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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 6, 2021 23:21:34 GMT -5
Harry Harrison is one the classic SF writers I never got around to as a kid or teenager but I have several of his books lined up for the near future, as I try to fill a few of those holes in my SF reading. Glad to hear this one holds up. I think the other big series of his I want to try is Deathworld, but of course I'm open to any suggestions from anyone who's familiar with his work. I read alot of Harry Harrison back in the day... not Stainless Steel Rat though. Sounds like Bill the Galactic Hero (Which I did read) is pretty similar to that one.. I remember there being some funny stuff, but a pretty thin plot. More serious is the "Hammer and the Cross' series, which is a Norse adventure... no Gods though, more historical fiction. His alternate history "Stars and Stripes' books were good too. I read Deathworld.. I vague remember not liking it that much, but I don't recall why.... don't think I read the series, just one or two. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Sept 7, 2021 6:21:39 GMT -5
Rihannsu: The Bloodwing VoyagesDiane Duane, 2006  Omnibus collecting: My Enemy, My Ally (1984), The Romulan Way (1987, co-authored by Peter Morwood), and Swordhunt (2000, originally published in two separate volumes, Swordhunt and Honor Blade) Still scratching my Trek itch; after finishing the Pawns of War tpb, I found myself wanting to read more about old-school Romulans, and remembered that this big, fat book has been laying in my to-read pile for waaaaay too long. This is Duane's epic story that - besides the redoubtable and resourceful crew of the Enterprise - focuses on the Romulan commander of the warbird Bloodwing, Ael t'Rllaillieu, who becomes a renegade in order to save her people's empire. (By the way, if you're wondering, 'Rihannsu' is the word for the Romulan people in their own language.) The first book, My Enemy, My Ally, is set about seven years after the events the TOS episode "The Enterprise Incident" (so about 5 years after the close of the Enterprise's first five-year mission under Captain Kirk's command. While patrolling the Federation side of the neutral zone with the Romulan Empire with several other ships due to indications of possible hostile activity from the Romulan side and also studying some inexplicably frequent ion storms in the area, the Enterprise is contacted by Commander Ael, with whom Kirk has had dealings, i.e., armed confrontations, in the past (and who, by the way, is the aunt of the femme fatale Romulan commander in the aforementioned TOS episode). She has crossed the neutral zone to warn the Federation of the development of two types of technology on the Romulans' part that could be game changers: one involves the ability to create interstellar ion storms, and the other ghoulish genetic experimentation on captured Vulcans that could give Romulans uncanny and potentially deadly telepathic abilities. Ael states that her reasons for going rogue lie in the fact that she sees the Romulan governing structures becoming increasingly corrupt and tyrannical, and fears that these new weapons may very well be turned on any dissenting Romulans rather than just the empire's enemies. She tries to convince Kirk to fly into Romulan space with her to confront these threats head-on and stop them from seriously altering the power-balance in that part of the galaxy. The Romulan Way takes place about a year after the preceding novel. The main focus is on a woman named Arrhae, who is the head of the household staff in the manor of a minor Romulan noble living in a small provincial city a few hours flight from the Romulan capital. However, we soon learn that she is a human, an anthropologist and Star Fleet intelligence officer named Terise Haleakala-Lobrutto, who has been surgically altered to appear Romulan. She's been on the Romulan homeworld for about 8 years, living a very quiet life and sending periodic reports on Romulan politics, culture and society to Star Fleet. However, everything gets turned upside down when some Romulan intelligence officers show up at her master's house with a prisoner - a high-ranking Star Fleet officer that they've captured and want to keep secreted away until he can be tried for various crimes before an open session of the Romulan Senate. By the way, it's interesting that the blurbs on the back cover of this omnibus volume provide even more sketchy details about the story than I just did, but if you see the cover of the original paperback edition of this book, or go to the Wikipedia page, you immediately know who the imprisoned Star Fleet officer is. (And incidentally, if you're thinking of reading these books, do not consult the Wikipedia pages for them, esp. the first one, because they spoil the hell out of it.) This one is additionally interesting because almost every other chapter is goes deep into Romulan history, describing their split from the Vulcans and eventual settlement of their new homeworlds - they're sort of like excerpts from Haleakala-Lobrutto's intelligence reports. Swordhunt takes place a few months later. This one is really hard to summarize without giving away too much of the story. The Enterprise is again assigned to go to a location near the neutral zone with a contingent of other starships to meet a group of Romulan ships, in order to hold a diplomatic conference that is intended to put Federation/Romulan relations on a better footing, as they've become frayed due to the events recounted in the preceding two novels, and the Romulans really want to secure the extradition of Commander Ael, who's been hiding out in Federation space, where she and her crew sort of have unofficial asylum. Also, Ael now holds an ancient sword that used to rest on an empty throne in the Romulan Senate and has great symbolic significance (she got a hold of it at the end of the preceding novel). The Romulan Empire is in turmoil at this point, as a triumvirate of praetors is trying to seize absolute power, even as its outer colonies - chafing under recent brutal raids by the Klingons - are beginning to rebel, and these divisions are apparent in their diplomatic mission. Everything comes to a head at once at the end of this one, with the conclusion in Duane's last Rihannsu novel, The Empty Chair, which I've just started reading. These are really, thoroughly enjoyable books. There's lots of great action sequences, political intrigues and espionage mixed in with background on the Romulans, as well as some really well thought-out science fiction concepts. And, of course, lots of great character moments involving Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the crew - which now includes one of the children of the Horta among others. Also, certain rather obscure characters from the original series also make brief appearances, so there's something for everyone here. And I really like this cute touch on the title page of the omnibus edition: 
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 7, 2021 10:38:38 GMT -5
I have the Stainless Steel Rat up for a re-read probably pretty darn soon. Wild to think that Harrison started out as a comic book artist.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 7, 2021 10:57:18 GMT -5
Rihannsu: The Bloodwing VoyagesDiane Duane, 2006 I read Duane's Romulan first novels back in the late '80s and really, really liked them (I'd count Spock's World among them). I was very disappointed when the official Trek canon just ignored all of her impressive world building, especially with the dismal "Nemesis" and its Nosferatu-like Remans. I find a little comfort in the fact that fans will consider her work the superior version for as long as we remember it. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Sept 7, 2021 11:41:11 GMT -5
I read Duane's Romulan first novels back in the late '80s and really, really liked them (I'd count Spock's World among them). I was very disappointed when the official Trek canon just ignored all of her impressive world building, especially with the dismal "Nemesis" and its Nosferatu-like Remans. I find a little comfort in the fact that fans will consider her work the superior version for as long as we remember it. Yeah, after reading these books, I dislike that movie all the more - although I hated the idea of the ogre-like Remans from the get-go. In Duane's telling, which is far superior, the inhabitants of Remus (ch'Havran) are no different from any other Romulans physically, and it's more like a twin planet with a temperate atmosphere similar to that of Romulus. As far as I'm concerned, whatever Dorothy Fontana and Duane wrote about the Vulcans and Romulans should be last word.
Anyway, Duane's other Trek novels are definitely on my radar now.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 7, 2021 11:59:24 GMT -5
 Slow Bear by Anthony Neil SmithMicah Slow Bear was a reservation police officer until he lost his arm as a result of a shoot-out. Now he hangs around the res casino giving advice and handling small problems for $10 chips, drinking beer and thinking about flirting with waitress Kylie. When some of his advice goes incredibly wrong and he exacerbates it by an even worse decision he is forced in to going undercover to dig up dirt on an exiled tribe member who was a rival of the Council President. And at every single move Slow Bear seems to make the wrong decision much to the detriment of himself and Kylie, who drove him from the res to the dying Brakken oil fields of North Dakota. This is a short brisk little noir that's maybe just a bit over novella length. Slow Bear is fairly likeable, but can't get out of his own way, much in the tradition of the sad-sack protagonists of David Goodis. You know he knows better, but life has simply eaten him up and spit him out. If I had a complaint it's that the ending is probably a little too spectacular to ring true. But still a nice quick read. |
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Post by Confessor on Sept 7, 2021 12:13:39 GMT -5
I have the Stainless Steel Rat up for a re-read probably pretty darn soon. Wild to think that Harrison started out as a comic book artist. I had no idea. Wikipedia says he started out illustrating for EC comic books like Weird Fantasy and Weird Science. Heh...you learn something new every day. That's doubly interesting because I remember as a kid it was clear that Harrison was following the Stainless Steel Rat comic adaptations by Kelvin Gosnell and Carlos Ezquerra in the pages of 2000 AD; every now and then he would write in to the letters page to comment on Gosnell and Esquerra's work. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 8, 2021 6:43:21 GMT -5
I'm doing some organizing, and I keep seeing things I want to re-read... I'm thinking I might make it a point that every 10 books I read a read something want to re-read or something... anyone do anything like that?
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Post by Confessor on Sept 8, 2021 20:24:05 GMT -5
I'm doing some organizing, and I keep seeing things I want to re-read... I'm thinking I might make it a point that every 10 books I read a read something want to re-read or something... anyone do anything like that? I don't have any formal system like you're planning, but I do enjoy a good re-read. I tend to only revisit books that have made a big impression on me, but usually a fair bit of time passes between those re-reads. I recently revisited The Stainless Steel Rat for example, but it was the first time I'd read it for 35 odd years. Also, maybe a year or so ago I re-read 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time in 10 or 15 years. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are exceptions, insofar as I have re-read them or sections of them countless times and get something new from them every time I do. Those books also feel like old friends that have been with me since my teenage years, so there's a warm, comfy nostalgia to them too. I'm not sure I feel quite that way about any other books. |
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Post by berkley on Sept 8, 2021 22:06:05 GMT -5
I'm doing some organizing, and I keep seeing things I want to re-read... I'm thinking I might make it a point that every 10 books I read a read something want to re-read or something... anyone do anything like that? Oh yeah, I have all kinds of little games or schemes going, whatever you want to call them: basically various devices to organise my reading in some way because I have such a ridiculous number of things on my "to-read" list, far more than I'll likely ever be able to read in one lifetime, that I need to impose some kind of method on the madness, some sort of order on the chaos.
A few years ago, I decided to pursue what I thought would be the modest goal of reading some of the more important-to-me (i.e. subjectively important to me personally) things I hadn't done up to then: that included everything from literary classics like Finnegan's Wake or Blake's prophetic poems to genre stuff like science fiction, American hard-boiled, British thrillers, horror, etc. And since I thought it wouldn't take me all that long - since I didn't plan to read absolutley everything, just a few representative samples - I thought I would do it chronological order.
I stared in the Elizabethan era, because at the time I was thinking mostly of English-language lit, and went through the late 16th through the 17th and 18th centuries at first pretty steadily, but increasingly slowly as I noticed that the more I read the more I found out about new things I wanted to read. This really came to a head towards the end of the 19th century: I reached the 1890s more than a year ago but I keep going back to read earlier things that I suddenly feel I shouldn't have skipped
But because I've been spending so much time in the 19th century that the last few years I've tried to add in a couple 20th or 21st century books every month - which of course slows me down even more - and I have a couple of separate side-paths even for that stuff. But I think I should be able to get into the 20th century soon in my original line of progression - I hope within the next year or so - and then start to catch up on some more recent, post-2000 stuff that I've been putting off for so long.
So my current monthly plan or routine is something like: an earlier 19th-century book that I skipped previously, an 1890s book, a couple late 50s, one of which will be genre (SF, hard-boiled, thriller), and a late 80s-early 90s (usually more straight literature). Of course the monthly deadline doesn't always coincide with finishing one book and starting another, but that's the basic idea. As an illustration, in August I read:
The Rainbow Stories (1989) - William Vollmann
A Rage in Harlem (1957) - Chester Himes
Pnin (1957) - Vladimir Nabokov
History of Civilisation in England v2 (1861) - Henry Thomas Buckle The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta (1854) - John Rollin Ridge Irish Fairy and Folk Tales (?) - William Butler Yeats (ed.)
I may have screwed up with the Yeats book (which I haven't actually finished yet): it was meant to be my 1890s one for the month but my copy says it was first published in 1918. Oh well, I was going to read it anyway at some time or another.
Anyay, I know the whole thng sounds absurdly arbitrary and over-schematic, but I've sort of fallen into this and I find it is a big help in deciding what I want to read next. Another plus is that by focusing so closely on certain areas the last several years, I've come to be pretty good at picking things I'll like: it's very rare now that I'll start a new book and find myself unable to get into it, or have to give it up after a few pages. What's slowing me down is mostly that the earlier 19th century things I'm going back to are all pretty long, so they are actually taking up the bulk of my reading-time every month.
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Post by Confessor on Sept 10, 2021 4:44:18 GMT -5
The War Lord of the Air by Michael Moorcock.  I've been wanting to read this book for a long time. I'd read a synopsis of it online and it sounded like a very interesting premise, and I was intrigued by references to it being the first Steampunk novel (though obviously written years before the term was coined). The War Lord of the Air was first published in 1971 and is set in an alternate timeline in which World War I never happened, peace has reigned for over 100 years, huge airships plough the skyways, and the colonial powers of Britain, Russia and America dominate and control vast areas of the Earth's surface. The book follows the British soldier Oswald Bastable as he is magically transported from North East India in 1902 to the year 1973. Bastable initially marvels at the utopian future that he finds himself in, but he soon gets drawn into the world of anarchists and revolutionaries, and he begins to suspect that this Imperial utopia is founded on decades of colonial oppression and brutality. Bastable himself is a tremendously likeable character and that is one of the book's main strengths. Michael Moorcock creates a very believable alternate late 20th century world and doesn't flinch from showing us that Bastable is very much a product of the British Empire and his Victorian/Edwardian upbringing. The author doesn't spend a whole lot of time fleshing out characters or locales, but nevertheless, the setting feels "real" and three-dimensional. This book is a rather nicely done example of Edwardian literary pastiche, and fittingly Moorcock employs one of the main tropes of Edwardian speculative fiction, in that this is supposed to be a manuscript written in 1903. As such, The Warlord of the Air very much feels like it could've flowed from the pen of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Jules Verne. On the downside, Moorcock injects some fairly blatant and heavy-handed anti-Imperialist and left wing sentiments, which at times kinda took me out of the story, especially in the final third of the book. But there's also a decent amount of action and some really enjoyable character moments too. The book is fast paced and delights in conjuring its alternate history setting, while examining the economic and geopolitical aspects of colonialism. I suppose that mix could conceivably put some readers off, but I found it to be quite fascinating and rather enjoyable overall. I will definitely be reading the two follow-up books in the "Oswald Bastable trilogy".
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 10, 2021 6:29:40 GMT -5
That sounds really interesting!
Ten Plus One
Ed McBain
When my wife and I watch murder mysteries on TV, we often comment that when a SECOND person dies, the good guys have kinda failed. With that standard, the boys at the 87th dealing with a sniper comes out to a truly epic fail.
I don't love it when I figure out the mystery before the detectives do...sometimes it's ok if it's just a random guess, but this one was obvious, and they took a long time to figure out the connects. It kinda felt like they were too buy harassing the innocent witnesses to think for a second.
That's definitely happened in these books before, but it was particularly bad this time.. I'm wondering if that's going to be the plot of a future novel, since the abusers were not members of the main cast, but guys from another Precinct.
This was the first one of these I read a bit out of order, which was no big deal, but it was also the first one that significantly referenced an earlier case, and felt a little less like the writing was from the 'every book in the series is someone's first' style the comics used to use. Which makes me wonder if I should not just read the random ones in the series I've grabbed at the last couple book sales and stick to reading them in order.
For those downsides though ,McBain continues to excel in creating fantastic one off throw away characters... I really like Cynthia Forrest, and the killer was also quite interesting.
The cover, though... ugh. I have another ones with a similar one, why use it again? So boring. Signet really needs to talk to the Hard Case Crime marketers.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 10, 2021 7:45:36 GMT -5
The Moorcock "steampunk" books have been sitting in my Moorcock to read pile for years*, but I never seem to get to that pile. I need to remedy that here sometime soon.
-M
*I picked them up because an associate when I was freelancing in the rpg field highly recommended them to me at Gen Con one year, and I got them at a used book store shortly afterwards, that would have been '06 or '07, so it's been quite a few years in the to read pile.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 10, 2021 8:29:19 GMT -5
The War Lord of the Air by Michael Moorcock. I've been wanting to read this book for a long time. I'd read a synopsis of it online and it sounded like a very interesting premise, and I was intrigued by references to it being the first Steampunk novel (though obviously written years before the term was coined). The War Lord of the Air was first published in 1971 and is set in an alternate timeline in which World War I never happened, peace has reigned for over 100 years, huge airships plough the skyways, and the colonial powers of Britain, Russia and America dominate and control vast areas of the Earth's surface. The book follows the British soldier Oswald Bastable as he is magically transported from North East India in 1902 to the year 1973. Bastable initially marvels at the utopian future that he finds himself in, but he soon gets drawn into the world of anarchists and revolutionaries, and he begins to suspect that this Imperial utopia is founded on decades of colonial oppression and brutality. Bastable himself is a tremendously likeable character and that is one of the book's main strengths. Michael Moorcock creates a very believable alternate late 20th century world and doesn't flinch from showing us that Bastable is very much a product of the British Empire and his Victorian/Edwardian upbringing. The author doesn't spend a whole lot of time fleshing out characters or locales, but nevertheless, the setting feels "real" and three-dimensional. This book is a rather nicely done example of Edwardian literary pastiche, and fittingly Moorcock employs one of the main tropes of Edwardian speculative fiction, in that this is supposed to be a manuscript written in 1903. As such, The Warlord of the Air very much feels like it could've flowed from the pen of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Jules Verne. On the downside, Moorcock injects some fairly blatant and heavy-handed anti-Imperialist and left wing sentiments, which at times kinda took me out of the story, especially in the final third of the book. But there's also a decent amount of action and some really enjoyable character moments too. The book is fast paced and delights in conjuring its alternate history setting, while examining the economic and geopolitical aspects of colonialism. I suppose that mix could conceivably put some readers off, but I found it to be quite fascinating and rather enjoyable overall. I will definitely be reading the two follow-up books in the "Oswald Bastable trilogy". I love that trilogy! Have you had a chance to read The Adventures of Luther Arkwright? It owes a lot to Moorcock's uchronias. |
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Post by Confessor on Sept 10, 2021 9:48:07 GMT -5
I love that trilogy! Have you had a chance to read The Adventures of Luther Arkwright? It owes a lot to Moorcock's uchronias. I haven't, no, but I really like Bryan Talbot a lot. His Alice in Sunderland is fantastic. I'll have to check the Adventures of Luther Arkwright stuff out. Thanks. |
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