March 2010 Book Round-Up

39: CR: CSI: Brass In Pocket – Jeff Mariotte

40: WE: Tales of Wells Fargo: Danger At Dry Creek – Irving Werstein

41: WE: Tales of Wells Fargo: Wells Fargo and Danger Station – Sam Allison

42: WE: The Buntline Special – Lou Cameron

43: WE: “Drag” Harlan – Charles Alden Seltzer

44: CR: Captains Outrageous – Joe R. Lansdale

45: SF: Maximum Ride: Fang – James Patterson

46: WE: Apache Rising – Marvin H. Albert

47: WE: Alias Smith and Jones: Dragooned – Brian Fox

48: WE: Alias Smith and Jones: Trick Shot – Brian Fox

49: WE: Gunsmoke: Man From Alberta – James Moffat

50: FA: The Dark World – Henry Kuttner

51: WE: Arkansas Smith – Jack Martin

52: AD: Tarzan And The Valley Of Gold – Fritz Leiber

53: CR: The Score – Richard Stark(Donald E. Westlake)

54: SF: Dinosaur Park(The Thirteenth Majestral) – Hayford Peirce

55: WE: Alias Smith and Jones: Cabin Fever – Brian Fox

56: AD: The Rat Patrol: The Iron Monster Raid – I. G. Edmonds

57: CR: The Jugger – Richard Stark(Donald E. Westlake)

58: WE: The Dawn Riders – Frank Gruber

59: SF: Two Worlds of Poul Anderson – Poul Anderson

March 2010 Movie Round-Up

Red River(1948)

The Lone Ranger(1956)

Tension In Table Rock(1956)

Terror In A Texas Town(1958)

The Lone Ranger and The Lost City of Gold(1958)

The Magnificent Seven(1960)

Return of The Seven(1966)

Guns of The Magnificent Seven(1968)

The Magnificent Seven Ride!(1972)

Big Bad Mama(1974)

The Missouri Breaks(1976)

Rick Wakeman & David Paton

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David Paton, Rick Wakeman

After my post last week for Scott Parker’s Forgotten Music on Rick Wakeman, I was suddenly back in the mood, myself, for the Yes keyboardist. I dd a little exploring on YouTube to see what they might have available and discovered this collaboration. David Paton was formerly with The Alan Parsons Project, which is where I knew of him.

I have a few clips I think are really good. The first is a new arrangement of Eleanor Rigby. Wakeman explains:

The second is Merlin The Magician from Wakeman’s album MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF KING ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE:

And finally, After The Ball from Wakeman’s sound track album for the Winter Olympics documentary, WHITE ROCK:

Two Worlds of Poul Anderson

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Poul Anderson, Science Fiction

TWO WORLDS OF POUL ANDERSON is a reasonably priced chapbook from World Science Fiction Library AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON HERE that collects two stories of the science fiction master. One, INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, was originally published in the September 1963 issue of Analog and DUEL ON SYRTIS from the March 1951 Planet Stories.

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Mike Blades and Jimmy Chung had started Blades Enterprise together, a private company intent on mining an asteroid in the Belt of metals and anything else within. A loan from the bank of Ceres financed it and they were engaged in drilling tunnels and setting up operations when the American warship went into orbit around it and the Captain and a few officers came aboard the Blade for a tour. They were out testing a new weapons system.

When the Captain later apprised them that an accident had occurred, and an atomic weapon was loose somewhere, it was suggested that the mining operation be abandoned for safety’s sake until the rogue weapon could be found. If it detonated beforehand, radiation would kill everyone on the asteroid.

Mike Blades smelled a rat though. The new Social Justice party had swept into office in America and they abhorred private enterprise. He wasn’t about to take it lying down.

DUEL ON SYRTIS

Riordan was a rich man who’d inherited a fortune and built it into an even more wealthy mass. He was always looking for more challenges. He’d hunted creatures on all the planets of the system. Now he wanted a Martian skin to add to his trophy room. Of course, since the war was long over, Martian slavery was a thing of the past.

As a rich man, though, Riordan was used to getting his way. He wanted a Martian. And not one of the tame townies. A wild Martian! There were few left, but he got his way. He set out with his hunting animals, the Martian equivalent of a hound and a hawk, and a rifle designed for the thin atmosphere of Mars.

Riordan expected a challenging hunt. Nothing less for a man of his wealth and stature. But he expected to win in the end.

Of course, the Martian, Kreega, had other ideas.

* * * * *

I enjoyed these two older tales by Mr. Anderson accompanied by black-and-white illustrations by Leo Summer.

Ten Influential Books

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Ten Influential Books

This seems to be a popular meme these days, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I’ll try for ten, in no certain order, just as they come to me.

1. TUNNEL IN THE SKY – Robert A. Heinlein. My first real science fiction and it defined my personal reading habits for most of my teenage years. For that reason, it has always been my favorite of his books(though I love nearly all of them).

2. 1984 – George Orwell. I can’t explain it. It was a reading assignment in school, of course, and I recognized it was science fiction. It’s one of the handful of books I’ve read at least half a dozen times.

3. SHOGUN – James Clavell. Everyone seems to have this one on their list. It’s on mine for different reasons I think. In 1975, I saw this one and was interested. It was a very long book and I was hesitant at first. I finally tried it, loved it, and have never been put off by the length of a book since.

4. IN COLD BLOOD – Truman Capote. My senior year in high school the English teacher, Miss Barker, had a spinner rack of paperbacks in class for us to choose from for reading assignments. I tried this one, never having heard of Capote, liked it, and really mined grades from it. The Sociology teacher saw me with it and offered extra credit if I would give a talk on it in class. Woot! Two grades on one book. It was very good, too.

5.TOM SWIFT and THE HARDY BOYS – I include both series here as they really fueled my interest in reading when I was very young. Though they contained SF elements, I really considered the Tom Swift books as adventure.

6.THE HOBBIT and LORD OF THE RINGS – H. R. R. Tolkien, My discovery of fantasy. Really involved worlds with a laid out history. It made them seem almost like I was reading something real. I knew they weren’t, though, just saying…

7. THE HUNTER – Richard Stark(Westlake). I’d never read a lot of Westlake before this one(under the title of the Mel Gibson movie, Payback), a shortcoming I’ve been rectifying ever since.

8. LONESOME DOVE – Larry McMurtry. The western that showed me that “horse operas” could be something more than shoot-’em-ups(not that there’s anything wrong with those), which led me to a lot of other great writers.

9. THE BIG SLEEP – Raymond Chandler. This is the novel that ramped up my love of the PI tale. I’ve long ago lost count of the number of different characters I’ve read and am always on the lookout for new ones.

10. SUBTERRANEAN – James Rollins. I love a good thriller and this man is responsible. I was working part-time in a Waldenbooks(the dream job for people like us) when an ARC of this one came in. It was Rollins’ first and I’ve since gone on to more writers in this vein.

I’ve noticed a distinct lack of literary authors on the list. I make no apologies for that. I’ve read them all, I think, both for reading assignments and enjoyment over the years, but influential…I don’t think so.

Finally, in looking back over the list, I could substitute another book for #9(what I have were off the top of my head). Both came along to me at about the same time. It was by a certain Mr. Spillane, but I think I’ll leave what I have listed.

Tension At Table Rock

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Frank Gruber, Richard Egan, western

TENSION AT TABLE ROCK is a 1956 western based on the novel “Bitter Sage” by Frank Gruber.It’s the tale of a man trying to flee his past, a past that follows him everywhere he goes because of a song written about him that paints him as a back-shooting coward. You see, he supposedly shot his best friend in the back for the $10,000 reward. Richard Egan plays Wes Tancred, the man in the song.

That wasn’t how it went though. His “friend” tried to shoot him in the back as he was leaving. Tancred was just faster. His friend’s woman(Angie Dickinson in a small part), rejected by Tancred, lied about it and he was thus hung with the coward title. Unknown to everyone, he tore up the voucher for the reward. Tancred is beaten and scorned by the townspeople and so leaves town, adopting a new name, John Bailey.

When he comes up on a small stage depot, run by a man named Miller and his son, Jody, he takes the job of horse hostler. A day or two later, three men ride in and take the depot. They plan to rob a stage due in a few hours. The depot master is killed when he pulls a hidden gun and Tancred ends up shooting the three.

Again, he refuses a reward and takes the boy into the town of Table Rock where the boy’s uncle, Fred Miller(played by Cameron Mitchell) is Sheriff. Table Rock is concerned because a trail drive is due in in a few days and the one the year before had produced a lot of damage, one man shot, and the Sheriff beaten nearly to death. Now he’s a scared man, though to proud to admit it.

Tancred intends to move on, but when Jody keeps running away to follow the man he idolizes, he hangs around to give the boy time to get used to the Millers.

You know how these things go. The trail herd rides in, trampling a farmer’s crops who lies in their path, then later in town, a drunken hand murders the farmer, the ramrod planting a gun in the dead man’s hand and claiming self-defense. Two people saw the truth. Tancred and the Sheriff. The Sheriff plans to let it lie until Tancred speaks up at the inquest and when he speaks eloquently about how lonely life becomes when a lie takes over, admitting who he really is, the Sheriff steps up and this sets the trail drovers, led by actor John Dehner as Hampton, the trail boss, against the town. They promise if their man is not released the next day they will take him out of the jail.

I liked this one. There’s not anything new here, but it’s a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. A young DeForrest Kelly, he of Leonard “Bones” McCoy fame, has a small part as a gunman hired by a sleazy saloon owner to kill the Sheriff, a man who happens to be an old friend of Tancred from their Quantrill days during the war.

Dinosaur Park – Hayford Peirce

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Dinosaur Park, Hayford Peirce

Dinosaur Park(originally published in 1989 as The Thirteenth Majestral) is a tale written in the style of Jack Vance, an homage to his works. It’s a wonderfully inventive novel with all sorts of names that bring a smile to one as he reads: Sleepyhead River, the Kneedeep Ocean, Desperation Beach, the Straggletooth Mountains, the continent of Woolywobber. There’s even a character, Baron Boddissey, mentioned in a number of Vance stories, usually as an object of derision or quoting from one of his books. that makes a brief appearance in the story.

It’s millions of years in the future and mankind has spread throughout the galaxy, settling millions of planets, every little group, religion, sect, establishing one to their liking. Humanity has long since forgotten their place of birth.

The planet is Stohlson’s Redemption and has been for so long that no one remembers who Stohlson was or what his redemption might have been. The planet cultivates, and tames, dinosaurs for their religious ceremonies.

Ten year old Kerryl Ryson is not a happy boy. In order to cement a business relationship with another clan, the Coober-Weezlers, a marriage has been arranged for him with seven year old Dalli Weezler. Kerryl is not impressed, all that red hair and freckles. And annoying. He certainly doesn’t want to go and live with them

In the city of Tyhor for the Festival, Kerryl and Dalli, as children will do, race in and out of the crowds watching the parade of dinosaurs given in honor of a visiting off-world dignitary, his Most Immaculate Ultim of Aberdown. Kerryl pulls a childish prank that goes bad, causing one of the Tyrant Kings to vomit all over the ULtim, and starts a riot.

For embarrassing the VIP, Kerryl’s father, as head of the clan, is fed to the dinosaur, taking the clan’s fetish with him. Because he’s a child, Kerryl is shown mercy; he’s held in slavery until he becomes fully grown, then his fate will be decided. The rest of the two clans are taken by the VIP into his gigantic starship, along with a number of dinosaurs, and leaves the planet.

Young Kerryl vows then to kill the object of his new hatred, rescue his clan,the fetish, and restore them to their former glory. How he intends to do all this he has no idea. Twenty years pass as he thinks and plans. He has to escape several death sentences, train in various forms of self defense while he does, and find some trail of his hated foe. Apparently long-lived, computer records from three hundred years before show he’s the man Kerryl is after, though he’s of course much younger then.

After several false trails, Kerryl is eventually headed toward an obscure planet known as Earth, a planet that doesn’t allow casual visitors, and hasn’t for three hundred thousand years, so he has pose as a dinosaur farmer from Ambrose and books passage on a liner headed there. When he tries to board, something like a force field won’t allow him to enter the ship. It doesn’t impede anyone else and when he tries to force himself through, he passes out. The liner leaves without him.

looking for other passage, he has to find one that will avoid stops at certain planets, because of various death sentences imposed on him. The next one that will work is five months away. While he’s waiting, the news services, a couple of months later, are filled with stories of the disappearance of the liner he’d tried to enter in N-Space and all nine hundred passengers and crew.

How odd? If something hadn’t prevented him from boarding…?

When he eventually arrives, Kerryl is scanned and arrested. He sees recorded evidence that the missing liner had arrived and watches himself, indisputably, exit down the passenger ramp.

That’s when the story really gets interesting. Earth has a secret that has kept it quarantined for three hundred thousand years. What the twelve Majestrals of Earth don’t know is that Kerryl Ryson has an ability that makes him extremely dangerous to their way of life.

I loved reading this novel. Funny at times, serious at others, it’s full of adventure in that old style(as mentioned written to emulate Jack Vance’s stories), it is well worth picking up if one loves this sort of stuff. From the good folks at Wildside Press HERE(just click on bookstore) and at Amazon, either as a TRADE or for their KINDLE.

Check it out.

FFB: Tarzan And The Valley Of Gold – Fritz Leiber

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Fritz Leiber, Tarzan

TARZAN AND THE VALLEY OF GOLD was the first novel by another writer authorized by the Burroughs estate, an important distinction as the character has been ripped off around the world by any number of publishers who don’t worry about things like copyright laws. Most notably was a series of five novels credited to a Barton Werper. The estate finally quashed it and all copies unsold were destroyed(yes, I own that series). This book was based on a movie script by Clair Huffaker for the film starring former Los Angeles Ram, Mike Henry, in the title role.

But the novel by Fritz Leiber, the legendary fantasy author, was so much more than a novelization. In the preface, Hulbert Burroughs talks about how it came about. When Ballantine Books, in the person of Ian Ballantine, suggested a novel, the estate was understandably wary. Leiber was a long time admirer of Burroughs’ work and wrote a sample chapter which was submitted, the estate was impressed, and agreed to the deal. The novel was so well done, true to Burroughs’ character, that it was numbered twenty-five in the series. There are references to the other novels, complete with footnotes, all through the book that gives one a sense that it belongs.

This Tarzan novel has everything a good Tarzan should: A lost Inca city in the Amazon jungle, a villain named Nivaro, with a penchant for distributing gold watches and jewelry with explosives built in, and his hulking bodyguard, Mr Train, wearing a black eye patch, a small, mysterious boy found wandering in the jungle, accompanied by a white jaguar companion, and with a map on a gold medallion around his neck.

This Tarzan is more like the one of the novels, an English Lord that can revert to his animal raising in an instant, his senses more alert to his surroundings than most men. Not at all like the Tarzan people who don’t read, just watch the movies, know. I’m speaking of the Weismullers, never a real favorite for me. His portrayal of the jungle man as a cunning, grunting savage never rang true as I’d read most of the novels before seeing them.

When the novel opens, Tarzan is in Mexico getting ready to fight two bulls, in his own inimitable manner, having spoke with the pair the night before. He receives a telegram from his friend, Professor Lionel Talmadge and leaves for Brazil on a jet. Upon arriving, an attempt is made on his life.

He learns from Talmadge about Vinaro and Train, remembers seeing them in Mexico, and that they are looking for the hidden valley. When he arrives at the compound of an old friend, where the boy was staying, hr finds the place burnt to the ground, his old friend, Ruiz, dying, his wife already dead, and the boy kidnapped.

Tarzan heads out through the Brazilian jungle in the direction they took, accompanied by the boy’s jaguar, a big lion Ruiz and he had rescued as a cub and raised, and a chimpanzee named Dinky.

Leiber took a script that, as best I remember(having seen the movie only once years ago), was okay, but not exceptional, and turned it into a good novel, adding to it and explaining things glossed over in the movie(the explosive jewelry for one thing. In the movie for nice, shiny explosions). The final showdown with Vinaro and Train, with a helicopter…

A worthy addition to the Tarzan legacy.

Forgotten Music: Journey To The Centre of The Earth – Rick Wakeman

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Rick Wakeman

Rick Wakeman was keyboardist for YES, joining in 1971, while also doing concept albums with his own band. JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH was released in 1974, combining his own English Rock Ensemble with the London Symphony Orchestra and the English Chamber Choir to produce a work based on Verne’s novel.

Way back then, my best friend and I shared an apartment together, this was in the days of vinyl, and we both owned copies. We used to play them both, stacked on the spindle so that it played the whole set without changing while we cleaned the apartment. I couldn’t tell you how many times we played it, suffice to say we wore those records out.

It was more classical than his usual stuff with YES, though they got out there every now and then as well. But for a couple of rockers it was like nothing of which we regularly listened. It’s hard to explain what the music said to us, but that we loved it. Sweeping arrangements that I hope, think, will be listened to well into the future.

Who knows? The sweep and feel of the music spoke to me as rock music, much as I loved it, like nothing else. I’m no expert on music by any means. All I can do is recognize something I like and my tastes are varied.

About ten years ago, Wakeman did a sequel, RETURN TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH. He released several other concept albums over the years, before and after this one, as well. I may do them all here as I don’t hear much about him anymore and the music deserves an audience.

I’m including a few clips to give you the flavor:

This second piece is titled THE FOREST:

And last a concert clip, though the sound quality could be better:

My New Computer: The Borg

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The Borg

First post with my new computer which has been dubbed THE BORG. My nephew built this sucker for me.