Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 55

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer

Mali was a cultural center of Africa and the west in the late Middle Ages producing original works of philosophy, theology, history, literature, and a science, and developing a rich culture of manuscript production. In the centuries since the Middle Ages, that tradition has been damaged by a series of radical governments, many of which were hostile to the manuscript culture, driving hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of manuscripts into hidden chests and basements as their owners tried to preserve their heritage. This remarkable book is the story of both the development and decline of that culture, and of the astounding effort to find and preserve those manuscripts in modern libraries built to house them in Timbuktu. It is also the story of how an al-Qaeda inspired group of radical Islamicists took over Mali, threatening to destroy those manuscripts as representing a tradition of Islam they rejected. Finally, it’s the story of brave individuals who risked their lives to save hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable treasures of the past.

 

Shatnerquake by Jeff Burk

Shatnerquake by Jeff Burk

I have read many thousands of novels over the course of my life, but never encountered anything quite like Shatnerquake. The setting is a convention (Shatnercon) dedicated to the career of William Shatner. The hero is William Shatner, himself, who is also the guest of honor at the convention. The villains—or at least most of them—are also William Shatner—sort of. The other villains are fans of Bruce Campbell (of Army of Darkness fame). These fans are so fanatical they have all cut off their hands to be more like their idol, and they have decided that William Shatner has to go so that their hero can get more of the acclaim that he deserves.

 

Actually, crazy as this is, it would have made a good plot, but Burk has something even more zany in mind. In his version of the earth, the Network Wars went violent and produced a fiction bomb which can erase an actor’s entire career. The Campbells try to set one off but things go wrong and every fictional character William Shatner ever played comes to life with the desire to kill the original man.

 

Frankly, the very absurdity of the story just increases the fun. How many roles for William Shatner can you remember? Everyone will say Star Trek and T.J. Hooker, but did you recall he was in Rescue 911? The truth is, he’s been in hundreds of roles and Burk brings many of them to life in this novel. It’s an amazing amount of fun as you look for ever more bizarre Kirks to come around the corner. In fact, my only complaint about the story is that we didn’t get to see even more of these characters differentiated from the mass of Shatners (but to be fair, Burk gives us a lot of them). A large chunk of my enjoyment came from figuring out which Shatner character Shatner was facing.

 

The ending is also interesting—and a little bit hard to decipher. I told the person who recommended the book my interpretation and he wasn’t certain he agreed with me. Perhaps I’ll have to read the sequel to find out which of us is right.

 

A Captured Santa Claus by Thomas Nelson Page

A Captured Santa Claus by Thomas Nelson Page

This is an unexpectedly touching story. In the midst of the Civil War, a Confederate officer gets home to his family at Christmas and is gravely troubled by how meager the holiday was for his children. Over the next year, he strives at every turn to find the presents his children had hoped for the year before. But how is he supposed to slip across enemy lines to reach his house with his Christmas presents? This is a story about surprising humanity and compassion in the midst of the United States’ bitterest war. Thank you to the top Amazon reviewer who recommended it to me.

 

Review: The Secrets of Super Villainy by C.T. Phipps

The Secrets of Super Villainy by C.T. Phipps

Phipps obviously adores superhero comics and this series is a loving satirical homage to them. In this third installment, Merciless is trying to find a way to bring his wife’s soul back into her vampiric body while dealing with the hilarious mess of his life. To make matters worse, a massive conspiracy to take over the world is underway and the conspirators have decided they need to take Merciless out first. Naturally Merciless, who insists he’s not a hero, is coming up with reasons to stop the bad guys.

 

Merciless’ growing frustration at his inability to save his wife is an insight into one of the ways true villains are made. We feel his pain and Phipps expertly makes use of this throughout the story, so much so that I think the story wouldn’t have worked without it.

 

All of that being said, that wasn’t even my favorite part of the novel. That comes in the form of one of the principal villains—the President of the United States. Think about that for a moment. How do you fight a president who is secretly planning to take over the world when you plan to keep living (mostly publicly) in those same United States? It’s a great dilemma, and a great novel.

 

Review: Dinosaur Lake by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Dinosaur Lake by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

It’s always fun to read about modern encounters with dinosaurs. Usually those fatal meetings occur in faraway places—an unknown island, the middle of the Amazon, caverns deep beneath the earth. What makes Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s tale so unique is that she chooses to introduce her dinosaur in a national park in the United States and therein lies both the strengths and weaknesses of the story.

 

The largest strength is the unusual setting—in the continental United States—where the dinosaur has a large number of human prey within easy reach. Unfortunately, this is really where the strengths end as well. No one carries their cell phones so they can’t take pictures of the growing evidence that a dinosaur is around—tracks, animal carcasses, and eventually the dinosaur itself. While everyone is naturally skeptical of the idea that a dinosaur could be alive today, not only are people disappearing but two very large boats are demolished by something and there is literally nothing known in the region that could damage them in that fashion. So even if you don’t jump to “dinosaur” as the solution, the idea that you should close the park and investigate isn’t far-fetched—but they don’t.

 

Then the dinosaur starts eating large numbers of people—again, no cameras—but this results only in a couple of FBI guys being sent. Why not send the National Guard? And the press finally comes (in time to get eaten) but really, they should have been swarming much earlier. Finally, our intrepid investigators manage to get a mini sub put in the lake, but still can’t get really serious infantry weapons (and people trained to use them). Again, if you’re arguing you need a sub armed with missiles to go after your monster, don’t you think that perhaps the navy might send expert teams to operate it? Or again, the National Guard might be mobilized to bring serious firepower to bear on the creature?

 

These weaknesses in just thinking out logically what kind of response the government would make to a creature killing lots of people really made it difficult to suspend disbelief in this novel. It’s still fun—tracking a dinosaur that keeps munching on the trackers is sort of the heart of a modern dinosaur story—but it isn’t the great novel I think this could have been.

 

 

What Child Is This? By Gilbert M. Stack

As we approach Christmas, why not help yourself capture the holiday spirit with one of my favorite short stories. If Ebenezer Scrooge had had this tale to read, he wouldn’t have needed the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future to visit him.

What Child Is This? By Gilbert M. Stack

Is it a Christmas miracle? The little boy wanders by himself into town and directly into Agnes Hancock’s heart, resurrecting feelings she’d thought long dead with her son in the Great War. No one knows who the child is or where he comes from, but Agnes can’t turn her back on him. As the police begin their investigation, she brings the boy into her home and learns to love again. But will her new found happiness be destroyed when the police finally answer the question What Child Is This?

This story is free on Kindle Unimited.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01...

Destroyer 46 Next of Kin by Warren Murphy

Destroyer 46 Next of Kin by Warren Murphy

The Destroyer finds its footing again in this novel about an unsuspected apprentice to Sinanju traitor, Nuihc. The apprentice, known as the Dutchman, combines Sinanju training with psychic abilities that make him a formidable opponent for Chiun and Remo. Add to that that he has sworn to the now deceased Nuihc that he will kill the remaining masters of Sinanju and you have the basis for a good story.

 

Murphy takes the time to develop the backdrop and build tension by getting into the head of the Dutchman who clearly doesn’t truly understand how deadly Remo and Chiun are. At times, unfortunately, it also felt as if the author didn’t remember how deadly the Masters of Sinaju are, making me wonder if there may have been a ghost writer involved in the novel. Remo is troubled by the need to hold his breath long before he should have been and there is an encounter with some strangely acting serpents that also didn’t feel quite “real” to me as a longtime admirer of the series. I’d also say that after a great buildup to the Dutchman’s powers, he didn’t use the psychic abilities nearly as effectively as I would have expected. Yet none of this truly detracted from the story and Chiun’s surprising sympathy for the Dutchman really humanized the tale. I would have expected Chiun to want to stamp out the illicit branch of Sinanju and yet he seems to not want to be driven to that extreme. Perhaps he is remembering his own failure to properly mentor Nuihc.

 

We also see some excellent interaction between Remo and Chiun—not the normal banter (there is plenty of that)—but genuine concern and affection for each other when they fear that the Dutchman may just have what it takes to kill one or both of them. Overall, it is one of the best novels in the series and also introduces one of its most interesting recurring villains.

 

Black Friday

BLACK FRIDAY

The term “Black Friday” was first used in Philadelphia in 1961. It refers to the Friday after Thanksgiving Day—the start of the Christmas shopping season since 1952. Long referred to as the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States, that didn’t actually become true until 2003.

 

Black Friday used to start at 6am but as the first decade of the new millennium progressed, that opening time started to get earlier. Finally in 2011, major retailers like Target, Kohl’s, Best Buy and Macy’s began opening at midnight. Not to be outdone, Walmart pushed the Black Friday opening to 8pm on Thanksgiving Day in 2012 and the opening time continued to get earlier for some stores.

 

Black Friday is actually not as important to the Christmas Season shopping as it used to be. Many stores now start the Christmas season much earlier, spreading out their sales throughout November and December.

 

Shopping on Black Friday is not without risk. 7 deaths and 98 injuries have been reported on this day as the result of confrontations between shoppers since 2006.

 

Review: Direct Descent by Frank Herbert

Direct Descent by Frank Herbert

I am a highly plot driven reader, remembering the plot of just about every book I’ve ever read with very little difficulty. So it says a lot when I write: despite having read this book two times before (once in college and once a few years ago) I couldn’t remember the plot of the story. Perhaps the reason for that is that it feels so derivative. Direct Descent is two stories about a mammoth thousands-year-old library that really feels like it was written after Herbert read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation (written three years before this work was published in serial form). The whole thing really reads like an Asimov story instead of a Herbert one. Both stories in this collection have the same basic plot. The new galactic government has decided to shut down the library in their attempt to stop knowledge from being disseminated. In each case, the evil government operatives are outwitted by brilliant librarians. Asimov did it better.

 

Perhaps it is actually a good thing that this plot is so forgettable. Frank Herbert is one of my favorite authors of all time. His great books like The Godmakers and Whipping Star, and yes, of course, Dune, all deserve to be read a dozen or more times. But his “lesser” works like The Santaroga Barrier, The Heaven Makers, and The Green Brain (to name only three) both entertain me and make me think every time I reread them. I’d honestly rather forget a rare misfire like Direct Descent.

 

A Brief History of Thanksgiving Day

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THANKSGIVING DAY

While American mythology generally credits the Pilgrims and the members of the Wampanoag tribe with celebrating the first Thanksgiving, harvest festivals in which communities express their gratitude for their blessings predate the arrival of Europeans in North America. Both the French and Spanish settlers adopted these customs and they also appear in Jamestown before the arrival of the Pilgrims.

 

The three day Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621 was not referred to as a “Thanksgiving” feast at the time, but as a harvest celebration. It was attended by the 50 survivors from the Mayflower and 90 Wampanoags.

 

During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress issued a proclamation each year asking the individual states to set aside a day to thank God for His blessings and ask his aid in prosecuting the war. After the war, presidents continued to sporadically declare days of Thanksgiving until Abraham Lincoln made the final Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day in 1863. The last Thursday of November continued to be recognized as Thanksgiving Day until 1939 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt switched it to the second to last Thursday in November in an attempt to boost sales during the Great Depression by stretching out the Christmas season. (In 1939 there were five Thursdays in November.) Republicans protested the change as an insult to Lincoln and the public began to refer to November 30 as “Republican Thanksgiving” and November 23 as “Franksgiving” (For FRANKlin D. Roosevelt). (Yes, our government during the Great Depression, with World War II having just broken out in Europe, really had nothing better to do than debate the proper day to be thankful.)

 

In 1941, Congress got involved and made Thanksgiving Day the fourth Thursday in November rather than the last day. This was seen as a compromise between the two positions. It also made the celebration a matter of federal law. (Of course, not every state could accept this compromise. Texas was the last holdout, abandoning the last Thursday of the month only in 1956.)

 

And that’s why we celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November even today.

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!