I just re-read The End of the Dream, by Philip Wylie (1972). It's a story of ecological disaster, told from the viewpoint of Will Gulliver, one of a handful of survivors living in the far-off year of 2023, who is compiling stories of the various man-made disasters that wrecked the environment and brought about the extinction of most of the human race.
It's an interesting book in some ways, but it hasn't aged well. There aren't a lot of well-developed characters here, it realy is mostly just a litany of disasters. The book's attitude towards non-whites is well-meanng, patronizing-but-racist stuff of the "non-whites are often as intelligent as whites" variety. There's also a section on sexuality that (a) has nothing to do with ecolocgy, and (b) seems to be advocating incest and pedophilia.
Overall, while there are interesting elements to the book, it's not something I can wholeheartedly recommend.
I finally finished he New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction. At over 800 pages and 33 stories it truly took me a while. As much as I like pulp fiction, I was running out of steam and was wanting to move on to something else.
Now I am reading Predictally Irrational by Dan Ariely. Popular economics uses a model that consumers will make selections in their best interest. This book deals more in reality and behavioral economics in which people don't alwasy make decisions in their best interest, and they do it in such away that their decisions are predictable. Its an interesting read so far.
Despite my interest in popular music, I had not been aware of the Liverbirds, an all-female Merseybeat band active in the 1960s. I'm currently reading The Other Fab Four: The Remarkable True Story of the Liverbirds, Britain’s First Female Rock Band, co-authored by two surviving members. The writing is only okay, but it captures their voices, and it's an incredible piece of social history. They knew the Beatles, played the Cavern in Liverpool and the same seedy clubs the Fab Four frequented in Germany, and shared the stage with the likes of Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones.
Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human by K.W. Jeter. I had no idea that a sequel (and at least one or two more) existed to the movie.This takes place about a year after the movie, and Deckard is forced to return to LA to hunt for an escaped replicant. He has also meets a doctor who claims that there have been humans who have been killed as a replicant, and replicants who can pass as human no matter how long they are tested. So far, so good.
Naomi Alderman's The Power, which uses an almost comic-book like premise (I have not watched the series it inspired) to develop a startlingly realistic-seeming SF/F which resonates. Alderman writes very well, and the book, thus far, has me. One of the best I've read recently.
Unfortunately, I'm reading it slowly, due to all of the end-of-career stuff. One more week.
TORTILLA FLAT: John Steinbeck is my favorite America author, yet I have never before read Tortilla Flat. That's because, whenever I'm in the mood for Steinbeck, I usually re-read one of my favorites. But I went to California last week and that never fails to put me in the mood to read some Steinbeck, so I decided on Tortilla Flat because it is short and I have never read it before. The dust jacket compares it to the exploits of King Arthur and his knights, but the "knight" the characters most resemble is Don Quixote. I didn't like the characters at first, but they grew on me. If anything, it reminds me of a paisano version of Cannery Row.
Kill Me by Stephen White. A very rich man has a few of his friends fall into an irreversible coma, stroke victim, etc. Through another friend he finds out about a group who will kill you based on certain parameters that the client sets, and will make it look like an accident. Thus sparing the family grief if that person commits suicide. Once who hit one of those parameters there is no backing out, and they will kill you. Well this dude hits one of his parameters, but he has some unfinished business he wants to take care of, and now needs to survive long enough to do it.
I'm almost finished with this, and it is an interesting subject.
The Lone Ranger first appeared on radio on January 30, 1933.
Between 1936 and 1956 Fran Striker wrote 18 "Lone Ranger" books.
Between the first and the second (from April through November of 1937), the Lone Ranger appeared in eight issue of his own pulp, The Lone Ranger Magazine.
In the late '70s (because of The Legend of the Lone Ranger movie then in the works), Pinnacle Books reissued the first eight of the Lone Ranger books in paperback. There would have been more, no doubt, had the movie been more successful. I read them all when I was in junior high school.
In the 2K-teens, Adventure House released replica editions of all eight Lone Ranger pulp magazines.I bought those as well, but haven't yet read them.
I've been in a "Lone Ranger" mood lately and decided it was time to read the pulps. Knowing that pulp magazine stories were often reprinted as books, I did a quick check of the contents. The only duplication I found was that the fourth pulp, "Valley of the Shadows," is identical to the second book, The Lone Ranger & the Mystery Ranch. I have no desire to re-read the books I read as a kid, but I thought it may behoove me to re-read just that first one, because it was released before the pulps and may (as far as I remember) tell the origin story.
It doesn't, really. As the story opens, the Lone Ranger and Tonto are already a team, although they have seaparated, each working on different aspects of the same case. The Lone Ranger does not yet own Silver, however, and his horse is killed by outlaws in the first chapter. So this book does present the origin of Silver, which is quite similar to the one from both radio and television. This Lone Ranger (and Tonto) is somewhat different from the version most of us know from TV. This book first came out 13 years before the TV show, and the characterization is much closer to the radio shows of the day. I haven't yet decided whether or not I'm still in the mood to move on to the pulps at this time, but at least now I know that I didn't miss seminal information about the origin of the Ranger from the first book.
This is what the Lone Ranger and Tonto looked like on the cover of the first pulp issue.
THE JOY OF WORDS: I picked up this 1960 collections of "words" for $6 a couple of weeks ago at an antique store. Two women with the same last name, Beulah and Melinda (I'm assuming a mother and daughter), have written their names inside the front cover. Two of the pages were dog-eared, two of them were written upon, there were two post-it notes, but mostly there was a copious amount of little pieces of torn paper used as bookmarks through out. The subjects are divided into sections: Wisdom, Humor, Benjamin Franklin, History, Beauty and Business. No selection runs longer than a page, and sometimes there are as many as three selections per page. This is the perfect book to pick up and put down or to read on a plane.
Replies
I just re-read The End of the Dream, by Philip Wylie (1972). It's a story of ecological disaster, told from the viewpoint of Will Gulliver, one of a handful of survivors living in the far-off year of 2023, who is compiling stories of the various man-made disasters that wrecked the environment and brought about the extinction of most of the human race.
It's an interesting book in some ways, but it hasn't aged well. There aren't a lot of well-developed characters here, it realy is mostly just a litany of disasters. The book's attitude towards non-whites is well-meanng, patronizing-but-racist stuff of the "non-whites are often as intelligent as whites" variety. There's also a section on sexuality that (a) has nothing to do with ecolocgy, and (b) seems to be advocating incest and pedophilia.
Overall, while there are interesting elements to the book, it's not something I can wholeheartedly recommend.
I finally finished he New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction. At over 800 pages and 33 stories it truly took me a while. As much as I like pulp fiction, I was running out of steam and was wanting to move on to something else.
Now I am reading Predictally Irrational by Dan Ariely. Popular economics uses a model that consumers will make selections in their best interest. This book deals more in reality and behavioral economics in which people don't alwasy make decisions in their best interest, and they do it in such away that their decisions are predictable. Its an interesting read so far.
Despite my interest in popular music, I had not been aware of the Liverbirds, an all-female Merseybeat band active in the 1960s. I'm currently reading The Other Fab Four: The Remarkable True Story of the Liverbirds, Britain’s First Female Rock Band, co-authored by two surviving members. The writing is only okay, but it captures their voices, and it's an incredible piece of social history. They knew the Beatles, played the Cavern in Liverpool and the same seedy clubs the Fab Four frequented in Germany, and shared the stage with the likes of Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones.
Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human by K.W. Jeter. I had no idea that a sequel (and at least one or two more) existed to the movie.This takes place about a year after the movie, and Deckard is forced to return to LA to hunt for an escaped replicant. He has also meets a doctor who claims that there have been humans who have been killed as a replicant, and replicants who can pass as human no matter how long they are tested. So far, so good.
Naomi Alderman's The Power, which uses an almost comic-book like premise (I have not watched the series it inspired) to develop a startlingly realistic-seeming SF/F which resonates. Alderman writes very well, and the book, thus far, has me. One of the best I've read recently.
Unfortunately, I'm reading it slowly, due to all of the end-of-career stuff. One more week.
TORTILLA FLAT: John Steinbeck is my favorite America author, yet I have never before read Tortilla Flat. That's because, whenever I'm in the mood for Steinbeck, I usually re-read one of my favorites. But I went to California last week and that never fails to put me in the mood to read some Steinbeck, so I decided on Tortilla Flat because it is short and I have never read it before. The dust jacket compares it to the exploits of King Arthur and his knights, but the "knight" the characters most resemble is Don Quixote. I didn't like the characters at first, but they grew on me. If anything, it reminds me of a paisano version of Cannery Row.
Kill Me by Stephen White. A very rich man has a few of his friends fall into an irreversible coma, stroke victim, etc. Through another friend he finds out about a group who will kill you based on certain parameters that the client sets, and will make it look like an accident. Thus sparing the family grief if that person commits suicide. Once who hit one of those parameters there is no backing out, and they will kill you. Well this dude hits one of his parameters, but he has some unfinished business he wants to take care of, and now needs to survive long enough to do it.
I'm almost finished with this, and it is an interesting subject.
THE LONE RANGER:
The Lone Ranger first appeared on radio on January 30, 1933.
Between 1936 and 1956 Fran Striker wrote 18 "Lone Ranger" books.
Between the first and the second (from April through November of 1937), the Lone Ranger appeared in eight issue of his own pulp, The Lone Ranger Magazine.
In the late '70s (because of The Legend of the Lone Ranger movie then in the works), Pinnacle Books reissued the first eight of the Lone Ranger books in paperback. There would have been more, no doubt, had the movie been more successful. I read them all when I was in junior high school.
In the 2K-teens, Adventure House released replica editions of all eight Lone Ranger pulp magazines.I bought those as well, but haven't yet read them.
I've been in a "Lone Ranger" mood lately and decided it was time to read the pulps. Knowing that pulp magazine stories were often reprinted as books, I did a quick check of the contents. The only duplication I found was that the fourth pulp, "Valley of the Shadows," is identical to the second book, The Lone Ranger & the Mystery Ranch. I have no desire to re-read the books I read as a kid, but I thought it may behoove me to re-read just that first one, because it was released before the pulps and may (as far as I remember) tell the origin story.
It doesn't, really. As the story opens, the Lone Ranger and Tonto are already a team, although they have seaparated, each working on different aspects of the same case. The Lone Ranger does not yet own Silver, however, and his horse is killed by outlaws in the first chapter. So this book does present the origin of Silver, which is quite similar to the one from both radio and television. This Lone Ranger (and Tonto) is somewhat different from the version most of us know from TV. This book first came out 13 years before the TV show, and the characterization is much closer to the radio shows of the day. I haven't yet decided whether or not I'm still in the mood to move on to the pulps at this time, but at least now I know that I didn't miss seminal information about the origin of the Ranger from the first book.
This is what the Lone Ranger and Tonto looked like on the cover of the first pulp issue.
THE JOY OF WORDS: I picked up this 1960 collections of "words" for $6 a couple of weeks ago at an antique store. Two women with the same last name, Beulah and Melinda (I'm assuming a mother and daughter), have written their names inside the front cover. Two of the pages were dog-eared, two of them were written upon, there were two post-it notes, but mostly there was a copious amount of little pieces of torn paper used as bookmarks through out. The subjects are divided into sections: Wisdom, Humor, Benjamin Franklin, History, Beauty and Business. No selection runs longer than a page, and sometimes there are as many as three selections per page. This is the perfect book to pick up and put down or to read on a plane.
Just finished Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, by Abraham Josephine Riesman.
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