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Post by Deleted on Sept 9, 2014 13:50:50 GMT -5
part of a Juvenile science fiction series that featured just about everyone that was active in the 60s... sounds interesting.... I'll be checking out to see if I have any of the others  Yep -- Winston SF. The source of a novel I've cited more than once as crucial to my (d)evolution into an sf fan, Raymond F. Jones' The Year When Stardust Fell, which I read in probably 7th grade. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 9, 2014 13:53:57 GMT -5
The Howard Hughes Affair by Stuart Kaminsky.
Toby Peters is hired by Hughes to look for some stolen airplane plans. He gets an assist from Basil Rathbone. Fun light mystery.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 9, 2014 13:56:14 GMT -5
part of a Juvenile science fiction series that featured just about everyone that was active in the 60s... sounds interesting.... I'll be checking out to see if I have any of the others Yep -- Winston SF. The source of a novel I've cited more than once as crucial to my (d)evolution into an sf fan, Raymond F. Jones' The Year When Stardust Fell, which I read in probably 7th grade. I've definitely heard of that.. not sure if I read it or not. |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 11, 2014 23:55:25 GMT -5
 The Screaming Mimi 1949 Fredric Brown Famed SF/Mystery writer Fredric Brown's best known crime novel (Well it was adapted into a movie with Anita Ekberg). Bill Sweeney, a newspaper reporter on a 2 week bender, stumbles across the crime scene of an attempted stabbing of a strip tease performer in her building's lobby. Sweeney learns that there's been previous and successful murders by knife within the past week while he's been tanked. The Chicago citizenry is is alarmed by who they now call The Ripper-killer of beautiful blondes. Sweeney hopes to sober up, track down the killer and get his reporter job back I saw the movie version many years ago and can't recall it. I enjoyed the novel, a noir-style crime story where men drink like fish and a dames a dame. Brown always writes in a simple,straight-forward manner and makes it a breeze to read. Not a lot of action, mostly Sweeney interviewing suspects and mulling over the details of the crimes. Interesting characters populate the story. Brown he kept me guessing as to the ID of the killer to the very end and came up with a logical conclusion.Thats all I ask for |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2014 13:32:29 GMT -5
Not sure how long I read The Screaming Mimi, but I know I liked it ... as I have all of Brown's mysteries that I've read -- probably at least seven or eight novels & one short story collection. His sf novels, at least, were more hit-or-miss for me -- I quite like What Mad Universe & Martians Go Home, but Rogue in Space, The Mind Thing & The Lights in the Sky are Stars couldn't hold my interest for more than a few pages each. (His sf short subjects were far more uniformly successful, IMHO.)
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 17, 2014 10:02:17 GMT -5
 Night of the Big Heat by John Lymington Apparently this was made into a movie... I can totally see it.(or perhaps it's a novellization?) Wikipedia says it was a book written with intent to make a TV show/movie, for what that's worth. The main story is that it's really hot, and people are grumpy, confused, and not themselves. It turns out that the spiders and old drunk saw one night were not actually pink elephants, but the prelude to an alien invasion. The aliens were using radio waves as transporters, and the heat was a by-product (perhaps intentional, no one ever is sure). The book focuses on the local pub owner (who is also a writer... probably the author himself in British form), his wife, his temporary secretary, and a couple locals that get dragged in. Most of the book is spent describing how it's really hot... this could easily be a short story... it gets old fast. The sub plot of the secretary trying to steal the main character from his wife fizzles... as does just about everything. The story ends when the alien spider thingys (no clear consensous if they're intelligent, or bugs, or something in between) as burn up in a fireball when it gets too hot and a corn field or something goes up. The invasion, or test, or whatever it is (again, the character's don't know) ends and all goes back to normal. It's really a horror story with the small sci-fi element of the scary monsters in dark corners being aliens, but they could have easily been demons, vampires, or whatever with little change. Pretty formulaic story, but it kept me turning the pages until the end. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 18, 2014 11:02:11 GMT -5
Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny
3/5 of the way through a re-read of the original Amber series. This is a great fantasy series and it holds up well from when it was ubiquitous among my friends as a teen. Even though I remember most of the twists Zelazny is a good enough writer that it's worth the time
Writer of the Purple Rage by Joe R. Lansdale.
I've now read enough of Lansdale's short work that I'm getting crossover. Which is one of the problems with his anthologies. There is a lot of crossover of stories from book to book. But it's worth the effort as pretty much every story is worth a read. And he was never a one-trick pony. The stories always run the gamut from horror to fantasy to noir to soft SF to pure pop-culture kitsch.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 18, 2014 12:37:05 GMT -5
The Howard Hughes Affair by Stuart Kaminsky. Toby Peters is hired by Hughes to look for some stolen airplane plans. He gets an assist from Basil Rathbone. Fun light mystery. I gave this one a shot, as the library happened to have it, and I'm a bit of a Howard Hughes fan (who is Tony Stark, after all, but Howard Hughes without the OCD?). I agree it was a fun, light mystery. I had the culprit pretty much right away, but the details were a surprise. I little bit heavy on the exposition and the day to day life of Toby Peters (I could do without being told what he eats for breakfast every day), but I'd definitely recommend it as a cool 40s novel. I'm definitely a fan of the Amber novels, though I recall not enjoying them as much on the 2nd run through. Did anyone ever do a comic adaptation for them? I seem to remember it on the schedule long ago, but I never remember actually seeing it. |
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Post by Jesse on Sept 19, 2014 11:28:28 GMT -5
Just finished re-reading... Babel-17by Samuel R. Delany  Delany makes some interesting commentary on language and how it effects the way people think and act while telling an epic outer space adventure featuring a colorful full cast of characters, espionage and plenty of action. The Earth Alliance is fighting an interstellar war with the Invaders who have developed a communications weapon called Babel-17 that is responsible for multiple deadly attacks against the Alliance. Rydra Wong a starship captain, famous poet and telepath is recruited to decipher what they thought was a code but she discovers is actually a language. When her ship is sabotaged one of her crew is suspected of being an Invader spy. After witnessing an assassination her ship is again sabotaged. Her crew is saved by a privateer whose lieutenant, a man known as The Butcher may be the key to understanding Babel-17. |
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Post by Jesse on Sept 19, 2014 18:35:46 GMT -5
The Changing Landby Roger Zelazny  A sequel to the short story "Dilvish, the Damned" published in the anthology of the same name (although not actually required reading to enjoy this novel). I'm not big on fantasy but I really enjoyed this, possibly because the Elder Golds resemble the Old Ones from the Cthulhu Mythos. Dilvish, the half elf half human protagonist, is on a mission to slay his arch-enemy the black magician Jelerak who had previously banished Dilvish to Hell. With his fire breathing metal demon horse named Black, Dilvish must infiltrate The Castle Timeless which is inhabited by the "mad" demi-god Tualua. Tualua depicted as a mass of tentacles in a pit is going through a "change" that causes the surrounding land to behave erratically, which makes the journey to The Castle Timeless unpredictable and deadly.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 20, 2014 16:01:03 GMT -5
Just finished re-reading... Babel-17by Samuel R. Delany  Delany makes some interesting commentary on language and how it effects the way people think and act while telling an epic outer space adventure featuring a colorful full cast of characters, espionage and plenty of action. The Earth Alliance is fighting an interstellar war with the Invaders who have developed a communications weapon called Babel-17 that is responsible for multiple deadly attacks against the Alliance. Rydra Wong a starship captain, famous poet and telepath is recruited to decipher what they thought was a code but she discovers is actually a language. When her ship is sabotaged one of her crew is suspected of being an Invader spy. After witnessing an assassination her ship is again sabotaged. Her crew is saved by a privateer whose lieutenant, a man known as The Butcher may be the key to understanding Babel-17. That sounds really interesting! Goin' on the list!  |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2014 20:32:28 GMT -5
Most of my Delany reading occurred in a short period during my freshman year in college -- Babel-17, Einstein Intersection, I think Ballad of Beta-2 & maybe Empire Star. Nova I read a couple of years after that.
Pretty good, as I recall.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 22, 2014 12:22:58 GMT -5
 The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale. Yeah...I've been on a Lansdale kick lately. This is Lansdale's take on the coming-of-age in danger work. It feels a bit like To Kill a Mockingbird but with that extra Lansdale twistedness. Not that it's a horror book. It's not. But there is a serial killer at work here and it is definitely messy. That said, this is a very strong work. Lansdale's characterizations are outstanding. He definitely achieves the feel and cadence of depression-era East Texas. The "mystery" isn't super strong, but then that's not the point. He gives us a number of options for the killer, though to me it was pretty obvious who it was. But that's not really the point. The point is the feel of the story and that is a home run. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2014 13:04:08 GMT -5
Pretty sure I started The Bottoms some years ago but didn't get very far. It just wasn't what I wanted at the time, I guess, especially from Lansdale. I think I own it; in any event, I need to revisit it at some point, especially since as noted previously East Texas, my native SW Arkansas & NW Lousiana are all pretty much of a sociocultural piece (i.e. the Arklatex), both now & during the period Lansdale wrote about here.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 22, 2014 14:08:01 GMT -5
I did find it interesting that the Narrator's Grandmother had gone to the Texas panhandle with his Aunt and then returned to East Texas while the Aunt went on to California because of the Dust Bowl. Tied back to my reading of The Worst Hard Time, which I know you've also read.
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