Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

And, it just became a Horror novel.

Re-reads are worrisome - what will happen to young me’s opinion? - but I don’t think this one will be dropping from 5 stars. I still love all these stories.

Some kind of neglected Feminist Science Fantasy from 1914. Not sure what to expect. I hope it’s good!

Time to finally get to this, after almost starting it, but not. The Doctor Who book came, and I disappeared into it. Before that, this got bumped - and it’s not as if I haven’t enjoyed Marlowe, or that it will take long! The snubbing is over.

I would say my fave cover artist for Virgin Doctor Who was Jon Sullivan; I love the cover for The Death of Art, and apparently he does too - early greatness! I already mentioned that I have a crush on Bernice Summerfield, thanks to the Dry Pilgrimage cover - but I actually love the whole cover. Beyond this artist, I like the Sky Pirates! cover, Christmas on a Rational Planet, The Room with No Doors, First Frontier...

I always felt - from the novels Death and Diplomacy through to Eternity Weeps - that the Bernice/Jason Kane subplot was strangely rushed. They meet in Death and Diplomacy, get married in the next book, appear intermittently, and are divorced in Eternity Weeps. It all seemed too fast, or not fleshed out so as to make sense. The 50th book made the marriage a big deal, and they seemed to be breaking up the next day.

The Dec. 2004 issue of Enlightment (Dr Who fanzine) picked 20 Essential Doctor Who books, just as the TV show was about to return in 2005. Virgin books that got picked were: Timewyrm: Revelation, Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible, Nightshade, Transit, Iceberg, Set Piece, Human Nature, The Man in the Velvet Mask, The English Way of Death, Damaged Goods, and The Dying Days. I would swap out a few, but these are cool picks.

If I choose to re-read some of the Virgin novels soon, I would like to go back to near the start - but I think I'd do the Cat's Cradle books instead of Timewyrm. Or there's that thing that goes from Blood Heat through to No Future, which I had a great time with, especially No Future. The Virgin Dr Who books did help solidify the 7th Doctor as my favourite, though Patrick Troughton had been tops with me for years.

All of the Virgin Doctor Who Novels’ covers are represented in here - looking even better without the titles and text obscuring anything. I am a huge fan of the cover art for Dry Pilgrimage, which is in here; it’s actually a book from a spin-off series starring Bernice Summerfield…and her face is gorgeous on that cover. (Looks best when not blurry…) The McCoy Doctor is my favourite Doctor, by the way.

‘The Artistic Career of Corky’ had me laughing out loud several times. These stories are all new to me again. It was also rather amusing to read this tale right after the novel Big Ben Strikes Eleven, because both feature a struggling portrait painter having his latest work angrily rejected by the intended purchaser, with that leading to even more startling results. More of a laugh, here, of course.

I’ve just flipped through it. It’s absolutely beautiful. A completist’s dream, this will give me the same “joy in the niche” experience as The Making of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, with all the rare art and photo inclusions. This will probably inspire me to re-read more of the novels, but for now, I will be lost in this. Thank you, Telos…and Howe!

It is very much like a Freeman Wills Crofts novel, in that we spend a lot of time with the detective - or in this case, detectives - prying away at the case. There was an extended portion where we cut away to what was going on with a suspect...but overall, we get to know most of the players as experienced by the cops, when they interview them or discover things about them. It's a little dry, but I do like it.

There’s something right at the beginning that has not aged well, it really drops a sour note…I don’t like it, but it does not seem to represent what is to follow, and as one reviewer says, the character involved sort of fades away, and we don’t have to deal with his crap attitudes. Now, this is a fairly entertaining whodunit; it’s a bit like Freeman Wills Crofts’ approach, and I’m more of a fan of that, than some.

Well, I keep changing my mind about what I want to read - but I’ll finally lock this in as next. I could use a good, if obscure, Golden Age Mystery.

I’ve given in to the impulse to read a few of the stories out of order - jumping to some shorter ones now and then. So today I read ‘The Cloud-Men’ by Owen Oliver, and also ‘Dagon’ by H.P. Lovecraft, plus ‘Alien Invasion’ by Marcia Kamien. I may have read ‘Dagon’ before; it’s one of those very famous Lovecraft tales I don’t actually like much - where H.P. stops by just to say “Cthulhu says ‘BOO!!’, and not much else.

It’s an intriguing read, for 1834. Not the struggle I thought it would be. I like it.

This is from 1834; I like how, in the Preface, Bodin basically writes "I don't know to what genre this book will belong. It doesn't really exist yet...it's going to come later...". Yah, dude, you're writing Science Fiction, and it has no formal tradition yet. Yes, you are helping start a genre of the future, about the future. This guy already seems kind of smart, even just pondering his own writing.

I’ve bailed on The Bind by Stanley Ellin, simply because it turns out that I have read it before, under the title The Man From Nowhere. That caught me by surprise, I must say! So, on to this. I don’t think I’ve read this before.