Three more plays by Eugene O'Neill: Desire Under the Elms, Strange Interlude and Mournoing Beciomes Electra. Our Gene doesn't do happy endings, apparently.
I have been reading the second Mars book, but it's slow going. I'm not entirely sure why. It's actually quite imaginative, with lots of bizarre but practical world-building. But just when I think it's ending, somebody is kidnapped or escapes or something and the book is extended for another adventure and I find it frustrating instead of exciting.
Maybe it's that lack of structure that makes me long for a proper ending. Or any ending. The first major plotline, where Carter exposes Barsoom's false religion, ended many chapters ago, but Carter keeps swashbuckling through one chase or escape or battle after another. I'd have preferred Burroughs had followed the repercussions of millions of people finding out that for millenia, everyone who went down the river Iss expecting to find paradise were instead eaten, and their property stolen! But that was basically ignored in favor of more pointless derring-do.
Also, Burroughs casually mentions that everybody on Mars is basically immortal and just moves on. WTF? That could use a little more development!
doc photo > Captain ComicsOctober 13, 2024 at 2:48pm
I believe the early Mars stories were serialized in a magazine before being collected and published in book form which may explain the episodic nature of the storyline. If you make it that far, book four in the series Thuvia Maid of Mars is quite good and unlike the first three books it is a standalone story.
Mysterry Science Theater 3000: A Cultural History, by Matt Foy and Christopher J. Olson. It's not bad, but the main issues are that as an old MSTie, I already knew most of the stuff sbout ther history of the show, and the authors' theories about the sociocultural impact of the show feel like those of academics who watch too much television.
MERLIN'S TOUR OF THE UNIVERSE - A Traveller's Guide to Blue Moons and Black Holes, Mars, Stars & Everything Far (Revised and updated for the twenty-first century): This is a reissue of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's first book, which originally appeared as a questiion-and-answer column in Star-Date, an astronomy magazine published for the lay reader by the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texus. In it, Tyson adopts the persona of an alien named Merlin who answers question about the universe. (Some answers have been updated to reflect advances in science.) This book is very much like Randall Munroe's What If? - Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Tyson's book is, perhaps, not as entertaining as Munroe's because the questions in Tyson's book are serious whereas the ones in Munroes are "absurd," but both books are equally educational. Recommended.
Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road, by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson. Reading the novelization before I've seen the episode berings back memories of my younger says - it's how I first encountered most of the Hartnell and Troughton Era stories.
Coincidentally, I am reading some Doctor who paperbacks myself, concentrating on those written by Terrance Dicks. I started with Doctor Who and an Unearthly Childwiththeintention of reading only the first three chapters and the last, but it was so quick and easy I just went ahead and read the whole thing. (I think I could read any of these in a single sitting if I had a mind to.) From there I moved on to Doctor Who and the Three Doctors and took a break after Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin. Next up (as long as my mind holds) are the adaptations of The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors, with the intention of finishing off with the original novel The Eight Doctors.
The disappointing thing about these paperbacks is that there are virtually no details not to be found in the television episodes. In that respect, they are very strict and literal adaptations (as you know). I'd ask you if The Church on Ruby Road has any "extras" in it, but of course you wouldn't know (yet).
The Baron > Jeff of Earth-JJanuary 15, 2025 at 4:20pm
My recollection is that by and large the old novelizations were pretty "bare-bones", except for a couple where guys novelized their own scripts and included things that the original budgets didn't allow for. The new series novelizations that I've seen have varied. Paul Cornell's novelization of "Twice Upon A Time" stays pretty close to the original story, whereas Steven Moffat's novelization of "The Day of the Doctor" adds in a bunch of things, including an "in universe" explanation of the Peter Cushing movies.
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I bought the first three novels at Barnes & Noble about 10 years ago, and haven't cracked any of them open yet.
Three more plays by Eugene O'Neill: Desire Under the Elms, Strange Interlude and Mournoing Beciomes Electra. Our Gene doesn't do happy endings, apparently.
I have been reading the second Mars book, but it's slow going. I'm not entirely sure why. It's actually quite imaginative, with lots of bizarre but practical world-building. But just when I think it's ending, somebody is kidnapped or escapes or something and the book is extended for another adventure and I find it frustrating instead of exciting.
Maybe it's that lack of structure that makes me long for a proper ending. Or any ending. The first major plotline, where Carter exposes Barsoom's false religion, ended many chapters ago, but Carter keeps swashbuckling through one chase or escape or battle after another. I'd have preferred Burroughs had followed the repercussions of millions of people finding out that for millenia, everyone who went down the river Iss expecting to find paradise were instead eaten, and their property stolen! But that was basically ignored in favor of more pointless derring-do.
Also, Burroughs casually mentions that everybody on Mars is basically immortal and just moves on. WTF? That could use a little more development!
I believe the early Mars stories were serialized in a magazine before being collected and published in book form which may explain the episodic nature of the storyline. If you make it that far, book four in the series Thuvia Maid of Mars is quite good and unlike the first three books it is a standalone story.
Mysterry Science Theater 3000: A Cultural History, by Matt Foy and Christopher J. Olson. It's not bad, but the main issues are that as an old MSTie, I already knew most of the stuff sbout ther history of the show, and the authors' theories about the sociocultural impact of the show feel like those of academics who watch too much television.
MERLIN'S TOUR OF THE UNIVERSE - A Traveller's Guide to Blue Moons and Black Holes, Mars, Stars & Everything Far (Revised and updated for the twenty-first century): This is a reissue of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's first book, which originally appeared as a questiion-and-answer column in Star-Date, an astronomy magazine published for the lay reader by the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texus. In it, Tyson adopts the persona of an alien named Merlin who answers question about the universe. (Some answers have been updated to reflect advances in science.) This book is very much like Randall Munroe's What If? - Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Tyson's book is, perhaps, not as entertaining as Munroe's because the questions in Tyson's book are serious whereas the ones in Munroes are "absurd," but both books are equally educational. Recommended.
Twenty-first Century Science Fiction: a fat anthology from 2013 that has been good so far.
(Also contains stories by a number of people with whom I've panelled. None by me, of course
)
Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road, by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson. Reading the novelization before I've seen the episode berings back memories of my younger says - it's how I first encountered most of the Hartnell and Troughton Era stories.
Coincidentally, I am reading some Doctor who paperbacks myself, concentrating on those written by Terrance Dicks. I started with Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child with the intention of reading only the first three chapters and the last, but it was so quick and easy I just went ahead and read the whole thing. (I think I could read any of these in a single sitting if I had a mind to.) From there I moved on to Doctor Who and the Three Doctors and took a break after Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin. Next up (as long as my mind holds) are the adaptations of The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors, with the intention of finishing off with the original novel The Eight Doctors.
The disappointing thing about these paperbacks is that there are virtually no details not to be found in the television episodes. In that respect, they are very strict and literal adaptations (as you know). I'd ask you if The Church on Ruby Road has any "extras" in it, but of course you wouldn't know (yet).
My recollection is that by and large the old novelizations were pretty "bare-bones", except for a couple where guys novelized their own scripts and included things that the original budgets didn't allow for. The new series novelizations that I've seen have varied. Paul Cornell's novelization of "Twice Upon A Time" stays pretty close to the original story, whereas Steven Moffat's novelization of "The Day of the Doctor" adds in a bunch of things, including an "in universe" explanation of the Peter Cushing movies.
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