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| 0441004709
| 9780441004706
| 2.94
| 54
| Jan 01, 1997
| Sep 01, 1997
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it was amazing
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review of Howard V. Hendrix's Lightpaths by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 14-22, 2020 For the complete review: https://www.goodreads.com/story review of Howard V. Hendrix's Lightpaths by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 14-22, 2020 For the complete review: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Another new writer to me although, not uncommonly for 'newness' for me, this bk is from 1997, so it's hardly 'new'. I've already come to dislike the term 'Millennial' but, perhaps, this is 'Millennial SF' in the sense that it's from 1997, not in the sense that its author is a so-called 'Millennial'. I ended up being engaged by this pretty quickly, partially b/c one of the main characters has an interest I potentially share. ""I got the fellowship because of an avocation of mine—an interest in utopian fiction. I'm sure that you know that the Orbital Complex has the world's largest collection of utopian and dystopian materials—"" - p 3 "Oh, Jhana knew the broken-rhythm hype, all right. Home, home on Lagrange / Where vanishing creatures still play" - p 9 It seems a bit much to explain such things sometimes but there're probably readers who don't understand the above dual reference. The original song lyric referred to would be "Home, home on the range / Where the deer and the antelope play" — the song being called "Home on the Range". The changed lyrics may be a reference to "In existence between 1843 and 1848 The LaGrange Phalanx was one of about 30 such towns constructed by followers of Charles Fourier a French philosopher who believed in a Utopian Socialism. Today the town is completely gone with only a roadside marker to represent its location." (https://historyinyourownbackyard.com/...) Then again, it may not. My current favorite SF writer, Mack Reynolds, has written a series of "Lagrangist" novels which I haven't read yet. It wd be typical of him to make reference to an obscure part of socio-political history. I vaguely remember reading a non-Lagrangist novel by him in which Lagrange was mentioned & my apparently poor memory of this has "Lagrange" not as a place but as a socialist-utopian philosopher (not Fourier). I was unable to find that reference in an admittedly hasty search. ANYWAY, this novel is about a utopian community of scientists & so much more. "Lakshmi called up the habitat's Public Sphere, the "marketplace of ideas" virtual construct where Lev spent a lot of his time, particularly in the "anti-Platonics" group area, pontificating and soapboxing to all who might be interested about how rigid specialization was what made Plato's Republic fascistic at base, how that was what lead him to banish the polymorphous poets, how the city-state of this habitat must be an inverse of that, strongly anti-specialist, if it hoped to preserve its participatory democracy" - p 13 Personally, I don't trust anyone who experiments with naked mole rats & I've known thousands of them (or am I getting confused?). ""Yes, but I'm sure they'll provide it all. Naked mole rats, Ethiopian sand puppies. NMRs, ESPs, as I like to call them." He crouched down, looking directly into the mole-rat colony's main chamber. "They're misnamed, you know. They're not rats, they're not moles, and they're not really naked. Heterocephalus glaber. Smooth other-headed ones. Hairless, different-headed creatures. The perfect gene source for creating transgenic, less problematic humans."" - p 24 My thoughts exactly — exact I wd've sd "namedmis" & "kedna". It's like pictures of women that I find attractive — even though I know the pcture was taken 100 years ago & that the actual person is long since dead, a goner. ""What?" said a whey-faced young sitcomedian with an exagerated shrug and knowing smile. "You think 'cause it's the end of the 2020s everybody's got perfect vision?" "A laugh track dutifully cranked out a string of mixed chuckles and chortles from another place and time. Jhana dumped her luggage at the foot of the bed, recalling as she did that the 2020s line had quickly become the comic's personal trademark, the tag line of the decade, before it became just another outdated rerun. But if it was such a funny line, then why did the viewing audience have to be told it was funny? Or was everybody just supposed to keep laughing along, herd-style, because once upon a time anonymous people had been anonymously recorded in the act of laughing? "That was the spooky part: much of the "source laughter" on the tracks had been recorded fifty or sixty years ago, and many of those laughing were now dead, gone to ashes or worm's meat. When Jhana laughed along with the tracks, she was laughing with the dead in one big happy haunted human comedy...." - p 30 The worst part is when the dead people think you're laughing at them instead of w/ them — then all heck breaks loose. At any rate, that kinda sums up 2020 doesn't it? I mean what w/ the Ivory Billed Activist being endangered n'at. ""She'd also say this place is a college campus in the sky and we do too much ivory tower theorizing. She'd say we have too much faith in technological progress. She'd start talking about how we're a rich and privileged elite in the ultimate castle on the highest hill. She'd say all HOME's claims of multiethnicity are bull. She'd sound off about Master Race in Outer Space types fleeing to an orbital suburb of Earth City, a lifeboat for the powerful, another technofascist nonsolution to human problems—" "Ekwefi took a quick sip of wine, her index finger held up to indicate that she still had more to say and did not want to be interrupted. ""—and I don't know if maybe she doesn't have a point after all. I mean, doesn't it seem sortof odd that all of us up here who are so dedicated to peace and social justice and world-saving are at the same time so isolated from the world we're trying to change? A plot to wall off activists and dissidents and idealists in a big isolated holding pen couldn't have done a better job of getting us all up here! To the people living in the trashlands down there, an elitist paradise in space must look pretty hollow."" - pp 53-54 If this were 'real life', I'd be one of the people living in the trashlands, maybe making the best of it if possible, & hatefully envious of the people in the utopian satellite colony. But, still, in the novel, I'm rooting for the colonists. I'm sick of complaining. ""It's like the two ancient snakes that intertwined themselves about the staff of Hermes or Asklepios," Lev replied, walking around the hovering, twisted halo of the thing, "but at the same time it suggests—I don't know, a model of the interlocked base-pairs of the DNA double helix.["]" - p 60 Ring a bell for any of you SF readers out there? Philip K. Dick discusses the very same staff / DNA similarity in his Valis (& I used that Dick passage in the movie of me getting my very 1st tattoo in 1986: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Tattoos... ). Or how about this?: ""So Tao-Ponto's your tribe of cash-flow hunter-gatherers, eh?" he said, staring quizzically at her as she followed him through the Genetics Lab. "They still big into Tetragrammaton and Medusa Blue?" ""I'm afraid I've never heard of that, sir," she replied, trying to be polite. ""Yeah," he said, giving her an appraising look. "You are pretty young. I don't suppose they'd want to talk about it to their employees, either—black mark and all. A potential Worldgate—scandals and conspiracies always used to be called gates back then—but they covered it up good. Only place you could probably even find a reference to it would be in an old copy of Covert Action Information Bulletin, or some source like that.["]" - pp 61-62 CAIB!! One of the most important periodicals in my world, certainly one that I learned an enormous amt from. It lasted from 1978 to 2005. I lament its passing. "She tried to remember her history. Didn't the old Right fear Big Government, and the old Left fear Big Corporations? Larkin seemed to be paranoid about both." - p 62 Ha ha! I'm w/ Larkin. Reading just about anything these days in the time of the PANDEMIC PANIC evokes the present tension for me. Ditto w/ the above. I'm an anarchist, I could relate to the 'left' as long as it resisted the murderous control freaks of the Military-Industrial Complex. The 'right' always seemed too kill-happy & bigoted for me to relate to. These days? The 'left' is pathetic, its humanitarianism seems skin-deep & it's practically begging to have Big Brother's boot on its neck — as well as on everyone else's. It's all such a mess. I don't want Big Government, I don't want Big Corporations, I don't want a 'team' to conform to the subcultural norms of. To hell w/ the 'left', to hell w/ the 'right'. Just sayin'. Hendrix seems to've been very well-informed about the political struggles at the time of this bk's writing. I wonder: was/is he a political activist? It wd make sense. ""Message recorded for Atsuko Cortland, from Global Trade Authority," her PDA (personal data assistant) said quietly. Atsuko grimaced. She knew she should never have agreed to accept the post of colony council liason to the GTA—an organization which she always thought privately of as the Global Trade Autocracy. Descendant of the GATTs and G7s and WTOs of the last century, the international trade-coordinating body had grown into quite the behemoth. She should have known better than to liase." - p 68 ""What exactly are you trying to do?" Roger said, sounding genuinely curious." [Really, I'm just trying to get thru this review, trying to get 4 more reviews done in 2020, trying to endure my life, trying to not have the review be generic, it's hard right now, I'm not enjoying this, even tho I thought the bk was excellent, I'm just not into it, I'm not into anything] ""Well," Marissa began, taking a deep breath, wanting to impress Roger and hoping he wouldn't shoot her idea down from the start, "my research with your mole rats indicates it should be possible to design viral vectors to speed up the evolutionary pace of the immune system, supercharge its rate of reactivity. At the same time, it should also be possible to use reverse transcriptase's ability to translate viral RNA into host-cell DNA—as a means by which to vector into the genome the immortalizing capability from teratoma tumors. A noncarcenogenic telomere alteration. These immortalizing vectors can then be targetted at, among other places, Human Chromosome One—particularly at the gene series on that chromosome which programs senescence and allows death to occur."" - p 74 What can I write here? I cd write xbxbxvvvxbxxbxccc, that wd at least be different from what one might expect in a review &/OR I cd comment on how Hendrix's presentation of his fictitious character's immortality research might really be based on something already in-progress &/OR might inspire actual research. This comment might imply that Hendrix must've been pretty inspired here. Or I cd interpolate a shockingly cynical comment & say that I don't want to be immortal, I just want all of my enemies to die before me & that that might be tantamount to the same thing. OR I cd just move on to the next quote. ""Oh, that's all controllable too. We can control levels of light intensity, photoperiod, day/night cycles, you name it—just by using screens on the lightpaths." ""Lightpaths?" Atsuko asked, feigning ignorance. "Like the light bar above us? Is it some kind of new technology?" "The wiry woman in coveralls looked at her strangely. ""New technology? I don't think so. New use of an old idea, maybe. The purpose of lightpaths is to bring light into darkness. That's one thing we have a lot of out there—light. This habitat is in high circular orbit, above the Earth's radiation belts and below the moon, so eclipses are very infrequent. We have virtually unlimited sunlight. The lightpaths are paths of reflected sunlight. All the light in the agricultural tori is sunlight reflected from the mirrored surface of the space colony's central axis—what you're calling a light bar. The light inside the big central habitation sphere is reflected sunlight too, only instead of the lightpaths bouncing off the central axis they bounce off the mirrored surfaces around the sphere itself and come in through the light zones or glass latitudes near the 'poles' of the sphere."" - p 80 NOW, humanity having such an ability for spawning the malignant, one wonders what security precautions these colonists might've made against a hostile entity taking control of the reflectors & preventing them from providing light/energy to the colony &/OR causing too much focused light to cause conflagration. Funny how even as an anti-war activist I've become so accustomed to having such 'dark' thoughts about the possibilities of my fellow humans. The colonists are far from lacking in wisdom: ""That area there, for instance, the one that looks like a field gone wild? That's based on Native American milpa polyculture, corn and beans and squash all growing together. The high-growing corn plants shelter the more delicate beans, and the squash vines grow from mound to mound among and between the corn and bean plants. The squash provides good, moisture-preserving cover for the soil, while the beans in turn fix nitrogen in the soil and aid in the growth of the corn and squash."" - p 82 You mean monocrops might not be the way to go?! You mean monoculture might not be the way to go?! You mean monotony might not be the way to go?! ""A meme is an idea that takes on a life of its own," Larkin said, "replicating itself through minds the way a gene replicates itself through bodies. Lots of our big ideas are memes. Paradise, apocalypse, utopia—those are memes. The idea of a world savior, a Christ or a Buddha—that's a meme. Most of what Jung was talking about in terms of archetypal imagery and the collective unconscious—those are memes and constellations of memes, too. At some deep level, the most successful memes seem to be fundamentally related to biology, to the experience of being born, growing up, living and dying as a biological being. So deeply related that they seem almost genetic."" - pp 87-88 Keep in mind that this bk was written before memes became known to the general populace as those squares w/ an image & a few pithy words related to the image that circulate thru social media. I find that newer definition shallow & get very tired of people tossing the word around as if it makes breasts & scrotums bounce in nude volleyball. But then I can be persnickety about words. For the complete review: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ...more |
Notes are private!
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Nov 30, 2020
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Dec 22, 2020
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Paperback
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| 2.90
| 77
| 1955
| 1959
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really liked it
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review of John Christopher's Planet in Peril by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 7, 2020 This is the 6th Christopher I've read & the 5th I've rev review of John Christopher's Planet in Peril by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 7, 2020 This is the 6th Christopher I've read & the 5th I've reviewed in the last few mnths. He's become a 'go-to' writer when I want to read something easy & enjoyable & quick. Right now I'm reading something like 8 bks & even though I think most of them are good they don't fit into the e&e&q category. This was written in 1954 &, as such, is the earliest Christopher I've read yet. There's a TV broadcast by someone who's definitely outside of the mold of what TV's become &, presumably, was even then. ""More than two thousand years ago this great comet last swept in its parabola round the sun. While eighty generations of men have come and gone, while the human race has climbed so painfully to its present eminence, that majestic luminary has been plodding round a course trillions of miles away in the outer dark."" - p 10 Um, 2,000 yrs ≠ 80 generations of men. If a generation is the time it takes for someone to grow up & produce their own progeny then what constitutes a generation is dependent on the social as well as the biological conditions prevailing. Hence, 200 yrs ago a new generation might've started at age 16 — whereas now age 26 might be more normal. Let's just say a generation is 20 yrs. 20 X 80 = 1,600. Close, but no tumescent cigar. If the author wanted to round off why not just say 100 generations? If we divide 2,000 yrs by 80 that makes the average age of childbirth in those 2,000 yrs = 25. "Women born in 1935 had the lowest “average” (median) age at first birth (20.8 years). The highest median age was 22.7 for women born in 1960. The 1910 cohort was between the other two cohorts, with a median age at first birth of 21.1." - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databri... That means that when Christopher was writing this bk the generation before the yr of writing wd've had an average 1st birth age of 20.8 yrs. Then again, it's probably a convention to call a generation 25 yrs. ""I suggest you get up out of that goddam chair, and go outside and have a look for yourself. Channel KF proposes to help you on your way by closing down for half an hour. We are going out on the roof to have a look at the comet ourself. Good-bye."" - p 11 I don't know about YOU (whoever YOU are) but I'd love it if a TV or radio person anounced they were going off-air for a half-hr to encourage their (v)audience to look at the sky. IN FACT, on March 9th, 1982E.V., at the Krononautic Organism's Party for People from the Future(s)" during a partial alignment of the planets, I was interviewed by a TV person & I insisted that I read a statement off a sheet of paper — the TV person protested saying that people wd turn off their TVs b/c they'd be bored & I told him that that was exactly what I wanted. He didn't use the footage. I always enjoy little details about the author's vision of the future. "Dinkuhl glanced at his watch; it was extraordinarily big and he wore it on his wrist instead of on his watch-finger." - p 18 ""People come over here for both those reasons. There are always some students who find the system in operation across the border more attractive than that at home. And the standard of personal comfort is less high in Siraq. There's a third reason as well, though. My father came over as a political refugee, and I came with him." ""Political refugee?" It was hard to get hold of a term that had ceased to be valid, in the major world, a century before. He saw Sara smile, understanding his bewilderment. "In what way?" ""It would be difficult to explain. Men conspire as much in Siraq as they do here, but in rather different ways. Daddy was in some plot to overthrow the government, and the plot was discovered. He would have been imprisoned if he had stayed."" - p 24 Siraq? It's hard in this day & age to not turn that into Iraq. This is the 1st of the recent 5 novels I've read by Christopher that doesn't seem to be directed at Young Adults. I must be one of those Adult Adults by now & maybe I'm a tad too old for this so maybe it's aimed at a Not-So-Young-Anymore Adult Who-Isn't-Incredibly-Jaded-Yet-However. At any rate, I enjoyed it. People die or disappear, alleged suicides.. but, of course, there's some doubt about that. Sara joins the crowd. "As far as those two worthies were concerned, they had constructed a closed case for suicide on Sara's part; they had theorized she had never recovered from Humayan's death—she had never really been persuaded that he had not been murdered. Sara's father, whom Charles never got to see in the flesh, had also, according to Caston and Stenner, committed sucide—having left a note indicating he intended to do so, feeling that there was nothing left for him to live for after he presumed that his daughter had taken her own life. Charles, however, was unconvinced." - p 37 Not only was Charles unconvinced, he didn't trust his boss. Clearly he has to go. Not to the bathroom, mind you. "The solicitude was wrong, altogether wrong. There was one possibility, he reflected wrily, that might account for it. Stenner seemed to have had some doubts as to his mental balance. It might be that Ledbetter had them, to an even greater degree. Some people were naturally polite and considerate to the insane." - p 42 Fortunately, as is the case in all times & places, there are HERETICS (see my own book entitled Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC cowritten by 6 HERETICS) who help Charles cope w/ what he's increasingly perceiving as wrong, wronger, wrongest. ""Hiram should have introduced us collectively as well as one by one. This is the Society of Individualists, Charles, Headquarters Branch and General Assembly combined. We lift our helping hands to any little lame dog that looks like he's having trouble with his climbing apparatus. We don't amount to nothing, but we like to think we do."" - p 55 I'm an anarchist, a type of creature that seems to've been largely subsumed into a braindead Big Brother embracing liberal bourgeoisie these days (OOPS! Did that just slip out? Geez, sorry [NOT]). Ok, ok, I'm referring to former friends of mine that I'm currently disgusted w/ — I'm sure there're still some anarchists out there who haven't been completely reshaped by propaganda into zombies. Ahem. Anyway, as those of you who've read other reviews may've picked up on by now, when I read a bk that mentioned anarchy w/o having to immediately reduce it to "chaos" or otherwise oversimplify it that bk earns kudos from me. Christopher, in 19-fucking-54 no less, has a character be an anarchist who's respected. Gotta love it. ""I guess not." Dinkuhl turned to Sara again. "You both look happy. What's it like being in Atomics? You got the secret of ultimate bliss? Think I should maybe join up, too?" ""Why not?" ""Yes, why not?" Dinkuhl echoed. It make a nice bolt-hole. Comes the big bang, bolt-holes are going to be handy. They give you at least five minutes extra, before someone comes along and pumps gas in from the top." "Grinning, Charles switched the screen off. ""You're an anarchist, Hiram, and anarchists always underestimate the reorganizational powers of society."" - p 101 Is that so?! Harumph. Well let me tell you, buster, there's always someone out there justifying war! ""You want war. Why?" "Professor Koupal raised his hands. "Wanting doesn't enter into it. The world outside is breaking up. There will be chaos there, anyway, within a couple of decades, and, as the only state with any vitality at all, we should have to go out then and reclaim the chaos. It would be a long job and a painful one—unnecessarily so. It is simpler, and a lot more efficient, to precipitate matters.["]" - p 139 Sorry, bub, but that strikes me as the usual specious logic based on a prediction wch may or may not come true. Personally, I'm tired of hopelessness. "The Siraquis, the Managerialists, the Cometeers. . . . There was nothing to despair of losing, and so there could be nothing to hope for." - p 158 Y'know, some of us, admittedly an extreme minority, have positive imaginations. I don't think any of us are lusting for power but we are creating oasises in a world desertified by greedy megalomaniacs. Check out this feller as an example: "Old Folks at Home: Doug Retzler": https://youtu.be/vqLZkrl_yWo . ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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not set
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Sep 11, 2020
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Nov 10, 2020
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Paperback
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| 0525297383
| 9780525297383
| 3.43
| 231
| 1981
| 1981
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liked it
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review of John Christopher's Fireball by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 1, 2020 Having recently read & reviewed Christopher's 'Tripods' Trilogy review of John Christopher's Fireball by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 1, 2020 Having recently read & reviewed Christopher's 'Tripods' Trilogy I was aware, I suppose, that they were probably targetted at young adults but that was even more apparent w/ Fireball. The protagonists are, once again, young males w/ some competition between them, Simon & Brad. "What bugged Simon was that while he had been prepared to make allowances, lend a helping hand and all that, he found no taker for his generosity. And while he had been determined not to say or do anything which might make his American cousin feel inferior or embarrassed, it was more than slightly galling to have evidence of the other's superiority thrust down his throat instead. The day after Brad's parents left he overheard Yankee Granny telling her sister about Brad. His IQ was 150, he had an incredible photographic memory so that he could recite whole pages out of an encyclopedia, and it wasn't a . . . you know . . . narrow talent." - p 10 Then along comes the fireball wch sends them on their hero's journey. ""What is it?" "Brad didn't answer. It was roughly spherical, eight or ten feet across, blindingly white—a whiteness of sunlight reflected dazzlingly from mist or ice. Except that there was no sun. It appeared to float a foot or so above the ground. Thunder growled, and a heavy drop of rain splashed Simon's face. He said 'It's what they call a fireball, isn't it? I've read about them.' "The progress had slowed and now halted. It hovered a dozen feet away from them. That was some relief, but he still didn't like the look of it. He was trying to reassure himself by adding: 'A form of ball lightning. Quite harmless.' "Brad said slowly: I guess it has to be ball lightning. Only ball lightning's supposed to be coloured — red or yellow. And nothing so big — no more than inches across.'" - p 17 Of course the fireball envelops them & there goes their old life. "It had to be the fireball that had caused it. Not by picking them up and putting them down, like a playful typhoon, but in some quite different way. A gateway? Could they have passed through it and come out in a different place? But a place where you got run down by barbarous-looking horsemen with swords. Place — or time? A gateway to the past. Or maybe to the future, and a new Dark Age after the world had blown itself up as thoroughly as some people had suggested it might." - p 25 I must admit that this sudden-event-that-dramatically-changes-the-characters-lives trope is very common in SciFi & I don't think I've gotten tired of it yet. The boys end up in what seems to be ancient Roman times but they get separated & the British boy is captured to be used as a slave &/or gladiator. It's unclear, at 1st, what the fate of the American boy is. Simon is fortunately championed by one of the most feared & respected gladiators so he's saved from being beaten to the bottom of the hierarchy. "The advantages were manifold. Bos took him to get fitted with boots and tossed aside the first pair offered as unsatisfactory; the man issuing them was quick to produce another pair, over which Bos, after a close examination and some twisting of the leather with his powerful fingers, nodded satisfaction. And Simon noticed that when they queued for food, it was not only Bos who was given larger and better portions, but he as well. "Gradually he was picking up the language. Bos seemed to find his ignorance amusing. he willingly supplied the Latin name for things Simon pointed out and was patient in repetition." - pp 43-44 Simon's situation is bad enough but at least he's young & healthy — what about those older & weaker ones? "Simon thought about the five who had crouched naked beside them throughout that broiling afternoon, especially of the little old man who had been in the cellar with him. What was going to happen to them? he asked Bos. "Bos shrugged. 'Damnati ad bestias.' "Simon had enough Latin to know what that meant. Condemned to the beasts — sent out into the arena, weaponless, to be savaged and eaten by starving lions, for the amusement of spectators. He almost did feel he was lucky." - p 46 Where's a fireball when you need one? In the meantime, Brad has fared better. W/ a better knowledge of Latin he's ingratiated himself to an open-minded rich Christian, a minority religion barely tolerated. "'Then, as we went on talking, the discrepancies started to crop up. Like dating. They date the way the Romans did before Christianity — A.U.C. not A.D. Ab urbe condita — from the founding of the city. And I discovered this Rome had been founded two and a half thousand years ago. And that Britain had been a Roman province for nearly two thousand years, not a couple of hundred. He got to it almost as soon as I did. Once you've accepted that someone has come from the future, I guess it's not too difficult switching that to a parallel world. As I say, he's open-minded for a Roman." - p 66 [Insert completely silly irrelevant comment here.] The boys are believed when they explain that they're from a parallel universe & they're put into the worldly bishop's hands. "'It was a decree of the emperor Julian that free men should shave their faces, but that slaves might not. He did not name Christians slaves, but I have chosen that title. We may worship our Lord in private, but not proclaim Him in public. That is slavery. We may walk the streets, but not go in procession to celebrate our faith. That is slavery. And we have grown used to our fetters, which is the worst slavery of all.' "He stared at the boys and then, disconcertingly, smiled, but the smile was not reassuring. "'That which can be used for good is counted good. At last God has sent a sign! A miracle brought you here, and God's wonders are not worked for nothing. Nor must they be wasted. This generation is blessed, but only if it seizes its blessing and uses it.'" - p 75 I've got news for you, Bishop (Hear ye, hear ye!), not being permitted to proclaim your religion in public isn't slavery — it's censorship. Just be glad you're not required to wear a mask. that might drive you fucking crazy. Apparently, Christopher's presentation of Julian's beard policy is part of his alternative universe view of this history. Now I'm interested in Julian (aren't I already, ahem, a little overwhelmed by an excess of interests as it is?!). "Julian (Latin: Flavius Claudius Julianus; Greek: Ἰουλιανὸς, Ioulianòs; 331 – 26 June 363) was Roman emperor from 361 to 363, as well as a notable philosopher and author in Greek. His rejection of Christianity, and his promotion of Neoplatonic Hellenism in its place, caused him to be remembered as Julian the Apostate by the Christian Church." [Really, guy?! Neoplatonic Hellenism?! That's so old-fashioned! I'd sooner worship Neosocratic Troyism.] [..] "The Misopogon (or "Beard Hater") is a light-hearted account of his clash with the inhabitants of Antioch after he was mocked for his beard and generally scruffy appearance for an Emperor. The Caesars is a humorous tale of a contest among some of the most notable Roman Emperors: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Constantine, and also Alexander the Great. This was a satiric attack upon the recent Constantine, whose worth, both as a Christian and as the leader of the Roman Empire, Julian severely questions." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_... Personally, one of the greatest disappointments in my life is that the Misopogon hasn't become a popular genre, like horror or romantic comedies. It's oh-so-desperately needed right now to set the world aright. "The Misopogon, or Beard-Hater, is a satirical essay on philosophers by the Roman Emperor Julian. It was written in Classical Greek. The satire was written in Antioch in February or March 363, not long before Julian departed for his fateful Persian campaign. "Glanville Downey says of the text: ""Julian vented his spleen in the famous satire, the Misopogon or Beard-Hater, in which, by pretending to satirize himself and the philosopher's beard which he wore in a clean-shaven age, he was able to pour forth his bitter anger against, and disappointment with, the people of Antioch."" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misopogon Well, one thing leads to another (except for, y'know, that one thing over there that got missed somehow) & the boys give the Christians an advantage w/ their alternate universe knowledge & the next thing you know.. "There must have been not one firing party, but several. One after another the temples turned to torches. They watched because there was nothing else to do, and the scene had a terrible beauty. From the temples the fire raisers turned to palaces and public buildings. As dusk fell, the flames were brighter still as they burned to ashes the ancient heart of Rome." - p 119 See what happens when you empower Christians? Where are they going to display Imelda Marcos's shoe collection?! "Immediately following the return from Rome, the pendulum had been set up in the high-ceilinged state room of the governor's palace, where it swung its murderous arc from wall to wall. Murderous, because its bob was a heavy cylinder of lead, with a sharp blade of iron set in on either side. An Altar, surmounted by the figure of Christ, had been set up just in front of the point where the bob, at the lowest point in its arc, swept some four feet off the ground. "And at that point a small wooden enclosure had been built, big enough for a man but granting him only sufficient freedom of movement to be able to drop to his knees in front of the altar before the bob came down. Some of the more agile were able to sway their bodies just enough to have the bob miss them - on the first few swings anyway. Escape became continuously more difficult, as the pendulum swung to and fro, and fatigue in the end made it impossible. The one time Brad and Simon had been there they had seen bystanders laughing and laying bets as to which would be the killing stroke, before they turned away, sickened." - pp 121-122 Give me Neoplatonic Hellenism anyday. ...more |
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review of H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 1, 2020 This was great, something that wd appeal to 'animal rights' fo review of H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 1, 2020 This was great, something that wd appeal to 'animal rights' folks, wch is more or less what I am even though I eat meat. It's from 1962 so it even predates John Brunner's (admittedly greater) ecological novel The Sheep Look Up (1972) (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ) wch means it deserves a special place in my small pantheon of environmentally sensitive SF. In this day & age of the PANDEMIC PANIC so much of what I read speaks to me about the extraordinary delusions I feel increasingly suffocated by. To me, the following describes a typical QUARANTINIAC. ""If you don't like the facts, you ignore them, and if you need facts, dream up some you do like," she said. "That's typical rejection of reality. Not psychotic, not even psychoneurotic. But certainly not sane."" - p 15 Of course, BELIEVERS, might find that descriptive of me instead of of themselves. On a planet that's being exploited by big business unfettered by any concern for life there because there supposedly is no intelligent life there a prospector discovers a little creature that he calls a "fuzzy" & the more he's around sd creature the more he realizes that it's very intelligent indeed. "Then holding it where Little Fuzzy could watch, he uncrewed the cap and then screwed it on again. ""There, now. You try it." "Little Fuzzy looked up inquiringly, then took the bottle, sitting down and holding it between his knees. Unfortunately, he tried twisting it the wrong way and only screwed the cap on tighter. He yeeked plaintively. ""No, go ahead. You can do it." "Little Fuzzy look[ed] at the bottle again. Then he tried twisting the cap the other way, and it loosened. He gave a yeek that couldn't possibly be anything but "Eureka!" and promptly took it off, holding it up. After being commended, he examined both the bottle and the cap, feeling the threads, and then screwed the cap back on again. ""You know, you're a smart Little Fuzzy."" - p 20 I wonder if that wd work w/ a raccoon. As Little Fuzzy becomes more accustomed to Papa Jack's good intentions his family moves in w/ them, including a baby. "Baby Fuzzy was clinging to her fur with one hand and holding a slice of pool-ball fruit, on which he was munching, with the other. He crammed what was left of the fruit into his mouth, climbed up on Jack and sat down on his head again. Have to do something to break him of that. One of these days, he'd be getting too big for it." - p 30 A gesture takes place across screens that wd be right at home in today's socially distanced world. "They shook their own hands at one another in the ancient Terran-Chinese gesture that was used on communication screens" - p 42 The big business that's exploiting the planet will have its interests dramatically damaged if the Fuzzies turn out to be thinking beings b/c the planet will be reclassified as protected. This is the crux of the struggle. "Leonard Kellogg looked pained. "What I was about to say, Victor, is that both Rainsford and this man Holloway seem convinced that these things they call Fuzzies aren't animals at all. They believe them to be sapient beings." ""Well, that's—" He bit them off short as the significance of what Kellogg had just said hit him. "Good God, Leonard! I beg your pardon abjectly; I don't blame you for taking it seriously. Why that would make Zarathustra a Class-IV inhabited planet."" - p 44 SO, the managers of the big business proceed to try to prevent any classification of the fuzzies as anything but animals. ""Holloway spoke, on the tape, of their soft and silky fur." ""Good. Emphasize that in your report. As soon as it's published, the Company will offer two thousand sols apiece for Fuzzy pelts. By the time Rainford's report brings anybody here from Terra, we may have them all trapped out." "Kellogg brgan to look worried. ""But, Victor, that's genocide!" ""Nonsense! Genocide is defined as the extermination of a race of sapient beings. These are fur-bearing animals. It's up to you and Ernst Mallin to prove that."" - p 47 Hence, the race to prove or disprove sapience is on. "Riebeck said, "If they're working together on a common project, they must be communicating somehow." ""It isn't communication, it's symbolization. You simply can't think sapiently except in verbal symbols. Try it. Not something like chnaging the spools on a recorder or field-stripping a pistol; they're just learned tricks. I mean ideas." ""How about Helen Keller?" Rainsford asked. "Mean to say she only started thinking sapiently after Anna Sulivan taught her what words were?" ""No, of course not. She thought sapiently—And she only thought in sense-imagery limited to feeling." She looked at Rainsford reproachfully; he'd knocked a breach in one of her fundamental postulates. "Of course, she had inherited the cerebroneural equipment for sapient thinking." She let that trail off, before somebody asked her how she knew the Fuzzies hadn't. ""I'll suggest, just to keep the argument going, that speech couldn't have been invented without pre-existing sapience," Jack said." - p 53 That's an interesting discussion, don't you think? I'm preoccupied w/ the idea of what I call "pre-linguistic thinking": in other words what happens in the mind before something comes out of it in language. Some might argue that until the language is formed it's not thought — but what about what's being kicked about here in relation to Helen Keller? Or in relation to a pre-lingual child? If what's going on in their mind is non-lingual & it's not thought than what is it? ""Wait a minute," Jack interrupted. "Before we go any deeper, let's agree on a definition of sapience." "Van Riebeek laughed. "Ever try to get a definition of life from a biologist?" he asked. "Or a definition of number from a mathematician?" ""That's about it," Ruth looked at the Fuzzies, who were looking at their colored-ball construction as though wondering if they could add anything more without spoiling the design. "I'd say: a level of mentation qualitatively different from nonsapience in that it includes ability to symbolize ideas and store and transmit them, ability to generalize and ability to form abstract ideas. There; I didn't say a word about talk-and-build-a-fire, did I?"" - p 54 145 pages later someone's actually testifying on the subject in court! Whatever happened in that time?! The testimony is given into a lie detector of sorts so that any naughty business is caught right quick. ""what, in you professional opinion, is the difference between sapient and nonsapient mentation?" ""The ability ot think consciously," he stated. The globe stayed blue. ""Do you mean that nonsapient animals aren't conscious, or do you mean they don't think?" ""Well, neither. Any life form with a central nervous system has some consciousness—awareness of existence and of its surroundings. And anything having a brain thinks, to use the term at its loosest. What I meant was that only the sapient mind thinks and knows that it is thinking." "He was perfectly safe so far. He talked about sensory stimuli and responses, and about conditioned reflexes. He went back to the first century Pre-Atomic, and Pavlov and Korzybski and Freud. The globe never flickered." - p 159 In other words, he hadn't gotten to lying about the Fuzzies yet. Well, it doesn't turn out too good for the bad guys, a key corporate player gets sentenced to death. He beats them to the Kool-Aid. ""At twenty-two thirty, the prisoner went to bed, still wearing his shirt. He pulled the blankets up over his head. The deputy observing him thought nothing of that; many prisoners do that, on account of the light. He tossed about for a while, and then appeared to fall asleep. ""When a guard went in to rouse him this morning, the cot, under the blanket, was found saturated with blood. Kellogg had cut his throat, by sawing the zipper track of his shirt back and forth till he severed his jugular vein. He was dead."" - p 163 That resonated with me. I was put in jail once b/c I'm such an evil demon & must be put down (& also b/c a rather unscrupulous person arranged this) & I hunkered under the too-short blanket in the pretty cold cell on the concrete bed & thought about sawing my arm arteries w/ my zipper pull b/c that was the sharpest thing I had at my disposal. I'm sure the world is very thankful that I didn't b/c now my bk Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC is here to bedevil the zombies. H Beam only made it to age 60 so there's another one I've outlived. I can see that I'm going to have to read more by him. It's the least I can do for the young feller. ...more |
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review of Mack Reynolds' The Cosmic Eye - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 23-25, 2020 For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/stor review of Mack Reynolds' The Cosmic Eye - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 23-25, 2020 For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Anyone who reads my SciFi reviews will realize that Mack Reynolds can do no wrong. In fact, I openly invited him to cut me in half with a chainsaw. Fortunately for me he's dead. That invitation was only for him & doesn't extend to anyone else so don't get any ideas. The opening epigraph: "When four sit down to conspire, three are police spies and the other a fool. —Old European Proverb" - p 5 I'm not convinced that's really an "Old European Proverb" b/c I'm not sure how long such a situation has existed. It certainly applied to the Stasi, the East German secret police, who were still in existence when The Cosmic Eye was written — although perhaps the 4th person was less of a fool than the proverb states. "One of the Stasi's main tasks was spying on the population, primarily through a vast network of citizens turned informants, and fighting any opposition by overt and covert measures, including hidden psychological destruction of dissidents (Zersetzung, literally meaning "decomposition"). It arrested 250,000 people as political prisoners during its existence." [..] "By 1995, some 174,000 inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (IMs) Stasi informants had been identified, almost 2.5% of East Germany's population between the ages of 18 and 60. 10,000 IMs were under 18 years of age. From the volume of material destroyed in the final days of the regime, the office of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records (BStU) believes that there could have been as many as 500,000 informers. A former Stasi colonel who served in the counterintelligence directorate estimated that the figure could be as high as 2 million if occasional informants were included." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi I've been told by German friends that the underground literary culture in East Berlin was mostly secret police informants. I wonder if their writing was any good? The society of The Cosmic Eye is highly stratified. ""Well you ought to remember Elizabeth Mihm. You met her the other night at Technician Philip's party at the Elite Room. Her husband used to be Prime Technician of the Transport Functional Sequence. Good friend of mine. Since he passed on, Lizzy has devoted a good deal of her time to entertaining. Her apartment is quite a center, quite a place for you to make contacts, my boy. She has the Supreme Technician himself to her soirees, quite often."" - p 6 & the very rich even complain about their robot servants. ""Butter," she was saying indignantly. "My dears, I simply don't know what to do about the servant problem. Real whale butter, mind you, for greasing herself and there's no breaking her of it. She's one of the old family robos, one of the very early models that I've had all my life and my mother before me. So what can you do? You can't just have her reconditioned, what would everyone say? But she uses butter. Heaven knows how my grandparents could have afforded it. I know I can't. Butter, my dears, three thousand erg units a pound. What I mean is . . ." ""Servants!" one of the other ladies said, casting her eyes ceilingward." - p 8 Ah.. & then there's self-censorship, a favorite topic of mine, aka allowing the ruling elites to occupy your mental real estate. "Paula Klein said expressionlessly, "I believe Lizzy rather insists on no politics or religion, no sex, no criticisms of current institutions, no race or other controversial subjects, and above all . . ." "Rex chimed in with her and together they chanted, "No criticism of the government." "They both laughed, but then both cast their eyes quickly about their vicinity. No one seemed close enough to have eavesdropped." - pp 13-14 Not surprisingly, in this climate there're speakeasies. Have any of you ever been to one? They exist in the US@ & in CacaNada. I don't know whether they're operating in the QUARANTYRANNY. I had a friend in CanaNada who had a Speak in his rented home adjacent to a junk yard. They had all-night parties. I played there. I was very unpopular. One guy offered to produce me but explained that he was a sadist & that he made the people he produced suffer. I declined his offer. ""But how do we know? I am sorry, sir, but this is a private establishment, and . . ." "Paula snapped, "This is Techno Rex Morris, son of Hero of the Technate Leonard Morris. Now is that enough for you?" "There was a long moment of silence. "Then the voice said, an element of apology there, "Welcome to the speakeasy, Techno Morris." "Paula snorted and led the way to where a heavy, padded door was sliding open. ""Speakeasy!" Rex blurted." - pp 18-19 The speakeasy is ostensibly a place for freedom of speech. Remember that? That was something that hypothetically was possible not that long ago. Nowadays, just try expressing an opinion contrary to the MONOLITHIC NARRATIVE around the THOUGHT POLICE & see how quickly they try to shoot you down w/ regurgitations of PARTY LINE. ""Come over here," Paula said to him, her dark eyes sparking. And then, under her breath, "There is only one fast rule. You're not to take exception to what anyone says—no matter how extreme. You're allowed to say anything you wish, but so is everyone else."" - p 20 Likely story. "One of the older men took his pipe from his mouth and said softly, "The fact that we cannot answer your question doesn't mean there is no answer. Perhaps to the Deity the answer is a very obvious one. Perhaps, for some reason, he does not want us to know why he created us. Perhaps we are fated never to find out." "Rex Morris drew Paula Klein back a few yards from the table. His lips were dry. "Look here," he whispered, "if the Temple knew about this conversation, these men would be apprehended and would probably lose status. They might even be exiled from the Technate. Or . . . or even . . ." ""Be imprisoned or meet violence," Paula finished for him." - p 22 The novel is set in a total surveillance society. Nonetheless, I'm not sure it isn't outdone by our current one. "Rex said, "Well, of course, I realize that rank has its privileges." "His uncle was still nettled by the Security Engineer who had intruded upon his privacy. He said, "Yes, but I'm afraid that even they are being eroded away in what has become a truly naked society, a society without privacy. When the early founders of the Technate took their initial steps against non-conformists, I wonder if they ever expected to go this far." ""Uncle Bill!" ""Oh, don't be such a ninny, my boy. It's one thing, watching yourself at a place like one of Lizzy Mihm's parties, but I'm your uncle and here we are in the privacy of my home. We are both members of the Technician caste. If we can't discuss serious matters, who can?"" - p 35 "["]The secret ballot came in later, when citizens began to be afraid to let their boss, their neighbors, or whoever, know how they had voted, for fear that they might become discriminated against as a result." "Rex yawned and said, "What a ridiculous manner in which to select a nation's rulers. Voting."" - p 36 "Rex said lazily, "What's all this got to do with avoiding controversial questions?" ""It's related, I suppose. It's all a part of the evolution of the gutless wonder, the modern American. Don't rock the boat. Don't say anything that might cause umbrage. Avoid politics and religion in your discussion, no matter how much they cry to be discussed. Talk about wishy-washy things." ""Makes for easier living," Rex murmered, sipping at his coffee." - p 37 "William Morris went back to worrying his theme. "But I suppose it was the coming of the miniaturized bug that finished us off. That and the National Data Banks and every citizen having a dossier into which every vital bit of information about him was recorded by the computers. His vital statistics, including his criminal record, if any, his medical record, his data pertaining to the Internal Revenue Department, his credit rating, his I.Q., and other educational data. From cradle to the grave, everything that pertains to you goes into your dossier. All phone calls are monitored, in this naked society of ours, and if there is any reason, whatsoever, the Security Functional Sequence has the ability to bug any room, any car, and public restaurant or other meeting place. They have the ability to pick up your conversation from half a mile away, even though you are walking along the street. No wonder our people, with this hanging over their heads every moment of their lives, are circumspect in everything they say."" - pp 37-38 This novel was published in 1969. It basically describes an earlier version of where we're at today in 2020. Maybe that doesn't bother you, maybe you're comfy in your privileged position where you think such things will never work to your disadvantage. Keep in mind that there's now face recognition software that can search huge databases to find where you were at just about any time & place. Sure, there're limits.. but maybe not for long. & what about criminal records? Oh, but you're not a criminal so why should you worry? Believe me, all it takes is a few well-placed half-truths or downright lies to create a web-presence of your 'criminality' regardless of how 'real' it is. It takes about as much to permanently create a legal criminal record for you of equally dubious 'reality' & this record can prevent you from getting jobs, etc.. Take the example of a friend of mine. He was fire-twirling at a political rally. He was arrested for possession of an incendiary device or some such. The police knew full-well that this wasn't a bomb but when they presented their completely & deliberately fake case to the mass media & to the court they used what I call 'police theater' to dramatize the situation as if they'd been put at great risk. He was found guilty but, fortunately, not imprisoned. Sometime later, he tried to get a job as a fireman. He was denied because of this record. He's since been denied every job he's applied for. It's been decades, decades of being prevented employment because of a deliberate falsehood on the part of the police. Why should they care? They're not their victims. It can happen here & it IS happening here more often than people realize. Those of you who think that the Surveillance State won't be any threat to you at all might be right — but maybe you should try giving a flying fuck for those that it definitely already is a threat to. "At the peak was the Supreme Technician, head of the Congress of Prime Technicians and carrying a veto power over its decisions. His position held for life and upon his demise the Prime Technicians elected from their number a new incumbent of the office." - p 40 Ok, we aren't there yet, fortunately — but what about those Governors declaring Emergencies & then exercising dictatorial powers even after their powers are legally voided by more democratic process? Take Governor Wolf in Pennsylvania as an example. Take Governor John Bel Edwards in Lousiana. Perectly legal attempts have been made to reduce their dictatorialness but because their grab for power has been of such legally unprecedented ferocity they still continue to dictate. How long before the precedent that these people set turns into the type of non-democratic hierarchy imagined by Reynolds? "his uncle had introduced him to the automated reception desk in the lobby and from then on the computer connected screens at the entrance, on the elevator banks, and at his uncle's door all recognized him and passed him. He knew, however, that there were limitations on his movements, as there were on those of anyone else in the 200 floor high-rise apartment building which contained in all, counting all three towers, more than ten thousand apartments. "In the way of experimentation, he had once requested the elevator to take him to the 65th floor. Within seconds a voice had said, "Techno Rex Morris, your residence is on the 185th floor. What is your purpose in stopping at the 65th floor? If you are visiting someone on that floor will you please reveal his name so that we may check if you are expected?" "Rex had thought, "I'll be damned. I'd hate to have to try and burglarize this building." But aloud he said, "Oh yes, excuse me, I was thinking about something else. 185th floor, please."" - pp 43-44 We're not there yet.. but how many of you would have no problem with living in a world where your movements are so much under surveillance that any attempt to get off an elevator somewhere other than where your apartment is would come under immediate scrutiny? Personally, I like having the freedom to spontaneously do things that might include discovery, perhaps a 'random' encounter with an interesting stranger. & what about words & our freedom to use them? "The scientist snorted contempt of that. "Controversial words, controversial words! For the love of God, how can a word be controversial? Ideas can be controversial, but words are merely tools to convey ideas. How this confounded tendency ever began, I'll never know. It seems to have started as far back as the middle of the 20th century. All of a sudden terms such as socialist, left, communism, propaganda, Marxism, agitator, revolution, and such became dirty words to which one reacted automatically and negatively without thought. You could no longer discuss such subjects because a mental iron curtain went down as soon as the words—not the reality behind—were used."" - p 54 Do any of you see any similarity to that & what's happening in our world now? The author was obviously commenting on the era of the War Against Communism that he was alive during — but what about the War Against COVID-19? Are there any similar mental iron curtains in place? I think there are. Try getting someone brainwashed by their unquestioning belief in the PANDEMIC to consider the well-researched opinions of people taking an opposite viewpoint. The result will be a completely reflexive naysaying that isn't even based in any understanding of the alternative position at all. For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ...more |
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review of Joanna Russ's And Chaos Died by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 17-20, 2020 For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/ review of Joanna Russ's And Chaos Died by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 17-20, 2020 For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Long before I started reviewing the bks I read I'd read Joanna Russ's The Female Man (1975) b/c I was interested in gender issues. I also read her Picnic on Paradise (1968). I remember thinking they were ok but, basically, they didn't do much for me. It took And Chaos Died (1970) for me to finally be impressed. The 1st epigraph puts the title in context. "They had noticed that, whereas everyone else had seven apertures, for sight, hearing, eating, breathing and so on, Chaos had none. So they decided to make the experiment of boring holes in him. Every day they bored a hole, and on the seventh day, Chaos died. — Chuang Tzu" - p 5 I'd 1st come across that story in John Cage's "Indeterminacy", text 27: The Four Mists of Chaos, the North, the East, the West, and the South, went to visit Chaos himself. He treated them all very kindly and when they were thinking of leaving, they consulted among themselves how they might repay his hospitality. Since they had noticed that he had no holes in his body, as they each had (eyes, nose, mouth, ears, etc.), they decided each day to provide him with an opening. At the end of seven days, Kwang-tse tells us, Chaos died. Notice that in this telling the holes are provided rather than bored. That gives quite a different impression, doesn't it? It's not so aggressive. The gist of the book concerns how people change under telepathic conditions. It's excellent for that. Two humans have crash-landed on a planet where the human occupants are ordinarily telepathic & have other abilities that the unwilling guests are uncomfortable w/. ""I am not going any." "Jai saw fingers flashing among cards, for some reason, someone picking out words, lips moving, looking over her shoulder and laughing: yes, that's it— ""I am not going any where," corrected the woman. She shook hands abruptly with the Captain. She said "Galactica, yes?" Again the words were perfect, slightly seperated. "Ja?" she said, then shook her head. "Sorry. I am not used." She made a face. She stepped toward Jai, twitching down the skirt of her short, sleeveless shift, brown. (Russet, he thought professionally. Spice, chocolate, sand, taupe, Morocco. What nonsense.) She sat down abruptly on the grass, crossing her knees. "I'm not used to talking this at all," she finally said, rather quickly. "My hobby. You fit well, yes?"" - p 13 The main male character is gay, a probably somewhat unusual characterization in SF in 1970, hence manifesting Russ's gender-bending tendencies. ""I don't like women," said Jai Vedh suddenly and dryly. "I never have. I'm a homosexual." ""Oh?" said the Captain, taken aback for a moment" - p 17 The shipwrecked pair try to puzzle out what's happening around them. ""What in the name of Everything is going on?" said the Captain. "What? Do you know?" ""Everything," said Jai Vedh. ""Huh?" ""I don't mean I know everything; I know nothing. I don't know." And he sat and buried his face in his hands. ""Books!" said the Captain, somewhat more steadily. "Books, not tapes. There can't be three dozen in the library, they're that rare. And here they are. Who the devil puts real books in an escape capsule?" ""The same person who put you and me in it together," said Jai Vedh." - p 21 Fortunately, the door-latch started talking to them. "My apologies, squeaked the door-latch. The woman clung to the doorway like a fish. "Frontal attack . . . too much stress . . . inconvenience for you . . . try in morning . . . next week . . . next month . . . times cures all things . . . you'll forget." - p 28 THEN they came down in the landing capsule. "They came down in the escape capsule the next morning: Jai Vedh safely strapped in and trying to control his air-sickness. Outside the round porthole, the cloud strata streamed by; the ship bucked like a freight elevator. They blasted a crater in the woods and around that a good, flat, rock rim—fused rock and mud with the steam driven out of it. Not even the ashes of the burnt grass remained. They stepped out on to the orange grass under the yellow-leaved trees—it was autumn. The Captain shook hands unaffectedly with the young woman in the simple brown dress who had been delegated to welcome them." - p 33 ""I know, I know," she interrupted, suddenly ducking round the doorway into the sun. "You must go back to your ship and cannibalize the motor for a radio. That's what one always does, isn't it? You have such trite ideas." She was swinging by one hand, into visibility and out of it; she added, "If you wait, you know, we'll bring you the equipment we came down with." ""Your what?" said the Captain. ""Our equipment," she said. "If you work hard, you can make your ship over in six months and not wait the rest of your life for a rescue. You would find that dull, I think." ""And you never rescued yourselves!" said Jai Vedh suddenly. "Because you didn't want to. Am I right?" ""You would guess eggs if you saw the shells," said the woman; "That's a compliment. Come on,"" - p 35 ""By the way," she said in a low voice, "I know what it means to cannibalize; it means to eat something. I heard about that." She seemed to hesitate in the half-dark. ""But tell me, please," she said, "what does it mean exactly—radio?"" - p 36 It's Russ's wonderful way of making speech confusing in a way accounted for by telepathy that makes this novel as great as it is. Note that the woman says "cannibalize the motor for a radio" but then shows that she doesn't quite understand "cannibalize" & doesn't understand "radio" at all. So where did she get the words from & how did she succeed in stringing them together in a way that makes sense? The Captain, at least, is inclined to think that the planet they've crashed on is primitive — &, yet, they have a one syllable word for a specific large prime number. That doesn't compute. ""Eleven thousand, nine hundred and seventy-seven is Ftun. I give you my own, improper, accented version. One syllable.["]" - p 47 We're not talking one, many here. The children aren't telepaths yet. ""I can talk," said the little girl. There was a moment's silence. ""Actually," she continued with sudden fluency, "it's because they're grown-ups. Grown-ups are horrid. They say 'Oh, he'll be all right.' They haven't the slightest compassion. This is because they can whatchamacallit. I can't whatchamacallit because I'm nine. I can talk, however, as you see. Now you say something." ""Telepath," said Jai Vedh automatically. ""No," said the little girl. "Talk, not telepath. Say 'how do you do.'["]" - p 59 Another nice detail, eh? Imagining the dilemma of children surrounded by telepaths who barely talk. ""My name," said Jai solemnly, "is Jai Vedh. Then we do what's called 'shaking hands.' " He put his out. She held out hers. ""Up and down?" she said. "How very interesting. I am Evne's daughter, my name is Evniki, that means little Evne and I am parthenogenetic.["]" [..] ""I'm nine," she went on pedantically, "but actually I'm fifteen. I've slowed myself down. That's called 'dragging your feet.' Mother keeps telling me 'Evniki, don't drag your feet,' but catch me hurrying into it!["]" - p 60 "["]It develops in adolescence. It allows you to know where everyone is, what everyone is thinking and feeling. Everyone else knows what you are thinking and feeling. You can transport yourself from place to place instantaneously, you can levitate, you can perceive and manipulate objects at a distance, from what size I don't know but it goes down to the microscopic—no, the sub-microscopic—size. And I think you can perceive everything directly: mass, charge, anything. And you play with them. You play with the wavelength of light. "". . . and with gravity . . ." he added." - p 64 Russ's treatment of these incredible abilities is another thing that makes this novel great. Instead of completely weaponizing them into a reductionist us-vs-them scenario, she humanizes these abilities & shows those w/ them as playful. It's fun. A character explains. "["]Chuang Tzu speaks of ming, generalized internal perception; this is ming. You and I are like the ivy plant and the squirrel, this is an old fable, the squirrel on the branch runs down to where the branches join and up again, but the ivy plant, which is bound to the branch, cannot see where the squirrel went and says: 'How did you get from here to there instantaneously? How did you get a nutshell from here to there instantaneously?' The squirrel explains. The ivy plant says 'Branch? What are you talking about, "branch"? There is no "branch"; there is no "down"; there is only this.'" - p 66 Fascinating, eh? I wonder, though, whether the old fable fails to take into account the root network. ""Hold your breath!" (shaking her) "And talk! Talk! Talk!" ""No!" screamed Evne. "Can't! Forgot!" and she flung herself away into the bushes and the heather, rolling over and over, then tearing things up and hitting her knees with her fists, and finally—with a kind of return to sanity—deliberately and vehemently beating her head against the ground. Jai felt pain in his temples until his head rang." - p 75 It's easy to forget how to speak when you're telepathic, esp if you're experiencing emotional upheaval. Jai discovers what books are like on this planet. "The ninth book appeared to be a collection of anatomical sketches and cross-sections; the binding cracked loudly as he opened the book, and the open page said to him in a whisper: "Everyone understands a picture. "He gave it to know that this was not entirely true. "But take you, for instance, said the page in a soft flattering voice. You— "He shut the book. Opened again to the same page, it at once began, softly, Everyone understands a picture, and he shut it again and put it under his arm. It was a machine. It had not, of course, spoken in words." - p 79 A search party arrives that's been looking for the crashed people. That doesn't bode well for the people already there. "Some information,emphatic but inexplicable, about the relation of a (complex) to a (complex) to a (complex) shot at him out of the Northwest, crossed the sky, and disappeared below the Southeastern horizon. "She said: ""It's your radio. They've come."" - p 86 Things have been rolling along pretty rough & tumble & then this? ""I'm thinking," replies Evne in the voice of a golem. "I love you," she croaks. She wheels about, heads in another direction; one arm (alive) tremblingly pleads with him, walks itself up his arm into his armpit and nests there in great fear of the world outside, cozily snoozing, singing We two, We two. They went into new country, gullies choked with scrub, elderberry bushes, things that whipped back into their bodies and faces. Evne talked to herself in a series of unitelligible nasalities like those of the drowned, bubbles like a corpse's voice. "Don't be alarmed," she says in a voice of scraped lead and walks into a bees' nest; no one was stung." - p 87 I, personally, find that to be a scene of great emotional power. Alas, the landing search party has some ideas for exploitation that, um, the sympathetic reader just. can't. agree. w/. "officers discussed with a sober Captain the military uses of the think-folk, to study, to duplicate. to betray." - p 94 Jai & Evne are taken aboard. They're in a guest room, the guest is coming. "She had milk-blue eyes, cropped straw hair, a butcher's smock, and spiked sandals. She had enormous breasts, two wells of silicone jelly, enormous buttocks, a faked, crowded waist, dyed eyes, dyed hair, and no uterus. Jai forced himself to concentrate on the unaltered parts that interlaced with the rest, the pearly organs that budded around her lungs and in her abdomen, lacy strips of flesh marking repeated surgical scars, some normal circulation left; you could, after all, think of her as the victim of a bad accident." - pp 98-99 Hi. Lar. I. Ous. The attempts to militarily exploit our heroes backfire far more dramatically than was expected because their abilities are far beyond the military's imaginings. "There were people running along the corridor outside, new people with souls so bad, so murderously professional, that it stood the hair up on his head. There were things whose purpose he did not even want to guess at. He bellowed again. "God will provide, said the wisp, playfully or prudishly. "So he jumped. "He came down in a park, at night. There was nobody near." - p 114 Jai Vedh has developed abilities thanks to Evne that enable him to teleport from the spaceship where the military was thinking they had him captive to Earth. Nice. Earth is quite a place. "The girl had thrown her arms around another passer-by and was saying, "You have disappointing eyes. I don't like you. Do you want to fuck?["]" - p 119 The Earth is overpopulated w/ humans. For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ...more |
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Jul 19, 2020
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Oct 20, 2020
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0027183505
| 9780027183504
| 4.00
| 6,524
| 1968
| Aug 01, 1968
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review of John Christopher's The Pool of Fire by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 15-16, 2020 This is the last bk in the Tripods Trilogy (except fo review of John Christopher's The Pool of Fire by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 15-16, 2020 This is the last bk in the Tripods Trilogy (except for a prequel that was published as a sequel 20 yrs later) that I've already reviewed the 1st 2 bks of: The White Mountains: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ; The City of Gold and Lead: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . This review cd be called "Review Lite" b/c I have almost nothing to say about the bk — not because I didn't enjoy it, I did enjoy it, but, perhaps, b/c it was a 'classic' reading experience for me where I just breezed thru the story & then it was done. ""You talk of the Council coming to us with its plans. You talk of parts to play, of men being told what they must do. I would remind you, Julius: it is not Capped men you are talking to, but free. You should rather come to us asking than ordering. It is not only you and your Councilors who can plan how to defeat the Tripods. There are others who are not lacking in wisdom. All free men are equal, and must be given the rights of equality. Common sense as well as justice demands this."" - pp 7-8 An anarchist in the midst of those rebellious humans! Good for him, I say. Unfortunately, the council holds sway. It wd've been interesting to read about the rebellion happening without top-down leadership. In the previous bk, Will had escaped from the City of Gold and Lead & was now back at the place where the rebels were living & organizing. His return leads to his being asked to give an explanation of conditions. The speaker introducing him isn't exactly flattering. ""And yet Will, an ordinary boy, no brighter than most, a trifle on the small side—Will has struck at one of these monsters and seen it collapse and die. He was lucky, of course.["]" - p 12 The suppression of human knowledge to make the invader's control easier becomes further apparent. "["]The land we are going to is called America, and the people there speak the English tongue.["] - p 18 It's discovered that the invaders, the 'Masters', can't hold their booze. "Then, passing a pyramid, we saw one of them come out, Mario gripped my arm, unthinkingly, and I winced. But the pain did not matter. The Master teetered on his three stubby legs, his tentacles moved uncertainly. A moment later, he crashed and lay still." - p 128 Sheesh, even with 3 legs the ET cdn't stand up — they'll never compete w/ humans. Why, I've seen a guy be drunk all day long & STILL drive. We'll just send him to fight. Then again, humans are such self-sabotagers. ""Ah, so you are better, no? You 'ave recover the good appetite, and prepare to break the fast?" "I smiled. "I think I could manage something." ""Good, good! So we 'ave the special break-the-fast for you. I 'ave cook 'im ready." "He passed me a plate, and I took it. It contained slices of bacon. They were thick, the meat was fat, apart from a couple of narrow bars of pink, and they looked as though they had not been fried but boiled in grease, which still adhered to them. I stared at it, while the cook watched me. Then the ship heaved one way, and my stomach heaved another, and I hurriedly put the plate down and staggered for the fresh air of the deck. As I went, I heard the cook's merry laughter echoing along the companion-way behind me." [..] "(The greasy fat bacon, I learned, was an old ship's cook trick; and this one was particularly fond of practical jokes.)" - pp 183-184 I must have a special edition of this bk b/c it actually vomited on me when I turned the page. The good guys win (ok, ok, the humans win but since I'm more or less human that's who I was rooting for) & the world will probably get TV back again so that Mind Control can get right back on track. Some people never learn. "(In a year or two, we had been promised, there would be something called television, by which men could see, in their own homes, things happening half a world away. It was the device which the Masters had used, as a preliminary stage in their conquest, to hypnotise man and so control their minds—and our scientists were making sure that could not happen again before they brought it back.)" - p 208 Oh, really? I thoroughly enjoyed this (ok, I missed a spot or 2) but I won't claim that it had the richness that Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings does or that Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy does. SO, if you're one of those people who might only read one trilogy in your lifetime I'd recommend those 2 before I'd recommend this one. Still, if you're an actual reader instead of a pretend one then go for it. ...more |
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Oct 16, 2020
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| 002042700X
| 9780020427001
| 4.07
| 7,367
| 1967
| 1970
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really liked it
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review of John Christopher's The City of Gold and Lead by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 9-13, 2020 This QUARANTYRANNY has really fucked my life review of John Christopher's The City of Gold and Lead by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 9-13, 2020 This QUARANTYRANNY has really fucked my life up. Just sayin'. It's October & this is only the 13th review I've written so far this year. Compare that to 2018 when I wrote 77 reviews. Even writing this relatively simple one seems like a practically insurmountable task. ANYWAY, this book is the 2nd in a series, a trilogy at 1st. I reviewed the beginning already, The White Mountains ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) so I won't go into how the premise of this series is that the Martians in H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds won - although that's not explained anywhere in these Christopher books. When I read these I thought I might not've read anything by Christopher before but, Lo & Behold!, I'd read his The Possessors in a book club edition that a door-to-door salesman convinced me to subscribe to when I was a young'un & I'm glad I did! Anyway, that was over 50 yrs ago so I don't remember The Possessors for shit. On the back of this edition it lists this & 2 other bks as a trilogy but it doesn't give a name to the trilogy. Odd. I've since learned that they're called The Tripods & that the 1st 2 bks were the basis for a SciFi TV series in the UK in the 1980s. 1st I've heard of that. AND there was a prequel-sequel written 20 yrs after the 3rd part of the trilogy. There you go, everything you ever needed to know. Plunging right in, out heros meet an uncapped, i.e.: non-mind-controlled, stranger on an island. "And where the silver band of the Cap should have been there was only flesh, toughened and browned by long years of exposure. "He spoke in German, in a harsh dialect. He had been looking out and had seen us struggling in the water, and had watched Beanpole haul me in to shore. His manner was odd, I thought—part grudging and part welcoming." - p 61 It's funny, literally every stranger I've ever met on an island has been uncapped. There's something to be said for that. Our heroes take on the task of entering the city where the tripods & their inhabitants live by accepting their abduction as slaves. "What happened as our Tripod entered the City was something for which I was completely unprepared. I felt as though I had been struck a savage blow that contrived to hit me in every part of my body at the same time, a blow from the front, from behind, most of all from above, smashing me down." - p 97 The Tripod operators, the extra-terrestrial invaders & colonizers have apparently recreated the stronger gravity that they're accustomed to. What might be strange to some of us about this is that usually when Earthlings are depicted in SciFi as going to other celestial bodies that have lighter gravity the Earthlings enjoy the liberation, the increased speed, the greater jumps & only have the slacking of their muscles to fear. What's wrong with these danged ETs? Why aren't they frolicking in Earth's lesser gravity?! Some people just don't know how to have a good time. ""Humans, you have the privilege, the high honor, to have been chosen as servants of the Masters. Go where the blue light shines. In the place to which it leads you, you will find fellow slaves who will instruct you in what you are at do. Follow the blue light."" - p 100 But what if they had on their BLUBlox? As if slavery isn't bad enough, slavery under increased gravity really bites. "The remnants of pride broke through the heavy dullness of his voice. He said, "I won the thousand-meters race at the Games, less than a month after I was Capped. No one had ever done that before in my province." "I stared at him, at the slumped tired body, the worn, sick-looking flesh, with horror. He was no more than two years older than I was, perhaps less." - p 103 Yes, I can see it now, the remake in 10 yrs: "The remnants of pride broke through the heavy dullness of his voice. He said, "I won the Virtual Reality Olympics at the Zoom Conference, less than a month after I put on the mask permanently & self-quarantined. No one had ever done that before in my province." "I stared at him, at the slumped tired body, the worn, sick-looking flesh, with horror. He was no less than fifty years younger than I was, perhaps even younger than that." "I sensed rather than heard it at first, but it grew into a ripple of sound, spread along the cubicles to my right—a sound of awe and wonder. I knew then that the moment had come, and craned my neck to see. They had entered the room from the far end, and were approaching the cubicles. The" [Vaccinators] - p 109 Slavery takes its toll. "We had all lost weight, but he, who had been tall and well built, seemed, in proportion, to have lost much more than I. His ribs showed painfully through the flesh of his chest, and his face was gaunt. He had the stooped posture that one saw in those who had been a year or more in the City. I saw something else, too, with horror: a pattern of angry marks across his back. I knew that some of the Masters beat their human servants for carelessness or stupidity, using a thing like a fly whisk, which burned the flesh where it touched. But Fritz was not stupid and would not be careless." - p 127 What's perhaps most marvelous about these stories is that the ET conquerors used television to "make men's minds receptive" before the invasion. Gee, the reviewer asks innocently, cd something like that be happening now? "And they caught the rabbits with the ancients' own marvel: the distance-pictures. These pictures were sent out on invisible rays through the air, and turned back into pictures in millions fo homes all over the world. The Masters found a means of suppressing those rays at their source, and sending out in their place rays that made the pictures they wanted. There went with them other rays that made men's minds receptive. So they watched the pictures, and the pictures told them to go to sleep. When they had gone to sleep, the pictures gave them their orders." - pp 152-153 WAKE UP BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!, y'know what I mean? In my review of the 1st bk of this trilogy, I made a pun about a "mar-riage", a "marred horse". That was a writerly touch preparing you for the following: "She was dressed in the simple dark-blue gown, trimmed with white lace, that she had worn at the tournament, when the forest of swords flashed silver in the sun, and all the knights acclaimed her as their Queen. Her brown eyes were closed, but the ivory of her small oval face was delicately flushed with rose. But for the casket, very much like a coffin, and the hundreds of others around her, I could have thought she was sleeping." - p 163 Sometimes I think the people around me are sleeping too.. but, no, they're dead. You've heard of "Teacher's Pet"? Well, my 5th grade teacher had little boy teacher's pets. He turned out to be a pedophile. "Matters were not helped by the fact that the Master became more and more obviously attached to me. His fondling of me, occasional at first, became a daily ritual, and I was pressed into doing something of the sort in return." - p 166 Stay tuned for my exciting review of the final bk of the trilogy! If I can ever muster the energy or enthusiasm to write it, i.e.. ...more |
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Jun 15, 2020
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Oct 13, 2020
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Paperback
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| 0020427107
| 9780020427100
| 3.94
| 12,018
| Apr 1967
| 1970
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really liked it
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review of John Christopher's The White Mountains by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 30, 2020 I've mentioned before that H.G.Wells was an import review of John Christopher's The White Mountains by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 30, 2020 I've mentioned before that H.G.Wells was an important writer to me as a young'un. His The Time Machine was particularly important but so was his The War of the Worlds. I've also mentioned that as a young teenager I had a picture of Wells & spouse sitting naked on the back porch of a cabin, presumably at a nudist camp. They were both a bit flabby, H.G. was wearing light-colored socks (probably white but the picture was black & white so I don't know) & sandals. I probably got that picture by picking it up at the side of a rural road where I lived, presumably left there torn out of a magazine, by a pervert possibly hoping to get somebody or another worked up. I was already a nudist so it just appealed to me that Wells was too. The point relevant to this review being that Wells established a mood of what one might call British 'pastoral' SciFi that I was very fond of. Tolkein's The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings trilogy & other things I was reading at the time did roughly the same thing in other genres. In other words, within a somewhat placid setting, some more or less honest simple folks are confronted w/ a hero's task & perform it staying true to their integrity &/or improving as a result of their hero's journey. What can I say? I'm a sucker for such a narrative, one so basic to my own ethical core. The White Mountains fits right in, this is even the 1st book of a trilogy, like the The Lord of the Rings (but not as epic) & Gormenghast (another epic favorite), it's British & the setting is rural. It even seems to be targetted to a young adult readership, a demographic I generally avoid. The 1st chapter is called "Capping Day", the meaning of wch is to become clear over time, the reader is just left to deduce that Capping Day is a sort of coming-of-age ceremony time. The 1st paragraph sets the setting: "Apart from the one in the church tower, there were five clocks in the village that kept reasonable time, and my father owned one of them. It stood on the mantlepiece in the parlor, and every night before he went to bed he took the key from a vase and wound it up. Once a year the clockman came from Winchester, on an old jogging pack horse, to clean and oil it and put it right." - p 1 This identifies the human environment as being apparently without electricity. That's further developed: "DANGER 6,600 VOLTS "We had no idea what Volts had been, but the notion of danger, however far away and long ago, was exciting. There was more lettering, but for the most part the rust had destroyed it: "LECT CITY" - p 9 Jack is a close friend of the main character, Will Parker. Will's life, despite our non-knowledge of what "capping" is, seems prosaic enough. "Jack had always been around. It was strange, I thought, as we walked toward the village, that in just over a week's time I would be on my own. The Capping would have taken place, and Jack would be a boy no longer." - p 9 Christopher's writerly strategy is to put the reader in the midst of his environment & to gradually explain dribs & drabs of it as one might have them revealed if one lived there. "What was known, though not discussed, was that the Vagrants were people for whom the Capping had proved a failure. They had caps, as normal people did, but they were not working properly. If this were going to happen, it usually showed itself in the first day or two following a Capping: the person who had been Capped showed distress, which increased as the days went by, turning at last into a fever of the brain. In this state they were clearly in much pain." - p 12 However, the Vagrants aren't always what they seem. Here's what one of them said to Will: ""I am the king of this land. My wife was the queen of a rainy country, but I left her weeping. My name is Ozymandias. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."" - p 24 "In antiquity, Ozymandias (Ὀσυμανδύας) was a Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias A related quote from the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem entitled "Ozymandias" is as follows: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem... Horace Smith's poem of the same title is less related. It would seem that the Vagrant might not just be free-associating or senselessly ranting. ""You are not a Vagrant!" "He smiled. "It depends what meaning you give that word. I go from place to place, as you see. And I behave strangely." ""But to deceive people, not because you cannot help it. Your mind has not been changed." ""No. Not as the minds of the Vagrants are. Nor as your cousin Jack's was, either." ""But you have been Capped!" "He touched the mesh of metal under his thatch of red hair. ""Agreed. But not by the Tripods. By men—free men."" - p 33 The Tripods! In Christopher's story the tripods that invaded Earth in Wells' The War of the Worlds have won. But the history of this invasion & the victory by the Martians has been forgotten by the Earthlings. Compare Wells' description of his protagonist seeing these tripods for the 1st time: "And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder." - H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds This remaking or augmenting of Wells must be a 'thing' because I'd previously read Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships in which he changed Wells' The Time Machine. I admit to thoroughly enjoying both reworkings. "["]And it may be that the Tripods came, in the first place, from one of those worlds. It may be that the Tripods themselves are only vehicles for creatures who travel inside them. We have never seen the inside of a Tripod, so we do not know." ""And the Caps?" ""Are the means by which they keep men docile and obedient to them."" - p 34 Now, I'm not giving too much away, we're only 34 pages into the novel so a reader would learn this fairly quickly. Will has the misfortune to be captured by someone whose intent is to shanghai him. ""Now then, no trouble. Save your strength for the Black Swan."" - p 61 Me being the kindof guy that I am I decided that since I had 2 DVDs of movies laying around named "Black Swan" I might as well watch the one that this reference was to, the 1942 pirate movie (&/or to Sabatini's book that the movie was based on) directed by Henry King & starring Tyrone Power & Maureen O'Hara, AND the one that has nothing to do with Christopher's reference, Darren Aronofsky's 2010 movie about ballet. WTF? Can't be too thorough. The successful conquering of Earth by the invaders in the Tripods has resulted in humanity's technological knowledge being dramatically set back. As our heroes, Will & friends, travel thru ruins they find cars w/o knowing them. One particularly clever human, however, is capable of surmising. "He said, "Places for men to sit. And wheels. So, a carriage of some nature." "Henry said, "It can't be. There's nowhere to harness the horse. Unless the shafts have rusted away." ""No," Beanpole said. "They are all the same. Look." "I said. "Perhaps they were huts, for people to rest in when they were tired of walking." ""With wheels?" Beanpole asked. "No. They were carriages without horses. I am sure."" - p 86 If the word "car" is believed to originate from Latin carrus/carrum "wheeled vehicle" we could play with it a bit & say that since a car is a horseless carriage that, therefore, removing riage from carriage is what signifies its horselessness & that, therefore, horse = riage. Hence a marriage is a marred horse. Or something. Alas, that enables me to make a joke about the doomed romance between Will & Eloise. ""When the tournament is over, the Queen goes to serve the Tripods. It is always done." "I said stupidly, "Serve them where?" ""In their city." ""But for how long?" ""I have told you. Forever."" - p 147 Will was expecting to marry her. Instead she'll become a work horse of sorts. That's the only marriage that'll come out of this mess. END OF REVIEW OF 1ST BOOK OF TRILOGY ...more |
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Jun 11, 2020
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Sep 30, 2020
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Paperback
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| 4.00
| 3
| unknown
| 1972
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really liked it
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review of Brian N. Ball's The Regiments of Night by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 23, 2020 Yet-another author I was previously unfamiliar w/ — thi review of Brian N. Ball's The Regiments of Night by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 23, 2020 Yet-another author I was previously unfamiliar w/ — this despite his having been born 88 yrs ago. He's still alive, I wish him well. Why I don't go to SciFi Converntions is beyond me, I enjoyed this. Much to my relief as a reviewer, I didn't take many notes so this review might very well be incoherent, but Khalia will understand. "To some extent Khalia could understand it. The Revived constituted a minority group that all could sympathize with, but whose appearance aroused only deep, half-submerged feelings of horror. They were the zombies of myth, the dead brought back from the grave into which unhappy chance had thrown them. ""They should be decently buried," Mrs. Zulkifar had once grated to the Brigadier. "I shouldn't be expected to travel—eat—breathe the same air—as a dead man!" "On that occasion Khalia had answered the woman: "Leave Mr. Moonman alone,"" - p 18 I told you Khalia would understand.. but do YOU, dear reader? "Khalia hid her instinctive horror. What had happened to the colony in the Sirian System was not the fault of the people themselves. Caught in a freak temporal effect, they had hung for two centuries in an unhappy half-life, neither living nor dead. The few that had the resilience to survive that bizarre and traumatic experience had been saved by a chance visit when a Galactic Center ship had called in. Mr. Moonman was one of the survivors." - p 24 I was one of the others. I eat freak temporal effects for breakfast. It's all about surviving. "Dross glanced at Wardle. "I know you held field rank, sir, but you commanded armies. We need a man who can adapt instantly to any bizarre set of circumstances. An expert, Brigadier, in the art of survival!"" - p 55 Sounds more like a partier to me. NOW, as we learned in Lesson 47b-SubParCon 14BX, SF writers often build on each other's lineages & they use their Waldos to do it. Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics have gotten serious play as a result. ""Surely not! No!" Mrs. Zulkifar shouted. "I know quite well that you're wrong, Doctor! Isn't it true that all robots are subject to the Laws of Robotics? Don't they carry a program stressing the sanctity of human life?" "Dross shook his head. "You have to believe this, Madam," he said. "Laws of Robotics! You might as well talk about the love-life of the robot! And the sanctity of human life? No! Mr. Knaggs and I found the prototype of a Confederation robot a few weeks ago. Do you know what was numbered amongst its duties?" He glared at the self-possessed, immaculately-dressed woman. "It was a perimeter guard. It was designed to sniff out all living things that tried to enter the surface base. Everything, humans included. And then kill."" - p 60 Now cf that to this excerpt from my recent review of Harry Harrison's Planet of No Return: ""["]The whole interior is so cramped that it must have been designed for robot control. See that metal tube? That's the ammunition feed for the recoilless canon. It goes right across the interior, right through the space where a human gunner or driver would sit. But there is more than enough space to site the control units for robot operation." """I don't understand. How can this be possible?" Lea said. "I thought that robots were incapable of injuring people? There are the robotic laws . . ." """Perhaps on Earth, but they were never applied out at the fringes of the old Earth Empire. You are forgetting that robots are machines, nothing more. They are not human so we shouldn't be anthropomorphic about them. They do whatever they are programmed to do—and do it without emotional reactions of any kind.["]" - p 176 "You probably won't find "recoilless canon" in any music dictionary so I'll provide a definition: "a piece in which the same melody is begun in different parts successively, so that the imitations overlap. without having the propellant theme shrink back physically or emotionally "Otherwise, note the reference to Isaac Asimov's famous story entitled I, Robot in wch the "3 Laws of Robotics" were introduced: "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. "A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. "A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. "An article in Scientific American discusses the feasability of these laws: https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar... . Artist Rich Pell made a great piece where he reminded DARPA of them too." - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Remember sex? That's so old-fashioned, positively outmoded, anachronistic. In this enlightened PANDEMIC PANIC COVID-19(84) era we know it's much more liberal & progressive to turn one's neighbor in for Thought Crimes than it is to fuck. That's how you can tell this next quote is from a different era. "They stood together in silence for a while. The girl was very close to him. Danecki sensed, both in himself and the girl, the sexual awareness which comes in moments of mortal peril. She had the scent of a woman who desperately needs to make love. "Me? thought Danecki. Approaching a middle age I'll not reach because of a hard-eyed young killer or a thousand-year-old war! Not with me." - p 94 Then Emma dies. After the build-up she's gotten as a pompous nuisance, no reader is going to miss her. ""She—what was it your engineer said?—tried to fill two spaces at once? Moving precisely at—? Displacing matter?" ""Poor Emma! A handsome woman, but stupid! Shallow, vain, and stupid! Poor woman!"" - p 124 Batibasaga, a feminist, revolted aginst the above generalization about woman. "Batibasaga stepped into the shaft. "The Army marched. "It was like a wall of lava—unstoppable, pulsating with red-black nuclear forces, a living wave of dense, ponderous, crushing machinery." ""I've failed," said Danecki helplessly." - p 153 Khalia & Danecki, the horn-dogs who tried to show by example that the feminists & the masculinists needn't fight, see their efforts frittered away in impending doom. But will specious logic win the day? ""I know," said Dross. "I know because I am a thousand years old." "In unison, the three robots said: "No man lives to be a thousand years old." ""The last human to contact you did so a thousand years ago," said Dross calmly. "I am a human. Therefore I am a thousand years old."" - p 172 & that's about how I feel today. I enjoyed this bk, esp the parts about the you-know-what. I will read more by the author — espcially if I can ever get thru the several thousand other bks that're ahead in line. ...more |
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review of Mack Reynolds & Dean Ing's Deathwish World by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 15-18, 2020 See the complete review here: https://www.goodre review of Mack Reynolds & Dean Ing's Deathwish World by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 15-18, 2020 See the complete review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... I remember devoting much of my 1984 reading time to reading the work of Philip K. Dick, I probably read one bk of his a wk. I loved his work so much that it might've seemed unlikely at the time that anyone could ever supercede him in importance as a SciFi writer to me. Fortunately for me,I keep discovering other SF writers that please me as much as Dick probably did way back then. Mack Reynolds is 1st & foremost among those these days. Reading one of his bks is bound to engross & please me. Since I 'dsicovered' his work in June, 2016, 4 yrs ago now, I've read & reviewed 16 of his bks: The Rival Rigelians: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Blackman's Burden: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Border, Breed Nor Birth: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Trample An Empire Down: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Computer War: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Code Duello: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Planetary Agent X: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Mercenary from Tomorrow: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... The Space Barbarians: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... After Utopia: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Commune 2000 A.D.: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Space Visitor: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Equality: in the Year 2000: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Galactic Medal of Honor: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Computer World: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Day After Tomorrow: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Fortunately, there's no end in sight. The "Foreword" provides this: "And it was possibly the softest sell of all time. The United States Government simply issued a declaration that it welcomed any countries in North, Central, or South America, or the Caribbean, to join it, conferring all rights pertaining to American citizens, including the Guaranteed Annual Stipend" - p 1 The "Guaranteed Annual Stipend" being something that occurs again & again in Reynolds's novels, a welfare that most of the people subsist on because the world has become so automated that hardly anyone works anymore. The opening scene is one of an apparent assassination. Reynolds, the author, is reputed to've been around wars &/or revolutions, perhaps he was a mercenary or, at least, familiar w/ mercenaries. As such, the technical detail might be accurate. "["]This scope we've got is an Auto-Range. Latest thing. Combines a range finder with a regular telescopic sight. No sweat. Hand me that silencer, Joe." ""You're sure?" Hamp said, pushing the back of his left hand over his mouth. ""Sure I'm sure," the other told him. "Take a minute or so to get it all sighted in again." He took the long tube Joe handed over and began screwing it into the barrel. It projected about a foot and a half when he had it tightly fitted. The silencer was about two and a half times the diameter of the barrel." - p 5 After the 'assassination' the team of 3 is attempting to leave the area when they're stopped by the police. To bluff their way out this happens: "Joe began to retreat backward, saying quickly into his transceiver, "State Police officer Number 358 had ordered my transceiver taken. One of us is a black; notify the nearest Nat Turner Team. One of us is an Amerind; notify the Sons of Wounded Knee. I am a Chicano; get in touch with the Foes of the Alamo. Notify our legal department! Notify Civil Liberties. Alert the Reunited Nations Human Relations . . ."" - p 12 It works. I'm reminded of a woman I met once who was stopped at the Canadian border. She told them that her father was a reporter for the Turner News Network and that he'd be very interested to learn about her being turned away. It worked, they let her in the country. She was bluffing, her father wasn't a reporter for the Turner News Network or for anyone else. ""What the hell's a Nat Turner Team?" "And Tom Horse added, "Or the Sons of Wounded Knee?" ""Damned if I know," Joe said grinning. "I made them up as I went along. Same with the Foes of the Alamo. What's the old gag? If there'd been a back door to the Alamo there would never have been a Texas."" - p 13 Ok, I've already been hinting so now it's time to reveal a little secret, it's early on in the bk, so it's not that much of a spoiler & it gives a pretty good idea of the political subtleties at work: ""Plumb center," Tom whispered. "The capslug shattered right on his chest and splattered red goo all over his shirt. I could see his face go pale and his eyes pop. He fainted."" - pp 14-15 The 'assassination' of the racist politician was just a scare, a Red Scare one might say. The 'assassins' were just putting the fear of his victims in him. An excellent idea! Meanwhile, in another plot thread: "Frank calculated quickly and looked up. "This comes to only two hundred pseudo-dollars." "MacDonald said to his fellow agent, "He's not only an intellectual but a mathematician." ""I'm supposed to get a thousand," Frank said his voice tight. MacDonald scoffed at him. "What'd you do with a thousand pseudo-dollars? Probably waste it. Go through it in a week. As it is, Roskin and I will lay over in Madrid on our way home, and we'll hoist a couple of drinks to you in Chicote's."" - p 27 Being an anarchist from BalTimOre, this next section warmed the cobblestones of my liver: "Roy Cox looked out over the small, shabby hall in Baltimore with its pitiful group, members of the Industrial Workers of the World—"Wobblies," in their own jargon. Inwardly, he felt depressed and weary. It was the same old story, there were sixteen in the audience." - p 33 I feel ya. Cox gives a speech & there're hecklers there: "["]Computers can be programmed into shortcomings." ""Like what!" one of the hecklers called out. His friends laughed, backing him. Several of the Wobblies, seated down front, turned and glared at thrm. "Roy said, "Well, let's take a couple of the scientists that the computers would have passed by. Two of their big requirements are a good education and a top-notch Ability Quotient. Thomas Edison had only a couple of years of formal education—he never got through grammar school. The computers wouldn't have picked him for a job. Steinmetz was a hunchback cripple, in spite of his I.Q., and would never have gotten a high Ability Quotient, much of which depends on physical attributes." - p 36 Note that ""Like what!"" from a heckler ends w/ an exclamation mark instead of a question mark. Such people aren't interested in informative answers, they just want to attack whomever they're trying to bully — as long as they have people to back them up. Otherwise, UP WITH THE AUTODIDACTS!! If you want to find real intelligence, instead of Pavlovian Dog Untertan (w/ Superiority Complex) pseudo-intelligence it's among the autididacts you must look (he says immodestly). A dog trained to jump thru a fiery hoop isn't as smart as one that figures out how to escape. ""This is one of the final things Bartolomeo Vanzetti wrote. He was self-educated." "Forry Brown read softly from the tattered clipping: "If it had not been for this thing, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in all our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by accident. "Our words—our lives—our pains: nothing! The taking of our lives—lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler—all! That last moment belongs to us. That agony is our triumph." "Forry Brown looked up from the clipping. "Their deaths weren't the end. Hundreds of articles about them were published for years. Best-selling books were written about the Sacco-Vanzetti case. There was even a long-running play on Broadway, and a hit movie film. In becoming martyrs, Bartolemeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco at long last put over their message. Decades later, they were vindicated by the State of Massachusetts. They hadn't even been guilty."" - p 47 "On April 15, 1920, a paymaster for a shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts, was shot and killed along with his guard. The murderers, who were described as two Italian men, escaped with more than $15,000. After going to a garage to claim a car that police said was connected with the crime, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and charged with the crime. Although both men carried guns and made false statements upon their arrest, neither had a previous criminal record. On July 14, 1921, they were convicted and sentenced to die. "Anti-radical sentiment was running high in America at the time, and the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti was regarded by many as unlawfully sensational. Authorities had failed to come up with any evidence of the stolen money, and much of the other evidence against them was later discredited. During the next few years, sporadic protests were held in Massachusetts and around the world calling for their release, especially after Celestino Madeiros, then under a sentence for murder, confessed in 1925 that he had participated in the crime with the Joe Morelli gang. The state Supreme Court refused to upset the verdict, and Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller denied the men clemency. In the days leading up to the execution, protests were held in cities around the world, and bombs were set off in New York City and Philadelphia. On August 23, Sacco and Vanzetti were electrocuted. "In 1961, a test of Sacco’s gun using modern forensic techniques apparently proved it was his gun that killed the guard, though little evidence has been found to substantiate Vanzetti’s guilt. In 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation vindicating Sacco and Vanzetti, stating that they had been treated unjustly and that no stigma should be associated with their names." - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-h... Composer Ruth Crawford Seeger wrote a great song supporting them post-mortem. Here're the lyrics: "Sacco, Vanzetti by H. T. Tsiang "Fast! Fast! One year has passed! Dead! Dead! You will never be reborn! Who said There will be a resurrection? Why didn’t we see any of those gentlemen Who were willing to take your places? The real meaning of “death” — You knew it. Still you paid with your life for your class! Sacrifice! That was real sacrifice! "Look at your enemies. They are fishing, Smiling, Murdering, As ever. Shameful! It is an eternal disgrace to us all. "Before your death Did not millions promise — To do “this” or “that” lf you should die? Now One year has passed. What about “this” and what about “that”? "Petitions? Protests? Telegrams? Demonstrations? Strikes? Oh! They may refire the cold ashes of our two martyrs. But they can never soften the murderer’s heart! Tears? Sighs? Complaints? And the like? Oh! They may expect the embraces of your dear mothers, They can never get pardon from the blood-thirsty masters. "Have you ever seen sheep end pigs Being dragged to slaughter? How pitifully they shriek! How terribly they tremblel Yet men enjoy their delicious flesh Just the same! Sheep! Pigs! Foreigners! Workers! Your sweat is fertile, Your blood is sweet, Your meat is fresh! "Oh, Vanzetti! You did say: “I wish to forgive some people for what they are now doing to me”. Certainly, you can forgive them as you like, But you are the Wop, the fish peddler, the worker, And haven’t anything in the bank. lsn’t it a great insult To say “forgive” to your honorable master? "Oh, Sacco! You did say: “Long live anarchy”, But you should not forget, That when you climb up to heaven You must use the ladder! "Oh Martyrs! Dead! Dead! You are dead, Never, never To live again. Fast! Fast! One year has passed! But years and years, Years are piling up immortal bricks Of your lofty monument. "Oh martyrs! Look at the autumn flowers: They are dying! Dying! Dying! But The trees, the roots from which The flowers are coming* Never, never die! When the spring comes We shall again see the pretty flowers Blooming, Perfuming, Saluting the warm sun, Wrestling with the mild wind and kissing the charming butterflies. "Oh martyrs! Dead, dead! You are dead! But Your human tree and your human root Are budding, Blooming, Growing! "Listen to the war cries of your living brothers! This is the incense We are burning To you. * Crawford changes “coming” to “blooming”" - https://songofamerica.net/song/sacco-... See the complete review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ...more |
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| 0812535243
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review of Harry Harrison's Planet of No Return by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 31, 2020 I just reviewed Harrison's The Technicolor Time Machine in review of Harry Harrison's Planet of No Return by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 31, 2020 I just reviewed Harrison's The Technicolor Time Machine in April, 2020 ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ), & I wrote in that review: "I'm glad I'm finally getting around to reading Harrison." In fact, I'd already read Harrison's Tunnel Through The Deeps & reviewed it on February 14, 2014 ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... ), a mere 6 yrs before but I'd already forgotten about it. As I stated in the latter review: "Was I impressed? Not particularly, it was ok, maybe the lack of writerly innovation is motivated by this being a sortof tip-o-the-hat to Verne & /or Wells." I liked The Technicolor Time Machine more & that liking combined w/ my slogging thru a few other bks that I've been determined to read entirely w/o getting much pleasure from the experience led to my reading Planet of No Return. Alas, I might've enjoyed it even less than Tunnel Through The Deeps wch brings my estimation of Harrison as a writer back down again. ""I've reached a decision," he said. "And I hope Lea will agree. The lifeship will be armed and defended with all of the deadliest weapons that are available. We will also take every possible machine or device that might aid us on the planet. Then, when we are completely equipped, I am going down alone, without any machines or metallic devices of any kind. Bare handed if necessary. Lea, don't you agree that this will be the wisest course under the circumstances?" "Her speechless look of horror was his only answer." - p 41 Apparently this story takes place in the 21st century. That would account for the "speechless look of horror" in response to going anywhere w/o a cell-phone. "["]I have no metal, nor do I wear anything made of artificial fibers." ""Not even the fillings in your teeth?" she asked, smiling. ""No, not even them." Brion was unsmiling and deadly serious. "All of the metallic fillings have been removed and have been replaced with ceramic inlays.["]" - p 47 Personally, I'll wear metal if I've bought it from a thrift store so that I'm not responsible for directly killing any metal for these purchases. "["]They slung us from poles like corpses. Carried us all night. I was sure they had murdered you." "He tried to smile but could only grimace. "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."" - p 101 I love that old joke. I think it might've originated w/ Jesus. I hear he had a great sense of tumor. Or maybe that was Lazarus. Speaking of Lazarus's chest cavity: "["]The whole interior is so cramped that it must have been designed for robot control. See that metal tube? That's the ammunition feed for the recoilless canon. It goes right across the interior, right through the space where a human gunner or driver would sit. But there is more than enough space to site the control units for robot operation." ""I don't understand. How can this be possible?" Lea said. "I thought that robots were incapable of injuring people? There are the robotic laws . . ." ""Perhaps on Earth, but they were never applied out at the fringes of the old Earth Empire. You are forgetting that robots are machines, nothing more. They are not human so we shouldn't be anthropomorphic about them. They do whatever they are programmed to do—and do it without emotional reactions of any kind.["]" - p 176 You probably won't find "recoilless canon" in any music dictionary so I'll provide a definition: a piece in which the same melody is begun in different parts successively, so that the imitations overlap. without having the propellant theme shrink back physically or emotionally Otherwise, note the reference to Isaac Asimov's famous story entitled I, Robot in wch the "3 Laws of Robotics" were introduced: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. An article in Scientific American discusses the feasability of these laws: https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar... . Artist Rich Pell made a great piece where he reminded DARPA of them too. It wd interest me to see a list of all the bks that refer to Esperanto as a future universal language. I try to call attn to such instances whenever I run across them in my readings: ""Does he understand you, sergeant?" one of them called out. ""That's a wicked looked knife he's wearing." ""Tell him to drop it." "Brion understood well enough; they were speaking Universal Esperanto, the interstellar language that everyone used in addition to their native tongue." - p 205 Like most, if not all, SF that I like, this is anti-militaristic: "Words were not going to stop these martial madmen. They actually lived in a military and jingoist idea of heaven. Wave the flag, my country right or wrong, build up the armament industries, repeal all civil rights—and go to war forever!" - p 222 This bk was published in 1982 during the Reagan presidency. That about sums it up. ...more |
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| 485069
| unknown
| 3.85
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review of Harry Harrison's The Technicolor Time Machine - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 16-19, 2020 This bk is copyrighted 1967, this edition is review of Harry Harrison's The Technicolor Time Machine - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 16-19, 2020 This bk is copyrighted 1967, this edition is from 1981. I probably saw it sometime between those 2 dates & thought it was too trashy for my increasingly literate tastes. Now, 40+ yrs later, I think it's thoroughly enjoyable, I'm glad I'm finally getting around to reading Harrison. ""This is my life's work," Hewett said, waving his hand roughly in the direction of the toilet. ""What kind of work is that?" ""He means the machines and apparatus, he's just not pointing very well." - p 9 Ha ha! "My vremeatron—from vreme, the Serbo-Coratian for 'time,' in honor of my maternal grandmother, who was from Mali Lossinj—is a workable time machine."" - p 10 Tell me another one; ell me a; xx. Tell m; ther on. When were we? ""Background material," Barney told him. "We can rough out the main story lines now and you can fill in the details later. L.M. suggested a saga, and we can't go wrong with that. We open in the Orkney Islands around the year 1000 when there is plenty of trouble. You have Norse settlers and Viking raiders and things are really hotting up. Maybe you open with a Viking raid, the dragon ship gliding acorss the dark waters, you know." ""Like opening a Western with the bankrobbers silently riding into town?" ""That's the idea. The hero is the chief Viking, or maybe the head man ashore, you'll work that out. So there's some fighting, then some more of the same, so the hero decides to move his bunch to the new world, Vinland, which he has just heard about." ""Like the winning of the West?" ""Right. Then the voyage, the storm, the shipwreck, the landing, the first settlement, the battle with the Indians. Think big because we're going to have plenty of extras. End on a high note, looking into the sunset."" - p 44 You get the idea. Time machine invented, Hollywood uses it to make an historical saga in a less expensive way than usual to save a failing studio. "You can't make a picture in a week!" - p 50 But, of course, you can, I do it all the time. Roger Corman probably did too & he was great at it. Here're some samples of mine: 492. a. "Double Embrace" - a celebration of the in-person meeting of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & Libby Ramer from June 19 to June 26, 2017E.V. - A Romantic Experimental Music Documentary Comedy - 1700 X 1275 - 1:50:49 - on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/1GDXxp_g168 b. "An afternoon in Casa WHO UNIT?" - the improvisation section excerpted from the above - 1:04:01 - on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/AnAfterno... 274. "START" (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE edit) - made as a collaborative project by approximately the same group of people as 233. "Dead & Breakfast" & 260. "Discontinuous Universe" - as w/ its predeccessors, this project began when Kelly Stiles (unfortunately w/o April Gilmore this time) came to visit Pittsburgh. Kelly & Morgan & tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE thought of a rough outline for a plot wch the whole Sylli G(roup) then fleshed out - often improvisationally while shooting & responding to our many locations. - as w/ "Dead & Breakfast", the cast performed multiple roles: Kelly Stiles: initial inspiration, camera, Gorgamesh, sock puppets, costuming, gameboard design, editing (not used in this version) etc.. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE:initial inspiration, camera, MEGALO, Ogre, Butcher of a Satie piano practice, gameboard design, animation, editing, sock puppets, bathroom corpse in "Dead & Breakfast" psychic flashback, 'Teenage Boy' in "Discontinuous Universe" kitchen psychic flashback, latex mask collection, etc.. Morgan Cahn: initial inspiration, camera, Brexskelren Ethetal, WASP, Dag's audience at the Fortuary, Cliff Hanger hooded figure, costuming, gameboard design, sock puppets, house set design etc.. Matthu Stull: initial inspiration, camera, Professor, Prostheseus, Minotaur, music in the "Prostheseus in the Labyrinth" scene, sock puppets, etc.. Michael Loomis: initial inspiration, camera, Pope Dag Hammerskull, Cliff Hanger hooded figure, 'Teenage Boy' in "Discontinuous Universe" kitchen psychic flashback, etc.. Thanks to: Teresa: camera, Seductress, Giant Owl, Ogre stunt double, sock puppets Aairyn: camera, sock puppets the Boat People: Evan, Babz, Patrick, Elli the mischievous kids: 1st generation: Genly Ai, Ivan 2nd generation: Reyghan, FreeSoul their parents: Kalie & D2K - for Reyghan & Genly Ai permission Alan & Nancy - for Ivan permission Yvette - for FreeSoul permission Craig - Guy running by w/ Left-Handed Monkey Wrench in The Alley Heinz History Center The Carnegie Museum of Natural History Invertebrate Zoology Lab: Insect Cult Members: Walt, Vanessa, Dave, Tim Robin: protector of the Giant Owl 2 kids in park: protectors of the Giant Owl Michael's Parisian Friend: camera Homer & Greenbean: Guinea Pig Oracle(s) Sarah: Sphinx voice-over Phipps Conservatory & the Chihuly sculptures Cathedral of Learning Nationality Rooms Allegheny Cemetary Schenley Park Paris Pittsburgh Excelsior Sound Effects CDs "75 Spectacular Sound Effects" CD François Rabbath: bass in 2 "Dead & Breakfast" psychic flashbacks of corpses - mini-DV -> DVD/1/2" VHS cassette - 1:16:19 - shot in september & october & edited in october & november of 2007 - on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/RkOyr6cFaz4 - on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/START_201810 OK, those took longer than a week once one includes post-production. There are some that took less time but I don't think you'd be as impressed by them (not that you'll be impressed by the above either necessarily). Here's a link to a shorter one that only took a week, more or less exactly: {240. "Dead & Breakfast" - this was a collaboration between 8 people made over a 6 day period - the initial concept & screenplay was from Kelly Stiles, Morgan Cahn, & Matthu Stull - the acting & camera work was by all participants: Kelly Stiles: Beaumont, the stuttering guest Morgan Cahn: Mrs. Danby, the Bed & Breakfast operator Matthu Stull: Lorno Katazian, the tv weatherman Jim Lemon: Ringo, the ski bum guest Sarah Stanek: George, the other ski bum guest April Gilmore: Jo-Jo Pumpkin, a 'crazy' guest Daniel Prince: Randy, Mrs. Danby's nephew Party Teen on Couch #2: Mr. Horn, a neighbor - the editing was mainly done by Kelly Stiles, Party Teen on Couch #2, & Sara Stanek - w/ possible input from Matthu Stull & Daniel Prince - as Party Teen on Couch #2, I also thought of the ending & a few other scenes - mini-dv - 37:18 - november '03 - this is enclosed in brackets because my participation was minor in contrast to that of Kelly, Morgan, & Matthu's} - on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/TCGBnvAyYao - on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/deadbreak... That was made before the mainstream release of the same name. One last example of one that was made quickly that might not be of much interest to people but that serves my point here: 607. "Coal & tENT: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & Coal Hornet discuss IMPROVisation: 2019.11.24" - 1:06:31 - 1080p - on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/KX4QDzHpyJo - on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/coaltent Ok, enough of that. "["]Charley Chang went back in time to a nice quiet spot where he worked very hard to produce this script. He stayed as long as he needed, then we brought him back to almost the same moment when he left. Hardly any time at all elapsed while he was away, so from your point of view it looks like it took just an hour to produce a complete script."" - p 74 There he goes, giving away my secret. That's how I've managed to make 615 movies, publish 1984 texts & 223 audio works. The downside is that I'm still only 16 to the outside world but I look like I'm 66. Have you ever read an Icelandic Saga? It's kindof like reading Jim Thompson. The author, presumably, was studying the subject for writing this bk. One might say that passages like the following are parody. "["] They also burned, in his own house, Audun the son of Smidkel at Bergen." He stopped and nodded his head sagely as though he felt he had communicated vital information. ""Well?" Barney asked, puzzled. "What does all that mean?" "Ottar looked at him and frowned. "Smidkel married Thorodda, my sister."" - p 104 Of the Icelandic Sagas, I've only read Grettir's Saga so I'm far from an expert but Grettir's was completely psychopathically violent and the Vikings depicted herein in Harrison's bk aren't any different. Here's a sample from Grettir's Saga chosen just by flipping thru the bk for a few seconds: "Grettir spoke this stanza: "Some men have tongues too long and too ready to speak; that's how they earn harsh revenge. But few have done more evil than you, and now your life is forfeit, your long journey is over. "Thorbjorn answered, 'I think I am no closer to death, for all your babbling.' "Gretir said, 'So far my predictions have never had to outlive their promise, and this one is not likely to, either, Defend yourself, if you want to; you will never have a better opportunity.' "Then Grettir struck at Thorbjorn, who raised his hand with the intention of warding the sword off, but it caught his arm just above the wrist and then swept on at his neck, cutting his head off. The traders said that he was a dealer of heavy blows, as the king's retainers were supposed to be, but they thought it no loss that Thorbjorn had been killed, for he had been quarrelsome and spiteful." - p 82, Grettir's Saga, University of Toronto Press Harrison really does seem to have done research into the language, the sagas, & to whatever other history might've been available about the time & people. W/ that in mind, I'm inclined to believe that the following might be based in fact but, WHEW!, it seems harsh even for the Vikings. ""What does he have against becoming a Christian?" ""Olaf would submit him first to the ordeal of the snake. In this the mouthpiece of a lurhorn, the larger brass war horn, is forced down the throat of the victim, a poisonous snake is put in the bell of the horn, which is then sealed, and the horn is heated until the snake seeks escape down the pagan's throat."" - p 127 ""Hananu Sousta handartokin,"* Ottar roared, and his men shouted back happily as they ran to swing the ship about for the last leg of her voyage." [..] "*"Come on! The last bit of work!"" - p 175 That was a taste of Old Norse. While you won't learn the whole language from reading this bk you might pick up enuf phrases to help you get thru traveling back in time to the era as a tourist. As the movie shapes up the director has an inspiration about who would be good to create the soundtrack. ""Spiderman Spinneke woud love it." ""He might at that," Barney squinted as an idea hit him, then snapped his fingers. "That's what I was thinking about, the Spiderman. He plays all kinds of weirdo instruments in that beat joint the Fungus Grotto. I heard him once, backed up with a brass section and a drum." "Val nodded. "I've been there. He's supposed to be the only jazz tuba player in captivity. It's the most terrible noise I ever heard."" - pp 200-201 NOW, given my own personal Low Classical & booed usic orientation & given my on-going fascination w/ instruments, that immediately perked my interest. As far as I can tell, "Spiderman Spinneke" is a completely fictitous character not modeled on anyone in particular, porbably modeled on experimental music of the recent past to the writing of this bk SO that makes me wonder who might've been obliquely an inspiration as of the copyrighting of the bk in 1967. Since the novel's 20th century location is Hollywood & environs I'll confine my guesses to the same. Roger Bobo: tubaist for the LA Philharmonic, someone w/ a somewhat avant-garde solo repertoire Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention: they wd've ben fairly early in their career but already notorious Harry Partch: an instrument inventor Lou Harrison: not exactly an instrument inventor but someone who used some home-made gamelan instruments Dean Elliott and his Big Band: their "Zounds! What Sounds!" record combining big band music with sound effects came out in 1963 Of course, there are many more possibilities but these are the prominent ones that occur to me 'off the top of my head'. Speaking of 'off the top of my head': "["]Do you know what a paradox is, Dallas?" ""The Spanish barber who shaves every guy in town who doesn't shave himself—so who shaves the barber?"" - p 217 The paradox referred to is the "Barber Paradox" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_... ). For a heretical (& somewhat silly) spin-off of that witness my "Haircut Paradox" ( https://youtu.be/pXMl1ZbMm9l ). While I'm linking to my movies (gotta advertise them SOMEHOW) I might as well take advantage of this: ""Sure, Australia. They have these natives there, what they call Abos, and a witch doctor was spinning this stick around his head on the end of a piece of string so it made the noise." ""A bullroarer, of course. A lot of primitive tribes use them and they are supposed to have magical qualities.["]" - p 226 & a Maori friend of mine demonstrates one here: https://youtu.be/gPOFMfbtRmc?t=325 as part of my "Avicenna's Floating Maori" movie. The Maori name for the bullroarer is "Purerehua". Aren't you glad you asked? ""These are the Icelandic Sagas, in the original Old Norse in which they were written. Of course most of them were just verbal history for about two hundred years, before they were transcribed, but it is amazing how accurate they can be. If I might read you a bit from the 'Thorfinn Karlsefni Saga' and 'The Greenlanders Story.'" - p 247 I assume that those were things that the author used for research material. Intrigued, I just ordered The Sagas of Icelanders, the largest affordable collection of these sagas that I cd find online. Can't learn too much now can we? All in all, this was an excellent read: fun AND satisfactory for the curious mind. Recommended. ...more |
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review of William Barton & Michael Capobianco's Iris by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 1-8, 2020 For the full review go here: https://www.goodread review of William Barton & Michael Capobianco's Iris by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 1-8, 2020 For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... To anyone out there who pays attn to my reviewing. my not having reviewed a single bk in 2020 until now, during the 3rd mnth of the yr, might seem like unprecedented sloth. In actuality, a member of my family died at the end of 2019 & I've been occupied w/ my role of 'responsible adult' ever since. Added to this that I've been reading 4 other bks, at least 2 of wch I've found exceptionally tedious but I'm nonetheless determined to finish them, & the reader may find that I place the reading of Iris in a particularly trying time. In short, it's hard for me to not just dismiss the bk by saying that I hated it — but, no, that wd be too oversimplifying. There were ideas in it that I found interesting enuf.. but, still, I felt like I was in the presence of the gentrification of science fiction. What on Earth cd I mean by that?! Most people are familiar w/ the idea of gentrification as referring to changes wrought on a neighborhood or a city by an influx of wealthy people whose above-average prosperity becomes catered to to the detriment of the poorer people in the area who had previously constituted the norm. As such, rents become unaffordable for any but the rich, snooty restaurants only wishing the patronage of the rich push out more egalitarian establishments, culture becomes swayed in favor of the often mediocre tastes of people w/ more money than intelligence (despite self-delusions to the contrary). Lifestyles of Yuppies become the preferred subject matter of readings. People w/ more varied experience of life need not apply. Welcome to the currently changing face of Pittsburgh, where I live. In the past, the term "co-opting" might've been used to refer to culture emulated but robbed of its virility by the rich, who never tire of exploiting the poor. In my not-always-very-humble opinion, jazz has been co-opted by well-to-do young white New Yorkers who have the chops but, dare I say it?, not the soul. Instead of saying "co-opting", I'm currently inclined to say that the process is gentrification. A young white musician studies w/ an older black one. The young guy starts a big band w/ black & white & asian members. In pictures of the group, the white guys are either absent or minimized. It's bad PR, you see, it makes it look like a white guy's leading the band, wch he is, & there's less money in that, it's politically uncomfortable, it's bad business. That's gentrification. Anyone who's witnessed the Art Ensemble of Chicago in African costume & make-up performing their robust music or Sun Ra's Arkestra in full theatrical splendor will probably agree that 4 middle-class white guys w/ generic appearance & shirt-tails out standing still while they produce university-trained imitations, no matter how skilled they are at it, just doesn't cut it. Bleach not only whitens, it wears the fabric thin. So how does this relate to Iris & to its authors? Maybe it doesn't, maybe I'm just an embittered guy who isn't gettting laid enuf who doesn't fit into the 21st century. I love the writing of Mack Reynolds. He wrote from 1950 to 1983. The "About the Author" section in his Commune 2000 A.D. informs the reader that: "A true adventurer, he once crossed the Sahara to Timbuktu and on the way was captured by the Tuareg (The Forgotten of Allah, and the so-called Apaches of the Sahara). Another time in the tropical jungles of Mexico he was bitten by a vampire bat and had to be treated for rabies. During his travels, Mack Reynolds has been in more than half a dozen wars, revolutions and military revolts, ranging from being shot at by the Huks in the Philippines to being bombed by anti-Castro Cubans." (Commune 2000 A.D., p 182) Now cf that to the bios of Barton & Capobianco: "William Barton is the information systems manager for Health Sciences Consortium, a nonprofit medical/educational publisher." [..] "Michael Capobianco is a founding partner and C.E.O. of Not-Polyoptics, a software company specializing in orphan computers." - p 403 Ok, my bad attitude is showing: I'm a bigot, a bigot against C.E.O.s. So what do the authors do to put a little wild world spice into their privileged authors story? Lots of sex. LOTS of sex. So much SEX that, for me, it became quickly very tedious. Again, maybe I'm just not getting enuf. Instead, tho, I feel like I wandered into a Nxivm (pronounced "Nexium") Wonderland, 50 Shades of Greys [plural intended]. "It was 2097 and now humankind was irrevocably changed. Those manifestations of the physical world that had entertained and ravaged people were ebbing away, becoming less important. Reality had become an eerie technological ocean, and mankind a frenzied swimmer in its electronic deeps. Only a little more than a generation before, an easy and acceptable means of plugging human minds into the already vast information processing and retrieval networks had been invented. Its ramifications were universal and its tendrils extended into virtually every phase of human endeavor." - p 2 So it (almost) begins. Ever since Cyberpunk began such a setting has become generic. However, this was published in 1990 so it's early enuf to not really be riding the wave of prefabrication. You see? Maybe I've been too harsh. There's a neologism: "Astronomy itself had changed from the early days of randomly scattered observation into a rigid and systematic cataloging of the heavens conducted almost entirely from a single great multi-observatory on Luna's farside. It had changed so much that it had a different name: asterology." - p 9 Apparently, "asterology" hasn't caught on yet b/c a search for it online only yielded "astrology". There's still another 77 yrs to go. I almost always respond to musical references — esp ones made to favorite composers: "The air seemed to change. What had been "Trois Gymnopédies" gave way to a gurgling roar that was being transmitted through the structure of the ship. The ion drive was firing, allowing Deepstar to fall along a parabola around Iris." - p 20 Note that an "ion drive" is evoked. A review on the front cover claims that this is "A virtually perfect blend of diamondhard scientific extrapolation and stylistically brilliant narrative." I didn't, personally, find the science to be such a big deal — but, then, I'm not a scientist. I also didn't find there to be anything particularly "stylisitically brilliant" about it either — I mean we're not exactly talking Nabokov here. There is a fair amt of tech-talk: "Brendan said, "You handle OdP pretty well." "Tem looked at him, expressionless. "Is that so surprising? I have a higher influx potential than Ariane, you know." ""Yeah, but I rode after her with a GAM-and-Redux subplot until she'd been down all the essential pathways. You can't have done that—we both know that Luna's access to Comnet is strictly limited . . . unless you've lied about never having been to Earth." "Tem smiled, showing a flash of teeth through the curly overfall of his untrimmed mustache. "Nope, Lewislab—and old Maggie herself—trained me pretty well. Monitoring experiments like the Mini-null-omega Research Torus is, for the most part, like controlling Deepstar. Our tools aren't all that backward" - p 24 One of the more interesting ongoing issues about space travel, for me, is not so much the tech how-to but the psychological problems resulting from separating humans from what is, after all, a pretty nice place: viz EARTH. Regardless of how much humans pollute the environment & generally act in exceptionally unpleasant manners, Earth is fantastic & I'm glad I live here. This is, after all, my HOME. No nation is my home but this planet definitely IS. "The years flowed into decades and the colonies of the inner Solar System began to complain of unexplained torpor. Low gravity, the experts said, no exercise, poor diet, even Weltschmerz. . . . Odd diseases and neuroses appeared, and colonies did not do well. Children died or grew up "weird," and people had to go home, if they could. The future of space began to look endangered." - p 37 I think it was probably in 1973 when I was a research volunteer at the Johns Hopkins Phipps Clinic in Baltimore in a simulated space station environment funded by NASA. The purpose of the research was to experiment w/ controlling the limited space in such a way that the 'astronauts' (me & 2 friends) wdn't succumb to "unexplained torpor". Behavior modification routines assured proper exercise, both physically & mentally, & limited socializing helped the 'astronauts' maintain interactive skills & pleasures. The study was only for 15 days but at the time I thought I cd've gone on for 6 mnths. The imagined future of space travel has humans being born off-Earth, on the moon for starters. That strikes me as a bit of a curse, a deprivation similar to the class-imposed strictures in effect on Earth itself thanks to socio-political manipulations. We read alot about "Brendan Sealock", a boxer & a technical genius — how his brain stays undamaged & highly functional despite all the beatings he's involved w/ is never explained. In other words, the combination seems unlikely &, therefore, is one of those ficitional 'ideals' that make for exciting characters. As w/ most or all of the characters we get tellings of much of his life, including his childhood. "That room they were in was part of a therapeutic program that the school had designed, geared like everything else around here to producing sensible, cooperative citizens who could eventually be shipped back into the collective-effort society of the Deseret Enclave Complex. Ten terribly antisocial little boys lived in the room, allowed to maul one another's emotions and form the naturalistic pecking orders common to such groups, while sociobiological technicians used carefully designed behavior-mod pressures on them. It usually worked." - p 48 ""Let's start at the beginning. All my life I've seen people sitting in judgment of one another. People place themselves in a hierarchical relationship with others, and society is driven by the resulting pain. That's what's always been wrong with the way people conceive their roles.["]" - p 53 That's John talking, the ultra-wealthy composer/sound-artist who's created this project of colonizing a planetary body where no known humans have ever set foot before. Technology changes faster than human nature even if human nature is changing along w/ it. ""Beth and I . . . well, I was wrong. I thought we would evolve into a model relationship. Instead, she can't get over her fear of intimacy." ""By 'intimacy' you mean submitting herself to your will?" ""Come on! What I wanted to say is that you're the crux of the whole thing. The love relationships focus on you."" - p 54 ""It's not just our personal survival at stake. This colony is supposed to last, even if no one ever comes to join us. I've put off bringing the first foeti out of deep freeze; this is just the beginning. . . ." ""And it doesn't seem very likely, does it?"" - p 55 But I'm up to p 55 & I haven't quoted a single sex scene yet. You might begin to think I'm fibbing. "Suddenly Vana appeared from her compartment, naked, a broad smile on her face. She announced, "Da-daaa!" and the PC hatches sprung open. "It's orgy time!" They all gathered in the center of the room, on a ridge surrounding the exit hatch, coming to cluster together by ones and twos, forming a ragged circle." - p 56 Ya gotta watch those "jagged circles", in circle jerks whole protubernces get sawn right off in the frenzy. ""I'd rather we didn't," said Beth. "I think the time has come to start discussing a few things. John, you know, I remember how eloquent you were about starting this colony . . . back on Earth. Now that we're here, and the time for a real start has come, you sit back and watch. When you do talk, it's all generalities. What's happening to you?" "The man looked at her and the others in turn. His face flushed. "I'm sorry," he said, looking at the table. "It's true—I had great hopes for this colony. But it's not going to work out that way. We're a failure already, barely two weeks along. All that's here is what we brought. I was wrong to think that something else could be created. I am responsible." He paused, then went on: "We have our chances to fail, now. When the USEC ship comes in a few months, those of us who must go back separately will be able to do so. Maybe we should call it quits."" - p 74 & the novel cd've ended there. But, no, the authors went bravely on.. for another 328pp. Thank goodness they put a swimming pool in there. ""Ah, but did you notice? I hit the water so slowly I didn't impart much momentum to it. Elementary physics." ""Can I climb up on the surface tension? My fullbodies won't absorb the water." ""Try it and see." "It worked, though it was difficult to present sufficient surface area to support her bare half kilogram, especially since, after a first failure, she was giggling like a maniac. Finally, she was riding dry on the tension of the shiny liquid, cradled in her little dimple like an ungainly water strider." - p 110 Then they all drowned. The End. "It was then that she'd seen the man who was to become that year's silver medalist: Brendan Sealock, the program said, and New York Free City. She'd watched him savage a series of contenders, earning whistles of contempt from the audience as he smashed his opponents around, obviously intent on injury. How the people cheered when he'd been beaten in the final match by a swift, dark Cuban who was simply too fast for him." - p112 Then he died & this review cd finally be over. But, nnnoooooooooo, the night is still young, the eternal night of writing this review, & there's still non-human technology to discover. ""You tell me, Brendan. What inert material stays pliable at 43 degrees Kelvin?" ""I might as well be the one to say it this time: alien artifact. This is not our tech."" - p 125 & then they were all sucked into what was tantamount to a cross between a mouse-trap, a toaster, & a fuel tank & turned into fuel for an automatic comedy-writing machine. The End. For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ...more |
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review of Wilhelmina Baird's Clipjoint by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 29-30, 2019 Let's start off w/ a suspicious gift. "I unzipped the edge review of Wilhelmina Baird's Clipjoint by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 29-30, 2019 Let's start off w/ a suspicious gift. "I unzipped the edges expecting paper and a shiny flat box with buzzing holofigures fell into my hand. They were wearing spacesuits and seemed to be massacring each other. The label was TROUBLE ON TOROS, with tiny faraway music, martial, the kind that goes with space battles, and mixed scents of ozone and musk. ""It's a vidcrystal," I told Mokey. "Someone wants to entertain us." ""Make them go away," he mumbled. "We don't watch vids. You got a conscientious objection. Who's Santa Claus?" "I fished around among the wrappings but that was it. One crystal in original case and the horse it rode in on. No name, address, shop-code, invoice." - p 4 Then the world blew up & the reviewer died & was reincarnated as an ear dildo shaped like a speaking carrot. "I slid it into my behind-the-ear-socket." - p 5 In other words, typical cyberpunk detail. "The lab didn't exist. There had been a bench, cabinets and the operating table where Hall did open-heart surgery on sick machines. The cli-controlled mainframe, his little deck for five-finger exercises, the usual setup for stealing current and mostly, Hallway." - p 10 ""Oh, God. Dribble." ""He's grown," Moke noticed. Give the man a cigar. Last time I saw it it looked like a five-year-old but nobody was going to mistake this for a baby. It was pushing six feet and hung like a donkey. The rest looked like a half-melted taper, arms and legs dangling. It ran with its behind in the air and it drooled. It couldn't help it, its teeth would have scared a shark." - p 13 Enuf about the Milkman. Or do you mean the Doo-Doo? "I guess so. Gooders are the Unemployed who work at living normal lives in abnormal environments. Or the opposite, depending on what you think is normal. "Like neat streets. Painted doors. Numbers that run in sequence. A closed bakery smelling of bread made with flour. Green oildrums with clipped bay trees outside a health-food restaurant. Window boxes along a housefront. Brown brick apartment-blocks with swept stairs and lights behind the transoms. "They have vigilante patrols who love their work and nobody messes with them. Gooders can get unbelievably nasty. Considering what they say about us." - p 16 Maybe this is the right time to mention that the back cover features praise from William Gibson about a previous novel of Baird's called Crashcourse: "A pungent, gleamy-dark street-future, illuminated with memorable style, and a gratifying sense of humor, and a killer eye for twsited technological detail." Some of you have probably noticed that often when one author praises another it's b/c the author praised writes like the author praising. That's somewhat the case here. "Divine was one of the little globes that dot the sky around our celestial equator and would give the pygmies something to look at nights if any of them still survived. They're all incredibly expensive, which makes our mentor Hans-Bjorn's terraformed asteroid Never the authentic product of old Ari Money and his five klicks by three nearly infinity. As sats go. "Divine didn't go nearly so far. But it had a dumb charm. A house and grounds curved around a core of self-generating grav-units on solar power, a genuine view of the sky, and with a horizon you probably got used to after the first few centuries." - pp 25-26 That's all well & good but what I don't get is why they'd bother to have self-generating gravy covering over the solar panels. I mean that seems sortof self-defeating. Conspicuous consumption? Well, all's well that ends well & what goes around comes around & what tells the part smells the part. What I say is: Pity the sister of the Missing Person. ""He means fell apart," Hallway said. His freckles stood out like burn-scars. I've never noticed he had them. "Face and hands disintegrated and her scalp came off. Then her feet at the ankle. What's left's in the hospital. Whole area's under quarantine. There's a news blackout but some guy with an illegal peeper gor the pictures on holo before the blinds came down. I saw it."" - p 73 Doncha just HATE when that happens?! But what it all really boils down to is that there's no such thing as a good cyberpunk novel w/o a little illegal organ transplanting. ""Yeah," Hal said, tired. "Especially plus the chips. Current cases'll do. Suite One elderly male, sounds high Ari. Aged a hundred sixty-seven, wore out his rejuve and his fourth heart. They've just done a transplant by donor, young male, who was alive until the exchange. It's explicitly forbidden. Only cloned material may be used in transplants. Special permission can be given. Not recorded." ""Who was the young male?" I asked. "Sword's invisible stare turned. "You're kidding. Boys and girls disappear every day, on the Strip and off it. Some of their parents sell them. He's dead now."" - p 76 We've come a long way since the day when you cd sell yr body in advance for post-mortem research & get an ID number tattooed on the bottom of yr foot. Be careful about what frozen specimen you open. "Murmansk had gone waxy yellow. "Put it back," he said thinly. "That's modified Hansen's disease."" - p 92 That's LEPROSY for you IG-NO-RAME-US-ES out there. "The floor had crept somehow between my thighs and was behaving like floors don't get to. I began to see why so many girl spacers wore pin-heels. I took a handful of it in my fingers and dug my nails in. It mde a kind of bubbling noise and went limp. Lorn slapped under his backside and made a wry mouth. A few seconds later Moke closed down his slate with a snap, shoved it under him and hauled me onto his knee. Lorn, who's a quick learner, made a stool of his sack." - pp 212-213 I just tried to order one of those floors from the Dome Hepot & they were sold out. Can you believe it? The mom & pop store wd've had one in the back rm for me special but they went out of business. Maybe I wdn't want it anyway if I'd need to make my sac into a stool, if you get my drift. This was written December 1990 - July 1991, a mere 30 yrs before the Floor Sexual Revolution made the 60s look like a limp biscuit. Baird really knows her sacs of shit. ...more |
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review of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 10, 2019 When I was young, maybe ages 11 to 15, I probably review of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 10, 2019 When I was young, maybe ages 11 to 15, I probably read every one of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. I still enjoy checking out any & all Sherlock Holmes movies. Alas, my complete Holmes stories bk was destroyed in the great parental bk purge. I never read any of his non-Holmes stuff. In honor of reading this, I got a copy of the 1925 silent movie version directed by Harry O. Hoyt & starring Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger. I picked that version partially b/c when I was a kid I watched Beery movies on TV & wanted to revisit him. The bk's copyrighted 1912. Reading the beginning made me think that Doyle's considerably more than a hack. "Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon earth—a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centred upon his own silly self. If anything could have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the thought of such a father-in-law. I am convinced that he really believed in his heart that I came round to the Chestnuts three days a week for the pleasure of his company, and very especially to hear his views upon bimetallism—a subject upon which he was by way of being an authority. "For an hour or more that evening i listened to his monotonous chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange. ""Suppose," he cried with feeble violence, "that all the debts in the world were called up simultaneously and immediate payment insisted upon. What, under our present conditions, would happen then?" "I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me my habitual levity, which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic meeting." - p 7 The narrator fancies himself to be desperately in love w/ Gladys, whose sexist fantasy functions as a prod for him. ""But chances are all around you. It is the mark of the kind of man I mean that he makes his own chances. You can't hold him back. I've never met him, and yet I seem to know him so well. There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done. It's for men to do them, and for women to reserve their love as a reward for such men. Look at that young Frenchman who went up last week in a balloon. It was blowing a gale of wind, but because he was announced to go on he insisted on starting. The wind blew him one thousand five hundred miles in twenty-four hours, and he fell in the middle of Russia. That was the kind of man I mean. Think of the woman he loved, and how other women must have envied her! That I should like—to be envied for my man."" - p 10 & if the Frenchman had been fatally dashed against a mountainside? Oh, well, there's always another one. In search for an adventure to wow Gladys w/, the narrator, Edward D. Malone, decides to take up w/ Professor Challenger, an explorer of ill-repute. ""Well, yes; I propose to write to him. If I could frame the letter here, and use your address, it would give atmosphere." ""We'll have the fellow round here making a row and breaking the furniture."" [..] ""Dear Professor Challenger," it said. "As a humble student of Nature, I have always taken the most profound interest in your speculations as to the differences bwteen Darwin and Weissmann. I have recently had occassion to refresh my memory by re-reading—" ""You infernal liar!" murmured Tarp Henry." - p 16 Challenger, a most cantankerous individual, replies. "You quote an isolated sentence from my lecture, and appear to have some difficulty in understanding it. I should have thought that only a subhuman intelligence could have failed to grasp the point, but if it really needs amplification I shall consent to see you at the hour named, though visits and visitors of every sort are exceedingly distasteful to me. As to your suggestion that I may modify my opinion, I would have you know that it is not my habit to do so after a deliberate expression of my mature views." - p 18 Eventually, Malone attends a lecture where the Chairman begins things poorly. "Professor Murray will, I am sure, excuse me if I say that he has the common fault of most Englishmen of being inaudible. Why on earth people who have something to say which is worth hearing should not take the slight trouble to learn how to make it heard is one of the strange mysteries of modern life. Their methods are as reasonable as to try to pour some precious stuff from the spring of a reservoir through a non-conducting pipe, which could by the least effort be opened." - p 39 Ha ha! As a former A/V Technician for a museum, I can relate. I'll never forget the time that one presenter scratched his head w/ a microphone & wondered why that loud sound was happening; or the many, MANY times people found it utterly incomprehensible that in order to be amplified thru a mic one had to actually put one's mouth near it! We're not talking rocket science here folks.. — &, yet, putting one's mouth near enough to a microphone to have it perform its function was so difficult for so many people that I can only conclude that a preponderance of the speakers were feeble-minded. Their speeches didn't necessarily convince me otherwise. An expedition is proposed to test Challenger's claim of a "lost world" in South America — an area that had stayed isolated from the evolution that had changed the rest of the world. Malone volunteers & finds himself in the company of a man whose previous visit to the continent had involved his killing slavers. "["]That's the rifle I used against the Peruvian slave-drivers three years ago. I was the flail of the Lord up in those parts. I may tell you, though you won't find it in any Blue-book. There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again. That's why I made a little war on my own. Declared it myself, waged it msyelf, ended it myself. Each of these nicks is for a slave murderer—a good row of them what? That big one is for Pedro Lopez, the king of them all, that I killed in a back-water of the Potomayo River.[']" - p 50 Jolly good. "These were that Lord John had found himself some years before in that no-man's-land which is formed by the half-defined frontiers between Peru, Brazil, and Columbia. In this great district the wild rubber tree flourishes, and has become, as in the Congo, a curse to the natives which can only be compared to their forced labour under the Spaniards upon the old silver mines of Darien. A handful of villainous half-breeds dominated the country, armed such Indians as would support them, and turned the rest into slaves, terrorizing them with the most inhuman tortures in order to force them to gather the india-rubber, which was then floated down the river to Para. Lord John Roxton expostulated on behalf of the wretched victimes, and received nothing but threats and insults for his pains. He then formally declared war against Pedro Lopez, the leader of the slave-drivers, enrolled a band of runaway slaves in his service, armed them, and conducted a campaign, which ended by his killing with his own hands the notorious half-breed and breaking down the system which he represented." - pp 55-56 Then again, this "half-breed" business bothers me. I've already noted the following in a review I wrote about a Hardy Boys bk: """Ladinos," the explorer explained, "are Spanish-speaking, mixed-breed people. They are very proud and do no manual work like laboring in the fields or carrying loads. Mainly, they own stores and cantinas in the towns and villages and hold political offices."" "Now, I sortof cringe when I read of people described in terms of "breeding". It makes me think of 'good breeding' (rich people) & 'ill bred' (poor people) or of mating a poodle w/ a pit-bull or something. It reeks of nazi genetics." - The Clue in the Embers ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13... ) Then, there's 'Victor Appleton II''s Tom Swift and His Flying Lab. The villainous organization here is called ORDEP. ""Ordep?" Tom repeated to himself. Then he realized what it was - Pedro spelled backward!" - p 94" - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63... Were the Hardy Boys & Tom Swift inspired by The Lost World? It seems possible, even plausible. Did The Lost World inspire Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park? That also seems likely. Anyway, while I love that Doyle has a main character be a slavery fighter, I'm more than a little taken aback by his having the only black character be named "Zambo" & being stereotypically, fawningly loyal to these wonderful white Europeans. " Sambo or Zambo is a derogatory term used for a person with Indian heritage and, in some countries, also mixed with African heritage. In an eighteenth-century Mexican casta painting by Ignacio Maria Barreda, zambo is a synonym for lobo (Spanish for "wolf"). "Later, its technical meaning was expanded to include people having a mixture of black and white ancestry—mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, etc. in modern US English and British English. "Etymology and usage "The word "sambo" came into the English language from the Latin American Spanish word zambo, the Spanish word in Latin America for a person of mixed African and Native American descent. This in turn may have come from one of three African language sources. Webster's Third International Dictionary holds that it may have come from the Kongo word nzambu ("monkey") — the z of (Latin American) Spanish being pronounced here like the English s. The Royal Spanish Academy gives the origin from a Latin word, possibly the adjective valgus or another modern Spanish term (patizambo), both of which translate to "bow-legged" "The equivalent term in Portuguese-speaking areas, such as Brazil, is cafuzo. Examples of "Sambo" as a common name can be found as far back as the 19th century. In Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair (serialised from 1847), the black-skinned Indian servant of the Sedley family from Chapter One is called Sambo. Similarly, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), one of Simon Legree's overseers is named Sambo. Instances of it being used as a stereotypical name for African Americans can be found as early as the Civil War." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_(... The Lost World isn't listed in the above-quoted Wikipedia entry as an instance where Zambo appears. In the 1925 movie Zambo is played by a white guy in black face. & how does all this connect w/ Doyle's possible perpetration of the Piltdown Man fraud? "The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. The falsity of the hoax was demonstrated in 1953. An extensive scientific review in 2016 established that amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson was its likely perpetrator." [..] "The identity of the Piltdown forger remains unknown, but suspects have included Dawson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Arthur Keith, Martin A. C. Hinton, Horace de Vere Cole and Arthur Conan Doyle." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdow... The Lost World gets into the weather conditions in the Amazon. "from December to May is the period of the rains, and during this time the river slowly rises until it attains a height of nearly forty feet above its low-water mark. It floods the banks, extends in great lagoons over a monstrous waste of country, and forms a huge district, called locally the Gapo, which is for the most part too marshy for foot-travel and too shallow for boating. About June the waters begin to fall, and are at their lowest at October or November." - p 60 Eventually, Challenger is proven right & the expedition sights dinosaurs. "There were, as I say, five of them, two being adults and three young ones. In size they were enormous. Even the babies were as big as elephants, while the two large ones were far beyond all creatures I have ever seen. They had slate-colored skin, which was scaled like a lizard's and shimmered where the sun shone upon it. All five were sitting up, balancing themselves upon their broad, powerful tails and their huge three-toed hind feet, while with their small five-fingered front-feet they pulled down the branches upon which they browsed. I do not know that I can bring their appearance home to you better than by saying that they looked like monstrous kangaroos, twenty feet in length, and with skins like black crocodiles." - p 94 But, really, what's most important about this bk is that "travellers" is spelled w/ the double "l". But, seriously, folks, I enjoyed this bk but I sssssssuuuuuuuurrrrrrrreeee do wish it hadn't had that half-breed Zambo shit. ...more |
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| 1974
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review of A. Merritt's The Metal Monster by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 14-18, 2019 For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.c review of A. Merritt's The Metal Monster by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 14-18, 2019 For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... "Before the narrative which follows was placed in my hands, I had never seen Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, it author." - p 5 By now, that's a fairly familiar framing device: the author presents a fictional context in which his bk exists as if to give it factual validity. This strikes me as a particularly late 19th, early 20th century device. Maybe I'm wrong about that. This bk was originally copyrighted in 1920. William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland was written in 1908. As I write in my review of that: "The protagonists find a manuscript at a ruin & decide to read it." ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ). Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships (1995) is a spin-off of H.G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895). In that: "Stephen Baxter's "Editor's Note" begins: ""The attached account was given to me by the owner of a small second-hand bookshop, situated just off the Charing Cross Road in London. He told me it had just turned up as a manuscript in an unlabeled box, in a collection of books which had been bequeathed to him after the death of a friend; the bookseller passed the manuscript on to me as a curiosity—"You might make something of it"—knowing of my interest in the speculative fiction of the nineteenth century. ""The manuscript itself was typewritten on commonplace paper, but a pencil note attested that it had been transcribed from an original "written by hand on a paper of such age that it has crumpled beyond repair." That original, if it ever existed, is lost. There is no note as to the manuscript's author, or origin." - p vii" - https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Such a beginning from Merritt is no surprise. What did surprise me more was the following: "The man to whom the President of the Association introduced me was sturdy, well-knit, a little under average height. He had a broad but rather low forehead that reminded me somewhat of the late electrical wizard Steinmetz." - p 5 How many readers of this review remember Charles Proteus Steinmetz? Now how many of you remember Edison? Tesla? Westinghouse? Steinmetz was famous around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century but seems to be largely forgotten now. When I was a little kid in elementary school, I read a biography about him that I found very inspiring. I even dressed up as him for some sort of costume event at school. He was a hunch-back who wore all black & smoked cigars. He cd generate 'lightning'. It's funny to see mention of him in The Metal Monster b/c it reminds me that he still wd've been topical then, even though he was dead. This is a fantastic adventure story, quite well-written if one can get beyond a tedium that borders on purple prose. "In Teheran I had picked up a most unusual servant; yes, more than this, a companion and counselor and interpreter as well. "He was a Chinese; his name was Chiu-Ming. His first thirty years had been spent at the great Lämasery of Palkhor-Choinde at Gyantse, west of Lhasa. Why he had gone from there, how he had come to Teheran, I never asked. It was most fortunate that he had gone, and that I had found him. He recommended himself to me as the best cook within ten thousand miles of Pekin." - p 11 Of course, the 'important thing' here is that he's Chinese & thus can be 'picked up' to be a servant to a 'Westerner'. It wdn't matter if he spoke 75 languages & cd fly he'd still be a servant to the most ignorant American or Britisher. Also, if someone needs to be killed off w/o upsetting the presumed reader too much the Chinese guy can be the one to go. The writing is 'poetic', by wch I mean full of extravagant & colorful descriptive & metaphorical fluorishes. "At its eastern end towered the colossal scarp of the unnamed peak through one of whose gorges we had crept. On his head was a cap of silver set with pale emeralds—the snow fields and glaciers that crowned him. Far to the west another gray and ochreous giant reared its bulk, closing the vale. North and south, the horizon was a chaotic sky land of pinnacles, spired and minareted, steepled and turreted and domed, each diademed with its green and argent of eternal ice and snow." - p 12 "The rays seemed to spring upward from the earth. Now they were like countless lances of light borne by marching armies of Titans; now they crossed and angled and flew as though they were clouds of javelins hurled by battling swarms of the Genii of Light. And now they stood upright while through them, thrusting them aside, bending them, passed vast, vague shapes like mountains forming and dissolving; like darkening monsters of some world of light pushing through thick forests of slender, high-reaching trees of cold flame; shifting shadows of monstrous chimerae slipping through jungles of bamboo with trunks of diamond fire; phantasmal leviathans swimming through brakes of giant reeds of radiance rising from the sprakling ooze of a sea of star shine." - pp 70-71 Whew! I'm not sure that anyone writes like that anymore. Merritt & Hodgson have this style of writing in common. They also describe scenes in this way for llllloooooonnnnnnnngggggg periods of time, commas of splintch. Now, of course, our main characters are a zillion miles from home in an area where there's little sign of fellow human beings & what shd happen?: "Out darted a girl. A rifle dropped from her hands. Straight she sped toward me. "And as she ran I recognized her. "Ruth Ventnor!" - p 24 She sure does get around. ""Richard Drake," I said. "Son of old Alvin—you knew him Mart." ""Knew him well," cried Ventnor, seizing Dick's hand. "Wanted me to go to Kamchatka to get some confounded sort of stuff for one of his devilish experiments. Is he well?" ""He's dead," replied Dick soberly." - p 25 Now, if Kamchatka is famous for the abundance and size of its brown bears & Kathmandu is the capital and largest city of Nepal I have to wonder if this is some sort of code for going to Kathmandu to get drugs. If this were a century later, the drug might be ketamine. I dunno, maybe it had something to do w/ Heavy Metal. "With the same startling abruptness there stood erect, where but a moment before they had seethed, a little figure, grotesque; a weirdly humorous, a vaguely terrifying foot-high shape, squared and angled and pointed and animate—as though a child should build from nursery blocks a fantastic shape which abruptly is filled with throbbing life. "A troll from the kindergarten! A kobold of the toys! "Only for a second it stood, then began swiftly to change, melting with quicksilver quickness from one outline into another as square and triangle and spheres changed places." - p 34 A large portion of this bk, perhaps the majority of it, is dedicated to description of this living metal. After a while I found myself (I have no idea where I'd been until then) longing for a break from such description but I have to give Merritt credit for his obsessive VISION, such visions as that of the geometric smiting thing. "It melted once more—took new form. Where had been pillar and flailing arms was now a tripod thirty feet high, its legs alternate globe and cube and upon its apex a wide and spinning ring of sparkling spheres. Out from the middle of this ring stretched a tentacle—writhing, undulating like a serpent of steel, four score yards at least in length. "At its end cube, globe and pyramid had mingled to form a huge trident. With the three long prongs of this trident the thing struck, swiftly, with fearful precision—joyously—tining those who fled, forking them, tossing them from its points high in the air." - p 44 Even though this bk is only 100 yrs old, it's obvious that the English language has changed over that time & that vocabularies have changed. I actually feel HAPPY just to read words like "trident" & "tining" — not that they're particularly obscure in these times but they're somewhat 'out-of-fashion'. & what about pony toss? Why, in my youth it was 6 to one half a baker's dozen to t'other that we'd play pony toss at the same time that we'd play croquet. ""Catch," he called; placed one hand beneath the beast's belly, the other under its throat; his shoulders heaved—and up shot the pony; laden as it was, landed softly upon four wide-stretched legs beside me, The faces of the two gaped up, ludicrous in their amazement." - pp 57-58 Why, back in those days, if you drank too much alcohol even your shoulders heaved, albeit a dry heave. "The sun? Reason returned to me; told me that this globe couldn't be that. "What was it then? Ra-Harmachis, of the Egyptians, stripped of his wings, exiled and growing old in the corridors of the Dead? Or that mocking luminary, the cold phantom of the God of light and warmth which the old Norsemen believed was set in their frozen heel to torment the damned?" - p 64 At 1st I thought: 'It must be Ra-Harmachis, I mean, that's most logical.' Then I remembered being at the bar last night & I took a closer look at the globe & saw that there were 2 of them. But just to make sure I started asking myself more questions. "What was their color? It came to me—that of the mysterious element which stains the sun's corona, that diadem seen only when our day star is in eclipse; the unknown element which science has named coronium, which never yet has been found on earth and that may be electricity in its one material form; electricity that is ponderable; force whose vibrations are keyed down to mass; power transmuted into substance." - p 80 No, I was confusing corona w/ areola. "During the total solar eclipse of 7 August 1869, a green emission line of wavelength 530.3 nm was independently observed by Charles Augustus Young (1834–1908) and William Harkness (1837–1903) in the coronal spectrum. Since this line did not correspond to that of any known material, it was proposed that it was due to an unknown element, provisionally named coronium. "In 1902, in an attempt at a chemical conception of the aether, the Russian chemist and chemical educator Dmitri Mendeleev hypothesized that there existed two inert chemical elements of lesser atomic weight than hydrogen. Of these two, he thought the lighter to be an all-penetrating, all-pervasive gas, and the slightly heavier one to be coronium. Later he renamed coronium as newtonium. "It was not until the 1930s that Walter Grotrian and Bengt Edlén discovered that the spectral line at 530.3 nm was due to highly ionized iron (Fe13+); other unusual lines in the coronal spectrum were also caused by highly charged ions, such as nickel, the high ionization being due to the extreme temperature of the solar corona." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronium Imagine being Isaac Newton & having Alectrona's areola named after you & then having the honor be reduced to a bunch of ionized metals. Life isn't fair. Of course, no matter where you turn Ruth Ventnor's there. ""It whispered to me first," she said, "from Norhala—when she put her arm around me. It whispered and then seemed to float from her and cover me like—like a veil, and from head to foot. It was a quietness and peace that held within it a happiness at one and the same time utterly tranquil and utterly free. ""I seemed to be at the doorway to unknown ecstasies—and the life I had known only a dream—and you, all of you—even Martin, dreams within a dream. You weren't—real—and you did not—matter." ""Hypnotism," muttered Drake, as she paused. ""No," she shook her head. "No—more than that.["]" - p 99 Sexual parasitism? You know, like when the female spider eats the male after consummation? Comsumption after consummation? What if Ruth had been a spider who'd just eaten Isaac Newton? ""It was as though I were the shining shadow of a star afloat upon the breast of some still and hidden woodland pool; as though I were a little wind dancing among the mountain tops; a mist whirling down a quiet glen; a shimmering lance of the aurora pulsing in the high solitudes. ""And there was music—strange and wondrous music and terrible, but not terrible to me—who was part of it. Vast chords and singing themes that rang like clusters of little swinging stars and harmonies that were like the very voice of infinite law resolving within itself all discords. And all—all—passionless, yet—rapturous. ""Out of the Thing that held me, out from its fires pulsed vitality—a flood of inhuman energy in which I was bathed. And it was as though this energy were—reassmbling me, fitting me even closer to the elemental things, changing me fully into them." - p 100 I know it sounds thrilling, ladies, but, please don't kill & eat your boyfriends after sex — or ever. Instead, ask yourself: "["]What is the definition of vital intelligences—sentience?" ""Haeckel's is the accepted one. Anything which can receive a stimulus and retains memory of a stimulus must be called an intelligent, conscious entity. The gap between what we have long called the organic and the inorganic is steadily decreasing. Do you know of the remarkable experiments of Lillie upon various metals?" - p 107 "No, I don't" the woman temporarily distracted from murdering & eating her boyfriend after sex sd. "Please tell me more." For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ...more |
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Sep 25, 2019
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Nov 18, 2019
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0441181120
| 9780441181124
| 3.19
| 142
| 1943
| Mar 01, 1983
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review of C. L. Moore & Henry Kuttner's Earth's Last Citadel by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 10, 2019 I thought that I'd read something by He review of C. L. Moore & Henry Kuttner's Earth's Last Citadel by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 10, 2019 I thought that I'd read something by Henry Kuttner before, probably in collaboration w/ someone other than C. L. Moore, but I can't find any traces of my having done so so, apparently, I haven't — unless it was a short story. This was written in 1943 but not published until decades later — what's up w/ that?! This starts off in the N African desert during WWII. I wasn't expecting that. ""You'd be surprised. She's damned clever. She and her sidekick draw good pay from the Nazis, and earn it, too.["]" - p 3 When most people draw good pay & try to spend it they get arrested for counterfeiting — apparently that was a perq of working for the nazis. My note to myself 'summarizing' the bk's style is: "Like Dean Koontz meets A. Merritt". Now, I've only read 1 Koontz novel, given to me by a security guard at a museum where I worked, & I didn't like it. It was too predictable-formulaic for me. It was called Lightning. I doubt that I'll ever read anything else by him. Merritt's a different story. I'm 'acquiring a taste' for Merritt. Basically what my note means is that the Koontz element is the nazi-thriller part but the prose is more 'flowery'. Given that this was written during WWII the nazi intrigue element isn't as what?-you're-still-milking-the-nazis? as I thought it was when I thought the bk was written decades later. Personally, if I were a farmer, I wdn't milk the nazis, I'd let them bloat until they explode. Nnnoooowwww, when was the last time you were hypnotized by a mysterious ship in the desert? Do they expect us to believe this?! "A door was opening slowly in the curve of the golden hull. "Drake did not know that his gun-arm was drooping, that he was turning, moving forward toward the ship with slow-paced steps." - p 7 A "gun-arm"? Is that like a 'game leg'? The ship takes them somewhen & then they wander around outside again. "The dust of the world's end rose in sluggish whirls around their feet, and settled again as they plodded across the desert. The empty sphere of the ship was hidden in the mists behind them. Nothing lay ahead but the invisible airy path the birdman had followed, and the hope of food and water somewhere before their strength gave out." - p 20 It seems that they're having a mistical experience. Then they found a McDonald's.. or was it a Gino's? Unfortunately, it was no longer cheap & their currency wasn't accepted. So they died shortly after p 20 & the rest of the bk was blank except for some mysterious black mold that moved across the surface, apparently hunting for rogue words, dunno, I didn't dare touch it. &, yea, there were wonders to behold. "Dubiously, they followed her up the spiral, at first watching their feet incredulously as they found themselves walking dryshod upon the waterfall whose torrent slid away untouched beneath their soles. But when they had mounted a few steps, they found it unwise to look down. Their heads spun as they walked upon sliding water over an abyss." - p 45 "They told him of the fountain's magic. It gave immortality. All who bathed in its pulsing light were immortal, as long as they renewed the bathing at intervals. Even Flande came to the fountain at intervals—the voices said." - p 57 NOW I understand the expression "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." But, y'know, immortality isn't usually all it's cracked up to be — I mean what's so good about something you can only do once? Take sex, e.g., you do it once & you want to do it again.. & again.. — but if you like immortality, that's it, once you're immortal you're immortal. ANYWAY, our heros aren't immortal, & they discover that the reason why they can't buy any food at the fast food joint is b/c they're the food. "["]But we are both food for the Light-Wearer, and you will do well to treat me with respect."" - p 115 Why's that, exactly? It might make more sense to kiss the Light-Wearer's ass. But what about those nazis? "Some premonition of what Mike intended galvanized Alan into action as he saw the Nazi's first forward stride. Flande must not die yet. Alan hurled himself against Mike Smith's shoulder with all his weight, sending the Nazi staggering." - p 126 I mean, what a mess, right? 1st they can't buy any food, then they ARE food, then one of them's vomiting on another one. Next thing you know some sort of outer-space dog will come along & lick it up. ...more |
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Sep 13, 2019
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Nov 10, 2019
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0345271211
| 9780345271211
| unknown
| 3.33
| 98
| 1953
| Mar 12, 1978
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review of Lester Del Rey's The Mysterious Planet by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 3-6, 2019 It seems that when I think of Del Rey I think of h review of Lester Del Rey's The Mysterious Planet by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 3-6, 2019 It seems that when I think of Del Rey I think of him more as an SF editor than as a writer. Why, I don't know b/c most of what he edited was somewhat obscure & he was a prolific author. "He later became an editor for several pulp magazines and then for book publishers. During 1952 and 1953, del Rey edited several magazines: Space SF, Fantasy Fiction, Science Fiction Adventures (as Philip St. John), Rocket Stories (as Wade Kaempfert), and Fantasy Fiction (as Cameron Hall). Also during 1952, his first two novels were published in the Winston juvenile series, one with an Italian-language edition in the same year. "In 1957, del Rey and Damon Knight co-edited a small amateur magazine named Science Fiction Forum. During a debate about symbolism within the magazine, del Rey accepted Knight's challenge to write an analysis of the James Blish story "Common Time" that showed the story was about a man eating a ham sandwich. Del Rey was most successful editing with his fourth wife, Judy-Lynn del Rey, at Ballantine Books (as a Random House property, post-Ballantine) where they established the fantasy and science fiction imprint Del Rey Books in 1977." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_... At any rate, I barely know his writing at all, having only previously read a short story collection called The Best of Lester Del Rey. I begin my review of that w/ this: "Lester del Rey's the kind of writer I might've read in my early teens (but didn't) & then decided that he represented the kind of SF that all SF seemed to me to be at the time: sortof interesting but not that well written or experimental. I wd've then moved on - remembering him w/ some affection but not in any hurry to read more. "Now that I'm 44 yrs past my early teens, del Rey still strikes me that way but I've read so many other things by now that I can respect del Rey just for being what he was: a somewhat generic, but still inspired, SF writer." - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... The Mysterious Planet is, as far as I can remember, the 1st novel I've read by him. It's about time. The 1st paragraph: "It was a fine morning on Mars, clear, crisp and cold. In a little over a hundred years the great air factories had increased the oxygen content until it could be breathed without a mask, and had added enough carbon-dioxide gas to let the air collect and hold the faint heat of the sun. Now it was like a morning high in the mountains of Earth." - p 1 Ok, I'm always interested in the details of terraforming. I don't let conerns about the negative effects on the local eco-system spoil my fun. But did Mars get mad?! ""Took just four days to get here from Earth," Simon went on. "Like a dream. You come on the Mars Maid? Yeah, I thought so. Boy, I wouldn't travel on a liner after riding this! The minute Dad got my unlimited pilot's license fixed—took plenty of greasing to do it—the very minute, off I took. And here I am!" ""Yeah, here you are," Bob agreed, without enthusiasm. He wondered if Jakes had any idea of how sickening the idea of bribing officials for an unlimited license was." - p 3 The "Mars Maid" part is presumably a reference to Edgar Rice Burroughs: " Thuvia, Maid of Mars is a science fantasy novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fourth of the Barsoom series. The principal characters are Carthoris (the son of John Carter of Mars) and Thuvia of Ptarth, each of whom appeared in the previous two novels." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuvia,... As for the immediate class conflict w/ the main character's being repulsed by the secondary character's privilege? I like it. This awkwardness continues when the privileged one gives t'other a present. ""Whew! Thought I'd missed you. Here!" He shoved a box into Bob's hands awkwardly. Bob turned it over and finally opened it. Inside was an officer's pocket-knife, a marvel of compactness that held twelve tools, from scissors to tiny pliers, as well as standard blades. Beside it lay one of the tiny, expensive little personal radios issued to the higher officers." - p 14 I took it for granted that it was probably rigged somehow. Things become mysterious. "They went back silently. It was completely impossible for the pirates to have taken all the freight and every man on board the ship off in no more than the single minute they had been locked together. Yet it had happened. Everything was beginning to come out the same—the events were impossible, but the black ship had done them, all the same." - p 28 "The shock was worse than any monster could have given them. The alien from Planet X looked almost exactly like a human! "He was a short man, and his knee joints looked a little wrong; there wasn't the usual knobbiness. The hand that held some kind of a weapon had four normal fingers, but there was a thumb opposite the regular one, giving him a double palm. Yet even the fingernails were there. Generally, his body seemed almost completely normal. His ears were a bit too large, and there was no hair on his head, while his eyes had a vaguely Asiatic slant to them. His skin was an orange shade, not too different from some jaundiced people, but still unmatchable on Earth. "Yet even on Earth, he would hardly have attracted a second glance. He was dressed in something like a Scotch ceremonial kilt of solid blue, with a soft T shirt and a brief cape. On a wide belt at his waist, several pouches were sewn. The costume was no odder than the man." - p 111 But did he speak English? Perhaps my favorite part of all this is the description of the Thule music. "It came while they were out. They got back to hear something that was a cross between an anguished cat and a tin can being battered around by a stumble-footed mule. In between sections, for no reason, a female voice would come on in a high, nasal singsong. "If there was any rhythm to it, it couldn't be found, except for a few sections where there was obviously srudied effort to make a pattern. "When they threw the door open and rushed in to shut off the racket, Juan was lying there with a smile of sheer pleasure on his face, beating his hand up and down as crazily as the beat of the so-called music. He let out a squawk when they cut it off. ""Hey, I want to hear all of how it goes," he cried, "This is interesting music."" - pp 140-141 Been there. The people who know & understand music the least are always the ones to oppress those of us who understand & know it the best. Of course, this makes Juan a suspicious character. I just hope his side wins. My initial impression was that this was like Heinlein, perhaps like his Space Cadet (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... ) insofar as it has good clean American characters in outer space still representing those good clean American values as put forth in propaganda of the 1950s. While I may have an imaginary wry grin to inflect my writing of that it doesn't mean that I didn't like it. ...more |
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review of John Rackham's / John Brunner's The Beasts of Kohl / A Planet of Your Own by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 10, 2019 The Beasts of K review of John Rackham's / John Brunner's The Beasts of Kohl / A Planet of Your Own by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 10, 2019 The Beasts of Kohl is the sort of thing that I'd usually be put off by. The deliberate editorial strategy of the Ace Doubles seems to be to occasionallly combine 2 story types of differing natures in the hope of getting the reader to choose the bk out of preference for one of them but to then read both. That's what happened w/ me: I picked this for the Brunner but read the Rackham 1st. That's somewhat like the way I eat: I eat the food I like the least 1st & save what's tastiest to me for last. The "beasts" of Kohl include, at 1st, one human &, eventually, 2. Kohl is a non-human described thusly: "Kohl had no shape, produced no visual image of his own, and never a sense of any emotion except keen pleasure, quick curiosity, or cool reason. Rang knew, with the top of his mind, that Kohl could change his shape to a certain extent, could produce extrusions to touch and operate the machinery controls to his own region of the undersea home, but he never thought of Kohl as a shape anyway, or a thing. He was just Kohl, who knew all things, who neither saw, smelled, heard or felt anything except through the mental rapport between himself and his beasts, who was at home in the sea, but shared life in all spheres with his servants." - p 10 Now, there's a type of Science Fiction & Fantasy that I usually avoid: a type that includes dragons, swords, names like "Rang" (single-syllable names meant to be Barbarian-evocative), etc.. But, occasionally, I read somethong along those lines that pleases me: Samuel R. Delaney's Return to Nevèrÿon series & Mack Reynolds's The Space Barbarians. Rackham's The Beasts of Kohl isn't really Sword & Sorcery, it makes it into its own category, perhaps, but it doesn't quite achieve what Delaney & Reynolds do — partially b/c it isn't as politically informed. Still, its basic premise of a creature w/ superior abilities to humans kidnapping human children & raising them as pets/bodily-extensions & then returning them to their planet of origin thousands of yrs later allows some interesting development. The 3 creatures on the cover are the "beasts": a human, a large dog & a large bird. What's surprising is that the naked woman, who comes along later, isn't featured in a rear-view position on the cover. The planet from wch the children were taken is, of course, Earth, as the reader soon realizes. ""This is a yellow-orange star," he said, remembering what he had learned out of the memory tanks. "A small one. See, it has nine planets. I wonder which one is to be ours?"" - p 39 Rang, having returned to an Earth dramatically in the future from the time he was born there still has the appearance of a cave man in contrast to the sophisticates of modern technology that he meets. Nonetheless, he has abilities, taught to him by Kohl, that surpass those of his new modern friend, Hector. "And Rang showed him, by careful stages, how to disentangle physical and emotional reactions from rational thinking, how to be aware of fear, and pain, and hunger and weariness, to isolate and analyze one by one the animal responses and understand them. And then, in a hesitant inexpert way, to control and project them. Once he had grasped the first essential, and tremendously difficult, knack of non-effort, Hector made progress swiftly." - p 104 Rang had never met a female human until Rana came along. He was of a sexual age but when she appeared in her natural nakedness he, apparently, didn't have a natural reaction. Given that I don't think that such a reaction is an acculturated one, the following passage, where Rana is dressed & otherwise altered, strikes me as delusionally humorous. "With just a brief flicker of hesitation she glowed and responded to him with total sympathy. It was a pleasant feeling. A fervor. ""Lord!" Hector breathed. "What have you done, Merry? She was magnificent before, but now—!" ""It's very good!" Rang endorsed, catching the ardent glow in Rana's mind and matching it generously. "But how?" He brought his attention, and the feelings, back to Meryl. Her face was rosy now, but her voice shrank to a confused murmur. ""It wasn't anything, really. Just a shampoo, and a good brushing. And a little foundation—powder—nothing much. But it makes a difference. You look different too, now that you're dressed up."" - p 106 Call me old-fashioned but I prefer a naked woman w/o make-up to a woman w/ "foundation" on anyday. This having been written in 1966, it seems a little late to be perpetuating the Cold War but the Soviets are tossed in anyway. ""I am Maly Shevlov, the captain of this ship. In the name of my glorious country and on behalf of the rational people everywhere, I welcome you to a better life, Mr. Raine. Please be assured that if you behave with reason and good sense you will find us the same. We wish no harm to yourself and your so beautiful companion. Put the pistol away now, Rakov; it will not be needed."" - p 143 Well, some exciting, adventurous, positively THRILLING things happen & then it's over. But, HEY!, there's still John Brunner's bk on the flip side: ********************************************************************* John Brunner's A Planet of Your Own: Brunner's one of my favorite SF writers & even in these sometimes deficient Ace Doubles his ideas always shine thru. I've reviewed so many bks of his now that I won't even link to them here. Here, amongst other things, Brunner addresses post-Earth beauty standards. "And even her asset of last resort, her appearance, had failed her. What she hadn't reckoned with—or had omitted to find out—was that once they had been clear of Earth, and the traditional association of appearance with regional origins, the emigrants whether forced or voluntary had become satisfied to be human beings rather than Europeans or Africans or Asians. By the time a couple of generations had slipped away, the mixing of the gene-pool had already been producing types which made the concept "exotic" seem irrelevant" - p 8 SOOOOOOO she gets desperate for a job stuck out in some podunk galaxy somewhere & she gets tricked into being what she thinks & is told is the only human on a planet that manufactures the veeerrrrryyyyy expensive "Zygra Pelts". ""Hmmm? Oh!" Shuster leaned confidentially close. "The term 'pelt' is a misnomer, and it's no breach of company secrecy to say so nowadays, although when they were first being imported to civilized worlds the admission would have been an automatic breach of an employee's contract, since it was thought advisable to mislead purchasers and possible rivals by making them think it was the skin of an animal. Actually, the pelts are entire lifeforms in themselves, and insofar as they're related to anything we know they're a kind of moss.["]" - p 13 Brunner has his character have a skill set that turns into the unlikely makings of a hero. "She whistled. Hadn't it been ruled, in McGillicuddy and Kropotkin versus Callisto Methane Derivatives, 2106, that interplanetary space included any solid body not possessed of its own independent jurisdiction? As of this moment, therefore, the whole planet Zygra counted as an asteroid." - p 73 This was great, if I'd liked The Beasts of Kohl as much as this I might've been tempted to give the whole Ace Double a 4.5 rating. Instead it's a 4. Not wanting to give away too much, my 'reviews' of both are really just teasers. ...more |
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review of Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 15-16, 2019 I've only read & reviewed one other Vinge bk, The Pea review of Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 15-16, 2019 I've only read & reviewed one other Vinge bk, The Peace War (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ), wch I enjoyed. I must not've liked it that much, tho, b/c I didn't read this 2nd one until 11 yrs later. The plot begins: "But the local net at the High Lab had transcended—almost without the humans realizing." [..] "It had been six months since resupply. A safety precaution early suggested by the archive, a ruse to enable the Trap. Flitting, flitting. We are wildlife that must not be noticed by the overness, by the Power that soon will be. On some nodes they shrank to smallness and almost remembered humanity, became echoes. . . ." - p 2 "The newborn looked across the stars, planning. This time things will be different." - p 7 The scale is magnificent, the atmosphere hard to get a human handle on. "Peregrine moved up another thirty yards, keeping a lookout in all directions. He could see the straits now, gleaming rough silver in the afternoon sunlight. Behind him, the north side of the valley was lost in shadow. He sent one member ahead, skittering between the hummocks to look down on the plain where the star had landed." - p 21 What the reader sometimes experiences is humans described by non-humans. "There were four legs per member, but it walked on its rear legs only. What a clown! Yet . . . it used its front paws for holding things. Not once did he see it use a mouth; he doubted if the flat jaws could get a good hold, anyway. Those forepaws were wonderfully agile. A single member could easily use tools." - p 28 Humans are, well, a minority — not necessarily a popular minority. "["]We're at the limits of information management with this expansion. Egravan and Derche—" those were Ravna's boss and boss's boss "—are quite happy with your progress. You came well educated, and learned fast. I think there's a place for humans in the Organization."" - p 57 The Organization being a type of desert popular w/ many types of non-humans. ""Then you know that an archive is a fundamentally vaster thing than the database on a conventional local net. For practical purposes, the big ones can't even be duplicated. The major archives go back millions of years, have been maintained by hundreds of different races—most now extinct or Transcended into Powers. Even the archive at Relay is a jumble, so huge that indexing systems are laid on top of indexing systems." - p 82 I'll never forget when the being that looked like Swiss Cheese was teleporting the aRCHIVE I manage to me sd to me just before it had its holes filled & it melted: "They'll never suspect a desert ingredient!" & just when its surface was brown & bubbling an unexpected communication came w/ a pop: ""There is one other thing, my lord. Jefri thinks it may be possible to use the ship's ultrawave to call for help from others like his parents."" - - p 146 ""Oh, that's okay. He meant a special call. Jefri says the ship has been signalling . . . all by itself . . . ever since it landed."" - p 147 Oh, the parents just set the microwave to infinity before they got cooked themselves. Well, if you believe that you'll believe the next one too. "They had picked up the refugee ship's "I-am-here," and then—ninety days later—a message from a human survivor, Jefri Olnsdot. Barely forty messages had been exchanged, but enough to learn about the Tines and Mr. Steel and the evil Woodcarvers." - p 169 Ah ha! But had they subjected those messages to the Turnovers Test? Maybe the Woodcarvers were really a Waffle Iron! "And some messages were patent nonsense. One thing about the Net: the multiple, automatic translations often disguised the fundamental alienness of participants. Behind the chatty, colloquial postings, there were faraway realms, so misted by distance and difference that communication was impossible—even though it might take a while to realize that fact." - p 226 Eventually humans get blamed for everything & things start to get hot for them. "Don't be fooled by humans telling you about themselves! In fact, we have no way of testing the creatures that dwell in Straumli Realm; their protector will see to that. "Death to vermin." - p 249 Eventually, there's a character who starts seeing thru the lies & the reader gets to release a huge sigh of gas. ""No . . . no, it's not that. I think this 'Mister Steel' is playing games with our heads. All we have is a byte stream from 'Jefri.' What do we really know about what's going on?"" - p 302 It's somewhat like your situation vis à vis this reviewer. I might be some sort of avatar for a non-human entity of dubious motives. How do you know? What cd be my motive for misleading you about this bk? Maybe you'll buy the edition of it that looks just like a paperback but is really a pleasure-creature from Gas Cloud X. The next thing you know, some gas bags are threatening you w/ indigestion. ""We sent them a description of our" digestive needs "hours ago. Why should it take so long for a simple yes or no?" ""Because they're haggling," said Pham, his grin broadening. "'Honest' Saint Rihndell here—" he waved at the scrimshawed local, "—wants to convince us just how hard the job is. . . . Lord, I wish I was out there."" - p 316 There's only one way out. "["]I know how these mantises think. If you can kill the child, especially before their eyes, it will break their spirit—just as puppies can be broken by the right terrors."" - p 554 Sheesh. All I wanted was some fucking desert. Now, if only I can get out of this novel w/o paying. "The sunlight was fading. He could see black dots on the surface. Sunspots. He had seen them often enough with Scriber's telescopes. But that had been through heavy filters. Something stood between him and the sun, something that sucked away its light and warmth." - p 580 "Pham answered. "That's temporary. Something has to power this maneuver."" - p 581 Wham, bam, Thank you, Pham. "They sat for a time, human looking out to see, Rider looking he wasn't sure quite where, and pack looking in most all directions. . . . There was peace here, even with (or because of?) the booming surf and the haze of spray. He felt his hearts slowing, and just lazed in the sunlight." - p 599 Oh, don't mind me, I'm just waiting for the bus. ...more |
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review of Edmond Hamilton's City at World's End by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 4-6, 2019 Of course, after the bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki review of Edmond Hamilton's City at World's End by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 4-6, 2019 Of course, after the bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, many writers, esp SF writers, wrote extrapolatory tales about future horrors to be anticipated if such bombings were to continue. "Kenniston realized afterward that it was like death. You knew you were going to die someday, but you didn't believe it. He had known that there was danger of the long-dreaded atomic war beginning with a sneak punch, but he hadn't really believed it." - p 7 Well, yeah, it happens, over Kenniston's small town where he & his coworkers are doing secret military research unknown to the townspeople — including Kenniston's fiancée. ""Yes, the bomb," said Hubble. "A force, a violence, greater than any ever known before, too great to be confined by the ordinary boundaries of matter, too great to waste its strength on petty physical destruction. Instead of shsttering buildings, it shattered space and time."" - pp 14-15 Yep, you read it here, instead of annhilating the town it moved it into a far-distant future where more or less nothing of the world it had existed in existed anymore. Robert Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold (1964) has a similar plot: "Farnham's Freehold is a post-apocalyptic tale. The setup for the story is a direct hit by a nuclear weapon, which sends into the future a fallout shelter containing Farnham, his wife, son, daughter, daughter's friend, and domestic servant." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham... City at World's End is from 1961. I wonder if Henlein took any inspiration from it for Farnham's Freehold. If he did, he added plenty of sex. City at World's End's characters jump to ill-supported conclusions: "Kenniston raised his head. "Yes. Dead and gone, all of them, long ago." He looked around the beautiful buildings. "You know what that means, Hubble. It means that Earth won't support human life any more. For even in this domed city they couldn't live."" - p 30 Sheesh. They've only been blown into the future for a very brief while & the protagonist is already sure there's no one else left alive on the entire planet, blah, blah. I will say that this plot whips right along. They've discovered an abandoned future city & the 20th century Middle Americans move into it. "Kenniston had gone two of the long squares, sunk in his disturbed thoughts, before he realized that a change had come into the streets. He tried to think what it was. People were more in the buildings now, and less in the cars, but that was not all of it. There was something . . . "The streets had suddenly come alive. "The children had done it. Overawed at first by the strangeness and the silence and the behavior of their elders, it had slowly dawned upon them that here was a whole great city lying ready to their hands—fabulous empty buildings full of mysteries and treasures, new streets, new narrow ways behind them, all virgin territory to be explored." - p 50 Yes, the rug rats. Who wd've ever thought they'd be good for something. Of course, the next thing you know, a space ship from off-planet appears just when everyone was starting to feel comfy. ""Look!" cried Crisci. "Look at it!" "They turned, there at the portal. And Kenniston saw now that the downward rush of the black visitant upon them had been only an illusion born of its bigness. For the thing, whatever it was, humming like a million tops, was settling upon the plain a half-mile from New Middletown. Sand spumed up wildly to veil the great bulk, then fell away and disclosed it resting on the plain. "It was, Kenniston saw instantly, a ship. Bud Martin's description had been accurate. The thing looked for all the world like a gigantic submarine without a conning tower, that had come down out of the sky to land upon the plain." - p 66 Of course, what it really was was a giant cup of coffee w/ enuf milk in it to empty out a whole herd of cows. "Are you sure that's the biggest size you have?", Kenniston asked the delivery being, "I've got a shitload of work to do." The delivery being "discovered one day that he was working besides the humanoids as naturally as though he had always done it. It no longer seemed strange that Magro, the handsome white-furred Spican was an electronics expert whose easy unerring work left Kenniston staring. "The brothers, Ban and Bal, were masters at refitting. Kenniston envied their deftness with outworn parts, the swift ease with which their wiry bodies flitted batlike among the upper levels of the towering machines, where it was hard for men to go." - p 82 But, coffee being the laxative party that it is, the people have to move along. "Gorr Holl nodded to that. "Oh, yes. Whenever life on some planet becomes economically unsound, or the margin of survival is too small, the Governors evacuate the people to a better world. There are lots of them, good warm fertile planets that are uninhabited or nearly so. They did it to some of my own people, moved them from Capella Five to Aldebaran." "Kenniston cried out of his anger, "And the people let that be done to them? They didn't even resist it?" "Gorr Hall said, "People—human people, I mean—have got millions of years of civilization behind them. They're used to peaceful government, used to obedience, and they've been moving from world to world ever since they left Earth ages ago, so that one planet doesn't mean much to them. But the primitive humanoid folk, lately civilized, like my own and Magro's, aren't so reasonable. There's been a good bit of resentment among them about this evacuation business. In fact, they hate it—just as much as you do."" - pp 86-87 So what's the back-story here? Are these people speaking in euphemisms? Once the Earth's humanoid population got to be 20 billion the 'evacuation' problem got to be crucial. All feces was being dumped in rivers. Mourners wd put a burning corpse raft on the Ganges & the river wd set fire from the methane. Eventually, it just stayed that way. Then the worm-hole was discovered. It wasn't known where it went to but all fecal matter got redirected there. The worm-hole got redubbed the 'shit-hole'. Of course, the waste material was needed to keep the Earth fertile so the Earth dried up toute suite. Enter our Middle Americans thrust into a dry future. Anyway, our future ancestors had a bad feeling about where they might be evacuated to. Call it intuition but they didn't want to end up on the crappier side of the universe. "Garris forgot oratory, in his indignation. He sputtered, "If they think we are going to move away from Earth to some crazy world out in the sky, they're badly mistaken! You make that clear to them!" "Varn Allen looked [honestly] bewildered, when Kenniston did. "But surely you people don't want to stay in the cold and hardship of this dying world?"" - p 90 Well, Kenniston decides to appeal to the Governors for the Earthlings to be allowed to stay on their planet. Naturally, he has to pack. "The nightmare unreality of it hit Kenniston again as he hastily got his few necessaries together. It was just like packing for an overnight run to Pittsburgh or Chicago, instead of for a trip across the galaxy. It couldn't be really going to happen. . ." - p 109 All sorts of things happen, they plug the giant coffee maker into the Earth's core & the next thing ya know all the problems are solved even if it's obvious coffee is only a temporary solution. Will the ensuing laxative party necessitate reopening the shit-hole? Read the bk & don't find out. ...more |
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review of Edmund Cooper's The Slaves of Heaven by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 21, 2019 The back cover synopsizes the outline of the plot of this review of Edmund Cooper's The Slaves of Heaven by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 21, 2019 The back cover synopsizes the outline of the plot of this for the reader: "They were the Night Comers... No one could say if they were ghosts or gods or devils. They only knew they came from the sky, silver clad, ominous, with a Medusa glance that could freeze a man in his tracks. They stole women and carried them off to heaven, decimating the Earth's population and threatening the survivial of the human species. "Berry, chief of the Londos clan, frustrated by the uselessness of his tribes' primitive weapons, ventures into the inner circle of the Night Comers and is spirtied away in their ship to their home in the stars. There, Berry's fight for survival holds the key to the existence of his own world and that of the Night Comers as well." I enjoyed this. I was a tad reminded of Mack Reynolds's Space Barbarians (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) because it's about superior vitality & integrity winning out over superior force & dirty tricks. As my Reynolds review concludes: "As I've come to expect from Reynolds, anything he writes questions status quo assumptions — in this case: who're the barbarians & who're the civilized? & what makes one preferable to the other? While many SF writers seem to have military experience that informs their stories, Reynolds seems to have a deep knowledge of history that's closest in spirit to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States while clearly predating it." Cooper's bk is from 1974. By then, describing sex, especially the sex of barbarians, was 'ok': "He glanced at Vron's face. Her eyes were closed: her lips were open. She seemed happy. He slipped his hand between her legs & began to fondle her. She gave a low groan of pleasure, but did not move." - p 1 I hope everything came out alright. Sometimes those manual enemas are tricky. Imagine that paragraph w/ this simple change of names. 'He glanced at Sally's face. Her eyes were closed: her lips were open. She seemed happy. He slipped his hand between her legs & began to fondle her. She gave a low groan of pleasure, but did not move.' Of-course,-these-Earthlings-are-post-nuclear-war-descendents. "The Londos people were nomadic. They had been nomadic for generations, though their wanderings were restricted mainly to the south country. Like every other tribe or clan, they knew the hot spots and avoided them sedulously. Men who sought refuge in the hot spots—clan outcasts, criminals, those whose minds were unclear—did not usually live long. Or, if they did, strange things happened to them. They developed horn or bone where there should only be flesh. They grew limbs where there should be no limbs. They went blind or began to see what others could not see." - p 6 Our man Berry has managed to get taken on a Night Comer spaceship in an attempt to thwart their spacenapping of the Earth females. He arrives at their satellite home. ""Welcome to Heaven," he said. "The acquisition program is enturely for females, but the occasional enterprising male does not displease us."" - p 41 He discovers that the Earth women are being used a breeders. "Berry scratched his head. "If no man has lain with you, how could you bring forth babies?" ""The Lords of Heaven had them put in my belly while I slept. That is the truth. They do not lie with dirt women, or only rarely. They have strange instruments, and much magic, whereby they can plant the seed of a child in the womb of a woman without her knowing. So it was with me. I have given them three sons. When a woman has given birth three times, the Lords of Heaven consider her to be spent. She is taken from the seminary and is not seen again. Some say that such women are returned dirtside, but others say they are killed, that the Lords of Heaven make use of their bodies to grow flowers. That is why I am afraid."" - p 46 ""And did she please you? Did you rut happily?" "Still Berry was not to be drawn. "She is much of a woman. I am content." "The Controller laughed. "It seems she has also taught you to be cautious, savage. Thus, having fulfilled her task, she may now be put down." "Berry looked at Tala. Her face became white, and she trembled. He turned to the Controller. "Chief, what do you mean by these words 'put down'?"" - p 59 Remember the days when MEN WERE MEN & women were turned into manure as soon as the MEN tired of rutting them? Well, actually, those days have never existed — but that's what we have FICTION for. "At the evening meal he confused Tala greatly when he tried to explain the significance of Operator J—the square root of minus one." - p 79 You mean she hasn't been composted yet? It's obvious that Tala doesn't have the GREAT ORACLE or she wd've immeditaely gotten this: "The j operator is “a mathematical symbol that is used to represent the complex numbers”. For example, the j operator is used in the form of x+jy. Where x is a real number, and y is a complex number. "The j operator plays a vital role in the analysis and calculations of three phase unbalanced loads, symmetrical faults, ac circuits, and phasor diagrams in electrical engineering." - https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/d... That wd've straightened her right out. Last but not least, let's get down to culture. Berry's going to be nothing but a Dingle if he doesn't get up to speed. ""Have you seen a Shakespearean play? Do you understand the philosophy of Existentialism? Have you read Tolstoi, seen a Leonardo painting, watched Fonteyn dance in 'Swan Lake'? What do you know of giants, such as Sartre, Ibsen, Moliere, Cervantes, Eliot, Goethe? Intellectually, savage, you and your kind are in the Stone Age. You are the trash that is left after the destruction of a civilization." ""These giants, they are very big people?" inquired Berry. "Regis LeGwyn laughed. "Giants of the spirit, stupid one. Men whose thoughts made them immortal."" - p 128 It looks like Berry's the one who ended up getting put down. That's not fair. Throwing in Existentialism is also not fair given that the most famous Existentialists aren't Existentialists & that nobody seems to know what it means anyway. Well, there you have it: a review mostly w/o spoilers of a bk that I've told you almost nothing about. Trust me, I enjoyed it but it's not high on my list of recommendations. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 24, 2019
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May 22, 2019
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 9781732088207
| 4.00
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| 2018
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really liked it
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review of PG Harris's On Till Morning by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 13, 2019 "Khalid Muhammad sat in prison on the Ideas of March, his grey bear review of PG Harris's On Till Morning by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 13, 2019 "Khalid Muhammad sat in prison on the Ideas of March, his grey beard ourgrowing the senna stains of earlier this month. His white robes wrapped around the tightened bars of his rib cage, every morning he felt nauseous, they had been injecting him with nano-technology for the past four years, he was hearing voices. The robots moved through his blood stream, keeping him alive with electricity by sucking out his own thoughts and replacing them with microphones in the pores of his skin, small cameras he could hear the lens focus when he held his breath in silence." - p 7 So begins the introduction to this "science fiction novel", as the author claims. I found it to be an excellent & original bk but definitely lacking in plot development. It starts off more as a series of not-very-related poetic SF vignettes. Later, there's a continuity between parts — but the continuity didn't 'mean much.' I still liked it anyway. The 1st chapter after the Introduction is called "Tomatoes" & has Jerry Garcia (in name if not otherwise) as a character. Famous people pepper the bk in a salty way. "Jerry with assuredness ingested a reishi goat cheese pill, he had been having a bad case of nausea due to an improperly digested tomato seed that was currently growing from a crack in his lower intestine, shooting roots into his stomach, leafy hairs under his fingernails. ""So you're saying theres nothing I can do? That's it?" ""We can keep you on cheese pills, but the new growth is too big, it can't be stopped without killing you. You are beginning your new transition."" - p 13 "Tomatoes" also features Hilary Clinton, L. Ron Hubbard, Mata Hari, Ezra Pound, Samuel R. Delany, Oprah, James Tiptree Jr., & Natalie Barney. I'd never heard of the latter so I asked the GREAT ORACLE about her & got this: "Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was a Left Bank American heterosexual attention play L'Académie des Femmes who lived as a () expatriate in Remy de Gourmont. "Barney's salon and a 50-year relationship was held at her Jacob in literature and formed a together pacifism. The Well of Loneliness all-male had many overlapping long salacious writers." In other words, she was a jelly-roll model for Carina: "Carina couldn't dare imagine all of the different versions of herself throughout the years. The one who modified guinea pigs for intelligence, despite the pigs developing a disquieting interest in bad puns. Or the version of herself who first built the clone machine." - p 21 The author is a musician. It shows. "It only took a year before Carina had mastered the trumpet. She would hold a handkerchief in her fingering hand to obscure the view of the valves from the guinea pigs. Guinea pigs were some of the best reed players, but Carina couldn't stand reeds other than a clarinet in her ensembles. This distressed the Cavy Composers Collective, because they were so dependent upon their sopranino saxophone ensembles for community marches, or parades. Carina couldn't adjust to the guinea pig musicians requirement for amplification, she viewed it as a weakness that was without redemption. Horns and vibrating lips weren't meant for electricity. This was a matter of ethics." - p 27 Only a musician knows the secret of using studio guinea pigs for reed parts. Time is used for the flute parts. ""Supposedly Tanika over at the Drunken Moon had a friend who knew the lady who ran the Archive of Old Symbols and she said that there is a collection of old fragments that describe flying circles and beams of light and sea cow mutilations, and that correspond with space-time rips. Along with radiation and viral body infections. Time had more holes than a blarge fish has stomachs!"" - p 45 You think I injest? "She had transcribed enough to gravity to reveal her situation, plus a few memories that were not her own. They were on a layer of gravity she was just starting to explore, she had to ball up all her roots and fruits into one hot spot of light, to begin to glimpse these other layers, but she was starting to see there was so much more than she first thought." - p 48 Yes, this author had got alot on the ball. Alot on the gravity ball. Alot on the policeman's gravity ball. Of course, what w/ all the celebrities n'at, Rump was bound to be let loose in 'ere some'eres. & that's when everything changes & attains some continuity (of sorts, out of sorts). "President Donald Trump reportedly grew enraged at a June meeting over the amount of visas awarded to travelers from certain countries, grumbling that 15,000 Haitians who entered the United States in the preceding months "all have AIDS" and that the 40,000 Nigerian visitors would never "go back to their huts" in Africa." - p 53 Such quotes have end note numbers next to them that direct the reader to sources. Those quotes are presented as having originated from "http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-... On Dec 23 2017" (p 116) Is there an immigration dept for alternate realitites? I'm sure Rump is an illegal immigrant from the slumlord reality & that he shd be deported back to it stripped of all his ill-gotten privilege. "When Trump lost all of his body hair and had been poisoned, his glands altered, ballooning his flesh out, tears would fall out of his jellied eyes and moisten the curves and folds, mucusoidal strings, yellow liverish ballooning flesh, tears would fall out like jelly in the curves of his dark yellow liverish mucusoidal flesh." - p 53 ""Do you know about Li Po? The man who drinks with the moon and his shadow? Never lonely?"" - p 60 My question(s) exactly. That's why the reader is directed here: https://youtu.be/NZk-vJoI9nY . Oh, well. Back to Rump. "The Trump administration said Friday it will renew mining leases to extract copper and nickel adjacent to a Minnesota wilderness area, reversing an Obama administration decision and giving a victory to a Chilean billionaire who is renting a mansion to the family of the president's elder daughter." - pp 71-72 Of course, those things are completely unrelated. Rump is simply expressing his internationalist spirit. ""Like in Ken Russell's Song of Summer, carrying the body of the composer."" - p 88 What? No, the internationalist spirit is nothing like anything so garish as a Ken Russell movie (even though I like them very much). " Song of Summer is a 1968 black-and-white television film written, produced, and directed by Ken Russell for the BBC's Omnibus series which was first broadcast on 15 September 1968. It portrays the final six years of the life of Frederick Delius, when he was blind and paralysed, and when Eric Fenby lived with the composer and his wife Jelka as Delius's amanuensis. The title is borrowed from the Delius tone poem A Song of Summer, which is heard along with other Delius works in the film." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of... ""That black light painting by" [Frederick Delius] "of the space buffalo of Venus, furry crown and stare."" - p 92 Shame on you, blaming a poor blind paralyzed man for this review. As those of you who've never seen the film won't recall, "At that moment the camera pulls back. Andrew Jackson's clothes are ripped away by invisible netting to reveal a sequined and bedazzled leotard. He is atop a pyramid of fleshy bodies, like kaleidoscopic Busby Berkely waterfall. Gold tinted Vaseline camera lens. A chorus line chant of, "Money, Power."" - p 96 You can tell it's a Russell & not a George Kuchar b/c that scene was too expensive for Kuchar. Money was saved by using interns as some of the cast. ""Norville your belly must've ate up your brain. I bet you can't even name five presidents of these United States." ""You can't fool me Daphne. I know there's only one president."" - p 98 What about his assassination double? Code-named Fistula. Sweeper Pete was one of 'em. "Tootles: Have ya'll seen Sweeper Pete? He's been messing sround with this new drug that dissociates your organs from your body. It's like instead of being one unit, you become a multitude of consciousness. Liver-conscious, lungs-conscious, heart-conscious, ear-conscious, eye-conscious, it's too much! Tongue-conscious, genital-conscious! How can one body contain so many voices!" - p 111 I have a friend like that. She's un-conscious. For those of us who pay attn to such things, there're the mystery end notes: "{{i}} http:www.foxnews.com/us/2018/03/10/south-c... On 03/15/18" - p 117 If someone actually did this, it's tragic. Then again, this is fox news (see https://youtu.be/hU-_aL7kKBI ). "{{ii}} http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2... On 03/15/18" - p 117 Tragedy aside, this was an excellent bk & I predict that its author will only get better. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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not set
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Apr 22, 2019
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May 14, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0061056480
| 9780061056482
| 3.95
| 5,342
| Jan 1995
| Nov 27, 1995
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really liked it
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review of Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 29-May 10, 2019 For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads review of Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 29-May 10, 2019 For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... Sometime in the misty past few yrs I bought the "H. G. Wells Collection" by Doma Publishing for an absurdly low price like $5 & got the Kindle app to enable me to read it. I don't like reading off screens, even though I do it all the time. As such, I only took a brief glimpse at it. I considered reading all the Wells in chronological order, starting w/ The Time Machine, wch I've already read at least once, so I looked at the 1st page recently & was impressed by the writing but still didn't want to read it on-screen. Then I picked up a copy of Baxter's The Time Ships, written 100 yrs later, & decided to read that instead. It was perfect for providing the experience I wanted! Stephen Baxter's "Editor's Note" begins: "The attached account was given to me by the owner of a small second-hand bookshop, situated just off the Charing Cross Road in London. He told me it had just turned up as a manuscript in an unlabeled box, in a collection of books which had been bequeathed to him after the death of a friend; the bookseller passed the manuscript on to me as a curiosity—"You might make something of it"—knowing of my interest in the speculative fiction of the nineteenth century. "The manuscript itself was typewritten on commonplace paper, but a pencil note attested that it had been transcribed from an original "written by hand on a paper of such age that it has crumpled beyond repair." That original, if it ever existed, is lost. There is no note as to the manuscript's author, or origin." - p vii This device, the device of stating that what one is about to read is from a found manuscript, thusly hypothetically not making it fiction by the author, in this case Stephen Baxter, but of unknown nature as to whether it's fiction or fact, is a device probably more often used in the 19th & early 20th century than now. Whether it was ever effective in making readers of those times believe that the story might be 'fact' has always struck me as improbable. As such, in this instance, it seems to be Baxter's tribute to the style of Wells's original wch doesn't, however, begin that way. Instead, let's compare the beginning of William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland (1908). Its 1st chapter is entitled "The Finding of the Manuscript": "I reached the crumbled wall, and climbed round. There, I found Tonnison standing within a small excavation that he had made among the debris: he was brushing the dirt from something that looked like a book, much crumpled and dilapidated; and opening his mouth, every second or two, to bellow my name. As soon as he saw that I had come, he handed his prize to me, telling me to put it in my satchel so as to protect it from the damp, while he continued his explorations. This I did, first, however, running the pages through my fingers, and noting that they were closely filled with neat, old-fashioned writing which was quite legible" - p 10, Carroll & Graf 1983 paperback edition The Time Ships continues The Time Machine & the "Prologue" to The Time Ships mentions that their shared hero had been in "the nightmarish world of A.D. 802,701" so I decided to double-check this against the Wells story. When I searched the Kindle edition for "802,701" no results were found. I tried "A.D." next. That produced 500 matches & revealed that yrs are spelled out as words so I tried: "Eight Hundred Thousand and Seven Hundred and One A.D." &, yep, that worked: "our planet in the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One A.D. For that, I should explain, was the date the little dials of my machine recorded." so I didn't catch Baxter out at not following the original (not that I expected to). The Prologue continues by having the protagonist decide: "I had blood on my hands, and not just the ichor of those foul, degraded sub-men, the Morlocks, I determined I must make recompense—in whatever way I could—for my abominable treatment of poor, trusting Weena. "I was filled with resolve. My adventures, physical and intellectual, were not done yet!" - p xi Near the end of The Time Machine it's written that: "The Time Traveller was not there. I seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and brass for a moment—a figure so transparent that the bench behind with its sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct; but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The Time Machine had gone. Save for a subsiding stir of dust, the further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane of the skylight had, apparently, just been blown in." Has he gone forward in time again to try to find Weena, the Eloi last seen struggling in the kidnapping grip of some Morlocks? Baxter goes that route. As our hero goes off into the future again he checks his gear: "I found my Kodak, and dug out my flash trough. The camera was now loaded with a roll of a hundred negative frames on a paper-stripping roll. I remembered how damned expensive the thing had been when I had bought it—no less than tweny-five dollars, purchased on a trip to New York—but, if I should return with pictures of futurity, each of those two-inch frames would be more valuable than the finest paintings." - p xiii "This Original Kodak camera, introduced by George Eastman, placed the power of photography in the hands of anyone who could press a button. Unlike earlier cameras that used a glass-plate negative for each exposure, the Kodak came preloaded with a 100-exposure roll of flexible film. After finishing the roll, the consumer mailed the camera back to the factory to have the prints made. In capturing everyday moments and memories, the Kodak's distinctive circular snapshots defined a new style of photography--informal, personal, and fun. "George Eastman invented flexible roll film and in 1888 introduced the Kodak camera shown to use this film. It took 100-exposure rolls of film that gave circular images 2 5/8" in diameter. In 1888 the original Kodak sold for $25 loaded with a roll of film and included a leather carrying case." - https://americanhistory.si.edu/collec... As might be expected, Baxter's 'sequel' 'pulls out all the stops' & makes things considerably more far-fetched & dramatic than the original Wells bk: "At last, the sun came to a halt altogether, it rested on the western horizon, hot and pitiless and unchanging. The earth's rotation had been stilled; now, it rotated with one face turned perpetually to the sun! "The scientists of the nineteenth century had predicted that at last the tidal influences of sun and moon would cause the earth's rotation to become locked to the sun, just as the moon was forced to keep one face turned to earth. I had witnessed this myself, during my first exploration of futurity: but it was an eventuality that should not come about for many millions of years. And yet here I was, more than half a million years into the future, finding a stilled earth!" - p 12 & to think he's only on page 12. But he ain't seen nuthin' yet. "There could be no doubt about it: I was traveling through events which differed, massively, from those I had witnessed during my first sojourn." - p 13 "And then—it was quite sudden—the sun exploded." - p 14 That cd really ruin a guy's day. On the back cover of the edition of The Time Ships that I have, the author is referred to as "today's most acclaimed new "hard SF" author, and the acknowledged heir to the visionary legacy of Wells, Heinlein, and Clarke". That might be in a parallel universe b/c I don't recall hearing about him until I got this bk, wch was published in 1995. Of course, I don't know EVERYTHING, just every other thing. Regardless, the notion of the multiverse wasn't postulated in MY universe until the mid-20th century so it's things like that that make this different from Wells's original The Time Machine. I admit, I wd've settled for the Time Traveller going back to the same future, finding Weena, & fucking her brains out w/ explicit description — but I can't fault Baxter for making the bk be an epic exploration of possibilities that cd be scientifically hypothetized way back in the 1990s before everyone had cell-phones & the world completely changed all over again. ANYWAY, in this new, improved, future the TT meets a Morlock & the damned thing speaks to him in English: ""I have access to records of all of the ancient languages of Humanity—as reconstructed—from Nostratic through the Indo-European group and its prototypes. A small number of key words is sufficient for the appropriate variant to be retrieved. You must inform me if anything I say is not intelligible." "I took a cautious step forward. "Ancient? And how do you know I am ancient?" "Huge lids swept down over those goggled eyes. "Your physique is archaic. As were the contents of your stomach when analyzed."" - p 40 How dare you say my "physique is archaic"!! Ok, I admit, I've got a bit of a pot belly & my teeth are really worn down & my hair's thinned dramatically but you talk like I've been left behind in the dust evolutionarily!! Let's change the subject. In the original Wells bk, the Eloi lived above-ground in idyllic circumstances: never having to work & happy & playful all day. Practical matters, such as the provision of their food, was taken c/o for them by the Morlocks, who lived underground & tended great machines. Occasionally, the Morlocks wd take away some Eloi & eat them (if I remember correctly). The Eloi were so spoiled & air-headed that they'd become oblivious to this dynamic. I always interpreted this as a prediction as to what wd happen if society were to continue to be divided between exploiters & workers: the exploiters wd become Eloi, totally dependent on the labor of others for everything & enervated by lack of initiative; the workers becoming completely debased by forced labor w/ no time for anything else, devolving into cannibalistic trolls. Baxter's vision has the Morlocks as highly evolved beings living to a hive-like extreme. The reader sees humans continue as beings constantly at war, forced to live underground w/o sunlight — simultaneously developing into the sunlight-eschewing Morlocks & into sunlight-embracing humans who STILL war constantly. It seems to me that Baxter's version more or less bypasses the class issue (until almost the end & then just in passing (or classing)). "I know well—Nebogipfel taught me!—that much of my dread of the Morlocks is instinctive, and proceeds from a complex of experiences, nightmares and fears within my own soul, irrelevant to this place. I have had that dread of darkness and subterranean places since I was a boy; there is that fear of the body and its corruption which Nebogipfel diagnosed—a dread which I may share, I think, with many of my time—and, besides, I am honest enough to recognize that I am a man of my class, and as such have had little to do with the laboring folk of my time, and in my ignorance I have developed, I fear, a certain disregard and fear." - p 517 "I leaned forward, as far as my restraints allowed. "Filby, I can scarcely believe that men have fallen so far—become so blind. Why, from my perspective, this damnable Future War of yours sounds pretty much like the end of civilization." ""For men of our day," he said solemnly, "perhaps it is. But this younger generation, who've grown up to know nothing but War, who have never felt the sun on their faces without fear of the air-torpedoes—well! I think they're inured to it; it's as if we're turning into a subterranean species." "I could not resist a glance at the Morlock." - p 172 "But for all the familiar landmarks and street names, this was a new London: a London of permanent night, a city which could never enjoy the glow of the June sky outside—but a London which had accepted all this as the price for survival, Filby told me; for bombs and torpedoes would roll off that massive Roof, or burst in the air harmlessly, leaving Cobbett's "Great Wen" unmarked beneath." - p 187 ""Tell me what this place is, before we leave it," I said. "His flaxen-haired head turned toward me. "An empty chamber." ""How wide?" ""Approximately two thousand miles." "I tried to conceal my reaction to this. Two thousand miles ? Had I been alone, in a prison cell large enough to hold an ocean? "You have a great deal of room here," I said evenly. ""The Sphere is large," he said. "If you are accustomed only to planetary distances, you may find it difficult to appreciate how large. The Sphere fills the orbit of the primal planet you called Venus. It has a surface area corresponding to nearly three hundred million earths—"" - p 54 Yeah, show-off, but I'll bet the property taxes are out of this fuckin' world!! Of course, humans, being what we are (HEY! Don't even think that about me, SHIT-HEAD!) are in a nature reserve of sorts where they continue to blow the bejesuz out of each other: "The island-world flared brighter than the sun, for several hours, and I knew I was watching a titanic tragedy, made by man—or descendents of man. "Everywhere in my rocky sky—now I started looking for it—I saw the mark of War." - p 91 There goes the neighborhood. Next thing you know, you'll have a rotating universe. ""The rotating-universe idea was first described some decades after your time—by Kurt Gödel, in fact."" - p 117 You don't say. That Gödel really knew how to tighten the expanding waistband. "The Gödel metric is an exact solution of the Einstein field equations in which the stress–energy tensor contains two terms, the first representing the matter density of a homogeneous distribution of swirling dust particles (dust solution), and the second associated with a nonzero cosmological constant (see lambdavacuum solution). It is also known as the Gödel solution or Gödel universe. "This solution has many unusual properties—in particular, the existence of closed timelike curves that would allow time travel in a universe described by the solution. Its definition is somewhat artificial in that the value of the cosmological constant must be carefully chosen to match the density of the dust grains, but this spacetime is an important pedagogical example. "The solution was found in 1949 by Kurt Gödel." [..] "Because of the homogeneity of the spacetime and the mutual twisting of our family of timelike geodesics, it is more or less inevitable that the Gödel spacetime should have closed timelike curves (CTCs). Indeed, there are CTCs through every event in the Gödel spacetime. This causal anomaly seems to have been regarded as the whole point of the model by Gödel himself, who was apparently striving to prove, and arguably succeeded in proving, that Einstein's equations of spacetime are not consistent with what we intuitively understand time to be (i. e. that it passes and the past no longer exists, the position philosophers call presentism, whereas Gödel seems to have been arguing for something more like the philosophy of eternalism), much as he, conversely, succeeded with his incompleteness theorems in showing that intuitive mathematical concepts could not be completely described by formal mathematical systems of proof. See the book A World Without Time." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel_m... I'll take some of those Closed Timelike Curves anyday over that old-time religion. Heck'o'goshen, readers of this bk even get to meet Gödel as a character. What more cd you ask for? ""Time travel, by its very nature, results in the perturbation of History, and hence the generation, or discovery, of Worlds other than this. Therefore the task of the Time Traveler is to search—to search on, until that Final World is found—or built!" "By the time we left Gödel, my thoughts were racing. I resolved never to mock Mathematical Philosophers again, for this odd little man had journeyed further in Time, Space and Understanding, without leaving his office, than I ever had in my Time Machine! And I knew that I must indeed visit Gödel again soon . . . for I was convinced that I had seen a flask of raw Platnerite, tucked inside his crate!" - p 230 Platnerite? Never touch the stuff. It's highly addictive & it makes you KA-rayayayay-zee! "As for me, after subsisting for so long on a diet of the Morlocks' bland stuff, I could not have relished my breakfast more if I had known—which I did not—that it was the last nineteenth-century meal I should ever enjoy!' - p 153 OUR HERO has already been thru ALOT & there's still almost 400 pp to go in the bk. Chapter 11 in Book 3 is called "The New World Order" & takes place in London in 1938, perpetually at war w/ the Germans. Some of us became familiar w/ the phrase "New World Order" in the 1980s when Reagan was pushing the idea. Some of us transformed that into "New World Odor" — as in something smelled fishy about the idea of one government for the entire world — esp given that this government was based on the US being the 'good guys', as opposed to, say, primary resource grabbers, & as the world cop. Hitler's '2nd bk' is called My New Order but it's misleading to call it "Hitler's Own Sequel to Mein Kampf" as the cover of it proclaimed given that it was really a bk cobbled together by American editors of Hitler speeches designed to show Hitler's genocidal & imperialistic intentions & NOT really a bk by Hitler. Still, I've long since wondered whether Reagan & his right-wing cronies deliberately referenced Hitler w/ their New World Order. In the London of 1938, basically a giant bomb shelter deprived of sunlight: "Wallis told me that people would still turn out to the Speakers' Corner, to hear the Salvation Army, the National Secular Society, the Catholic Evidence Guild, the Anti-Fifth Column League (who waged a campaign against spies, traitors and anyone who might give comfort to the enemy), and so forth." - pp 206-207 I'll be giving a speech in a few days that references the Speakers' Corner so if I don't finish this review before I've uploaded the documents for that I'll add a link here. The history Baxter provides for this era is a parallel universe one for the one that I assume my readers & I both have been born after. In this case, the race to build a Time Machine becomes a parallel for the race to build (& drop) the atom bomb (although that comes along too). "He said in a low voice, "We have rumors that the Germans are building a Time Machine of their own. And if they succeed first—if the Reich gets functioning Chronic-Displacement Warfare capabilities . . ."" - p 217 ""You develop your time ironclads because you fear the Germans are doing the same. Very well. But the situation is symmetrical: from their point of view, the Germans must fear that you will exploit such time machinery first. Each side is behaving precisely in such a way as to provoke the worst reaction in its opponents. And you both slide towards the worst situation for all."" - p 313 Replace the Human Race w/ the Arms Race. What about the Peace & Prosperity Race? The Positive Creativity Race? What if nations worked hard at improving everyone's lot & got credit when they succeeded? For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ...more |
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review of Robert Silverberg's Tom O'Bedlam by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 24-26, 2019 I have 7 other bks by Silverberg in my collection: Invade review of Robert Silverberg's Tom O'Bedlam by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 24-26, 2019 I have 7 other bks by Silverberg in my collection: Invaders from Earth (1958), Conquerors from the Darkness (1965), The Man in the Maze (1969), Up the Line (1969), World's Fair 1992 (1970), The World Inside (1970), & The Reality Trip And Other Implausibilities (1958-1971). I have the 1st 4 marked as read & not the last 3 but I've probably read them all. Whatever I read I read before the fall of 2007 when I started reviewing all the bks I read for Goodreads. I have a very vague recollection of The Man in the Maze & that's it. I don't remember the rest at all. In the front of Up the Line I wrote 2 pencilled notations: p 94 — stupid use of "anarchy" p 101 — " " " " The examples chosen are: "Their roughnecking was verging on anarchy; no one was safe in the streets after dark." & "I said, "You're talking anarchy!" / "Nihilism, to be more accurate["]". Apparently, I keep returning to his work b/c I often find it affordable & I don't remember it so it occurs to me that I shd try reading something else by him in case he's someone I've underappreciated. Tom O'Bedlam has praise on the front cover by popular author Peter Straub: "A WONDERFUL BOOK". I don't trust such praise. I've never read anything by Straub. Looking at a list of his novels online I don't recognize any of the titles. I associate him with Stephen King & Dean Koontz. I've read a little by both of them & didn't like it. I see online that King & Straub collaborated so at least half of my association is born out. Anyway, what I'm getting at here is that if Silverberg is aiming for Straub's market then I probably shdn't have high hopes. I found this bk to be mediocre in the same way that I found Koontz's work to be mediocre. It also occured to me that Silverberg was 'getting on in life' when this was written (1985) & he might've tried to make the-bk-that-wd-become-the-movie & give him a nest-egg to live comfortably off of in his declining yrs. The movie doesn't seem to've been made. No great loss. I DID approach this w/ an 'open mind'. I was positively inclined to it just b/c of the title. "Tom O'Bedlam" (not the currently well-known actor/whatnot): ""Tom o' Bedlam" is the name of an anonymous poem in the "mad song" genre, written in the voice of a homeless "Bedlamite." The poem was probably composed at the beginning of the 17th century; in How to Read and Why, Harold Bloom calls it "the greatest anonymous lyric in the [English] language."" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_o%2... I reckon Silverberg gave a pretty powerful spin to the character but it's the type of spin that's more fantastic than it is psychologically rich. Predictably, the shared visions that constitute the core subject of the bk, are gradually revealed. ""I heard what you were saying when you were in that fit," Charley went on. His voice was low, barely more than a whisper. "About the green world. About the crystal people. Their shining skins. Their eyes, like diamonds. How did you say their eyes were arranged?" ""In rows of three, on each side of the heads." ""Four sides to the head?" ""Four, yes." "Charley was silent a while, poking at the fire. Then he said, in an even quieter voice, "I dreamed of a place just like that, about six nights ago. And then again night before last.["]" - p 20 Cut to a healing center where sick people are sent to get their minds 'picked'. "Lansford called out from the control console, "Blood sugar okay, respiration, iodine uptake, everything checks. Delta waves present and fully secured. Everything looks fine. I'm popping the Father's pick into the slot now. Elszabet?" ""Hold it a second. What reading do you get on mood?"" - p 22 There were some good ideas in this bk (sez me) but they were repeated far too much (sez me). I got the idea pretty early on & didn't need to go thru the reiterations in an extra 100pp of fluff. By page 28 all of the main ingredients are introduced. "From unseen loudspeakers came a deep, unhurried, relentless drumming. The ground shook. They probably had it wired, Jaspin thought. Electrostatic nodes all over the place, and synchronized pulsation chips. Tumbondé might be primitive and elemental but it didn't seem to scorn technology." - p 28 Silverberg throws a synthetic woman into the mix. Having her be artificial makes it easier to hyper-sexualize her w/o being easily accused as sexist. Personally, I prefer the Ron Goulart approach more. "There was a tap on the door. ""Who?" Ferguson called. ""Alleluia," said the most musical female voice he had ever heard. "Something stirred in his muddled and mutilated memory bank, but he was unable to get hold of it. He touched his ring and said, "Request Alleluia." ""Fellow patient at Nepenthe Center. Synthetic woman, terrific body, fucked-up personality. You've been screwing her on and off all summer."" - p 39 Even Alleluia is having the visions. ""A couple of them. The green world was one. My dreams seems to stay with me, you know? I suppose because I'm a synthetic. Maybe the pick doesn't always work right on me. There's another world I've seen once or twice, with two suns in the sky." "Ferguson caught his breath sharply. "She said, "One's red, and the other one—" ""—is blue?" ""Blue, yes!" she said. "You've seen it too?" "He felt the chills run down his back. This is crazy, he thought. "And there was a big golden thing with horns, standing on a block of white stone?" ""You have seen it! You have!" ""Jesus suffering Christ," Ferguson said." - p 42 I say: blame it on Ferguson for catching his breath too sharply & having it mutilate the chills running down his back. "Switching on the little recorder in front of her, Elszabet said, "Let's get started, people, shall we? Monthly staff meeting for Thursday, July 27, 2103, Elszabet Lewis presiding, Drs Waldstein and Robinson and Patel and Ms. Corelli in attendance, 1121 hours. Okay? Instead of starting with the regular progress reports, I'd like to open with a discussion of the unusual problem that's cropped up in the past 6 days. I'm referring to the recurrent and overlapping dreams of a—well, fantastic nature that our patients seem to be experiencing["]" - p 53 Maybe they're all just watching the same tv shows. Running from reality straight into the boob tube. "In college at Berkeley, she had been an athlete, a runner, track team, all-state champion in almost every medium-distance event, the 800 meters, 1500 meters, 1600-meter relay, and more. Those long legs, the endurance, the determination. "You ought to consider a carreer as a runner," someone had told her. She had been nineteen, then. Fifteen years ago. But what did that mean, a career as a runner? It was a waste of a life, she thought, giving yourself up to something as hermetically sealed, as private, as being a runner. It was a little like saying, You ought to consider a career as a fire hydrant." - p 82 At least as a hydrant you might get the trickle-down. But, seriously folks, I considered a career as a push-up artist until someone pointed out that I meant stick-up artist. Besides, that fits right in to my boob tube theory. ""What's your theory?" ""That we're getting some kind of broadcasts from an approaching alien space vessel."" - p 84 Or maybe they're just delivering a pizza. I mean that's no weirder than writing a boob of the march. Does Playboy have a boob of the month club now?! ""Truth, yes." Senhor Papamacer leaned forward. His eyes were ablaze. "I tell you what to do. You march with me, with Senhora Aglaibahi, with the Inner Host. You write a book of the march. You have the words, you have the learning.["]" - pp 101-102 What say we knock back a few while we watch the Playboy channel, boss? ""I guess you forgot, on account of being picked. But I'm an alcoholic. I've got a conscience chip in my gullet. Any booze hits my throat, the chip's going to make me throw up.["]" - p 193 Imagine if Rump had a conscience chip that made his nose grow every time he said something stupid. Do you think he'd start making porn? Rumpy the Nosepecker? "["]What I think is that this man is in the grip of a psychosis so powerful that he's somehow able to broadcast it to others. A kind of psychic Typhoid Mary capable of scattering hallucinations across thousands of kilometers. And the closer you get to him, Elszabet, the more intense and frequent the hallucinations are["]" - p 211 Yeah, but don't forget the boob tube, he cd've never gotten elected w/o it. "["]Now the thing you have to know," Tom said, "is that the universe is full of benevolent beings. Okay? There are more suns than anybody can count, and all of the suns have planets, and those planets have people on them, not people like us, but people all the same. They're all alive and out there right this minute, going about their lives. Okay? And they know we're here. They're beckoning to us. They love us, every one of us, and they want to gather us to their bosom.["]" - p 225 Right. Just wait 'til you get the bill. ...more |
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| 9780441816101
| 3.45
| 11
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| Jan 01, 1970
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review of E.C.Tubb's / David Grinnell's The Jester at Scar / To Venus! To Venus! by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 14-16, 2019 I've only read one review of E.C.Tubb's / David Grinnell's The Jester at Scar / To Venus! To Venus! by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 14-16, 2019 I've only read one other Grinnell bk, The Edge of Time (my review's here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ). Here's an excerpt from that review: "As for the Grinnell? I liked it. His name seemed vaguely familiar so I did a little online research & learned from Wikipedia that: ""Donald Allen Wollheim (October 1, 1914 – November 2, 1990) was an American science fiction editor, publisher, writer, and fan. As an author, he published under his own name as well as under pseudonyms, including David Grinnell. ""A founding member of the Futurians, he was a leading influence on science fiction development and fandom in the 20th-century United States. ""Ursula K. Le Guin called Wollheim "the tough, reliable editor of Ace Books, in the Late Pulpalignean Era, 1966 and ’67, " which is when he published her first two novels, in an Ace Double." "- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_... "I'm impressed. I tend to think of the Futurians as the founders of 'zines, even tho that's probably not historically accurate. I reckon he used a pen-name to avoid criticism that he was publishing his own work. Dunno. I have plenty of bks published by Ace & by DAW Books, another press I take for granted was his given the 'coincidence' of the initials. Now I'll remember him & look for more of his work." As w/ The Edge of Time I'd say Grinnell/Wollheim leans toward the Hard Science end of the SF spectrum. But before I get into that, I'll start w/ the E.C.Tubb side of this Ace Double. I think this is probably the 1st Tubb I've read. The main character, Dumarest, was born on Earth but moved away as a child. Now, the people he encounters on other planets think that Earth is just a myth. "Dumarest looked down at his hand where it was clenched around the glass. "Earth is no legend," he said flatly. "The planet is real and, one day, I shall find it."" - p 15 The "Jester" of the title is the ruler of the planet Jest who's recently married. As, I suppose, has always been typical of marriages between royalties, the marriage is one of financial benefit or alliance rather than one based around, say, a shared affection for cross-breeding Virmillion hot-dogs w/ Poontangian fruit-waterers. "He glanced at her, noting the thin arrogance of her profile, the imperious tilt of her head. Strange how those with the least reason adapted the greater dignity, stranger still how the bare facts could be transmuted by pompous phraseology. He, the ruler of Jest, had married the daughter of Elgone, the Elder of Eldfane. If the people thought of it as a love-match, they were more stupid than he guessed. As a dowry she had brought him one hundred thousand tons of basic staples, the revenues from her estate on Eldfane, a million units of trading credit to be used on her home world, the services of an engineering corps for three years; and the promise of an obsolete space vessel when one should be available." - p 20 & all I got was this lousy t-shirt. Given that, I probably wdn't've been able to resist the suit. ""I see," said Dumarest. He frowned at the mechanism riding between the shoulders. "What would happen if I fell and buried my shoulders deep in mud?" ""The air-cell would continue to work under all conditions, sir." ""And suppose, at the same time, a fungi exploded and coated me with dangerous spores?" ""The filters would take care of that. Spores down to microscopic dimensions would be caught in one or the other of the treble filters. I am perfectly willing to deonstrate the suit under any conditions you may select, sir." ""Do that," suggested Dumarest. "Wear one and follow an expedition; test it as they order. If you remain alive and well you may possibly sell them—next year."" - p 28 When I went shopping for a suit & I duplicated Dumarest's apparently wise consumer savvy I was thrown out of the store, & none too gently. It was obvious that they weren't mycologists. But what about Tubb? "Dumarest took a small folder from his pocket. It was filled with colored depictions of various types of fungi both in their early stage of growth and at maturity. He riffled the pages and found what he wanted. Holding the page beside the hemispheres at his side he checked each of fifteen confirming details. "Slowly he put the book away. "It was the dream of every prospector on Scar. It was the jackpot, the big find, the one thing which could make them what they wanted to be. There were the rare and fabulously valuable motes which could live within the human metabolism, acting as a symbiote and giving longevity, heightened awareness, enhanced sensory appreciation and increased endurance. "There was golden spore all around him, in a place which he had almost died to find." - p 42 Any story in wch flipping a coin is featured can't be all bad. Instead of organizing my bks on shelves by color, I organize them by whether they have coin tosses or not. That's my only criteria of differentiation. "A coin rested beside the bottle." [Yes, coins, too, get tired. Esp coins in Money Against Capitalism ( https://youtu.be/-yi9PTR99xE ).] "He picked it up and tossed it to Heldar. "Look at it," he invited. "It will decide your fate." ""My lord?" "On one side you will see the head of a man. I have scratched a line across his cheek, a scar. The other side bears the arms of Jest. Spin the coin. Should it fall with that side uppermost you will receive your needed treatment, but if the other side whould be uppermost, the scar, then you belong to this world and I will not help you."" - p 49 Instead, Heldar shoved the coin in Jocelyn's nose slot, pulled his leg, & collected the harvest from his mouth. "This batch was for testing and disposal. The rest would be for slicing and dehydrating by a quick-freeze process which kept the flavor intact. It would be packed for the markets of a hundred worlds. Gourmets light years apart would relish the soups and ragouts made from the fungi harvested on Scar." - p 62 All that just from one sovereign's mouth. What if he'd pulled on his cock-ring? "Verification of anticipated movement of quarry received. Obtain ring and destroy Dumarest. - p 81 **************************************** I really got this bk for David Grinnell's To Venus! To Venus! & that's mainly b/c "His left earphone was tuned in to the wavelength of Jim Holmes, who was his target. Jim had been fulfilling his assignment of cruising the surface in the ungainly looking but very efficient moonwalker when the machine had suddenly stopped operating. Chet hoped to get it restarted. "His right earphone received the wavelength of the mother ship, which would eventually take everybody back to Earth. It took a bit of getting used to, this business of receiving two channels simultaneously, but it had been covered in the intensive training he had received, and now he could listen to two conversations at the same time and make sense of both." - p 6 Some people are bipolar, others are binaural, others write about the space race between the USA & the USSR. Pierre Boulle, e.g.. "["]Operation Immediate is the name which covers the three volunteers, their back-up and support unit and all the equipment necessary to achieve a manned landing on the southern hemisphere of Venus."" - p 32 Next thing ya know it was like a wormhole had opened up between p 32 & p 57 & the astronauts were THERE. "Particularly, although the changeover from the dull routine of the many weeks into the bustle of the final days had caused a stir of excitement and a loss of sleep, on the eve of their arrival all three had settled down to the task which they had in hand. They all slept blissfully when their turn came, and when the orbital countdown began they were at their places, alert, relaxed and ready. The rockets roared, slowing their approach, and orbit was achieved perfectly. The fellows looked at each other and smiled broadly. They were about to embark on the most dangerous part of their mission. But the successful voyage which had covered twenty-five million miles had been capped by a beautifully simple functioning of all systems. So they forgot the dangers and were buoyed by confidence in their equipment and the scientists of the Agency who had engineered their exploration." - p 57 "Outside the fierce storm caused the clouds to boil heavily; dust, pebbles, stones and small rocks were caught by the hurricane winds and hurled like buckshot indiscriminately in every direction. The landing vehicle swayed in the strong gusts. But Chet's attention was riveted on the thremometer. The temperature outside was close to five hundred degrees! The auxiliary thermometer registered the same." - p 60 Heating up those frozen pizzas w/o burning them is going to be tricky. "Then he continued: "A report from Venera, Lieutenant-colonel Yarmonkine commanding, whose point of origin was verified by Jodrell, says that the Russian crew have effected a soft landing in the southern hemisphere of Venus. The report describes tropical jungle scenery, breathable air and habitable land. They say they are comfortable without life-support systems of any kind and are currently conducting tests. Please advise when possible. End of message."" - p 65 Then everyone died in every bk & all the readers discovered themselves to be in excellent health, very happy, inspired, & immortal. THE END. ...more |
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| 9780441139606
| 3.63
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| Jan 01, 1976
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review of Mack Reynolds's Day After Tomorrow by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 12, 2019 This was different from any other Mack Reynolds novel I've review of Mack Reynolds's Day After Tomorrow by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 12, 2019 This was different from any other Mack Reynolds novel I've read. For one thing, it was close to a conventional spy novel; for another, it had an _____ ending. Let's start off w/ termination w/ extreme prejudice of the beginnings of an independent miners union in the USSR: ""The men in the mines there were trying to start a union." "The minister knocked back his vodka with a practiced stiff-writes toss. "Union?" he said in surprise. "Surely they already have a union. Miners? Of course they have a union." ""I do not mean the State union," Simonov said, crossing his legs. "They were trying to establish a union independent of control by the State. They had various greivances, including a desire for better housing and medical care.. They even had plans for a strike." "His superior poured himself another drink. "What's it coming to?" he growled. "You'd think we were in the West. What did you do?" "Ilya Simonov grunted his version of humor. "Well, I could hardly send the ringleaders to Siberia, in view of the fact that they were already there. So I arranged for a bit of an accident."" - p 16 Larry Woolford is a subversive-suppressor in the US secret police. He's also a conformist. "Steve Hackett himself was a fairly accurate carbon copy of Woolford, barring facial resemblance alone. He wore Harris tweed, instead of Donegal. Larry Woolford made a note of that. Possibly herringbone was coming back in. He winced at the thought of a major change in his wardrobe; it'd cost a fortune. However, you couldn't get the reputation for being out of style." - p 24 Yes, there are people like this. Yes, they are idiots. Woolford & Hackett are assigned to a counterfeting case. ""What makes you think your pushers are amateurs?" ""Amateur," Hackett corrected. "Ideally, a pusher is an inconspicuous type, the kind of person whose face you never remember. It's never a teenage girl who's blowing money at fifty dollars a crack." "It was time to stare now, and Larry Woolford obliged. "A teenager!"" - p 27 I'm originally from Baltimore. B/c of this, any mention of Baltimore attracts my attn & then I tend to associate the written version w/ my own experience. ""Susan Self, 418 Elwood Avenue." He looked up and said to Larry, "That's right off Eastern, near Paterson Park in the Baltimore section of town, isn't it?"" - p 35 This bk was published in 1976. In 1976 I lived in Fells Point, the neghborhood west of Paterson Park. Eastern Ave was a main drag running thru both neighborhoods. At that time the American Nazi Party bookstore was on or near Eastern Ave. Whenever I think of 'working class barracks' I think of Paterson Park & the next eastward neighborhood, Highlandtown. All rowhomes, formstone fronts, painted door screens, very few trees. The neighborhood was one of the nazi hold-outs. This was an example of the neighborhoods in Baltimore where some of the residents were notorious for never leaving more than a 3 or 4 block radius from their home. All they needed was the liquor store & whatever passed for a food store. Such neighborhoods were insanely fearful of 'outsiders'. The nazi bookstore was shut down in the late '70s for non-payment of taxes. Reynolds's choice of this area as the HQ for his resistance organization is quite strange since they're very much the opposite of nazis. I wonder how deliberate that was. I'm an autodidact so my interest always gets strong when Reynolds promotes similar people. ""Well—briefly does it. It got out a couple of years back that some of our rocketeers had bought a solid fuel fromula from an Italian research outfit for the star probe project. Paid them a big hunk of Uncle's change for it. So Ernest Self sued." "Larry said, "You're being too brief. What do you mean he sued. Why?" ""Because he claimed he'd submitted the same formula to the same agency a full eighteen months earlier and they'd turned him down."" - p 64 "["]He doesn't have any degree. He said he learned to read by the time he reached high school and since then he figured spending time in classrooms was a matter of interfering with his education."" - p 65 "["]Our culture is such that the genius is smothered. The great contributors to our society are ignored, or worse."" - p 97 But what about in the "Soviet Complex"? "He was, Ilya Simonov had found out, Leonid Mikoyan, son of one of the few Old Bolsheviks who hadn't been purged by Stalin. Leonid Mikoyan owed his position, which he was reputedly incompetent to hold down, to the fact that being the son of an Old Bolshevik in the Soviet Complex was a status symbol unrivaled. At the age of nine he had become a Young Pioneer, another status symbol in Russia; you were a nobody if, as a child, you had not been a Young Pioneer. At the age of fourteen he became a member of the Young Communist League, attaining more merit in the eyes of the elite. And at the age of twenty-six he was made a full-fledged party member. One attains little in the way of position in the Soviet Complex, no matter how competent, unless he is a member of the Party." - p 70 But it wasn't really until he put on the Harris Tweeds that his position skyrocketed. Is Reynolds referencing an actual person? Perhaps he's meant to be the son of "Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan" [..] "(25 November 1895 – 21 October 1978) was a Soviet revolutionary, Old Bolshevik and statesman during the mandates of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. He was the only Soviet politician who managed to remain at the highest levels of power within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as that power oscillated between the Central Committee and the Politburo, from the latter days of Lenin's rule, throughout the eras of Stalin and Khrushchev, until his peaceful retirement after the first months of Brezhnev's rule." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastas... Steve Hackett's wife is a social climbing conformist too & given, once again, the Baltimore connection I found the next section interesting: "She said, "They've recently moved into a new apartment in the Druid Hill section of Baltimore. It's the name area now. Just everybody is moving there. You're simply not with it, these days, unless you live near Druif Hill Park." ""I don't like Baltimore," he muttered. ""What's that got to do with it? Steve, we've simply got to take an apartment there. Houses have become old hat. We'll be nobodies unless we move to a Baltimore apartment."" - p 85 Well, HEY!, that must be true. I mean Gertrude Stein had a huge house there back in the day. John Waters lived in an apartment building. The proto-Vermin Supreme lived in some sort of building (a 'Jockey Club'). Neil Feather lived in a house. Just as I have to wonder about Reynolds using Patterson Park, an area associated w/ white supremacism at the time, I have to wonder about his using Druid Hill as a status neighborhood. "Census tracts that have been in persistent poverty for up to five decades are shown in Map 8. Here, too, previously redlined tracts tend to have experienced persistent poverty, with the exception of Inner Harbor. Between 1970 and 2009 in Baltimore, the entire neighborhoods of Penn North/Reservoir Hill, Perkins/Middle East, Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park, and Upton/Druid Hill meet the definition for persistent poverty. "Persistent segregation is displayed in Map 9. The current racial/ethnic population is also shown as a dot density overlay in order to highlight which census tracts are currently majority White and which are majority Black. All of the census tracts that comprise South Baltimore have been at least 90% White since 1970; all of the tracts in Cherry Hill, Clifton-Berea, Dorchester/Ashburton, Forest Park/Walbrook, Greater Mondawmin, Greater Rosemont, Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park, and Upton/Druid Hill have been at least 90% Black for the past five census periods." - https://societyhealth.vcu.edu/media/s... In other words, as of when this bk was published, it's highly unlikely that white conformist professionals wd be looking to Druid Hill as a choice destination. The Movement Professor tries to school the conformist cop Woolford on things relevant to class. "["]Then you have lower-upper, middle-upper, and finally we achieve to upper-upper class. Now tell me, when we get to that rarified category, who do we find? Do we find an Einstein, a Schweitzer, a Picasso; outstanding scientists, humanitarians, the great writers, artists and musicians of our day? Certainly not. We find ultra-wealthy playboys and girls, a former king and his duchess who eke out their income by accepting fees to attend parties. We find the international bum set, bearers of meaningless feudalistic titles, or we find millionaires and billionaires, who achieved their wealth by inheriting it. These are your upper-upper class!"" - pp 100-101 The Movement is behind massive counterfeiting. The police state finds it impossible to understand. "["]Remember Stalin as a young man? He used to be in charge of the Bolshevik gang which robbed banks to raise funds for their underground newspapers and other activities. But a billion dollars? What in the world can they expect to need that amount for?"" - p 112 "He was astonished that an organization such as the Movement would have spread to the extent it evidently had through the country's intellectual circles, through the scientifically and technically trained, without his department being keenly aware of it. "One result, he decided glumly, of labeling everything contrary to the status quo as weird and dismissing it with contempt." - p 122 Indeed. It's nice to imagine that the underestimation of the opposition can result in the success of such things as sneak attacks thru hacked data base bios. "He got the hundred odd word brief and stared at it as it filled the screen. The only items really correct were his name and present occupation. Otherwise, his education was listed as grammar school only, an initial cruel cut. His military career had him ending the Asian War as a General of the Armies and his criminal career record included four years on Alcatraz for molesting small children. Alcatraz! Hadn't it been closed down for years?" - p 127 The Movement is wonderfully clever & intelligent but Woolford, as a social-climbing conformist, is almost entirely w/o scruples. Alas, unlike in every other Reynolds novel I've read, that's presented as the more successfully powerful force. ...more |
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Mar 13, 2019
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 3.69
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| 1970
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really liked it
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review of Mack Reynolds's Computer World by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 10, 2019 I've already praised Mack Reynolds in so many reviews that I f review of Mack Reynolds's Computer World by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 10, 2019 I've already praised Mack Reynolds in so many reviews that I feel redundant doing it again. Nonetheless, you haven't necessarily read the reviews where I've praised him so I have to dose this w/ at least a little of the same flavor to do him justice. Most of the Reynolds bks I've read recently take place in a near future (that's ometimes this reader's past) in wch social problems have been solved much better than they're ever likely to be but there're still dissenters &/or power-hungry people plotting an overthrow of these near-utopic conditions. Computer World has one ft in & one ft outside of that category. The main character, Paul Kosloff, lectures about linguistics on "Tri-Vision", what is easily concluded to be hologram television. To give an idea of how light people's workloads are: "The technician said, "Well, that's it for the week, Professor. You know, you teachers have it easy." ""How's that?" Paul fingered the invisible automatic zipper on his briefcase, closing it. ""Well, this job comes under the head of hard labor for me. I put in a full four hour day, on a four day a week basis. And I'll probably be stuck with it for a full five years before retirement. But here you turn up one lousy hour a week." "Paul Kosloff grunted deprecation. "How long to you think it takes me to prepare one of these lectures, Jerry?" He took up the briefcase and stuck it under his arm." - p 11 The typesetter for this bk might've also lived in a future where work was undemanding because at the bottom of page 10 the reader finds: "The technician gestured to him in a professional's ditionally ascribed to Saint Cyril but was probably the" & on the bottom of page 13 finds: "and out into the office area of the University of coming down to get me that way."" How many people wd flaunt a degree from "the University of coming down to get me that way" these days? Why I remember when that degree wd get ya a 4 hr a wk job earning 6 voluptuous figures but those days are gone. Instead, we have the megalopolis. "Automatically, without need for thought, as automatically as once men drove" the University of coming down to get me that way ", he brought down the canopy, put his Universal Credit Card in the slot, dropped the pressurizer and dialed the cantral vacuum-tube terminal. The Tri-Vision studios in which he worked were located in Greater Washington, but he lived in the pseudo-city of Princeton in the area once known as New Jersey." - p 14 Reynolds is always good for interpolating history into his stories. "Toward the last, the emperors were providing hundreds of thousands of animals and men to satisfy the bloodlust of their people", the University of coming down to get me that way. "Nor were simple fights sufficient. Battles, including naval engagements, were fought in the arena, sometimes between such exotic warriors as pigmies from Africa's interior, and seven foot tall northmen from far Scandinavia. Criminals were crucified, tied face to face with a rotting corpse, until, over a period of days, they smothered to death; baboons were trained to rape virgins; living slaves were dipped in tar and strung up to be used as torches." - p 17 AH.. Civilization! Despite the fantasticness of his stories, Reynolds is careful to make his details realistic. Take this fighting scene w/ Kosloff defending himself: "He decided to risk the twenty-first Kata and threw himself into a fighting stance. The one who had just slugged him came in fast, throwing a left punch with pointed hand, Nishi ken style. Paul bent his body slightly to the right in downward motion and threw a left edge of hand block hard against the other's wrist. He grabbed the inside of the wrist with his left, forcing his arm up high and pulled his opponent's arm upward as he pivoted on his left foot to the left. His body was now completely backwards against the attacker's stomach. He held the other's arm high and with his right elbow came back hard with an elbow blow to the stranger's stomach." - p 20 Kosloff lives in a world where data, including detailed data about most or almost all citizens, is kept in a National Data Bank. Any damage to this data bank is likely to cause the whoe society that it uses & is used by to collapse. Goodbye easy lifestyle. "Harrison ignored him. "I suppose it really began back in the 1960's when New Haven consolidated all the city's files on the individual into a single data pool open to all city agencies. Santa Clara County in California wasn't far behind and put all county residents into a computer bank, listing age, address, birth record, driver's license, voting and jury status, property holdings, occupation, health, welfare, and police records." - p 38 Those darned SF writers. Look at what this feller does: he pays attn to what's happening around him & then extrapolates from that. What a wacko. Or, at least, so I hoped. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything online substantiating Reynolds's history of New Haven & Santa Clara County's data collection & centralization. That doesn't mean it's not true. I don't always trust what's available online. I didn't find anything about New Haven in the index of the 1980 edition of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. & what about Manhattan? ""Manhattan! Manhattan's been deserted for years." ""Not exactly. There's a few hundred or so of what they call baboons. Possibly a few thousand. They don't exactly admit of a census. Fugitives, left overs from the riots who are afraid to come over to the mainland, mental cases, foreigners without papers who aren't eligible for being issued Inalienable Basic and hence have no way of maintaining themselves on the mainland. Then there are the looters who scrounge through the ruins trying to find art objects, jewelry, saleable things they can take to the mainland and sell to antique and art dealers." - pp 49-50 Well, I guess Manhattan's more or less out. Just as I thought it might finally be affordable. What about other places? "["]Why live in the most expensive country in the world, when you can pick such spots as Mexico, Spain, Greece, Morocco and a score of other countries where the cost of living is a fraction? On their Social Security income, oldsters in California or Florida could live only on a poverty level. In Mexico they could live in luxury, complete with servants."" - pp 57-58 I wdn't mind a higher quality of life but I don't want servants, no sireebob. Even if I were inclined to be such a petty despot, I'm sure I'd end up with baboons trying to rape my virgin the University of coming down to get me that way degree. Fuck that shit. Besides, "They can monitor not only everything you say or receive in your phone conversations, but all the talk and other sounds that go on in your vicinity. They can do this to everybody in the United States of the Americas, if and when they wish, who wears a teevee wrist phone." "Paul Kosloff stared down at his in consternation. "They can?" ""Yes. And, of course, it is illegal not to wear your teevee phone. But that's just the beginning. We can bug rooms right through a wall. We can read conversations going on in a room by the vibrations on the windows. We can listen in on a conversation going on in the open, half a mile away. Oh, you'd be amazed how we snoopers can snoop these days, hombre."" - p 66 How many of you readers even need to have this appraisal of technological surveillance born out for you with contemporary knowledge? Snooping on conversations by reflecting microwaves off vibrating glass is old news. GPSs on cell-phones to show location is common knowledge — even if many people don't think about the implications. I, on the other hand, can't help but think about the comtemporary degree of surveillance combined w/ '6 degrees of separation'. I'm positive that at this very moment, there's a maidservant to the queen who's masturbating to my keystrokes here & that we're only 2 degrees apart. Love it or loave it. ""My dear Paul, you must realize, I don't move in such exotic circles. My work is in biological research." He reached out and poured them additional barack, an apologetic element in his voice. "Paul leaned forward. "I didn't expect you to. However, I once listened in on a conversation in which one of the speakers maintained that it took only four contacts, at most, to meet anyone in the world." "His uncle snorted, "I'd like to see four contacts get me an introduction to, say, the King of England." "Paul accepted that. "Very well, I would be your first contact. I studied Polish and Czech with a friend who had once spent a year at Oxford. I would introduce you to him. In turn, while at Oxford he associated with who was later to become Sir Antony Brett-James, who is now a colonel in the Royal Guard. I am sure he could arrange for an introduction for you to the King. Four contacts, in fact only three."" - p 152 "Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six, or fewer, social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "a friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and popularized in an eponymous 1990 play written by John Guare. It is sometimes generalized to the average social distance being logarithmic in the size of the population." [..] "Michael Gurevich conducted seminal work in his empirical study of the structure of social networks in his 1961 Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD dissertation under Ithiel de Sola Pool. Mathematician Manfred Kochen, an Austrian who had been involved in urban design, extrapolated these empirical results in a mathematical manuscript, Contacts and Influences, concluding that in a U.S.-sized population without social structure, "it is practically certain that any two individuals can contact one another by means of at most two intermediaries. In a [socially] structured population it is less likely but still seems probable. And perhaps for the whole world's population, probably only one more bridging individual should be needed." They subsequently constructed Monte Carlo simulations based on Gurevich's data, which recognized that both weak and strong acquaintance links are needed to model social structure. The simulations, carried out on the relatively limited computers of 1973, were nonetheless able to predict that a more realistic three degrees of separation existed across the U.S. population, foreshadowing the findings of American psychologist Stanley Milgram. "Milgram continued Gurevich's experiments in acquaintanceship networks at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. Kochen and de Sola Pool's manuscript, Contacts and Influences, was conceived while both were working at the University of Paris in the early 1950s, during a time when Milgram visited and collaborated in their research. Their unpublished manuscript circulated among academics for over 20 years before publication in 1978. It formally articulated the mechanics of social networks, and explored the mathematical consequences of these (including the degree of connectedness). The manuscript left many significant questions about networks unresolved, and one of these was the number of degrees of separation in actual social networks. Milgram took up the challenge on his return from Paris, leading to the experiments reported in The Small World Problem in popular science journal Psychology Today, with a more rigorous version of the paper appearing in Sociometry two years later. The Psychology Today article generated enormous publicity for the experiments, which are well known today, long after much of the formative work has been forgotten." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_deg... Can't plug our old pal Stanley Milgram enuf. Maybe the most interesting idea in the bk is this: ""This is an intuition computer, Professor. Given that same problem I mentioned earlier, that had ten elements, two of which are unknowns. A man will often hit, intuitively, the correct answer after assimilating only five or six of the seemingly necessary elements. Nostradamus, here, halves that. It often comes up—intuitively—with the correct answer after being given but one third of the seemingly pertinent information."" - p 167 "Artificial intuition is a theoretical capacity of an artificial software to function similarly to human consciousness, specifically in the capacity of human consciousness known as intuition." [..] "Veeramachaneni and others at MIT developed a machine which performed comparably to humans in a test of intuitive intelligence during 2015." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artific... ...more |
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Mar 02, 2019
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| 3.89
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it was amazing
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review of Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 18-20, 2019 For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/ review of Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 18-20, 2019 For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... One of my minor interests is in apocalypse novels in wch there at least appears to be only one human survivor. The earliest of these that I've read or otherwise know about is Mary Shelley's The Last Man. I have a performance called "The Last Man on Earth" that's somewhat inspired by Shelley. One can witness excerpts from my presentation of that at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University here: https://youtu.be/f2puiVTPGYU?t=363 . The Last Man (1826) has 7 yrs of plague wipe out all but one person. The Purple Cloud (1901) by M. P. Shiel has all but one killed by a purple vapor. Greener Than You Think (1947) by Ward Moore has grass take over the planet. Note that the last 2 have colors in their titles. I was half hoping that The Black Cloud (1957) wd continue this tradition. It doesn't in the sense of having only one survivor. It does in the sense of being an ecodisaster novel of sorts. Maybe it's more appropriate to call it an extraterrestrially-induced astroecodisaster. Whatever. I loved it. I have a friend who criticizes me for reading & reviewing science fiction. She has a brother who's a scientist & has started becoming interested in science in recent yrs. I pointed out to her that much SF is written by scientists so if she's interested in science why not be interested in fiction written by scientists? Fred Hoyle exemplifies this. "FRED HOYLE (1915 - 2001) "Sir Fred Hoyle was an English astronomer and cosmologist, primarily remembered today for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, and his often controversial stance on other cosmological and scientific matters, such as his rejection of the Big Bang theory in favor of a steady state universe and the panspermia theory of the origin of life on earth. He is considered one of the most creative and provocative astrophysicists of the second half of the 20th Century. "Fred Hoyle was born during the First World War, on 24 June 1915, in the village of Gilstead, West Yorkshire, England. After his father’s cloth business failed, the family moved briefly to Rayleigh, Essex in 1921 before returning again to the Bingley area, and Hoyle moved from school to school, regularly playing truant and missing long periods of school. Despite his attempts to avoid formal education, however, he did show an interest in educating himself, especially from chemistry and astronomy books, and, when he won a scholarship to Bingley Grammar School in 1926, he started to approach education with a more positive attitude. "After a series of failed scholarship exams, he managed to obtain a scholarship to study science at Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1933. He persevered at mathematics, always his weakest subject, and, by sheer determination, he was placed in the top ten of the 1936 Mathematical Tripos and was awarded the Mayhew Prize as the best student in applied mathematics. In other subjects, he was taught by some outstanding people during his undergraduate years at Cambridge, including Max Born (quantum mechanics), Arthur Eddington (general relativity) and Paul Dirac (who replaced Rudolph Peierls as Hoyle’s supervisor). "Hoyle’s interests turned towards mathematical problems in astronomy and, as he continued to win prizes and awards, he was elected to a Fellowship at St John's in 1939 for his work on beta decay. He married Barbara Clark in late 1939, and they went on to have a son, Geoffrey, in 1942 and a daughter, Elizabeth. "Although his career was largely put on hold with the outbreak of World War II, it was also a fertile period for gestating some ideas he would later expand on. He had refused to be drafted for weapons research, having immediately realized that the recently discovered phenomenon of a nuclear fission chain reaction could be used to create a nuclear bomb, and he mainly worked on radar for the Admiralty in Nutbourne, near Portsmouth. It was there that he met fellow astronomers Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, and the three were able to discuss astronomy in spare moments (they would later propose together the steady-state cosmology for which Hoyle is probably best known). Through his work on radar, he also visited the USA in 1944, where he became more familiar with the atomic bomb project. It was then that he first began to hypothesize on the role of nuclear reactions in stars. "At the end of the war, he returned to Cambridge as a Junior Lecturer in Mathematics. He published an important paper in 1945 on the structure of stars, in which he introduced a new method for solving the equations determining the structure of a star with a convective core, and discussed the most advantageous way of integrating the equations of stellar equilibrium. "In a 1946 paper, on the creation of elements and the synthesis of elements from hydrogen, Hoyle introduced (or at least formalized) the concept of nucleosynthesis in stars, building on earlier work in the 1930's by Hans Bethe. Stellar nucleosynthesis is the process of nuclear reactions taking place in stars to build the nuclei of the heavier elements, which are then incorporated in other stars and planets when that star "dies", so that the new stars formed now start off with these heavier elements, and even heavier elements can then be formed from them, and so on. "Hoyle also theorized that other rarer elements could be explained by supernovas, the giant explosions which occasionally occur throughout the universe, whose immensely high temperatures and pressures would be sufficient to create such elements. Remarkably, he had found a way of testing the theory of star formation in the laboratory, and was able to prove his earlier prediction that carbon could be made form three helium nuclei without an intervening beryllium stage. Although his co-worker William Fowler eventually won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his contributions to this work, for some reason Hoyle’s original contribution was never recognized. "As part of this work, Hoyle invoked the so-called Anthropic Principle to make the remarkable prediction, based on the prevalence on Earth of carbon-based lifeforms, that there must be an undiscovered resonance in the carbon-12 nucleus which facilitates its synthesis within stars. He calculated the energy of this undiscovered resonance to be 7.6 million electron-volts, and when Fowler's research group eventually found this resonance, its measured energy was remarkably close to Hoyle's prediction. "It was also this work that caused Hoyle, an atheist until that time, to begin to believe in the guiding hand of a god (what would later be called “intelligent design” or “fine tuning”), when he considered the statistical improbability of the large amount of carbon in the universe, carbon which makes possible carbon-based lifeforms such as humans." - https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/... I include such a long excerpt from one of his online bios b/c I think it touches on several areas of interest to me: 1a. "Hoyle moved from school to school, regularly playing truant and missing long periods of school. Despite his attempts to avoid formal education, however, he did show an interest in educating himself, especially from chemistry and astronomy books, and, when he won a scholarship to Bingley Grammar School in 1926, he started to approach education with a more positive attitude." 1b. Being an autodidact myself & one who detested school as boring & oppressive I'm usually pleased to find evidence of other people that I consider to be intelligent exhibiting a similar attitude. 2a. "He had refused to be drafted for weapons research, having immediately realized that the recently discovered phenomenon of a nuclear fission chain reaction could be used to create a nuclear bomb, and he mainly worked on radar for the Admiralty in Nutbourne, near Portsmouth." 2b. If more people who worked on the Manhatten Project had had the foresight that Hoyle did the atrocities of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki cd've been avoided. 3a."It was also this work that caused Hoyle, an atheist until that time, to begin to believe in the guiding hand of a god (what would later be called “intelligent design” or “fine tuning”), when he considered the statistical improbability of the large amount of carbon in the universe, carbon which makes possible carbon-based lifeforms such as humans." 3b. It seems only fair to also point out that I completely disagree w/ the above point 3a. The PROLOGUE is a framing device where the bk is explained as a series of papers regarding the hidden history of the Black Cloud accompanied by a letter. "More surprising, however, was the letter that accompanied the papers. It read: "Queens' College, 19 August, 2020 "My dear Blythe, "I trust you will forgive an old man for chuckling occasionally to himself over some of your speculations concerning the Black Cloud. As it happened, I was so placed during the crisis that I learned of the real nature of the Cloud." - p 7 Note that the date is "2020", a mere yr from the 2019 that I'm writing in. Now note the date that the story begins. "It was eight o'clock along the Greenwich meridian. In England the wintry sun of 7th January, 1964, was just rising. Throughout the length and breadth of the land people were shivering in ill-heated houses as they read the morning papers, ate their breakfasts, and grumbled about the weather, which, truth to tell, had been appalling of late." - p 9 Now, the reason why I point this out is to call attention to how much things have changed between 1964 & 2019. Ever since the Black Cloud, nobody talks about the weather anymore. Have you noticed that? Probably the main thing that I enjoyed about this bk was the way it talks the reader logically & mathematically thru the probable detection & analysis of such an event as the coming of the Black Cloud if it were to happen. "Astronomy is kind in its treatment of the beginner. There are many jobs to be done, jobs that can lead to important results but which do not require great experience. Jensen's was one of these. He was searching for supernovae, stars that explode with uncanny violence. Within the next year he might reasonably hope to find one or two. Since there was no telling when an outburst might occur, nor where in the sky the exploding star might be situated, the only thing to do was to keep on photographing the whole sky, night after night, month after month. Some day he would strike lucky. It was true that should he find a supernove located not too far away in the depths of space, then more experienced hands than his would take over the work. Instead of the 18-inch Schmidt, the full power of the great 200-inch would then be directed to revealing the spectacular secrets of these strange stars." - p 11 It's thru the 200-inch that I'll probably discover my next girlfriend. Talk about long-distance relationships! Of couse, by then, texting will be FTL & solid state holographic. "Emerson, who was working the lantern, put in a slide that Marlowe had made up from Jensen's first plate, the one taken on the night of 9th December, 1963." - p 18 Hoyle published this in 1957, a mere 6 or 7 yrs before he has the action take place. Imagine if I have to wait until 2025 for a suitable OKCupid match on another planet. Will the texting have evolved enuf to permit easy communication yet? Well, let's do some calculating. ""Our next step must be to measure the speed with which the cloud is moving towards us. Marlowe and I have had a long talk about it, and we think it should be possible. Stars on the fringe of the cloud are partially obscured, as the plates taken by Marlowe last night show. Their spectrum should show absorption lines due to the cloud, and the Doppler shift will give us the speed."" - p 22 "*The details of Weichart's remarks and work while at the blackboard were as follows: ""Write a for the present angular diameter of the cloud, measured in radians, "d for the linear diameter of the cloud, D for the distance away from us, V for its velocity of approach, T for the time required for it to reach the solar system. "To make a start, evidently we have a = d/D" - p 23 It's a relief to learn from this that my prospective match isn't obese. I've always had a thing for skinniness. This bk was written in the day when computers still used punch-out cards. I wondered why I got such a good deal on the computer I write these reviews on. Now I know that it's because the punch-out cards it uses are obsolete. "He still had to convert the letters and figures he had written into a form that the machine could interpret. This he did with a special kind of typewriter, a typewriter that delivered a strip of paper in which holes were punched, the pattern of the holes corresponding to the symbols that were being typed. It was the holes in the paper that constituted the final instructions to the computer. Not one single hole among many thousands could be out of its proper place, otherwise the machine would compute incorrectly. The typing had to be done with meticulous accuracy, with literally one hundred per cent accuracy." - p 32 & this was before the day of holecheck. It didn't matter to me, though, because I thought those strips of paper were coupons so I just threw them away & let the roll run out. No wonder I haven't gotten a date. Even if they were coupons I shd've kept them in case of a 'get one, get the 2nd one free' deal. "["]The mass of the cloud is more difficult. As far as I can see the best way, perhaps the only way, would be from planetary perturbations." ""That's pretty archaic stuff, isn't it?" asked Banrett. "Who do it? The British I suppose."" - p 39 Do I detect a note of defending an esoteric British practice? ""That's an awful high density. If the gas comes between us and the Sun it'll block out the Sun's light completely. It looks to me as if it's going to get almighty cold here on Earth!" ""That doesn't necessarily follow," broke in Barnett. "The gas itself may get hot, and heat may flow through it." ""That depends on how much energy is required to heat the Cloud," remarked Weichart. ""And on its opacity, and a hundred and one other factors," added Kingsley. I must say it seems very unlikely to me that much heat will get through the gas. Let's work out the energy required to heat it to an ordinary sort of temperature." "He went out to the blackboard, and wrote: "Mass of Cloud 1.3 X 10[to 30] grams. Composition of Cloud probably hydrogen gas, for the most part in neutral form. Energy required to lift temperature of gas by T degrees is 1.5 X 1.3 C X 10[to 30] RT ergs where R is the gas constant. Writing L for the total energy emitted by the Sun, the time required to raise the temperature is 1.5 X 1.3 C 10[to 30] RT/L seconds Put R = 8.3 X 10[to 7], T = 300, L = 4 X 10[to 33] ergs per second gives a time of about 1.2 X 10[to 7] seconds. i.e. about 5 months." - p 44 ""It looks to me as if we're rather lucky," Barnett laughed uneasily. "Because of the Earth's motion round the Sun, the Earth will be on the far side of the Sun sixteen months hence when the Cloud arrives."" - p 45 "1. A cloud of gas has invaded the solar system from outer space. 2. It is moving more or less directly towards us. 3. It will arrive in the vicinity of the Earth about sixteen months from now. 4. It will remain in our vicinity for a time of about a month. ""So if the material of the Cloud interposes itself between the Sun and the Earth, the Earth will be plunged into darkness. Observations are not yet sufficiently definitive to decide whether or not this will occur, but further observations should be capable of deciding this issue."" - pp 46-47 In other words, these scientists are doing their best to lay the groundwork for saving life on Earth from a potential disaster by trying to figure out just how potential it is. & yet.. there's always a hierarchy in the way. ""All this had to be fought for. Otherwise we'd have had the same sort of set-up that you objected to. Let me talk a bit of philosophy and sociology. Has it ever occurred to you, Geoff, that in spite of all the changes wrought by science—by our control over inanimate energy, that is to say—we still preserve the same old order of precedence? Politicians at the top, then the military, and the real brains at the bottom.["]" - p 87 Still, I think both the scientists & the politicians were overreacting when they made preparations for the arrival of my long-distance girlfriend. "The evacuation of Tibet, Sinkiang, and Outer Mongolia was left to the Chinese. With cynical indifference nothing at all was done by them. The Russians, on the other hand, were punctilious and prompt in their evacuation of the Pamirs and of their other highland areas. Indeed genuine efforts were made to shift the Afghans, but Russian emissaries were driven out of Afghanistan at pistol point." - p 100 I don't know about the rest of the world but I know I was feeling a distinct blood rush to a certain extremity with the resultant increase in temperature at the thought of her finally getting here. "By June it became clear that the temperature of the Earth was likely to be raised everywhere by some thirty degrees Fahrenheit. It is not commonly realised how near the death temperature a large fraction of the human species lives. Under very dry atmospheric conditions a man can survive up to air temperatures of about 140˚ Fahrenheit. Such temperatures are in fact attained in a normal summer in low-lying regions of the Western American desert and in North Africa. But under highly humid conditions, the death temperature is only about 115˚ Fahrenheit. Temperatures at high humidity up to 105˚ Fahrenheit are attained in a normal summer down the eastern seaboard of the U.S, and sometimes in the Middle West. Curiously, temperatures at the equator do not usually run above 95˚ Fahrenheit, although conditions are highly humid. This oddity arises from a denser cloud cover at the equator, reflecting more of the Sun's rays back into space." - p 101 Now wasn't that a nice little synopsis? I'm from BalTimOre where I'd often spend about 2 wks of the summer lying around in a stupor feeling like I was underwater b/c the humidity was so high even though the temperature was 'only' between 95 & 100˚ Fahrenheit. "The death-toll in the U.S. remained quite small, thanks largely to the air-conditioning units that had been fitted during previous years and months. Temperatures rose to the lethal limit throughout the whole country and people were obliged to remain indoors for weeks on end. Occasionally air-conditioning units failed and it was then that fatalities occurred." - p 104 Right. Methinks Hoyle's being a bit optimistic here. 1st, there wd be the corrupt constractors out to make a killing off defective merchandise. 2nd, there wd be the power failures. How cd anyone service the exploded transformers outside in that kind of weather? Once the Black Cloud had engulfed the Earth new light patterns prevailed. I still remember my new GF & I admiring the beauty of it all & talking about how it proved the non-existence of god. For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ...more |
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Jan 14, 2019
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Jan 20, 2019
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tENTATIVELY,
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| 2.94
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it was amazing
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Nov 30, 2020
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Dec 22, 2020
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| 2.90
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really liked it
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Sep 11, 2020
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Nov 10, 2020
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| 3.43
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liked it
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Aug 28, 2020
not set
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Nov 01, 2020
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| 4.01
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really liked it
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Aug 25, 2020
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Nov 01, 2020
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| 3.43
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it was amazing
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Aug 03, 2020
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Oct 25, 2020
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| 3.42
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it was amazing
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Jul 19, 2020
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Oct 20, 2020
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| 4.00
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really liked it
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Jun 19, 2020
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Oct 16, 2020
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| 4.07
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really liked it
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Jun 15, 2020
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Oct 13, 2020
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| 3.94
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really liked it
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Jun 11, 2020
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Sep 30, 2020
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| 4.00
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really liked it
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Jun 07, 2020
not set
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Jun 30, 2020
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| 3.69
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it was amazing
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May 29, 2020
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Jun 18, 2020
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| 3.56
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liked it
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May 18, 2020
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May 31, 2020
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| 3.85
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really liked it
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Mar 28, 2020
not set
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Apr 19, 2020
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| 3.14
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it was ok
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Feb 23, 2020
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Mar 08, 2020
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| 3.78
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Nov 07, 2019
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Dec 30, 2019
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| 3.93
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Oct 25, 2019
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Dec 10, 2019
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really liked it
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Sep 25, 2019
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Nov 18, 2019
| |||||
|
| 3.19
|
liked it
|
Sep 13, 2019
|
Nov 10, 2019
| |||||
|
| 3.33
|
liked it
|
Sep 09, 2019
|
Nov 06, 2019
| |||||
|
| 3.41
|
really liked it
|
Aug 10, 2019
|
Sep 11, 2019
| |||||
|
| 4.13
|
really liked it
|
Jul 06, 2019
|
Aug 16, 2019
| |||||
|
| 3.67
|
liked it
|
Jun 21, 2019
|
Aug 06, 2019
| |||||
|
| 3.36
|
liked it
|
Apr 24, 2019
|
May 22, 2019
| |||||
|
| 4.00
|
really liked it
|
Apr 22, 2019
|
May 14, 2019
| |||||
|
| 3.95
|
really liked it
|
Apr 22, 2019
|
May 10, 2019
| |||||
|
| 3.39
|
it was ok
|
Mar 24, 2019
|
Mar 26, 2019
| |||||
|
| 3.45
|
liked it
|
Mar 12, 2019
|
Mar 16, 2019
| |||||
|
| 3.63
|
really liked it
|
Mar 04, 2019
not set
|
Mar 13, 2019
| |||||
|
| 3.69
|
really liked it
|
Mar 02, 2019
|
Mar 10, 2019
| |||||
|
| 3.89
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 14, 2019
|
Jan 20, 2019
|
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