Wesley Britton's Blog, page 40
November 25, 2016
Book Review: Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History by
John Dickerson, moderator of CBS's Face the Nation and CBS News Political Director, has taken his Whistlestop podcasts broadcast on the Panoply network, and collected them into an extremely instructive and captivating history of American presidential campaigns.
His essays on specific events that affected the downfalls or victories of a number of candidates are not presented in chronological order and Dickerson doesn’t attempt to cover every election in U.S. history. In fact, his looks at campaigns that took place in the 19th century of Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, James Blaine, and Grover Cleveland appear in the last half of the book. Among the missing campaigns were those of Ross Perot, John McCain’s second run with Sarah Palin as his running mate, James Buchanan, Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding, and Franklin Pierce. Of course, if every candidate made an appearance, we’d be looking at a very hefty tome or a multi-volume series.
Instead, the book is organized thematically, with Harry Truman and Bill Clinton in the “Comebacks” category, Eugene McCarthy, Ed Muskie, Howard Dean, and Michael Dukakis in “Collapses.” Dwight Eisenhower and Andrew Jackson share a section labelled “Too Close to Call.” Ironically, the last section, “Crashing the Party,” concludes the book with the third party run of George Wallace which is, echoing similar campaigns like that of Barry Goldwater in 1964, a harbinger of Donald Trump’s win this year. In fact, one message seems to be once the two party battles began in 1800, many elections since have more in common than some might believe.
Countless discussions these days focus on the divisiveness and partisanship of our politics, as if we’re now living in times markedly different from a mythological united past. However, once the factions of government began to coalesce with the elections of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, wide chasms in the electorate began to develop in ways modern voters would recognize. The Republican party, for example, had fights between extreme conservatives like Robert Taft and so-called moderates like Dwight Eisenhower long before the Tea Party and our current Congress. Image building and spin-doctoring were evident in the campaigns of Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison who wasn’t born in a log cabin, despite the myth created around him. Mudslinging began very early in the electoral process with trustworthiness and sexual misconduct means to blacken the reputations of a number of candidates long before modern finger-pointing and sanctimony.
Of course, the history Dickerson presents isn’t ground-breaking, although many of the stories aren’t widely known but should be. His entertaining writing style keeps his observations fresh and engaging and he is even-handed in pointing to the flaws, foibles, successes, and wins for both the major parties.
Clearly, political junkies will not want to miss this collection, but I think all Americans should take the time to dig into this essential round-up of past elections. It provides context for our understanding of presidential campaigns and shows how our electoral system has somewhat evolved over the past two centuries. As well as how much we haven’t evolved, or devolved, as much as we might think.
This review first appeared Nov. 24, 2016 at BookPleasures.com:
goo.gl/YZxRlB
Purchase Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History at:
https://www.amazon.com/Whistlestop-Fa...
His essays on specific events that affected the downfalls or victories of a number of candidates are not presented in chronological order and Dickerson doesn’t attempt to cover every election in U.S. history. In fact, his looks at campaigns that took place in the 19th century of Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, James Blaine, and Grover Cleveland appear in the last half of the book. Among the missing campaigns were those of Ross Perot, John McCain’s second run with Sarah Palin as his running mate, James Buchanan, Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding, and Franklin Pierce. Of course, if every candidate made an appearance, we’d be looking at a very hefty tome or a multi-volume series.
Instead, the book is organized thematically, with Harry Truman and Bill Clinton in the “Comebacks” category, Eugene McCarthy, Ed Muskie, Howard Dean, and Michael Dukakis in “Collapses.” Dwight Eisenhower and Andrew Jackson share a section labelled “Too Close to Call.” Ironically, the last section, “Crashing the Party,” concludes the book with the third party run of George Wallace which is, echoing similar campaigns like that of Barry Goldwater in 1964, a harbinger of Donald Trump’s win this year. In fact, one message seems to be once the two party battles began in 1800, many elections since have more in common than some might believe.
Countless discussions these days focus on the divisiveness and partisanship of our politics, as if we’re now living in times markedly different from a mythological united past. However, once the factions of government began to coalesce with the elections of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, wide chasms in the electorate began to develop in ways modern voters would recognize. The Republican party, for example, had fights between extreme conservatives like Robert Taft and so-called moderates like Dwight Eisenhower long before the Tea Party and our current Congress. Image building and spin-doctoring were evident in the campaigns of Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison who wasn’t born in a log cabin, despite the myth created around him. Mudslinging began very early in the electoral process with trustworthiness and sexual misconduct means to blacken the reputations of a number of candidates long before modern finger-pointing and sanctimony.
Of course, the history Dickerson presents isn’t ground-breaking, although many of the stories aren’t widely known but should be. His entertaining writing style keeps his observations fresh and engaging and he is even-handed in pointing to the flaws, foibles, successes, and wins for both the major parties.
Clearly, political junkies will not want to miss this collection, but I think all Americans should take the time to dig into this essential round-up of past elections. It provides context for our understanding of presidential campaigns and shows how our electoral system has somewhat evolved over the past two centuries. As well as how much we haven’t evolved, or devolved, as much as we might think.
This review first appeared Nov. 24, 2016 at BookPleasures.com:
goo.gl/YZxRlB
Purchase Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History at:
https://www.amazon.com/Whistlestop-Fa...
November 23, 2016
Leslie Charteris, The Saint, and Sci Fi: Mad Scientists, Giant Ants, Zombies, and the Loch Ness Monster
When you think of Simon Templer—Leslie Charteris’s The Saint—odds are you don’t think of science fiction. However, over the decades of his print, radio, TV and film incarnations, sci fi was indeed one of many genres where the “Robin Hood of Modern Crime” found himself involved with strange and bizarre adventures.
In fact, in 1966 author Leslie Charteris claimed he worried about issuing new editions of his older Saint books capitalizing on the fame of Roger Moore whose picture would adorn new TV tie-in paperbacks. In his “Forward” to the new re-publication of his 1931 Alias The Saint, Charteris wondered if he should update the old tales. He admitted the archaic telecommunications and transportation technologies in The Saint’s early adventures had changed significantly. In a similar “Foreword” to his 1965 edition of The Saint Overboard (1935), Charteris said his Jules Verne-like machines used by mad scientists were outdated as quickly as the books went to print, making his futuristic aqualungs and bathyspheres commonplace and uninteresting thirty years later. So Charteris said he was reluctant to bring out new editions thinking readers would be better served by new books with new settings and new topical references. He decided to advise readers to consider his older books “historical fiction” because of the dated references.
He had a point. As chronicled in the opening pages of The Saint in New York (1934), The Saint’s first adventures included thwarting political assassinations and destroying mad scientists who'd created diabolical weapons Templer feared would instigate rather than deter war, situations that often foreshadowed actual historical events culminating in World War II. According to SF editor Martin Greenberg’s introduction to The Fantastic Saint (1982), Templer’s battles with such mad scientists began with 1930’s The Last Hero (a.k.a. The Saint Closes the Case), published just two years after the character’s debut in Meet the Tiger (1928). In The Last Hero, Templer stumbled upon a secret British government installation where he witness the testing of a deadly and mysterious weapon—the electroncloud machine. The machine created a vapor capable of turning anything it touches into ash. As the plot unfolded, Templer discovered the inventor is insane and determines the scientist must die and his formula destroyed to keep it from falling into the hands of “the ungodly”—Templer’s term for his criminal adversaries.
The 1982 Fantastic Saint anthology of six short stories edited by Greenberg includes the most overt sci fi/supernatural Templer adventures originally published between 1932 and 1959 in various magazines. The collection opens with “The gold standard,” which is mostly the usual Saint fare with Templer matching wits with Inspector Teale of Scotland Yard and a criminal who’s kidnapped a gullible scientist who can transform base metals into gold. That machine is the only real sci fi trapping for this quick and rather predictable read. Likewise, the second story, "The Newdick Helicopter" deals with an inventor who purports to have created a helicopter capable of feats no other flying machine can, but this rather unsatisfactory short, short story is really all about a small-time flim-flam.
"The Man Who Liked Ants" is the first of the yarns that really fits the sci fi label with a deranged biologist who has created a race of giant ants the professor believes will inherit the earth and replace man. The story is full of scientific jargon from the professor before Templer steps in to end the frightening and deadly menace.
“The questing tycoon” veers into the supernatural when the Saint rescues a voodoo priestess with prophetic powers before he meets a tycoon who wants the power to create zombies to be his laborers. He tries to make Templer into a zombie not knowing the priestess has created a charm that prevents this before she turns the table on the evil tycoon, the very definition of the “ungodly.”
"The Darker Drink" is perhaps the most difficult tale to categorize except perhaps as a dream within a dream. In it, Templer is alone in a cabin when a strange man named Big Bill Holbrook—maybe that’s his name, he’s not sure--stumbles in, claiming he’s trapped in a dream he cannot escape and the Saint must be part of his dream. Then an entrancing woman joins the mix followed by three gangsters who seem to kill the Saint.
But Templer awakens in the cabin unscathed and finds his way to Holbrook’s home and discovers he has died in bed talking about the Saint. An odd story that’s certainly fantastic and very atypical of the usual Charteris story with a logical conclusion with all loose ends tidied up. Not this time.
Appropriately, the collection concludes with "The Convenient Monster," in which a Scottish policeman asks the Saint to help investigate murders of animals that might be committed by the Loch Ness monster. Templer thinks a bit of human trickery might be involved; in the end, he’s proved half correct. A very human killer is discovered with the device she thought would cover her crimes, but “Nessie” makes a dramatic cameo that Templer witnesses. It’s the monster that takes out the scheming woman who’s been trying to frame him. Or her. Or it. In short, it’s a conclusion with both a plausible solution blended with the fantastic.
The Saint and Science
Once The Saint became a regular TV series, Charteris relied on many other authors to craft new stories, both teleplays and print adaptations he edited for publication. For example, in 1964, sci fi author Harry Harrison wrote Vendetta for the Saint that became a TV movie starring Roger Moore and the novelization of that story. Then, in 1978, Terence Feely wrote a teleplay for the Return of The Saint series, “The Imprudent Professor.” It was a story adapted by Graham Weaver for The Saint in Trouble, a book of two such adaptations. I mention it here as that story focused on a professor who had perfected solar panels long before their common use. The professor’s work was opposed by energy companies not eager for this new technology that would erode their profits even as the Russians do all they can to lure the scientist to work for them in Moscow.
“The Imprudent Professor” is by no stretch of the imagination a sci fi story. The solar panels are merely a MacGuffin in a straightforward Soviet vs. Western intelligence power play, a very typical espionage plot. Still, there are things of interest here. For one matter, clearly, Charteris approved of Weaver’s interpretation of the Saint character which included some interesting thoughts on what Templer thought of scientists.
In the first pages of “The Imprudent Professor,” Templer muses on his distrust of scientists, believing most important discoveries were stumbled on to by accident. For every useful breakthrough was an offsetting discovery that brought with it disastrous consequences. On a personal level, Templer remembered it was a mad scientist who destroyed his anonymity in The Last Hero. He admits his knowledge of science wouldn’t fill the back of a post card.
What these notes might tell us about what Leslie Charteris felt about scientists is probably negligible, although it’s fun to speculate about why he was among so many 20th century writers who found egotistical or power-hungry masterminds frequent adversaries for their earthier heroes. The Saint first appeared in the aftermath of World War I and many of his adventures took place in the decades leading up to World War II where Charteris could show his prescience for what was coming. Of course, many of his later stories were set in Cold War contexts where agents of the East and West vied for technological advantages whenever opportunity was laid before them.
So seeing The Saint in fantastic situations, especially when cutting-edge technology could be dangerous to humanity, shouldn’t be surprising, especially for a writer who used a wide palate of plotlines and circumstances to create variety in his yarns. On one side, giant ants and the Loch Ness Monster; on the other, technology that could tip the outcomes of both hot and cold wars. No wonder, from 1928 to the present, we’ve always needed a Saint.
In fact, in 1966 author Leslie Charteris claimed he worried about issuing new editions of his older Saint books capitalizing on the fame of Roger Moore whose picture would adorn new TV tie-in paperbacks. In his “Forward” to the new re-publication of his 1931 Alias The Saint, Charteris wondered if he should update the old tales. He admitted the archaic telecommunications and transportation technologies in The Saint’s early adventures had changed significantly. In a similar “Foreword” to his 1965 edition of The Saint Overboard (1935), Charteris said his Jules Verne-like machines used by mad scientists were outdated as quickly as the books went to print, making his futuristic aqualungs and bathyspheres commonplace and uninteresting thirty years later. So Charteris said he was reluctant to bring out new editions thinking readers would be better served by new books with new settings and new topical references. He decided to advise readers to consider his older books “historical fiction” because of the dated references.
He had a point. As chronicled in the opening pages of The Saint in New York (1934), The Saint’s first adventures included thwarting political assassinations and destroying mad scientists who'd created diabolical weapons Templer feared would instigate rather than deter war, situations that often foreshadowed actual historical events culminating in World War II. According to SF editor Martin Greenberg’s introduction to The Fantastic Saint (1982), Templer’s battles with such mad scientists began with 1930’s The Last Hero (a.k.a. The Saint Closes the Case), published just two years after the character’s debut in Meet the Tiger (1928). In The Last Hero, Templer stumbled upon a secret British government installation where he witness the testing of a deadly and mysterious weapon—the electroncloud machine. The machine created a vapor capable of turning anything it touches into ash. As the plot unfolded, Templer discovered the inventor is insane and determines the scientist must die and his formula destroyed to keep it from falling into the hands of “the ungodly”—Templer’s term for his criminal adversaries.
The 1982 Fantastic Saint anthology of six short stories edited by Greenberg includes the most overt sci fi/supernatural Templer adventures originally published between 1932 and 1959 in various magazines. The collection opens with “The gold standard,” which is mostly the usual Saint fare with Templer matching wits with Inspector Teale of Scotland Yard and a criminal who’s kidnapped a gullible scientist who can transform base metals into gold. That machine is the only real sci fi trapping for this quick and rather predictable read. Likewise, the second story, "The Newdick Helicopter" deals with an inventor who purports to have created a helicopter capable of feats no other flying machine can, but this rather unsatisfactory short, short story is really all about a small-time flim-flam.
"The Man Who Liked Ants" is the first of the yarns that really fits the sci fi label with a deranged biologist who has created a race of giant ants the professor believes will inherit the earth and replace man. The story is full of scientific jargon from the professor before Templer steps in to end the frightening and deadly menace.
“The questing tycoon” veers into the supernatural when the Saint rescues a voodoo priestess with prophetic powers before he meets a tycoon who wants the power to create zombies to be his laborers. He tries to make Templer into a zombie not knowing the priestess has created a charm that prevents this before she turns the table on the evil tycoon, the very definition of the “ungodly.”
"The Darker Drink" is perhaps the most difficult tale to categorize except perhaps as a dream within a dream. In it, Templer is alone in a cabin when a strange man named Big Bill Holbrook—maybe that’s his name, he’s not sure--stumbles in, claiming he’s trapped in a dream he cannot escape and the Saint must be part of his dream. Then an entrancing woman joins the mix followed by three gangsters who seem to kill the Saint.
But Templer awakens in the cabin unscathed and finds his way to Holbrook’s home and discovers he has died in bed talking about the Saint. An odd story that’s certainly fantastic and very atypical of the usual Charteris story with a logical conclusion with all loose ends tidied up. Not this time.
Appropriately, the collection concludes with "The Convenient Monster," in which a Scottish policeman asks the Saint to help investigate murders of animals that might be committed by the Loch Ness monster. Templer thinks a bit of human trickery might be involved; in the end, he’s proved half correct. A very human killer is discovered with the device she thought would cover her crimes, but “Nessie” makes a dramatic cameo that Templer witnesses. It’s the monster that takes out the scheming woman who’s been trying to frame him. Or her. Or it. In short, it’s a conclusion with both a plausible solution blended with the fantastic.
The Saint and Science
Once The Saint became a regular TV series, Charteris relied on many other authors to craft new stories, both teleplays and print adaptations he edited for publication. For example, in 1964, sci fi author Harry Harrison wrote Vendetta for the Saint that became a TV movie starring Roger Moore and the novelization of that story. Then, in 1978, Terence Feely wrote a teleplay for the Return of The Saint series, “The Imprudent Professor.” It was a story adapted by Graham Weaver for The Saint in Trouble, a book of two such adaptations. I mention it here as that story focused on a professor who had perfected solar panels long before their common use. The professor’s work was opposed by energy companies not eager for this new technology that would erode their profits even as the Russians do all they can to lure the scientist to work for them in Moscow.
“The Imprudent Professor” is by no stretch of the imagination a sci fi story. The solar panels are merely a MacGuffin in a straightforward Soviet vs. Western intelligence power play, a very typical espionage plot. Still, there are things of interest here. For one matter, clearly, Charteris approved of Weaver’s interpretation of the Saint character which included some interesting thoughts on what Templer thought of scientists.
In the first pages of “The Imprudent Professor,” Templer muses on his distrust of scientists, believing most important discoveries were stumbled on to by accident. For every useful breakthrough was an offsetting discovery that brought with it disastrous consequences. On a personal level, Templer remembered it was a mad scientist who destroyed his anonymity in The Last Hero. He admits his knowledge of science wouldn’t fill the back of a post card.
What these notes might tell us about what Leslie Charteris felt about scientists is probably negligible, although it’s fun to speculate about why he was among so many 20th century writers who found egotistical or power-hungry masterminds frequent adversaries for their earthier heroes. The Saint first appeared in the aftermath of World War I and many of his adventures took place in the decades leading up to World War II where Charteris could show his prescience for what was coming. Of course, many of his later stories were set in Cold War contexts where agents of the East and West vied for technological advantages whenever opportunity was laid before them.
So seeing The Saint in fantastic situations, especially when cutting-edge technology could be dangerous to humanity, shouldn’t be surprising, especially for a writer who used a wide palate of plotlines and circumstances to create variety in his yarns. On one side, giant ants and the Loch Ness Monster; on the other, technology that could tip the outcomes of both hot and cold wars. No wonder, from 1928 to the present, we’ve always needed a Saint.
November 21, 2016
Book Review: Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou by Steven Burgauer
Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou
Steven Burgauer
Publisher: BATTLEGROUND PRESS; 1 edition (November 11, 2016)
Don’t let the rather misleading title of Steven Burgauer’s new World War II novel fool you. Yes, there’s a ring of Nazi spies plotting to blow up a boat building factory in New Orleans. But the scope of the book reaches far beyond Louisiana and involves many more characters and situations than the small band of unlucky German agents.
The various settings indeed center on New Orleans where Andrew Jackson Higgins, an actual historical figure who in reality did what is described in the novel, is building landing craft for the allies, especially boats that can travel in shallow water, land safely on shores and beaches, and return to the water by a simple change to the propellers. But we also spend much time in New Orleans bordellos and meet mixed-blood prostitutes, some keenly interested in Haitian voodoo with helpful connections for the U.S. government. These connections include Sicilian mob families who provide helpful intelligence on the German and Italian defenses of Sicily where an allied invasion is planned using the Higgins boats.
But we also spend considerable time with Navajo code-talkers before we spend even more time in bloody South Pacific island hopping by U.S. forces. We go to London and visit British intelligence where one Commander Ian Fleming makes several appearances. Burgauer throws in scenes in Cuba, an amphibious invasion by a U.S. squad in Tunisia, as well as a number of U.S. Locations described in many a soldier’s backstory.
In short, a lot of moving parts keep this story going with so much rich detail providing every page with verisimilitude, notably in the settings and multi-cultural panorama of the mixed-blood women, soldiers and officers, Mafia bosses and henchmen, and the Navajo code-talkers. Considerable research is demonstrated from street slang to military technology which, admittedly, often slows the flow in order to get in historical descriptions from World War I battles to engineering specs for Higgin’s boats. Sometimes, these bits are a tad repetitious, as when Burgauer makes sure all readers know what the acronym, SNAFU, stands for.
While the title isn’t the best choice for what this book includes and some passages can easily be skimmed, Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou is for World War II buffs, those who like historical fiction in general, fans of New Orleans legends and lore, and readers who like espionage yarns spun out with an epic sweep. In other words, it’s a book for a wide variety of readers.
This review was first published by BookPleasures.com on Nov. 21, 2016 at:
goo.gl/FKoKjW
Purchase Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou at:
https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Saboteurs...
Steven Burgauer
Publisher: BATTLEGROUND PRESS; 1 edition (November 11, 2016)
Don’t let the rather misleading title of Steven Burgauer’s new World War II novel fool you. Yes, there’s a ring of Nazi spies plotting to blow up a boat building factory in New Orleans. But the scope of the book reaches far beyond Louisiana and involves many more characters and situations than the small band of unlucky German agents.
The various settings indeed center on New Orleans where Andrew Jackson Higgins, an actual historical figure who in reality did what is described in the novel, is building landing craft for the allies, especially boats that can travel in shallow water, land safely on shores and beaches, and return to the water by a simple change to the propellers. But we also spend much time in New Orleans bordellos and meet mixed-blood prostitutes, some keenly interested in Haitian voodoo with helpful connections for the U.S. government. These connections include Sicilian mob families who provide helpful intelligence on the German and Italian defenses of Sicily where an allied invasion is planned using the Higgins boats.
But we also spend considerable time with Navajo code-talkers before we spend even more time in bloody South Pacific island hopping by U.S. forces. We go to London and visit British intelligence where one Commander Ian Fleming makes several appearances. Burgauer throws in scenes in Cuba, an amphibious invasion by a U.S. squad in Tunisia, as well as a number of U.S. Locations described in many a soldier’s backstory.
In short, a lot of moving parts keep this story going with so much rich detail providing every page with verisimilitude, notably in the settings and multi-cultural panorama of the mixed-blood women, soldiers and officers, Mafia bosses and henchmen, and the Navajo code-talkers. Considerable research is demonstrated from street slang to military technology which, admittedly, often slows the flow in order to get in historical descriptions from World War I battles to engineering specs for Higgin’s boats. Sometimes, these bits are a tad repetitious, as when Burgauer makes sure all readers know what the acronym, SNAFU, stands for.
While the title isn’t the best choice for what this book includes and some passages can easily be skimmed, Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou is for World War II buffs, those who like historical fiction in general, fans of New Orleans legends and lore, and readers who like espionage yarns spun out with an epic sweep. In other words, it’s a book for a wide variety of readers.
This review was first published by BookPleasures.com on Nov. 21, 2016 at:
goo.gl/FKoKjW
Purchase Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou at:
https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Saboteurs...
November 20, 2016
Review one of my books and enter a contest for free books!
Review Wes Britton’s The Blind Alien (or any Beta-Earth Chronicles title for that matter) and aenter to win $500.00 in free books from BearManor Media!
Contest Rules:
1. Post your review of any BearManor Media book on Amazon.com between now and Dec. 24, 12:00 p.m. (EST).
2. Send an e-mail to Publisher Ben Ohmart at benohmart@gmail.com, and include the hyper-link to your review.
3. Your name will be entered automatically in the contest.
4. The winner will be picked Christmas Day, 2016.
Contest Rules:
1. Post your review of any BearManor Media book on Amazon.com between now and Dec. 24, 12:00 p.m. (EST).
2. Send an e-mail to Publisher Ben Ohmart at benohmart@gmail.com, and include the hyper-link to your review.
3. Your name will be entered automatically in the contest.
4. The winner will be picked Christmas Day, 2016.
November 15, 2016
Meet the Main Cast of The Third Earth: The Beta-Earth Chronicles: Book 5
“I've read a Lot of books, both professionally and for fun, and I have to say that Wes' Alien series is one of the best. I urged him to continue it, and I'm glad it's a series now!”—Ben Ohmart, publisher, BearManor Media
It’s been awhile since I posted an excerpt here from The Third Earth, book 5 of the Beta-Earth Chronicles. I freely admit understanding what follows will be easiest for those who have read the previous four volumes or those who have read the introduction in The Third Earth which fills in the story of what took place before what is below. Here, hopefully all new readers will get a taste of Malcolm Renbourn’s first person narration and enjoy meeting the main cast of characters:
In the beginning, I was the most ordinary of human failures on a planet I later called Alpha-Earth. The most important moment I experienced on Alpha-Earth was the moment I left it and was captured in a device that dragged me across the multi-verse to Beta-Earth. All I left behind was my mother's grave, my father's grief, my energetic dog, and little else. I had an old car, a part-time job as an adjunct history professor, and a usually empty bed. If the gods needed a human instrument for their grand design, I was the least obvious of all candidates.. .and the least willing.
Later, I described that wrenching moment:
"Unexpectedly, mysteriously, in a flash, an acrid, pungent flash, the air changed around me. Gravity shifted, and the space around me expanded strangely. I could no longer see. I felt a scorching white light. Every cell in my body exploded, stretched, every hair on my skin turning into a field of burning wicks. In that wall of fire, every bone, muscle, and tissue of my body disintegrated and then, somehow, remolded."
Twenty years later, in exactly the same geographic location, I experienced those sensations all over again, but there were differences. When I came over from Alpha-Earth to Beta-Earth, I had no idea what was happening to me. When I came over from Beta-Earth to Cerapin, I unhappily knew what was coming. The second time around, I didn't come through the dimensional barrier alone. Five of my Betan wives also had to make the journey.
The most important difference was that the first transfer blinded me. It took away the sight I'd known for thirty years. For the next two decades, I saw absolutely nothing. After the second transfer, I felt my rubbery, jerky, awkward body slide to the floor, and I noticed something special: I could see again!
Strange said, the first thing I saw was the floor beneath my face. Is that white tile? Light brown? I'd forgotten colors. As I lay on the cold metal — at least I assumed it was metal — I could barely move. Just turning over and looking up took time. A painfully bright yellow light glowed down at me. I felt and saw the body of a woman crawling on top of me. My blurry, confused eyes slowly brought her face into some form of focus. Oh, it had to be Elsbeth! She had been standing next to me in that circle back in Bergarten, so it had to be her. She seemed drenched in hot, white light, and I knew what dangled before me had to be her long brown hair. I wasn't sure if I was actually recognizing it with my eyes or accepting what my mind was telling me what those things had to be. For twenty years, I hadn't known what brown was. Was it memory of long lost colors I was perceiving, or was I piecing together descriptions I've been hearing all these years?
I shook my befuddled head as my blinking and blinking new eyes tried to bring coherence to the face people had been telling me was so plain. Plain! Whatever my odd vision was doing, I'd never seen anyone so beautiful in all my life!
Elsbeth looked into my eyes, and her own brown doe-eyes widened with pleasure. "You can see! Husband can see!" She turned her head and again called out to our
company, "Husband can see again!"
I reached up and explored Elsbeth's face with my shaking fingers. Tears ran down
my cheeks. So long ago, Elsbeth Cawl had been a poor and simple farm girl, a tiller of
the fields certain she'd never bear children. Elsbeth and her sister Lorei had joined the Scratchers of Freedom underground. Planning to help shelter runaway slaves, they instead hid a fugitive blind alien in a little cell beneath their little farmhouse. That first night, Elsbeth had drained so much fear and pain from a very anguished and very ill alien by pulling a very surprised stranger as deep inside her as she could. After that, I can't count the days and nights Elsbeth soothed my tormented heart simply by her gentle and devoted presence. Not just me. Elsbeth could soften and melt away so many hard and harsh emotions in anyone around her merely by being her loving self, and here she was in this place simply because she would never let her husband be anywhere without her.
"It's absolutely perfect," I said, "that my first sight is you!"
She beamed and looked at me even closer. "You look as the first day we met! Your
beard, your hair, have lost their gray, their whiteness of age! You have much hair
again! Your skin has no wrinkles, your color be flushed with youth!"
I puzzled over this revelation and wondered if my muscles would soon show any
sign of restored vigor. Our lips were pressed together, and then she rolled off me, as I
began to try to sit up.
I managed to prop my back against a slick wall, holding Elsbeth tight against me.
We were next to a transparent glass wall that surrounded us on three sides. The
yellow light I'd noticed before pointed at us from the top. Everything seemed to bathe
in bright light. I didn't know how much of this shined from above or how much
resulted from what was happening to me. My pupils felt watery, heavy, and dilated.
I turned my head to the right, knowing Joline had stood beside me there on Beta-Earth. As my vision seemed to be clearing, at least for short distances, I saw Joline
lying on her belly, her face turned to give me a lop-sided smile. While I had known
what would happen to her, what I saw was still a shock.
On Beta-Earth, Joline Renbourn was world-renowned as quite a beauty. Her fame
partly drew from her towering figure, a heritage from her upbringing in the cliff-
dwellers in the ice-country of Aufry. I had spent many nights delightfully playing with
her ridiculously long legs. In this pyramid of glass, I couldn't tell if she still stood on
tall limbs, but I could see in her face just how much she had been transformed.
Before we had come to the Bergarten chamber for the transference, Joline had
been told she would be joining her consciousness with her bond-sister and my former
wife, Bar Tine Renbourn. Ten years before, Bar had been murdered in Dellmire by the brother of Kalma Salk, the brown-skinned woman prophesized to be the wife who would reconcile my family with the country of Balnakin.
For ten years, Bar's spirit had watched over us on Beta-Earth, but her essence also voyaged often to the planet we had just come to. In one vision quest, she had brought the spirit-selves of Lorei and Doret Renbourn to Cerapin, showing them the world that the six of us must come to so Cerapin would become aware of the multi-verse. As
a result, Bar knew the language most of the rest of us didn't.
In many ways, Joline and Bar merging together seemed weirdly appropriate. Joline and Bar had become my wives together at the same time in the same ceremony on the same day when Bar had been freed from her so-called Balnakin rehabilitation. In our Wellnee home, while Lorei and Elsbeth tended to household duties, Joline and Bar sat together with me on my office porch helping turn my Alpha-Earth stories into articles and books for Betan readers.
They became fast friends and had much in common. Joline's parents had exiled her from her cliff home because her father thought her a mere nuisance and burden with no prospects. All her life, Bar had been a blue-skinned Balnakin slave with no will of her own, until she found the courage to help send me on the road to freedom, sacrificing herself to face the vengeance of her brown-skinned masters.
With the hideousness of the Bergarten disaster, Bar became a tormented soul, who fled our family to try to escape the memories of that awful day. The only one of us she kept in contact with was Joline.
Despite Bar's self-imposed exile from us, she and Joline had even more in common. Joline became known for her books of rather graphic erotic verse. Bar's creativity came out in her sculptures and ceramic objects. After her death, Bar's spirit was very much Joline's special guardian angel.. .until now.
I saw her face divided as if she was half Joline and half Bar — "Jolbar." While I couldn't have described her with the right words at the time, I can now say that the right side of her head had obviously belonged to Joline, with the emerald-green eye and the straight light-blonde hair that reached her chin. The left side had belonged to Bar, with the puffier cheek, the inset blue eye, and the buttery, flowing blonde mane. On Beta-Earth, I'd heard that her skin had an enamel smoothness. I now saw this description made sense. The right half of her lips were thin, the left fuller. Her eyes looked not coordinated. Her right one was glassy as it stared at me. The Bar eye seemed to be looking off to faraway places.
After a few moments of soft groans, Jolbar tried to focus both eyes on me and say, "Hello, husband. With your new eyes, meet your new wife — well, wives. I guess we shall be Jolbar Sonam Tine Renbourn. We no doubt look as strange as we feel. We can't get the strength to stand up."
"I know the feeling, or the lack of it. Maybe it's just any strength I can't manage."
Jolbar nodded, and withdrew into herself. Likely, she lacked the energy or the will to talk further. She rolled over on her back, holding her hands up in the air. She twisted and flexed her fingers, the Bar half of her no doubt exploring sensations she hadn't felt since her murder. She must have been curious about the differences she saw and felt, her Joline hand long and slim, her Bar hand smaller and a bit more pudgy.
My wonderstruck eyes moved past Elsbeth on my left to look at her birth-sister, the once blind prophetess Lorei Cawl Renbourn. Like me, she was sitting against the glass wall. For the first time, I could see how the Cawl sisters were so different, at least in appearance. Unlike the curvy Elsbeth, Lorei was long and lanky. Unlike the rough-skinned Elsbeth, Lorei's skin was clear, creamy, smooth. She had been known
for her grace, elegance, and the nimbleness of her fingers with needles and thread, especially when she sewed children's clothes and toys.
The most obvious difference was her distinct eyes. One looked sharp at me, the other seemed dead in its socket. That was because, like Jolbar, Lorei, too, had a dual consciousness, a duality she had been sharing with Doret Renbourn for several years. Half of Lorei's mind and senses were back on Beta-Earth, housed in the tiny frame of the mutant dwarf who had become the Mother-Icealt of All-Domes. Likewise, Lorei's body now carried part of the essence of Doret in this very room. So the eye that looked sightless and opaque was really the eye of a sister sitting wherever she was on Beta-Earth. This meant Doret Renbourn could witness everything Lorei saw.
Again, I thought the joining of these two souls was perfectly appropriate. From the beginning, Lorei had carried the breath of Olos inside her, her gift of prophecy a dominant force in nearly every aspect of all our lives. She had always urged a worship of Olos as the spiritual rudder of our family. She had known when new wives would join the tribe, she had seen many of the coming battles and challenges that faced us, even when she herself resisted our foretold futures.
When Doret joined us, our spiritual pair became inseparable. She often guided Lorei's gift drawing on her years of training in Appool Hollow-Bone Dream-Guessing. I admit, the rest of us came to dread their pronouncements. They always seemed to place more and more heavy burdens on Tribe Renbourn. None had been anywhere as burdensome as what had happened to us this unhappy day.
Still, I quickly thought how good Lorei looked in her bright-green three-piece suit of protective fabrics, identical to the suits all of us wore. In all our jackets and pants, we carried skil-pads of so much knowledge of Beta-Earth in very deep pockets. I also had pads of all my writings about Alpha-Earth, and a thin music player rested in my inner right jacket pocket that not only had all my Alphan music but many samples of Betan sounds as well. I planned to protect that for as long as I could, feeling the music was too precious to just hand over like we planned for all of our other pads — except for all the thin vials of Beta-Earth seeds that Elsbeth carried. According to Lorei, these were the most important gifts we brought with us. They should not be revealed until — well, I had no idea.
"Hello, Husband," Lorei smiled. "I see you have regained the youth of your first cross-over. True said, in many ways, our bodies have been restored to what they were twenty years past. Our biological clocks have been reset, and more. I also see you are practicing new sight. Trust me — I remember well trying to adapt to having vision for the first time when Doret and I were transformed in that cave ritual. Push yourself not! Comprehending depth, focusing on distant things will take time and much queasiness and head pain. Determining what be up, what be down, what be left, what be right and how far things are from you will be clear not for some time."
"And everything is so bright! Is that the light above us?"
"In part. Much be your visual organs trying to process what they haven't expected to digest for so long. Unlike me, who was blind from birth, your mind has all those old memories of colors, shapes, dimensions, and distances you're trying to match with what surrounds you here. Your mind be reaching back to all those previous
experiences to start to reuse them to make sense of where we are now. Correctly matching what you touch and what you see will also take getting used to. I certain if anything is going to form quickly in your sight, it will be us! If all your senses know anything to the smallest sensory details, it be the bodies of your wives. I wager all else will sharpen much more slowly."
I nodded and tried to look around some more. I turned to look at my other two wives, and my jaw dropped with almost incomprehensible disbelief.
On Beta-Earth, Alnenia Ricipa Renbourn had considered herself no beauty, but not unpleasant to look at. I had heard her most distinguishing physical characteristics, beyond her very muscular and well-toned body, were the long, single Pynti eyebrow that ran over her eyes and the thought lines that often creased her forehead.
On the other hand, Kalma Salk Renbourn was known as a most attractive Balnakin brown-skin, with unique yellow eyes, a commanding presence, and a very noticeable intensity in all her doings.
I can say that the pairing of Alnenia and Kalma was the least likely of all the changes to my wives. Unlike Lorei and Doret, or Joline and Bar, I don't recall any special bonds between Alnenia and Kalma. True, unlike the lifelong poverty of the rest of the outcasts and exiles of the original sisterhood, both these women were raised by prosperous tribes with privileged backgrounds. True, both women were highly skilled at working with numbers, especially tribal accounts and ledgers, not to mention international commerce. Alnenia had been Kalma's first friend when the then haughty and aloof Balnakin had come to help save Tribe Renbourn from financial ruin.
Both these women were easily the strongest physically of all my wives, and I confess, the most assertive in bed — especially Kalma. She didn't shy away from pinning me down on the sheets before rolling over and putting her powerful legs to work.
For all the years we were together, the closest friendship I saw between the Salks and Ricipas was that between the fathers, Lius Salk and Sikas Ricipa, two giants of both commerce and moral leadership. Both hadn't been too certain I was worthy of their daughters, but over time I discovered I had gained two important mentors, as well as two indispensable wives.
The women that sat together across from me bore no resemblance to what they must have looked like on Beta-Earth. Now, they had identical gray-skin faces that had been transformed beyond recognition. What hair they had worn before was gone. Their foreheads bulged out with a wide, rounded, and almost oval lobe on each of them. Their jaws were now extremely pronounced, jutting out with squared thick chins. Streaks and spots of different colors illustrated their flesh, especially their arms. Their incisors looked almost wolfish. Their feet had grown so wide and large, they had had to remove their boots. I sorrow to remember because my expression when I first saw them must have been one of revulsion and fright, and they looked back at me, their faces mirroring exactly the same emotions.
Order The Third Earth at:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MSH4KZG
It’s been awhile since I posted an excerpt here from The Third Earth, book 5 of the Beta-Earth Chronicles. I freely admit understanding what follows will be easiest for those who have read the previous four volumes or those who have read the introduction in The Third Earth which fills in the story of what took place before what is below. Here, hopefully all new readers will get a taste of Malcolm Renbourn’s first person narration and enjoy meeting the main cast of characters:
In the beginning, I was the most ordinary of human failures on a planet I later called Alpha-Earth. The most important moment I experienced on Alpha-Earth was the moment I left it and was captured in a device that dragged me across the multi-verse to Beta-Earth. All I left behind was my mother's grave, my father's grief, my energetic dog, and little else. I had an old car, a part-time job as an adjunct history professor, and a usually empty bed. If the gods needed a human instrument for their grand design, I was the least obvious of all candidates.. .and the least willing.
Later, I described that wrenching moment:
"Unexpectedly, mysteriously, in a flash, an acrid, pungent flash, the air changed around me. Gravity shifted, and the space around me expanded strangely. I could no longer see. I felt a scorching white light. Every cell in my body exploded, stretched, every hair on my skin turning into a field of burning wicks. In that wall of fire, every bone, muscle, and tissue of my body disintegrated and then, somehow, remolded."
Twenty years later, in exactly the same geographic location, I experienced those sensations all over again, but there were differences. When I came over from Alpha-Earth to Beta-Earth, I had no idea what was happening to me. When I came over from Beta-Earth to Cerapin, I unhappily knew what was coming. The second time around, I didn't come through the dimensional barrier alone. Five of my Betan wives also had to make the journey.
The most important difference was that the first transfer blinded me. It took away the sight I'd known for thirty years. For the next two decades, I saw absolutely nothing. After the second transfer, I felt my rubbery, jerky, awkward body slide to the floor, and I noticed something special: I could see again!
Strange said, the first thing I saw was the floor beneath my face. Is that white tile? Light brown? I'd forgotten colors. As I lay on the cold metal — at least I assumed it was metal — I could barely move. Just turning over and looking up took time. A painfully bright yellow light glowed down at me. I felt and saw the body of a woman crawling on top of me. My blurry, confused eyes slowly brought her face into some form of focus. Oh, it had to be Elsbeth! She had been standing next to me in that circle back in Bergarten, so it had to be her. She seemed drenched in hot, white light, and I knew what dangled before me had to be her long brown hair. I wasn't sure if I was actually recognizing it with my eyes or accepting what my mind was telling me what those things had to be. For twenty years, I hadn't known what brown was. Was it memory of long lost colors I was perceiving, or was I piecing together descriptions I've been hearing all these years?
I shook my befuddled head as my blinking and blinking new eyes tried to bring coherence to the face people had been telling me was so plain. Plain! Whatever my odd vision was doing, I'd never seen anyone so beautiful in all my life!
Elsbeth looked into my eyes, and her own brown doe-eyes widened with pleasure. "You can see! Husband can see!" She turned her head and again called out to our
company, "Husband can see again!"
I reached up and explored Elsbeth's face with my shaking fingers. Tears ran down
my cheeks. So long ago, Elsbeth Cawl had been a poor and simple farm girl, a tiller of
the fields certain she'd never bear children. Elsbeth and her sister Lorei had joined the Scratchers of Freedom underground. Planning to help shelter runaway slaves, they instead hid a fugitive blind alien in a little cell beneath their little farmhouse. That first night, Elsbeth had drained so much fear and pain from a very anguished and very ill alien by pulling a very surprised stranger as deep inside her as she could. After that, I can't count the days and nights Elsbeth soothed my tormented heart simply by her gentle and devoted presence. Not just me. Elsbeth could soften and melt away so many hard and harsh emotions in anyone around her merely by being her loving self, and here she was in this place simply because she would never let her husband be anywhere without her.
"It's absolutely perfect," I said, "that my first sight is you!"
She beamed and looked at me even closer. "You look as the first day we met! Your
beard, your hair, have lost their gray, their whiteness of age! You have much hair
again! Your skin has no wrinkles, your color be flushed with youth!"
I puzzled over this revelation and wondered if my muscles would soon show any
sign of restored vigor. Our lips were pressed together, and then she rolled off me, as I
began to try to sit up.
I managed to prop my back against a slick wall, holding Elsbeth tight against me.
We were next to a transparent glass wall that surrounded us on three sides. The
yellow light I'd noticed before pointed at us from the top. Everything seemed to bathe
in bright light. I didn't know how much of this shined from above or how much
resulted from what was happening to me. My pupils felt watery, heavy, and dilated.
I turned my head to the right, knowing Joline had stood beside me there on Beta-Earth. As my vision seemed to be clearing, at least for short distances, I saw Joline
lying on her belly, her face turned to give me a lop-sided smile. While I had known
what would happen to her, what I saw was still a shock.
On Beta-Earth, Joline Renbourn was world-renowned as quite a beauty. Her fame
partly drew from her towering figure, a heritage from her upbringing in the cliff-
dwellers in the ice-country of Aufry. I had spent many nights delightfully playing with
her ridiculously long legs. In this pyramid of glass, I couldn't tell if she still stood on
tall limbs, but I could see in her face just how much she had been transformed.
Before we had come to the Bergarten chamber for the transference, Joline had
been told she would be joining her consciousness with her bond-sister and my former
wife, Bar Tine Renbourn. Ten years before, Bar had been murdered in Dellmire by the brother of Kalma Salk, the brown-skinned woman prophesized to be the wife who would reconcile my family with the country of Balnakin.
For ten years, Bar's spirit had watched over us on Beta-Earth, but her essence also voyaged often to the planet we had just come to. In one vision quest, she had brought the spirit-selves of Lorei and Doret Renbourn to Cerapin, showing them the world that the six of us must come to so Cerapin would become aware of the multi-verse. As
a result, Bar knew the language most of the rest of us didn't.
In many ways, Joline and Bar merging together seemed weirdly appropriate. Joline and Bar had become my wives together at the same time in the same ceremony on the same day when Bar had been freed from her so-called Balnakin rehabilitation. In our Wellnee home, while Lorei and Elsbeth tended to household duties, Joline and Bar sat together with me on my office porch helping turn my Alpha-Earth stories into articles and books for Betan readers.
They became fast friends and had much in common. Joline's parents had exiled her from her cliff home because her father thought her a mere nuisance and burden with no prospects. All her life, Bar had been a blue-skinned Balnakin slave with no will of her own, until she found the courage to help send me on the road to freedom, sacrificing herself to face the vengeance of her brown-skinned masters.
With the hideousness of the Bergarten disaster, Bar became a tormented soul, who fled our family to try to escape the memories of that awful day. The only one of us she kept in contact with was Joline.
Despite Bar's self-imposed exile from us, she and Joline had even more in common. Joline became known for her books of rather graphic erotic verse. Bar's creativity came out in her sculptures and ceramic objects. After her death, Bar's spirit was very much Joline's special guardian angel.. .until now.
I saw her face divided as if she was half Joline and half Bar — "Jolbar." While I couldn't have described her with the right words at the time, I can now say that the right side of her head had obviously belonged to Joline, with the emerald-green eye and the straight light-blonde hair that reached her chin. The left side had belonged to Bar, with the puffier cheek, the inset blue eye, and the buttery, flowing blonde mane. On Beta-Earth, I'd heard that her skin had an enamel smoothness. I now saw this description made sense. The right half of her lips were thin, the left fuller. Her eyes looked not coordinated. Her right one was glassy as it stared at me. The Bar eye seemed to be looking off to faraway places.
After a few moments of soft groans, Jolbar tried to focus both eyes on me and say, "Hello, husband. With your new eyes, meet your new wife — well, wives. I guess we shall be Jolbar Sonam Tine Renbourn. We no doubt look as strange as we feel. We can't get the strength to stand up."
"I know the feeling, or the lack of it. Maybe it's just any strength I can't manage."
Jolbar nodded, and withdrew into herself. Likely, she lacked the energy or the will to talk further. She rolled over on her back, holding her hands up in the air. She twisted and flexed her fingers, the Bar half of her no doubt exploring sensations she hadn't felt since her murder. She must have been curious about the differences she saw and felt, her Joline hand long and slim, her Bar hand smaller and a bit more pudgy.
My wonderstruck eyes moved past Elsbeth on my left to look at her birth-sister, the once blind prophetess Lorei Cawl Renbourn. Like me, she was sitting against the glass wall. For the first time, I could see how the Cawl sisters were so different, at least in appearance. Unlike the curvy Elsbeth, Lorei was long and lanky. Unlike the rough-skinned Elsbeth, Lorei's skin was clear, creamy, smooth. She had been known
for her grace, elegance, and the nimbleness of her fingers with needles and thread, especially when she sewed children's clothes and toys.
The most obvious difference was her distinct eyes. One looked sharp at me, the other seemed dead in its socket. That was because, like Jolbar, Lorei, too, had a dual consciousness, a duality she had been sharing with Doret Renbourn for several years. Half of Lorei's mind and senses were back on Beta-Earth, housed in the tiny frame of the mutant dwarf who had become the Mother-Icealt of All-Domes. Likewise, Lorei's body now carried part of the essence of Doret in this very room. So the eye that looked sightless and opaque was really the eye of a sister sitting wherever she was on Beta-Earth. This meant Doret Renbourn could witness everything Lorei saw.
Again, I thought the joining of these two souls was perfectly appropriate. From the beginning, Lorei had carried the breath of Olos inside her, her gift of prophecy a dominant force in nearly every aspect of all our lives. She had always urged a worship of Olos as the spiritual rudder of our family. She had known when new wives would join the tribe, she had seen many of the coming battles and challenges that faced us, even when she herself resisted our foretold futures.
When Doret joined us, our spiritual pair became inseparable. She often guided Lorei's gift drawing on her years of training in Appool Hollow-Bone Dream-Guessing. I admit, the rest of us came to dread their pronouncements. They always seemed to place more and more heavy burdens on Tribe Renbourn. None had been anywhere as burdensome as what had happened to us this unhappy day.
Still, I quickly thought how good Lorei looked in her bright-green three-piece suit of protective fabrics, identical to the suits all of us wore. In all our jackets and pants, we carried skil-pads of so much knowledge of Beta-Earth in very deep pockets. I also had pads of all my writings about Alpha-Earth, and a thin music player rested in my inner right jacket pocket that not only had all my Alphan music but many samples of Betan sounds as well. I planned to protect that for as long as I could, feeling the music was too precious to just hand over like we planned for all of our other pads — except for all the thin vials of Beta-Earth seeds that Elsbeth carried. According to Lorei, these were the most important gifts we brought with us. They should not be revealed until — well, I had no idea.
"Hello, Husband," Lorei smiled. "I see you have regained the youth of your first cross-over. True said, in many ways, our bodies have been restored to what they were twenty years past. Our biological clocks have been reset, and more. I also see you are practicing new sight. Trust me — I remember well trying to adapt to having vision for the first time when Doret and I were transformed in that cave ritual. Push yourself not! Comprehending depth, focusing on distant things will take time and much queasiness and head pain. Determining what be up, what be down, what be left, what be right and how far things are from you will be clear not for some time."
"And everything is so bright! Is that the light above us?"
"In part. Much be your visual organs trying to process what they haven't expected to digest for so long. Unlike me, who was blind from birth, your mind has all those old memories of colors, shapes, dimensions, and distances you're trying to match with what surrounds you here. Your mind be reaching back to all those previous
experiences to start to reuse them to make sense of where we are now. Correctly matching what you touch and what you see will also take getting used to. I certain if anything is going to form quickly in your sight, it will be us! If all your senses know anything to the smallest sensory details, it be the bodies of your wives. I wager all else will sharpen much more slowly."
I nodded and tried to look around some more. I turned to look at my other two wives, and my jaw dropped with almost incomprehensible disbelief.
On Beta-Earth, Alnenia Ricipa Renbourn had considered herself no beauty, but not unpleasant to look at. I had heard her most distinguishing physical characteristics, beyond her very muscular and well-toned body, were the long, single Pynti eyebrow that ran over her eyes and the thought lines that often creased her forehead.
On the other hand, Kalma Salk Renbourn was known as a most attractive Balnakin brown-skin, with unique yellow eyes, a commanding presence, and a very noticeable intensity in all her doings.
I can say that the pairing of Alnenia and Kalma was the least likely of all the changes to my wives. Unlike Lorei and Doret, or Joline and Bar, I don't recall any special bonds between Alnenia and Kalma. True, unlike the lifelong poverty of the rest of the outcasts and exiles of the original sisterhood, both these women were raised by prosperous tribes with privileged backgrounds. True, both women were highly skilled at working with numbers, especially tribal accounts and ledgers, not to mention international commerce. Alnenia had been Kalma's first friend when the then haughty and aloof Balnakin had come to help save Tribe Renbourn from financial ruin.
Both these women were easily the strongest physically of all my wives, and I confess, the most assertive in bed — especially Kalma. She didn't shy away from pinning me down on the sheets before rolling over and putting her powerful legs to work.
For all the years we were together, the closest friendship I saw between the Salks and Ricipas was that between the fathers, Lius Salk and Sikas Ricipa, two giants of both commerce and moral leadership. Both hadn't been too certain I was worthy of their daughters, but over time I discovered I had gained two important mentors, as well as two indispensable wives.
The women that sat together across from me bore no resemblance to what they must have looked like on Beta-Earth. Now, they had identical gray-skin faces that had been transformed beyond recognition. What hair they had worn before was gone. Their foreheads bulged out with a wide, rounded, and almost oval lobe on each of them. Their jaws were now extremely pronounced, jutting out with squared thick chins. Streaks and spots of different colors illustrated their flesh, especially their arms. Their incisors looked almost wolfish. Their feet had grown so wide and large, they had had to remove their boots. I sorrow to remember because my expression when I first saw them must have been one of revulsion and fright, and they looked back at me, their faces mirroring exactly the same emotions.
Order The Third Earth at:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MSH4KZG
November 14, 2016
Book Review: Columbo Under Glass by Sheldon Catz
Columbo Under Glass
Sheldon Catz
Publisher: BearManor Media (October 26, 2016)
ASIN: B01MG5VKHVPublisher: BearManor Media (October 26, 2016)
https://www.amazon.com/Columbo-Under-...
Sheldon Catz’s exhaustive analysis of the Columbo TV series and made-for-TV movies is strictly for Columbo aficionados. The show’s 69 mysteries are indeed placed under a hot glass, a magnifying glass in fact, that requires a reader to be interested in a show that aired, off and on, from 1968 to 2003 and be knowledgeable about the cast and crew, plots, supporting players and not be bothered to be told, again and again, details like Henry Mancini wrote the theme music for ABC’s rotating Mysteries.
One puzzling aspect of this new study is that Catz is far from an adoring fan, at least in terms of his conclusions about so many aspects of the show. The first 100 pages are his hit-and-run reviews of each episode and TV movie, and most are rated as fair or poor with few branded “excellent.” He points to weaknesses in storylines, especially what clues are credible or convincingly discovered by the frumpy detective, what Catz sees as poor acting, or the “bloating” he discusses that we saw, most notably in the two-hour stories. Obviously, he watched all the mysteries multiple times with a critical eye, so obviously Catz caught details few casual watchers would have noticed or cared about. For example, he spends several pages noting the 31 fleeting appearances by utility player Michael Lally who is only seen or heard briefly, usually so quickly it took Catz watching and freeze-framing video tapes of the show to spot Lally in the background as a bartender, cop, photographer, whatever.
Still, to point out so many foibles makes one wonder—why did Catz spend so much time investigating a series he seems to find more flawed than quality entertainment? Throughout his episode guide, Catz keeps cross-referencing his discussions with the short mini-essays in the second part of the book where he looks at nearly every aspect of the stories including what sorts of endings worked, or didn’t, the morality of Lt. Columbo, how the character developed over the decades, and the continuity, or lack of it throughout the decades. He even devotes an essay to suggesting why a number of episode titles weren’t the best and offers his suggestions for improvement. In fact, he puts forward a number of suggestions on how the stories and characters could have been better as well, especially when Columbo the character could have been truer to himself.
Clearly, Catz knows his subject intimately. In 1991, he began a ten year tenure as editor of The Columbo Newsletter. He has the full endorsement of Mark Dawidziak, author of The Columbo File (1989) who wrote the foreword for Catz’s study. Columbo Under Glass is 99% told from a viewer’s point-of-view, that is, it discusses what we see on the screen but there’s precious little about how it got there. Not until page 319 do we get much about the origins of the character on stage, and that too is a short discussion. There is next to no discussion of production histories, there are no interviews with insiders or participants. In short, this is from first to last Sheldon Catz’s take on Columbo and the reader is free to compare his own feelings with those of a man who has spent a lot of time dissecting every minute of Columbo ever aired.
If you’re extremely familiar with Peter Falk’s raincoated character or at least want to be, this book is for you. If you’re a less devoted fan, this is a book to skim but not immerse yourself in cover-to-cover reading. If you’re not already a fan of the cigar-smoking investigator who is always asking, “just one more thing,” Columbo Under Glass likely isn’t for you. Most of your questions are readily available online on the websites Catz lists in his final pages.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Nov. 14, 2016 at:
goo.gl/T9f35r
Sheldon Catz
Publisher: BearManor Media (October 26, 2016)
ASIN: B01MG5VKHVPublisher: BearManor Media (October 26, 2016)
https://www.amazon.com/Columbo-Under-...
Sheldon Catz’s exhaustive analysis of the Columbo TV series and made-for-TV movies is strictly for Columbo aficionados. The show’s 69 mysteries are indeed placed under a hot glass, a magnifying glass in fact, that requires a reader to be interested in a show that aired, off and on, from 1968 to 2003 and be knowledgeable about the cast and crew, plots, supporting players and not be bothered to be told, again and again, details like Henry Mancini wrote the theme music for ABC’s rotating Mysteries.
One puzzling aspect of this new study is that Catz is far from an adoring fan, at least in terms of his conclusions about so many aspects of the show. The first 100 pages are his hit-and-run reviews of each episode and TV movie, and most are rated as fair or poor with few branded “excellent.” He points to weaknesses in storylines, especially what clues are credible or convincingly discovered by the frumpy detective, what Catz sees as poor acting, or the “bloating” he discusses that we saw, most notably in the two-hour stories. Obviously, he watched all the mysteries multiple times with a critical eye, so obviously Catz caught details few casual watchers would have noticed or cared about. For example, he spends several pages noting the 31 fleeting appearances by utility player Michael Lally who is only seen or heard briefly, usually so quickly it took Catz watching and freeze-framing video tapes of the show to spot Lally in the background as a bartender, cop, photographer, whatever.
Still, to point out so many foibles makes one wonder—why did Catz spend so much time investigating a series he seems to find more flawed than quality entertainment? Throughout his episode guide, Catz keeps cross-referencing his discussions with the short mini-essays in the second part of the book where he looks at nearly every aspect of the stories including what sorts of endings worked, or didn’t, the morality of Lt. Columbo, how the character developed over the decades, and the continuity, or lack of it throughout the decades. He even devotes an essay to suggesting why a number of episode titles weren’t the best and offers his suggestions for improvement. In fact, he puts forward a number of suggestions on how the stories and characters could have been better as well, especially when Columbo the character could have been truer to himself.
Clearly, Catz knows his subject intimately. In 1991, he began a ten year tenure as editor of The Columbo Newsletter. He has the full endorsement of Mark Dawidziak, author of The Columbo File (1989) who wrote the foreword for Catz’s study. Columbo Under Glass is 99% told from a viewer’s point-of-view, that is, it discusses what we see on the screen but there’s precious little about how it got there. Not until page 319 do we get much about the origins of the character on stage, and that too is a short discussion. There is next to no discussion of production histories, there are no interviews with insiders or participants. In short, this is from first to last Sheldon Catz’s take on Columbo and the reader is free to compare his own feelings with those of a man who has spent a lot of time dissecting every minute of Columbo ever aired.
If you’re extremely familiar with Peter Falk’s raincoated character or at least want to be, this book is for you. If you’re a less devoted fan, this is a book to skim but not immerse yourself in cover-to-cover reading. If you’re not already a fan of the cigar-smoking investigator who is always asking, “just one more thing,” Columbo Under Glass likely isn’t for you. Most of your questions are readily available online on the websites Catz lists in his final pages.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Nov. 14, 2016 at:
goo.gl/T9f35r
November 11, 2016
Remembering Robert Vaughn
I was so struck today to learn about the death of Robert Vaughn at the age of 83. How to best remember him here? I thought I’d repost an interview I conducted with Vaughn back in March 2002 which is still at my spywise.net website. In fact, should you visit
http://www.spywise.net/robertVaughn.html
you’ll see photos of me with Vaughan at the Montgomery Fairgrounds Antique Show in Gaithersburg, Maryland. My purpose was to ask Vaughn about his lesser known spy TV series like The Protectors and The A-Team, along with his thoughts on the longevity of U.N.C.L.E. as research for my first non-fiction book, Spy Television (Praeger Pub, 2003.
---
On February 9th, 2002, I gave myself a mission and gratefully accepted it. My mission: to attend the Montgomery Fairgrounds Antique Show in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and interview my childhood hero--actor Robert Vaughn, AKA Napoleon Solo, the "Man From U.N.C.L.E."
I've had harder missions. Arriving at the autograph tables early in the morning, I saw him--Robert Vaughn, the walking definition of secret agent elegance and style. He was sitting between two lovely actresses also their to be seen and greet fans. On Vaughn's right sat Karen Black, star of countless films and TV shows of the 1970s and beyond. On his right sat Linda Harrison, best known for her role as Nova, Charlton heston's love interest in the first two Planet of the Apes epics. Despite their distracting charms, it was Vaughn I had come to see, and he quickly agreed to speak with me over the noon hour.
For several hours before our conversation, my wife Betty and I shopped in the four rooms of collectibles, looking carefully for U.N.C.L.E. memorabilia for Napoleon, er, Robert to sign. Amidst all the carefully organized boxes and displays of Baby Boom nostalgia, I found it--the ideal souvenir for the occasion. One dealer sold me a vintage 1966 "16" magazine featuring a spread called "The Life of Robert Vaughn in 50 Photos." What could be more perfect--the life of the star of U.N.C.L.E., THE A-TEAM, and countless films and TV appearances signed by the man himself?
I should have known better. When I returned to the autograph table for our talk, my wife showed Vaughn the magazine. His excitement was obvious as he looked over the pictures. With tones revealing his own nostalgia for times past he said, "I've never seen this before. I was so much taller then. There's my high school sweetheart." Of course, my good-hearted spouse had to say it--"Why don't you give it to him?" "I was thinking about that . . ." muses I, aloud. But before my thought had jelled, the magazine disappeared from view faster than any spy's conjuring trick. Turning to me, Vaughn said, "So what is it you'd like to ask me?" Clearly, I'd paid my price of admission.
Of course, I'd thought out just what I wanted to ask as I was researching information for my book, SPY TELEVISION, then a book in search of a publisher. Being a lifelong U.N.C.L.E. fan, I knew Vaughn's ex-partner, David McCallum, had become so tired of questions about his role as Illya Kuryakin in the show, that he refused to answer any more questions about the old days. While Vaughn has always been more talkative about his years in the forefront of American popular culture, I suspected few questions I could ask hadn't been asked and answered many times before. So I started by inquiring into why Vaughn left the states after his most successful series had been cancelled in 1968, a subject of much conjecture by fans on ongoing and very lively online list serves devoted to what was once the most influential series on television. Many aficionados had speculated Vaughn's choice to leave America was based on the political problems of the era, notably the assassination of Vaughn's personal friend, Robert F. Kennedy. Was this so?
It was. Vaughn said firmly, "I was working in Czechoslovakia when the Russians invaded in August of 1968, and that, combined with the Vietnam War, and the election of Richard Nixon, I decided I'd spend some time outside of the United States. For the next four years, almost five years, I was based in London and did television series for three years, various films in England and on the continent and in Italy." At that time, it was widely reported Vaughn planned to leave acting to enter politics. Was this true? "Well, I actually hadn't talked about it but the fan magazines had talked about it. I never had any personal interest myself. I was basically opposing the war which was not a political issue to me. It was a international, humanity issue."
During this self-imposed exile, Vaughn starred as Harry Rule in a little-known series called THE PROTECTORS, a 30 minute show later syndicated in the U.S. From 1972 to 1973. As Vaughn had said he didn't want to do any further television series
after U.N.C.L.E., I asked how this came about. He told me Sir Lew Grade, who ran all the commercial programming in England at that time, called his agent in England and asked if Vaughn would be interested in doing a spy show there. "I said I wasn't very interested," he told me, "and then they said, `Well it's only a half-hour show, you'd only be here one year,' and they offered a pretty good deal. I didn't realize that in England, it took them five to six to seven days to shoot a half-hour show whereas in America it would take only three days. I wound up doing a second season, so I was there almost three years. " THE PROTECTORS wasn't a show the actor was especially proud of. "I wasn't too happy with the quality of the stories, but I had a wonderful time. I lived in London. Every weekend we spent in some place in England, Ireland, or Scotland. We did a lot of filming, actually, on the continent in Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, and just about every country available in Europe. "
After his return to the states, Vaugn's acting career continued in earnest, with both starring roles and guest appearances in films such as THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, SUPERMAN IV, KUNG FU: THE LEGEND CONTINUES, COLUMBO, LAW AND ORDER, and one episode of DIAGNOSIS: MURDER which featured three other TV spies from the '60s, Patrick Macnee, Barbara Bain, and Robert Culp. But one starring role didn't make it. "I did a quick series that didn't last very long called EMERALD POINT." Starring Dennis Weaver, the series "was done by the same people who did DYNASTY and DALLAS and it was kind of supposedly a show with that kind of orientation that took place in the Navy. It only lasted half a season. "
In 1985, Vaughn starred as General hunt Stockwell, a role designed to boost the ratings of the once popular A-TEAM, a show now a staple on the "TVLand" channel. It's a series best remembered for the presence of Mr. T and his catch-phrase, "I pity the fool." But after dropping ratings, Vaughn said he was asked to come in at the request of an old friend. "The guy that produced the A-TEAM, his name is John Ashly, he's since died, he was an actor. We were both young actors in our twenties when we came to Hollywood . . . He remembered me from our early days." (John Ashley was married to
Deborah Walley for a time with whom he appeared in the Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello beach party movies.) The show lasted only one more season, but during that year, one memorable episode teamed Vaughn with his old pal, David McCallum. In that adventure, "The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair" (first broadcast on Oct. 31, 1986),
McCalum played an old partner of General Stockwell who'd become a traitor and an agent for the Red Chinese. What was it like, I wondered, for the two friends to reunite? "We had a lot of fun. We keep in touch. David lives in new York City, I live in Connecticut about an hour north of New York City so we're in touch from time to time on the phone and personally. "
We chatted about the ongoing interest in what might seem to non-fans as a show long ago relegated to TV history--of course, I mean The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Despite its few appearances on the small screen since its first run from 1964 to 1968, five internet groups are devoted to the series, a detailed "web ring" of U.N.C.L.E. sites grow seemingly each month, and an ongoing series of CDs albums of original soundtracks continue to sell well. After 9/11, much discussion revolved around the fact that the war on terror would likely require just such an international organization as U.N.C.L.E. (The United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). What, I asked Vaughn, is the reason The MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. is still interesting to baby boomers now in their fifties? "I think it relates definitely to the ongoing success of the James Bond pictures," Vaughn replied. "Obviously, they're still making them and still making a lot of money. It is generally that genre that U.N.C.L.E. was supposed to emulate, which was an international roguish kind of spy who operates around the world with a lot of attractive women, and I guess that's why it's still going on. Cause there were a lot of attractive women in the '60s that are still on film. They may date but not the film." Knowing Vaughn had contributed to a dissertation by Cynthia Walker on U.N.C.L.E. at Rutgers university, I asked Vaughn his thoughts on the meaning of such scholarly interest in his show. "I don't know what it all meant, philosophically or intellectually. I know it was good fun for us to do and good fun for people to see. I guess I'll wait for Cyntheia Walker's report to find out the deeper meaning of the whole thing."
Currently, Vaughn is working on his autobiography which will be completed "when the autobiographer, meaning me, puts his butt in a chair long enough to wrap it up."
----
Looking back, I am so glad to have had this hour with an actor who had meant so much to me during my teenage years. Hope these memories will mean something to you as well.
http://www.spywise.net/robertVaughn.html
you’ll see photos of me with Vaughan at the Montgomery Fairgrounds Antique Show in Gaithersburg, Maryland. My purpose was to ask Vaughn about his lesser known spy TV series like The Protectors and The A-Team, along with his thoughts on the longevity of U.N.C.L.E. as research for my first non-fiction book, Spy Television (Praeger Pub, 2003.
---
On February 9th, 2002, I gave myself a mission and gratefully accepted it. My mission: to attend the Montgomery Fairgrounds Antique Show in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and interview my childhood hero--actor Robert Vaughn, AKA Napoleon Solo, the "Man From U.N.C.L.E."
I've had harder missions. Arriving at the autograph tables early in the morning, I saw him--Robert Vaughn, the walking definition of secret agent elegance and style. He was sitting between two lovely actresses also their to be seen and greet fans. On Vaughn's right sat Karen Black, star of countless films and TV shows of the 1970s and beyond. On his right sat Linda Harrison, best known for her role as Nova, Charlton heston's love interest in the first two Planet of the Apes epics. Despite their distracting charms, it was Vaughn I had come to see, and he quickly agreed to speak with me over the noon hour.
For several hours before our conversation, my wife Betty and I shopped in the four rooms of collectibles, looking carefully for U.N.C.L.E. memorabilia for Napoleon, er, Robert to sign. Amidst all the carefully organized boxes and displays of Baby Boom nostalgia, I found it--the ideal souvenir for the occasion. One dealer sold me a vintage 1966 "16" magazine featuring a spread called "The Life of Robert Vaughn in 50 Photos." What could be more perfect--the life of the star of U.N.C.L.E., THE A-TEAM, and countless films and TV appearances signed by the man himself?
I should have known better. When I returned to the autograph table for our talk, my wife showed Vaughn the magazine. His excitement was obvious as he looked over the pictures. With tones revealing his own nostalgia for times past he said, "I've never seen this before. I was so much taller then. There's my high school sweetheart." Of course, my good-hearted spouse had to say it--"Why don't you give it to him?" "I was thinking about that . . ." muses I, aloud. But before my thought had jelled, the magazine disappeared from view faster than any spy's conjuring trick. Turning to me, Vaughn said, "So what is it you'd like to ask me?" Clearly, I'd paid my price of admission.
Of course, I'd thought out just what I wanted to ask as I was researching information for my book, SPY TELEVISION, then a book in search of a publisher. Being a lifelong U.N.C.L.E. fan, I knew Vaughn's ex-partner, David McCallum, had become so tired of questions about his role as Illya Kuryakin in the show, that he refused to answer any more questions about the old days. While Vaughn has always been more talkative about his years in the forefront of American popular culture, I suspected few questions I could ask hadn't been asked and answered many times before. So I started by inquiring into why Vaughn left the states after his most successful series had been cancelled in 1968, a subject of much conjecture by fans on ongoing and very lively online list serves devoted to what was once the most influential series on television. Many aficionados had speculated Vaughn's choice to leave America was based on the political problems of the era, notably the assassination of Vaughn's personal friend, Robert F. Kennedy. Was this so?
It was. Vaughn said firmly, "I was working in Czechoslovakia when the Russians invaded in August of 1968, and that, combined with the Vietnam War, and the election of Richard Nixon, I decided I'd spend some time outside of the United States. For the next four years, almost five years, I was based in London and did television series for three years, various films in England and on the continent and in Italy." At that time, it was widely reported Vaughn planned to leave acting to enter politics. Was this true? "Well, I actually hadn't talked about it but the fan magazines had talked about it. I never had any personal interest myself. I was basically opposing the war which was not a political issue to me. It was a international, humanity issue."
During this self-imposed exile, Vaughn starred as Harry Rule in a little-known series called THE PROTECTORS, a 30 minute show later syndicated in the U.S. From 1972 to 1973. As Vaughn had said he didn't want to do any further television series
after U.N.C.L.E., I asked how this came about. He told me Sir Lew Grade, who ran all the commercial programming in England at that time, called his agent in England and asked if Vaughn would be interested in doing a spy show there. "I said I wasn't very interested," he told me, "and then they said, `Well it's only a half-hour show, you'd only be here one year,' and they offered a pretty good deal. I didn't realize that in England, it took them five to six to seven days to shoot a half-hour show whereas in America it would take only three days. I wound up doing a second season, so I was there almost three years. " THE PROTECTORS wasn't a show the actor was especially proud of. "I wasn't too happy with the quality of the stories, but I had a wonderful time. I lived in London. Every weekend we spent in some place in England, Ireland, or Scotland. We did a lot of filming, actually, on the continent in Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, and just about every country available in Europe. "
After his return to the states, Vaugn's acting career continued in earnest, with both starring roles and guest appearances in films such as THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, SUPERMAN IV, KUNG FU: THE LEGEND CONTINUES, COLUMBO, LAW AND ORDER, and one episode of DIAGNOSIS: MURDER which featured three other TV spies from the '60s, Patrick Macnee, Barbara Bain, and Robert Culp. But one starring role didn't make it. "I did a quick series that didn't last very long called EMERALD POINT." Starring Dennis Weaver, the series "was done by the same people who did DYNASTY and DALLAS and it was kind of supposedly a show with that kind of orientation that took place in the Navy. It only lasted half a season. "
In 1985, Vaughn starred as General hunt Stockwell, a role designed to boost the ratings of the once popular A-TEAM, a show now a staple on the "TVLand" channel. It's a series best remembered for the presence of Mr. T and his catch-phrase, "I pity the fool." But after dropping ratings, Vaughn said he was asked to come in at the request of an old friend. "The guy that produced the A-TEAM, his name is John Ashly, he's since died, he was an actor. We were both young actors in our twenties when we came to Hollywood . . . He remembered me from our early days." (John Ashley was married to
Deborah Walley for a time with whom he appeared in the Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello beach party movies.) The show lasted only one more season, but during that year, one memorable episode teamed Vaughn with his old pal, David McCallum. In that adventure, "The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair" (first broadcast on Oct. 31, 1986),
McCalum played an old partner of General Stockwell who'd become a traitor and an agent for the Red Chinese. What was it like, I wondered, for the two friends to reunite? "We had a lot of fun. We keep in touch. David lives in new York City, I live in Connecticut about an hour north of New York City so we're in touch from time to time on the phone and personally. "
We chatted about the ongoing interest in what might seem to non-fans as a show long ago relegated to TV history--of course, I mean The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Despite its few appearances on the small screen since its first run from 1964 to 1968, five internet groups are devoted to the series, a detailed "web ring" of U.N.C.L.E. sites grow seemingly each month, and an ongoing series of CDs albums of original soundtracks continue to sell well. After 9/11, much discussion revolved around the fact that the war on terror would likely require just such an international organization as U.N.C.L.E. (The United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). What, I asked Vaughn, is the reason The MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. is still interesting to baby boomers now in their fifties? "I think it relates definitely to the ongoing success of the James Bond pictures," Vaughn replied. "Obviously, they're still making them and still making a lot of money. It is generally that genre that U.N.C.L.E. was supposed to emulate, which was an international roguish kind of spy who operates around the world with a lot of attractive women, and I guess that's why it's still going on. Cause there were a lot of attractive women in the '60s that are still on film. They may date but not the film." Knowing Vaughn had contributed to a dissertation by Cynthia Walker on U.N.C.L.E. at Rutgers university, I asked Vaughn his thoughts on the meaning of such scholarly interest in his show. "I don't know what it all meant, philosophically or intellectually. I know it was good fun for us to do and good fun for people to see. I guess I'll wait for Cyntheia Walker's report to find out the deeper meaning of the whole thing."
Currently, Vaughn is working on his autobiography which will be completed "when the autobiographer, meaning me, puts his butt in a chair long enough to wrap it up."
----
Looking back, I am so glad to have had this hour with an actor who had meant so much to me during my teenage years. Hope these memories will mean something to you as well.
November 10, 2016
One more Invisible Man--The 2000-2002 SyFy version, this time . . .
We’ve looked at two TV series titled The Invisible Man, the 1958 British offering and David McCallum’s 1975 incarnation. Today, we’ll explore the SyFy Channel version that ran from June 10, 2000 to Feb. 1, 2002.
Created by producer Matt Greenberg and Developed by Carlton Prickett and Breck Eisner, the third version of another invisible TV spy debuted to the largest audience viewing an original program on the SyFy Channel to that date. For fans, the title was often shortened to “The I-Man.”
In the two-part pilot, French-Canadian Darien Fawkes (Vincent Ventresca) was a convicted thief forced to be a guinea pig in a secret government experiment. A synthetic gland secreting light bending quicksilver was inserted into his brain allowing him to become invisible. But it also began destroying his higher mental capabilities. A loose cannon by nature, the new chemical aggravated his stability, driving him slowly insane, dependent on counter drugs administered by Claire, “The Keeper” (Shannon Kenny). Fawke's quest in the series was to find a means to have this gland safely removed.
The personality of the mysterious organization Fawkes worked for was seen through the various supporting characters including his partner, Bobby Hobbs (Paul Ben-Victor), a bantering buddy who was streetwise but unsophisticated. A gun lover, Hobbs was noted for his intense paranoia and sense of under appreciation. Alex Monroe (Brandi Lanford) was the lead female agent. She'd transferred to the unnamed Agency after her newborn son was kidnapped and her ongoing quest was to recover him. She had considerable difficulty working with others, so Monroe typically operated alone. Albert Eberts (Michael Mccafferty) was the verbose computer nerd wishing for opportunities to perform field work. Administrating this small and under budgeted group was “The Official,” Charles Borden (Eddie Jones) who controlled all the secrets.
While rough-hewn, Faulks was clearly well read, often inserting quotes from famous authors in off-camera asides or in final moments when he commented on the meaning of his latest adventure. For example, one 2001 quote was “As Tennessee Williams once said, we have to distrust each other. It’s our only defense against betrayal.” This observation would fit many episodes as Faulks, like Number Six in The Prisoner, was on the receiving end of many biological and chemical weapons. For example, in one 2001 episode, the enemy organization, Chrysalis, infected him with a nano-bug allowing them to see and hear what he does. This was done by having the bug transported through sexual transmission.
Chrysalis was the 21st century version of THRUSH, the arch-nemesis of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Like THRUSH, Chrysalis raised many agents from birth. Fawks infiltrated a school for such children stolen from their mothers who’d been implanted with anti-aging DNA from Chrysalis masters. In one outing, Alex Monroe learned her lost son was in fact the child of the alleged head of Chrysalis, Jarod Stark (Spencer Garrett). In the series finale, viewers learned the super-children were the primary aim of Chrysalis, a technological superpower able to patiently wait its turn to take over the world.
Similarly, like The X-Files, the Agency had adversaries within the U.S. government itself. In “Insensate,” Fawkes met the leaders of the S.W.R.B. (Secret Weapons Research Branch), an agency so ruthless it intimidated and frightened the official. In that episode, Faukes learned his government was conducting illegal chemical and biological experiments on innocent civilians, resulting in a secret building of humans robbed of their senses. (“Insensate” received special promotion from the SyFy channel as it featured a rare guest appearance by Armin Shimerman, the former Ferengi bartender, Quark, on Star Trek: Deep Space 9).
The most personal theme developed as Darien uncovered both his family history and the background to why he was the chosen invisible agent. He learned his brother Kevin (David Burke) developed the Quicksilver gland and gave it to his brother to keep him out of prison before His murder by Arnaud DeFehrn (Joel Bissonnette). Appearing in nine episodes, Arnaud was the terrorist who implanted the RNA responsible for the invisibility madness. He gives himself a gland without the defect, but became permanently invisible. Later, Kevin’s memory RNA was injected into Darien in the hopes his resurrected mind could find out how to remove the gland. He declined, feeling Darrien was now a better man for it.
From the beginning, the series' producers avoided overworked science-fiction subjects like aliens or alternate universes, so the show kept close to its secret agent foundations without veering off into overused subjects on other series. Geared for a broad audience, especially 18-49 year olds, the dark themes were tempered with well-written humor, characterized by departmental bickering. In one episode, the agency tracked down stolen sperm from a Noble Prize winner’s sperm bank, re-capturing, as it were, the “crème de la crème.” One running gag was the names of continually changing cover agencies “absorbing” the department—whose budgets the Official drew from—completely unrelated to espionage. Thus Fawkes and Hobbs were rarely taken seriously when they announced they worked for the Department of Fish and Game, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or the United States Post Office.
The last four of the 45 episodes were aired in Jan. 2002, the show ending due to high costs and differences between the SyFy Channel and its parent company, USA. The cancellation inspired an on-line letter campaign including postcards and fliers ready-made for use by disappointed viewers. This led to an unusual request from the network after the 2001 anthrax scare. the network posted a note to "Invisible Maniacs" asking they not send "packages of Kool-Aid and glitter (or any other powdery substance). Due to the state of heightened security throughout the country and the U.S. Postal system, any and all questionable mail is being met with extreme scrutiny." (Powdery substances were symbolic of the gold flakes that fell off Fawkes’ body after he returned to visibility.)
Universal Studios released the first season on DVD in March 2008 with extras including commentary tracks and interviews with participants.
https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-...
You can see the full pilot episode at YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6904W...
You can also watch the series at Hulu:
www.hulu.com/the-invisible-man
Created by producer Matt Greenberg and Developed by Carlton Prickett and Breck Eisner, the third version of another invisible TV spy debuted to the largest audience viewing an original program on the SyFy Channel to that date. For fans, the title was often shortened to “The I-Man.”
In the two-part pilot, French-Canadian Darien Fawkes (Vincent Ventresca) was a convicted thief forced to be a guinea pig in a secret government experiment. A synthetic gland secreting light bending quicksilver was inserted into his brain allowing him to become invisible. But it also began destroying his higher mental capabilities. A loose cannon by nature, the new chemical aggravated his stability, driving him slowly insane, dependent on counter drugs administered by Claire, “The Keeper” (Shannon Kenny). Fawke's quest in the series was to find a means to have this gland safely removed.
The personality of the mysterious organization Fawkes worked for was seen through the various supporting characters including his partner, Bobby Hobbs (Paul Ben-Victor), a bantering buddy who was streetwise but unsophisticated. A gun lover, Hobbs was noted for his intense paranoia and sense of under appreciation. Alex Monroe (Brandi Lanford) was the lead female agent. She'd transferred to the unnamed Agency after her newborn son was kidnapped and her ongoing quest was to recover him. She had considerable difficulty working with others, so Monroe typically operated alone. Albert Eberts (Michael Mccafferty) was the verbose computer nerd wishing for opportunities to perform field work. Administrating this small and under budgeted group was “The Official,” Charles Borden (Eddie Jones) who controlled all the secrets.
While rough-hewn, Faulks was clearly well read, often inserting quotes from famous authors in off-camera asides or in final moments when he commented on the meaning of his latest adventure. For example, one 2001 quote was “As Tennessee Williams once said, we have to distrust each other. It’s our only defense against betrayal.” This observation would fit many episodes as Faulks, like Number Six in The Prisoner, was on the receiving end of many biological and chemical weapons. For example, in one 2001 episode, the enemy organization, Chrysalis, infected him with a nano-bug allowing them to see and hear what he does. This was done by having the bug transported through sexual transmission.
Chrysalis was the 21st century version of THRUSH, the arch-nemesis of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Like THRUSH, Chrysalis raised many agents from birth. Fawks infiltrated a school for such children stolen from their mothers who’d been implanted with anti-aging DNA from Chrysalis masters. In one outing, Alex Monroe learned her lost son was in fact the child of the alleged head of Chrysalis, Jarod Stark (Spencer Garrett). In the series finale, viewers learned the super-children were the primary aim of Chrysalis, a technological superpower able to patiently wait its turn to take over the world.
Similarly, like The X-Files, the Agency had adversaries within the U.S. government itself. In “Insensate,” Fawkes met the leaders of the S.W.R.B. (Secret Weapons Research Branch), an agency so ruthless it intimidated and frightened the official. In that episode, Faukes learned his government was conducting illegal chemical and biological experiments on innocent civilians, resulting in a secret building of humans robbed of their senses. (“Insensate” received special promotion from the SyFy channel as it featured a rare guest appearance by Armin Shimerman, the former Ferengi bartender, Quark, on Star Trek: Deep Space 9).
The most personal theme developed as Darien uncovered both his family history and the background to why he was the chosen invisible agent. He learned his brother Kevin (David Burke) developed the Quicksilver gland and gave it to his brother to keep him out of prison before His murder by Arnaud DeFehrn (Joel Bissonnette). Appearing in nine episodes, Arnaud was the terrorist who implanted the RNA responsible for the invisibility madness. He gives himself a gland without the defect, but became permanently invisible. Later, Kevin’s memory RNA was injected into Darien in the hopes his resurrected mind could find out how to remove the gland. He declined, feeling Darrien was now a better man for it.
From the beginning, the series' producers avoided overworked science-fiction subjects like aliens or alternate universes, so the show kept close to its secret agent foundations without veering off into overused subjects on other series. Geared for a broad audience, especially 18-49 year olds, the dark themes were tempered with well-written humor, characterized by departmental bickering. In one episode, the agency tracked down stolen sperm from a Noble Prize winner’s sperm bank, re-capturing, as it were, the “crème de la crème.” One running gag was the names of continually changing cover agencies “absorbing” the department—whose budgets the Official drew from—completely unrelated to espionage. Thus Fawkes and Hobbs were rarely taken seriously when they announced they worked for the Department of Fish and Game, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or the United States Post Office.
The last four of the 45 episodes were aired in Jan. 2002, the show ending due to high costs and differences between the SyFy Channel and its parent company, USA. The cancellation inspired an on-line letter campaign including postcards and fliers ready-made for use by disappointed viewers. This led to an unusual request from the network after the 2001 anthrax scare. the network posted a note to "Invisible Maniacs" asking they not send "packages of Kool-Aid and glitter (or any other powdery substance). Due to the state of heightened security throughout the country and the U.S. Postal system, any and all questionable mail is being met with extreme scrutiny." (Powdery substances were symbolic of the gold flakes that fell off Fawkes’ body after he returned to visibility.)
Universal Studios released the first season on DVD in March 2008 with extras including commentary tracks and interviews with participants.
https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-...
You can see the full pilot episode at YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6904W...
You can also watch the series at Hulu:
www.hulu.com/the-invisible-man
November 8, 2016
Book Review: Carol Burnett’s In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox
In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox Carol Burnett
Publisher: Random House Audio
Audible.com Release Date: September 13, 2016
ASIN: B01JKBTZBY
https://www.amazon.com/Such-Good-Comp...
Without question, if you want to enjoy Carol Burnett’s In Such Good Company, the audio edition is the way to go. Most importantly, Burnett herself is the reader/narrator which allows her personality to shine through from beginning to end. Along the way, we also get audio inserts from archived interviews from Vicki Lawrence, Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, and costume designer Bob Mackie. We also hear clips from an interview with Burnett by Dick Cavett, her final speech on the last episode of the series, and Burnett’s final rendition of “I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together.” And yes, one Tarzan yell is sneaked in.
In Such Good Company is all about the 11 years and 279 episodes of the classic Carol Burnett Show that ran on CBS from September 11, 1967 to March 29, 1978. Naturally, the book includes sketches of the recurring cast including Lawrence, Korman, Conway, and Lyle Waggoner along with behind-the-scenes participants from directors to musicians. She shares her memories of memorable guest stars including Bing Crosby, Roddy Mcdowell, Steve Lawrence, Edie Gorme, Betty White, Ken Berry, Vincent Price, Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable, and Mickey Rooney. She explains why Waggoner and Korman left the show and how Dick Van Dyke tried to fit in for three months of the last season.
Much of the story is Burnett’s retellings of her favorite sketches, especially the show’s parodies of classic films and musicals such as their take on soap operas (“As the Stomach Turns"), and Burnett’s favorite sketch, the 1976 “Went with the Wind!” Spoofing the scene in Gone With the Wind where Scarlett O'Hara must fashion a gown from curtains, Burnett, as Starlett, descends a long staircase wearing a green curtain complete with hanging rod. The outfit, designed by Mackie, is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution.
And, of course, Burnett discusses her favorite characters like Eunice Higgins in “The Family,” The charwoman, Nora Desmond, and “The Old Folks,” the latter featuring Burnett and Korman as Molly and Bert. Often, her memories are told using the voices of these characters. As she’s shared many times before, Burnett shows how her format was greatly influenced by The Garry Moore Show on which she was a player, notably the unrehearsed question-and-answer segment with the audience that opened each broadcast.
For serious Burnett fans and many not so serious, In Good Company isn’t going to be especially revelatory as Burnett covers much trodden ground. Beyond the synopses of her favorite skits and bits, she sticks to the behind-the-scenes anecdotes of what happened over the happy 11 years at Studio 53. There’s no dirty laundry exposed and she even refuses to name the one guest who was a pain in the ass. She’s justifiably proud of the show’s 25 prime-time Emmy Awards, being ranked No. 16 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time in 2002, and the “sandbox’s” many other awards.
In her final pages, Burnett admits nothing like The Carol Burnett Show could be produced on television now, especially due to the costs involved. Clearly, she was very glad to have spent 11 years in such good company, and that means we, her audience, as well as those who played in that “sandbox,” as she continually refers to her show. If you were glad to have spent time with that good company, this is a fine way to remember it.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Nov. 8, 2016 at:
goo.gl/SmlglA
Publisher: Random House Audio
Audible.com Release Date: September 13, 2016
ASIN: B01JKBTZBY
https://www.amazon.com/Such-Good-Comp...
Without question, if you want to enjoy Carol Burnett’s In Such Good Company, the audio edition is the way to go. Most importantly, Burnett herself is the reader/narrator which allows her personality to shine through from beginning to end. Along the way, we also get audio inserts from archived interviews from Vicki Lawrence, Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, and costume designer Bob Mackie. We also hear clips from an interview with Burnett by Dick Cavett, her final speech on the last episode of the series, and Burnett’s final rendition of “I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together.” And yes, one Tarzan yell is sneaked in.
In Such Good Company is all about the 11 years and 279 episodes of the classic Carol Burnett Show that ran on CBS from September 11, 1967 to March 29, 1978. Naturally, the book includes sketches of the recurring cast including Lawrence, Korman, Conway, and Lyle Waggoner along with behind-the-scenes participants from directors to musicians. She shares her memories of memorable guest stars including Bing Crosby, Roddy Mcdowell, Steve Lawrence, Edie Gorme, Betty White, Ken Berry, Vincent Price, Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable, and Mickey Rooney. She explains why Waggoner and Korman left the show and how Dick Van Dyke tried to fit in for three months of the last season.
Much of the story is Burnett’s retellings of her favorite sketches, especially the show’s parodies of classic films and musicals such as their take on soap operas (“As the Stomach Turns"), and Burnett’s favorite sketch, the 1976 “Went with the Wind!” Spoofing the scene in Gone With the Wind where Scarlett O'Hara must fashion a gown from curtains, Burnett, as Starlett, descends a long staircase wearing a green curtain complete with hanging rod. The outfit, designed by Mackie, is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution.
And, of course, Burnett discusses her favorite characters like Eunice Higgins in “The Family,” The charwoman, Nora Desmond, and “The Old Folks,” the latter featuring Burnett and Korman as Molly and Bert. Often, her memories are told using the voices of these characters. As she’s shared many times before, Burnett shows how her format was greatly influenced by The Garry Moore Show on which she was a player, notably the unrehearsed question-and-answer segment with the audience that opened each broadcast.
For serious Burnett fans and many not so serious, In Good Company isn’t going to be especially revelatory as Burnett covers much trodden ground. Beyond the synopses of her favorite skits and bits, she sticks to the behind-the-scenes anecdotes of what happened over the happy 11 years at Studio 53. There’s no dirty laundry exposed and she even refuses to name the one guest who was a pain in the ass. She’s justifiably proud of the show’s 25 prime-time Emmy Awards, being ranked No. 16 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time in 2002, and the “sandbox’s” many other awards.
In her final pages, Burnett admits nothing like The Carol Burnett Show could be produced on television now, especially due to the costs involved. Clearly, she was very glad to have spent 11 years in such good company, and that means we, her audience, as well as those who played in that “sandbox,” as she continually refers to her show. If you were glad to have spent time with that good company, this is a fine way to remember it.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Nov. 8, 2016 at:
goo.gl/SmlglA
November 7, 2016
Here's a battle scene excerpted from The Third Earth--
Here’s an excerpt from the brand-new The Third Earth—The Beta-Earth Chronicles: Book 5. This section comes from a much longer battle scene in the war between the pairs of Cerapin-Earth and the nams, the single-bodied humans the pairs are invading across a bridge that connects their respective districts. The pairs have vast technological advantages; the nams have the heart and courage to fight for self-preservation.
The story is told from the perspective of Malcolm Renbourn who’s watching the war from inside an underground bunker where a number of television screens show various angles of the fighting.
Without question, all eyes centered on the coming main event. The bridge. On one side, the pairs were lining up rows of their infantry that would lead the way for their armored troop carriers. A seemingly endless number of nams were preparing for their own, far less professional march. The pairs began by calling out through their loudspeakers and speaking-cones that resistance wasn’t necessary. No lives needed to be lost. No blood needed to be spilt. The 33 army was there to meet the needs of their people and cause no harm. Well, the nams were not interested in the needs of the unkind people of District 33.
Almost simultaneously, the two forces began their marches. I know not who fired first, but I’m sure it was the hail of arrows sent into the 33 ranks. They accomplished little beyond annoying the pairs. In response, the invaders shot the electric fire from their pistol-batons and sent waves of their whirling stun discs into the nams. The pairs sent hovering winged drones towards the nams, which suddenly wobbled in the air before crashing to the stones below. My eyes widened, as I saw nam arms pointing into the sky. I realized some of them were holding up signal blockers. Others responded to 33 technology by flinging bottles and jars containing fluids that ignited and exploded in the frontlines of the pairs.
Despite these opening shots, both sides moved relentlessly forward. For both sides, an obvious problem was the confinement of the walled bridge. Neither side could ever retreat as, especially in the nam hordes, there were bodies in the rear waiting to have their chance to join the battle.
With a ear-splitting howl and roar, the nams stopped their slow march and began screaming and running into the 33 soldiers. “Flam! Flam! Flam!” the nams cried in unison. Roughly translated, that little word meant “Those of us about to die will take you with us!”
That battle-cry was almost a weapon of its own. For the invaders, it resulted in confusion and surprise on so many faces. For the nams, they were voicing the rage and pain they had felt all their lives. While the 33 military was sturdily professional and didn’t break, the nams vented an emotional outcry that drove all of them to frenzied fury. They didn’t stop even as the bridge began to fill with the downed bodies of the dead and wounded of both sides. The nams had become screaming savages now flushed with the chance to hit back with a vengeance that was filling the pairs with growing fear.
Finally, the relentless flood of the nams broke through the first ranks of the pairs and hand-to-hand combat made it impossible for the fighters to know just who they were hitting, cutting, shooting, beating. Soldiers on both sides were picking up weapons left on the ground and turning them against whomever they were scrambling with. As the fighting was so close, the 33 forces could not use some of their more sophisticated weaponry as they’d be just as likely to cut down their own people as much as any nams. There armored vehicles ground to a stop as, apparently, the pairs wished not to crush the bodies of their own wounded and dying in their path. Some of their mortars might have taken out some of the nams near the back, but that could have resulted in weakening the bridge which was already quaking with the carnage.
The Third Earth is available at:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MSH4KZG
The Third Earth is also available through Smashwords at:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
And it’s at Barnes and Noble at:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-t...
Learn more about the Beta-Earth Chronicles at:
www.drwesleybritton.com
The story is told from the perspective of Malcolm Renbourn who’s watching the war from inside an underground bunker where a number of television screens show various angles of the fighting.
Without question, all eyes centered on the coming main event. The bridge. On one side, the pairs were lining up rows of their infantry that would lead the way for their armored troop carriers. A seemingly endless number of nams were preparing for their own, far less professional march. The pairs began by calling out through their loudspeakers and speaking-cones that resistance wasn’t necessary. No lives needed to be lost. No blood needed to be spilt. The 33 army was there to meet the needs of their people and cause no harm. Well, the nams were not interested in the needs of the unkind people of District 33.
Almost simultaneously, the two forces began their marches. I know not who fired first, but I’m sure it was the hail of arrows sent into the 33 ranks. They accomplished little beyond annoying the pairs. In response, the invaders shot the electric fire from their pistol-batons and sent waves of their whirling stun discs into the nams. The pairs sent hovering winged drones towards the nams, which suddenly wobbled in the air before crashing to the stones below. My eyes widened, as I saw nam arms pointing into the sky. I realized some of them were holding up signal blockers. Others responded to 33 technology by flinging bottles and jars containing fluids that ignited and exploded in the frontlines of the pairs.
Despite these opening shots, both sides moved relentlessly forward. For both sides, an obvious problem was the confinement of the walled bridge. Neither side could ever retreat as, especially in the nam hordes, there were bodies in the rear waiting to have their chance to join the battle.
With a ear-splitting howl and roar, the nams stopped their slow march and began screaming and running into the 33 soldiers. “Flam! Flam! Flam!” the nams cried in unison. Roughly translated, that little word meant “Those of us about to die will take you with us!”
That battle-cry was almost a weapon of its own. For the invaders, it resulted in confusion and surprise on so many faces. For the nams, they were voicing the rage and pain they had felt all their lives. While the 33 military was sturdily professional and didn’t break, the nams vented an emotional outcry that drove all of them to frenzied fury. They didn’t stop even as the bridge began to fill with the downed bodies of the dead and wounded of both sides. The nams had become screaming savages now flushed with the chance to hit back with a vengeance that was filling the pairs with growing fear.
Finally, the relentless flood of the nams broke through the first ranks of the pairs and hand-to-hand combat made it impossible for the fighters to know just who they were hitting, cutting, shooting, beating. Soldiers on both sides were picking up weapons left on the ground and turning them against whomever they were scrambling with. As the fighting was so close, the 33 forces could not use some of their more sophisticated weaponry as they’d be just as likely to cut down their own people as much as any nams. There armored vehicles ground to a stop as, apparently, the pairs wished not to crush the bodies of their own wounded and dying in their path. Some of their mortars might have taken out some of the nams near the back, but that could have resulted in weakening the bridge which was already quaking with the carnage.
The Third Earth is available at:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MSH4KZG
The Third Earth is also available through Smashwords at:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
And it’s at Barnes and Noble at:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-t...
Learn more about the Beta-Earth Chronicles at:
www.drwesleybritton.com
Wesley Britton's Blog
This just came in. My favorite two sentences of all time!
“The Blind Alien is a story with a highly original concept, fascinating characters, and not-too-subtle but truthful allegories. Don’t let the ...more
“The Blind Alien is a story with a highly original concept, fascinating characters, and not-too-subtle but truthful allegories. Don’t let the ...more
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