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Tentatively, A Convenience
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Born
in Baltimore, The United States
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YOU & them
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October 2007
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https://www.goodreads.com/tentativelyaconvenience
Thanks to the idiocy of Goodreads policy my books are no longer easily found & do not all appear here. Instead, 5 of them appear under "Tentatively a Convenience": https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... .
My name is "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE". It is NOT "Tentatively, A Convenience". The completely disrespectful push for conformity is on. Such 'normalization' of my spelling, wch I've been using since 1979, is a symptom of what I call "AU", Artificial Unintelligence - both that of algorithms wch can't possibly cope w/ the human imagination & that of robopathic humans - say the type of person who studied creative writing w/ a professor who isn't a creative writer & who isn't published. This type of person then proceeds to learn 'how to be Thanks to the idiocy of Goodreads policy my books are no longer easily found & do not all appear here. Instead, 5 of them appear under "Tentatively a Convenience": https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... .
My name is "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE". It is NOT "Tentatively, A Convenience". The completely disrespectful push for conformity is on. Such 'normalization' of my spelling, wch I've been using since 1979, is a symptom of what I call "AU", Artificial Unintelligence - both that of algorithms wch can't possibly cope w/ the human imagination & that of robopathic humans - say the type of person who studied creative writing w/ a professor who isn't a creative writer & who isn't published. This type of person then proceeds to learn 'how to be creative' in a completely uncreative way & goes on to not be a creative writer or to be published either but to still be convinced that they're qualified to edit actual published actual creative writers. That's a form of regrettably delusional behavior fostered in them by their inability to educate themselves outside of potty training.
Alas, some GoodReads fiend has removed my date of death! I had it as "September 3, 1953" - before my date of birth so that my death won't happen in my lifetime. Some humorless GR person must want me to die. Foo on them.
Making matters even worse, my bk "footnotes" has been removed from the database here & I'm now listed as the author of "15" bks instead of the correct SIXTEEN. "footnotes" was still for sale online the last time I checked so I highly recommend getting a copy before they disappear altogether.
OTHERWISE, please read this extensive interview w/ me by poet/essayist Alan Davies as part of "Otoliths 27" ( http://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/20... ). It's a DOOZY, I promise. It'll also hopefully be published as a small & cheap bk
ALSO, my friend Anthony Levin-Decanini has started an excellent new (as of mid 2013) improvising series called "Crucible Sound" in Pittsburgh at Modernformations Gallery & I was honored by his interviewing me regarding improv for his relevant blog. I quite like the interview & I hope you do too. Here's the link for part 1:
http://cruciblesound.blogspot.com/201...
& the link for part 2:
http://cruciblesound.blogspot.com/201...
I hope you find it interesting enuf to subscribe to the blog & to check out the other programs. If you're in or nearby Pittsburgh, PLEASE ATTEND THE CRUCIBLE SOUNDS! Things like this don't last forever, but while they do they can be quite lively!!
The photo of me is by my friend Julie Gonzalez. Maybe someday I'll write a bio in here but, in the meantime, I'll just sign w/ some of my email signature:
electronically signed,
He-Who-Has-Written
Amir-ul Kafirs
Some tenuous beginnings of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory):
(for all x)x = (for all x)x (Anything is Anything)
(A Double Negative As Not A Positive)
(A finite quantity represented as a set containing
an infinite quantity of its subdivisions
(such as its subdivision in terms of rational numbers)
does not equal the same finite quantity
represented as a set containing an infinite quantity
OF A DIFFERENT DEGREE of its subdivisions
(such as its subdivision in terms of irrational numbers).)
m + n does not equal n + m is isomorphic to x
the ceiling of x is greater than or equal to the ceiling of the ceiling of x
(Enough is Enough)
The Formula o ...more
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Tentatively, A Convenience
As far as I 'know', most of these questions have been created by Goodreads staff to stimulate the 'Goodreads authors' to make public statements that m…moreAs far as I 'know', most of these questions have been created by Goodreads staff to stimulate the 'Goodreads authors' to make public statements that may be of interest to people ON Goodreads. That's all well & good. The questions are generic & more or less irrelevant to my actual praxis but that's ok. I aim to please. SO, how DO I deal with writer's block?
1st off, I don't have "writer's block". EVER. Or any other kind of creative block. Why don't we hear about "Composer's Block" or "Pornographer's Block"? Maybe the writers who have writer's block are simply impotent, people w/ no ideas worth translating into texts in the 1st place.
2nd. when I see a writer's block I want to carve it, I want to carve a swan into it & watch it melt. Is that sadistic? I don't think so, the writer's block isn't able to feel pain. Or is it? There's always Hylozoism. Maybe the writer's block is ALIVE! Did you ever think of that you insensitive impotent sniveling writer?!
3rd, when I see the writer's block I wonder whether it's a Rubik's Cube. Maybe I just need to twist those little facets until everything lines up, until everything is 'perfect'. But what wd it say to US if it cd talk? 'Please, STOP, my reactive arthritis is killing me'?
4th, there's always the risk of getting the writer's block PREGNANT. I've known thousands of deadbeat writer's block dads. Sure, they act like they're completely comfortable w/ having knocked up a block, a chip off the old block.. but are they really? Look out for those furtive glimpses at table corners, room corners.. They're thinking of the wee ones.. & that one night stand when they had to PROVE to themselves that they weren't impotent, when they were going to stick it to that writer's block no matter what it took. But did they think further? NooOooOoooOo.. Bad plotting, bad narrative structure, no outlining, no thinking of how-it-wd-all-end. (less)
1st off, I don't have "writer's block". EVER. Or any other kind of creative block. Why don't we hear about "Composer's Block" or "Pornographer's Block"? Maybe the writers who have writer's block are simply impotent, people w/ no ideas worth translating into texts in the 1st place.
2nd. when I see a writer's block I want to carve it, I want to carve a swan into it & watch it melt. Is that sadistic? I don't think so, the writer's block isn't able to feel pain. Or is it? There's always Hylozoism. Maybe the writer's block is ALIVE! Did you ever think of that you insensitive impotent sniveling writer?!
3rd, when I see the writer's block I wonder whether it's a Rubik's Cube. Maybe I just need to twist those little facets until everything lines up, until everything is 'perfect'. But what wd it say to US if it cd talk? 'Please, STOP, my reactive arthritis is killing me'?
4th, there's always the risk of getting the writer's block PREGNANT. I've known thousands of deadbeat writer's block dads. Sure, they act like they're completely comfortable w/ having knocked up a block, a chip off the old block.. but are they really? Look out for those furtive glimpses at table corners, room corners.. They're thinking of the wee ones.. & that one night stand when they had to PROVE to themselves that they weren't impotent, when they were going to stick it to that writer's block no matter what it took. But did they think further? NooOooOoooOo.. Bad plotting, bad narrative structure, no outlining, no thinking of how-it-wd-all-end. (less)
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Paradigm Shift Knuckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory)
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HiTEC (Histrionic Thought Experiment Cooperative) "Systems Management"
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The Kavyayantra Press Reading Series: "vii"
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Puzzle Writing
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But Not Limited To:
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Yet Another Slow-Burning Feast of a Few Months Mischief in the U.K., Maybe (A Partial(ly) Epistolary Account of Non-Non & Non-Participation, Maybe)
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review of Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child's Reliquary by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 20, 2026 This is a thriller. I've only read a few thrillers, they don't generally interest me, the more SciFi they are the more I'm likely to read them. In review of Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child's Reliquary by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 20, 2026 This is a thriller. I've only read a few thrillers, they don't generally interest me, the more SciFi they are the more I'm likely to read them. In this case, I have to admit that I was sucked right in from the get-go. The opening scene is of a novice police scuba-diver swimming in a sewage-filled area where the muck is so thick the diver can't see. As if that's not bad enuf, he finds 2 skeletons. The description of the misery of all this is very impressive. "Beneath Fernandez's open suit, Snow could see a T-shirt with the Police Scuba team's unofficial motto: We dive in shit and look for dead things. Only this time it wasn't a dead thing, but a massive wrapped brick of heroin, thrown off the Humboldt Rail Bridge during a shootout with police the previous night." - p 6 One of the reasons why I was so easily engrossed in this is b/c the settings are so akin to settings in my own life. "assistant curatorship at the New York Museum of Natural History, wasn't always in the midst of some new round of budget cutting. And the more the Museum got into financial trouble these days, the more it seemed to rely on show instead of substance. Already, Margot had noticed the early buildup for next year's blockbuster exhibition, 21st Century Plagues." - p 20 This is a sequel to a bk entitled Relic, wch I haven't read, & many of its main characters, such as Margo, are from that bk. I worked for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History from 2009 'til 2018 & we did at least one exhibit in collaboration w/ NY's Museum of Natural History so that connection immediately struck home for me. Even mentioning "blockbuster exhibition"s rang true - not so much b/c of the Natural History Museum but b/c of museums in general, of wch I worked for more than 7. One of the recurring characters is a reporter named Smithback. The discovery of the skeletons leads to Smithback's investigating of the tunnels under NYC where he managed to meet a leader of some of the underground population named "Mephisto". ""No! You should feel honored, scriblerian. This is as close as I have been to the surface in five years." ""Why is that?" Smithback asked, groping the darkness for the microcassette recorder. ""Because this is my domain. I am lord of all you survey." ""But I don't see anything." "A dry chuckle rose from the hole in the cinder block. "Wrong! You see blackness. And blackness is my domain. Above your head the trains rumble past, the surface dwellers scurry on their pointless errands. But the territory below Central Park—Route 666, the Ho Chi Minh trail, the Blockhouse—is mine."" - p 47 Exploring railroad & mining tunnels (etc) has been important to me. As a child I went into large storm drain pipes in an area near where I lived that were part of an in-progress housing development. As a teenager I'd walk thru an in-use railroad tunnel at Patapsco State Park. As an adult I explored the tunnel that went from the Maryland Institute College of Art to what became the Camden Yards stadium & I established what I called the "BalTimOre Underground Club" (BTOUC) (1982-1983) there where I held at least 2 major events. Then there was the PSBBTOUC (Paris Suburban Branch of the BalTimOre Underground Club) (1984) in the ancient Roman mining tunnels under Paris. This was followed by the GSBBTOUC (Glasgow Suburban Branch..) (1988) in an abandoned subway stn under the botanical gardens. None of these explorations & activities of mine were anything close to what's under NYC but I've always had an interest in them. Smithback spies on confidential police proceedings regarding the skeletons & the ensuing discovered murders. He hides in a museum projection booth to enable him to overhear what's happening in the lecture hall that it serves. "The projectionist came in from the control room, his features narrowing as he saw Smithback. "You said—" "The journalist waved his hand. "I know what I said. I didn't want to make you any more nervous than you already were. Here." Smithback pulled a twenty out of his wallet and handed it to him. ""I wouldn't take it, except the Museum's salaries are ridiculous; you can't even begin to live in New York . . ." the fellow nervously stuffed the bill into his pocket." - p 122 Ha ha! I worked as a projectionist for the Andy Warhol Museum &, to a much lesser extent, for the Carnegie Museum of Art. My 1st paycheck from the AWM was for something like $26. Believe me, I can relate to the "salaries are ridiculous"! Pendergast, another recurring character, is an FBI agent w/ improbably perfect skills. "Pendergast smiled slightly. "Trading in local commerce tends to keep the natives peaceful." ""Drugs?" D'Agosta asked in disbelief. "Pendergast nodded, opening his coat. In the gleam of the penlight, D'Agosta could make out several tiny pockets stitched into the filthy lining. "It appears that virtually everyone down here is or has been an addict of one kind or another." His finger moved from one pocket to the next. "I have an entire pharmacopeia here: crack cocaine, methylphenidate, Carbrital, Seconal, military-grade Blue 88s. They may well save our lives, Vincent. They saved mine on my first descent." "Pendergast dug into one of the small pockets and pulled out a slender black capsule. "Biphetamine," he said. "Known in the underground fraternity as a black beauty."" - p 157 The FBI agent & his accompanying police officer, D'Agosta, have entered the underground to try to meet Mephisto so that they can find out more about the murders. The Mole people are adamantly against police & Mephisto decides to put these 2 to the test by getting them to eat "track rabbit", rats that live underground, to see whether they're who their disguises say they are. "He watched with mingled horror and relief as Pendergast, without hesitation, raised the rat and put his lips to the gash in its flank. There was a sharp sucking sound as the rodent was eviscerated. D'Agosta felt his gorge rise. "Licking his lips, Pendergast set the newspaper and its burden in front of their host. ""Excellent," he said simply. "Mephisto nodded. "Interesting technique." ""Hardly." Pendergast shrugged. "They spread a lot of rat poison around the Columbia service tunnels. You can always tell by tasting the liver whether it's safe to eat."" - p 166 Does that mean that the liver tastes 'off' if it's poisoned? I wish Pendergast had been more specific. The extent of the tunnels is enormous. Assuming this to actually be the case, it fascinates me. The work that must've gone on underground in NYC must've been almost incomprehensibly massive. Why? What was the vision? How did they manage to organize so much machinery & so many workers? It seems almost impossible, like building the pyramids. "Pendergast nodded. "Even on my first trip, I was astonished at the vastness. I felt like Lewis and Clark, setting out to explore unmapped territory." ""You don't know the half of it. There's two thousand miles of half-dug tunnels, and another five thousand miles still in use. Underground chambers, sealed up and forgotten." Hayward shrugged. "And you hear stories. Like about bomb shelters, secretly built by the Pentagon in the fifties to protect Wall Street types. Some of them are still stocked with running water, electricity, canned food. Engine rooms filled with abandoned machinery, ancient sewers made from wooden pipes. An entire freakin' lost world."" - p 183 Ok, so this bk has the Natural History Museum & the tunnels for me to relate to but making matters even better for me, personally, it throws in a conceptual artist, something I sometimes think of myself as. ""They're never supposed to touch," he said in a wounded tone as he fussed with the strings. "D'Agosta stepped back. "What is this, some kind of experiment?" ""No, it's an artificial environment, a reproduction of the primeval jungle that we all evolved in, translated to New York City." "D'Agosta looked at the strings in disbelief. "So this is art? Who looks at it?" ""It's conceptual art," Kirtsema explained impatiently. "Nobody looks at it. It's not meant to be seen. It is sufficient that it exists. The strings never touch, just as we human beings never touch, never really interact. We are alone.["]" - p 188 Now, that description of a fictitious conceptual artist seems more than a bit tongue-in-cheek & I suspect that the authors don't like conceptual art. Still, if there's a sequel to Reliquary maybe it shd center around this guy & not have any murders. It cd be called R - implying that it's the sequel to Luther Blissett's Q. Of course, w/o the murders they'd lose their readership. As our heroes try to figure out what's going on hypotheses appear that have an extremity potentially matching the facts. "["]This may sound crazy, Lieutenant, but the fact is there are many substances in nature—hormones, for instance—that cause startling transformations like this. It's not as bizarre or unusual as it sounds. There's a hormone called BSTH which turns a caterpillar into a butterfly. There's another called resotropin-x. When a tadpole gets a dose of that, it turns into a frog in a matter of days. That's what's happening here, I'm sure of it. Only now, we're talking about changing a human being."" - p 234 That's one of my favorite parts of this bk, something to think about. Why, in my neighborhood, Spit'n'Polish Hill, there's a young woman who turns into the Werewolf of Polish Hill by placing a small dog on her shoulder - just to avoid talking w/ an old man. That, too, is probably hormonal. Eventually, the moles are tear-gas smoked out of their underground refuge. "Suddenly, another manhole cover popped free closer to the march, and a series of gaunt figures clambered out, disoriented and coughing." - p 326 I'd credit the authors w/ staying somewhat close to the believable when describing prosaic parts of the story. In this case, tho, having had personal experience w/ removing manhole covers, one doesn't just "pop" one free, they're very heavy. Now, granted, the one that I pulled off from above was made heavier by concrete on it - so heavy that it bent the metal meat hook we were pulling it up w/, I think that manhole covers in general are too heavy to easily push open from underneath, let alone "pop" them. From the "Author's Note" at the end of the bk: "While the events and characters portrayed in this novel are fictitious, much of the underground setting and population are not. It has been estimated that as many as five thousand or more homeless people have lived in the vast warren of underground tracks, subway tunnels, ancient aqueducts, coal tunnels, old sewers, abandoned stations and waiting rooms, disused gas mains, old machine rooms, and other spaces that riddle underground Manhattan. Grand Central Station alone sits above seven stories of tunnels, and in some places the underground works extend more than thirty stories beneath the city. The Astor Tunnels, with their elegant stations crumbling into dust, actually exist, on a smaller scale and under a different name. No comprehensive maps exist of underground Manhattan. It is a truly unexplored and dangerous territory." - p 463 "The authors are indebted to the book The Mole People by Jennifer Toth (Chicago Review Press, 1993). Readers interested in the factual account of the subterra incognita of Manhattan are urged to read this excellent, thought-provoking, and at times frightening study." - p 464 & I've had that bk since it came out & STILL haven't read it yet. SO, I went to look for it in my overcrowded personal library.. & didn't find it. ...more |
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The cover here is for a different edition than the one I read. Usually, I'd add my edition so that the image cd be correct but I'm not doing that today. review of Lloyd Biggle Jr.'s The Fury Out of Time by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 5, 2026 The cover here is for a different edition than the one I read. Usually, I'd add my edition so that the image cd be correct but I'm not doing that today. review of Lloyd Biggle Jr.'s The Fury Out of Time by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 5, 2026 I got this bk b/c it was one of two that I found in a bkstore that were both $1.50. I only had $3 & some change. I'd never heard of Biggle. The title seemed like something imposed on the author for commercial reasons by the publisher, although I have no idea whether that's true or not. I had low expectations. As it turned out, I loved it!. It's a time travel novel, a genre I'm very fond of, & it might be one of my favorites w/in this genre. This was very inspired, very imaginative. Biggle's plot is full of entertaining characters & twists & turns that keep things lively from start to finish. His main character, an astronaut whose career was cut short by the loss of a leg, has a sense of humor & ethics & adventure that make sure he, & the reader, never have a dull moment. I was so enthusiastic about this that I've bought 4 more novels by him since. In general, I found the writing fun. "He shaved slowly, dressed himself slowly. It was afternoon when he finished, but he had no hunger. "Nor any thirst. He had never experienced a craving for drink. He drank only when he had nothing better to do, which was, unfortunately, almost always." - p 7 "The colonels were arguing again, but Haskins was paying very little attention to them. He was really interested in only two kinds of people—those who could tell him what he wanted to know, and those who could do something he wanted done." - p 20 That reminds me of H. Beam Piper, whose writing I've been reading recently. A mysterious vessel appears, causing a swath of destruction. It is accompanied by an anomolous betterfly. "["]Tell me this, Professor. While this future butterfly is evolving, what changes might take place in the human race?" ""What a question to ask a lepidopterologis! Oh, I vaguely recall some speculation on the subject. The man of the future may be totally bald. Vestiges such as the appendix and perhaps the tailbone might disappear altogether. There may be changes in the teeth, as one devastating result of the civilized diet. The feet will be modified by the corrosive restrictions of shoes. Experts have produced long lists of such things, but I don't remember much about them except that they always gave me the impression that I'd rather not be around to meet their subject."" - p 40 Our hero, having reasoned that the vessel is a time machine, is chosen to pilot it back to the future from whence it came - to diplomatically convince the future people to not send any more time machines back again b/c of the destruction that its "Force X" causes. The news of all this having leaked out to the press there's a great hubbub of pros & cons. "The screaming headlines, the thousand variations on the thought 'WHAT DOES THE FUTURE WANT FROM US?" And the absurdly speculative answers: natural resources, slaves, markets, havens from atomic holocausts . . . absurdly speculative, and at the same time terrifyingly plausible." - p 78 Karvel, the protagonist, has a flippant sense of humor throughout, tempered by a sensitivity to the sufferings of others. ""We're going to name an air base after you. Thought you'd like to know." ""One in Antarctica, I suppose. I'm glad I won't be there to hear the speeches."" - p 83 Karvel reaches the future from wch the time machine had come at some point. He inadvertently wreaks massive destruction, including of human life. A mob rushes for him but he's rescued by a pilot in an air vehicle. "The pilot returned to offer Karvel a bowl of deeply browned balls of food. He accepted with a nod of thanks, and cautiously placed one in his mouth. It disintegrated into a thick paste before he could begin to chew it. A highly appropriate food, he thought, for a people who had no teeth and—what was it the report had said?—no stomachs. "Prechewed and predigested meat balls," he told himself wryly." - p 94 There being no language in common, Karvel & his hosts must learn how to speak to each other. "That night he received more lessons, or perhaps the same lessons. The sterile muttering of the walls blended grotesquely in his shapeless dreams with the haunting screams from the devastated city and Lieutenant Ostrander's youthful laughter. The next day he fancied that he had a precarious grip on a word or two, but he could think of no adequate way to test his knowledge. Were they saying, How is your breakfast, when they brought food? Or Eat this quickly so we can get back to work? Or May your digestive efforts be bountiful? Was it a blessing that they intoned with his first sip of mush, or pointed commentary on his table manners?" - p 100 Biggle really thought things thru. There're various nation states, all semi-autonomous from each other except for trading. There's an "Overseer" that the nation states approach for ultimate decision making. The Overseer lives on the Moon but comes to Earth when needed. The Overseer lusts for Karvel's language teacher. He also has the power to basically get whatever he wants & has a harem on the moon. ""Dunzalo might not let her go. She has a fairly high number. She's Languages 9-17, and she seems to be an accomplished scholar." ""She's one of the bearded ones, too. I suppose there's a taboo involved—life pledged to learning, or some such thing. I'll look it up. But these Earth cities will trade anyone, if they're offered enough. Languages 9-17, is it? I'll trade for her the next time I go to Dunzalo. She's even worth a special trip. Lovely thing—what she must look like without that beard! On second thought, though, maybe I like her better with it on."" - p 144 This next touch was so inspired that I include it even tho it's a bit of a spoiler. "Karvel stepped forward cautiously as the Shuttle settled onto the city's tallest tower. The leg was no longe merely joined to him. It was his servant, it obeyed his wishes; but he continued to regard it as a honored guest, in delicate health, rather than as a member of the family. He babied it." - p 152 This is a wild ride. W/o giving too much away, he joins forces w/ some non-humans called "Hras". Here's a bit about their eating habits: "He learned that they had no sensation of taste, as he understood it; nor did they have any means, or any necessity, of chewing their food. In actual fact, they chewed it with their hands and placed it directly into their stomachs." - p 189 All in all, this was so absolutely wonderful that if his other work lives up to it he's going to enter my pantheon of SF greats ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Reviewe... ). It's fantastic to've been reading SF for 60 yrs or so & to just be discovering Biggle now! ...more |
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Jan 06, 2026 11:42AM
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review of E.C. Tubb's Mayenne by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 31, 2025 Ok, I'm still somewhat new to Tubbs but it's pretty obvious by this point how formulaic this series is. I reckon that's true of most or all series so it's not like he's a review of E.C. Tubb's Mayenne by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 31, 2025 Ok, I'm still somewhat new to Tubbs but it's pretty obvious by this point how formulaic this series is. I reckon that's true of most or all series so it's not like he's an especially poor writer in that respect. Actually, the formulaicness is doing its job, I'm sucked in, I'll read plenty of them. The hero, Dumarest of Terra, is searching the Galaxy for his birthworld, Earth, wch most people that he encounters think is a myth. He gets to a new planet where he faces extreme trials & tribulations. The titular woman is, of course, madly in love w/ him - in the other bks I've read in the series that provides a high probability of her death by the end of the bk. Dumarest's heroic attributes are truly.. HEROIC. This bk is number 9 in the series. At the end of #8 it's written: "He might never go at all. He wouldn't be the first man who had lost a world for the love of a woman." - p 190, Veruchia Yes, the reader was left w/ the possibility that the ever-searching Dumarest might settle down w/ Veruchia & stay & rule her world w/ her. Fat chance. Chapter 1 of Mayenne finds Dumarest once more travelling between the stars. "Dumarest heard the sound as he left his cabin, a thin, penetrating wail, almost a scream, then he relaxed as he remembered the Ghenka who had joined the ship at Frell. She was in the salon, entertaining the company with her undulating song, accompanying herself with the ctystalline tintinnabulation of tiny bells. She wore the full Ghenka costume, her body covered, her face a mask of paint, the curlicues of gold and silver, ruby and jet set with artfully placed gems which caught and reflected the light in splinters of darting brilliance so that her features seemed to be alive with jeweled and crawling insects." - p 5 Guess who Dumarest is about to become lovers w/? No Plain-Jane-from-Next-Door for our boy. An accident happens in the spaceship & it becomes stranded, drifiting in space. Mayenne, the Ghenka, broadcasts her voice over a radio she's brought w/ her. When Dumarest asks her about it, she makes an excuse. "Dumarest remembered the bleakness of the static he had heard in the control room, the eerie feeling it had created. It would not be hard for a person trained as the Ghenka had been in tonal efficiency to imagine the sound held words, almost recognizable, almost human. It was perfectly understandable that she could have sung back to it as a man might talk to a tree or to something which could not possibly answer. Loneliness took many strange paths." - p 40 Look at me: I'm lonely, while writing this review it's as if I'm telling someone about a story, as if there's someone out there listening to me [insert maniacal laughter here]. I might be better off talking to a tree. ""People do not accept me readily. Women hate me because of the influence thay think I have over their men. Men desire me, not as a woman to be loved, but as a prize to be displayed. The rich are condescending and the poor are envious. Those who employ me try to cheat.["]" - p 40 I feel ya. One of the passengers talks about his mental training. "["]It is a matter of conscious discipline. For thousands of years man have known that, by mental exercise, they could control their metabolic behavior. For example, I could thrust a steel rod into my flesh and I would not bleed, feel pain, nor would the injury leave any trace or scar.["]" - p 51 I can remember being 15 & thinking along similar lines. I remember beginning to get sick & using some mental discipline, successfully, to stop the sickness. I remember believing that it was possible to make myself invisible thru such means. Did I read something that inspired me along those lines? The way I remember it is that I came up w/ it on my own. I still think such things are possible but I don't think I'm ever likely to be capable of them. Still, it interests me to come across such ideas again in something written less than a decade after when I had such thoughts. & another passenger: ""I am not afraid to die. No," Daroca corrected, "that is not wholly true. I am afraid of the lost opportunities death will bring. The places I shall not see, the things I shall not do. Stupid, perhaps, but to me death has always meant unfinished business.["]" - p 54 Again, I can relate. I've often sd something to the effect of: 'I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want the quality of my life to deteriorate.' It is. & 'I can't die yet, I have too much work to do.' Too many bks to write, movies to make, Usic to d compose, that sort of thing. Well, our travellers & their spaceship get pulled out of space thru unknown means to a planet that thinks. The planet-that-thinks idea 'inevitably' reminds me of Stanislav Lem's Solaris (1961) & the great movie Tarkovsky made of it (1972) & the excellent remake that Steven Soderbergh made (2002). All of Tubb's plot elements are interesting & skillfully crafted but it's the interplay between the planet & the stranded humans that allows for the most imaginative story-telling. The planet changes itself to suit whatever relationship to the humans it's moved to. "Dumarest walked to the edge and looked down. The bottom was invisible. He looked to the other side; there was no way to reach the cages aside from the causeway. The ground too had changed, the soft emerald of the sward replaced by a stony barrenness, the sparse trees once again the thick mass of vegetation they had previously known." - p 126 Can Dumarest of Terra outwit & outfight a thinking planet? Will he save Mayenne & settle down w/ her & give up his quest to find Earth? Stay tuned. "Our children, Earl. I am not too old to give you sons." "And daughters who would sing as their mother sang. A home which would be his and the things most men regarded as important. A fair exchange, perhaps, for his endless quest for a lost world." p 134 One might think that I'd lose interest in such predictability fast. But, right now I might be dying, I might be at the end of the line - & reading such tales keeps me entertained & distracted & doesn't take much strength. ...more |
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Dec 31, 2025 12:11PM
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review of Neal Barrett, Jr.'s The Karma Corps by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 31, 2025 I picked this up b/c it was in the Science Fiction section priced at $1.50. I wasn't familiar w/ the author & the cover had a somewhat generic guy-w/-swor review of Neal Barrett, Jr.'s The Karma Corps by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 31, 2025 I picked this up b/c it was in the Science Fiction section priced at $1.50. I wasn't familiar w/ the author & the cover had a somewhat generic guy-w/-sword image. It's funny how much SF features time-&-space-travellers finding themselves in worlds that approximate knights-in-armor (& such-like) on Earth. For most of my reading of this I decided that it was more appropriately categorized under Fantasy than SF but, then, the 2 usually get mixed together. It eventually turned into SciFi for me, wch I prefer, but it was fine as Fantasy too. The main character, Lars, is the commander of a rag-tag group of warriors called The Arm of God or The Karma Corps. They're people reputed to've been brought back from Limbo by someone in the ruling church to fight w/ special abilities against purported demons who the church has been in conflict w/ for 200 yrs. Lars is walking & stops to watch the training of his troops. "As Lars watched, the wheat-haired corporal gave a sign. Abruptly, the greens disappeared. There was a single crack of sound, as air rushed in to fill the body-sized vacuums. Instantly, the greens reappeared some twenty meters away. Most landly truly in their circles, or close enough to count. Turning quickly about each trooper loosed a wicked bolt at his target, vanished, appeared back at the start, cranked up his crossbow and disappeared again." - p 10 This ability to disappear from one place & reappear close to instantaneously at another place is called jumping. Unfortunately for them, some of the 'demons' are able to do it too & are better at it. The leader of the Church is a woman known as the Holy Mother, the Voice of God. Audiences w/ her are usually restricted to Church hierarchy so people outside the Church, like Lars, have never met her & don't know anything about her. Lars is summoned to her. ""You do not—speak to Her Holiness. Only to—the Veil." ""And is that what I'm to call her?" asked Lars. "Your Holiness is proper?" ""Didn't you—understand a thing I said, young man? You don't call Her anything. You speak—only to the Veil!"" - p 56 The fighting increases in intensity & The Karma Corps are losing massively. Lars gets lost in his jumping. "It was the creatures they were sitting upon that struck him cold. They were neither pigs nor oxen, but something leaner and far swifter; sleek-tendoned beasts with powerful legs and heads like hammers. Like the warriors themselves, these beasts were strangely familiar. God's Breath, Lars thought of a sudden, I've sat one of the damnable things myself!" - p 126 Lars & close associates are fleeing from the adversarial forces in the deeps of the castle (yes, of course there's a castle!) & this is when the Fantasy becomes more SF. They're getting into the buried spaceship that the Chruchers arrived in. "Lars heard a slight whisper of sound. Sister-Major stepped back. The circle sprang clear a good inch. Slepping her fingers around the edge, she pushed the portal aside with no effort. ""It works like a marvel," said Lars. "And after all this time!" ""They were a different kind of folk," said Sister-Major. "Past our understanding, for certain."" - p 188 I enjoyed this very much & was glad every time I resumed reading it after a break. Like almost all Fantasy/SF the plot was imaginative & engaging. Even tho I'm a very critical person & dislike almost everything about pop culture I find myself embracing SF like it's a still-horny girlfriend that I haven't seen for awhile. Take that! ...more |
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Dec 31, 2025 09:12AM
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review of Mina Loy's The Last Lunar Baedeker by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 27, 2025 The full review of this will appear on the following webpage if & when I go to the trouble of making it: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticL... Even if I review of Mina Loy's The Last Lunar Baedeker by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 27, 2025 The full review of this will appear on the following webpage if & when I go to the trouble of making it: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticL... Even if I hadn't been inclined to like Loy's writing this bk's scholarly biographical framing of her wd've convinced me that she was one of the most brilliant & charming people to ever live. This was edited & introduced by Roger L. Conover w/ a note by Jonathan Williams & published by the Jargon Society in 1982. They did such an excellent job that I'm vvvvveeeeerrrrrryyyyyy IMPRESSED. From the 1st page of the introduction: "For the last thirty years of her life she was virtually inaccessible to critics, "a sort of moral hermit" by her own definition who would rarely submit to interviews and was increasingly distant from her friends. She waved off would-be "rediscoverers" with a shrug: "But, why do you waste your time on these thoughts of mine? I was never a poet."" - p xv To deny that she was a poet has a special importance to me. "If her poems demanded a new kind of reader, so be it. It was not her intention to please the critics: "I have a fundamental masculine conceit that ascribes lack of appreciation of my work to want of perspicacity in the observer," she told Carl Van Vechten in 1914." - pp xv-xvi & why not? If there are poets who tailor their work to what they think readers want then they're killing themselves to make malevolent forces happy as if that's what proves their skill & makes them popular. The latter might be true but they're missing that their beauty is only skin deep b/c there's nothing underneath, they've participated in their own reduction to a hollow shell. William Carlos Williams wrote: "Mina Loy was endowed from birth with a first-rate intelligence and a sensibility which has plagued her all her life facing a shoddy world. When she puts a word down on paper it is clean; that forces her fellows to shy away from it because they are not clean and will be contaminated by her cleanliness. Therefore she has not been a successful writer and couldn't care less. But it has hurt her chances of being known." - p xvi What praise! Imagine having someone write something like that about you! "But Mina Loy was not looking for laureates in the Pantheon of Verse. Her erotic love songs and bold satires had already been praised by Eliot and Pound, who considered her the most radical of the radical set whose work began appearing in magazines like Rogue, Others, Trend, and The Blind Man in the 1910s. Her manifestoes, plays, and drawings had long since entered little magazine history; they appeared in the "Exile" issue of The Little Review, the Waste Land issue of The Dial, the "291" issue of Camera Work. Among art critics, she had been called a prodigy even before she started writing poems. Her paintings had been exhibited in some of the landmark shows of the century: at the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris, the 1917 Independents' Exhibition in New York City, the 1914 Free Exhibition of International Futurists in Rome." - p xvii "In the course of my research I have turned up letters in which Henry Miller, Thomas Merton, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein, and Walter Lowenfels confess their artistic debts to Mina Loy directly. I am told that Basil Bunting, Charles Henri Ford, Octavia Paz, John Ashberry, and Hayden Caruth admire her." - p xxii Mina Loy seems to've been very active in multiple cities, in multiple countries. She was THERE.. & it shows in her work. "There is no way of knowing how many hours Freud sat for her, or Harry Kemp. But her portraits have aged as well as their subjects, whose approval was evident when she was done. Carl Van Vechten and James Joyce chose her likenesses of them to be published, Gertrude Stein endorsed hers with a signature. Marinetti bought his; Papini's was sent to Rome." - p xxiv Loy's the who's who at the center of the who's whos. "She had only two books of poems published in her lifetime. The first was issued in a paperbound edition by Robert McAlmon's Contact Publishing Company in 1923, the second in an edition of 500 copies under Jonathan Williams' Jargon imprint in 1958. Both books went out of print almost immediately, though it should be said that the former was helped to that state by New York City customs officials who took it upon themselves to decide that Lunar Baedecker (sic) contained pornographic material. A shipment of books bound for the Chaucer Head Bookshop was intercepted at the docks, and probably less than a hundred copies ever made it into the country. One of the more fragile books issued by McAlmon's press, it is now almost never seen outside rare book rooms or dealers' catalogues where it is a de rigueur item at $450." - p xxiv Sheesh, how do these ignorant fools ever get into such positions of power where they're able to supress culture? I sent something iike 50 white shirts to a friend of mine in Montréal who offered to silkscreen on them the ad for a show I'd recently given there. She mailed a box of them back to me in Baltimore w/o my having any knowledge of how many she'd screened or how many colors she'd used. US Customs intercepted them & I was summoned to their offices where I was questioned. They wdn't let me see the shirts. They wanted to know how much they were worth. I told them, truthfully, NOTHING - that my friend had printed on them for free & that I'd probably be giving them away - that, in fact, we were losing money on them b/c I'd paid for the shirts & their mailing to Canada & that my friend had not only printed on them for free but had mailed them back at her own expense. They insisted that I put a price on them. I asked them how I cd do that given that I didn't know how many there were or how many colors were used. I ended up forced to pay them something between $25 & $75 for what turned out to be 25 shirts. They made more money off something that they had nothing to do w/ the making of than I did. When I was at the cashier's window paying the money one of the Customs officials came to me & asked me what kind of homosexual cult the t-shirts were for?! He seemed excited by this. The image on the shirts had my naked penis shown w/ my DNA tattoo above it. It had never occurred to me that someone wd interpret this as being somehow homosexual. & this was a person in the position to hold my work hostage & make me pay to get it back. How ludicrous can it get?! & that's not my only experience along those lines. ""Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose" is the key to the whole of Mina Loy's private mythology. Getting it right was the first order of business of this volume." - p xxvi & that's the epic that I was most impressed by. "But for the endurance of some memoir-reknowned legends about her wit and beauty, Dada diarists' attention to her career as the widow of Arthur Cravan, and the recent anthology appearances I have mentioned, her name would by now have vanished entirely." - p xxvii Ah, yes, how many of the truly creative & brilliant people have disappeared in history? Often b/c their creativity was too difficult or 'offensively observant' or challenging? Not to mention, of course, non-commercial - or b/c idiots like the NYC Customs people disappeared their work? I've been struggling against the anti-creative forces that try to impose their death culture standards throughout my entire adult life - that's one of the reasons why I'm writing this bk review. Loy's love life wd make an amazing novel in & of itself. Marinetti, the primary spokesperson for Italian Futurism, was lovers w/ her. I love Futurism, despite its macho overtones, & find Loy's association w/ it to be somewhat amazing considering her Feminism & Futurism's largely male orientation. "In her early work, she declares an open season on a number of public figures by subjecting them to satiric treatment in her poems. She disaffected herself from her one-time lovers and fellow-manifestoists Giovanni Papini and Filippo Marinetti by making unabashed use of intimate "material" gleaned from sexual and social encounters with them." [..] "Briefly a member of the Futurist ring and special friend of its grand muftis, Mina Loy's infatuation with the group ended when it embraced fascism. Her disillusion gave way to a polemical hostility that is the source of most of the satires in this volume. Poems like "Giovanni Franchi," "The Ineffectual Marriage," and "Lions' Jaws" are only sparring pieces, however, compared to her experimental verse play, The Pamperers. Uncollected here for reasons of length, the play inaugurated the "Modern Forms section of The Dial." - p xxxiii In all honesty, tho, I have to say that, as much as I admire Loy's work, it doesn't come anywhere close to the imagination & innovativeness of most Futurist work, including Marinetti's. Still, the above got me curious about The Pamperers & I hoped to be able to purchase a copy but had to be satisfied w/ copying it from a university source. Here's an excerpt: "A MAN: (Whose monocle has been hypnotized to idea associations by the luminous dial) I don’t know anything about Marinetti; I don’t want to know anything about Marinetti but I respect him . . . he has a clean collar I am willing to accept the creed of any man who wears a clean collar SOMEBODY: Why the devil shouldn’t Marinetti wear a clean collar? I don’t know why Marinetti shouldn’t wear a clean collar, all I say is . . . Marinetti wears a clean collar! OSSY: Di . . . if you half guessed what I’ve caught in the stables, you’d throw Futurism to . . . DIANA: Don’t mean . . . that I’m out of fashion again OSSY: Since 1 P.M. . . . " "In the 1920s, again employing Futurist-style tactics for ironic effect, she invented a political party called Psycho-Democracy and circulated the sensational "platform" of this one-woman movement around the streets of Florence. The original pamphlet establishes Mina Loy as one of the first employers of psychotype—typographical characters and arrangements of lines that participate in the expression of ideas, giving a violent exuberance to the page. As a group, Mina Loy's Florentine poems and satires constitute the most substantial literary response to Futurism ever made by a woman under the direct influence of the movement, but historians of the avant-garde and the feminist literary establishment have overlooked this oeuvre." - p xxxiv As far as I can tell, the "psychotype—typographical characters and arrangements of lines that participate in the expression of ideas" isn't reproduced here. That seems like one of the only shortcomings of this edition. As for "one-woman movement"s, such things are always of interest to me. It seems like I've encountered a considerable number of those but the only one-person mvmt I can think of at the moment is Arthur Berkoff's Pregroperativism. I think that I, & a few others, may've been designated Pregroperativists by Arthur but I'm not sure any of us ever had anything other than the vaguest idea what it meant. "There was no thought of making money. Contributors were not paid, and Arensberg agreed to finance the paper at a loss. For in those days, the avant-garde did not take stock of itself in commercial terms, but rather by the number of people whose passion, curiousity, or anger could be stirred by a radical new idea. By this standard, Others was an instant success." - p xxxvi IMO, the avant-garde, intrinsically, does "not take stock of itself in commercial terms, but rather by the number of people whose passion, curiousity, or anger could be stirred by a radical new idea" wch is one of the reasons why I think that a recent bk that is contextualized as "avant-garde" that I have work in is NOT avant-garde. Its editor/publisher is entirely too much of a business-person for that to be the case. "She has seen so many new movements that she has decided to initiate one herself and call it "Vitalism." This woman is half-way through the door into To-morrow." - p xliv "To-morrow"? What about 2-morrow or too-morrow? "One night Baroness Loringhoven painted her body, shaved her head, and marched off to the opera with a coal scuttle perched on her head." - p xlvi Go, girl! That's my kind of gal! But was she naked? I went to the symphony once wearing a translucent jacket that had 4 glow-in-the dark rectangles on its back. The hall was dark so the appearance was of a window w/ light coming thru it moving thru the space. Some time later, I was wearing that same jacket in a supermarket when an excited woman stopped me & asked me if I'd been wearing that jacket at the symphony. She sd she'd seen it from all the way across the hall. On to Arthur Craven a person of great importance in Loy's life who disappeared, leaving her love-stricken for the remainder of her life. "It is comrade Trotsky who tells us in his Autobiography of his mid-Atlantic encounter with "a boxer, also a poet and nephew of Oscar Wilde, who openly pronounced that he preferred to slug Yankees in a noble sport than to get his chest driven in by some ignorant German." "What name the passenger used with Trotsky is anyone's guess, for the poet-boxer was a fugitive, forger, and master of disguise who had eluded military authorities and conscription officers for two years as he roamed through Central and Western Europe. But the name on his passport was Fabian Avenarius Lloyd, alias Arthur Craven, born to British parents in Lausanne, Switzerland, on May 22, 1887." - p xlvii "Fabian was endowed from birth, it seems, with a rebellious and stormy nature, a belief that he could live according to his own rules and in defiance of conventional codes of behavior. He did. Having been expelled from several schools in his early teens, he struck out for America at the age of 16, spent a few months in New York, then worked his way to California as a lumberjack, chauffeur, orange-picker, and butcher. It was in America that he learned to use his fists; he had to to survive the tests that hoboes and migrant workers put him to in boxcars and fields." - p xlviii "he shocked his opponents by boasting loudly of his accomplishments, listing his past titles, and citing the elegant tramp pedigree which preceded his life in the ring: "hotel thief, muleteer, snake-charmer, chauffeur, ailurophile, grandson of the Queen's Chancellor, nephew of Oscar Wilde, sailor, gold prospector, poet with the shortest hair in the world . . ." - p xlix "ailurophile" = cat lover. That must've sent chills down the spines of his opponents, if they knew what it meant. "In March, 1910, he entered the light-heavyweight competition in the Eighth Meeting of the Boxing Championships for Amateurs and Soldiers organized by the French Federation of Boxing Clubs. Through a bizarre series of defaults, disqualifications, and withdrawals on the part of his opponents, he succeeded in becoming Amateur Light-Heavyweight Champion of France without fighting a single bout." - p xlix "The Bal Bullier was a favorite nightspot among boxers, and it was there, after successfully defending his title as Heavyweight Champion of the World on December 19, 1913, that Jack Johnson met Arthur Craven and invited him to join the decadent crowd "making the rounds at Johnson's expense of the night spots of Montmartre . . . tossing off champagne, flicking cigars. . . ." In an American interview a few years later, Craven recalled his first encounter with Johnson outside the ring. "He's a man of scandal," he began. "I like him for that—eccentric, he's lively, good-natured, and gloriously vain; anything that has to do wth Johnson has to do with a crowd of policemen. . . . . I have a great admiration for him. . . . After Poe, Whitman, and Emerson, he is the most glorious American. . . . If there is a revolution . . . I shall fight to have him enthroned King of The United States." - p l Ha ha! & if you listen to Miles Davis's "Tribute to Jack Johnson" while driving, you'll almost inevitably speed. "It was their season to fall in love, and America's season to enter war. Mina Loy knew when she saw the recruitment offices open in Manhattan that Cravan would have to leave the country. She even looked approvingly at his disguise when he came to say goodbye. The military uniform would make getting rides easier as he hitchhiked north, he explained, and she thought to herself that only Craven would be able to avoid the draft by posing as a soldier on furlough." - lviii "That Craven was given to perpetrating hoaxes of this kind was not forgotten when he mysteriously disappeared in Mexico in 1919. Some say he drowned, others that he was murdered. But the facts are that no body was ever found, nor a single witness." - p liv Will I ever get past the introduction? Its excellence makes it well worth dwelling on. It's to be credited to: "Roger L. Conover January 17, 1982 Somerville, Massachusetts" - p lxi We move onto a biographical timetable: "c. 1911 American Futurist painter Frances Simpson Stevens is houseguest." - p lxvi Having never heard of this painter I immediately became curious. "Stevens explicitly identified her work as futurist. In an article for The Popular Science Monthly, she articulated her vision: ""A futurist artist in Italy, seeing an ordinary street car go by, realizes the future possibilities of power and speed, and he begins to paint great trains going so fast that they lose their definite form in the lines of direction. Motion and light destroy the solidity of the material bodies... The futurists make their engines move, throb and create. Something is always happening in a futurist's pictures, and the great variety of color and changing lines helps to convey this impression." Frances Simpson Stevens, 1917 "Very little of Stevens' art has survived. One work that has is Dynamic Velocity of Interborough Rapid Transit Power Station at the Philadelphia Museum of Art." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances... "c. 1914 Affair with Marinetti, whom she credits for "twenty years added to my life from mere contact with his exuberant personality" though his "interest in me only weathered two months of war fever." "The only thing that frightens me is the fear of not finding someone who appeals to me as much." - p lxviii The full review of this will appear on this webpage: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticL... ...more |
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review of E.C. Tubb's Veruchia by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 23, 2025 I've long since read or heard that old people revert to their childhood interests. I've always wanted to avoid such a regression. Nonetheless, now that I've found the wr review of E.C. Tubb's Veruchia by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 23, 2025 I've long since read or heard that old people revert to their childhood interests. I've always wanted to avoid such a regression. Nonetheless, now that I've found the writing of E.C. Tubb I feel like I might just have fallen into the trap. Reading Tubb reminds me of reading 17 Edgar Rice Burroughs novels when I was about 13. Tubb's writing style is so familiar that I border on feeling like I might've written it myself. At the same time that I was reading this I was watching "The Lost City", a 12 part, 4 hr serial from 1935. When I 1st started checking it out I gave up very quickly, I was so put off by how ridiculous it was. I eventually grew to appreciate its over-the-top-ness. Of course, each cliff-hanger episode ending was predictably to be resolved in favor of the endangered protagonists. Some particularly ludicrous moments included a black man, ostensibly African, who begs the 'genius' scientist to turn him white. The scientist does & the newly-white man cavorts in glee at this 'wonderful' thing. The scientist is then told by the main hero something to the effect of: 'That's the greatest invention mankind has ever seen!' Later, a queen dooms a ne'er-do-well to probable death & one of the 'good guys', a woman, asks: 'You aren't going to kill him are you?' to wch the queen replies: 'This is Africa!' ANYWAY, Veruchia has a similar sort of structure but not one quite so naive or racist or imperialistic. The hero, Dumarest of Terra, faces constant peril wch he manages to escape from in the most spectacular ways. The pace of this, just as an adventure story, is that of a freight train about to run over Pauline. &, of course, there's a very-special-woman for Dumarest to be involved w/. This was the 8th bk in the series, I hope I have the 9th but I haven't checked yet, I really want to know what happens next! At the beginning, Dumarest is visiting a museum. ""The last of its species was destroyed over three centuries ago in the Tamar Hills. It was a carnivore and the largest insect ever known on this world: the result, apparently, of wild mutation. Its life cycle followed a standard pattern, the female sought out a suitable host and buried her eggs in the living flesh. See the sting? The venom paralyzed the selected creature which could do nothing as it was eaten alive by the hatching young. Note the long proboscis, the mandibles and the hooked legs.["]" - p 10 Ever had Scabies aka Mange? Don't. The eggs get laid under one's skin & the itching will drive. you. mad. Mange eggs don't even make a good breakfast. Dumarest gets kicked off one planet only to end up on another, penniless & fighting in an arena as an unlikely contestant to win against a specially bred giant bird. There's a world ruler who oversees this blood-sport. ""My name is Veruchia. We do not use titles here. Only the Owner. On this world all tenants are equal."" - p 59 &, yes, there's romance. I've never read a Harlequin Romance, it's against my principles (n'at). But Veruchia is probably not that far from a Harlequin. The knight in shining armor saving the damsel in distress (n'at). But, what can I say? It's like a vagina - I get sucked right in. But, ladies, I'm letting you know up front: I'm not going to fight a giant bird for you. ""Hamane is suspicious. He insists on conducting an investigation into the Owner's death. What will be found?" ""The prediction that he will discover traces of assassination is of a probability factor of sixty-eight point seven. He will be swayed by his own inability to account for the unexpected relapse and eager to shift the blame. The evidence will be insufficient to convince others."" - pp 78-79 Not long after I finished this I started watching the last season of "The Borgias" on DVD. This one starts off w/ the Borgia Pope, played by the excellent Jeremy Irons, getting poisoned but being saved by the brilliance of his daughter, Lucretia. The Owner wasn't so lucky. One of the recurring types of characters locks himself in his guarded chambers so that he can mind-merge w/ those others of his order. It's the following description that made me think about what a great movie this wd make. There's so much over-the-top chain-jerking that the movie wd be great for fight scenes, love scenes, AND psychedelia: "It was place of shifting rainbows, a wonderous kaleidoscope of varying colors, crystalline, splintering into new and entrancing formations. He seemed to move through a maze of brilliance, shafts and spears and arching lines of the purest color reaching endlessly to all sides." - p 84 Well, if you thought that fighting a giant bird was too much (Greek myth or not), wait until you reach the underwater parts of this. It's so successful for what it is that all my sophistication just slides away & reveals me in my naked adolescence. ...more |
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review of H. Beam Piper's Federation by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 18 & 23, 2025 This is the 6th bk I've read by Piper. I'm hardly an expert on him. It's been a bit strange. The 1st one I read was Little Fuzzy wch I liked very much & credi review of H. Beam Piper's Federation by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 18 & 23, 2025 This is the 6th bk I've read by Piper. I'm hardly an expert on him. It's been a bit strange. The 1st one I read was Little Fuzzy wch I liked very much & credited as sensitive & ecological. Same goes for Fuzzy Sapiens. I had misgivings about Uller Uprising, I liked it, I liked the writing, but I found myself in philosophical conflict w/ it. The same conflict has been exaggerated w/ Federation. Basically, Piper seems like a proto-Free-Trade advocate. To me, an Anti-Globilization political activist, that's a bit hard to stomach. 4 of these stories, collected post-mortem, depict interplanetary colonization. The subjugated inhabitants are all depicted as primitive, not necessarily as 'bad', but all deserving of the 'superior' guidance of the Federation. Piper presents a Terran origin for this Federation, a nuclear war has wiped out the hegemony of the Northern hemisphere & the Southern hemisphere has rebuilt humanity w/ Adelaide & Montevideo taking lead roles. Piper ridicules the Marxism depicted as stemming from Adelaide & has his militaristic heros taking charge in a manly way that's ultimately better for the primitives b/c it saves them from their own limitations - either thru lying or force. Piper is obviously squarely in favor of characters who bypass the delusional Marxists who criticize the actions of these manly men as exploitative. The thing that makes this particularly strange for me is that I find Piper's philosophizing convincing in the context he puts it in but unconvincing in relation to my real-life experience. SF author Jerry Pournelle provides a preface. I've never read anything by Pournelle but I've read descriptions of his politics that've led me to believe I probably relate to them: "Pournelle held paleoconservative political views, which were sometimes expressed in his fiction. He was one of the founders of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy, which developed some of the Reagan Administration's space initiatives, including the earliest versions of what would become the Strategic Defense Initiative." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_P... "Paleoconservatism is a political philosophy and a strain of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, traditionalist conservatism, and non-interventionism. Paleoconservatism's concerns overlap with those of the Old Right that opposed the New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s as well as with paleolibertarianism. The terms neoconservative and paleoconservative were coined by Paul Gottfried in the 1980s, originally relating to the divide in American conservatism over the Vietnam War. Those supporting the war became known as the neoconservatives (interventionists), as they made a decisive split from traditional conservatism (nationalist isolationism), which then became known as paleoconservatism" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoco... "I have a unique privilege: I have the legal right, acknowledged by the copyright owners, to do stories in H. Beam Piper's worlds. "This didn't come lightly. It was given to me by Beam Piper himself many years ago, long before I had any suspicion that I might write science fiction. Beam apparently knew my future better than I did." [..] "Our letters read like treatises. Beam, not formally educated, had read more books than most professors; and he was a keen observor of human nature." - p vii Yes, it appeals to me that Piper was an autodidact, I am too. I've also read more bks than probably anyone else I've ever known - obviously I attach importance to that. Even tho I disagree w/ Piper I can recognize & respect his being an articulate free thinker. Then there's an introduction by John Carr: "Horace Beam Piper was born in 1904, the son of a Protestant minister. He had no formal education and at age eighteen went to work as a laborer for the Pennsylvania Railroad's Altoona yards. Throughout his life he was a reticent and guarded man and as a result we know little about his early years. He was largely self-educated; he obtained a deep knowledge of science and history: "without subjecting myself to the ridiculous misery of four years in the uncomfortable confines of a raccoon coat."" - p xii The 1st story is entitled "Omnilingual". It's about archeologists on Mars trying to recreate Martian life before it died out 50,000 yrs before. Martha is trying to recreate their language so that they can read the multitudinous texts they've found. Her attempt to do so is ridiculed by the most ambitious of the other archeologists. The criticisms of her project are valid insofar as none of the conditions needed for this recreation are likely to be met. She perseveres. ""You know, Martha," he said, when he returned, "Tony was right about one thing. You are gambling your professional standing and reputation. It's against all archeological experience that a language so completely dead as this one could be deciphered." - p 18 ""I heard Colonel Penrose say once, that an officer who's afraid to risk his military reputation seldom makes much of a reputation. It's the same with us. If we really want to find things out, we have to risk making mistakes. And I'm a lot more interested in finding things out than I am in my reputation."" - p 19 I enjoyed this story very much b/c Martha discovers what she needs to in order to crossreference & expand, she's an example of a person who perseveres in the "impossible" & brings it into the realm of the possible. I can relate. "NAUDSONCE": "That was true. As a means of transportation, the wheel had been completely obsolete since the development of contragravity, six centuries ago. Well, a lot of Terrnas in the Year Zero had never seen a suit of armor, or an harquebus, or even a tinder box or a spinning wheel. "Wheelbarrows, now there was something they'd find useful. He screened Max Milzer, in charge of the fabricating and repair shops on the ship. Max had never even heard of a wheelbarrow. ""I can make them up, Mark: better send me some drawings, though. Did you just invent it?" ""As far as I know, a man named Leonardo da Vinci invented it, in the Sixth Century Pre-Atomic.["]" - p 71 "No, Leonardo da Vinci did not invent the wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow was invented much earlier, dating back to ancient Greece between the sixth and fourth centuries BC, and also appeared in China around four centuries after that. "While da Vinci did not invent the basic wheelbarrow, he did design a machine called an odometer that used a wheelbarrow-like structure with gears and a rotating wheel to measure distance. He also incorporated a wheelbarrow-like structure into the design for one of his war machines, the 33-Barreled Organ gun." - AI Overlord So, you see? Not only did da Vinci invent the Barrel Organ, he invented Odorama! Only he made them for the savages of Italy instead of the primitives of some-planet-you've-never-heard-of. ""Ayesha, you have recording of the pump," Meillard said. "Load a record-player onto a jeep and fly over the village and play it for them. Do it right away. Anna, get Mom in here. We want to get her to tell that gang that from now on, at noon and for a couple of hours after sunset, when the work's done, there will be free public pump-concerts, over the village plaza." "Ayesha and her warrant-officer helper and a Marine lieutenant went out hastily. Everybody else faced the screen to watch. In fifteen minutes, an airjeep was coming in on the village. As it circled low, a new sound, the steady thugg-thugg, thugg-thugg of the pump began. "The yelling and twittering and the blaring of the peace-horn died out almost at once. As the jeep circled down to housetop level, the two contending faction-clumos broke apart; their component individuals moved into the center of the plaza and squatted, staring up, letting the delicious waves of sound caress them." - p 111 Intrigueing, eh? I loved the imagination of this story & I don't want to give too much away. There's even, one might say, some wisdom to it. From the "Introduction to "Oomphel in the Sky"": "In this story we find a classic Piper conflict: inefficient government vs. efficient private enterprise. Terra is a hotbed of Neo-Marxist liberalism and we get the idea that it is beginning to fall into decadence, and that in large part the colonial spirit of the outer worlds is all that is keeping the Federation alive and functioning." - p 113 Hence my referring to Piper earlier as "like a proto-Free-Trade advocate". While the stories may be somewhat convincing expressions of his philosophy I find that to be b/c Piper's fictional world is under his control & not really representative of reality as I've experienced it. ""What the devil is oomphel?" The lieutenant was mopping the back of his neck with one hand, now, and trying to pull his sticky tunic from his body with the other. "I hear that word all the time." ""Well, most Terrans, including the old Kwannon hands, use it to mean trade-goods. To the natives, it means any product of Terran technology, from paper-clips to spaceships. They think it's . . . well, not exactly supernatural; extranatural would be close to expressing their idea. Terrans are natural; they're just a different kind of people. But ummphel isn't; it isn't subject to any of the laws of nature at all. They're all positive that we don't make it. Some of them even think it makes us."" - p 120 "There wasn't a soul, human or parahuman, in sight; the only living thing was a small black-and-gray quadruped investigating some bundles that had been dropped in the fields, in hope of finding something tasty. He got a view of that—everybody liked animal pictures in a newscast—and then he was swinging the pickup over the still-burning ruins. In the ashes of every hut he could see the remains of something like a viewscreen or a nuclear electric stove or a refrigerator or a sewing machine. He knew how dearly the Kwanns cherished such possessions. That they had destroyed them grieved him. But the Last Hot Time was at hand, the whole world would be destroyed by fire, and then the Gone Ones would return." - pp 122-123 SO, the Federation is on a planet inhabited by 'primitives'. These Kwanns have been convinced by their witch doctors that the Apocalypse is at hand & are destroying their villages in anticipation of it. This renders them homeless & largely w/o food. It also means they aren't working for the Federation occupiers any more. The Federation forcs are trying to decide what to do to both save the natives (from themselves) & to get them back into the productivity that the Federation uses them for. Do you see how the story works? The colonizing Federation forces are presented as superios intelligences w/ higher purposes & they have to convert the natives away from their self-destructive superstitions. It's a very similar logic employed by colonizing imperialists on good ole Terra. From the "Introduction to "When in the Course"": "Of all the stories in this collection, "When in the Course" is the only one that has never before been published! But even more important than that: it occupies a strange half state because Piper's two major series, the Terro-Human Future History and his Paratime time travel series." - p 200 &, indeed, as the Introduction more or less points out, this story is a parallel universe to Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) except that there's no Kalvan, etc. There was enuf difference between the 2 stories that I cd still enjoy this quasi-reread. Once again, technology enables the Federation forces to impress the natives into docility: "But the Terrans had another wonder, a little thing that she could hold in her hand, that made her voice so loud that she could call down from above and everybody in Tarr-Hostigos heard her. So they had come down to safety into the great enclosure in front of the citadel, and there had been no shooting." - p 220 The Federation's new alliea re enable to enlarge their kingdom in a way not quite-as-murderous as business-as-usual. A proclamation is written to declare this expanded Kingdom: ""When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them to one another . . . a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impell them to the separation. . ." "A great many of the charges against King Kaiphranos of Hos-Harphax were grossly exaggerated; well, maybe the case against George III of England had been slightly overstated in Nancy's original." - p 256 Given the likelihood that many or most or all of Piper's military-political conflicts are based in historical events that he's studied it's no wonder that things play out as they do. It's interesting to me that he adds the quasi-disclaimer that "maybe the case against George III of England had been slightly overstated" - something to prompt some mulling-over. ...more |
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Dec 23, 2025 02:07PM
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review of E.C. Tubb's Technos by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 16, 2025 O. K. This is the 3rd bk by Tubb I've read, I've enjoyed them all. This was copyrighted 1972. I was born in 1953. I wonder if Tubb's work somehow exemplifies the imaginat review of E.C. Tubb's Technos by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 16, 2025 O. K. This is the 3rd bk by Tubb I've read, I've enjoyed them all. This was copyrighted 1972. I was born in 1953. I wonder if Tubb's work somehow exemplifies the imagination & ethos of my formative yrs. I was raised a Christinane & rejected that & became an atheist when I was 15. I discovered rock'n'roll when I was 13, especially psychedelic & other more complex versions of rock such as Frank Zappa's music. I started becoming politically aware when I was 16 & ran across the word anarchy or some derivation thereof & realized that I was a natural-born anarchist. I became opposed to the Vietnam War when I was a teenager & refused to register for the draft when I turned 18. I started hitchhiking around North America when I was 17. This bk features Dumarest as an ongoing protagonist, a person w/ ethics who travels around outer space trying to find his planet of birth, Earth. His character appeals to me, I wonder if there was a special emphasis on such characters at the time & that that's partially why he resonates w/ me. I imagine there've always been such heros but, somehow, he seems of MY time & place & era, an era where blind obedience had shuttled off a large number of young men my age to murder the Vietnamese. ""Blind obedience is never good," said Dumarest flatly. "Always a man must ask himself why he should obey. Because the one giving the order is older? Has greater wealth? Is in a position of authority? Commands respect because of his greater knowledge and experience? Unless these questions are asked the habit of obedience leads inevitably to mental slavery."" - p 9 Dumarest delivers a message to a man on a farming planet. There, he learns that a genetically modified plant has been introduced on the planet by imperialists from the planet Technos where the rulers want to subjugate the farmers. The plant is basically unconquerable & kills everything in its path. It's called "Thorge". ""We can't get rid of it," said Quendis as Dumarest straightened. "The third year stems are as thick as a man and the speed of growth is phenomenal. It seeds throughout the year aside from four months in winter and leeches the soil where it grows. It can be cut but the acid eats into the blades. If we burn it the flames release a poisonous vapor which sears the lungs and blisters the flesh. We can drag it out by the roots but if a fragment is left it grows again. It's a weed," he explained. "A mutated pest. Against it cultivated plants haven't a chance."" - p 26 Technos is closed off to immigration but they force immigration from people on other planets that they have plans for. Dumarest takes the place of one of those & smuggles himself on Technos that way. Once he gets there he discovers one aspect of the indoctrination used: "Technos is a wonderful planet, its rulers wise, kind and understanding. It is a great thing to be able to serve Technos. Those who are chosen to do so are fortunate. You are fortunate. You are very . . . "Dumarest rolled from his bunk and stood, head tilted, listening. The insidious voice came from all directions carried on the diffused light which illuminated the dormitory or transmitted by the metal supports of the bunks themselves. Its purpose was obvious; more conditioning to make the new arrivals obedient." - p 48 Naturally, Dumarest fights his way out of the situation & manages to burrow deeper into the capital itself where he discovers the more insidious side of Technos. &, yes, he's lucky to escape capture. ""Luck has an important part to play in survival," admitted the physician. "But it is too intangible for us to be able to isolate. If a man lives he is lucky because he has lived. But it takes more than luck to pass through the tests I have devised." He grunted as a red light flashed from the screen. "Six and a quarter minutes. Failure."" - p 94 Luck was an important factor in Tubb's Moon Base too. It pleases me that Tubb is exploring it again. Hearkening back to what I wrote at the beginning here about Tubb's hero seeming to be of "MY time & place & era" there's a part here where Dumarest escapes, temporarily, by ducking into a disposal chute. The 1st short story I wrote (when I was 13 in 1966 or 1967) was about a character trying to escape from a mental institiution by sliding down a laundry chute. See what I mean? It's like a zeitgeist to me. ...more |
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Dec 16, 2025 04:43PM
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review of E.C. Tubb's Lallia & Claude & Rhoda Nunes's Recoil by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 15, 2025 Having read Tubb's Moon Base & enjoyed it I took the leap of faith & bought a lot of 16 more bks by him off eBay. They were all from the Du review of E.C. Tubb's Lallia & Claude & Rhoda Nunes's Recoil by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 15, 2025 Having read Tubb's Moon Base & enjoyed it I took the leap of faith & bought a lot of 16 more bks by him off eBay. They were all from the Dumarest of Terra series so I arranged them in chronological order & started reading them from the earliest one I had, this one. This is #6 in the series. Dumarest is, I suppose, a somewhat typical hero: tough, fast, intelligent, & w/ deep integrity. What can I say? I like people like him & I'm glad there's fiction that encourages such attributes. His obsession is w/ finding the planet of his origin, Earth, wch he left as a youth & wch no-one seems to know the whereabouts of anymore. Dumarest gets a job on a spaceship of limited quality w/ a small crew. He talks w/ the youngest crewmember. "["]Another few years and I'll become an officer. Then for the big ships and the wide-open life." "Is that what you want?" ""Sure. What could be better?" "It was the defiance of youth, but Dumarest knew what the youngster didn't. The wide-open life he dreamed of was nothing but an endless journeying between the stars, constantly bounded by the monotony of imprisoning walls. The years slipping past broken only by planetfalls and brief dissipation. Those who rode Middle lived lives of incredible restriction despite the journeys they made. Too often they found refuge in strange diversions and perverted pleasures." - p 11 Tubb's writing reminds me most here of that of A. Bertram Chandler, a sci-fi writer who was also a ship's captain - the above non-romantic realism in particular. The young stewart reveals something about one of the other crewmen: "["]He's religious," he explained. "I don't mean that he's a member of the Universal Church. He's that and a lot more. He dabbles in every cult going. Transmigration, Reincarnation, Starcom, Extravitalis, Satanism, Planarism, Amorphism–you name it and he's interested.["]" - p 12 The crewmembers of the starship that Dumarest is on are called upon on one of their planetfalls to pass judgment on a local women. She's basically in trouble for arousing too much lust & the locals are hoping she'll just get killed & things will go back to normal. The starship crew decides to diplomatically avoid the execution by taking the woman away w/ them. ""This is the one on whom you must pass judgement," he said. "She came to us several months ago from a ship which called here. We gave her the guest offering of food and wine and accepted the stranger within our gates. In return she has sowed dissension, turning brother against brother, mocking our sacred ways and filling the young men with thoughts of evil. We gave her work among the women and she dazzled their minds with thoughts of orgies, dancing, fine raiment, and decadent living. We put her to work alone and then had to set guards to keep the young men away from the enticement of her body."" - p 50 They succeeded in saving her life but Dumarest had to kill the local champion in hand-to-hand combat to do so. The woman, Lallia, knows a good thing when she sees it so she latches onto him. ""So, you can throw knives, Earl," said Lallia, as they walked past the glittering booths. "What else don't I know about you? Never mind," she said, not waiting for an answer. "I'll find out. I've a lifetime to do it in. Right, lover?" "He looked at her, tall, beautiful, the doll cradled in her arms, and felt a sudden wave of tenderness. It would be good to find somewhere to settle down, to build a home, and to find immortality in children. Good enough, perhaps, to eliminate his need to search for a forgotten world." - p 78 Yes, Lallia's quite the passionate woman & there's a deep love brewing between her & Dumarest. Alas, things go awry. NOW, this being an ACE double, 2 bks for the price of one so loved by the likes of me, it's time to flip the bk & turn to Claude & Rhoda Nunes's Recoil. Typical of these doubles, there's a more popular author paired w/ someone(s) less well-known. I'd never heard of the Nunes &, at 1st, I was a bit bored by their story but I got into & appreciated their skill & imagination. Now I hope to read more by them. "Tom Manners scowled as he looked back at the swirling, unnatural clouds, shuddering with unexplainable aversion at the idea of entering the shallow depression. The instinct of the horse was something, too, in which he had quite a lot of faith. He was well aware, from its labored breathing and trembling muscles, that it would not be possible to coax the horse any closer. "Then, so suddenly that he almost screamed with shock, someone came out of the mist and stared up the high bank in his direction. Someone? He choked with renewed terror, realizing that this was nothing even remotely human. He cowered against the sand, huddling towards the trembling horse. All he could hope for was that the thing was unaware of him." Tom is a human on Earth, the thing looking at him is a Gorgon, freshly landed on the planet. It makes me think of Tom Graeff's 1959 film "Teenagers from Outer Space": "In the film, a young alien named Derek becomes a fugitive on Earth after he defies his crew's directive to eradicate human life in order to use Earth as grazing grounds for giant voracious livestock they call Gargons." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage... The Gorgon & its uneasy allies, the people from the planet Grath, have landed on Earth to take it over from its current dominant species, humans. They possess some key figures & have these possessed people initiate mass action against children who have psi powers that might threaten the invaders. ""And in the meantime, I suppose all the cripples, abnormals and deviates must bear the brunt of it? For no other reason than that there must be a scapegoat." The editor snarled and turned impatiently away. "This is bad enough but the way it slants–if you take the trouble to read between the lines–it sounds as though they want to make whipping boys out of the higher IQs as well. As if the possession of anything over 120 is a crime against the common man and we ought to segregate, investigate, and probably domesticate anyone who shows a spark of originality" - pp 50-51 ""That's what makes it even more incomprehensible. You know I went to see the old man to query the whole thing. Frankly, you would have almost thought he was possessed, the way he poured vitriol on everything I had to say against it. And he used to be close to my ideal as a genuine humanitarian.["]" - p 51 When the Grathians try to possess the psi Earthling children it backfires on them & causes the children's powers to increase & for them to become aware of them. ""You see," went on the boy in a muffled voice, "there's this schoolmaster, Old Jones we called him. And he made a set for me from the start. Seemed to hate my guts for nothing at all. So . . . well . . . maybe I just lost my temper, but what would you have done, mister?" ""Trampled him a little, perhaps, just to frighten him—keep him out of school for a while," replied Alex gravely, and smiled inwardly at the fantasy. He looked up at the approach of two men, who were talking animatedly, absorbed in their subject. ""—weirdest thing I ever heard of," said one. "Seen a lot of queer things in my time, but finding Jones flattened out with his skeleton crushed like an eggshell, and bruises two feet long . . . made you think a herd of elephants had given him a going over. Makes you feel like looking over your shoulder. I mean, what known animal . . ." The voice faded into silence as the steps passed by, while every muscle in Alex's body seemed to freeze slowly solid." - p 87 As it turns out, Old Jones was possessed by a Grathian & he DID have it in for the boy b/c he detected his psi powers. Another one of the boys, Alpheus, has powers used fatally against the invaders. "A moment later, the hand shifted its grip; the thumb pressed against Calder's head. There was a sudden crack as his head fell limply to one side and the huge hand relaxed. Calder toppled to the floor, and the gigantic hand vanished as suddenly as if it had never been there at all. As Jack moved unbelievingly towards the body on the floor, the boy disappeared as abruptly as the vision he had invoked." - p 112 I liked this b/c I found it somewhat unpredictable. I didn't have much of a idea of what wd happen next. It started off on the planet Grath, then went to Earth & never returned to Grath. That ultimately made sense for the plot but I wasn't expecting it. ...more |
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review of David Pogue's Hard Drive by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 14, 2025 I wasn't familiar w/ this author but the cover of this bk screams of targetted-at-a-New-York-Times-bestseller-demographic. &, yeah, it's written in a generic techno- review of David Pogue's Hard Drive by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 14, 2025 I wasn't familiar w/ this author but the cover of this bk screams of targetted-at-a-New-York-Times-bestseller-demographic. &, yeah, it's written in a generic techno-thriller style - but I enjoyed it! Looking at info about the author online I found that he's written quite a few bks, mostly technology & how-to. This is his only novel for adults, there's one other novel for middle-schoolers. Having come of age in the midst of a revolution that rejected "suits" & "straights" as representatives of an 'entitled' oppressive death culture, this clean-cut, obviously well-to-do, author-in-a-suit really isn't my kind of guy.. but I still enjoyed the bk. A small, but growing, computer company is developing technology that'll make them very successful. They have Japenese investors. A spokesperson for the company makes a speech to them: ""As you know, Master Voice is the most important, most dramatic new computer product in the history of personal computers. I mean, think of it: true speech recognition. I kid you not, gentlemen, it will be like nothing the world has seen before. People will speak into a microphone, and the computer will type out what they say, word for word, with better than 90 percent accuracy. Or people will control their computers: 'Print my thesis!' they'll say. 'Sort my Rolodex!' Trust me. One day you'll view your financial involvement with us as the best investment you ever made."" - pp 5-6 The investors believe that the product will be successful, if the company can produce it - so they give the company a hard deadline or they'll withdraw their money - wch will be disastrous. This bk was copyrighted 1993. That's fortunate for me b/c it means that I can adequately understand the technology referred to - something I wdn't stand much of a chance at if it were more current. I'm not moaning at my lack of current technology understanding, I'm somewhat sick of the emphasis on tech, even tho I use it every day. One of the protagonists of the story is Danny. He's developed an anti-virus utility that he hasn't been able to sell or otherwise market. His virus knowledge comes in handy when he gets hired as a crunch-time employee for Master Voice. "The disk contained Danny's masterpiece: a little utility program he'd written himself that checked for computer viruses. He'd named it SURvIVor, hoping people would get the spelled-backward joke. It was a pretty good program, actually. If a virus made its way into your system, SURvIVor would beep like crazy, alerting you to the fact that youwere being invaded. Once you knew you had a virus, SURVIVor's Cleanse command could even clean it out for you." - p 12 "Of course, it was only the biggest, most popular dial-up computer network/database in the universe. She could send and receive electronic mail (E-mail, Mike O'Massey called it)" - p 28 E-mail! It's funny to think of when e-mail was this new. My 1st email was probably under the name of Luther Blissett & was in 1996. I didn't even have a computer capable of dial-up (vvveeeerrrrryyyyy slow & primitive by today's standards) so I had to check & send my emails at the public library. This reference to e-mail is from 3 yrs before I was using it. Danny's at his new job: "Each cubicle was equipped with a Mac IIvx—not top of the line, but powerful enough. Each was equipped with eight megabytes of memory—plenty of RAM—and a 265-megabyte external hard drive. Well, that ought to hold a few files, Danny thought. Like the whole Library of Congress." - p 31 Ha ha! My 1st home computer was a Mac SE (probably) given to me by James Mansback "Sarmad" Brody in the fall of 1994. In those days, files were in the kilobytes. I might not even had had a megabyte of storage. These days, I have over 200TB of storage & I go thru 20TB or so in a yr or less. "He let the drone of the TV enter his consciousness. ""And so the United States has found itself in an unlikely position: an ally to the rebellious Ukraine. If Masso and Unkrainian president Jurenko have their way, the American plan just might help the fighting Commonwealth states truly . . . become a union once again, Jeannie Spinks, CNN, Moscow."" - p 48 I have no memory of what was going on w/ Ukraine & the US in 1993ish. SO, this became a sortof prediction of 30 yrs later when Russia's trying to reestablish its empire thru an imperialism I can only hope fails miserably. See my relevant article here: https://medium.com/@idioideo/what-am-... if you can access it w/o paying. Of course, Danny has a love interest, Michelle, & michelle has a turtle. "Myrtle, evidently bored by the proceedings, half receded into her shell. Michelle lifted her gently by the edges and put her back inside the terrarium. ""Technically, poor Myrtle is contraband," she told Danny. "Pet stores in this country aren't allowed to sell turtles anymore, did you know that? But I got Myrtle from the lady who used to have my apartment, and that was two years ago. Myrtle has already outlived her life expectancy in captivity by a year; I think she and I were meant to be together."" - p 52 When I was a kid, walking in the nearby woods, seeing turtles was common. Sometimes kids wd paint a mark on their top so that they'd know if they were seeing the same turtle again. I saw a turtle recently for the 1st time in what seems like 50 yrs. I didn't know that selling them in pet stores has been illegal for so long but I'm glad it is. What a strange world we live in where an animal can be endangered b/c it's slow to cross a road & its natural protection, its shell, is inadequate against the weight of a car. "Nonetheless, Stroman had decided to treat the U.S. government like any other Artelligence customer. Stroman would sell them the product; it wouldn't be his responsibility to monitor what they did with it. If he started worrying about the ultimate reason for his presence in these hallways, he'd probably back right out of the deal out of sheer guilt; finding better and faster ways of killing people wasn't quite his cup of tea." - p 55 Typical. I remember being at a party talking w/ a guy who was working in robotics. He was quick to inform me that he 'didn't know what was going to be done with his work.' Now, of course he knew it was being used for military purposes, ulrimately for killing people, or he wdn't have been so quick to deny such knowledge - but the denial enabled him to have a clean(ish) conscience. I worked for a medical lab where the 2 owners were approached by the US military & asked to do anthrax research. The owners declined. The lab was bought shortly thereafter & the owners were kept on as consultants. Then they were let go. Gee, I wonder if the lab started doing anthrax research after that? Artelligence was under attack by industrial sabotage meant to destroy Master Voice from a bitter competitor. They didn't figure out what was going on until massive damage had been done. "There are four ways a virus can infect a computer. First, it can be accidentally sent along with legitimate data over the phone wires, if the computer is equipped with a modem (telephone hookup). Second, the virus may enter through the SCSI port on the back of the computer. This small computer serial interface port is usually used for connecting an external hard drive; if such a drive is infected, then any other disks on the computer also become infected. "Third, a computer may be infected by other computers, if they are linked together into a network. And finally, a virus may arrive at a computer aboard s floppy disk. As soon as the disk is slipped into the disk drive , any hard drives (or other computers) attached to the computer are at risk." - p 83 Things have developed considerably since then. AI Overview provides this: "AOL has faced lawsuits regarding scareware, most notably a significant class-action settlement in 2013 for $8.5 million with Support.com and other defendants over deceptive "Computer Checkup" scareware that falsely warned users of serious computer issues to sell unnecessary fixes, a practice similar to broader FTC actions against scareware marketers. While AOL itself wasn't always the primary scareware creator, they faced lawsuits for facilitating these deceptive practices through their platform, leading to settlements for user harm." It's not uncommon for such lawsuits to have a clause that states that the company can't be sued again for the same crime. After the above-mentioned lawsuit, Verizon sold their emails to AOL, that included mine. As soon as I was involuntarily switched over to AOL I became deluged w/ scareware. Many yrs later, it's lessened but it's never stopped. Michelle works in PR for Artelligence & she's trying desperately to meet the deadlin that's been set by the Japanese investors. "January 13, 1994 "You, sir, are a man of your word," Michelle said. It took every ounce of her self-control not to puke at having to play the cute blond PR chick. "It was working, though. The guy was utterly hromone driven, with about as much brains as a grapefruit. His name was Ringo, of course. ""Hey, hey, I say I'm gonne get the job done, I get it done, you know what I'm saying? Doll like you comes in here, I says to myself, I says, Whoa! Now there's someone with class, you know what I'm saying? There's a fine classy lady who deserves to be treated right.["]" - p 156 I'm not sure I've ever been present at such an interaction. The implication seems to be that some low-life male wants to elevate his class status by getting his penis into one of his attractive superiors. That seems like something out of a 70s movie. I'm sure it's happened in 'real life' too but I have to wonder whether it's exaggerated here in order to insult people that the author considers beneath his station. ""If this thing crawls into the UNIX and mainframe world," Skinner volunteered, "it could get onto the InterNet!" "Danny shot an explanatory glance at Michelle. "InterNet is the phone network that connects every mainframe in the United States. Like the national highway system, except it's made of phone lines. Every corporation, branch of government, and satellite hooks into the InterNet."" - p 190 It's possible that the majority of the people reading this review will have been born into a world where the InterNet already existed & was taken for granted. Of course, such people know it wasn't always like that but this gives a little taste into earlier times. Why, for me, it feels like I'm still wiping the InterNet's butt! Okay, okay, I cdn't resist the expression. All in all, this gave me everything I hope for a techno-thriller. Why, people even got murdered! Do you find yrself shaking if you go a day w/o a murder in pop culture?! ...more |
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Cognitive Dissidents
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— last activity Nov 09, 2021 08:48AM
A meeting place for people dedicated to subverting oppressive 'realities' by whatever means we're inspired to use. A meeting place for people dedicated to subverting oppressive 'realities' by whatever means we're inspired to use. ...more
Goodreads Librarians Group
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Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Librarians Group is the official group for requesting additions or updates to the catalog, including: * Adding new books or editions * Editing book information (including covers) * Combining and merging book editions * Edits to page counts, quotes or awards * Correcting author profiles for authors not in the Goodreads Author Program If you're a Goodreads member with a new request, click Join Group. Once you're added to the group, you can post your question following this link. Simple requests (e.g. page count updates) typically take around 48 hours depending on the volume of requests, while more complex requests could take up to a couple of weeks (e.g. adding a new book). Authors, if you are a member of the Goodreads Author Program, you can edit information about your own books. Find out how in this guide. Keep in mind that Librarians don't: * Grant or give insights into Librarian applications / Librarian status * Move ISBNs or ASINs between editions * Help with non-catalog Support questions (e.g. How do I reset my password?) For help with these queries or to submit general questions, comments or feature requests, try Goodreads Help or use the Contact Us form. If you're a Librarian and want to process requests, please refer to our Librarian Manual to ensure edits are performed in line with Goodreads policies. ...more
Working Class Readers
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— last activity Sep 06, 2023 09:07AM
What sort of books do working class readers enjoy? Clearly all books! but OK if we are thinking reading in a class conscious way, what might we highli What sort of books do working class readers enjoy? Clearly all books! but OK if we are thinking reading in a class conscious way, what might we highlight to other working class readers. This might be books by working class writers; it might be books about working class lives or jobs or themes; but it might be something else! ...more
Oulipo
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— last activity Mar 09, 2011 04:49AM
Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, Harry Matthews, etc.
Feb 04, 2023 08:07PM
Feb 05, 2023 02:41AM