July 2010 Book Round-Up

124: My: The Kissed Corpse – Asa Baker(Davis Dresser)

125: SF: End Of The World – Dean Owen

126: WE: Killing Trail(ebook) – Charles Allen Gramlich

127: WE: The Stalking Moon – Theodore V. Olsen

128: TH: Dog Team: Target Response – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

129: CR: Quarry’s Cut – Max Allan Collins

130: WE: The Loner: Seven Days To Die J. A. Johnstone

131: WE: The Lone Ranger: The Phantom Rider! – Fran Striker

132: WE: The Last Hunt – Milton Lott

133: MY: Mr. Monk Is Cleaned Out – Lee Goldberg

134: CR: Guilty(ebook) – Lee Goldberg

135: WE: Trouble In Tombstone – Richard S. Wheeler

136: CR: A Policeman’s Lot(ebook) – Gary M. Dobbs

137: AD: Capture The Saint(ebook) – Burl Barer

138: AD: The Saint In New York – Leslie Charteris

139: SF: Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and The Shadows of Mindor – Matthew Stover

140: SF: Countdown To Armageddon/A Stranger In Paradise – Edward M. Lerner

141: WE: The Best Western Stories of Ed Gorman – edited by Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg

142: SF: Cap Kennedy: The Eater of Worlds – Gregory Kern

143: CR: Murder Is My Business – Brett Halliday(Davis Dresser)

144: SF: 12 Worlds of Alan E. Nourse – Alan E. Nourse

145: WE: A Time For Hanging(ebook) – Bill Crider

July 2010 Movie Round-Up

The Shepherd of The Hills(1941)

The Big Sky(1952)

Apache(1954)

The Time Travelers(1964)

Five Million Years To Earth(1967)

The Stalking Moon(1968)

From Noon Till Three(1976)

Let’s spend The Night Together(concert film)(1983)

The Poker Club(2008)

Iron Man 2(2010)

12 Worlds of Alan E. Nourse

Tags

Alan E. Nourse, Science Fiction

12 WORLDS OF ALAN E. NOURSE is made up of stories published back in the fifties. They cover a wide range of topics: medicine(after all, he was a doctor by profession), parallel worlds, exploration of planets and the stars, business. Of varying lengths, some as short as four-five pages, one story takes up a quarter of the book. It is a publication of World Library Classics, an imprint of Wildside books.

My favorite story was BEAR TRAP, the longest in the book, a tale still relevant today as it was with it’s first appearance in the December, 1957 issue of Fantastic Universe, still relevant as the novel published in 1949 that may have been an influence on the story. It’s set in the far flung future of 1982.

Our hero is Tom Shandur, the “Chief Fabricator and Purveyor of Lies,” as he thinks of himself. He works for the Public Information Board and it’s his job to spin all news stories in the best possible light for public consumption. You see, the world is on the brink of another war. The one man working on solving it is David P. Ingersoll, Secretary of State, the greatest proponent of peace in the world.

Now the man has suddenly died, a victim of building pressure and a bad heart. Preliminary stories put out that he had skipped the latest summit to try to ward off war because of a slight illness. In fact, the president had stopped him from attending the conference at the last moment and it was this betrayl that had led to his death.Shandur is supposed to write the “definitive” story to ease the world into the death. Ingersoll himself had left a notation that when he died, he wanted Shandur to write the story.

Shandur, already full of disillusionment at what he was doing, suddenly decides he will write the real story of all that had went on. As he researches the story, he begins to find some disturbing things, never mind the attempt on his life.

For the longest time while reading the story, I felt it wasn’t science fiction. Right up until the twist at the end and revelations appear.

Another story I liked was MEETING OF THE BOARD, centered around the business world. I smiled quite a lot as I read. Having spent nearly forty years working in the textile manufacturing world, on both sides, I recognized quite a bit going on. In all those years, I never understood how management treated the people that did the actual work. At the same time, I couldn’t get the two sides, management and union, never recognizing that they needed each other. Management couldn’t make the product, but seemed to think the actual workers were an easily shed commodity when something cheaper came along. Their only responsibility was to maximize stockholders’ shares. And the unions never wanted to bend either.

That’s why the textile business in this country is on it’s last breath. But enough sermonizing.

The part that made me smile is that the roles were reversed in the story and things didn’t work any better. For the same reasons.

A fine collection here, the first short fiction of Nourse that I’d read.

Reading Forgotten Books: The Best Western Stories of Ed Gorman

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Ed Gorman, Forgotten Books

Despite it’s title, THE BEST WESTERN STORIES OF ED GORMAN, edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg, is the same book Richard Prosch posted on here. The edition I have is a large print one published in 1995 in the United Kingdom. Different cover, but the same otherwise in content and story order.

Richard does a wonderful job of commenting on the individual pieces. You should read his post.

My favorites include the Leo Guild story(the novels are fine indeed), Pards, and the piece on Roy Rogers. I’m of that last generation that watched and loved Roy, and his ilk, before they seemed to disappear from television and movies. No, cowboys didn’t dress like that, no version of the celluloid westerner for that matter, but who cares.

It’s a set of stories worth digging up if one hasn’t already added it to their library.

Forgotten Music: Ratt

Ratt started out I would imagine as all bands do, wanting to make their music, get big, make lots of money, and be remembered long after they fell from public view. They started off fine, but along the way turned into one of those godawful “Hair Bands” of the eighties. Spandex and poofed-up hair, make-up, seemingly ten million screaming teenage girls pursuing their every move.

But they didn’t start out that way.

The Ratt EP pictured here was released in late 1983 on an independent rock label and started to draw some attention. When they signed with a bigger label, I suppose they were pressed to do something more commercial. Out of The Cellar was a pretty good album as well, but they soon disappeared(at least for me) in the haze of hair bands and videos on MTV at the time.

But this EP(I still have my vinyl copy, though I haven’t heard it in years) showcased a hard rock outfit that could stand with most, if not all the metal bands working during the period. Seven songs, six originals and one cover of a cover. Walking The Dog was a cover of Aerosmith’s version of the Rufus Thomas song. One song, Back For More, appeared in a rerecorded version on Out of The Cellar. Those legs on the cover belong to Tawney Kitaen, better known as the hot redhead in the Whitesnake videos.

The line-up: all songs by Sephen Pearcy, singer, and the late Robin Crosby, guitarist( Warren DeMartini as well on You’re In Trouble)

1: Sweet Cheater

2: You Think You’re Tough

3: U Got It

4:You’re In Trouble(European release only)

5: Tell The World

6: Back For More

7: Walkin’ The Dog(Thomas)

Countdown To Armageddon/A Stranger In Paradise – Edward M. Lerner

Tags

Edward M. Lerner, Science Fiction, Wildside Books

COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON/A STRANGER IN PARADISE is Wildside Press“s second foray into the double book concept, modeled after the old Ace Books doubles. You know, read a book, flip it over, and read a second. Covers for both titles. I remember them well from my youth and still have most of those purchased back then. Wildside offers it HERE and a fine pair of books they are.

Edward M. Lerner first came to my attention in his, now growing, collaborations with Larry Niven, specifically the Fleet of Worlds Ringworld prequels. He worked for thirty years in the Aerospace Industry while writing science fiction part time. Now a full time writer.

COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON

Lebanese physicist Abdul Faisel worked for the Rothschild Institute in France. He harbors a deep hate of Christianity because of a peculiar sect that slaughtered his whole village, including his parents and baby sister. For years, he’d researched and gathered parts for two projects. When the Hezbollah terrorists hire him to build them an atomic bomb, delivering a stash of plutonium, he finally sees his chance.

Why waste his atomic bomb on terrorists whose only aim is to foster more hate, war, and killing? He has plans that go much farther.

Sounds like a rather pedestrian plot, doesn’t it?

I haven’t mentioned his second project. He’s built a working time machine! And he’s disappeared into the past with his atomic bomb.

It’s left to our heroes, Harry Bowen, physicist, and Terrence Ambling, government agent, to follow him into the past.

STRANGER IN PARADISE

A collection of five stories that combine new tropes with old. You have nanotechnology, people with the “Gift,” recycling, colonized worlds fallen into “savagery,” lost technologies being rediscovered, demons, greedy lawyers, industrial espionage, a new American Revolution. All wrapped up in five stories. I particularly like ther title story as researchers from Earth encounter a puzzle on a planet colonized by the “Firsters.”

A fine set.

Enjoyed both of these and the double concept set off youthful memories of a number of the old Ace favorites.

Apache

Tags

Burt Lancaster

APACHE is a 1954 western based on a novel by Paul Wellman starring Burt Lancaster as Massai and Jean Peters as Nalinle, his woman. Some other notables in the picture were John McIntire as Al Sieber, John Dehner as Weddle, and Charles Bronson(billed as Charles Buchinsky) as Hondo, an Apache scout.

It’s based on the true story of Massai, an Apache warrior, who slips off a train moving all Apache fighting men to Florida, and spent a year returning to his people, never making contact with white man or Native American. He wages a one man guerrilla war and was never recaptured. Every death or missing person was attributed to him whether true or not.

The story uses that as a starting point and weaves a tale of a misunderstood man who tries to go “straight,” adopting a new method he learns from a Cherokee farmer and his wife: corn, growing your own food. Foe a warrior, that’s an incredible change.

It wasn’t to be though. Betrayed by his own people, then set up by Weddle to die in an “escape attempt,” which goes awry and sets him loose again. Not knowing who to trust, he heads west, driven by the army, taking Nalinle with him. When she becomes pregnant, he wants her to return to her people. She refuses and they find a hiden patch of land where he givces up his war and returns to his original thought: planting corn and raising his family.

But then the army finds him.

I’ve not read the novel, but watching the movie was an enjoyable bit of time.

Mailbox Monday

A light week.

1: Solomon Kane – Ramsey Campbell: a novelization of the film based on the Robert E. Howard character by the noted horror writer.

2 & 3: Countdown To Armageddon/A Stranger In Paradise(PDF file for review) – Edward M. Lerner: based on he old Ace doubles concept. You know, read one book, flip it over, and read the second.

Post # 800

Well, another milestone crossed. I’ve said it before. A lot of fun for me and all started on a whim. I inend to keep going as long as I’m able and get a few readers every day.

The Time Travelers

Tags

low-budget spectacular, Science Fiction

I first saw this one in my long ago youth. A 1964 film, I never saw it in the theater, but it probably reached those late night Saturday night monster/science fiction movie feature with the local host made up like some goofy looking character. Ours was, hell, I don’t remember now that I think back. The show was from the High Point station, “Die Point” as our genial host called it.

I was about fifteen or sixteen at the time and loved that stuff. This movie could have fit into the fifties: low budget, really cheap sets, and a whole lot of fun for a young kid. A local station that runs old movies, old series, twenty-four hours a day ran it. I loved watching every second of it.

It concerned a group of scientists working on a time window, trying to look into the past or future. One overzealous guy opens the circuit wide open(they use a lot of scientific babble to explain it all) and shorts out a number of lines. freezing it at 107 years in the future. Quite by accident, they discover it’s more than a window, a door they can step through. The picture they see is a bleak setting and one of the characters, an electrician, jumps through and goes running off to explore.

The doorway is flickering, unstable, so the older scientist jumps through to bring him back. The younger soon follows when they see some strange figures appear in the distance follow. Soon weird creatures try to come through and the woman fights them off with a fire extinguisher. Worried, she follows in as well. The door is becoming more unstable.

Well, you know what happens. Door closes, scientists marooned, chased by weird mutants, take refuge in a cave, a sudden force field blocks the entrance, a normal looking woman, along with a pack of androgynous looking androids invites them in to the underground city where a group of scientists had survived the nuclear war.

The earth unlivable on the surface and supplies running out, a ship is nearly ready to take the survivors to a habitable planet around a near by star. Suspended animation with the androids tending the ship, raising plants for food, the four are invited to accompany them until calculations show the added people will strain resources, food, fuel, air, beyond capacity, and it will take too long to re-adapt everything. They won’t be allowed to go.

Then it becomes a race against time to build a new version of their time portal. The advanced science helps a bit.

One of my all time favorites of this type of movie. It actually held up better than I thought it might. A fine example of overcoming a miniscule budget to turn out a decent product.