Month: December 2005

I bought this book as part of the much-vaunted by-and-sell-on-eBay thing I had going on in the early part of the century. I didn’t sell it, and I didn’t mark it a quarter in my own family yard sale; instead, I’ve read it. As you know, I’m on a neo-classic science fiction kick these last couple of weeks (see also my report on Man Plus by Frederik Pohl).

The book has the double-effect thing I enjoy so much. As a piece written in the late 1960s, it captures something of its time and the state of the science fiction of the era; however, its setting is hundreds of years hence. After colonizing the near solar system, the world fell into atomic warfare with which the colonists wanted nothing to do; as a result they evolved for life in free-fall. Meanwhile, the east and west coasts of America endure massive nuclear strikes which leave the fascist Texans safe to emerge as the rules who conquer the Americas and continue the struggle against the Chinese and the Russkies.

Oddly enough, although someone from the twenty-first century could look upon this and see blatant politicization-as a blogger, it’s my sacred duty–this book doesn’t contain any; the setting is simply the setting. Also, the author doesn’t have much to laud about the others in the book, whether the oppressed workers nor the Russian socialists. Instead, it’s all part of the setting, and it is what it is.

A thespian from the Sack–a free-fall colony near the moon–comes to Texas (as the whole Western hemisphere, give or take a couple hippie republics, is called) to stake a claim on an old family mine. As he’s unused to gravity, he wears an exoskeleton to function, and finds himself playing the role of the foretold leader of the revolution–or at least the figurehead as he plays the leader to earn his passage to his mining claim.

The voice fits the thespian from off the planet well, and the book is rather enjoyable. If you’re not too caught up on the latest science fiction, and if you can find a copy, it’s worth checking out.

I bought this book at the local Borders at full price because I enjoyed Interior Desecrations, and I cannot handle a day I don’t start with a Bleat. Also, Lileks’ is the life I want to live, to the point that I am shaving myself a high forehead to go totally all Single White Female. Perhaps I’m revealing too much and strengthening the case for a restraining order.

But anyway.

If you read it on the Internet, it must be true; ergo, I came into this book with a different set of expectations than a casual readers, and Lileks, like a jeweller with a loupe in, took his little hammer and shattered my crystalline acceptance about my upcoming next twenty years. There’s so much upon which I had not already dwelt. Like teething. For crying out loud, that’s going to last forever, and like the teeth will burst forth all snaggled from sealed gums….Although history has proven that most have survived this ordeal, I’m not looking forward to it.

So instead of reading this book with a knowing humor, with the shared knowledge of travails past, I have to look at it as a set of future tribulations, knowing that many of the quaint solutions we will apply will one day be the subject of Gnat’s sequel to her father’s work.

I bought this book as part of a sack of books for a buck on the last day of a library book fair in some rural southwestern Missouri county earlier this year. It’s a Stated First Edition, woo hoo! Unfortunately, it’s also a former library book, with all the stamps, scrawlings, and pockets, but a nice acetate cover anyway. Oddly enough, it’s a former Granite City library book, which means this book has been to Springfield and back in its limited lifetime.

But I digress. This book describes the progress of the Man Plus program, a program designed to modify a man to survive on the surface of Mars and to get that man to Mars. It’s a good old school science fiction piece, set in the near future for the time (the president in the book is the 42nd President, which we all know served in 1993-2001. It features an limited omniscient narrator who uses the third person the identify interested onservers who are not a part of the Man Plus project, but who direct it from behind the scenes. This compelling little mystery kept me turning the pages and offers some foreshadowing that keep the story moving.

Overall, a good book, the kind I ate up in my formative years to make me the lesser geek I am today.

And for those of you keeping score at home, this book marks my 94th read of the year. Unless I start hitting the coloring books, I won’t make 100 this year, but my goal was 70, so I did well. Of course, I haven’t met any of my other personal goals this year, and I likely won’t read this many next year with the impending lifestyle change upcoming, but I’m rather pleased with my bookishness this year.

I bought this book a long, long time ago when I was doing the eBay thing. Undoubtedly, I bought it for a buck or less and hoped to turn that into a quick three or four dollars, minus eBay’s cut of fifty cents plus twenty percent plus PayPal’s quarter plus twenty percent plus whatever shipping cost over what I charged plus the cost of packaging compounded with the cost of gas to the post office and my time in preparing and shipping the item. In retrospect, perhaps my bottom line is better off that I didn’t actually sell the book on eBay. Now that I’ve come to better appreciate Stephen King, my library is certainly better off.

As you probably already know, gentle reader, this book deals with a father and his daughter on the run from a clandestine government organization called the Shop. A participant in a small study while in college, Andy McGee (the father) found that he had special abilities beyond those of normal men. He married another participant, and together they begot the very special titular pyrokinetic daughter Charlene. The clandestine officials kill the mother and pursue the father and daughter so they can study them and perhaps use the child’s power on the Russkies. Hell, you know how it works out, sorta; you remember the Drew Barrymore movie, back when it was startling that the little girl from E.T. could be dangerous–back before the little girl who played the little girl from E.T. became actually dangerous.

The book moves along quickly and captures not only early King narrative, but also some of the zeitgeist of the time. Unfortunately, the book’s ending also reflects that zeitgeist, without any cathartic retribution or quiet return of the hero to normalcy; no, we get an indication that the child will tell her story to the one periodical that will stick it to the man, a periodical of some influence at the time, perhaps, but not any more. Of course, it wasn’t 2005 in 1980, so I couldn’t certainly expect Charlie McGee to start a blog, but come on.