March Books Read

In Scorpio Assassin (1992; #39 in the series)) Dray Prescott is still teamed up with a female, with both of them assigned by the Star Lords to a certain task.  Of course they are not told what that task is exactly, other than protecting someone.  After several of the people they were trying to protect are killed they are finally able to figure out who needs to be protected and why.  By the end of the 39th volume in this series the Star lords are angry with Dray for "failing" his mission, and they round him up for his punishment.  But he is so angry with them because of their lack of full disclosure that it is the Star Lords I pity, not Dray.  Another good entry in the series, which has rarely if ever been reduced to pot boiler status.  Each plot is carefully worked out, considerably different from previous books, and the list of characters and races is so vast that we seldom tire of a particular character.  The novel was first published in Germany, then finally came to the English speaking world in 1996.  It is 234 pages long.  I read the Kindle edition.   *** stars.

 

A World Aflame is number 13 in the Cap Kennedy series, Tubb's  SF version of Doc Savage and his earthbound exploits.  I am alternating two series by the author, this and the Earl Dumerest saga.  Cap has three assistants, each one a very special man.  Published in 1974, the novel is a brief 128 pages.  Tubb harkens back to a 1952 novel of his, Tide of Death, also known as World At Bay.  Essentially an atomic energy experiment goes wrong and begins eating up a planet, with its consumed soil creating a hole that grows exponentially hour by hour.  In this update, Cap must contend with a powerful woman in charge of her planet, who wants no interference from Earth agents.  She hopes her power experiment will keep her world independent, and the extra energy exported to make her planet rich. 

The experiment begins with a found object of the Zheltyana, an ancient and nearly forgotten race that once had ruled the galaxy.  Only traces of their great discoveries are occasionally found, and the object in question, the Xuyen Torus, was stolen from a museum that scientifically studies any found remnants of this civilization.  Of course in the right hands such knowledge might be useful if approached cautiously.  But working in a hurry causes the experiment to quickly get out of control.  Can Cap and his boys save the day yet again?  Read for yourself and find out.  A decent entry in the series.

*** stars

 

Turning now to the Delphi Classics on Kindle, I began with Richard Marsh's 1897 crime novel The Crime and the Criminal.  The novel is divided into four books.  Book 1 is told by Thomas Tennant, the almost innocent nincompoop who becomes embroiled in a young woman's murder.  Riding a train from Brighton to London, his ends up sharing a carriage with a woman known to him previously.  She attacks him, they struggle briefly, and she ends up falling out of the train.  The nincompoop does not press the emergency button, nor tell anyone about what happened.  He is cut from broken glass from the door banging open and shut, leaving a lot of blood behind.

Book Two is told by Reginald Townsend, a very handsome man and a scoundrel of the blackest sort.  He belongs to a secret Murder Club and has drawn short straw.  He must kill someone within the month, and does so.  He knows Thomas, knows that he is innocent, but says nothing.  Thomas is eventually caught, put on trial by a maddened English public who is horrified by his crime of murdering a young woman.

The third book is told by Mrs. Caruth, a widow who falls in love with Reginald, and has a soul as black as his.  She was the woman in the carriage with poor Thomas.  She knows of his innocence also, since the woman supposedly murdered is herself and quite alive, but she wishes to marry Reginald so keeps silent.  She knows that Reginald is the murderer, and plans to blackmail him into marrying her.  So who was murdered?  Another girl, murdered by Reginald, in the same location and at the same time that Mrs. Caruth falls out of the train.

The fourth and final book is told by the author, who has much to say about criminal trials of the time and "evidence" presented and witness statements.  There is only one decent character in the entire book, and that is the wife of the accused, Mrs. Tennant.  She is a brick.  The final book is well written and all the plots are tied together.  My main quibble with the book is the sheer volume of coincidences that occur in order to keep the story alive.  I like the idea of the four different perspectives, and rather than repeating what the previous person has reported, the author briefly reviews prior happenings and then moves the plot forward again.  By the time we get to the fourth book things are bubbling away nicely, and the author can tie up all of the characters and the plot very neatly.  Fun to read, though a bit hard to believe.

***1/2 stars.

 

From an early edition.  My Kindle version had two pictures. 

 

Next came another set of WW I stories from H.C. McNeil ("Sapper").  From 1915 there are 16 tales, most of them very brief.  Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R. E. tells the author, an officer and fellow engineer, a number of stories while in hospital recovering from a foot injury.  Many of the stories are light-hearted and humourous, no doubt for the benefit of  wounded soldiers recovering from war wounds and trauma, and for their nurses and doctors.  However, there are a few deadly serious ones, too.  "A Word To the Shirkers" hits upon the young men who did not volunteer to serve their country, and does not hold back.  "The Christmas Truce" is quiet and poignant, while "The Terrible Danger of Funk" warns of the dangers of complacency.  Like the previous volume (see January 2025 reading summary blog), this is a must read for those of us who want to remember what war really is.  Though the writing not always top quality, the stories are.  Highly recommended.

*** 1/2 stars.

 

Emilia In England (later changed to Sandra Belloni) is a novel from 1864 by George Meredith (republished with its new name in 1887) that follows the fortunes of a country family trying to align itself with famous and rich people.  The fortunes of three daughters, a son and their father are told in three volumes, with Emilia, a common girl with a very good singing voice, at the center of the plot to attract a higher class of people to the family to improve their fortunes.  Emila is the main attraction because of her singing voice.  She falls for Wilfrid, the brother, but he is pretty much a wishy washy cad.  His father wishes him to marry Lady Charlotte, and he agrees, though he loves Emilia.  She trusts him for a while, but eventually realizes that he is otherwise destined.  There are a lot of characters and there is a lot of tragedy.  However, Meredith is a sophisticated writer of literature and handles all with great dexterity and aplomb.  One of the most compelling parts of this very long novel is when Emilia is at her lowest point.  She wanders London for several days and nights, eventually becoming starved, filthy and ready to immerse herself in the oily black Thames River.  She is rescued by a close friend who had been searching for her everywhere.  However, his discovering her was not by chance, as she had left a trail of clues behind her among some street children she had befriended.  The ending is somewhat unexpected for its time.  Emilia and Wilfrid--well, never mind the spoiler.  It was a very good ending, as I had expected "the usual" happy ever after sort of thing.  Much better than most writers of his time, his work seems totally ignored among the cult of the Brontes, Jane Austen and their ilk.  Stories like this are ripe for a TV series.

 

Finally comes a great adventure story by A Merritt.  From 1931 it is called The Face In The Abyss.  It is a suitable title, and when you hear it think of Sauron.  This book, more than any other I have read, seems to have more of Tolkien in it.  There are no Hobbits, but there are orc-like creatures, an important fellowship, a Sauron versus Gandalf finale, and any number of other similarities.  The main character Graydon could easily stand in for Aragorn.  One improvement that Merritt made over Tolkien is that he resisted cliche animal characterizations.  Snakes and spiders are good, for example, though lizards not so much.  This is a long novel, a combination of two that were serialized much earlier in Argosy Magazine.  The second novel was called "The Snake Mother".  

An explorer wanders deep into the Andes in search of gold, stumbling upon an ancient race of white people.  There are Indians, too, but the whites have been there since before the mountains rose up.  While their science has made great advances, their morals haven't kept pace.   Sound familiar.  In this passage, the Snake Woman (a Gandalf-like character) talks to Graydon after he has described outside civilization to her.  "I am not so enamored with your civilization, as you describe it, to wish it extended here.  For one thing, I think you are building too rapidly outside yourselves, and too slowly inside."  And again later... "Some day you will find yourselves so far buried within your machines that you will not be able to find a way out--or discover yourself being carried helplessly away by them."  Wow!  Heavy stuff for 1931 fantasy writing!

The adventures themselves are truly epic and vast in scale.  The final battle rises to a fitting climax, with most tropes avoided.  It probably won't spoil your reading if I tell you that Sauron is defeated in the end, and the ancient ones are given a second chance.  So far this is the most enjoyable work by Merritt that I have read, and is recommended for fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, and Tolkien.

 

An early reprint; cover by Paul Stahr.  I read the Kindle edition. 

 

Note:  There will be no update for April books read next month.  However, I will combine the April/May summaries in my next update around June 1st.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Radon Be Gone Day

Once again we are getting major work done in the basement.  This is the third or fourth time.  This time it is to mitigate our radon problem.  Lots of drilling and banging is going on, and the basement will have a very different look when the work is completed later on today.  I needn't add that, like the previous projects which solved our dampness issue and then our asbestos issue, this one is also very expensive.  How expensive?  About the cost of a trip to Europe from Canada for two for ten days.  Not to worry, as we print our own currency (in the attic).

It appears that Spring has finally arrived, though due to a lot of cloudy days and nights my astronomy year has yet to begin.  I missed out completely on winter constellations this year.  Now that daylight savings time has arrived it means very late nights once I do get a clear night.  Spring is the time of year when Earth is turned away from the Milky Way, meaning that astronomers don't have to look past our own dust and heavy star fields to see into deeper space.  That means it is prime time to view other galaxies, and a 12" telescope will show a lot of them.  Until then I'll continue to stare at my sky maps and prep sheets.  Full moon is Wednesday, so by next Sunday I should be able to begin, clouds permitting.

 

In film news there are three to report.  We watched two more films by French director Jean Rollin. 

Lost In New York is from 1989 and was made for TV.  Two little girls, one about 4 and the other around 10, meet in a cemetery and become friends.  The young one possesses an African fetish figure, which she calls The Moon Goddess.  They look through illustrated books and adventure magazines and transport themselves to exotic locations.  As adults they arrive in New York, but in different locations and spend a lot of time searching for one another.   The highlight of the film is the location footage of the city from that era.  In old age the girls are once more separated, but manage to link up for one final adventure.  This is a film very different from earlier Rollin efforts, and its enigmatic story and deliberate pace make it quite enjoyable.  The bonds of friendship can run very deep, he seems to say, but are always in danger of being tampered with.  Recommended.

 

Two screenshots from Lost In New York. 

 

Jean Rollin's vampire films are, for the most part, watchable by fans of the genre.  However, he left vampires behind in his 1978 The Grapes of Death, turning his attention to zombies.  He should have stayed with vampires.  A young woman returning to her French village discovers a plague of murderous peasants with very bad skin problems.  She makes more bad decisions during this film than is statistical possible.  After 30 or so of these the film tends to lose its credibility quite rapidly.  Violence and gore and blood abound, as well as totally senseless killing.  The whole thing was brought about by a regional use of an experimental pesticide on the grapes, and at the local wine festival anyone who drank wine catches the disease, a bad one to be sure.  Only two beer drinkers remain unaffected, but, alas, they die, too.  A movie with no point to make, and only a very poor way of not making it.  Avoid.

 

Leaving Criterion soon, though not soon enough. 

 

Lastly comes one from our "Chilling Classics" DVD collection.  The Devil's Hand is from 1962 and is a b & w modern age zombie film of the Vudou kind.  I have always had a soft spot for voodoo movies, especially several great ones from the 1930s.  Starring Robert Alda and Commissioner Gordon (Neil Hamilton from the TV Batman series), this one is watchable but not one of the great films in this genre.  A doll maker is the head of a small religious cult who meet in the back of his shop.  Alda plays a man engaged to be married who is lured into the cult by a bewitching blonde witch, a stellar member of the cult.  When a pin is stuck into a doll of his fiancee, she is hospitalized with a heart problem.  The main problem with the film is casting wooden man Hamilton as the very uncharismatic leader of the cult.  He acts like he is in a Republic serial instead of a decently scripted film.  A highlight of the film is that the cult is multinational and multiracial.  There are some creepy scenes, but not enough.  Very little explaining is given as to how this power became acquired by the great man.  For instance, he can beat the stock market, though he still chooses to run a tiny doll store.  He simply can stick a pin into a doll and injure or kill that person.  How?  We will never know.

 

From our DVD collection. 

 

Mapman Mike

 

Jean Rollins' Topless Vampires

Before we get into all that vampire blood, we will take a moment to comment upon Deb's blood.  Her latest blood test shows continued improvement, and she seems to be feeling like her old self.  She has been exercising for over a week now, and we both hope to be walking outdoors again any day now, weather permitting.  We bought a new suitcase, and a new backpack for Deb.  So we are definitely thinking of traveling again.  However, airfares are not pretty.  We shall see.

 

In other news, Sudbury officially received about 40 cm of snow last week (16").  It was the heavy stuff, not the fluffy stuff, and some ice pellets and freezing rain landed on top of it, making plowing nearly impossible.  They are still digging out, and have had several more inches since then.  No spring flowers for Sudbury for a while.  The street where my family lives never did get plowed.  My brother and three other neighbours with snowblowers had to clear a single lane by themselves.  It hit on March Break for schools, but even so the school buses were cancelled in the city for two days this week.  It's seldom that a major snowstorm gets the better of Sudbury, but it happened this year!

 

Turning to cinema, I have always been a fan of classic Hammer horror films.  They influenced a generation of film makers, including Roger Corman.  And Jean Rollin, it would appear.  Criterion has six of the French director's horror films, all leaving this month.  We are trying to watch at least five of them.  So far, three have been viewed.

 

Requiem for a Vampire is the earliest, from 1972.  Hammer Films were winding down by that point, and then along came Rollin.  His films are pretty short and focus even more strongly on sex than Hammer ever did (different censorship rules in France compared to England).  They all contain some great atmosphere and photography and feature many naked young women with mostly natural, unenhanced bodies.  The films are are in colour, and there is often a lot of blood.  Requiem opens with a car chase, one of the more unique ways to open a vampire film.  The vehicles' passengers are shooting at one another, and the lead car has two females dressed in clown suits.  There is no explanation.  After one car crashes the two females head cross country on foot, soon arriving at a cemetery and an abandoned and ruined castle.  The fun soon begins.  Definitely worth catching for fans of earlier vampire films.

 

Leaving Criterion soon. 

 

In Lips of Blood from 1975 a young boy has a close encounter with a beautiful young girl in the ruins of an old chateau.  It is a brief affair, but it comes back to him in a flash 20 years later when he sees a poster showing the old chateau.  Determined to find the place again and perhaps the girl, who was kind to him, he begins asking questions and looking for help.  However, someone is out to stop him.  He sees fleeting images of the girl and she seems to be asking for his help.  Of course he finds her and discovers that she is a vampire, but this film goes into mostly unpredictable territory, and actually has a happy ending (for the vampire).  The young girl playing the entrapped vampire (Annie Belle) is quite beautiful, with a face that would lure any man on (not me!) to his doom.  Recommended.

 

Annie Belle has lips of blood. 

 

Leaving Criterion soon. 

 

The third film in our on-going Jean Rollin festival was Fascination from 1979.  A group of robbers get mixed up with two women in a beautiful not ruined chateau.  Too bad for them.  The women are part of a clique of gals that drink not only ox blood (good for anemia), but eventually develop a taste for human blood.  The two women from the beginning later become seven women, and the one poor male robber remaining doesn't have a chance.  Oddly fascinating, the film is quite violent in places, including one scene where two women face off on a drawbridge, one with Death's scythe and the other with a tiny dagger.  Guess who wins?  The opening scene in a butcher's abattoir is suitably revolting.  The time is the very early 1900s.  Worth catching for blood drinking fans.

 

Leaving Criterion March 31st. 

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

Spring

It has arrived.  It was a long awaited event (since last November).  This past week I have had to wear three different jackets to go outside.  My normal winter one, a light jacket but very warm; a spring/summer jacket; and my warmest winter jacket.  Our weather continues to be all over the map in the way of temperatures.  We were able to add another day to our sub-zero daily highs, making it 52 now.  Sudbury had a major snowstorm, along with a lot of the American Midwest, with nearly 20" of new snow.  That should keep them white until at least May.  We had a few flakes, but the cold really took a bite out of our spring bulbs.  Hopefully they will survive.  So far only snowdrops have bloomed.  We are considerably behind this year.

 

It's kind of funny/odd, but just as our thoughts are able to turn once again to travel a new war begins, driving up the price of jet fuel and making airfares even more pathetic.  Depending on Deb's next two blood work results, we had hoped to cross the Atlantic again.  It would be our first time since 2019.  Possible destinations include Iceland (a shorter jaunt), Vienna (a longer stay) and, of course, London.  But now who knows?  I had to fill up the gas tank on our vehicle yesterday, and it wasn't pretty.  At least there were no lineups at the pump.

 

We also have a very expensive house fix coming up March 30th, as we will get our radon problem mitigated.  Readings this winter went sky high, so it's time to fix it.  We (mostly Deb) have been doing a house clearing, something that happens every five years or so around here.  This time we are serious to get things down to a manageable level, making a possible move not only easier but more likely.  There are several large apartment blocks in Amherstburg with a river view, so we likely wouldn't go far.

 

In PC gaming news, my wishlist continues to shrink as Steam sales continue.  Great games can be had very cheaply if one awaits the frequent sales.  I recently collected six great older games, paying less than $35 Can.  I also added a few perks to my Train Sim World collection.  After completing Black Mirror, we have moved on to a newer Sherlock Holmes game called The Awakened.   It is an updated version of a 2008 game and is extremely complex and difficult to learn.  We nearly gave up on it a few times, but have used a walkthru to get through parts.  It uses about half the keyboard for commands and thus has a very long learning curve.  We are improving, and have played a few segments with no help.  Holmes and Watson are up against Cthulhu no less!

 

Screenshot of a young Holmes from The Awakened, a game for PC. 

 

In film news, Deb has completed her most recent one.  It took almost two months longer than expected due to her illness, but once she recovered things moved along well.  It is another great looking (and sounding) film, and will likely do well at festivals.  Watch for it on her website soon (her website link is in my upper left margin, top of this page).

 

In film watching news, we have completed all 30 episodes of Apple TV's Foundation.  The final episode was a trope-filled wonder, with extreme violence and sadism galore.  Of course another series is forthcoming, someday, which will cover all three books.  From what I have read about the series the further along it gets the less it has to do with Asimov's novels.  It is a great looking series, taking lessons from recent Star Trek series, and no doubt from Game of Thrones.  For my money there are too many characters, too many sub plots, too much violent conflict and too little science.  Asimov did not write a fantasy of the future; he wrote a science-based work of fiction.  But we all know that TV viewers are too dumb to care much about science.  Besides, it's more fun watching things blow up.  I will get around to the first Asimov book of the series in the very near future.

 

We also completed a multi-season travel series hosted by Eugene Levy.  Called The Reluctant Traveler the Canadian actor is supposedly brought out of his deep shell by the experiences he undergoes.  However, he travels in five star luxury, meets up with important locals who show him around, and gets to see things other travelers never would see.  For example, on his visit to London he spends 4/5ths of the time in Windsor in conversation with Prince William.  It's fascinating to see a future king being so candid with Eugene, but really, a travel show?  Hardly.  He gets a private tour of the palace and grounds, then goes into town and has a pint at the pub with William.  Ah yes, just like our visits to England.

 

And we have completed watching all 4 seasons of Monty Python's Flying Circus.  When it's good it's very good.  But when it's bad, it's very racist, sexist and hardly funny at all.  Still, every episode offers up something memorable and hilarious. We have now moved on now to another comedy classic series, Second City TV, with some of Canada's funniest comics (John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy and many others).  We also managed to get through all three seasons of the original Addams Family series.  This stuff is usually lunch time viewing, as we eat.

 

In film news there are two to report.  One of them should have been trashy and the other classy, but as things turned out, our expectations were incorrect.  Women of Devil's Island is from 1962, part of our "Drive In Classics" DVD library.  It sounds like an exploitation film, and there are certainly a lot of beautiful women in it.  However, it is a swashbuckler and a bit of fun viewing.  The women are prisoners of the revolution, sent there after their families were murdered or exiled.  They are badly misused by a cruel and sadistic warden.  A pirate ship comes by and attempts to steal the gold that the women work so hard to mine.  In the process they also attempt to rescue the women.  For the most part the women stick together and help defeat the prison guards.  Sisterhood has never looked so brave and noble.  Hurrah for the women of Devil's Island!  While there are a few heaving bosoms, it is mostly the fancy feminine hairstyles that viewers will be drawn to.

 

From our classic DVD collection. 

 

Lastly comes Lancelot du Lac, a Goddard film from 1974.  Possibly regarded as a good film, it isn't.  The actors say their lines like a class of high school kids who don't want to be in drama class.  The men wear armour all of the time, a ridiculous look and even more ridiculous sound.  Horses gallop, jousts and battles take place off screen, the two lovers don't seem much in love, and blood spurts from all directions at times.  The film is quite tedious.  Watch John Boorman's Excaliber instead.

 

Showing on Criterion. 

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

 

 

HIgh Winds

We were given fair warning, but the wind today was nearly off the scale for us.  Beginning around 7 am we were hit with a wind sheer.  Deb was up and saw the full garbage can rolling down the sidewalk.  It was garbage day and we had put it out last night.  We never saw it again.  We nearly never saw Deb again, either.  She went out alone to retrieve it, but it was already gone.  Then she had to fight her way back up the sidewalk against the wind, which was 60 to 70 mph.  It was also sleeting.  Of course I happily slept through it all, and might never have known what had happened to her had she blown away.  14 hours later and it is still howling away out there.  Both Ontario and Michigan have very large number of power outages, including much of Amherstburg.  So far our power hasn't even blinked.

 

In film news, Deb is awaiting the new music for her latest film.  She has a good composer in Mexico City, a student at the university there.  She has used him before and is hoping for another winning score.

UPDATE:  As I was typing our power went off very suddenly.  It was off for about 30 minutes.  So far so good, and we are back in business.  It is quite cold outside, so the house was getting chilly.  The furnace does not run without electricity.  But we have lots of wood stocked up and we were getting ready to light the fireplace.

 

In other film news, there are three that we have watched recently.  Jim Jarmusch's most recent film (2025) is called Father Mother Sister Brother.  It consists of three short films, all written and directed by Jarmusch.  All three films are family oriented and small in scale.  the first one stars Tom Waits as an old coot who lives alone and knows how to prey on his son's sympathy, wrangling lots of cash from him to keep up his secret high living life.  When his son and daughter visit him he puts on an act of a man with barely a nickel to his name.  The daughter is not fooled, however, and never gives him anything.  The second film stars Cate Blanchett and Charlotte Rampling.  Rampling is the mother, and her two daughters are coming for tea.  She lives in Dublin and is a writer.  The visit is awkward and as Deb says, a bit creepy.  Rampling hardly looks like she was a model mother.  Neither of the first two films impressed me very much.  However, the third one is a winner.  Fraternal twins get back together for their parents' funeral.  They obviously have a deep connection, and this comes across beautifully in the film.  This third one is well worth watching.

 

Now showing on Mubi. 

 

Tamal 2010: A Punk Cat In Space is from 2005, a Japanese anime flic that will have viewers saying "Huh?" for its 92 minutes running time.  Here is the Criterion blurb:

 

[The movie] is a futuristic fever dream that flows back and forth in time, following the adorable wide-eyed kitty Tamala on her home world of Meguro City, a BLADE RUNNER–esque metropolis controlled by the Catty & Co. corporation. Escaping into space, she’s waylaid by the God of Death and crash-lands near Hate City on the Planet Q, where she meets a new boyfriend, goes bowling and thrift shopping—and realizes she may be the latest reincarnation of an ancient Greek cat cult with ties to the omnipresent Catty & Co. 

 

If that description floats your boat, then I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.  Probably best seen under the influence of drugs of some kind or other, watching it straight was a weird enough experience.  If nothing else, it is certainly a memorable film.

 

Showing on Criterion. 

 

This evening we watched a Mervyn Leroy classic film from 1934 called Heat Lightning.  Two sisters run a desert gas bar, the older one being the mechanic and the younger one running the cafe.  Different customers stop by and pass on, but two criminals on the lam stay for a visit.  The mean one knew the older sister in a different life.  The younger sister is anxious to date boys.  They both end up hurt badly by events that transpire.  The film, a short one, begins as a comedy but soon becomes a tragedy.  However, life goes on.  A pretty neat film, and it would make a good double feature with the later and superior Petrified Forest.  Aline MacMahon is terrific as the older sister with a past that comes back to haunt her, while Ann Dvorak plays the innocent younger sister effectively.  Worth catching.

 

Leaving Criterion this month. 

 

In health news, Deb's latest blood work showed very good progress.  She is getting her energy back, and all seems well for now.  I had my foot checked again this week, and all seems well there, too.  Perhaps there will be some travel in our near future.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

 

Black Mirror (1) Review: Piano Repertoire 8 Week Update

 A lot happens between posts, most of which does not get reported.  We added one more cold day, bringing our season total to 51.  Hopefully that is all behind us now.  We had some snowdrops blooming on the 28th of February.  Their numbers are increasing daily.  Crocuses and daffs are also on the rise.  Astronomy season has begun once again, after a three month hiatus.  Rain and clouds are in the forecast.  Sigh.  Deb also had her second and final iron transfusion.  It seems to be working and she is hard at work on her most recent short film.

 

We finished watching season one of Mlle. Holmes, a French series in 6 parts.  Four of the programs weren't too bad.  The worst one was the finale, called (of course) The Final Problem.  It was almost unwatchable, as a woman who had competently solved crimes for five weeks suddenly falls apart completely when she realizes that Mlle. Moriarty is framing her for shooting her grandfather.  The frame up is so bad and amateurish that sixth graders I have known could have easily got out of being blamed.  Supposedly part of a crime fighting police team, she goes it all alone, as so many TV character tropes do.  She hides evidence, she loses her ability to think, and she acts completely selfishly.  Of course she has no Sherlock blood in her veins; only Moriarty's and her mother's, after they had a brief affair.  Or something.  Moriarty would be ashamed of her.  Anyway, it was a bad way to finish the season.  Not to mention that she commits murder at the end.  Grandpa wakes up at the conclusion, after being in a coma throughout the entire episode, unable to tell anyone who shot him.  No trope there.

 

In addition to being hard at work watching the final ten episodes of Foundation, we watched a new film by a favourite (up till now) director.  Dracula is a 2025 film by director Radu Jude, who turns his creative block towards AI, chatting with it about the Dracula myth and letting AI come up with its own version of it.  Thus it is a series of short films connected by the director's chats with AI, and loosely connected to the Dracula myth.  The main story that seems to run through this very long film (170 minutes) is quite good.  A sort of Dracula low budget stage event sees Dracula and the girl he seduces performing in front of a group of tourists in Romania.  At the end of the play the audience gets to chase them around the village with long wooden stakes, after giving the villains a one minute start.  Other shorter films are less and less successful, finally becoming too comically raunchy to even sit through unless the viewer has a bad fever and is mildly hallucinating.  Anyone who has used AI for creative purposes has a fair idea of how badly things can turn out.  While the film has some terrific scenes, it also has far too many which are beneath most intelligent people's dignity to view.  I can recommend the first half, though it contains an overlong love story that ends in a bizarre enough way.  Another later story concerns the first Dracula novel published in Romania.  The movie goes downhill the longer one watches.  See it at your own peril.

 

Radu Jude and AI take on the undying legend.  

Showing on Mubi. 

 

Moving on to PC gaming, we replayed Black Mirror, a horror adventure game published by The Adventure Company in October 2003.  I first played it in December of 2005, though it took me four months to get through it (25 hours of playtime).  I remembered almost nothing of the game, other than it rained a lot, so this was like playing it for the first time.  Deb and I played it together.  Even so, we needed to look up some things.  More on that later.

 

Overall Black Mirror remains a pretty decent game.  It spawned two sequels (both played) and a new and updated version of this first game, still awaiting me in my Steam library.  Samuel Gordon returns to his ancestral home (Black Mirror Castle) upon the suicide death of William Gordon, his grandfather.  He soon becomes embroiled in a family curse, and works to solve a great mystery surrounding William's death.  The story is okay, at least until it is revealed who the killer is.  That revelation defies all logic.

 

The game plays out in six chapters.  Locations are gradually added as the game progresses, but it begins inside the castle and on the grounds.  There are several people to speak with, and many rooms to explore.  The first two chapters include the nearby village and a church.  Chapter 3 takes players to another ancestral home in Wales.  This chapter is like a game unto itself.  Chapter 4 adds underground locations including beneath the church and Black Mirror Castle itself, as well as an old mine.  Next come many chilling visits to the morgue, an ancient stone ring and a lighthouse.  Many locations are seen in late autumn daylight and during night and dark thunderstorms. I was correct; it does rain a lot in this game.  And yet Samuel never wears a hat or carries an umbrella--perhaps he is crazy).  Presentation is via an enhanced slideshow format, where Samuel walks across the view.  Sometimes the on-screen scenario can be extended by walking further or to one side.  Let's look at some images now.

 

 

Black Mirror Castle. 

 

The main entrance hall within the castle. 

 

The castle greenhouse.

 

Churchyard cemetery.  There are several cemeteries in this game.

 

Entrance gate to the house in Wales. 

  

The local map showing all locations (except Wales).  Once acquired players can click on the map and transport there. 

 

The very creepy Morgue.

 

To escape from the old mine we must shoot and kill a wolf (boo, hiss) in a timed sequence set up to make players fail. 

 

My favourite screenshot, taken beneath the parish church. 

 

Same cemetery as above, at night.  There are at least four in the game.

 

The final problem, so to speak.  This is close to the end of the game, in Chapter Six. 

 

As the images hopefully demonstrate, I have no quibbles with the graphics.  Again played in 640 x 480, Steam has done a good job of keeping this old game looking good.  Not having to constantly switch CDs is a good thing, too.  Anyway, the body count continues to mount during the game.  In addition to William and the wolf, the castle gardener is murdered, a young boy (boo, hiss), Samuel's uncle and his cousin (?) James.  Besides a few too many murders, what else is there to dislike about the game?

 

Well, there are very few actual puzzles.  Assemble a torn photo, unscramble some riddles, solve a 4 x 4 sliding puzzle, figure out how to open a jewel box with a puzzle along with a few other examples, this game is mostly about pixel hunting.  Hot spots appear red when the cursor is placed on them.  Very often spots that have been checked 101 times and not shown up will turn red later, after a certain conversation or action has taken place.  Inventory can become crowded at times.  Worst of all, some hot spots must be left clicked and right clicked, or else.  Yes, players can "die" in this game.  After Samuel gets killed a few times by a wolf, and his head sliced off, it is a good thing to save often.  This brings me to my main complaint.  If you don't save often you get a much more immersive experience in the game.  But if you don't save often and you die (not if but when) then a lot of replaying must take place.  If you do save often, you totally lose the immersive experience of being in the game.  Developers never really get this.  It seems a necessity to kill the player many times, to prove how stupid players are and how clever the developers are.

 

Things I liked were the fact that Samuel would not leave a place if there was still more to do there.  That was very handy.  And many of the map locations could not be visited if they were no longer needed.  Very helpful.  Sadly, however, the game lacked flow.  As soon as one puzzle was solved, one thought that the way ahead would be clear for a time.  Usually another obstacle was encountered almost immediately.  And now we come to the game's conclusion.  Once we know who the killer is, we also realize that it would be virtually impossible for that person to have committed all the crimes.  For so many reasons (no blood anywhere on him, for one).  Perhaps this will be explained better in the second game, which I've also played but forgotten.

 

I can recommend the game, though it falls beneath most games where players cannot die.  Good graphics and highly atmospheric locations, a decent enough story (until the end).  But beware that right click option. We played for a total of 24 hours, taking solutions where needed and seemingly stuck.

 

In piano news, the first 8 weeks are usually crucial to further development.  Practice is very slow, as the pianist attempts to teach his body what to do when and where.  Being a naturally slow learner, 8 weeks usually doesn't get me very far.  However, I can now play the Invention in D by Bach, and the Haydn sonata (a small one, albeit) is coming along nicely.  I have even began to memorize it.  The Bach Prelude in D from Book 1 is still very slow going.  Though mostly a piece for right hand, it has more tricky places than a typical mine field.  The fugue, though, is progressing well.  It should be ready to play in another four weeks.  I have yet to begin the final piece on the first half, a short work by Beethoven.

 

The second half of the program is dominated by a very difficult Chopin Nocturne, Op. 27 #2.  I nearly gave up during week 5, and I might still pack it in.  Despite getting 40' a day to itself, it still sounds like I am sight reading it.  If after another four weeks it is still going nowhere, I will switch it off for a different piece.  The pieces by Scriabin range in difficulty from fairly easy to quite difficult, are developing as expected.  One of them is fully playable while the other two slowly improve each week.  Lastly comes a difficult piece that I learned several years ago, March Wind by MacDowell.  It is coming back to me quite fast and should be memorized and playable in four weeks time.  I will report again at that time.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

 

February Reading Summary 2026

It was a short month, but the first half was cold enough to be inside a lot.  There are seven books to report this month

 

Scorpio Reborn is from 1995 and is 252 pages long, the first book of the Lovian Cycle by Kenneth Bulmer, itself part of the extensive Dray Prescott series.  Our hero now finds himself in the southern hemisphere, sent on another mysterious mission by the Star Lords.  He arrives amidst a dwelling fire and barely manages to save a woman before he is knocked cold by a falling beam.  She ends up dragging him from the building.  In a neat twist, Dray Prescott is paralyzed for the first few chapters of the novel, watching events transpire but unable to participate.  He gradually recovers the use of his limbs, then comes speech, and finally he is his old self again.  He is paired with another of the Star Lords' servants, this time a female.  She thinks that she saved him from the fire, instead of the other way around.  Dray allows her to lead, but when he thinks matters should be handled differently he goes his own way.  A good tale filled with evil and cruel bad guys who get their just desserts in the end.  There are three novels in this volume.  

 

The Kindle volume contains three novels.  I read the first one, above.

Cover art by Ken Kelly. 

 

Prison of Night is by E C Tubb and is from 1976 and is somewhat unusual in this series.  Earl Dumarest stays on the same planet for this direct sequel to the previous story, something that has never happened before.  Readers should be glad he did, as some of the mystery of this very strange planet gets solved.  Every day its two suns come close together, and when they do an effect termed Delusia occurs, which enables dead people from a person's memory to come forth and speak with them.  It can be a very unnerving experience, though in some cases it is healing and beneficial.  That is one mystery that does not get solved in this story.  However, this planet has another surprise to claim as its own.  Humans can only be outside during the daylight hours; should they remain out after dark it is the Sungari that rule the world.  These are mysterious creatures that kill people who leave home after dark.  When curfew is called people must remain indoors.  Dumarest stays out and attempts to meet up with these mysterious night time things.  As a result part of the mystery of their existence is revealed to readers.  The rest of the book is standard adventure, with a war to fight and a woman who loves Earl and wants him to settle down with her and raise babies and stock animals.  It won't be a surprise to readers of this series that Dumarest blasts off for other worlds at the end of this book, continuing his search for Earth and his avoidance of the deadly Cyclan.  They are after information in his brain, so he remains on the run. 

 

Cover art by Don Maitz. 

 

I began a Michael Moorcock epic novel called The Whispering Swarm.  It is the first volume of a series called The Sanctuary of the White Friars.  As the large first volume is divided into three books, I shall report when I have completed all three.  I am reading one a month for now.  If things go well I will tackle volume two.

 

Turning now to the Delphi Classics series, I began the month with a novel by Jerome Jerome.  Tommy and Company is from 1904 and consists of a group of short stories loosely linked into a very readable type of novel.  The year is significant, as the stirrings of feminism began to appear in the London public.  Jerome has a field day poking fun, mostly at men, and how they react to modern women.  Tommy/Jane is the central character, a sexless waif at the beginning who is taken in by Peter Hope and eventually adopted by him.  The first story describes their meeting and establishes both characters in a most hilarious fashion.  While the book is far from farce, it is often very very funny.  It can also be quite touching.  Overall, however, the stories are simply great fun to read, and give insights into the times and the people of London.  We meet characters one or two at a time, and though they usually star in their own story, Tommy/Jane is usually working behind the scenes in all of them.  While making only brief appearances after his/her first story, Tommy/Jane provides the main reason to keep on reading.  He/she is one of the most original characters in literature.  The final story is one of the finest endings to a novel this reader has ever encountered.  Full marks for Mr. Jerome.  **** stars.

 

I have added D. H. Lawrence's complete works to my Delphi Classics collection. I began with a novella of his, The Ladybird from 1923.  It's an emotionally packed story that takes place from 1917 to sometime after Armistice.  A young woman visits an English hospital to see a badly wounded German officer known to her family from before the war.  Her own husband is fighting somewhere in Europe of Africa,and is eventually wounded himself.  The wounded German and the young wife become closer and closer, until when her husband finally returns, she is faced with her great problem.  A good read that delves into the psychological problems that wars create, as well as the physical ones.  It also demonstrates how war can change certainties (her love for husband) into uncertainties.  When one thinks one is happily married and then encounters a soul mate, what can one do?  *** stars.

 

Next came a rereading of George MacDonald's Phantastes, his first novel published in 1858.  I first encountered this fairy tale for adults in Lin carter's Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (see separate blog) as #14.  On first reading I loved the book and awarded in four stars.  On second reading I sitll love the book, but rated it down slightly.  This is mainly due to the main character and the many terrible choices he makes through his dream journey to fairyland, thus causing hardship and misery to others.  The main character is Anodos (ascent in Greek), and his adventures are epic.  They begin in the fairy woods, then on the the fairy castle, then deep underground and opening out onto a vast sea.  This book, more than other other, helped start the adult fantasy trend, and direct links can be found in many places to later works by William Morris and Lord Dunsany.  It likely also influenced Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis, who read the book at 16, was forever changed by it.  Even Arthur Machen's writing can be traced back to episodes in this book.Therefore, anyone interested at all in adult fantasy will find this a must read novel.  It isn't terribly long, and there is a lot of poetry and stories within stories.  Definitely recommended.  *** 1/2 stories.

 

Cover art by Gervasio Gallardo.  See my Ballantine blog link at upper left margin.
 

Speaking of Arthur Machen, next came his earliest published short tales.  The Chronicles of Clemendy, or The History of the Ix Joyous Journeys Carbonnek.  In these linked tales from 1888 of medieval love and loss Machen harkens back to Rabelais, Chaucer and Boccaccio.  His stories feature during a journey among fellow Silurians (lovers of wine, joy, music and letters), and are told by various men.  One tale tells of a mechanical clock knight that usually hits the bells with his weapon, but appears to be walking about town after dark and catching people doing things with members of the opposite sex that they really shouldn't be doing.  Another tale explains how a man wasted his life digging for treasure after overhearing some monks discussing the subject.  There are two with wizards and maidens, the first one a sad tale of woe as a lovely maiden is kidnapped and ravished by an adept, then killed.  The second tells of a wizard father who does not wish his daughter to see other men, afraid that his dark magic might be called out.  Other tales tell of a knight trapped in a high tower, more than a mile above ground, while another tells of a knight trapped in dungeon far beneath the earth.  In all it is a good collection of tale, though after a while they have a similarity that makes it difficult to remember and distinguish between them.  I could see James Branch Cabell being influenced by these tales, though his writing is more erudite and dryly humourous.  Machen does inject humour into the tales, however, sometimes waiting till the moral of the tale is revealed.  Well worth reading, especially if you have only read his novels and later stories.

*** stars.

 

Ghosts (1986) is the second tale in Paul Auster's New York Trilogy.  It is short, more a novella, and seems to repeat a lot of what was encountered in the first book.  Again we have a private eye (a real one this time, supposedly) staked out in an apartment and keeping an eye on a man.  That's pretty much the story in this disappointing sequel to the first book.  Auster seems to get some of his inspiration from the final episode of the 1960s The Prisoner TV series, where Patrick McGoohan finally discovers "who is Number One."  I will eventually get around to book three, but now I am in no rush.  ** stars.

 

Mapman Mike