Category Archives: Book Reviews

Men Into Space: A History

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MenIntoSpace_front-500x500Steve Davidson gave a glowing review to Men Into Space by John C. Frederiksen on the Amazing Stories blog. Men Into Space was the late-1950s hard science fiction adventure series that in the eyes of pre-teen Mike Glyer took up where the space exploration episodes of Disneyland left off.

Publisher Bear Manor Media’s description is in synch with my memory of the show’s only season:

Popular actor William Lundigan appeared as the redoubtable Colonel Edward McCauley, who grappled with many of the same problems that real astronauts encountered in their quest to reach the Moon a decade later. It was a somber departure from previous televised science fiction fare, aimed at juveniles, and served up the drama and excitement of space flight in realistic fashion.

In 38 black-and-white episodes, McCauley endures lunar crashes, renegade satellites, runaway space stations, meteor strikes, and colliding tankers, in addition to memorable encounters with feuding scientists, balky subordinates, hostile cosmonauts, and space babes. All told, Men Into Space is a classic slice of 1950s Americana and exuberantly reflects the national obsession with astronautics of its day. It is a must for devotees of the heroic age of spaceflight and early science fiction television.

Davidson praises all aspects of the book, especially its episode summaries –

Where Men Into Space really shines though is John’s presentation of all 38 episodes. With loving detail and an evident encyclopedic familiarity with each one, Frederiksen lays out the action, the conflict, the personalities and the emotion in a page-turning, exciting and completely engaging manner; the closest comparison I can find to his semi-fictional presentation are James Blish’s Star Trek (TOS) episode novelizations.

You’ve sold me, Steve. Dialing my Kindle now…

Scalzi Brings ‘Em Back Alive

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Red ShirtsRedshirts. Classic Star Trek fans know them as the expendable security personnel on the away team who are prone to be dramatically killed by hazard of the week — whatever threat the show’s real stars will have to overcome before the end of the episode.

Captain Kirk lost so many redshirts I wondered if he was due for a breakdown. In Captain Newman, M.D., the movie about an Army psychiatric ward during WWII, Eddie Albert’s Colonel Bliss is so racked by guilt about the men he’s sent to their deaths that he suffers a divided personality and, as “Mister Future,” spends his day calling out duty rosters composed of the names of dead pilots [YouTube, at 5:00 and 9:00].

Never Captain Kirk: he simply isn’t that introspective. The only personality splits he experiences are byproducts of transporter accidents – like Evil Kirk and Feeble Kirk from “The Enemy Within,” or Kirk’s alternate universe, war criminal twin (commander of the goateed Spock) in the far more interesting “Mirror, Mirror.”

Who, then, will rescue these minor characters from their gruesome fates? Who will recognize that decades of watching Trek reruns has prepared the audience to become customers for a story told from the redshirts’ point-of-view?

John Scalzi is the man. His satirical adventure, Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, revolves around three questions: Can a red-shirted character stay alive for an entire novel? How does this imaginary universe work really? Will his protagonist be able to decipher the rules, survive and save his friends? Scalzi answers all three questions in ways that are entertaining, funny and even, at times, touching.

A Roddenberry counterpart has created the Universal Union (a couple continuums over from the United Federation of Planets, no doubt.) And somebody must answer for all the redshirts who’ve met a gristly end at enemy hands (tentacles, claws, extendable tool arms, acid-spewing beaks, what have you) on his show — a show which somehow truly exists in a parallel space-time to his own. A member of the Intrepid’s latest draft of redshirts, Ensign Andrew Dahl, discovers the truth, and that they have little time to save their lives before they’re doomed to join the away team.

At this point in an ordinary review a critic usually riffs through the plot to help you decide if this is your kind of story. Unfortunately, admiring the work in too much detail would spoil your enjoyment. Anyway, I can’t make my enthusiasm for Redshirts contagious by an inferior retelling of its jokes.

The novel’s opening chapter is a taut, dramatic demonstration of what it’s like to be a redshirt spending his last moments alive trapped in a series episode. It’s my favorite part, and closes with a revealing conversation between Captain Abernathy and his bridge officers, who aren’t as bothered as they might be about the incredible attrition of away team members. Science Officer Q’eeng ends chapter on the exactly wrong emotional note (a good thing in comedy) when he baldy advises his colleagues, “We need more crew.”

What follows is the full adventure of the redshirts’ discoveries and salvation. Then the three codas of the title, First Person, Second Person, and Third Person, fill out the last quarter of the book.

First Person is done as a blog. I don’t know why this practically gave me a split personality of my own.

Mike: I know the novel’s blog is not supposed to be in Scalzi’s “voice.” I know it’s supposed to use the diction of the character creating it.

Glyer: So what’s the problem?

Mike: I feel like the first Redshirts coda keeps falling behind in a competition with something I’m expecting from reading Whatever.

Glyer: This blog is written by one of the characters. If it was just like Whatever it would be a failure.  

Mike: We both understand that. Why doesn’t it help?

So the first coda drove me a little batty. If you’re scoring at home don’t mark that down as a flaw in the book but regular readers of Whatever might want to come prepared just the same.

The final two codas are narratives continuing the story in a direction I was more than pleased to see based on the emotional investment I’d made in the characters. Was it a realistic direction? Not necessarily. Sure, we could always have more realism. But bleep that! Manipulate away! (Would you have been happier if E.T. had died in the emergency room? Then Redshirts might not be for you. Otherwise, dive in.)

Redshirts is more than a novel, it’s a royal progress, regaled in song, blog and press release, feted and cheered. Before I ever downloaded a copy I read the blurbs. I applauded the favorable reviews and booed the bad ones. I even gave a signal boost to the book tour. Scalzi’s invitation to watch him pull the levers and push the buttons to promote his New York Times bestseller succeeded, so far as I was concerned, in tapping that same well of vicarious pleasure Bradbury plumbed when he told audiences, “I wanted to be the greatest writer in the world. Aren’t you glad I finally made it?” Buying a copy was the inevitable final step toward my complete immersion in this social media tsunami.

Not that the joyous hype was my sole reason for buying. Scalzi is a funny writer. His blog is funny. I expected his book to fulfill its promise to be funny, too. He did that, and more.

It’s a time-honored competition among sf writers to turn one another’s stories inside out for a laugh, as Harry Harrison’s Bill, The Galactic Hero did to the Foundation Trilogy and Starship Troopers, or Philip Jose Farmer’s Kilgore Trout novel did to Vonnegut. In this case, you’ll enjoy Scalzi twisting and reweaving Gene Roddenberry’s familiar tropes in new and humorous ways.

Happy Birthday Professor Tolkien

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Today is J. R. R. Tolkien’s 120th birthday, whose fans have much to look forward to in the new year 2012 provided the Earth doesn’t end before the first Hobbit movie arrives in theaters this December.

Well-timed for today’s celebration is the new review of Diana’s book about the Inklings, The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community posted by James Huston — author of action novels Falcon Seven and Marine One. (Last year Falcon Seven made the longlist for NPR’s “Killer Thrillers” poll.) Huston says –

Not only is it full of information I’d never heard before, but it gives the reader exceptional insight into the two writers who are the focus of the book, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, two of the most popular authors in the twentieth century. As an author, I was particularly interested in her insights into the creative process and the way that the community “supported” the writers efforts. I say supported in quotes, because reading their work to the others was often like getting their fur pulled off (to use a Lewis analogy from another context). They encouraged each other, no doubt, but they also said what they thought, regardless of whether that made the author feel good about his work or not. They were dedicated to producing the best work they could, and were willing to hear rough criticism to achieve it.

What to Give People Who Hate Sci-Fi

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Last-minute holiday shoppers gravitate to quickie gift suggestions like “Sci-Fi Books for People Who Hate Sci-Fi” Alex Knapp’s book-buying guide at Forbes.

With one quick click online, we can send a book to our mom’s iPad without a hitch. But what to send? Obviously, as a science fiction fan, I like to try to get other people as excited about science fiction as I am.

It’s not an easy task. A lot of people are simply averse to the science fiction genre, whether it’s because of the association with nerd-dom or an aversion to space and lasers.

As a fellow fan I am perfectly satisfied with Knapp’s mix of classic authors – Heinlein, Bester – and contemporary legends – Scalzi, Sawyer, Resnick. Unfortunately, his premise breaks down immediately in the face of reality. The thing about people who are adamant in their dislike of sci-fi is that as soon as they detect a sniff of it they indignantly spout something that translates to, “I say it’s spinach and I say to hell with it.” To suppose that quality sci-fi, however carefully chosen, will fly under their radar is absurd. Especially a bright orange paperback with a BEM on the cover. (What were you thinking, Alex?)

If you’re a fan who’s desperate for a gift idea, why get sidetracked into unwelcome evangelism? Profit from your knowledge of the best sf novels by making them your guide to non-genre works people will love to receive. Here’s what I mean.

Impressed with Heinlein’s Starship Troopers? Then don’t lose a minute gift-wrapping a copy of Eugene V. Sledge’s autobiographical account  of his WWII service, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Truly, when I read it this summer I was utterly impressed by its narrative flow and dynamic style, beyond anything I’ve ever found in a historian (even David McCullough). I also suspected I’d discovered the literary roots of Heinlein’s most famous combat novel – until I saw that Sledge’s was first published in 1981. If there’s an influence at work, it must be Heinlein influencing Sledge. And there’s no question the old master would have been proud to acknowledge Sledge as a student, if such is the case, given the brilliant result.

The Guns of the South came out just a couple of years after I’d read Shelby Foote’s account of the Civil War. Reading Harry Turtledove’s novel I remembered Foote’s coverage of The Wilderness well enough to be impressed by Harry’s detailed historicity of his fictionalized battle. He faithfully replayed the battle until the point where his Confederates turn the tide using AK-47s. For armchair strategists Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative is just what the doctor ordered. (A Ph.D, that is.)   

So that’s the plan – backtrack from your favorite sf novels to the great books that equipped you to enjoy them and the people on your gift list will think you’re a genius.

Now, a Word To Our Sponsors

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Taral Wayne posted about the unwonted notoriety he’s gained thanks to the internet scavengers at Betascript. Since then he’s corresponded with them:

In response to my email they claim they have used no copyrighted art of mine in the publication.  I can’t tell if this is true or not… I can only say one online service described it as “b/w, 68 pages, illustrations.”  But it might have been generic stuff, similar to the “cover.”  In any case, the only way I could find out is spend $45 to buy the book.

Taral wondered how this outfit gets away with cluttering up booksellers’ databases:

Who’s going to buy a book about me, the guy who invented the pretzel, or the second monkey on the right in a Planet of the Apes sequel? Makes it harder for customers to find what they’re really looking for.  I’m expecting the dealers will eventually refuse to list crap by outfits like Betascript.

Robert Lichtman hopes to accelerate that outcome with KTF reviews of Betascript’s Taral book on Amazon Canada, UK and Germany, plus Blackwells, Alibris and the DEA Store (Italy):

Don’t buy this book. Betascript Publishing is a pirate organization, and stole writing and artwork *copyrighted* by Taral Wayne for their sleazy little overpriced efforts. Yes, per the production description he is a well-known and honored artist, but please don’t support his hard work being ripped off by this disreputable publish-on-demand gang of thieves! Thank you.

Pointing the Way, But to Where?

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Do not miss Charles Platt’s review of The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick in the New York Times. Platt tells how he heard some of these exegetical ideas from Dick in person back in 1979, while the rest of his mini-essay is rich with other intriguing insights.

 The following quotes are selected merely to give a sense what is being reviewed.

The trouble is, any revelatory messages are embedded in more than 900 pages of impulsive theorizing, much of which is self-referential. Dick typically floats a concept, criticizes it 10 pages later, criticizes the critique, then rejects the whole thing as a totally different notion enters his head.

We receive no help from the editors in mapping this tangle. As Richard Doyle, a professor of English and information sciences and technology at Penn State, writes in his afterword, “When you begin reading the ‘Exegesis,’ you undertake a quest with no shortcuts or cheat codes.” Thus we’re on our own when we ponder sentences like “This ­forces me to reconsider the ‘discarding and annexing’ process by the brain in favor of a proliferation theory,” or “So irreality and perturbation are the two perplexities which confront us,” or “I dreamed: I am the fish whose flesh is eaten, and because I am fat, it is good. (Bob Silverberg ate me.)”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Hertz on Collectingsf.com

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John Hertz’ contribution to Collectingsf.com for July 2011 is a review of Eleanor Cameron’s classic The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (1954):

We remember Mr. Bass, who keeps saying “precisely” although he confesses he is like a cook who can’t tell anyone else afterward just how he did it.  We remember his house on Thallo Street, and his newspaper want ad written, as Northcote Parkinson taught in Parkinson’s Law three years later, to draw only one answer, the right one.  We remember Mrs. Pennyfeather the hen, and the oxygen urn that went phee-eep, and the wise men who weren’t very wise….

This book also will be the subject for a discussion group at Renovation.

French Court Rules for Book Reviewer

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A French court has dismissed a lawsuit against the publisher of a critical review:

In 2007 [Joseph H.H. Weiler] published on [the Global Law Books] Web site a short review of a book by Ms. Calvo-Goller. The reviewer was Thomas Weigend, a professor of law at the University of Cologne. (Mr. Weigend was not named in the lawsuit.)

Ms. Calvo-Goller thought the review was defamatory and asked Mr. Weiler to take it down. He said no but offered her the chance to respond to it on the Web site, an opportunity she declined. Instead she brought a criminal-libel complaint against him in France.

This wasn’t a brutal, KTF review, either:

In the ruling, the court said the review expressed a scientific opinion of the book and did not go beyond the kind of criticism to which all authors of intellectual work subject themselves when they publish.

I think if you had the time and inclination to look through sf fanzines from the past several decades you would find plenty of reviews that transgressed this limit, in fact, whole fanzines that specialized in publishing such reviews. Whenever I have wondered what saves fandom from being plagued by lawsuits of this type, the only convincing answer I’ve ever come up with is that nobody in the sf field can afford to hire an attorney.

[Thanks to Francis Hamit for the link.]

War Eagles by Conover and Riley

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Bill Warren recommends War Eagles: The Unmaking of an Epic by David Conover and Phillip J. Riley, available in both hardcover and paperback from BearManor Media.  Bill writes:

Merian C. Cooper had a busy and productive career as a movie producer all through the 1930s, but his personal favorite remained King Kong; he loved the gigantism of the whole thing, the astonishing imagery. Toward the end of the 30s, he was at MGM, and envisioned a giant eagle with a Viking for a rider, perched atop the Statue of Liberty. Hot damn. He roughed out a story, apparently with historical-fiction novelist Harold Lamb, engaged Willis O’Brien of Kong fame to handle the extensive special effects, which would include a lot of stop-motion animation. The screenplay was written by Cyril Hume, who some 12-15 years later wrote Forbidden Planet. The book includes lots of production drawings obtained from many sources, including a couple of frame blow-ups from the test footage that was shot. These frames are in Technicolor; Cooper, a major backer of the process, was eager to shoot this big movie in color.

The story is somewhat cornball, and the hero (Slim) is very cornball–an eager test-and-military pilot who’s scared of girls–but the script makes the movie sound nothing less than swell, in the glorious old meaning of that word. Slim crashes in Antarctica, in a valley warmed by volcanic heat. Here he discovers the descendants of a lost tribe of Vikings, who speak English, more or less, and fly about on giant eagles. They are periodically menaced by a few dinosaurs. The tribe has a bard who sings legends in what reads like a cross between the usual form “Beowulf” appears in and “The Song of Hiawatha”–but, by George, it works. The climax: a suspiciously Germanic Evil Nation from Europe has developed an engine-killing “death ray” (and engines invulnerable to it); they launch an aerial armada to attack New York, disabling all American aircraft. Slim learns of this and leads his Viking companions to defend New York from the aerial menace–on the backs of giant eagles. Wow.

John Hertz: Another Science Fiction

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By John Hertz (reprinted from Vanamonde 921):  Art lovers (and perhaps Best Related Work nominators) will want a look at Megan Prelinger’s Another Science Fiction (2010), collecting a hundred twenty striking Space images from commercial publications of the years 1957-1962. Her book is two hundred forty pages, and some images get a full page, or two, quite rightly. All are highly imaginative; the things pictured had not been built, not that all the images are representational; it is science fiction through and through; it is wonderful art; it has everything to do with us: and little connection. These artists were not working in our field, more’s the pity, nor is there much sign they knew what ours were doing. So the title is true. Before the May release The New York Times, 9 Mar 10, p. D1, gave a dozen of the images on paper, half as many on the website. The Times‘ text is expectable; so is the book’s; imagine a lemon reviewing a quince. But never mind that. Most of the images came from Aviation Week, and Missiles and Rockets which is no longer published. Prelinger says (her p. 14), “I little expected that the advertising in their pages would seize my attention more than the articles.” That’s the truth too. She did us a service; let us rejoice in what she accomplished. As a picture book this is a treasure.