Wesley Britton's Blog, page 41

Book Review: Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy by Mike Love

Book Review: Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy
Mike Love and James S. Hirsch
Publisher: Blue Rider Press; 1 edition (September 13, 2016)
ISBN-10: 0399176411
ISBN-13: 978-0399176418
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Vibration...

Second only to the Beatles in terms of the number of books detailing the histories of the two respective bands, The Beach Boys have been explored from nearly every possible angle. It might seem a memoir from Mike Love might be redundant, but it’s instead a needed corrective to many a previous volume.

That’s largely due to articles and books that started in the ‘70s that created the myth of Brian Wilson being the single tortured “Genius” of the band with the other members mere chess-pieces to his brilliance. Worse, it was then the stories began that if he had had more support and less obstruction from the other Beach Boys, Brian’s projects, especially the legendary Smile, would have been given to a hungry fan base eager for whatever Brian came up with. While Brian’s father Murray is justly the most vilified figure in the saga, Mike Love has been reviled for decades for supposedly being the Beach Boy who opposed Brian’s creative evolution.

In Good Vibrations, Love builds a very convincing case of self-defense. For one matter, he details his own contributions to the band’s catalogue of hits, especially their lyrics. As with many a previous chronicler of the music of the Beach Boys, he discusses the turmoils of the troubled Brian Wilson and shows how it was drug abuse and mental issues that derailed Wilson’s creativity, not squabbles with his bandmates.

Song by song, album by album, Love traces the output of the band highlighting the contributions of everyone in the band, with a noticeable lack of anything positive to say about Al Jardine. He acknowledges the early dominance of Brian in the studio and Love’s leadership of the band on the road. He credits Carl and Dennis Wilson for their input over the years and sadly repeats the stories of their declines due to drug abuse. All the Beach Boys are seen, warts and all, as being a dysfunctional batch of boys not especially good in their romantic relationships. No surprises here.

Naturally, his discussion of the court case that finally validated his songwriting claims doesn’t put Brian in a very favorable light. The duels continued through the 50th reunion tour, but Love asserts interference from non-band members and legal obligations is what led to the tour’s sad end, not some personal ego trip on his part.

I personally think Love’s memories of his time with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rikikesh is the best description of the Maharishi’s ashram I’ve read to date. I too have long thought Love’s involvement with presidents Reagan and Bush put him in the Republican camp, but he claims to be apolitical and the issues he worked on such as environmental concerns were more liberal than conservative. The story of the Beach Boys, of course, includes many sad chapters including Dennis Wilson’s involvement with Charles Manson and the control Eugene Levy wielded over Brian. It’s amazing the group maintained any life at all over the last 30 years.

True, no one should take the book as the unvarnished truth, as Mark Twain would put it, and Love is sometimes rather thin on explanations especially discussing his disastrous Rock and Roll Hall of Fame speech. It’s impossible to argue with his conclusion that it remains the music, the “sonic oasis” as he calls it, that made Beach Boy music so universal, long-lasting, and meaningful to listeners over four generations.

If you’re among those who have seen Brian as the victimized hero and Mike Love as the vainglorious villain in the Beach Boys epic, Good Vibrations will contain many revelations and surprising perspectives. If you’re a Beach Boy fan and are willing to put your preconceptions aside, Good Vibrations is an indispensable read. Let me suggest reading the audio edition, read by Love himself. You get a hint of his personality with all his short laughs punctuating some of his observations. I’m very glad to have spent this time with one of the most important lyricists and rock stars of my generation. There’s no reason to be in either the Brian or Mike camps of supporters—we should be grateful we had them both, along with Carl, Dennis, Al, and Bruce Johnson.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Nov. 4, 2016 at:
goo.gl/oHkcbU

The Third Earth has finally arrived!

The Third Earth—The Beta-Earth Chronicles: Book 5
By Wesley Britton
Publisher: BearManor Media (November 3, 2016)
ASIN: B01MSH4KZG
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MSH4KZG


Immerse yourself in an extraordinary universe revealed by the most original storytelling you’ll ever experience. “Science fiction yes, but so much more.”

For twenty years, Dr. Malcolm Renbourn and Tribe Renbourn faced adventure after adventure, struggle after struggle on Beta-Earth.

Now, Renbourn and five of his Betan wives are forced to cross the multi-verse once again, this time to the strange world called Cerapin-Earth. After startling and frightening physical transformations, the altered Renbourns meet two new kinds of humanity. One is the dominant pairs who are able to share thoughts and sensations at the same time. The other are the nams, single-bodied people the pairs deem defective mono-minds. As a result, nams are exiled from the overpopulated cities of pyramid hives.

Tribe Renbourn must join the outcasts and teach them they are as worthy of love and acceptance as any unkind pair. But helping the nams learn how to stand up for themselves ultimately leads to a catastrophic war. At the same time, Cerapin scientists plan another multi-versal jump that must also end in a costly disaster. Along the way, two sexy spies complicate everything.

On a world where technology is worshiped like a religion, how can the nam rebels overcome the superior armaments of the pairs using primitive weaponry? While this conflict brews, Tribe Renbourn explores what it means to be human in ways they never expected. Will their epic end like it began, forced to sacrifice themselves to save a doomed city?


The Third Earth is available through Smashwords at:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

It’s also listed at Barnes and Noble at:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-t...

Book Review: Tom Clancy Duty and Honor by Grant Blackwood

Tom Clancy Duty and Honor (A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel)
Grant Blackwood
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons (June 14, 2016)
Publication Date: June 14, 2016
Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC


Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton


For some time now, I’ve felt the Tom Clancy estate isn’t doing Clancy’s legacy any favors by all those continuation novels written by other authors. True, Clancy himself started it all by creating franchises like Net Force, Splintered Cell, and Ops Center bringing in other authors to pump out new adventures in each of those series. It worked well enough for many years, but I admit when the Ops Center series was rebooted, I began to feel all these yarns were becoming paint-by-numbers formulas.

The flagship series was, of course, the Jack Ryan books followed by the Jack Ryan, Jr. novels. Jack Ryan, Jr., became a major character in 2003’s Teeth of the Tiger, which was also the introduction to The Campus, a private covert ops organization using the cover of Hendly Associates which funds the operation. In the eight books that followed, seven of which were co-written or fully authored by Mark Greaney, Ryan Jr. is part of the team sent out by the Campus normally battling terrorists or the Russians while Ryan Sr. is president except for the term when Ed Kealty sits in the White House.

While Jack Jr. is ostensibly signed on as a desk-bound analyst for The Campus, he soon joins Brian and Dominic Caruso in killing terrorists out in the field. In 2010’s Dead or Alive, John Clark and Ding Chavez join the team, and the series then very much centers on this ensemble cast. In 2015, Grant Blackwood contributed Dead or Alive to the series and then Duty and Honor this year, but his new volume has little of the flavor of any previous Ryan outing.

For one matter, Jack Jr. is on an extended “sabbatical” from The Campus so the entire supporting cast is missing. For another matter, this version of Jack Jr. is more than foolish and reckless from beginning to end—most of his choices are described as impulsive and many make little sense considering the training and connections established in the previous books. The plot is equally nonsensical with none of the scope of any previous Clancy novel starring his principal characters. “Duty”? Duty to who? Most of the storyline is Junior on a personal mission he doesn’t understand. “Honor”? How so? What honor is being upheld when Junior is seeking some assassin who is out to kill him but who balks at carrying out the deed?

The story opens up a bit, if not with an attractive supporting cast of characters, as Junior investigates the European Union’s private security firm, Rostock Security Group, and its founder, Jürgen Rostock. There’s a string of corpses as Ryan uncovers the truth behind Rostock’s benevolent face as catastrophic events are being planned.

What is most surprising about this disappointing book is that Grant Blackwood has a pretty good track record with scribing thrillers, including co-authorship with Clive Cussler. Judging from reviews at Amazon, few readers have any idea how this drop in quality came about. The good news is that Jack Ryan Sr. and Mark Greaney return this December in Tom Clancy True Faith and Allegiance. Perhaps there’s life in the literary epic yet, even as Amazon is preparing a TV series showcasing Jack Ryan. Stay tuned. But jump over Duty and Honor—a low ebb in an otherwise essential saga.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com at:
goo.gl/DPI6z4

Remembering the Forgotten 1959 World of Giants

The syndicated World of Giants (Sept. 5--Nov. 28, 1959) was the most expensively made television series of its day. The 13 30 minute black and white World of Giants was inspired by the success of the 1957 film, The Incredible Shrinking Man, along with a plethora of other tiny people B movies.

In this early fusion of the spy genre and science fiction, Mel Hunter (Marshall Thompson) was an intelligence bureau agent who, while spying at a missile site behind the Iron Curtain, suffered from a strange residue shower after a rocket filled with experimental fuel exploded. His molecular structure changed, and he shrank to six inches in height and was endowed with reflexes "somewhere between a hummingbird and a mongoose." He was paired with normal sized agent Bill Winters (Arthur Fronz) and used his unique gift in secret missions. Each episode opened with the narration:

“You are about to see one of the most closely guarded secrets and one of the most fantastic series of events ever recorded in the annals of counter-espionage. This is my story. The story of Mel hunter, who lives in your world, a world of giants.”

In another narration, Hunter told viewers:

"It was up to me to be careful 3600 seconds of every hour. I couldn't expect the rest of the world to live my way. To the rest of the world, my problems are not a matter of life and death. The Bureau guards many fantastic secrets. But none quite so fantastic as Mel Hunter - me. Following my escape from a nightmare behind the Iron Curtain six months ago, I watched along with 14 doctors and 17 scientists and saw myself shrink to the size of a six-inch ruler. The shrinking had stopped. The scientists were still hoping, still working on my case, and I was still a special agent ... a kind of special special agent."

In an uneven mix of special effects and anti-Communist propaganda, World of Giants played it straight with the little agent as fearful of daily life as the Reds. Falling pencils were as deadly as the dogs who growled and threatened hunter while he scurried under doors, up rose bushes, and lifted giant phone receivers. He lived in a luxurious dollhouse, exercised on a tiny gymnastics bar, and was carried around in a special briefcase equipped with a trapdoor over which was his built -in seat and seat belt. But he also suffered from nightmares taking him back to the mission that changed his life and showed considerable jealousy when his partner had romantic encounters.

For the series, producer William Alland discovered new uses for trick photography, notably split-screen filming, which helped reduce the costs of creating props. The program was shot entirely in Hollywood. Jack Arnold, who had directed two Alland productions as well as The Incredible Shrinking Man, directed some episodes.

Marshall Thompson, later Dr. Marshall Tracy of TV’s Daktari was perfectly cast, but no one could take his predicament seriously. As one producer noted, it’s difficult to believe your country could collapse if the hero can’t escape a playful kitten. No one could accept the notion of J. Edgar Hoover briefing a micro-agent in his office. Both intentional and unintended humor appeared in the visuals and dialogue as in one scene where a scientist asked hunter what he most wanted. “A five inch girl,” was the reply. When the series ended, scientists were looking for a cure, but no cure could help a series based simply on a gimmick.

Not released on DVD, you can see a number of clips from the show at YouTube including:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrdrW...  

Book Review: Chasing the Last Laugh: Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-the-World Comedy Tour by Richard Zacks

Without question, Richard Zacks’ richly detailed research will mainly appeal to Mark Twain enthusiasts. That company includes me. But you don’t need to have a background in Mark Twain studies to find this travelogue a fascinating read.

The story begins in the final decade of the 19th century when Mark Twain found himself bankrupt largely due to his investments in a troublesome typesetting machine and the disastrous Charles Webster publishing company Twain owned. Enter millionaire Henry H. Rogers who does his best to dig Twain out of the quagmire. But Twain’s wife Livy insists on all debts getting paid back dollar-for-dollar to uphold her family’s reputation. To meet his obligations, Twain is forced to go on an around the world lecture tour to raise the funds.

While I certainly haven’t read all the previous books on the Clemens’ family journeys in 1895-1896, I always thought that Twain endured the journey as an unrelenting ordeal but Zacks convinced me that impression is an oversimplified response to what happened. True, the family suffers from ailments and unpleasant and sometimes dangerous travel conditions from time to time, but Twain benefited from the experience in many important ways. While he frequently complained about taking to the stage, Twain bathed in the affectionate responses he got from audiences across the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and India although his anti-racist readings didn’t fare well in South Africa. The sight-seeing, including visits with many interesting dignitaries, especially in India, made for a tour anyone would envy, especially as Twain was treated far more like a triumphant prince and not a beleaguered pauper. And the fact he set out to do this at all earned him good press which enhanced his already august reputation considerably.

I admit, much of the day-by-day minutia is not all absorbing reading, although we get to experience what Twain thought and see what he saw. Not all readers need a dollar-by-dollar accounting of just who Twain’s creditors were and what hoops Twain leaped through to accommodate them. On the other hand, Twain’s attraction to India is extremely interesting as we encounter the exotic, colorful carnival that Twain witnesses from regal potentates to fakirs and beggars on the streets. For my money, Zacks provides a valuable service with his historical overviews that provide deep contexts for the places the Clemens went and some of the people they met.

There’s considerable humor, as you might expect, along the way. That includes generous samplings of the stories Twain used in his presentations along with many bits and pieces from his notebooks and letters. The perspectives also include passages from correspondence from Livy Clemens and their daughter, Clara. The result isn’t just a tracing of the tour’s route until the tragic news of daughter Suzy’s death in August 1896, but a very well-done and balanced portrait of the complex author and his family relationships.

If you want cover-to-cover entertainment, start with Twain’s own Following the Equator, his under-appreciated if uneven 1897 account of the tour. But Zacks’ study is also worthy of appreciation for what he has added to studies of the life and literature of the justly lionized Mark Twain. Chasing the Last Laugh isn’t for everyone, but it should be on many a bookshelf of those interested in 19th century American literature and history.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com, Nov. 1, 2016
goo.gl/TgskuR


Purchase Chasing the Last Laugh at—
https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Last-L...

Back to 1950s TV sci fi with 1958's The invisible Man

Just for fun, this week we’re going to be revisiting a few obscure but memorable sci fi TV series from the 1950s. I wager most readers will have likely never heard of them or never seen them since their original broadcasts.

Today, we’re going to look at the original 1958 The Invisible Man. While there have been various invisible TV characters over the years, (including 1975’s The Gemini Man and Christopher Eccleston in 2004’s Heroes), there have been three series titled The Invisible Man. A few weeks back, we remembered David McCallum’s 1975 version, sometime down the road we might explore the 2000-2002 Syfy entry.

The original TV Invisible Man, sometimes called H.G. Wells The Invisible Man, ran on CBS and ITV from Sept. 14, 1958 to July 5, 1959. For two seasons of 26 half-hour adventures, producer Ralph Smart, best known for his work on Danger Man, a.k.a. Secret Agent, fused H. G. Wells and Ian Fleming in The Invisible Man, England’s first fanciful Secret Agent series.

The project began when ITC head, Sir Lew Grade, wanted to move beyond the success of his historically set dramas featuring characters like Robin Hood and Sir Lancelot. He wanted modern settings that would appeal to the export market, especially in the U.S. A pilot was shot featuring Canadian actor Robert Beatty providing the voice for the unseen hero, but Smart scrapped this unusable version. Viewers of the era never saw the substandard special effects of this half-hour, especially the too obvious wires used to animate moving objects. Some footage was salvaged for a revised pilot for a series now centered on Dr. Peter Brady, a British scientist who accidentally made himself invisible experimenting with light refraction.

Brady is initially declared a state secret and locked up, but eventually convinces the British government, represented by Sir Charles Anderson, to allow him to return to his laboratory and search for an antidote ("Secret Experiment"). British Intelligence recruits him for an assignment ("Crisis in the Desert"), but soon security is breached ("Behind the Mask") and he becomes a celebrity ("Picnic with Death"). Using his invisibility to help people in trouble, Brady solves crimes and fights spies.

Plots were never the point as many stories were hastily cobbled together. At first intended to be a comedy, new scriptwriter Ian Stuart Black was called in to crank out stories, and he shifted the emphasis to political thrillers. For example, one story dealt with a terrorist plot to smuggle nuclear devices into Western capitals as blackmail to enrich Communist coffers.

The main attraction of the show was the novelty of viewers seeing drinks, test tubes, or cigarettes floating in the air. They saw car doors opening and steering wheels turned by unseen hands, and bad guys duking it out with invisible fists. Special effects master Jack Whitehead created most of the situations with wires allowing glasses to rise, chairs to be jerked downward simulating a man sitting, and hats lifting from an invisible head.

Unintended events provided some unwanted drama during filming. On one occasion, a stuntman drove a car through London, the driver hiding under a false seat. Passersby thought a runaway car was loose, and chased down the vehicle. While filming another scene involving a moving car, a large arc lamp, used to brighten locations, fell and nearly hit the car carrying a stuntman and co-star Lisa Daniely, missing her by inches.

During the series run, the identity of the primary actor playing Bradey was a closely guarded secret to keep viewer interest. In 1965, while the series was still in reruns in the U.K., it was revealed a little-known actor named Johnny Scripps was usually the on-screen body, a short man who looked through buttonholes on Brady’s shirts. Tim Turner was the principal voice actor and appeared visibly in the “Man In Disguise” episode as a villain with a foreign accent. Supporting characters included Brady’s widowed sister Diane Brady Wilson (Lisa Daniely) and his young niece Sally (Deborah Watling). As the sister essentially acted as Brady’s wife, Daniely asked producers why she wasn’t cast as a spouse. She was told the networks wouldn’t want viewers speculating about an invisible man sleeping with a woman, although he did get occasional romantic moments as when Brady kissed a Russian agent (Zena Marshall). While no breakthroughs for women leads occurred onscreen, the show benefited from production supervisor Aida Young, one of the first women to serve in this position for television.

Future Avengers Ian Hendry and Honor Blackman guest starred, and future Avengers writers Brian Clemens and Philip Levine contributed scripts. Another supporting player was Desmond Lewellyn, soon to become the “Q” in the Bond series. At one point, the show had a moment of controversy when the allegedly anti-Communist plot lines drew the ire of the Labour Peace Fellowship, an organization campaigning for world disarmament. They demanded the show be dropped from the schedules, claiming it was “calculated to ferment hatred against Russia” and “a danger to East-West relations.”

In 2006, MPI Home Video released the complete series, including the unaired pilot, for DVD players in the UK including commentary tracks on the episodes “Shadow Bomb,” “Picnic With Death,” and “Secret Experiment” by Lisa Daniely, Deborah Watling, Brian Clemens and Ray Austin. Dark Sky Films issued the two seasons of b&w adventures for American audiences, but without the extras. The series is now deemed the transitional show in between ITC’s swashbuckling programs like the Adventures of Robin Hood and Ralph Smart’s Danger Man, the 1961 program that began the long run of ITC spy series.

You can order the four-disc complete series released by Network Entertainment (rated 4.6 by reviewers to date)at:
Amazon_com Invisible Man The Complete Series Ernest Clark, Tim Turner, Johnny Scripps, N-A Movies & TV

Book Review: Too Bad to Die by Francine Mathews

I’ve lost count of how many novels I’ve read over the years that fictionalize author Ian Fleming’s involvement in Naval Intelligence in World War II. In each case, known history, speculative biography, and obvious literary invention meet. Most yarns by the likes of Damian Stevenson and Aaron Cooley seek to present foreshadowings of what Fleming would write in his James Bond books. The imaginations of such writers are usually quite fanciful with Fleming being more the action figure than he actually was.

I can’t recall any previous work quite as literate as Francine Mathews’ To Bad to die which weaves flashbacks from Fleming’s childhood into his investigation into a Nazi plot to assassinate Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at their November 1943 conference in Tehran to plan out the Normandy invasion. Very convincingly, Mathews sketches many portraits of important historical figures from the “Big Three” to their entourages and family members, code-breaker Allan Turing, broadcaster Edward R. Morrow, Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek, and U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, Averell Harriman.

Although little of this story happened or could have happened in 1943, Mathews is especially believable creating the milieu in which all these figures walked, notably using vocabulary and terms of English schoolboys when Fleming was young. Hints of the Bond books to come include references to martinis shaken, not stirred, a voice inside Fleming’s head giving him the alter ego of 007, a false passport giving Commander Fleming the fake name of James Bond, and a torture scene is clearly meant to seem the inspiration for a very similar situation in 1953’s Casino Royale. The death of Fleming’s father during World War I is offered as the psychological motivation for Fleming’s spinning out fantastic yarns. In short, Mathews digs deeper than many other writers to give readers more than a hot and fast page-turner.

Obviously, Bond fans, World War II buffs, and lovers of espionage yarns in general are a perfect audience for Too Bad to Die. Aficionados of suspense and mystery stories should find much to appreciate from Francine Mathews’ descriptive tale, even if few readers will miss the obvious clues that reveal who the main villain is long before he levels a pistol at Fleming. Still, I can’t help but think the actual creator of James Bond would approve of this one.


Purchase Too Bad to Die at:
https://www.amazon.com/Too-Bad-Die-Fr...

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Oct. 29, 2016:
http://dpli.ir/E1oQiL

Book Review: Tippi: A memoir by Tippi Hedren

Tippi: A Memoir
Tippi Hedren
Publisher: William Morrow (November 1, 2016)
ISBN-10: 0062469037
ISBN-13: 978-0062469038
https://www.amazon.com/Tippi-Memoir-H...

Back in Feb. 2012, I had the opportunity to interview actress, humanitarian, and animal rights activist Tippi Hedren for online radio’s “Dave White Presents.” At the time, she was touting The Girl, an HBO/BBC film about Hedren’s relationship with Alfred Hitchcock in which Hedren was played by Sienna Miller.

To my surprise, Hedren never mentions The Girl in her new memoir, although she devotes several inevitable chapters to her involvement with the director who discovered her when he saw her in a commercial and then cast her as his leading lady in 1963’s The Birds and again in the following year’s Marni opposite Sean Connery. As she’s been saying for years, Hedren again expresses her gratitude for all Hitchcock taught her about the movie business while discussing his obsessive sexual harassment and stalking of her before threatening to ruin her career for not yielding to his advances. It’s likely most readers will pick up Tippi looking for insights into The Birds, Marni, and Hitchcock as these are the subjects she is most known for. However, few readers will glean any new revelatory details on these matters as they’ve been covered in countless sources before.

What is likely to most interest those who don’t know the story is Hedren’s epic eleven-year quest to make the film Roar (1981) with her then husband, Noel Marshall. In 1969 while she was shooting two films in Africa, the couple was introduced to the plight of African lions. Soon, the Marshall’s started bringing lions, lions, more lions, cheetahs, and tigers into their Hollywood home in preparation for the movie they wanted to make to spread awareness about endangered African wildlife.

The lion’s share of the memoir deals with Tippi’s life with the lions which became more than one private home could handle. Ultimately she created the Shambala Preserve to house the more than 150 animals used in Roar which grew to include any abandoned wild felines that had no other place to go. During the making of the film, many of these animals were almost lost in a ravaging flood and later surrounded by California wildfires. The section on the flood and the quickly assembled rescue of the animals is without doubt the most exciting passage of the book.

Gratefully, Tippi is not a name-dropping Hollywood tell-all, and those looking for much about the movie business won’t get much of what they seek. Readers will see little about her short time working with Charlie Chaplin on the Countess from Hong Kong and less on later film and TV appearances other than her pleasure at appearing on The Bold and the Beautiful. Admittedly, most of her roles were either in low-budget films or one-off appearances on television series used to raise money for her causes. For me, the biggest surprise was the Marshall’s efforts to get Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist into print and their having to wait for years to earn their well-deserved percentages of the book and film version.

Instead, the memoir covers one woman’s odyssey from a girl who hoped to become a figure skater turned model turned actress and the mother of Melanie Griffith and grand-mother of Dakota Johnson. Griffith fans may marvel she survived child-hood with all those dangerous beasts literally prowling into every room in her house. Along the way, we see Hedren taking on humanitarian efforts like entertaining the troops in Vietnam, taking overseas tours on behalf of Feed the Hungry, becoming the God Mother of the modern Vietnamese Nail Industry, and her efforts to push Legislation through Congress for the protection of wild animals in captivity. She shares much about her personal life, like the accident that took away her senses of smell and taste and the constant headaches she’s been enduring for years.

From beginning to end, a very personable and vivacious personality shines through the triumphs and struggles, and we meet a very independent and strong-willed lady whose self-confidence rarely lags even when things seem very dark, especially in the later ‘70s when her second marriage and film work hit the bottom. It’s hard not to root for a courageous woman who isn’t self-absorbed but rather deeply concerned for her family, refugees, and of course her beloved big cats. Bull elephants, too. One indication of what matters to Tippi is the appendix which lists an impressive catalogue of awards and honors, but there’s no filmography.

In short, this is more than a readable autobiography, especially if you don’t need wall-to-wall star-studded anecdotes of Hollywood’s yesteryears. Tippi Hedren herself is more than worth the price of admission. Perhaps you’ll be inspired by her wisdom and sage advice and be moved to join in with her animal rights projects.

You can hear Wes Britton’s Feb. 29, 2012 audio interview with Tippi Hedren archived for download at:
http://tinyurl.com/87lxu8o


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Oct. 27, 2016 at:
goo.gl/uWGnfY

Planet Hopping with L. Sprague De Camp

As you can see from the “Analysis” section below,L. Sprague De Camp’s Viagens/Krishna SERIES was intended to be entertaining, full of action and humor. After all these years, I still hesitate to describe the books as classic or indispensable reading. Still, there’s a readership for these old-fashioned adventures, and that audience might include you.

THE VIAGENS/KRISHNA SERIES
Cultural clashes between Earthmen and Krishnans result in heroes' battles against Smugglers, searches for lost humans, and rescues of women in jeopardy
Authors: L. Sprague De Camp (1907-2000) and Catherine Crook De Camp (1907-2000)

Location: Planets Earth, Krishna, travels between
Time of plot: Twenty-second century
First published: The Rogue Queen (1951), The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (1953), Cosmic Manhunt (1954), The Tower of Zanid (1958), The Search for Zei (1962), The Virgin and the Wheels (1962, 1940), The Hand of Zei (1963), The Hostage of Zir (1977), The Bones of Zora (1983), The Swords of Zinjaban (1991)

The Plot: The Rogue Queen takes place on the planet Niond where female worker Iroedh meets an Earth scientist who is visiting her caste-bound society. Iroedh is a social outcast and falls in love with a male drone named Antis. Iroedth and the Earthman rescue Antis from a scheduled execution, and they wander as outcast rogues. They learn their community's diet inhibits sex hormones, so Iroedth eats meat and becomes fully functional. She brings this news home, and her community realizes their old caste system must crumble.
The Continent Makers is a collection of short stories and the novelette, "The Continent Makers" which is centered on Gordon Graham, a geophysicists helping design a new continent. He meets Jeru-Bhetiru, a beautiful Oirian, and falls in love. Alien agents capture the two, seeking information from Graham. He escapes and traces the gang to Ascension Island. He frees Jeru, destroys the gang, stops an alien invasion, but looses the girl.
In The Cosmic Manhunt Victor Hasselborg goes to Krishna to find a merchant's eloping daughter. Adventurer Anthony Fallon, her betrothed, becomes the corrupt king of Zamba attempting to smuggle guns against the embargo. Hasselborg kidnaps the girl, returns to Earth, and Fallon is imprisoned.
In The Tower of Zanid, Earth archeologist Julian Fredro hires Fallon after his prison term to guide him to an ancient Tower guarded by the Yeshites. Fallon also accepts a contract to spy on the Yeshites. Disguised as Yeshite priests, Fallon and Fredro enter the Tower, discovering an armament factory. The spies are caught, escape, and join an invasion of the Tower. The Yeshites lose and sign a treaty.
The Virgin and The Wheels are two novels, The Virgin related to this series. On Krishna, Brian Kirwan and Gottried Bahr rescue American missionary Althea Merrick from Gorchakov who has forced marriage on her and bungles raping her. The three escape to a primitive island. Gorchakov pursues them, a battle ensues, and Yuruzh, a native prince, kills Gorchakow and rescues Alethea. The two leave as lovers.
The Wheels tells of lawyer Alister Park who discovers he is shifting between identities and an alternate reality called Vinland. His primary other-self is a powerful Bishop Scoglund of Vinland. In these two roles, Park becomes Vinland's Secretary of War and orchestrates political maneuvers until his lawyer-self is killed. As Bishop Scoglund, he presides over his own funeral.
In The Search for Zei, Earthman Dirk Barnevelt goes to Krishna to find missing scientist Igor Shtain. He learns Shtain is a hostage of the Sunqar pirates. Barnevelt disguises himself as a Krishna warrior and travels to Qiriv, a royal matriarchal kingdom. The Sunqar pirates raid the palace and kidnap the princess Zei. The queen commissions Barnevelt to ransom Zei, and he enters the Sunqar stronghold where he finds Shtain. A fight breaks out, and Barnevelt and Zei escape, pursued by the pirates. Barnevelt and Zei are mutually attracted, but are of different species, and Zei's royal status precludes permanent relationships.
In The Hand of Zei, Barnevelt and Zei hike inland and find her homeland. The Queen rewards Barnevelt and makes him commander of an allied assault on the Sunqar. Barnevelt rescues Shtain and defeats the pirates. He learns Zei too is human, a child adopted so her mother could retain her throne. The two marry and overturn the social order.
The Hostage of Zir is Fergus Reith, a tour guide assigned a group of boorish Earthers on Krishna. A rebel leader kidnaps them to bargain for arms. Reith escapes, frees his group, and learns his quarreling tourists will be deported.
In The Bones of Zora, Morat and Foltz, two quarreling paleontologists, dig for specimens of Krishna's past. Fergus Reith, Morat's guide, finds his ex-wife, Alicia, held captive by Foltz. He rescues her, and the three escape an attack by the enraged Foltz. A priest cult captures Reith and Morat, Alicia rescues them, but pirates capture the three. They escape, Morat and Alicia leave for Earth, and Reith prepares for his next tour. Twenty-two years later, the three meet again in The Swords of Zinjaban. Alicia is an executive for a visiting movie crew, and contracts Reith and Monat to assist them. Reith and Alicia help the movie crew find locations and bail them out of misadventures with Krishnans, wild beasts, and misplaced sexual advances on both Reith and Alicia. They meet the reformed Anthony Fallon while attempting to reconcile. A Krishnan leader kidnaps Alicia, and Reith and Fallon rescue her. Reith and Alicia decide to re-marry. The movie crew battles angry Krishnans, the movie director cheats Reith out of his pay, but the wedded couple establishes a new life.

Analysis: De Camp's purpose is simple entertainment, each story a plot-driven adventure described in imaginative, carefully researched detail. Humor adds a level of satire, especially in the twist-ending short stories in the Continent Makers collection which contains the 1949 "The Animal-Cracker Plot," the first story of what some call the "Viagens Interplanatarians" series. Other humorous stories in the volume include "The Inspector's Teeth," "Summer Wear," "Finished," "The Galon Whistle," " Git Along!," and "Perpetual Motion." In The Swords of Zinjaban, the best developed novel in the series, situational comedy adds much interest to an otherwise episodic, repetitive adventure. In most volumes, usually novels combining two previously published short stories, however, there is little more than wry commentary on either human or Krishnan culture except regarding inter-species sex and other conflicts between differing cultures.
Critics frequently cite Rogue Queen, the one Viagens novel not taking place on Krishna, alongside his 1939 Let Darkness Fall as being his best work, establishing the mythos, tone, and techniques he would follow in later books. Krishna, Earth, and the other planets in the series provide De Camp a wide range of settings and conflict situations that allowed him to use the elements of his previous fantasy work in a science-fiction environment. This is particularly noticeable on the barbaric Krishna with its medieval civilization of priests and priestesses, secretive cults, mysterious towers, and primitively-armed kingdoms. But most books tend to repeat familiar patterns of structure, plot, and character development. Most stories are a combination of Earth detectives seeking missing colleagues who encounter Krishnans attempting to circumvent the arms embargo on Krishna. Often, women are placed in sexual jeopardy and are rescued by the hero, giving the stories and erotic undercurrent.
While lead characters have their own idiosyncrasies, most are interchangeable with virtually identical personalities. Frequently, introverted Earthers travel to Krishna, disguise themselves as Krishnans, become heroes, and begin new lives on Krishna. De Camps's characters are often either independent detectives who are fast-thinking and physically adept or greedy con-artists who are clever and often escape justice. With the exception of Fergus Reith, the lead character in the final three adventures, heroes typically appear in two novels, minor supporting players appear throughout the series providing the loose linkage between the books. Many books with recurring characters can be considered a series-within-a-series, or, like the Zei books, combined into one volume as in the 1978 illustrated Hands of Zei which fused The Search for Zei and The Hands of Zei. In The Swords of Zinjaban, De Camp brings together all his favorite characters and plotlines, providing, if not the series final culmination, at least a volume tying up all loose ends leaving the setting open for totally new adventures.
Critics tend to discuss De Camp's detailed, sensory, and realistic environments in his over ninety books, particularly his adherence to real-time vs. subjective time space travel. As his friend Isaac Asimov noted, De Camp does not believe in the idea of hyperspace intergalactic spaceships. As his purpose since the 1930's was to create escapist fiction, his long career is noted more for his descriptive style than for thoughtful substance except in his non-fiction works on history, science, and biography. His considerable interest in the development of technology, detailed in his Ancient Engineers: Technology, and Invention from the Earliest Times to the Renaissance (1987) and his studies in ancient myth, developed in his Great Cities of the Ancient World: From Thebes to Constantinople (1990) provide much of the detail, ambiance, and sense of authenticity in his Krishna books.

New Review for The Blind Alien!

Just stopped by my The Blind Alien Amazon page and see yet another new review! Nice to see a year has gone by and new readers still find the book worth the time to comment on—


Intriguing…
I’ve not read a book like this before, full of alternative perspectives, excellent characterisation, plots, emotional turmoil and torment. Ripped from Earth, Malcolm, a well-read but relatively insignificant earthling, finds himself suddenly transported to a planet in another universe. During this transition, he loses his sight, so he has to face this alien world with a different culture, language, morals and ethics, totally blind. Here, the elite treat him like a science experiment probing and analysing every part of him - inside and out. But through the months of experiments and torment, he devises a plan to escape using the only weapon he has - his own uniqueness. Therein, other characters emerge helping him with is struggles and adding their cultural and emotional perspectives. The plot and dialogue are densely packed with ideas and the unique structure of the plot transport the reader to this new world. Dr Britton has successfully created a parallel world; something that many sci-fi books fail miserably at. Well worth the read!
---Robert Cole, author The Ego Cluster