A solidly researched book on the first American women in space, including some new stories you won't find elsewhere. There were six women out of the 1A solidly researched book on the first American women in space, including some new stories you won't find elsewhere. There were six women out of the 1978 astronaut class of thirty-five, and the women got all the attention, sometimes to the men's disgruntlement. Although some of them must have been grateful when they saw the unrelenting crush of public attention Ride endured when she got back from STS-7. I loved the story of Ride and Svetlana Savitskaya, and that later Ride was the one person on the Challenger Commission trusted enough to leak the test info on the O-rings that failed, because the leaker (to this day unidentified) knew she would do what was right. I remember watching Richard Feynman do that ice water experiment with the O-rings that conclusively proved what caused the Challenger to explode. I never knew the backstory until now.
But these six women were every one extraordinary astronauts who all flew and set records and the whole story is fascinating, including all the outrageous stuff, the casual misogyny, like NASA not letting the women astronauts fly PIC in the training jets, and that time the aviation engineer assumed they all had their licenses and let them fly his test aircraft.
Grush writes
Every single astronaut class since the historic one of 1978 has included women, with more recent selections comprising a nearly equal number of men and women candidates...Eileen Collins made history in 1995 when she became the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle. She also became the first female commander of a Shuttle mission in 1999.
I was there to watch that 1995 launch in person, and I wept when I heard them say "Go at throttle up." But nowadays, in spite of Challenger and Discovery, we don't even blink when a woman astronaut flies to the ISS.
Atwood's brain just doesn't work like anyone else's, to the great benefit of all her readers. In this selection of short stories she explores, variousAtwood's brain just doesn't work like anyone else's, to the great benefit of all her readers. In this selection of short stories she explores, variously--
*herself communing with George Orwell through a snoring medium (a little heartbreaking, I found this one)
*an alien member of an intergalactic-crises aid package who is also an out of work actor (and vaguely an octopus, but, you know, just go with that) who is being paid to keep us locals calm inside by telling us a fairy tale while the rest of his team, I guess, cleans up Earth outside ("This simultaneous translation device I have been issued is not the best quality. As we have already experienced together, you do not understand my jokes. But as you say, half an oblong wheat-flour product is better than none."). Caveat lector, said fairy tale is not all Cinderella-like.
*Hypatia's eyewitness account of her death by clamshell ("Would I have been happier if I'd never been a respected public figure, if I'd followed the standard path for a woman then--got married, had children?...I would probably not have ended up as a butchers' workout, but you never know. Many obscure women have been done to death merely for existing...I try to look on the bright side: I did not have to endure the indignities of extreme old age."
*a future history of, again, a plague-ridden Earth where the women have undertaken to match "clean" brides and grooms to perpetuate the race (channelling Sheri Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country here)
*a really weird, even for Atwood, account of the soul of a snail occupying the body of a bank teller and not at all happy about it ("There must be a purpose. I must be learning something. I can't believe this is all random.")
and more, including an interrupted series of stories set in the world of happy couple Nell and Tig, who says "We had a good long run. You'll be fine."
Atwood giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other. And on that happy note, exeunt....more
Here is a writer who has taken 3-D printer technology seriously to heart and figured out what might be done with it in future. In this case he has facHere is a writer who has taken 3-D printer technology seriously to heart and figured out what might be done with it in future. In this case he has facilitated teleportation in a way Alfred Bester and Steven Gould never did. Sixteen-year old Jessica, entirely unwillingly, is teleported from Earth to Carver 1061c, a planet recovering from an extinction-level event. There she is to meet up with her parents who left her behind six years before, and she isn't sure what she is most resentful of, being left behind in the first place or being made to leave Earth to become their field assistant in the second. It doesn't help that they never asked her what she wanted. Then they arrive and immediately thereafter everything goes straight to hell. Jessica ends up on planet without many of the skills she needs to survive, in spite of which she becomes the first to learn that her race wasn't the first intelligent one in residence.
The ending feels a little rushed and not entirely resolved, but otherwise a fully realized world with good characters and a solid, uncomfortably believable plot. I am never climbing into one of those printers, I don't care if it is my only chance to get to Alpha Centauri in six days. Just saying. ...more
I thought I'd read all of Zane Grey's novels when I was a kid until I stumbled across this title in an antique store in Edmonds, Washington, last weekI thought I'd read all of Zane Grey's novels when I was a kid until I stumbled across this title in an antique store in Edmonds, Washington, last week. His plots are much of a muchness, cowboy heroes riding to the rescue of virtuous heiresses in peril from greedy, amoral bad guys, and a lot of really clunky dialect ("Wall, I should smile"), but no one ever wrote the scenery of the American West better than Grey did. When I got to Arizona and New Mexico I recognized them from his writing, like here:
Beyond and above the foothills yawned the western end of the Pass--the grand gap that split the mountain's range and gave the felicitous name to this beautiful rent in the crust of the earth...The sun was setting in the notch, with broken clouds above, pearl and mauve and opal, with hearts of rose and edges of saffron. How intense the blue far above! How like yellow lightning low down near the sinking orb, that now slipped its blazing under side below the clouds! A colossal reflector of nature--the great stone slopes of the mountain, magnified the brilliance, the color, the glory. And what had been beautiful before now seemed transformed to enchanted to realms beyond the earth. What pure gold burned on the winding high walls of rock! The royal purple hue of Pharaoh's raiment slanted down from the peaks, its source invisible, to vanish in the white fire-streaked gorges...
And that's just one sunset. You get the feeling that Grey galloped through the two-dimensional characters and bad dialogue tags and improbable plot lines just so he could get back to the scenery he so loved. Okay by me. If you've never read Grey I recommend Light of the Western Stars, where Eastern heiress Madeleine comes west to visit her brother Alfred, which ne'er-do-well the West has redeemed, and cowboy Gene Stewart literally sweeps her off her feet. That scene where they're on the run from Don Carlos (the taken-for-granted racism is awful, so be warned) to a heart stoppingly beautiful campground high in the mountains will stick with you....more
The price of war is always higher for children, something I wish people would remember before the shooting starts. Daisy, the American 15-year old fobThe price of war is always higher for children, something I wish people would remember before the shooting starts. Daisy, the American 15-year old fobbed off on her British aunt by her feckless father and evil stepmother right before this future war begins, is stronger and smarter (and funnier) than she ever thought she could be and she survives. But at what cost?...more
It's 1783. Ross Poldark returns to Cornwall after two years of taking the king's shilling in America's Revolutionary War to find his father dead and hIt's 1783. Ross Poldark returns to Cornwall after two years of taking the king's shilling in America's Revolutionary War to find his father dead and his fiance engaged to his cousin Francis. His father's mine is played out and he is broke and his heart is broken. Then at a town fair he rescues an unwashed urchin named Demelza Carne who he takes home to be his kitchen maid. She grows up, they marry, and life at Nampara, the Poldark estate, and in Cornwall, England, and Europe plays out over the next 37 years (although there is that missing 12 years when Ross' adventures are only tantalizingly alluded to, a la Conan Doyle). There is adultery, robbery, and even murder, poverty, hunger, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, smuggling, espionage, corruption in politics and government,, royal intrigue, a lot about mining copper and tin, more about steam power which was just then coming into its own, a duel to the death, laugh out loud comedy (as life has), and a heartbreaking stop on the battlefield of Waterloo.
I burned through this entire series in a little over two weeks, yes, I did, I think partly because Graham's characters are so very attractive (or not). Each has more layers than a hero sandwich, although of course he saves his best efforts for Ross and Demelza who are each their own onion. Recurring villain George Warleggan inspires dread and foreboding whenever he appears on the page, which inspires cheers whenever Graham allows George to be thwarted.
But also because Graham is a UXB-level plotter. He is adept at planting a land mine inside the narrative of book three that nobody steps on until book seven, if then. By when he's made you care so much for the characters that you're so worried about that mine that you tear into the next book as soon as you finish the last one. Keenly observed descriptions of Cornwall's gorgeous landscape, too, and for those who like that sort of thing, fun use of Cornish slang. I do, as when the Poldark mines offer up "kindly" lodes, which means they're profitable. Very much recommended....more
Meet Henrietta Mouse, Architect. She has a positive genius for designing, building, and decorating that perfect personal palace for any animal of her Meet Henrietta Mouse, Architect. She has a positive genius for designing, building, and decorating that perfect personal palace for any animal of her acquaintance. Squirrel asks for a spaceship and just about gets one (love the windsock). Lizard gets a solarium and Trout an underwater garden that would do Versailles proud. Pig really goes to town with the decorating, from Directoire to Art Deco, in a concatenation of styles Ms. Mouse privately calls "higgledy-piggledly."
Whatever the style, Ms. Mouse is up to the task and then some. The illustrations, by Doris Susan Smith, are detailed and utterly delightful--you'll find something new every time you pick up the book. The endpapers are hilarious, scenes of Ms. Mouse at work. Here she prepares to share blueprints with her muskrat builder. There Ms. Mouse consults with Porcupine, her landscaper. Over there her mouse assistant unpacks the ugliest pitcher ever and Ms. Mouse rolls on the floor laughing.
Never mind the kids; admit it: you want one for yourself....more
I read Simon Winchester's Pacific a few years back and found it both dour and sour. Not a keeper. So when I stumbled across a paperback copy of this bI read Simon Winchester's Pacific a few years back and found it both dour and sour. Not a keeper. So when I stumbled across a paperback copy of this book at the HPL Book and Plant Sale, I thought why not give it a try? One thing I had to keep strictly in mind was that Winchester's book was published in 2015 and Michener's in 1951. I hadn't even been born when Michener and his wife spent a year traveling the South Pacific and he wrote this book about it, so my guard was very much up. Goody, an old white guy's view of Polynesia. Can we spell racism? misogyny? colonialism?
I was mostly surprised. So long as you allow for the fact that this is a Greatest Generation guy, heir to all the learned attitudes of his day, this feels like a pretty straightforward look at what he saw. As he explains in the first chapter, "The Mighty Ocean," he alternates nonfiction with fiction, or a factual look at, say, "The Atoll," any atoll, and follows it up with a short story like "Mr. Morgan," about the lifelong head to head of a planter and a priest on the atoll of Matareva.
Michener served in the Pacific during World War II and he has an elegiac description of the Solomon Islands in "Guadalcanal."
To me--and to many like me--Guadalcanal has a significance that is hard to explain. For years we had been told, "America is soft. W.P.A. and C.C.C. have ruined the young men. This generation has no vital spark." We believed these rumors, in part, and what was more important, our enemies believed them. Across the world critics looked at us and reported: "Sports loving, luxury minded, whimpering in depression, unregimented." The fatal word was passed: "America is through. She's a pushover." At Guadalcanal my generation threw back the answer.
There's a history lesson in a paragraph for any of us right there.
What follows is one of the best of the short stories, "The Story" (yes, you read that right) where Michener inhabits the voice of Anywriter being pestered by a copra planter who has just the best story ever and he wants the narrator to write it. After which it turns out that the copra planter's own story is a much more enthralling and heartbreaking story by far, and the narrator does not learn that until he is about to climb aboard the plane home.
Tahiti, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, all are represented here, and the author ends with a final chapter titled "What I Learned" where his conclusions still resonate today. The roots of China in the South Pacific were planted well before Michener met his first Chinese entrepreneur on this journey, and long before China ever started building islands out of sandbanks and putting military airfields on them.
Wherever I went I saw the face of Asia, and it was unforgettable.
Michener paints with a pretty broad brush and he definitely sees through the eyes of a white Westerner, but he does see and he does report what he saw in plain facts and quotes and he does his damndest to interpret what he saw in fiction. He does a pretty good job of it, too. A worthwhile read....more
I love how-to books, and this is one, as in how to save a sentient AI from itself. Love all the AI characters in this series, Jeeves, Bechimo, Joyita I love how-to books, and this is one, as in how to save a sentient AI from itself. Love all the AI characters in this series, Jeeves, Bechimo, Joyita (lovelovelove Joyita), Admiral Bunter and all the other Free Logic ships, and now Catie. Love the idea of a more or less human Mentor to help them on their way, too, and Tolly is a great character in his own right.
Love the Korval books, period. My favorite is still I Dare (the turtles!), but they're all great. Dive in and you won't come up for air for a nice long time and you won't care, either. Enjoy!...more
Best of the WWII stalag escape novels, written by a man who actually did. And I loved the way the protagonist made the perp serve his needs right up uBest of the WWII stalag escape novels, written by a man who actually did. And I loved the way the protagonist made the perp serve his needs right up until the next to the last page. (trying not to spoil)...more
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