August 2009 Book Round-Up

CR: 124: Cut Short – Leigh Russell

WE: 125: Gunsmoke: Shootout – Jackson Flynn

WE: 126: Gunsmoke: Cheyenne Vengeance – Jackson Flynn

WE: 127: Shoot-out At Broken Bow – Charles G. West

CR: 128: Black & White & Dead All Over – John Darnton

WE: 129: Gunsmoke: The Renegades – Jackson Flynn

WE: 130: Gunsmoke: Duel At Dodge City – Jackson Flynn

AD: 131: The Spider: Judgement Knight – Norvell Page, Howard Hopkins, & Gary Carbon

AD: 132: Hunt At World’s End – Gabriel Hunt, Nicholas Kaufmann

MY: 133: Sleeping Dogs – Ed Gorman

WE: 134: Lassiter: High Lonesome – Jack Slade

TH: 135: Mucho Mojo – Joe R. Lansdale

WE: 136: Bloodshed of Eagles – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

WE: 137: The $300 Man – Ross Morton

NF: 138: Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded – John Scalzi

CR: 139: Love Me -And Die – Day Keene

NF: 140: Write With Fire: Thoughts On The Craft of Writing – Charles Allen Gramlich

PI: 141: Losers Live Longer – Russell Atwood

WE: 142: Bonanza: Mystic Fire – Monette Bebow-Reinhard

SF: 143: Metatropolis – edited by John Scalzi

WE: 144: Hell To Pay: The Life and Violent Times of Eli Gault – J. Lee Butts

August 2009 Movie Round-Up

12 To The Moon(1960)

Dune(1984)

A Clear And Present Danger(1994)

Stargate: Continuum(2008)

StarGate: The Ark of Truth(2008)

Terminator Salvation(2009)

Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen(2009)

Green Lantern: First Flight(2009) animated

Metatropolis – edited by John Scalzi

Tags

John Scalzi, Science Fiction

This volume is the prose edition of the audio book(nominated for a Hugo for best dramatic presentation) edited by John Scalzi and available from Amazon as a CD or download. It features five novelettes by Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, and Karl Schroeder set in a sort of shared world anthology. There’s no overlapping characters, only themes and concepts the five worked out together.

METATROPOLIS is a world of the future. There are no aliens here or fantastic inventions to make life wonderful for its inhabitants. It’s a world evolved from today’s excesses carried to what seems the logical progression from things happening today.

There’s no mining of natural resources, instead people dig through landfills for discarded items that might be refurbished. You see, manufacturing is done. Global warming has changed the landscape, the lower American lands almost uninhabitable. New Orleans and Miami are gone, the southwest is extremely dry.

The cities in the north have become self-contained, those that survived, wall off in some instances, with entry strictly controlled, from the wilds(former suburban areas).

One story is set in the Pacific Northwest, a green city stretching from Portland into Canada. A man enters who’s mission is unclear, later an assassin is sent in to take him out.

Another has a bouncer just trying to make an extra buck caught up in a new kind of urban revolution. A bicycle courier on the run with her stepdaughter from her Russian mobster husband gets a lesson in who to trust(these last two set in Detroit).

A young man in New St Louis learns the folly of just doing enough to get by in school. He delays his aptitude tests until the last minute. Everyone must work and if you haven’t taken the tests by age twenty, you’re expelled from the city into the wilds. He learns he’s only qualified for two jobs despite the fact that his mother is city administrator: shit shoveler or pig farmer(not much better in his mind).

A weapons investigator takes an assignment to find missing plutonium and gets hooked into an advanced role playing game unlike any he’s seen before, then discovers another deeper within that one, with a third hinted at. All in pursuit of that plutonium.

I enjoyed the book, although one of the stories I didn’t much care for. I won’t say which because I’m certain another person reading it will likely come to a different interpretation.

It’s an offering from those fine folks at Subterranean Press, small press publishers of science fiction and fantasy.

Motley Crue

Tags

Metal, Motley Crue

I used to like these boys back in their early days before they went commercial. Live Wire and Shout at the Devil. Their music after those two albums didn’t really do much for me.

These two are my favorites:

Live Wire

Shout At The Devil

The only other song they did after these two albums I cared for was Girls, Girls , Girls and I admitted to someone that they video probably influenced that. It was about strip clubs and featured a lot of good looking, half naked women(hey, I’m a guy okay).

Girls, Girls, Girls

Racism and Conspiracy Nuts

I just can’t seem to let this go. Last post I talked about a friend’s descent into the land of wingnutdom(Yes, I know that’s not a word, but it describes them nicely).

He was ranting about Obama this morning and one statement struck me. He doesn’t like Obama and I was okay with that. But he said, “I researched all about Obama and what I found backed up what I inherently knew.”

I had to call him on that one. Any good scientist will tell you you take the evidence where it will lead you. If you look for things to back up what you already “know,” that’s all you will find. You will dismiss or gloss over anything that doesn’t agree with your preconceived notions.

Out of one side of his mouth, he dismissed anything I said with, “You can’t believe everything you hear or see on the internet,” while at the same time trying to give me websites to go to back up his assertions.

I just can’t take that crap anymore.

I think I’ve lost a friend.

Racist or Prejudiced?

I had a long, sometimes rather loud, “discussion” with a friend last night on the subject of racism. We had a dispute over the definition of the word.

I maintained that a racist was someone who had an irrational fear of another person based simply on skin color or religious preference. His side of the argument was that black people were not racists, but simply prejudiced. He maintained that when blacks started lynching white people, denying them equal education or job opportunities, only then would he call them racists.

I disagreed.

Am I wrong here? Is he right?

Update: I had another long argument(let’s call it what it is) with my friend this morning. I’m beginning to wonder about him.

Let’s see. Michael Jackson’s death is a conspiracy by the white power structure to take out anyone who doesn’t go along with them, not as I believe: several acts of stupidity: by Michael, for wanting these powerful drugs that should not be used outside an operating room, by the numerous doctors for helping him to get them, and by the doctor for administering them that night, then leaving him alone to go to the “bathroom.”

Then there are the questions about Obama’s birth.

That last one did it for me. I never would have suspected him of being a “birther.” I knew he didn’t think much of Obama(his words: “Obama ain’t s***!”), but that one was hard to take.

I think the friendship may have ended here and I’m saddened. But I told him that he was increasingly sounding like one of those conspiracy nuts that I don’t much care for. Conversations with him were no longer interesting or fun.

Ted Kennedy, R.I.P.

I woke up this morning to see this. I”d known it was coming ever since his battles with cancer became known. Doesn’t make it any less of a shock though.

It seems like the end of something important now that the third brother has passed away. That generation was tough, seemed to have something to say, and most of the Kennedys since, at least the ones in politics, didn’t seem to measure up.

The tough part is over now, Mr Kennedy. It’s time to rest.

Libraries, Part One

Libraries have always been a big part of my life ever since I learned to read. I went into the first grade never having been taught a thing about reading and won a prize for reading the most books in my class that year.

School libraries became one of my favorite haunts after that. I read most of the stuff that boys read during the fifties. Every year I got better and began raising my level of books. The Hardy Boys were a big favorite(I may even have read a Nancy Drew or two; I don’t really remember) and the Tom Swift, Jr. titles I devoured as fast as I could get my hands on them. Edgar Rice Burroughs was another love. I read everything of his I could find and, as unsophisticated as I was, didn’t realize there was a lot more until I started digging through the public libraries.

We lived in a very small town and the first public library I remember was one small room in the basement of the local YMCA. Mama told that it had once been a barber shop where I’d gotten my first haircut ever(I certainly don’t remember as I was somewhere under a year; mama said I cried a lot). It was crammed with books and I loved exploring the shelves to find stuff I could handle.

Some few years after that, the doctor in town built a substantial building to house his office(he was giving up house calls) and half was turned over for a bigger library. Several rooms in fact. I was in heaven the first time I checked it out. Who could imagine that many books in the world(hey, I was small; what can I say).

It was in that library that I made my greatest discovery: TUNNEL IN THE SKY by Robert Heinlein. The spine had a small rocket ship at the bottom and it looked like it might be interesting.

Boy was it!

I went through all the Heinlein they had(I’m talking about his juveniles here) and then went all over the library looking for those “rocket” books. I couldn’t tell you the names of most those authors I read back then. The only other ones that come to mind are Andre Norton and J(oan) Hunter Holly. I hate to admit if I’d known they were women, I may not have tried them.

Those “rocket” books ruined me so to speak. I suppose the Tom Swift books might be considered science fiction, but he wasn’t blasting off to other worlds on a regular basis.

I so got into that stuff that I recall one memorable Saturday jumping on my bike early and riding the mile or so to the library. I found six SF that looked good and figured that should hold me for the weekend. Little did I know.

Getting home, I started to read and before the day was done, I finished all six. These were of course short juveniles, but still…

After Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton’s books were next among my favorites in my early teens. The Time Traders series tops the list, but her novel Daybreak 2250 A.D.(Starman’s Son) would be the one I liked the best. I own copies of both though the first version I owned and read was the previous. It shows the protagonist and his partner, a large mutant cat, on a raft with the ruins of a city along the banks of the river.

It would be a couple of more years before I made it to high school and learned all my favorite writers had so many more books. More adult books. As well as a wealth of other books of all types.

Write With Fire – Charles Allen Gramlich

Tags

Charles Allen gramlich, Nonfiction

I don’t remember when, or exactly how, I first came across Charles Gramlich’s blog, RAZORED ZEN. I just know I took to it instantly. It’s been a few years now as it had to be after my disability because getting a new computer and onto the internet was something to help fill my days as I could no longer work. As much as I love to read and listen to music(metal still being my favorite even at my advanced age of 59), I needed something more to do with my time.

RAZORED ZEN was one of the earliest blogs I started to follow(many more were soon bookmarked) and I had no thoughts of starting my own back then.

Charles’ posts revealed someone I had a lot in common with. We both loved such writers as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, to name just a couple, than a great deal of the best-selling literary “lights” of the day.

And I gleaned a lot on his posts on writing. In my younger days, teens, I used to write pastches of my favorites of the day(the only completed rough drafts I have left are two Man From U.N.C.L.E. novels; and yes, they are simply wretched).

Unfortunately the realities of life and work soon ended my attempts to write. I’ve lived alone most of my adult life , except for a few short periods, and feel quite comfortable with it. So work predominated just for me to survive. I probably didn’t have the discipline to write in my younger days anyway.

I lurked on RAZORED ZEN for a good while before I felt confident enough to comment. There was something about it though. A kindred spirit I guess. I have nine years on Charles and, as he mentions in the book, there was no such animal as kindergarten back then. At least in my small town.

I entered the first grade not knowing how to read(my mother, though she liked to read, was raising three children alone and did spend a great deal of time with my sisters and myself, though reading to us was not something she did) and still won a prize at the end of that first year for reading the most books in the class. That was including a young girl who did advanced work so she skipped the second grade the next year. There has been no stopping me since.

Sheesh, I’m getting off subject here. Sorry, Charles.

WRITE WITH FIRE is a fine how-to for writers and would-be writers alike. It’s filled with all sorts of useful information written in his breezy, east to read style. I found myself zipping through taking it all in(the man certainly knows his stuff). Everything from tips on the writing process to things like submission letters. He has essays on proper grammar and punctuation, discusses the techniques he himself might use to construct a story, physical conditioning(just from sitting at a computer keyboard for long periods, I can tell you it’s tough), all the while emphasizing one should find their own voice.

There are even a number of anecdotes from his life. His experiences after Katrina were of interest as was the short story his son, Josh, wrote at seventeen, Charles cheerfully admitting he couldn’t have done as well. The pride shows through.

When I started this book, I wasn’t at all sure how I would take it. I liked his four novels and the booklet of poetry(when I finished Cold In The Light at four in the morning, I immediately fired off a “nasty” email for keeping me up half the night), but they were fiction. It was a fun read though.

I certainly encourage anyone who doesn’t already have it to get a copy soon.

Happy Anniversary, Hawaii

Yesterday, August 21, was the fiftieth anniversary of Hawaii becoming a state. In 1959, I was just a couple of months shy of my tenth birthday. Yet I still remember the excitement I felt watching TV and reading the papers. I knew of Hawaii beforehand and the family had a very mild connection. One of my sisters was born on Pearl Harbor day in 1951 and mama said father had wanted to name her Pearl, something she absolutely forbid.

Hawaii has been on my mind lately after reading about a recent poll of fellow Tarheels on that stupid Birther nonsense. A second question asked of them was, “Do you believe Hawaii is part of the United States?”

While it wasn’t large, there was enough of a percentage to register that said no or weren’t sure to that question. That there was anyone at all is sad to me. The ignorance and North Carolinians at that! Which, in turn, set me to wondering what the percentage would be for a nationwide poll of the same question.

That says something to me about a lot of stuff in this country.