Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 17, 2020 12:35:39 GMT -5
Tales of Unease by Arthur Conan Doyle. I've been a big fan of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories for decades, but prior to this, I'd never read any of his other work. Like the Holmes stories, these tales of mystery and suspense were first published in Victorian or Edwardian fiction magazines, such as The Strand, The Cornhill, Harper's, and The Idler, among others. It has to be said that the Holmes stories very often had implied supernatural elements in them, a la "The Hound of the Baskervilles", or at least a sinister "swish of Dracula's cape" to them. So, it's no surprise that the author would be so adept at creating spooky or sinister tales. That said, only a few of these stories are actually supernatural. Most of them are short morality tales, often with a theme of vengeance, and with gripping and ghoulish twists at the end – which is a shame because it is the stories with bona fide supernatural elements to them that are the best, in my view. Horror-wise, the stories in Tales of Unease are actually quite gentle by modern standards, but they nonetheless have the ability to unnerve you slightly as you read. "Lot No.249" (1892) is the longest story in the collection and it might well be the best too. Set in 1884 in the halls of Oxford University, the story tells the tale of the unsavoury and brusque Edward Bellingham, a student of Eastern languages and metaphysics, and his upstairs neighbour, Abercrombie Smith, who is an athletic medical student. Bellingham has won a horde of Egyptian collectables at an auction, including lot no. 249, which is a mummy! Shortly afterwards, Bellingham's "enemies" start being attacked by a mysterious assailant. Naturally, it transpires that Bellingham has managed to use ancient incantations to reanimate the mummy to do his bidding. "Lot No.249" is an enjoyable little tale and nicely creepy too, with a quintessential Victorian Englishness to it. Another Egyptian mummy-themed story that I liked was "The Ring of Thoth" (1890), which was, according to the book's forward, a big influence on the 1932 film The Mummy starring Boris Karloff. Another favourite tale was "The Brazilian Cat" (1889), which concerns a young English peer, who is in financial difficulties, visiting his wealthy cousin. Things don't quite go the way that the young peer expects and, without spoiling the ending, an exotic Brazilian cat that the cousin has acquired on his travels plays an important role in the story's rather nasty twist. "The Brown Hand" (1899), which is about a ghostly leper breaking into an English home to retrieve his amputated and preserved hand from a laboratory jar, is another really good story. As too is "The Horror of the Heights" (1913), which follows an intrepid aviator as he discovers and investigates huge, gelatinous, air creatures in the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere. However, not every tale here is of such high calibre. A few of them, such as "The Case of Lady Sannox" or "The Captain of the Polestar" are rather ill-focused and tend to meander to a quite unsatisfying conclusion, which leaves you wondering if Doyle had simply lost interest in the story part way through writing it. Ultimately, I found Doyle's suspense and supernatural fiction to be enjoyable and entertaining, but even though a few of the tales here ("The Ring of Thoth", "The Brazilian Cat", "Lot No.249") are really very good, none of the stories are a patch on his Sherlock Holmes adventures.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 19, 2020 10:11:31 GMT -5
Fountains of Paradise Arthur Clarke
I'm a big fan of Arthur Clarke in general... this is one of his later books, but seems to follow the pattern of several of the others. Here, he focuses on the possibility of the Space Elevator.. which is one of my favorite maybe-possible sci-fi concepts.
As is typical of Clarke, most of the science is pretty reasonable, with the exception of the material used, which is a future-discovered superstrong filament, just perfect for the task.
There's also an alien first contact thrown in, because Arthur Clarke, and why not? It kinda muddles the time line of the book a bit, and doesn't really add anything to the story of the Space Elevator, but it's fine as a side story, and somewhat unique for a first contact.
I really loved that the alien computer that visited was more influential in philoposphy than technology (Because, of course, every species follows the prime directive). I'm not so sure religion would become irrelevant to the world so easily, but it's be nice if that was the case (I'm definitely on Clarke's side there... causes nothing but trouble in the world)
Overall, I definitely wouldn't call this the best of Clarke's work, but it's a pretty representative example.
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Post by berkley on Nov 20, 2020 2:57:31 GMT -5
Tales of Unease by Arthur Conan Doyle.
I've been looking for a collection of Conan Doyle's supernatural stories like this so good to see your review here. I read Lot. 249 way back as a pre-teen in the early 70s in an anthology titled Hauntings: Tales of the Supernatural, which made a huge impression on me, so I've always meant to seek out more of his horror writing and this looks like a good one.
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Post by Duragizer on Nov 20, 2020 22:11:44 GMT -5
Black Fire (James Kidman) I borrowed a copy of this novel from my local library in 2008. It read it and absolutely loved it, so much so I immediately wanted to own a copy. It took me 'til 2017 to purchase one, and finally a month ago to take it off the shelf and begin the re-read. I considered Black Fire a masterpiece in my twenties. Now that I'm older and wiser(?), I see the flaws. The protagonist, while sympathetic, lacks personality; the dialogue skews toward cliched/banal, especially the exchanges between the protagonist and his girlfriend; the plot twist at the end isn't exactly unpredictable. Those are the cons, but there are certainly pros. Black Fire is rich with imagery, atmosphere, and emotion; as a "right-brained" individual, I find these qualities compensate for the novel's shortcomings. 8/10
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 21, 2020 1:18:05 GMT -5
Just a quick Edgar Rice Burroughs question, which I thought I would post here, so that it'd be seen by those who know their stuff. Is Tarzan of the Apes a better read than A Princess of Mars?
I read the first Barsoom book a couple of years back (I reviewed it in this very thread), and although I mostly enjoyed it, I found Burroughs' writing to be a bit mediocre and rather dry in places: bits of the book were a little hard to get through and I found my interest waning on a couple of occasions. Despite this, I picked up a second hand copy of Tarzan of the Apes (mainly because I liked the cover art) and I'm wondering whether it is worth reading based on my reaction to A Princess of Mars. Thoughts?
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Post by berkley on Nov 21, 2020 2:25:32 GMT -5
I would say yes, though I can't say Burroughs's style is any better in the one than the other. I read various of the later books of the Tarzan series when I was young but never read Tarzan of the Apes itself until much later, as an adult, and I was really quite surprised: even though I knew, as everyone does, the basic outline of the plot from the movies and so on, many of the details and just the way the whole story was presented were so different to what I'd been expecting that it was quite a revelation. Whether this is just a subjective feeling peculiar to myself or something other readers have experienced, I can't say, but based on my own experience, I definitely recommend it - even if you still have trouble with the deficiencies of Burroughs's prose style (which I'm so used to myself that I'm probably able to overlook them with all the more ease).
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Post by Deleted on Nov 21, 2020 2:45:58 GMT -5
Having reread them both within the past year, I will say that while I enjoyed both, Tarzan of the Apes was a much better read.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 21, 2020 5:33:00 GMT -5
I should preface this by noting that I haven't read anything by Burroughs since I was 15, when I kind of burned out on his writing (due to a combination being fed up with his recycled plots in the later Tarzan books and the mediocre and dry patches you mentioned that run through most of his prose). That said, I always found the Barsoomian books, obviously including Princess, a cut above everything else he did. However, if you already have the book, by all means read it - although you'll have to read the second one as well, since the first *spoiler alert* ends right in the middle of the Tarzan/Jane 'how I met your mother' love story. Personally, I think the sixth book, Jungle Tales, contains his best Tarzan prose. And you don't necessarily have to read the intervening books to enjoy it.
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Post by berkley on Nov 21, 2020 23:40:22 GMT -5
I should preface this by noting that I haven't read anything by Burroughs since I was 15, when I kind of burned out on his writing (due to a combination being fed up with his recycled plots in the later Tarzan books and the mediocre and dry patches you mentioned that run through most of his prose). That said, I always found the Barsoomian books, obviously including Princess, a cut above everything else he did. However, if you already have the book, by all means read it - although you'll have to read the second one as well, since the first *spoiler alert* ends right in the middle of the Tarzan/Jane 'how I met your mother' love story. Personally, I think the sixth book, Jungle Tales, contains his best Tarzan prose. And you don't necessarily have to read the intervening books to enjoy it. I know you're being facetious, but for me, {Spoiler: Click to show}the Tarzan/Jane romance and specifically how it "ends" in Tarzan of the Apes is one of the most effective, and affecting, aspects of the book and render it more akin in spirit to late-Victorian adventure-romances like The Prisoner of Zenda than anything else in ERB's body of work, even his explicit Zenda-tribute, The Mad King.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 22, 2020 0:50:57 GMT -5
Thanks for the Tarzan of the Apes advice, berkley, chintzybeatnik, and EdoBosnar. I took the plunge yesterday evening and powered through a third of the book in one sitting. I'm really enjoying it and finding it a much better read than A Princess of Mars. I'll post a proper review when I've finished it. Thanks again, guys.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 22, 2020 12:59:06 GMT -5
Crime CampaignPaul Kupperberg, 1979 A well-respected TV news anchor, Ian Forester, makes a surprise announcement at the end of a news broadcast, stating that he's quitting his job and running for mayor - and immediately takes a commanding lead in all opinion polls, much to the chagrin of Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson, who had also decided to join the mayoral race. Forester is running on an anti-corruption and anti-crime platform, and during one of this press conferences, he's physically accosted by none other than Spider-man, who tells him to withdraw from the race. This shocks everyone in attendance, none more than freelance photographer Peter Parker, who's at the press conference on assignment for the Bugle. That's the set-up - as Peter starts checking out why someone's maligning his alter-ego's good name, he finds out that New York's criminal underworld bosses, led by the Kingpin, are behind Forester's surprise campaign. This plot involves an uneasy alliance with, among others, his long-time rival Silvermane. There's lots of backroom dealing, backstabbing and, of course, Spidey kicking butt. The story is pretty well-plotted, but it won't rock your world or anything. It's a nice diversion, but I can't say my enjoyment of it was due to anything besides nostalgia and a fondness for (and familiarity with) the characters. Otherwise, I'd only read four of these Marvel prose books from the late '70s back in the day, the novels featuring Captain America (Holocaust for Hire), Iron Man (And Call My Killer ... MODOK!) and Fantastic Four (Doomsday) and the Marvel Super-heroes book with four novellas (starring Daredevil, Hulk, the Avengers and the X-men). Back when I first read those, at about the age of 13, I thought they were sooooo cool. Then when I re-read the X-men and Avengers stories again a few years later, I was less impressed. Still, I wouldn't mind reading all of these again now, because they're fun little books. By the way, the reason I read this now is because I saw this ad making the rounds on fb a few weeks ago, including the Back Issue page, which is where I first saw it:
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Post by berkley on Nov 22, 2020 20:06:19 GMT -5
I might consider reading the Dr. Strange book sometime if I ever see it around, but then again, I suspect it might be a disappointment since I have such high standards for the character. They should have asked Steve Englehart to write a DS novel at some point.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 23, 2020 5:04:57 GMT -5
I might consider reading the Dr. Strange book sometime if I ever see it around, but then again, I suspect it might be a disappointment since I have such high standards for the character. They should have asked Steve Englehart to write a DS novel at some point.Well, he didn't do a Dr. Strange novel, but he did write The Point Man, which has a lot of Dr. Stange-like elements to it. I reviewed a while back at another site.
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Post by berkley on Nov 23, 2020 9:47:39 GMT -5
I might consider reading the Dr. Strange book sometime if I ever see it around, but then again, I suspect it might be a disappointment since I have such high standards for the character. They should have asked Steve Englehart to write a DS novel at some point.Well, he didn't do a Dr. Strange novel, but he did write The Point Man, which has a lot of Dr. Stange-like elements to it. I reviewed a while back at another site.Yes, I read that way back when it came out in the early 80s. I've bought the sequels too but haven't tried them yet.
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Post by Calamas on Nov 23, 2020 11:16:41 GMT -5
Well, he didn't do a Dr. Strange novel, but he did write The Point Man, which has a lot of Dr. Stange-like elements to it. I reviewed a while back at another site.Yes, I read that way back when it came out in the early 80s. I've bought the sequels too but haven't tried them yet. I also read The Point Man when it first came out and while I liked it, it also showed many signs of being a first novel. With the sequels that followed Englehart wrote with a much surer hand. Bonus for comic fans: He eventually makes use of a couple of characters he co-created.
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