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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 14, 2014 13:19:55 GMT -5
I agree with you as far as history I don't know goes, but I'd think Flashman interacting in the Old West would be really fun. I'll have to see when I get to it, I guess  . This one from my stash was a really head scratcher:  Love that cover... sadly it has nothing even remotely to do with the book. If fact, they even take a quote to put on the back to make it sound like it IS relevant. The actual story is sorta a bad 1984 riff... there a Big Brain of computers that decides who's allowed to get married and reproduce. The main character is denied, and seems to fall in love with a similarly denied woman at the marriage office. He figures he'll never see her again, so he goes to get an android wife, but apparently that's illegal, and he has to go on the run. DOn't worry, though, apparently New York is a giant slum for people that don't like Society. Yeah. There's some attempted rape, gladiator combat on bicycles, and a horrible twist ending. Oh, and some weird stuff about a colony on Venus where 'Men can be men', but they don't have any women there. Then there's the fact the main character is telepathic, which is rare, and makes the police chase him (why, it's not clear, nor is it clear why they wouldn't want him to have kids if that was valued).. just a hot mess all around. I noticed the Publisher has pretty much their whole catalogue in the back, and only a couple other sci-fi books out of about 100, so maybe that was the problem. I know he's a pretty famous name, so perhaps this is just a bad outing. |
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Post by berkley on Aug 14, 2014 16:59:32 GMT -5
Quite a few PKD fans regard Eye as his first "mature" book, at least as far as his trademark preoccupation with the nature of reality goes. I accord that distinction to Time Out of Joint myself, but admittedly I'm biased. I think this was the second PKD book I read and there was a gap of at least a couple years between my first ( A Maze of Death) and this one. I'd go along with the idea that it might be his first important book that deals with what became the recurrent theme you refer to - wiki says it came out in 1955 while Time Out of Joint was 1958. I believe that PKD included both in what he retroactively thought of as his "10-volume meta-novel". I had never read anything like PKD before and it took quite a while before my young brain could adjust itself to the disturbing worldview often presented in is stories - I found A Maze of Death so depressing that I thought I'd never read another book by this writer, but when I saw a copy of Eye in the Sky on the dingy shelves of a local used bookstore I was drawn to it in spite of myself. I threw me mentally off-kilter as much as had Maze but perhaps because I was a couple years older, this time I as intrigued a I was disturbed, and pretty soon I was reading every PKD book I could find. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2014 18:37:29 GMT -5
Maze of Death was the 3rd novel of his I ever read, after Time Out of Joint (not long after I turned 12, I'm pretty sure) & Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (around the time I turned 13). You're right -- very challenging stuff for a kid. Pretty challenging for an adult, for that matter.
Eye in the Sky I didn't get to till some 4 years later when I came across the edition Ish pictured, new on the 'stands. That was during the summer of '77, when I became an absolute PKD fiend, reading something like 12 of his novels & at least two of his short-story collections -- basically, everything I could lay my hands on. Till then, along with those first 3, I'd read only Do Androids Dream & A Scanner Darkly.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2014 18:55:47 GMT -5
I agree with you as far as history I don't know goes, but I'd think Flashman interacting in the Old West would be really fun. I'll have to see when I get to it, I guess . This one from my stash was a really head scratcher: Love that cover... sadly it has nothing even remotely to do with the book. If fact, they even take a quote to put on the back to make it sound like it IS relevant. The actual story is sorta a bad 1984 riff... there a Big Brain of computers that decides who's allowed to get married and reproduce. The main character is denied, and seems to fall in love with a similarly denied woman at the marriage office. He figures he'll never see her again, so he goes to get an android wife, but apparently that's illegal, and he has to go on the run. DOn't worry, though, apparently New York is a giant slum for people that don't like Society. Yeah. There's some attempted rape, gladiator combat on bicycles, and a horrible twist ending. Oh, and some weird stuff about a colony on Venus where 'Men can be men', but they don't have any women there. Then there's the fact the main character is telepathic, which is rare, and makes the police chase him (why, it's not clear, nor is it clear why they wouldn't want him to have kids if that was valued).. just a hot mess all around. I noticed the Publisher has pretty much their whole catalogue in the back, and only a couple other sci-fi books out of about 100, so maybe that was the problem. I know he's a pretty famous name, so perhaps this is just a bad outing. I have this one but haven't read it. Offhand, I've read very little of Long's sf (maybe just a novel called This Strange Tomorrow), as opposed to his horror, which is what he's largely known for, along with having been one of Lovecraft's best friends. (He wrote two of the earliest trulyl important Cthulhu Mythos stories not authored by HPL, "The Hounds of Tindalos" & "The Space Eaters.") Belmont, the publisher, was ... not a top-tier imprint, I'd say. Oddly enough, I guess, one of the first sf novels I ever read was one of theirs -- Robert Tralins' The Cosmozoids. They were also known in one iteration as Belmont Tower, which -- I learned not that long ago, unless I'm completely fabricating memories here -- is where Wally Wood's Tower Comics line its name. I think they published a couple of THUNDER Agents collections in paperback. |
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 14, 2014 19:10:56 GMT -5
Yes, Belmont and Tower were both owned by the same company that owned Archie Comics. They merged Belmont with Tower in 1971.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Aug 18, 2014 11:20:38 GMT -5
I haven't had much look book hunting the matching editions of Sexus and Plexus, so I finally started reading Nexus by Henry Miller, after having it for a year or more now. I've read Tropic of Capricorn and Nights of Love and Laughter, the later being a collection of his short stories. The Rosy Crucifixion (which is the three books, Sexus, Plexus and Nexus) as well as Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn are written about events in his life. I enjoyed both Tropic books, and had a feeling I might like the Rosy Crucifixion books. Reading that they were written much like Charles Bukowski's novels, I was sure I would like them. Especially that Miller spends a good part of his life in Paris, and foreign lands and customs can make for interesting reading, when I've never been outside the US.
Miller is however very different in his writing as oppose to Bukowski (thought Miller is mentioned twice in Bukowski's books as a writer he enjoyed reading). Miller takes me in a lot into his books, but I have to be there, so to speak, tuning out all outside distractions otherwise I seem to loose the impact of the story. Whereas Bukowski is very casual reading and easy to follow. The one thing that I would say made me think the later novels of Miller's life might be more interesting than the earlier, is I found that to be the case with Bukowski. He had a hard childhood and early life, that really shaped who he was by the time he was half way through his life, which to me, is getting close time, so it interesting to me.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 21, 2014 22:46:04 GMT -5
Not having much luck reading during vacation, but I did get through this one:  The cover is very... 1967. Some good stuff was had in the making of this cover.. and perhaps the book as well. The Human race is divided into Land and Sea people.. both are desparate to avoid war.. and the key is in the 'Space Swimmers' that seem to have unlocked the secret of traveling to distant planets. Some cool stuff in here, but the story is a little lacking. It's never totally clear WHY they want to go to space.. the world is in good shape, and only has a population of 3 billion on land, so its not overcrowded. It's also a bit odd that in 3 generations, 'sea-people' would have changed.. and they're very different. A fun story overall, but I suspect I'd have appreciated it more with some, er, outside influences at hand. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 26, 2014 12:07:55 GMT -5
Ok, I'm officially a Joe Lansdale fan. Two-Bear Mambo was very close to the best book I've ever read where the good guys lose (right up there with the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones and Empire Strikes Back).
I don't think I'd want to read them in large doses, as I suspect he charm of his over the top humor would lose something if you get used to it, but Hap and Leonard are really amazingly well done characters, I'll definitely visit them again before too long. I could really believe this author if he delivered a 'the characters write themselves' sort of line.. .I suspect they probably do.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 26, 2014 12:08:14 GMT -5
Rassin Frassin double post.
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Post by berkley on Aug 26, 2014 14:16:05 GMT -5
Speaking of Joe Lansdale, has anyone read his Tarzan novel? I saw it in a used bookstore the other day and was tempted to buy it but ended up holding off for now.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2014 14:34:34 GMT -5
I've noted before that I consider Lansdale a homeboy. He's from (& still lives in) east Texas, which means we're both products of the so-called Ark-La-Tex, the sociocultural capital of which is Shreveport. |
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Post by DubipR on Aug 27, 2014 7:43:42 GMT -5
Got this copy of the lost of novel of film director and auteur, Samuel Fuller. I've been a fan of Fuller's work since my teens and have read some of his short stories. This is something new from the master. Knowing Fuller, it'll be terse and don't take s**t kind of writing...
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 27, 2014 11:07:41 GMT -5
Sure is a great cover!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Aug 29, 2014 1:05:54 GMT -5
 The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World Harlan Ellison 1969 Cover Artist:Hard to decipher-Pipper? Contents: Introduction: The Waves in Rio The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World 1968 Along the Scenic Route 1969 Phoenix 1968 Asleep: With Still Hands 1968 Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R. 1969 Try a Dull Knife 1969 The Pitll Pawob Division 1968 The Place With No Name 1969 White on White 1968 Run for the Stars 1957 Are You Listening? 1958 S.R.O. 1957 Worlds to Kill 1968 Shattered Like a Glass Goblin 1968 A Boy and His Dog 1969 I read this about 40 years ago and thought it was time for a re-visit.The Beast.. was the story where Ellison evolved into a New Wave fantasy writer after many years of writing SF or Juvenile Crime stories. Personally,I had a hard time enjoying this short tale since it was more concerned with imagery and experimental form rather than coherent storytelling. To each their own Ellison's 1950s tales in this book are enjoyable pulp SF,very violent and brutal. Seems as much influenced by Mickey Spillane as Heinlein. Shattered Like A Glass Goblin is about a discharged Army vet who finds his high school sweetheart living in a druggy hippie household. Very much influenced by Lovecraft.Santa Claus vs S.P.I.D.E.R. is a wild satire of the then popular spy stories. Along The Scenic Route is an excellent tale of high speed daredevil highway racing. And then there is the classic A Boy And His Dog. Again,its violent and brutal. The hero of the story is a rapist after all. But it can't be denied the story is captivating and memorable. An excellent compendium of Harlan's best short stories up to that point. Highly reccommended |
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Post by berkley on Aug 29, 2014 1:32:18 GMT -5
Harlan Ellison is one of the several famous SF writers I haven't yet read a lot of: my older brother had a copy of I Have no Mouth and I must Scream, which I read, but don't retain much impression of - I think it was probably a bit beyond my level at the time - not so much of reading comprehension, but of intellectual/emotional capacity, for lack of a better term.
I do remember very well, though, an Ellison story I read a few years later, I think in the pages of Heavy Metal, unless it was OMNI. It was about a guest on the Johnny Carson show (not named but obviously meant to be understood as such) who seemed to be a joke or a token weirdo invited for laughs, but turned out to be a genuine acolyte of some Lovecraftian sort of cult, much to the shock of the audience, and perhaps even himself. I think it was called Flop Sweat, or something like that.
I've been picking up all the paperback anthologies I can find over the last few years but The beast Who Shouted Love at the Heart of the World has eluded me up to now. Looking forward to reading them one of these days, but I've committed myself to going back to some of the earlier SF I've missed before I get to later writers like Ellison.
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