Lansdale cures it. And if it's Hap & Leonard, that's just gravy. The trajectory of the series is interesting. It started out super strong, sagged quite a bit in the middle (in my view) and then shot up precipitously in the later books. Not that any of the books were ever bad, but there was a lull around the time of Devil Red and Honky Tonk Samurai that has been completely overcome in Rusty Puppy and now in Jackrabbit Smile. Hap and Leonard are back (and Brett, who is growing on me) and they're in full-on P.I. mode. I wasn't a big fan of the boys becoming actual private eyes, but again, it's working better. They've been hired by a racist mother and son to find their daughter/sister who was nicknamed Jackrabbit and has dropped off everyone's radar. The search for Jackrabbit leads the boys to a small east Texas town that's largely owned and run by "The Professor" who seems bound and determined to reinstate racial segregation. There's also plenty of religious fundamentalism and conspiracy craziness going on. This is a short tight book. Hap and Leonard are in prime form kicking butts while cracking wise. I'm not sure it's quite as strong as the previous Rusty Puppy, but it's darn close. And the two are the strongest one-two books in the series since the very beginning. |
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Post by berkley on Jul 22, 2021 12:15:58 GMT -5
This is a trope we comics fans should be used to - it's exactly how scientists are traditionally presented in superhero comics. I'm very used to the trope. But it still drives me nuts. Me too, believe me. In the comics as well as elsewhere. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jul 22, 2021 12:52:16 GMT -5
I'm very used to the trope. But it still drives me nuts. Me too, believe me. In the comics as well as elsewhere. ... Well, I think the trope works just fine in Gilligan's Island... |
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Post by berkley on Jul 22, 2021 15:50:41 GMT -5
Me too, believe me. In the comics as well as elsewhere. ... Well, I think the trope works just fine in Gilligan's Island...
Yes, perhaps comedy is the best place for it. Though it also occurs to me that the professor's brilliant plans never succeed in getting them off the island, in contrast to superhero comics, where the hero-scientist routinely succeeds in defeating vastly more advanced alien civilisations and cosmic beings!
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jul 22, 2021 16:08:56 GMT -5
Yes, perhaps comedy is the best place for it. Though it also occurs to me that the professor's brilliant plans never succeed in getting them off the island, in contrast to superhero comics, where the hero-scientist routinely succeeds in defeating vastly more advanced alien civilisations and cosmic beings!
Ha! Back when we were kids, my older brother used to joke that the whole reason they never got off the island was because of the Professor. |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,140 
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Post by Confessor on Jul 25, 2021 14:52:49 GMT -5
What are people's thoughts on sci-fi author Leigh Brackett? I know her predominantly for writing an early version of the Empire Strikes Back script, but I've never read any of her books. A local thrift store has cheap copies of her books People of the Talisman and The Nemesis from Terra, and I wondered if they're any good?
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