One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band by Alan Paul





I've been a fan of The Allman Brothers' Band since my 18th birthday, when a friend's old hippie Dad sat me down with a big spliff and played me the band's Eat A Peach album. Within days I began scouring second hand record shops for their albums and have today built a pretty respectable collection of their late 60s and 70s output.

Alan Paul's book isn't a traditional biography of the band, since it mostly consists of interview snippets from the surviving band members, their road crew, managers, record company people and record producers. These interview fragments cover the story of the band in chronological order, with only occasional scene setting and context from Paul himself. This is very much the officially sanctioned version of the ABB story and it's very readable, though perhaps a little lightweight at times. Still, the book taught me heaps about the band that I didn't know before. So, if you're a fan, this is probably worth your while picking up.

The interviews were all done by the author for the book, yes.

Black Betty
Walter Mosley, 1994

The fourth Easy Rawlins novel; it’s now 1961, and Rawlins is pretty down and out. He had two sell his house and lives in a rental property with his two adopted children, teenage Jesus and 5 year-old Feather. Jobless as the story begins, he agrees to help a private investigator, Saul Lynx, who asks for his help in finding a woman named Elizabeth Eady. She’s a domestic servant for a wealthy family living in Beverly Hills, and she mysteriously disappeared right after the paterfamilias died. She is also someone Rawlins knows from his past in Houston, where she was known as Black Betty – the woman every man wanted to be with. There’s also a B-plot involving Easy’s friend Mouse, who had just been released from jail for a manslaughter conviction. He’s itching to get revenge on whoever fingered him for killing a guy in an alley behind a bar and Easy, also witness to that event, agrees to help him find the ‘culprit,’ even though he knows it will not end well.
These Easy Rawlins books keep getting better as the series progresses. In fact, thinking about it now, if I didn’t have the first three novels in an omnibus edition, I’m not sure the first one, Devil in a Blue Dress, would have led me to read the others. This one, though, makes me regret that currently I only have a few of them left to read.

The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge by Harry Harrison.




Unlike the first Stainless Steel Rat book, The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge is not a novel that I'd previously read as a teenager. It opens to find our hero "Slippery" Jim DiGriz newly married to his quarry from the first book, the murderous assassin Angelina, who is expecting the pair's twins. After engaging in some larceny (just for fun), Jim is once more recruited by Inskipp, the director of the mysterious Special Corps, and sent to the oppressive planet Cliaand to investigate why the Cliaandians are invading other planets. Jim engages in a one-man guerrilla war to stop Cliaand's empire building and, along the way, is aided by a group of female freedom fighters and his wife (once she has given birth to the twins, James and Bolivar diGriz).

Putting aside the fact that the reason behind the Cliaandian's ruthless enslaving of other worlds is pretty flimsy (they are invading planets simply to convert all of a newly conquered planet's resources into invading the next planet ), this is, like the first book in the series, a fast-paced adventure, packed with action and humour. That said, it does take a little while to get going: the first half of the book is mostly setting up and, while it's still fairly entertaining, it's not all that gripping. Really, it's only about half way through that author Harry Harrison kicks into high gear and we get an action-packed roller-coaster ride that feels akin to the first book.

Overall, I didn't think The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge was as good as the original book. It felt a little overlong to me, but deGriz is still an immensely likeable character and there was more of Angelina here, which I enjoyed. There was also much more for the other supporting female characters to do than in the preceding book – no doubt due to the burgeoning feminist movement in the late 60s when this book was written. So, this was another fun space opera romp and, though not as good as the first book, still an enjoyable read.

If I were to read one Harry Harrison book, which should it be? or if I were to read several, which should I start with? Same question, I suppose.

Like Harrison, Simak is another classic SF writer I haven't read much, though I have tried some of Simak's earlier stuff the last few years. I still don't feel I have a handle on him, though. My next will be Time is the Simplest Thing and then Way Station, so at least I know which ones I want to read next.

As far as my own classic SF reading goes, right now I'm in the middle of a long-overdue re-read of Asimov's Foundation trilogy. I'll wait till I finish it before commenting here. After that it'll be some late-50s Sturgeon and Leiber, if I have the stack I'm looking at arranged properly.

The Stainless Steel Rat is probably his best known and biggest book so it's the most reasonable option. If you want something a little less light then Make Room! Make Room! was the basis for the movie Soylent Green. Bill The Galactic Hero is a satire of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, so it's fun to read them close together. And Terry Pratchett called it the funniest SF book ever written.

My opinion is to go with any of the three volumes of Conan books published by Del Rey in the early 2000s.  The Coming of Conan, The Bloody Crown of Conan, and The Conquering Sword of Conan.  These are unexpurgated Howard.  No pastiches.  No fixes.  No add-ons.  Howard as he was originally published.  Or not published, in the case of the partial stories and outlines.  Of them I think The Coming of Conan makes the most sense.