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Monthly Archives: August 2008

August Book Round-up

31 Sunday Aug 2008

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

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Th: 101: Breaking Cover- J. D. Rhoades

SF: 102: Exceptions To Reality- Alan Dean Foster

Ad: 103: The New Destroyer: Killer Ratings- Warren Murphy & Jim Delaney

Fa: 104: Owls Hoot In The Daytime and Other Omens-Manly Wade Wellman

Fa: 105: Who Fears The Devil?- Manly Wade Wellman

PH:106: The Shadow: Crime, Insured- Walter Gibson

PH:107: The Shadow: The Golden Vulture- Lester Dent & Walter Gibson

SF: 108: The Accidental Time Machine- Joe Haldeman

We: 109: Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man: Purgatory- William W, Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

SF:  110: Zoe’s Tale- John Scalzi

SF:  111: Daybreak-2250 A.D.(Star Man’s Son)- Andre Norton

We: 112: Sidewinders- William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

Ad: 113: Tales of Zorro-edited by Richard Dean Starr

August Movie Round-up

31 Sunday Aug 2008

Posted by Randy Johnson in movies

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Stagecoach(1939)

Murder, My Sweet(1944)

The Killer Shrews(1959)

Alvarez Kelly(1966)

El Dorado(1966)

Hour of The Gun(1967)

The Way West(1967)\

Marlowe(1969)

A Man Called Horse(1970)

The Long Goodbye(1973)

The Big Sleep(1978)

The Bourne Ultimatum(2007)

The Brave One(2007)

The Bucket List(2007)

Death Sentence(2007)

Gone Baby Gone(2007)

No Country For Old Men(2007)

Live Free Or Die Hard(2007)

Star Trek:Of Gods and Men(online movie)(2007-8)

Murder, My Sweet(Dick Powell)

31 Sunday Aug 2008

Posted by Randy Johnson in movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

film noir, Philip Marlowe

I just finished watching Murder, My Sweet with Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe. I must say it was a complete turnaround from the last Marlowe film I saw, Robert Mitchum’s The Big Sleep.

I’m not that familiar with Dick Powell’s work, but he seemed perfect as the world weary, cynical Marlowe. Other sources say this film turned his career around, shedding his nice guys only image. Not that Marlowe was a bad guy. Just the tough character I suppose they figured Powell couldn’t bring off.

This movie had the right look, set in the forties where Marlowe belongs. Some of the recent films I’ve reviewed didn’t get it right. Elliot Gould’s The Long Goodbye looked to modern and Gould was not Philip Marlowe. The only thing that saved that film was Leigh Brackett’s script. James Garner’s Marlowe had him interacting with hippies(shudder).

The film noir genre seems to work better in black and white. Of course this is no revelation as more learned people than myself have noted that.

All in all, Murder, My Sweet is a very good adaptation. They got it right. Marlowe is the tough, wisecracking PI that has been the pattern for practically every PI novel since Raymond Chandler wrote his novels. A small group, but not a dog in the bunch. The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and The Little Sister are my favorites though. It’s been a few years, so maybe it’s time to reread them.

Next up for me is Powers Boothe’s Marlowe HBO series. I’ve only seen a couple of episodes and look forward to the set. Boothe has been a favorite actor ever since I saw him in Southern Comfort with Keith Carradine.

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

30 Saturday Aug 2008

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

western, William W. Johnstone

Sidewinders introduces two new characters, Scratch Morton and Bo Creel. Two partners that wander through the west together. They are a bit different than usual, as they are, let’s just say slightly weathered.

They’re still tough men, with both fists and guns, despite their age.

They’re headed toward the town of Red Butte when they break up a stage hold-up, driving off the outlaws. The shotgun guard, another older man named Ponderosa Pine, is wounded, so they accompany the stage into town.

The stage line is owned by Abigail Sutherland, a widow with two sons, and she’s in competition with another line owned by a man named Rutledge, who’s hired a band of gunmen to work for him.  They hire on to protect the line on it’s runs.

The outlaw gang they’d interrupted has been harowing both lines for months, mostly piddling amounts hardly worth the effort.

There’s a mystery here and Morton and Creel set out to figure what’s going on.

I like these two characters and the way the mystery is gradually revealed makes for an interesting mix of genres. I only had one small quibble with the way it was done. Other than that, I enjoyed the book and look forward to the next one, which is due shortly.

I hope Norton and Creel have a long line of books in their future. They are an interesting pair and somewhat different from your run of the mill western characters.

Recommended.

The Big Sleep(Robert Mitchum)

29 Friday Aug 2008

Posted by Randy Johnson in movies

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Philip Marlowe, Robert Mitchum

When I ordered this movie with Netflix, I expected I’d be disappointed. I mean, Humphrey Bogart had already made the definitive version of the Raymond Chandler novel. How can you remake perfection?

Disappointed can hardly describe my feelings after viewing the remake. Why do actors involve themselves in such projects. Especially an actor of Mitchum’s stature.

What did I find wrong with it? Mitchum’s age for one thing. Way to old for the role. In reading the novels, I’d always viewed Marlowe as late thirties, about where Chandler had placed him.

And the setting. Philip Marlowe belongs in L.A. in a forties setting. London! What were they thinking? I know it was Lew Grade’s company making the film, but WTF? It just looked completely wrong from start to finish. The only worse thing they could have done was make Marlowe British. That’s too terrible to comprehend.

I’m no expert that can break a film down and explain where they went wrong. I’m just a fan talking about what I like and don’t like.

Netflix doesn’t seem to have Mitchum’s other Marlowe film, Farewell, My lovely, available. Just as well. I’ve heard it was better than The Big Sleep, but then the bar is not set very high.

Next up for me is Dick Powell’s Murder, My Sweet, based on the aformentioned Chandler novel. I’ll let you know what I think.

FFB: Daybreak-2250 A.D.(Star Man’s Son)-Andre Norton

28 Thursday Aug 2008

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

Andre Norton, post-apocalypse, Science Fiction

She was born Alice Mary Norton in 1912 and legally changed it to Andre Alice Norton in 1934, writing under the male name of Andre Norton. The reason was that her books were intended for young boys and it was believed they would sell better if “written” by a man. As much as I hate to admit it now, in my callow youth, I probably wouldn’t have read any of her books if I’d known a woman wrote them.

She primarily wrote science fiction and fantasy, with an occasional historical thrown in, some three hundred plus novels. Recurring themes were bonding between humans and animals, tribal societies, and the outdoors, whether on Earth or some exotic planet deep in space.

Her best known works are probably the Witch World titles, some thirty plus. They were okay, but not my favorites.  A great many people believe them her best work.

I first read Daybreak-2250 A.D. when I was barely a teenager. It was published in 1952 and has also appeared under the title Star Man’s Son. Though I own copies of both, I much prefer the former. It was among the earliest science fiction I read. Not the first. That’s reserved for Tunnel In the Sky by Heinlein. But it was shortly after that one. I was probably twelve or thirteen.

Some believe it was the first fiction to deal with a post-nuclear holocaust world, but there is no reliable evidence to prove that.

Fors was of The Puma clan, of the People of the Eyrie in the Smoking Mountains. The son of a Star Man, it was his dream to be one himself. His father had been killed years ago in a battle with the Beast-things. The Star Men were the explorers of the clans, the ones who traveled the far lands looking for caches of the lost knowledge. Lost because the Old Ones had thoughtlessly used nuclear weapons to nearly destroy the world. They looked for the cities that hadn’t been destroyed or looted.

Now Fors would never be a Star Man. He had just been turned down for the fifth year in a row and by next year he would be to old to be considered. You see, he had a problem. His mother had been a woman of the plainsmen, those nomadic, horse riders, not of the Eyrie. He had a strain of mutant in him. Silver hair, better eyesight, night and day, and better hearing than anyone else in the tribe. People didn’t trust him. Now he was fated to spend his the rest of his life at the sufferance of  his clan.

Angered, he breaks into the Star Man’s building to retrieve his father’s pouch and leaves the Eyrie to find the “lost” city his father had been on the hunt for when he died. With him is Lura, another result of mutation from the nuclear bombs. Lura is a giant hunting cat who’d bonded with Fors as a kitten. They even have a limited  telepathic connection. Lura is, essentially, a Siamese cat the size of a mountain lion.

All Fors has to go on is a scrap of map with a city by a large body of water. While hunting, he has to avoid the “blue” cities, unsafe from radiation. They glow at night.

In his wanderings, he makes a new friend, rescuing Arskane caught in a vicious trap of sharpened spikes in a pit set by the beast-things, those vicious city dwellers that may have once been human. Arskane’s ancestors were flyers who landed their planes in a southern valley after that long ago war and melded with the people there, settling in and becoming farmers and sheepherders.

An earthquake has opened up a volcano and driven them from their valley to hunt for a new home. There have already been clashes with the plainspeople.

Their bond grows as they battle first the beast-things, then the plainspeople, captures, escapes, fleeing across the deadly Blow-up lands, nursing each other back to health. Their mission now is to reunite all bands of humans before they repeat the Old Ones’ mistakes and leave the world to the beast-things. For they are now, for the first time in two hundred years, emerging from the city ruins to engage humans on the open plains. Something has them working together.

This is one of my favorite novels and rereading it for the first time in a few years to refresh my memory, it carried me back to that long ago youth.

My Sister’s Speech at The Democratic Convention

26 Tuesday Aug 2008

Posted by Randy Johnson in Personal, politics

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Democratic Convention, Gloria Jean Craven

Just want to make a quick note here.

They keep changing the time for my sister, Gloria Jean Craven’s, speech at the Democratic Convention tonight. First it was between 10 and 10:30. Then she called earlier today and said it had been changed to 6:45. Then she called back thirty minutes later and said it was now 8:30. These are all East Coast times.

She’s become a bit disallusioned since she’s been out there. When they looked at the remarks she’d prepared, she was told she’d never get on the air with that. Then she was handed a speech filled with. let’s be honest here, a load of crap. Such platitudes as living in an area with a church every couple of miles, every home with a picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt hanging on the wall. I can’t speak for every home in my town, but in the many I have been inside, I have NEVER seen Roosevelt hanging on the wall.

I’m beginning to wonder if all they really wanted was an older white woman pumping up Obama.

Update:

My sister just gave her speech(8:50 p.m.. eastern) and, surprise, she got to give the speech she wanted.

Old Man’s War Universe- John Scalzi

25 Monday Aug 2008

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

John Scalzi, Robert Heinlein, Science Fiction

Originally, this post was to be my thoughts on John Scalzi’s latest novel. Instead, I decided to talk about his Old Man’s War universe, as it collectively came to be known.

The Colonial Union(humans) is at war with The Conclave(a confederation of alien races), not to mention other races that aren’t allies of either side.

In OLD MAN’S WAR, humans sign up for military service to be instituted on their seventy-fifth birthday. Samples of DNA are taken and tests run. No one knows why. Once reaching your seventy-fifth, You go into space and find out.

John Perry and his wife had signed up together. Their children had grown and had their own lives. This was their chance to help protect them and the rest of humanity from the Conclave, who routinely attack and destroy colonies established on other planets. It’s the Colonial Defense Force’s job to protect those colonies.

Perry’s wife dies before they reach that magical seventy-five, so he goes into space alone. There he finds out why samples of DNA were taken. His consciousness is transferred into a cloned body. He’s suddenly young again. Not just young. The body has been augmented to be stronger, faster, better vision, reflexes, unable to reproduce,all to make better soldiers.  A computer, called a Brainpal, is installed in the brain.  One side effect of all this is the bodies are green(I know, little green men are stereotypes in SF. Trust me it all works).

The first book shows Perry’s rise through the ranks as he makes new friends, the battles, the aftermath.

Book two is THE GHOST BRIGADES. Ghost Brigade troops are kept apart for a reason. Introduced in the first book, not much is known about them. They are the shock troops.

John Perry sees one, Jane Sagan, that strongly resembles a younger version of his late wife. She doesn’t know him though. As they are forced to interact on several missions, Perry learns something.

These ghost brigades are just that. They are clones grown from the DNA of recruits that died before reaching seventy-five. They grow up and are trained to be fighters, developing their own personalities. They take names from famous humans. Jane Sagan was named for Carl Sagan and was grown from the DNA of Perry’s late wife.

Here’s the deal about recruitment. If  a soldier manages to last ten years(very few do), they can re-enlist or retire. Perry and Sagan, against all odds, survive and fall in love. They chose retirement and lives on a farming planet.  Once again, their consciousnesses are transferred to new clones, regular, unaltered bodies. Zoe is an adopted daughter.

Which brings us to the third and fourth novels, THE LAST COLONY and ZOE’S TALE. They both cover the same time frame, the first from John and Jane’s perspective, the latter from their adopted daughter’s.

The Colonial Union want The Perrys to head uo a new colony being established on a just discovered planet. This one is to be different. The Union’s other ten colonies were established from Earth volunteers. Each has their own culture. The new colony is an experiment in that it is to be made up of volunteers from the ten colonies. Ten separate cultures living on one planet. The Perrys job will be to weld it all into a functioning planet before the next wave of colonists arrive.

Right away, a new problem. When they emerge from the interplanetary drive, the planet is not the one to which they were headed. What’s more the drives are automatically disabled and the ships crews are forced to settle as well. All electronic devices are collected, as the Conclave is hunting them to desroy the new colony. Radio waves could reveal their location.

Nothing is known about the new planet. Everything has to be done from scratch. Exploration, establishing towns, farms, all by hand. Nothing that uses any kind of radio wave can be used, as the Conclave may find and destroy them.

They name the  new planet Roanoke, the town Croatoan.

Suddenly, everything is okay. The Colonial Union finds them and they are safe.

Disturbing secrets start to emerge. No one, not even the Perrys knew the colony is just a pawn in the war. They want Roanoke found to draw the Conclave fleet in to be destroyed.  That should break up the Conclave and leave the Union free reign.

Naturally things don’t go as planned and leaves Roanoke despised by both sides. A martyr for the Union if destroyed, a hated spot for the Conclave because of the destroyed fleet.

A weapon turns up to help turn the tide and ZOE’S TALE tells the story about Zoe, the sixteen year old’s dangerous mission to gain that weapon and save Roanoke. A sixteen year old that had become a symbol to a third alien race and her maturation in the process.

There are two short stories and a novella set in the OMW universe, A QUESTION FOR A SOLDIER was published as a chapbook by Subterranean Press long before I found Scalzi and his books. I haven’t read it because it now commands exremely high prices  on the used book sites(eight, nine hundred dollars). AFTER THE COUP was offered for download at a dollar a pop. The novella, THE SAGAN DIARY, was also published as a chapbook bY Subterranean. It tells the story of Sagan falling in love with Perry. I even appear in that one as a dead person. By preordering and paying early for a copy, I got to appear in APPENDIX: COMPANY D IN MEMORIAM, a list of members of 16Th Brigade, Company D, who died heroically in a battle against superior forces. An honor I’m sure.

John Scalzi is building a nice little universe here. Anyone who reads these stories will recognize that the author, like most of us SF fans, is a huge fan of Robert Anson Heinlein. One critic said these books weren’t just an homage to the master, they could very well have been written by him. I’m not sure I would go that far, probably not even Scalzi, but they are fun books to read and he obviously was influenced by Heinlein. Which is not a bad thing at all.

There seems to be another influence on Scalzi: Philip K. Dick. His novel, THE ANDROID’S DREAM, and the sequel he’s currently working on, THE HIGH CASTLE, will be recognized by any PKD fan.

The Democratic National Convention and My Sister

24 Sunday Aug 2008

Posted by Randy Johnson in Personal, politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Democratic Convention, Obama

All the details haven’t been set, but apparently my sister’s fifteen minutes have been extended a bit.

Shw called me last night and said the day had been a mess. When I asked what’s up, she said a call had come in asking if she wanted to go national.

She thought, at first, that someone was kidding.

Apparently, Obama wants her in Denver Tuesday at the Democratic Convention(what the boss wants, I guess) and the calls have been flying back and forth arranging the details, flights, transportation, and such. They had asked about her husband, but she told them they would never get him on a plane. She then asked about a companion, someone she knew, that might help her nerves a bit. That had to be okayed, then details worked out.

Something Tuesday. At this point, that’s all we know. I’ll amend this post whenever anything new is learned.

Update: my sister has been told she will speak between 8:00 and 8:30 p.m., a total of three minutes, including applause. That’s all she has right now.

Update on the update: my sister says that between 8 and 8:30 is mountain time. That would be 10 and 10:30 for us east coast folks. The rest of you who read this will have to figure your own times. My head is spinning.

Olympic Basketball Gold

24 Sunday Aug 2008

Posted by Randy Johnson in Sports

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Tags

basketball, Olympic

Congratulations to both the men’s and women’s teams for their gold medal victories. The men had me a litle worried until Kobe Bryant took over late in the game.

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