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Post by Rob Allen on Nov 15, 2021 19:29:30 GMT -5
Is it weird that I look at that site's name and see it as "Goo Dreads"?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 15, 2021 21:51:29 GMT -5
Is it weird that I look at that site's name and see it as "Goo Dreads"? Yes. Well you asked. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 15, 2021 23:29:28 GMT -5
I agree, it's kinda weird, but who are we to judge.. this is the classic comics forum, if we we're weird, we wouldn't be here  Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock When I saw Slam's review of this.... I immediately thought that perhaps this was a better done job at looking at things than Project Pope, which was almost great, but petered out a bit. This one doesn't get distracted from it's focus... did the man make the religion, or did the religion create the man? And it tells us very definitely which.. but since it's Time Travel, its a loop, so did which is it, really? Good stuff. But...it's time travel. And even though the time travel is just a the deus ex machina to tell the story, it almost invalidates the point. Because if Karl can go back in time, why can't others? Whose to say all those visions and angels weren't just fellow travellers? I suppose that misses the point of the book, but I can't help it.. I hate time travel. The chutzpah in this book is amazing, matched only by the arrogance to wonder why it the book would generate death threats. (my copy had a afterward by the author, written in 1996, that was both a humble shout out to those who inspired him and an arrogant condemning of those that 'don't get it') I suspect that at the time it was written it was quite unique, but seems less so now. I'll certainly give the extra points for orginality though, and it certainly meets my most important quality for good sci fi.. it makes you think. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 19, 2021 23:18:42 GMT -5
Five Little Pigs
by Agatha Christie
This was a bit different than usual... a Poirot cold case, as he talks to, gets written stories, then does his reveal with the 5 people involved in a murder 16 years previous. Poirot is really a great character here, but the mystery was a bit of a trick... one of the 'facts' suddenly changed at the end and the culprit was out of nowhere... not my favorite way to twist the ending. The unique format makes it interesting to try to follow though..it's almost like the whole book is meant to be a puzzle.
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Post by berkley on Nov 20, 2021 0:51:54 GMT -5
I agree, it's kinda weird, but who are we to judge.. this is the classic comics forum, if we we're weird, we wouldn't be here Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock When I saw Slam's review of this.... I immediately thought that perhaps this was a better done job at looking at things than Project Pope, which was almost great, but petered out a bit. This one doesn't get distracted from it's focus... did the man make the religion, or did the religion create the man? And it tells us very definitely which.. but since it's Time Travel, its a loop, so did which is it, really? Good stuff. But...it's time travel. And even though the time travel is just a the deus ex machina to tell the story, it almost invalidates the point. Because if Karl can go back in time, why can't others? Whose to say all those visions and angels weren't just fellow travellers? I suppose that misses the point of the book, but I can't help it.. I hate time travel. The chutzpah in this book is amazing, matched only by the arrogance to wonder why it the book would generate death threats. (my copy had a afterward by the author, written in 1996, that was both a humble shout out to those who inspired him and an arrogant condemning of those that 'don't get it') I suspect that at the time it was written it was quite unique, but seems less so now. I'll certainly give the extra points for orginality though, and it certainly meets my most important quality for good sci fi.. it makes you think.
I've read a fair bit of Moorcock but not this famous short story or the collection it appears in. Should be geting to it within the next year or so, I hope, if I continue my slow progression through some of the SF and other genre stuff I missed in my younger days. Of course in this case, it's hard not to have gathered by now what the gist of the story is - I may even have read the comic book adaptation back in the 70s - in Unknown Worlds of SF, was it? At any rate, I probably won't be able to experience that shock of first discovery, but I'm still looking forward to reading Moorcock's original as I thnk he is a really good writer (if possibly a little over-prolific!) and I like the way he puts his words together.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 20, 2021 18:27:00 GMT -5
I don't think the story relies on shock at all.. it's pretty clear where its going almost from the start.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 21, 2021 20:48:47 GMT -5
Mindbridge
by Joe Haldeman
I had got this one for the Hugo Award winners good reads book club, but it took too long to come in and I lost track of it for a while... I found it yesterday and gave it a go :)This is definitely a unique book... it's presented almost like it was a pile of research you were doing in your were writing a grade school report pre-internet...charts, reports, first person accounts, excerpts, even a song. It works.. I definitely felt immersed in the world and story.
That world is a near future one at the beginnings of interstellar travel.. with the some unique twists. There's a weird mix of careful explaining of some of the science, but more often, hand waves or stuff that the people in the book don't understand either. At heart, it's mostly a first contact novel, and a pretty typical one at that. The unique format makes it worth the read though.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 22, 2021 13:47:43 GMT -5
 Prague Fatale by Philip KerrAfter a fairly weak effort in Field Gray, Bernie Gunther is back to form. Well he's back to someone's form, though it's a bit unusual form for Gunther. Gunther is summoned to Prague by newly appointed Reichsprotector of of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, to act as his bodyguard/personal detective. Gunther is almost immediately thrown in to a locked-room mystery by the murder of one of Heydrich's adjutants. All this when Gunther was trying to solve a murder in Berlin that may have involved the "Three Kings" of the Czech Resistance Movement and starting a relationship with another young lady. This is a return to Gunther acting the detective with the added wrinkle of a locked-room mystery. Gunther is not Hercule Poirot. Or Miss Marple. He's much more likely to bull ahead until he forces the answer than to intuit it based on clues cleverly placed by the author. That give the book a bit of a fish out of water feel. Add in the fact that the realistic suspects are high-ranking officers in the SS and Gestapo, who are clearly supposed to be above suspicion, and Bernie is treading on thin ice, even with the support of Heydrich (whose support is always terrifying). I felt like this may have been the strongest outing since the original trilogy. Part of it may have been a return to Gunther acting the detective and part of it may have been that he was acting that outside the confines of his safe place of Berlin. Whatever it was, it was a good outing. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 22, 2021 14:17:48 GMT -5
Is it weird that I look at that site's name and see it as "Goo Dreads"? I almost forgot to mention - 'goo dreads' is now the only way I'm reading that. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 23, 2021 17:43:16 GMT -5
I'm re-reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ... it's been a while (maybe 15 years) and I realize when my oldest took an interest and read it I needed to... such great stuff. I think there might be even MORE stuff from here I quote regularly than from Monty Python.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 24, 2021 1:14:46 GMT -5
Finished Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest earlier this evening...  This was my first go round with an of the Continental Op books by Hammett and I quite liked it. I am not sure anything can equal my love of The Maltese Falcon by Hammett, but I was completely enthralled by this and need to find a way to get more Hammett in my library. -M |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 24, 2021 5:26:24 GMT -5
I think all five of Hammett's novels are top-notch. My personal favorite, though, is The Glass Key (like, by a long shot).
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Post by brutalis on Nov 24, 2021 7:58:33 GMT -5
Finished Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest earlier this evening... This was my first go round with an of the Continental Op books by Hammett and I quite liked it. I am not sure anything can equal my love of The Maltese Falcon by Hammett, but I was completely enthralled by this and need to find a way to get more Hammett in my library. -M Great minds and all that. I have had this and the other Hammett books in my to read pile for quite awhile now. I just finished off Red Harvest about 2-3 weeks ago. Really enjoyed it too. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2021 0:21:25 GMT -5
Death Angel's Shadow by Karl Edward Wagner  I first discovered Karl Edward Wagner via Conan pastiches when I was a freshman in high school. I read a couple of Kane books at university borrowed from a friend, but hadn't revisited Wagner since then. I've picked up most of the Kane books over the years, but hadn't cracked them open since my university days, until about a week ago. I decided I wanted to give some of the shorter Kane stories a go, so picked up this collection off my shelf and started in on it. The first two were longer, novella length tales (Reflections on the Winter of My Soul and Cold Light) while the last (Mirage) was truly the only short story in the collection. All were solid. Wagner was my favorite of the Conan pastiche writers in high school, and I always held a fondness for Kane, but after all these years it was just an ok read for me this time around. I think I will hit one of the novels and see if that is any different, but it just may be that my tastes have moved in different directions over time. It wasn't bad by any means, it was solid sword and sorcery fare, and I still like Kane's prose overall, just didn't resont with me as it did in the past. -M |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 3, 2021 13:46:55 GMT -5
 Jimmy the Kid by Donald WestlakeDortmunder is back and once again he listens to Kelp and gets himself in to a caper that goes off the rails. While in county jail Kelp came across a book about a thief named Parker written by Richard Stark. Kelp feels like they should use the book as a blueprint for their next caper (which clearly infringes on Dortmunder's role as planner). The meta-commentary here is a hoot, given that Richard Stark was one of Donald Westlake's pen names and that the first Dortmunder novel started life as a Parker novel. The caper itself involves a kidnapping and ransom of a child and, as usual, almost everything goes wrong. While I found this to be a decent read it is the weakest of the three Dortmunder books thus far. Jimmy, the kidnap victim, is just a little too smart. And the gang, particularly Dortmunder himself, is just a little too dumb. At this point it's becoming increasingly hard to figure out why the entire gang isn't in prison and why Dortmunder doesn't just confine himself to eking out a living with the encyclopedia scam. |
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