Rudolph Kohn's Blog, page 5

More Lens Swashbuckling and Twists! Second Stage Lensmen Review

At first glance, Second Stage Lensmen seems like more of the same from Doc Smith, which isn't a bad thing: we get action, intrigue, grand strategy, disguises, and larger-than-life characters.

But it turns out that we actually get more: extended looks at the enemy and its operations; the appearance of the first female lensman; more details about space battles, from heavy cruisers down to individual dogfights; and direct mention of Eddore!

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Five Editing Foci

As I finished up editing my first novel, I spent some time considering the different things I was looking for each time I went through a new draft. I came up with a list of five things to focus on during a particular editing stage, and thought this might be helpful for people who spend all their time looking for typos or feel like they're just doing the same thing over and over each time they edit.

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A Modern, Pulpy Mashup: Doomsday Recon Review

After reading and reviewing Ryan Williamson's The Widow's Son, I decided to try out one of his later works. Doomsday Recon is the first book in a series of three, and has Jason Anspach also on as an author.

Compared to The Widow's Son, I found this book to be much more polished. One of the problems I had with The Widow's Son was the constant foreign-language bits, which are still present in this book, but are handled more skillfully and naturally.

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Contrasting Gothic Horror: Dracula v. The Phantom of the Opera!

I've covered both Dracula and The Phantom of the Opera (the books, obv), with Justin Fraser on the Wordy Pair Podcast, but I thought it might be fun to contrast them with each other in a bit more detail, so that's what I'm gonna do here (and in the video above).

Both of these books are classics of the Gothic Horror genre, yet they are about as different as can be!

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A Character Description Crash Course, Courtesy Rex Stout

I've recently read comments to the effect of "don't describe your characters," and was a little shocked to discover that there are actually people that promote this kind of nonsense.

Of course, it's possible to overdo it, but nothing at all is a bridge too... close?

In the video above, I look at character descriptions from a variety of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books, and try to glean some bits of wisdom from them.

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How Not to Name Drop in Writing

I recently re-read Massacre of Mankind, an official sequel to H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds that was published in 2017, written by Stephen Baxter. It's a decent book, and Justin Fraser and I talk about it on this episode of The Wordy Pair Podcast.

Gray Lensman? More Like Great Lensman! Book Review!

Gray Lensman is the next book in E.E. "Doc" Smith's famous Lensman series! This one continues the adventures of the inimitable Kimball Kinnison, actually starting by retelling the ending of the previous book (which I noted was abrupt and not particularly good) with a bit more flair!

If you're looking for something drastically new, you won't find it here, but overall I enjoyed this book very much and if you've enjoyed any of the Lensman books already, you'll find more of it here.

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When Reality Is Crazier than Bizarre Fiction!

A little silliness for you today...

How many bizarre and unlikely coincidences does it take to connect a new song to a video game that is several years old, and takes place over thirty years ago? I count at least six.

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Asimov's Foundation: Better than Expected!

How is it possible that this is my first time reading Foundation? I enjoyed a bunch of Asimov's robot stuff when I was in high school, and I even think I read some of his non-fiction work. Yet somehow, Foundation always missed me. Whenever I would think of it, the library or bookstore I was in wouldn't have it. And so, many years have passed, and I'm finally reading it for the first time!

It's worth noting that Foundation, like a lot of the Lensman stuff, was originally published serially, even in the same magazine as some of it: Astounding Stories. But while the Lensman series is swashbuckling and practical, Foundation is much more cerebral and driven by clever plans with a lot more moral grayness floating around.

This first book in what would eventually become a series covers five specific points in time: the Founding, Founding+50 years, Founding+80 years, Founding+155 years, and one part that happens between 80-155 years later but is not exactly placed.

I found this book super interesting and very thought-inspiring. The five individual stories are loosely connected by the concept of "Seldon crises," which are major turning points in history.

Seldon is the great psychohistorian who anticipated the fall of the galactic empire, and the potential for a dark age of 30,000 years. His goal, described at the start of the book, is to reduce that dark age to a mere 1,000 years.

The book follows the movement of the Foundation from a twinkle in Seldon's eye, to a purely scientific endeavor, to a pseudo-religion, to a trading partner spreading good tech across the galaxy.

One interesting point of conflict is between the large-scale tech of the empire and the miniaturized tech of the Foundation. We see a fascinating example of economic warfare, as well as an expertly-planned intrigue that seeks to create control by limiting access to high-tech--less violent than the alternatives.

The most powerful scenes in the book involve one character outplanning another, yet the story still manages to avoid falling into the all-too-common pitfall of advocating centralized planning. I was honestly a bit worried Foundation would be a socialist disaster, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not.

Even Hari Seldon isn't really planning; he makes some good predictions and works hard to set up the right incentives early on, but he doesn't "plan" the actions of the Foundation in any meaningful way. He doesn't provide instructions but rather says each crisis leads to a constriction of choices, which I thought was an interesting take.

One point that made me laugh was Asimov poking fun at people playing science by simply reading and comparing old authorities, as opposed to doing their own experiments and research. In fact, there were quite a few humorous moments throughout the book.

I loved the point when some Foundation logicians broke down a politician's words during a meeting and determined that the whole thing was null content.

On the down side, I was a little disappointed to find there was almost no actual science in the book! Asimov mostly relies on minimizing detail on space travel and communication, throwing in the buzzword "atomic" here and there.

There were a few parts of the book that lapsed into very pulpy dialogue, reminiscent of Doc Smith's Lensman books. You may enjoy that or not, but it wasn't a significant chunk of the story.

To make one last contrast with Lensman, the action in Foundation is much less bombastic, punctuating important moments but not fatiguing the reader.

All in all, I greatly enjoyed my first look at Foundation. If you want to give it a try, check it out here. This is the version I got, a very nice hardcover containing the first three books.

Space Drama! Review of Colony Launch

Colony Launch is an okay novel. If you're looking for some reasonably interesting character drama, you might find it satisfying, but my final thoughts on it were unfortunately not great.

From a plotting perspective, Colony Launch is about four separate story threads that come together very slowly. It takes nearly half the book for three of them to stick together, and the fourth only joins up right at the end.

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