Rudolph Kohn's Blog, page 9

Primo Ancient Pulp Sci-Fi: A Review of "Triplanetary"

In the last week, I read through E.E. "Doc" Smith's book Triplanetary, which is a very weird book in a lot of ways. Most of it was written in 1934, but Smith added a bunch in 1947-1948 to link it up with his Lensman series.

Today, we have to read it with a healthy, thick grain of suspension of disbelief, but it's a pretty cool book with some fun ideas, especially considering it was written nearly a hundred years ago.

Check the video for full details!

If you want to check it out, go here:
https://a.co/d/2Oqaic3

I also found an open-access review paper that talks about why gravitational waves move at the speed of light:https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/204/pdf

The Flavorless Nostalgia Pap of Alien: Romulus

(also available on your favorite podcatcher)
Last week Justin went and saw Alien: Romulus so we could do a Half-Blind Review of it on The Wordy Pair!
Long story short, the movie hits a lot of nostalgia boxes but the characters are paper-thin and overall the story is pretty bland.
Definitely worth listening to if you're tracking the downward spiral of the once-great Alien movie franchise!

Book Review: "A Spell for Chameleon" by Piers Anthony

My friend Justin Fraser, author of The Good Guy and some other books, recommended this book to me because of its interesting plot twist at the end. What I found was a surprisingly fun and extremely creative little fantasy adventure that you'll probably enjoy as long as you don't hate puns.

A Spell for Chameleon has a few "big" fantasy ideas that are pretty interesting, but where it really shines is in the huge number of "little" fantasy ideas that Anthony packs into the book. The main characters are interesting and well-written, and the pacing is just right--not too fast but steady and constantly moving.

The dialogue is very good, with different characters having very different voices.

The tone is a little strange, with a bit of a childish/storybook feel through most of the books, but enough adult situations to put it in the upper range of young adult. Nothing too raunchy, but descriptions are detailed, funny, and frank through the whole book, including the adult situations. 

Kind of the language you might expect a teenage boy to have in his head, but hopefully enough sense not to say out loud.

All in all, a good read as long as you don't mind puns. I really loved the creature-craft, and that alone makes it worth looking at again. Anthony's creativity is seemingly unbounded and a good inspiration. Probably will check out the sequel soon, but I'm not drooling over it.

Book Trailer: Missed Contact

I created a short, 60-second trailer for my book, Missed Contact. A little bit more involved than the short teasers I made for some of my short stories, this one uses several pictures and a little bit more thought, since it's not an excerpt from the book, but a "three act" (that's what the Internet told me I should write :/ ) script about the setting, characters, and plot.

For those of you who have been kind enough to visit my blog, I'll note that even though the video says to go check it out on Amazon, it's also available at a variety of other e-book retailers, too.

I'd love to get some more feedback about this book. I really enjoy the mixture of mystery and science fiction that I created for this one. It's a quick, fun read that should be perfect for one night of reading.

Strong Characters, Hard Sci-Fi: A Review of "The Forge of God"

 

Today I've got a very positive review for a book that I read recently: The Forge of God, by Greg Bear. Watch the video for all the details, but I'll reiterate here that the characters are very strong, the author presents a good number of novel and interesting science fiction concepts, and the plot has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing about who is telling the truth and who are the good guys--if there are any.

Read more »

MHI for Polyglots: A Review of "The Widow's Son"

Just finished reading Ryan Williamson's book The Widow's Son, and it's a pretty solid pulp western with some nice dark fantasy elements and even some cool steampunk bits. It's a fun, exciting book with some minor negatives that are worth dissecting a bit.

This one gets my recommendation as long as you enjoy that kind of setting. If you're not in the mood for that kind of story, though, you may want to give it a pass.

Our Most Recent Podcast Is a Hilarious Rant!

 

I gotta say, I'm really proud of the most recent episode of the Wordy Pair Podcast. It's hilarious and it breaks down this really awful post about context cues, of all things. Somebody took a really basic, grade-school English topic and turned it into a confusing mess.

Halfway through, we started thinking it might be an AI article, and by the end, we decided AI would probably be clearer and make fewer mistakes!

If you want something fun and funny about writing to listen to, check it out!

You can find the whole series here. Whether you're a reader or a writer or even a movie watcher, you'll find something fun!

What the Heck Is a Crookes Tube? (Lovecraft story talk)

Image of Crookes tube in operation, from D-Kuru, CC BY-SA 2.0 AT, via Wikimedia Commons

I didn't know until yesterday that August 20th was H. P. Lovecraft's birthday! It seemed like a worthy time to go through a couple of his stories, so I read two of them last night: Under the Pyramids (written with Harry Houdini, of all people), and The Shunned House.

Read more »

How to Deal with Common Writing Hang-Ups

 

I always forget to mention this, but a friend of mine (who is also a writer) and I have a weekly podcast about writing, reading, and media. We're "The Wordy Pair!" (See, it's a pun off of the old Japanese sci-fi novels/TV show "The Dirty Pair")

The most recent episode had a bunch of really funny moments, as well as a really solid discussion of many of the really common things that slow down a writer.

Come for the comedy, stay for the advice.

Book Review of "The Object: Hard Science Fiction"

 I recently went through and put a few of the best selling books in "Hard Science Fiction" on my list of books to read, partly for market research and partly just to read some new books.

The first one I chose to read is The Object: Hard Science Fiction by Joshua T. Calvert.

Unfortunately, I didn't find it too engaging, but it did have a few good points.

I tried out making a video review on YouTube:

I'll also put up a text version of my notes here, in case you want to read them.

I realize it's a very mixed review, but if you still want to check out the book, you can find it here.

And if you instead get an urge to read or re-read Rendezvous with Rama, you can find that here.

Thanks for watching!