Category: Books

Wow, it’s been almost three years since I read N-Space, the collection to which this book is billed the sequel. How do you get a sequel to a collection of short stories, snippets, and novel excerpts? Beats me, I am not a marketing flack for a publisher.

Like that book, I didn’t care for this book too much. For starters, it pads the nearly 500 pages with excerpts and scenes from novels (a disturbing number of which I have already read). It offers a number from his Warlock series, which I haven’t read and might have to look into. Other than that, it dabbles mostly in the Known Space arena.

It did, however, allow me to put my finger on one of Niven’s flaws: his books are best when the science isn’t actually a freaking character within it, particularly the one that speaks most. The later Ringworld novels fell into this trap, as did one of the stories in this book (“The Borderland of Sol”) whose only purpose was for Niven to noodle about the conceit of a quantum blackhole. The narrator is a space adventurer who follows along with Carlos Wu, father of Ringworld‘s Louis Wu, as they uncover a scientist engaged in piracy. The bulk of the story is Wu knowing the science of what’s going on and not spilling it until they’re in the pirate’s lair, where the pirate scientist gives a lecture on quantum black holes.

The nonfiction bits talk about how much Niven likes to deal with the hard sciences and that, in one of the many science fiction convention memories he treats us to, he and a group of artists and writers got a conference room set aside so they could create a world, including the topography, the aliens on it, and their culture. They worked in the room for the whole convention, and that was it: people putting together a world. Niven was surprised that more fans didn’t stop by to see this riveting action as artists created the images, writers wrote up the prose, and everyone brainstormed without a freaking story.

Niven, apparently, lives for this stuff, but readers don’t necessarily. Ergo, this book is okay for real Niven fans, but casual science fiction fans should probably stick to the real novels or the real collections.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

Wow, is this book really 10 years old? Man, I read the original book, The Rants only….12 years ago, I guess. Funny how those years condense in memory. I’m reading another book whose predecessor I read in my old house, probably 3 years ago, and that doesn’t seem so far back.

Regardless, let’s get to the book in hand. It collects Dennis Miller’s monologues from his old HBO show which he got right after he left Saturday Night Live. All those years ago. They’re seasoned with his allusions, which you get enough of to think yourself smart when you get them. He takes on the normal topical topics, like kids these days (which are now kids those days and adults now), politics, government, and relationships. The titles are broad and the topic matter, too, is broad, and somehow, it saddens me and comforts me that the rants could hold up today, a decade later. Particularly if you just change the name “Clinton” to “Clinton.” We haven’t come very far in this decade, but we haven’t gotten much worse.

Additionally, it’s odd to note that Dennis Miller, before 2001, sounds more like an intelligent Bill Maher politically than he does now. He says, I think, that he changed in 2001. I would say so.

Good, interesting reading worth a look.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

As you might know, gentle reader, I am a great John D. MacDonald fan, and someday I hope to own all of these paperback originals. This one, written in the middle 1950s, deals with a bucolic Florida town near Tampa that has an old doctor who grew rich from land sales but kept the money, in cash, in his fortress like home. Word gets out, and some out of town hitters come looking for it at the same time as distant shirt-tail relations show up to sponge a bit and the niece-by-marriage hatches a plot to have the man committed.

The book switches points of view and really develops the individual characters in it. It seems slowly, almost, but it’s not; the book runs only 191 pages and really ramps up to a good climax as the individual storylines come to a focal point. MacDonald does this well in his paperback originals, some of which I’ve already reviewed in this space (use the search bar, I’m too lazy to do it for you).

This book is a good one in the set, and I’m eager for the next. Which will probably be in a couple of weeks.

Books mentioned in this review:

This play details two Jewish brothers’ brief stay with their grandmother and aunt in Yonkers during World War II. The grandmother is of old German dictatorial stock, the aunt is daft, the father (who leaves the boys with his mother while he earns some money to repay a debt to a loan shark) is weak, and the uncle is a bag man for the mob who’s on the run. The boys, needless to say, aren’t thrilled and aren’t sure how to survive in this environment.

Not one of the Simon plays that I’ve found that speaks to me; I guess if I would have been Jewish in New York in World War II, it would have been more meaningful to me. It’s not a bad read, but I don’t know that the play is as driving and forward moving as a play ought to be.

Books mentioned in this review:

I have read at least one other Shell Scott novel, since I own it, and might have read more than that courtesy of my local library when I was in high school. So although I’m not a particular fan of Prather, I’ve enjoyed his participation in a genre I enjoy.

The book is less earnest in its pulp and doesn’t really swerve into the campy, but the main character doesn’t take himself or his adventures too seriously. In this book, Shell Scott investigates the murder of a vice president of a Hollywood dish magazine and discovers, as the bodies of mobsters and starlets begin to fall all around him, a blackmail scheme behind it. He does some shooting, some fighting, some near-loving of said starlets, and uses a ruse in the ending to unravel the plot.

A quick read, good enough, and I’ll take more of these as they present themselves in the garage sales or book fair circuit. If you’re so inclined, there’s a link to this book below and you can put some dough in the coffers of Noggle, Inc. No, really, I mean dough; Amazon doesn’t pay pitiful referrers like me in real money.

Books mentioned in this review:

As you know, gentle reader, I prefer a book in my hand to all the wordsmithery of Internety. Maybe I’m invoking the wrong allusion for my point. Regardless, it explains why I buy books that collect writings that are freely available on the Internet. Like this volume, which collects a number of things from Slate’s first ten years (1996-2006). In a sad sort of way, my going through this book identified how I’ve turned away from reading mainstream general interest magazines in Slate’s 10 year history and why.

This book collects a couple pieces per year (the best, one would assume) and prefaces with a little about the magazine’s history at the time. However, a little after 2000, the “best” of Slate veers into Bush and Republicans sux! territory. Here’s the subject of the pieces:

1996

• Why flight attendants talk like they do.
• Trying to overcome one’s aversions to certain foods.

1997

• Sleeping in the same bed as kids is okay.
• A man muses while watching couples pass.
• Liberal versus conservatives (gardening philosophy, not political).
• Che’s popularity is because he died young.

1998

• Working in the ER when it’s a full moon on Friday the 13th.
• A conversation exchange of posts thing.
• The Farrelly Brothers’ popularity.
• A baby sitting co-op as an economics lesson.

1999

• The tele-tubby gay thing.
• Jerry Falwell’s definition of the Anti-Christ describes the author.
• The Supreme Court handles a stripper case.

2000

• Presidential candidates tend to be blue-blooded Ivy Leaguers.
• The stolen election told as a Grinch poem.
• A couple’s interaction in a bar.

2001

• Author tries Paxil for a month.
• Bill O’Reilly is a poseur.
• On defending bestiality (not actually defending bestiality).

2002

• On shy urinators.
• Soccer fans as nationalists.
• Evolution of the Pledge of Allegiance.
• Lewis and Clark celebrated inappropriately.
• A former Marine at the WTC rubble finds survivors.
• Spitting like a wine pro.
• The 50/50 political split in America.

2003

• Post exchange on miscarriage.
• Goose stepping in parades.
• A man awakens from being knocked out.
• Low-rise pants.
• Author acts as a street performer.
• Hating Bush but loving his tax cuts.

2004

• The Martha Stewart trial.
• Rich men buying newspapers.
• The end of the universe.
• Bush is stupid on purpose.
• Discovering a genetic deficiency in oneself that leads to breast cancer.
• Michael Moore is a bad documentarian.
• What did Bush know before we invaded 9/11?
• I am a racist.
• I love being in India.
• Bush is a bad parent; Gore, Kerry, the Clintons are good parents.
• In praise of misers.

2005

• Reattaching severed body parts.
• Rappers compared to bloggers.
• In praise of Congress’s action on Terry Schiavo.
• Pitying Prince Charles.
• Proust and the madeleine cookie.
• Impact of men watching their women give birth.
• A Katrina evacuee gets help from the private sector.

I have bolded the pieces that explicitly knock Bush by name. The tone of the pieces begins to shift around 2000, too, to include snarky asides and tut-tutting of some conservative/libertarian principles. Suddenly, the periodical is no longer writing about interesting things that I don’t know about so much as writing about politics and attacking me and things I believe in.

You know, there was a day when I had subscriptions to Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly. We even had our years with Newsweek and Time. I didn’t pay much attention to Slate, but I went to Salon every day and I even foolishly invested in it.

But come 2000, all of a sudden the magazines all shifted. In the news magazines, they belittled Bush every magazine. In the monthlies, they spent less time on general interest essays and more time trying to outdo each other in implicating Bush in a wide variety of churlish behaviours. Mostly churlish on the part of the magazine authors. As you might remember, I wrote a piece when I let my Harper’s subscription lapse after a decade.

Now I’m off of news weeklies, news monthlies, and general interest monthlies, and home/family magazines are coming next, now that they’ve shifted tone from saving energy saves money to go green to serve Gaia and preserve the environment for the future, where your descendents can live in substinence conditions to serve Gaia.

But, back to this book.

The essays that were what mainstream magazines did best–take one outside his or her daily existence into something, even just a different voice, outside the reader’s experience–were enjoyable. The snarky pieces about celebrities (O’Reilly) and successful business people (who then buy publications) were tolerable–but that’s not a compliment; I tolerated them, literally. However, the snarky pieces on the Bush administration were inexecrable. It took me three times to make it through best-selling author (that is, best selling quoter and inflater of Bush’s misstatements) Jacob Weisberg’s bit about how Bush chooses to be stupid and has an oedipal complex. I read the piece about the Republicans being bad parents and couldn’t believe that the author of that piece was serious.

But seriousness and its attendant earnestness explains why I don’t read Slate unless a blogger links to a specific piece (usually by Hitchens or Kaus), don’t take general interest magazines, and don’t even visit Salon any more (but cannot sell my stock since its sale price is less than the commission price for selling it).

Hard otherwise to capture personal historical reading trends as this book has done accidentally. So I guess it’s worth it for this long post I got out of it. And some of it is good, but when it’s bad, it’s horrid, to make another semi-appropriate allusion.

Books mentioned in this review:

Well, it surely comes as no surprise that I’ve been on a Star Trek kick lately. I’ve read a number of books in the last couple of months (see this, this, this, and this). Last week, on Tuesday through Friday nights, I watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, and Star Trek: Insurrection. 80% of current Star Trek cinema (yeah, these videocassettes).

So what do you think I picked up after finishing Heat? This paperback, which I purchased in August.

Now, this is the first “modern” Star Trek book I’ve read. The others noted above come from the early 1980s, and they run about 200 pages give or take. This paperback, published among 27 that year, runs 370 pages and comes with all the jump cuts, red herrings, and multiple points of view you’d find in a more recent piece of genre fiction. I won’t say that those characteristics make more modern novels better than the old school genre fiction, but they do make for richer reading.

This book centers on a plot by the Romulans to work with the Borg to defeat the Federation. Romulans, using Borg technology, reanimate Kirk after having found his grave on Veridian III (where he died in Star Trek: Generations). They brainwash him and send him to kill Picard, who’s on a mission to do something to the Borg and, well, it’s complicated. In a decent way. The best way would tie up loose ends and answer fundamental questions the books ask, but then again, I suppose that would prevent me from buying one of the 30 Star Trek novels that came out the next year to learn the truth, only to discover that the next ghostwriter for Shatner didn’t bother to read the preceding book to answer the questions.

Still, a pretty decent bit of fiction, set comfortably in a defined universe where I understand the markers. Similar to the John Norman series I delve into from time to time, although not as richly presented.

Books mentioned in this review:

You know, I don’t think I’ve ever picked up a book about or by a candidate while the campaign was going on (although I did read Ross Perot’s book some years after United We Stand was forgotten as a book and as a political force). Still, as part of the Christmas present for my two conservative uncles (mentioned here), I got them this book in addition to an anti-Clinton screed I knew would go over well (I forget which one I got them; there were so many from which to choose!).

I bought a copy of this book for myself so that I’d be familiar with it as well. I mean, you can tell by my sidebar that I support his run and all, so it’s preaching to the choir, really.

The book breaks down into three sections, really:

1. Fred Thompson’s biography.
2. Horserace handicapping ca last summer.
3. A collection of Fred Thompson’s writing.

Additionally, there’s a bit thinking about whom Fred Thompson could select as a running mate. Both of the handicapping sections are weak, especially as time has rendered the possibilities impossible (that is, things didn’t fall the way the author presents as a best case scenario). However, the biography and the political essays by Thompson himself are nice, but are available on the Internet.

Ergo, the book’s best as a gift for someone whom you want to convince that Fred’s the man and to whom you want to give something more than a collection of URLs.

Books mentioned in this review:

As I insinuated in the book review for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, this book takes the script of the movie and what I know if it and goes a little beyond it. Okay, a lot beyond it. And she’s the author who gave Mr. Sulu his name, which according to Wikipedia became canon not when she used it in her book, but when it was inserted into the script of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

So, do you remember the movie? Not much either you, huh? Funny how these movies are really so short in actual episodes/incidents/scenes when you come right down to it. This particular movie was the one between Khan and the whales, so it gets short shrift. Also, it reads more like a fattened television script (and the fattening isn’t always flattering) than a novel in its own right. And, if you remember, this is the first movie that started the tradition of blowing up the Enterprise. Maybe it meant something in this movie (shock, if nothing else), by the time the Next Generation bunch were blowing them up like they were wooden Hollywood sets and not expensive pieces of government procurement, it was rote and boring.

So the book’s worth the time if you’re a Star Trek fan (or a Vonda N. McIntyre fan, I suppose).

If not, watch the movie.

Books mentioned in this review:

Man, this book is old; Kling is still a new detective and married to the model who might have started cheating on him, The City is a pre-Giuliani cesspool, and the copyright date says 1981. Well, that’s about all you can say about it to know how old the book is. Its contents and story have aged well, but it’s worth remembering that this series is only middle aged here at about 30 years old.

The main plot: on the hottest week of the year, the boys from the 87th find an apparent suicide in a apartment where the air conditioner has been shut off. This causes them to delve a little deeper, and they discover that several things in the apartment have been wiped of prints–including the thermometer and the bottle of pills the victim used in the suicide. So suicide it probably ain’t. In side plots, a recent ex-con decides Kling deserves to die for sending him up and Kling’s investigation of the alleged infidelity of his wife.

The book’s only 180 pages long, so it reads like a script for a television series in spots, but really, isn’t that what we expect of these middle-of-the-series books?

Books mentioned in this review:

This thin volume, my free gift for subscribing or resubscribing, doesn’t count for much on the intellectual scale, but you know, gentle reader, that I don’t always go for the heavy stuff. As a matter of fact, I avoid it a lot of the time. So maybe some cartoons fit right in.

They’re amusing. I don’t think I’ve even chuckled at a one panel cartoon in decades, but I give some of them a wry internal smile, including some within this collection. Some almost venture to Far Side territory, something you wouldn’t expect from a staid publication.

Worth a look, I guess, if you subscribe or find it at the book sales.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book is a bit unlike most genre fiction, where you have an obvious sort of plot problem that, once it’s overcome, the book is done. Instead, we have a character (Friday), an elite “courier” who happens to be an Artificial Person looking for an identity in a world of humans who don’t view AP or the lesser petri dish Living Artifacts as human, and we have her situation: in a post-breakup world run by batteries and without internal combustion engines, intrigue amid the nation-states, and a wave of assassinations. When Friday is rejected by an open family and is cut off from her corporate benefactors, she has to rely on her wits and her augmented reflexes to survive and find her way home.

The book is a later Heinlein; I have only the barest memory of reading anything but Stranger in a Strange Land in high school (the other stuff came in middle school) and Farnham’s Freehold last year. This book is more like the former, with its reliance on free-and-breezy sexuality, than the latter, a more straight ahead science fiction story. I mean, the Heinlein moral code is there in both, but not so vigorous in the earlier work. I’m not going to spend a lot of time pooh-poohing it because I’m not a prude, but I am a family guy. So I prefer the old school Heinlein.

The book doesn’t answer many questions the reader will have about what’s happened between now and the time the book takes place to break up the US, for one thing, and eliminate internal combustion engines. Nor does it really draw to a close the questions it brings up nor conclude the macro-background big deals and big events in which the story is set; instead, we have Friday removing herself from the situation as a resolution.

Perhaps consistent, perhaps on message, but ultimately it weakens the book.

On the plus side, this book is fairly common at book fairs, so you can get yours cheaply if you don’t want the ease and convenience of enriching me by clicking the link below.

Books mentioned in this review:

All right, I think this author took slightly more liberty with this novelization than “Gene Roddenberry” did with the first one; a lot of the scenes that I don’t remember from the movie are a little disparate (but nobody got implants that disappear). Given what I’ve seen of the novelization of The Search for Spock, though, this one is relatively bang-on the novelization.

To recap: While the Enterprise is on a training mission, it investigates a scientific lab outpost that sends a garbled message to Kirk. Meanwhile, an enemy from Kirk’s past has put events in motion to steal that lab’s discovery and to kill Kirk in revenge.

These books clock in under 200 pages, even with the additional emoting scenes and scientific mumbo-jumbo added. If you’re into Star Trek, you will probably get a kick out of them.

Books mentioned in this review:

As you might know, gentle reader, I picked up a number of Star Trek movie novelizations last autumn along with a copy of My Enemy, My Ally. I also later bought VHS copies of all of the movies but The Voyage Home. So I’ll be able to do a comparison of the films to the novels as well, once I get around to watching the movies.

The book follows the movie, mostly, with some variations (as I recall). For example, I don’t remember an implant that gives Kirk direct access to the Starfleet emergency channel. But it’s in the book and, as I know of the Star Trek universe, nowhere else. However, my reading in the canon is a little light, but that’s changing.

The book also looks at some of the behind-the-scenes politicking that made Kirk an admiral and some of the history of the Enterprise era, but it looks as though this, too, never made official canon. I have to wonder if they really paid attention to the books when building the movies and other series. Actually, I don’t have to wonder; I can infer by what Ms. Duane said when she commented on her book.

A quick enough read, and it was fun enough. If it doesn’t line completely up, I won’t notice in most places and won’t mind too much when it does. Which is why Paramount can do it so sloppily.

Oh, yeah, the plot: A big probe comes to earth to destroy it. No, not because of the whales, because it’s Voyager coming to meet its creator and disinfect the planet of the irrational carbon units. Then, a hot bald chick acts as its emissary and the dad from 7th Heaven unites with the hot bald chick and the machine. Credits roll.

Sure, it’s thin, but audiences waited through the whole 1970s, almost, to get that, and they were ecstatic. Once the geeks were happy again, the fog of the 1970s lifted, the moribund economy rebounded, and we’re still seeing the effects of that national optimism today. Reagan revolution? No, the Roddenberry Revolution.

Books mentioned in this review:

As I move the books and the MfBJN home office, I’ve shuffled through my to-read shelves and have found a couple of books that I would have surely read by now if I’d known they were present. This book is one of them. The Lucas Davenport novels are pretty good genre reads.

This book, from the middle 1990s, details Davenport’s search for a madman who has kidnapped a shrink and her two daughters and keeps them hidden in a root cellar in the country. Davenport marshals his team (sorry, Deputy Chiefs his team) to find the perp and to hopefully rescue as many as possible.

Davenport novels have a good sense of the upper Midwest, but like in Mortal Prey, someone in the know will find a jarring inaccuracy. In that book, it was little things about St. Louis; in this book, it’s when discussing GenCon (whose t-shirt the bad guy was seen wearing). Davenport explains it off-handedly that it’s a gaming convention in Lake Geneva. Although the name comes from Lake Geneva, the convention was held in Milwaukee at the time. Take my word for it. Before I was living in St. Louis to prepare my John Sandford fact-checking abilities, I lived in Milwaukee and attended GenCon to hone my John Sandford fact-checking abilities.

Regardless of those occasional devil chords of obvious problems (which probably include things about which I don’t know, so I don’t hear the krang!), the books remain readable and enjoyable, and I’ll get around to the one remaining Sandford on my shelves (Dead Watch) one of these days.

Books mentioned in this review: