FFB: Adam Link Robot – Eando Binder

Tags

Forgotten Books, Science Fiction

Adam Link-Robot by Eando Binder

Adam Link was the main character in a series of ten stories by two brothers, Earl and Otto Binder, that were published under the name Eando Binder, E and O Binder. His first appearance was in a story titled I, Robot that appeared in the January, 1939 issue of Amazing Stories. It has no connection with the Isaac Asimov book of the same title(the story goes that when the collection of Asimov robot stories was to be published, the Doctor wanted the title Mind and Iron. The publisher changed it to I, Robot over Asimov’s objections).

Adam Link’s stories are all told in the first person from the robot’s point of view. He was first built by Dr. Charles Link, his “father”, with an iridium-sponge brain that gives him an  artificial intelligence.  He learns quickly, reading a book in just a few minutes, remembering everything exactly, eventually going through Doctor Link’s  entire library. The Doctor plans to sponsor him for United States citizenship as a person.  But, before that can happen, Link is killed in an accident and Adam is blamed for murdering him.

The first story and the second, The trial of Adam Link, Robot have twice been filmed on both versions of the Outer Limits, the early sixties original and the nineties version, as I, Robot. The later version starred Leonard Nimoy as Adam’s defense attorney.

The book, Adam Link-Robot was published in 1965 by Warner Books as a fix-up, the stories rewritten to make a novel. After his name is cleared, Adam embarks on a series of adventures to prove he’s “human” and not a machine that should be patented. The edition I have is the third printing, January, 1974.

He goes into business as a consultant to businesses, amassing a considerable sum of money, uses it to finance the rejuvenation of slums, builds a female version of himself, Eve of course, using his secretary to teach and prep her as a female, gets betrayed by a friend and used to rob banks, becomes an undercover detective to find the fiend who framed Eve for the murder of three hoodlums, performs a series of athletic endeavors, and has to fight aliens in the defense of the human race. All in the attempt to gain citizenship and be “human”.

I’ve never read the ten stories in their original forms(they are a bit before my time). As far as I know, this fix-up novel is their only book form. I wouldn’t mind seeing some publisher put out the stories in a collection as they originally appeared in the magazines(Is there anybody out there listening?).

The book seems to be available on the used sites at reasonable prices.

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Jackknife-William W. Johnstone with J.A. Johnstone

Tags

thriller

I just finished the latest Willam W. Johnstone thriller, Jackknife It’s a good, quick read.

The time is a few years into the next Prresident’s administration. She’s a strong-willed liberal with a young handsome black man as her vice-President. Obviously written about a year ago, in all fairness, the choice the author made seemed the logical one at the time.

A terrorist group is planning a 9-11 type strike for the day after Thanksgiving, one of the biggest shopping days of the year. It’s the grand opening of an Ultra-Megamart in Fort Worth, Texas.  The sleeper cell sets off several car bombs around town just to get the world’s attention, then have an even bigger explosion planned.

Word comes out of Pakistan about the plan by a wounded undercover agent, but they’re a bit late.

What the terrorists don’t know is that a Megamart truck driver named Jack McCabe is also loose in the store to meet his wife and daughter. Jackknife is his nickname AND call sign. A former specialforces officer, he’d battled terrorists before. He takes the job of organizing some of the Texans into a force to stop the terrible plan. Not everyone in America is a bleating sheep.

Will he succeed? Read the book and find out. Well worth the price.

Hollywood and Their Piles of Flop

Tags

Asimov, SFclassics

I read an announcement this morning that a group was planning an adaptation of Asimov’s Foundation. I cringed when I read that. It wasn’t clear whether they meant the first book, Foundation, or were adapting the series and taking elements from all the books. Either way, I fear for the results.

Hollywood’s track record for adapting literary science fiction is spotty at best.

I, Robot was ostensibly based on the Asimov collection of  stories. Not even close. The script was already written when they bought the rights to the book, just for the title, then patched Asimov’s three laws of robotics into said script. Having seen the movie, I can promise you the robots violated the laws at every opportunity.

Bicentennial Man I haven’t seen. I heard it was terrible. It was a hit at the box office, I understand, but that was undoubtedly because of Robin Williams’ prescense and not because of the high quality SF. I suspect most of the people who saw the movie never read the Asimov story it was based on, or were even aware that it was an adaptation.

I recently saw A Sound of Thunder, based on the Ray Bradbury story of the same title. An awful movie, it would have fit right in to the SCI-FI channel’s Saturday line-up of turgid thrillers, which is in fact where I saw it.

I Am Legend was the third adaptation of the classic novel. At least they used the title this time. Another Will Smith action movie, but the third miss out of three on getting it right.

I’ve also seen where there getting ready to screw up Dune for the third time. You see how much faith I have in Hollywood. They’ll get it wrong once more.

I’m sure there have been adaptations of SF novels that have worked. But they escape me.

update: They’ve remade The Day The Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves. God Help us all!

Favre In Limbo

Tags

NFL, Packers

The latest in the Brett Favre soap opera:

Will he file for reinstatement and report to the Packers camp to force their hand?

At one time, I was sympathetic to Favre. Despite the last three years where he played his little game of -Will I retire?-Will I come back?-dragging things out far longer than he should have. The Packers were patient to a much greater degree each season than what seemed reasonable.

Last season, he said he was done, retiring, physically still able to play but mentally spent. I understood all that. Thirty-eight for an athlete, particularly a quarterback, is getting old. It gets harder every year to get everything working at maximum at the same time.

He kept waffling this year, though, yes I will, no I won’t, yes I will. I think Favre underestimated the Packers continuing to put up with his BS. He seemed genuinely surprised that they wouldn’t welcome him back with open arms. They got tired and took him at his last change of heart back in March, deciding to move forward. Franchises in any professional sport have to plan years down the road. They can’t sit back and wait on the vagaries of an aging athlete.

Why does he want to come back again? On The John Boy and Billy syndicated radio show, they made reference that his wife and agent were pushing him. They laughed and John Boy said that maybe his wife just didn’t want him underfoot the year round. Could be.

Then there are the charges of collusion with the Vikings. I’m not sure what to make of all that. I can’t imagine that Favre and the Vikings’ staff would ever believe the Packers would just cut him loose to play for whoever he felt like.

I think Favre needs to retire. It’s time. He says let him worry about his reputation. There is validity in that.

However, I’m old enough to remember how pitiful Johnny Unitas looked as a Charger, a lame Joe Namath playing for the Rams, Willy Mays dropping catches, unable to hit like the old days, as a Met, Sugar Ray leonard in his last two fights more concerned about protecting himself than winning the bout(paydays surely because I can’t imagine him wanting THAT limelight), Muhammed Ali’s last fight against Larry Holmes(most people agree this was the fight that caused the damages that haunt him today).

I’d like to remember Favre the way he finished last season, at the top of his game. Can he do it again? Remember, the previous two seasons, Favre looked like a man playing out his string, hanging on for that next paycheck, more interceptions than touchdown passes.

Can he repeat last season? Or will we see a replay of those two before? Odds are, with a new team, I’d suspect we’ll see the bad Favre.

But that’s just one fan’s opinion. I’m by no means an expert. On ESPN, everyone seems to agree that any team would be better off with him than without. Maybe. It seems the Favre sweepstakes has narrowed to the Jets and the Bucs. But remember one thing about any sweepstakes. You lose far more often than you win.

FFB: THe Man Who Moved A Mountain

Tags

Biography, religion

The book I’m talking about today for Patti Abbot’s Forgotten Books project is rather personal to my family. Copies have been circulating for years until most have read it. I own one, my mother two.The title is THE MAN WHO MOVED A MOUNTAIN by Richard C. Davids and it’s a biography of a man named Bob Childress and the changes he wrought in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia after he became a preacher. More than a biography, it’s a portrait of the mountain folks’ life in the early twentieth century, a lot of detail, a wonderful story of a hardy people.

It was first published in 1970 and is still in print today. Amazon has new copies, as well as used, for sale.

What makes it personal is that my grandfather, though a little younger, lived in the same area and grew into a young man there. The building of the Blue Ridge Parkway split the family farm in half, it was sold and everyone scattered to begin new lives elsewhere. There’s a family cemetery up there where the oldest headstone we’ve found still legible is during the Civil War. There’s an even older, small cemetery we’re trying to locate now. We’ve been told it’s considerably overgrown. The oldest member of our grandfather’s line we’ve traced is buried there(b. 1768, d. 1851).  Great-Grandmother’s line we’ve tentatively traced all the way back to Scotland.

After the farm was sold, “Papa” came down into North Carolina where he met my Grandmother and they started their branch of the family tree. Four generations, forty-seven people, the last two generations still adding.

Back to Bob Childress.

Buffalo Mountain was extremely isolated. Bordered by streams, at times after big storms, they were unfordable. Moonshine was the sole enterprise, there being plenty of apples and corn, water, wood for the fires, sugar the only  thing needed to be bought.

It was a hard life for Bob Childress growing up, no different, really, from any other family, a hard scrabble existence. His parents were heavy drinkers and his first memory was of being drunk at three.

Until I read this book, I’d always believed the East was civilized. But on Buffalo Mountain, even well into the twentieth century, every man went armed and disputes were settled with guns. Murder was not uncommon. And Washington, D.C. was only two hundred twenty miles away. It was every bit as wild as anything in the old west.

Shortly after his birth in January, 1890, Childress’ older brother, all of fourteen, faced down two deputies, with a pistol, that were taking away his mother in handcuffs for “acting peculiarly.” He forced them to let her go and took her home.

Another incident mentioned was a man was being tried for assaulting a deputy. Twenty members of his clan rode in armed and killed the judge, the prosecutor, the sheriff, shot three members of the jury and two bystanders, then rode off into the hills with the rescued defendant.

Childress had some education, at his brother’s insistence, as a woman, a sort of missionary, came up from Guilford College and taught anyone who wanted to learn. That lasted until he was fourteen, when she married and left. At about the same time, his brother married and left the family home.

That’s when Bob Childress’ hell-raising started.

For the next six years, he hung out around stills , drank and played cards, fought with rocks.  At fifteen, he bought his first gun.

Now he was a man!

He had his jaw broke in a fight. He was knocked unconscious with a liquor bottle waking up hours later, bloody and alone, abandoned by both friends and family. He was shot in the shoulder and leg in separate incidents. His twentieth year was spent rarely sober.

Then one morning he woke up miles from home in front of a church, with no idea how he got there. He heard singing and went inside. A revival was happening. At the end of the service,  he went forward and was saved. That night, he slept without drink and the next morning he left his pistol alone. He returned every night and knew a peace he hadn’t felt all his life.

The drinking slowed, he married,  had two children, blacksmithed, served two years as a deputy(where the chief crime was U.M.A.S, the unlawful manufacture of ardent spirits).He lost his wife during a flu epidemic.  A group from a Primitive Baptist church asked him to be their preacher. With his booming voice, he was destined to be  a voice of God. They were even willing to overlook the fact that he could read and write.

Primitive Baptists believed education was a sin and that Sunday school and night meetings were the work of the Devil. What wasn’t a sin was moonshine and settling disputes with a gun.

He married again.

The rest of the book details the efforts of a thirty year old man with four children(eventually to swell to eight) to complete his education in order to be a trained minister(he’d only completed eighth grade), his battles to overcome a prejudice toward education, break the stranglehold  moonshine had on people, the mistrust folks had of anyone who wasn’t family, and get bridges built across the big streams to relieve the mountain’s isolation(the moonshiners didn’t want them because it gave the “revenoors” easy access).  He was responsible for getting a sawmill started to bring a new industry to the mountain and a number of beautiful rock churches built, many which still stand today.

One quote I really liked was a woman referring to Childress. “The Preacher made books seem like a big box of candy just waitin’ to be tasted.”

The book is full of many things I’m familiar with. To this day, my Mother says sallet instead of salad when referring to greens of any type. My Grandfather had a small grocery store open 6-to-6 six days a week. He came home to a hot lunch every day.  Always beside his plate was a bowl for his cornbread and buttermilk, a staple mentioned in the book.

My Uncle and I have discussed the book and laughingly wondered about something. “Papa” never talked much about his early years that I remember. We just wondered passingly if he ever did any of the things mentioned. He was a highly moral man. Who knows?

It’s a wonderful book full of photographs from the era and I think anyone would enjoy a look at life in those long ago days.

P.S. One town mentioned near Buffalo Mountain back then was Mayberry, about forty miles north of Mount Airy, N.C. As Andy Griffith was born and raised in Mount Airy, it doesn’t take much of a stretch to figure where he got the name of his little town on the show.

My First Movie

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Lone Ranger

I got to thinking about movies today and the easy availabity almost everywhere. You can buy them, rent them(I just signed up with Netflix), watch them on television(with cable and dish service) on innumerable channels, whether On Demand or just old movie channels. Oh, and mustn’t forget  theaters and drive-ins(my little town has one of the few drive-ins in the south and a booming business they do in the summer).

One wonders how long those last two will last. Probably forever, but at a must reduced rate. With the advent of big screen TVs, DVRs, and just the sheer easiness of watching a movie at home with all the creature comforts within a hand’s reach, I think theater going will gradually slow to a trickle. It will probably take a while, though, until us dinosaurs all die out.

Even now, I myself  watch all my movies on TV. Being disabled, It takes a huge effort, and help, to get out to a theater. It’s just so much easier….

When I was a child, there was only three channels( four when the weather conditions were right:PBS).

I can still remember seeing my first movie in a theater. My Mother took my two sisters and myself to see THE LONE RANGER AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD. That would have been the summer of 1958. I was nine at the time, the oldest of the three siblings. I don’t even remember much about the plot.

It’s the experience I remember. The seedy lobby of The Balmar Theater, that glorious smell of the popcorn, sitting in the dark with the family watching The Lone Ranger! It was a totally new adventure for a small boy and the last for a long while.

There wasn’t a lot of money back then. Mama was raising the three of us without any help from dear old dad. But that’s another sad story. I know she must have scrimped and saved just to give us that theater visit.

I wonder how many people can remember the very first movie in a theater?

That kind of thing is starting to disappear. Even when I was still seeing movies at the local cineplex(they rarely call them theaters anymore), It seemed like so many of the young people were more interested in socializing than actually watching the movie. Thank God I stopped before cell phones grew so huge. I’ve heard horror stories from friends about endless conversations behind and in front of them. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.

The world has changed a lot since I was a boy. Not all of it good to my way of thinking.

Four Movies-Three Novels-One Character

Tags

Parker, Richard Stark

Point Blank(1967)

Slayground(1984)

Payback(Theatrical version, 1999)

Payback(Director’s Cut, 2007)

Parker is a character in a series of novels by Richard Stark, Donald Westlake’s noir alter ego. He’s a man that makes his living stealing large chunks of money. It doesn’t matter where: payrolls, banks, race tracks, ball games. wherever large amonts of cash are handled. There’s a network of like minds that work together in various combinations to acquire large sums of money, splitting the take after the heat dies down.

Parker has his own set of morals. he works with different people, will only use violence as a last resort. But he won’t hesitate to use that violence if necessary. Above all, don’t cross him. He will never betray a partner, take any part of the loot that’s not his. But if you double cross him, he’ll go to extraordinary lengths to make sure you pay.

Eight movies have been made from the novels. For some reason, in none of the eight is the name Parker used. Four of the films  don’t seem to be available in any form that I can find. Those are listed below.

Mise A’ Sac, A French film based on The Score. Georges is the charcter’s name.

The Split, based on the Seventh. Jim Brown plays McClain in this one.

Made in U.S.A., based on The Jugger. Parker morphs into a woman named Pamela Nelson in this one.

The Outfit, based on the novel of the same title. Robert Duvall plays Earl Macklin in this one. Because of Duvall’s presence, you’d  think this one would be easily available.

That’s all I know about these four.

Now to the four listed at the top. Spoilers abound from here out.

Point Blank is based on The Hunter, the first of the Parker novels, It stars Lee Marvin as Walker, a man double-crossed by his wife and his friend after a heist and left for dead. His friend wants to buy his way back into the mob.

A year later, he’s after his cut of the money and revenge for his betrayal by two important people in his life. This time he has a “cop” feeding him information. The “cop” just wants to break the mob, doesn’t care about Walker and his concerns.

He finds his wife, who dies from an overdose of sleeping pills. Whether it’s accidental is never made clear. Walker starts working his way up the ladder, looking for Reese, the friend that betrayed him, avoiding  traps with aid of his sister-in-law, who Reese’s fancies. Walker kill everyone who crosses him along the way, until he ferrets out the real plan. The “cop” has been using him to clear out everyone until he’s left running the mob in Los Angeles.

Despite the strange ending, Walker walking away with no money, the false cop still alive, I like this one the best of the four.

Slayground, based on the novel of the same title,  stars Peter Coyote as Stone. He and two partners take down an armored car on a country road.They have to use a  substitute driver when the one planned is inadvertently killed on a traffic stop. Overzealous driving during the escape, they get involved in an auto accident that kills a rich man’s young daughter.

He hires a killer to track and  murder all connected. He starts, kills everyone else, and tracks Stone down in an amusement park out of country. It takes a heroic struggle before Stone comes out on top.

In this one they softened the Parker too much, making him come off  little whiney for my tastes. In the novel, Parker was sorry about the death, but was more interested in saving his own skin. I liked this one the least.

Payback, with Mel Gibson as Porter, is based on The Hunter and comes in two versions, the theatrical and the director’s cut. They are radically different. Same basic plot as Point Blank discussed above. But no fake cop in this one. Just a man after his money and revenge.

The beginnings are wholly different, In the theatrical version, Porter is having slugs dug out of his back by a doctor, the sort with no license and well paid to keep his mouth shut. Once recovered, he enters the city to begin his hunt. In the director’s cut, he’s recovered and entering the city walking, ragged and almost looking homeless. That’s the way The Hunter begins.

The wife’s a heroin junkie and, after Porter finds her, dies of an overdose from a stash that Porter missed. He starts working his way up the food chain in both versions until he reaches the top. This is where the two versions split widely. In the director’s cut, the whole subplot with Kris Kristofferson’s character, Bronson, the kidnapping of his son to extort Porter’s money, Porter’s torture to reveal the son’s location, the trap to get all the mob bosses in one place, the phone bomb, and the happy ending, of a sort, are all gone.

Bronson’s a woman in the director’s cut and is never seen, just heard over a phone. After the murder of one boss and the near hijacking of another, Bronson and Porter set up a drop for the exchange. Of course, a double-cross is planned and Porter works diligently on the sly to take out all the mob men ready to kill him when he takes the money.

Missing one, an innocuous looking woman, Porter ends up in a shoot-out with the woman and another few gunmen, taking them all down, but getting a few bullets himself.

The girl friend roars up in the limousine, drags him in, and they drive off. Both versions end the same, but Porter’s a little worse in the second version.

Both had their good points, but I think the director’s cut was the best. Apparently, the studio, or Mel Gibson, wanted a bit friendlier movie, if you can say that about such a viloent movie, either version.

FFB:Booked To Die-John Dunning

Tags

Forgotten Books, John Dunning, mystery

Booked To Die introduced me to three things. The elegant prose of John Dunning, the world of the book scout, and his character, Cliff Janeway. The book was first published in 1992.  Book prices in this post would be 1992 prices.

Cliff Janeway is a Denver homicide detective. The murder of a book scout sends him down a path that changes his life.

A book scout prowls book sales, estate sales, second hand stores, and such, looking for that rare first edition book that he can pick up cheaply and resell for a good sum. It’s a hard life because true finds are few and far between.

Robert Westfall, known locally as Bobby the Bookscout, looked like a homeless person. He eked out a bare living finding first edition books. He was found murdered. While checking out his apartment, Janeway finds fifteen high quality first editions that he conservatively estimates at a worth of  three thousand dollars

Where had Bobby found such a valuable stash? Was it responsible for his death?

Janeway has a suspect,  a creepy character named Jackie Newton. In pursuit of Newton, Janeway goes a bit far and it costs him his badge.

He then uses his savings to open a rare book store and continues to search for evidence against Newton on the side. Dead bodies start to turn up and more rare, quality first editions start coming out of the woodwork. So to speak.

Janeway believes that a fantastic collection is out there somewhere and a murderer is after it. Janeway goes after it also.

It all makes for a nifty little mystery. Booked To Die was the first of a series which has been a bit up and down. The Bookman’s Wake is another superior entry.

It might be time for new readers of mysteries to check out the first two anyway. The prose is smoothly written.

A forgotten Friday book indeed.

Range War In Whiskey Hill-Charles G. West

Tags

Charles G. West, western

Range War In Whiskey Hill is Charles G. West’s twenty-second western novel. He began his writing career with a science fiction story titled The Tenant, a modern day take on the Frankenstein story. It had a very small print run. I’ve been told that I own one of only 2500 copies.  Since then, he’s concentrated on “historical” novels.

I don’t know who looks after the Fantastic Fiction listings, but they have Mr. West’s books mixed with another Charles West, a teacher from Fresno, California. They also have Tanner’s Law listed as coming out in September at $27.95. Signet brought out a paperback in January at $5.99.

Recently, Mr. West has started writing standalones. Before, he did books in groups of three, except for one four volume sequence.

Colt McCrae went to prison at eighteen after being misidentified as part of a bank robbery in which a man was killed. The one that actually did the killing hung and Colt got a ten year prison sentence. Two people could have cleared him, but didn’t for their own reasons. One, the actual outlaw for which he was misidentified, a friend of McCrae’s, and an embarrassed young woman.

Six months before he’s released, Colt gets a letter from his uncle, telling him his father had been killed, shot in the back. Everyone knows who’s responsible, a wealthy rancher named Frank Drummond. He’d bought out or run out every other rancher but Colt’s father and uncle.

Upon release, the young man returns home to help defend the ranch he now co-owns with his brother and his uncle’s, as well as find his father’s murderer. A hired killer named Bone is brought in to stop McCrae.

Yes, the range war plot is not new. Rather well used as a matter of fact. But I like the way Mr. West builds his characters and their relationships. He has an easy, fast flowing style that draws one in. His books and plots have gotten better with each succeeding volume.

Finally, I suppose I’m colored in my opinions by my having a tenuous, very tenuous, connection to the novelist. I worked for his brother twenty-five years ago and the man, now retired, still lives here in Eden, North Carolina. That’s how I first became aware of him, as his brother came into the Waldenbooks, where I was working parttime then, every time a new book was published.

Recommended, as well as any of the other twenty-one.

The Night Remembers-Ed Gorman

Tags

Ed Gorman, mystery

I just finished The Night Remembers by Ed Gorman. This edition is the Ramble House, a handsome book from Fender Tucker’s imprint. I have the trade paperback with an understated cover by Lou Carbone. The introduction is by Bill Pronzini, which is appropriate, as the introduction reads:

This is for Bill Pronzini and somebody else who shall remain Nameless

Mr. Pronzini does a much more eloquent job of pointing out Ed Gorman’s skill as a writer than I ever could. I’m a fairly late comer to Gorman’s books, having just discovered him in the last few years as I began prowling the internet and finding blogs of interest. He’s one of a number of writers with whom I’m engaged in trying to catch up.

A probably never ending job as I’m so far behind and they all continue to publish.

Jack Walsh is an early sixties retired policeman, a widower. He serves as an ad hoc manager of his apartment building for a reduction on the rent, supplementing his income as a private investigator. He has a lady friend much younger and they have a baby together. She has health problems that are addressed throughout much of the novel.

All that’s what I liked about Walsh. He’s just an everyman, someone with which most of us can identify. He’s definitely not your stereotypical fictional PI, the fist-fighting, gun-slinging type that generally shows up on to many network TV series.

One day, a woman named Lisa Pennyfeather shows up at Walsh’s office and wants to hire him to prove her husband innocent of a murder for which he’d been convicted and served a twelve year prison term. The catch was that Walsh, while still a policeman, had arrested George Pennyfeather for that crime years ago.

Walsh refuses the case, still believing the husband guilty. Later that night, he gets an urgent phone call from the woman, wanting him to come to her home, saying something had happened. What he finds is a woman stabbed to death in a gazebo on the property, amidst a party going on to celebrate Pennyfeather’s release from prison.

Walsh gets caught up in the case then.

What follows is a couple of more murders, another PI, lies upon untruths, the horrendous crimes behind the whole mess. All this while having to deal with his lady’s health, which takes up a good portion of the novel.

I liked this mystery. It was unpredictable. Whenever I thought I knew what was going on(after all, I’ve read a lot of these things), Gorman leads you off down a different path.

This is the only Walsh novel, his one previous appearance a novelette, “Friends”, in 1990. I would love to see more.

Worth a look.

P.S.: Pronzini is another one I’m behind on, having not read any of the Nameless novels. I guess I need to get up off may butt and find some of them.