Heat Wave

 Heat and humidity, minus the storms, have been with us long enough now to declare it a heatwave, the first long one of the summer.  Even sitting outside is uncomfortable, never mind having to actually work out there.  I cut the grass earlier in the week, but the Lone Mountain jungle continues to spread unabated.  A lot of outdoor work will have to happen when it does cool down, supposedly this coming Sunday.  Tomorrow will be the hottest day of the season, with strong storms promised.

Monday night I got to run through my piano program, finally, after a ten month delay.  I was originally going to perform it last October, but Covid started up again.  So at last I got to play it right through for someone.  Paula M., good music friend and former private teaching colleague (both of us now retired) came over last night to hear my program, and to perform four  piano pieces she has been working on.  It was a fun evening, and as usual from any given performance, I learned a lot.  My next play-thru will be at Deb's mom's retirement home, possibly next Monday.  After that, I will likely invite a friend or two at a time to come hear it, if they are indisposed.  Then I can finally put the pieces away and concentrate of some newer ones.  My brain is becoming numbed by the current pieces.

Deb continues to have her films accepted in some mighty important film festivals, including the Poe Festival in New York (she also made their 2022 Poe Festival calendar, March's photo being devoted to her film).  And she just had two of her films accepted for a festival in Detroit, called Shetown Festival.  She continues work on her latest (last?) Yorick adventure, an underwater one starring a singing mermaid and a lute playing octopus.

In listening news, we are just about ready to hear Beethoven's Op 13 piano sonata, one of his more revolutionary works.  Slowly getting there, though it will take at least two years to hear his complete works.  And I continue to read Swafford's 1000 page bio of the composer, a most entertaining read.  In reading news, I just finished the complete short stories of Ballard, and am reading another excellent novel by Malzberg.

In movie news, Deb's two most recent picks are as follows. Delirious was shown at Sundance, and stars Steve Buscemi as a paparazzi ("No, I'm a licensed professional.") who takes in a temporarily homeless young man and begins to teach him the business.  It's a fun film to watch, as the young man works his up to eventually becoming the hottest day time soap star on TV.

Now showing on Criterion. 

Her leaving August 31st choice was a 2018 Indian film called Naal, starring a happy young boy of six or seven years who is told by a visiting uncle that he is adopted.  This fact changes his entire outlook on life.  While the film (and young star) is charming, it is perhaps overlong by about 15 minutes.  There is some lovely photography, with the action mostly taking place in one small farming village near a river.  We get a direct view of local village life far from buses and trains, in a world that seems out of time with the rest of not only India, but the world.  Acting is very good, and the slim story is fleshed out nicely.  Definitely worth a peek, though seeing the little boy's face in closeup, expressive as it is, may becoming tiring after a time.

Naal, leaving Criterion August 31st. 

Sorry, no art today.  Next time.

Mapman Mike

 

March Reading

 I lost seven days of reading in March, due to an unprecedented series of clear nights during the monthly astronomy session.  It wore me to the ground, and I ended up traveling just over 500 miles altogether.  But what a month for observing!  The April session begins on the next clear night, and I am excited to get back to my galaxy observing project.  Despite the loss of a week, I still managed to get through much of my usual amount of reading, including ten books related to the Avon/Equinox series, and one by a non-related author, along with another 4 hours of volume 2 of 1001 Arabian Nights.  Here is last month's line-up:

 

As usual, Robert Silverberg lead things off.  I read To Live Again, a novel from 1969.  The novel (including an intro by the author) seems to fulfill J G Ballard's wish of having SF look inward rather than outward.  Silverberg looks inward in a very unique way: in the future it is possible to have your mind and personality preserved on tape.  Only the very rich can afford such a thing, and updates are suggested every six months.  Once you die, your memories etc. can then be purchased by another rich person.  Impressed into the single mind comes a complementary personality, making inner dialogues possible between the person and their acquired persona, and the person gains the life experiences of their intimate companion.  Not only this, but more than one persona can be added if desired.  I like the idea, and the writing, a lot, even though the complications of such tomfoolery could never really be fathomed.  *** 1/2 stars.

 

Next, I began yet another series by Piers Anthony, called Incarnations of Immortality.  The first novel is called On A Pale Horse, and the novel finds a man suddenly faced with becoming the figure of Death, and having to carry out his day to day duties and responsibilities.  There is a lot of humour, but also some interesting moral decision-making that must be done.  While the book is long, it is followed by a 22 page essay by the author that proves to be every bit as entertaining as the story.  I liked the story, though there were some weaker moments.  The next installment deals with the figure of Time.  *** stars.  

 

One of the best books in the actual Avon/Equinox series is #23, Bring The Jubilee, by Ward Moore.  It is a brilliant book dealing with time travel and the American Civil War, published in 1955.  It would be difficult not to admit the influence of that book on Harry Harrison, in his time travel/Civil War effort called A Rebel In Time.  While I much preferred the Moore novel, the Harrison one has its good points, too.  For one thing, the hero is black.  Imagine being black and educated today and being sent back to the American south in 1859.  Good luck with that.  So Harrison opens a brand new area with his confrontation of racial issues in America.  His writing is always so smooth and stylish, the book reads well and easily, and is hard to put down once begun.  *** stars.

 

From 1971 comes a novel as quirky as its title, The Electric Sword Swallowers (which I cannot fathom).  Nor does the cover byline "Every man his own Napoleon" make any sense, either. This is one of the oddest stories I have ever read, and I've read many odd ones.  In essence, the emperor of a planet (a self-proclaimed Napoleon), reenacts famous battles.  This particular story deals with the Battle of Waterloo at its climax.  Intelligent robots with some human DNA are utilized in the battle, thousands of them.  A group of reformers want to oust him, and use the robots for greater good and profit.  Our hero, Ferdie Foxlee, is hired as a top technician, after barely escaping two previous jobs.

The story begins as a comedy farce, but grows more serious as it goes on.  Some good points are raised throughout the story about revolutions, war, and the inhuman use of robots that are partially intelligent, and can act and feel on their own.  It's the kind of story one comes across more often in Ace Doubles than any other publisher, and I doubt any other publisher would have printed this as is.  Bulmer knows his military history, and he knows his emperors, too.  While I am not a fan of military history (or military anything), I found the book to be highly readable, and so original in concept that I enjoyed reading it a lot.  The ending is also very well handled, as the planet finds a worthy purpose after all, rather than just being a fun place to reenact battles.

*** stars.   

 

Beyond Capella by John Rackham was the unrelated book for the month, an anti-war space adventure from 1971.  Though very sexist for today's reader (what SF wasn't from earlier days?), Rackham at least tackles the issue of women in space and women in combat.  He also tackles other major issues such as the morality and wastefulness of war, computers replacing humans, and even alcohol on board ship (no one smokes on board in this book, either).  *** 1/2 stars.

Fifty Days To Doom is by E. E. Tubb, a 71 page pulp novella from 1954 that I quite enjoyed.  It marks the third anti-war book in a row that I read in March.  Tubb's novella has a lot in common with Rackham's novel, from 1971.  Both feature a man who is caught up in a senseless war, and wants nothing more than peace.  Again it always amazes me how so much story can be crammed into such a small number of pages.  *** stars.

The Moon Children by Jack Williamson was the first of three jackpot winners for the month, a novel so astoundingly good that I know I will read it again soon.  Unfortunately, my copy is water damaged, so I will have to order a new one.  The 1971-72 tale starts out a bit like Wyndom's Midwich Cuckoos, and also features some John Christopher inspired passages.  But the direction that Williamson takes with this story of three alien children born to human mothers is completely original and totally fascinating, and remains one of the best SF novels I have ever read.  Very highly recommended.  ****+ stars.

I finished up Moorcock's Swords trilogy, the adventures of Corum.  The King Of Swords is an excellent finish to a great series, despite the 2nd book being much less interesting than were books one and three.  Definitely worth checking out.  All three books are quite short.  **** stars.  

 

I finally got to read some of the short stories by J. G. Ballard, a multi-month project that will see me finish reading all of his fiction.  Having heard rave reviews of his short works, especially the early material, I opened the first page of the first story with high expectations.  My expectations were blown clear out of the water.  I had time to read 13 stories, some of them novelettes, all his short writing from 1956 through 1960.  I will merely list the names of the stories that are among the best fiction ever written.  Prima Belladonna; Escapement; The Concentration City; Venus Smiles; The Waiting Grounds; Chronopolis.  Absolutely astounding stuff!!

Barry Malzberg, a favourite author of mine, wrote under more than a dozen names, in all genres of fiction.  Under the name of Howard Lee, he wrote the first of four novels based on episodes of Kung Fu, starring David Carradine.  The first novel is called The Way of the Tiger, The Sign of the Dragon, and brought back a lot of memories.  The flashbacks to the monastery are very well handled, and I would never have suspected that the smooth writing style was a work by Malzberg.  A 2021 reboot of the series is planned, starring a female (of course; who else) Caine.

Lastly came the third incredible discovery of the month (Williamson and Ballard being the other two), The Seedling Stars by James Blish.  Consisting of three novelettes and a short story, we get the complete history of how humans adapted to life on other planets, rather than selecting to colonize only Earth-like planets.  At times I felt that I was reading the very best work of Hal Clement.  Written in the mid-50s for pulp magazines, and then rewritten for paperback publication, this is an incredible series of loosely linked stories that I wish contained many more episodes.  Fabulous reading.  **** stars.

And now a very short film summary from the past week.  Deb's three film festival choices were unrelated, beginning with the 1934 Imitation of Life, a film ahead of its time, but considerably behind by now.  Imagine sitting in a theatre in 1934 and watching a film about a black girl who can pass for white, and rejecting her black mother and her black roots.  Still quite watchable, though some moments are painfully melodramatic.  The ending was changed from the book, which did not impress the author.

Now showing on Criterion.

 

Imitation of Life, 1934.

Walk On The Wild Side is from 1962, starring a very handsome Laurence Harvey, along with Capucine, Jane Fonda, and Barbara Stanwyck.  The New Orleans setting tells the simple story of a Texas man coming in search of a woman with whom he fell in love with three years earlier.  But the woman has changed a lot since their last meeting.  Filmed in beautiful black and white, the film is good, but suffers from I call the cliched Hollywood ending, in this case not the happy one.

 

Now showing on Criterion. 

Lastly came a Preston Sturgess comedy starring a young Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, along with just about every comic actor in the movie business in 1941.  While the film has a good first half, it falls flat in the second due to overuse of very silly slapstick comedy, which does not suit Fonda at all (nor would it suit anyone else).  There is some really good writing in the first half, but not much in the second.  The story ends up going in circles, too.  The real joy is seeing Stanwyck scintillate in the role of a card sharp, and in watching the many character actors in their small roles.  It gets tiresome watching Fonda play the part of a buffoon, often expressionless.

Half good, half bad.  Now showing on Criterion.  

 

Mapman Mike

December Books Read

 2021 is well underway--the newest wall calendars are in place, and a new crop of Criterion movies are arriving (and leaving).  And Britain is free of Europe, and the US is almost free of Trump.  And we are all still stuck with covid for a long time yet.

In movie news, we watched a fascinating Egyptian film from 1969 called The Night Of Counting Years.  A while back we had watched a short film by the same director, based on an ancient papyrus scroll that was found and translated.  In this full length feature, the director tackles an episode in 1881, where the Cairo authorities are trying to locate the tombs and mummies from the 21st dynasty for preservation and knowledge.  A fierce mountain tribe has located the horde, and has been systematically robbing the tombs and selling pieces on the black market.  The picture is a quiet one, with stunning location photography and settings.  The film has been restored and looks positively breathtaking.  So many great films, and we actually have time for some of them!

                                                            Now showing on Criterion.  

 

Next came The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, a movie I have likely seen at least 20 times, mostly at the Plaza Theatre in Sudbury, where I would attend a triple feature every Saturday, for 25 cents.  This was Harry Harryhausen's first colour feature, and it's a special effects circus.  There are cyclops, a dragon, a dancing snake woman, a baby two-headed roc, a mama roc, a sword fighting skeleton, a magic lamp with genie, a shrunken princess, and the wonderfully evil magician, Sokura.  There are parts of this film that terrified me as a child, when I would sneak out to the candy counter for a 5 cent treat, taking just long enough to miss the offending scene.  Criterion had a wonderful print of the movie to show us, but it is now left the building.  We waited till the last minute to watch it.

                                    This film showed on Criterion Channel until Dec. 31st/20

 

 Turning now to books read last month, I managed to get through 11 tales related to my Avon/Equinox SF Rediscovery Series project.  In addition, I read two "outside" books, and four more chapters of Beethoven's biography by Jan Swafford.  By reading count was higher this month, as there was virtually no astronomy program due to cloudy nights.

 

I began and ended the month with works by Robert Silverberg.  First came Across A Billion Years, an unusual story of space age archaeology.  A group of scientists are exploring a site of The Old Ones, a mysterious civilization that vanished millions of years ago.  Their artifacts, which remain puzzling and unexplainable, keep turning up of different planets.  A young digger hits the motherlode object, which opens up the field of study like nothing ever before.

 

Silverberg is famous for his books on archaeology, and in fact it was through one of his science books that he first came to my attention as a young reader.  He knows a lot about the subject, and obviously has fun with this well written adventure story.  The ending disappointed me, as it was bound to do when dealing with such a subject, but I really enjoyed the book.  At the end of December I read my 2nd Silverberg story of the month, called Three Survived.  As the author explains in his introduction to my volume, he was asked to write a book for the Pacemaker Series in the late 1960s.  This series of books was aimed at poor readers who wanted access to fun stories.  So Silverberg took a story he'd written many years earlier and reworked it for young but willing readers.  It is actually a novella, and not too bad a one, at that, with several good points to make.  My only complaint, a frequent one with Silverberg and other authors of the time, is that there is not a single female character in the entire story!  Obviously the book was intended for male readers, an opportunity missed yet again to involve females in the genre.  The character Leswick could easily have been switched to female.

 

Next came Blue Adept by Piers Anthony, Book 2 of his Apprentice Adept series.  Anthony tries to build a bridge between SF and Fantasy genres, and while he can be praised for trying something new, the book (and series so far) is more successful as fantasy.  The chapters alternate between two worlds, one where rich people rule a planet decimated by pollution, living under domes and enjoying The Games, and its opposite world, where magic rules and things are still very green.  In my opinion, since discovering his preference for writing fantasy (which at the time was vastly outselling SF), Anthony has been on a downhill treadmill.  One reads him, enjoying certain situations, characters, and settings, but overall it is just a matter of passing time.  I enjoyed the 2nd book more than the first one, but nothing would inspire me to reread either book.

 

Harry Harrison's thrill-a-minute conclusion to his 3-book series To The Stars was up next.  The series (for me) began badly with a frustrating ending to book 1.  However, things improved vastly in the 2nd book, and continued on in like manner till the final page of book 3.   This book deals with the rebellion of the outer planets against Earth, and is a nail-biting story in the best pulp tradition.  There are several highlights, including the author's comparison of how the UK works compared to the USA, and an older, wise black character that owns one of the last great hidden libraries of books, amidst the slums of LA.  A recommended series, after you are finished throwing book one against a wall after reading it.

 

Bulmer's Blazon in a tale of extremely violent and cruel aliens suddenly attacking Earth colonies, and ruthlessly destroying people, animals, crops, etc.  At first Earth is helpless against this unlooked for enemy, and their finest ships go down to defeat in any face to face encounter.  Time for a secret weapon, one that can destroy the aliens and bring peace to the galaxy.   From 1971, the story continues Bulmer's tradition of writing a good tale, and then something beyond.  He always has something interesting to say about humans in his stories, both good and bad.  In this story, the ultimate weapon gets a bit out of control, causing as much of a problem as the alien enemy once did.

 

My readings of E C Tubb have lately centred around books of his that were unpublished in his lifetime, but have finally seen print more recently.  The Freedom Army is from 1953, and is a good old fashioned pulp novel.  Debracey's Drug has caused all humans who take it to lose their emotions and unwilling to tolerate any level of freedom.  The original purpose of the drug was quite different, a story all too familiar today with many fine drugs on the market.  Three freedom loving men are trapped in a bunker, being bombarded to death by the raging mob who hates them.  Luckily (or we wouldn't have had a story at all) one of these men is a brilliant old professor, who is just finishing up his invention, which can lead them all to safety by sending into a different dimension.  Same planet, but different.  Away they go!  To land in the fire from the frying pan they just left behind.  Cruel aliens rule this Earth, and must be defeated and killed.  Again, no females in this story at all.  Sad but true.  A good example of traditional SF pulp, it is one breathless adventurous moment after another.

 

Rogue Star, by Jack Williamson and Fred Pohl, is the concluding novel of their Starchild trilogy.  This volume can be read without any knowledge of the first two books, as it takes place centuries after those stories, in a time when the past events are considered more myth than fact.  In this story, star loves girl, girl hates star, star vows revenge on its elders (other stars).  This is certainly one of the most unique stories I have ever read, and most certainly the strangest love story I have ever come across!  There are some fine moments here, though overall it is a pulp SF novel at heart, with plenty of action, explosions, and heart-thudding adventures.  The hero is quite a comical figure, like something out of an Iain Banks novel.  I had expected the ending to somehow be twisted into a happy one (like so many Star Trek episodes), but I was pleasantly surprised at how original and suitable it really was.  A good read if you want something off the beaten path.

 

The Distant Suns, a novel, and Flux, a 35 page story, were next, authored by Michael Moorcock.  The novel is from 1975, but is a throwback to the pulp era.  Three people leave for Alpha Centauri to find a planet suitable for overcrowded Earth to colonize.  With references to the Morlock and to Neil Armstrong, and a hero named Jerry Cornelius and his wife Catherine, this is a fun read.  There are some inexplicable moments (Asians came to the planet they discover first, many centuries earlier), but overall this is a fun SF novel, filled with strange people and things, and first rate adventure.  Flux is Moorcock's tribute to H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, and in it he reveals the true secret of time travel.  Quite a good story, which covers a lot of ground in very few pages.

 

Next came Miracles of Life, Ballard's autobiography.  At last we get to separate fact from fiction.  Ballard writes as well here as in any of his novels, and his sense of humour keeps things from becoming too serious.  Completed just a year or so before his death, it is essential reading for fans of the author.  His Shanghai experiences during WW II have seeped into every aspect of most of his novels, but he had many other experiences that also deepened his outlook, no the least of which was the death of his young wife.  It is not a book that should be read before his major novels, but it is one I will come back to again.

 

The month's crowning achievement was reading Barry Malzberg's Herovit's World, a novel about a SF pulp writer slowly going crazy.  All of Malzberg's novels feature someone going off the deep end, but this one really takes the cake!  One of his best works, it is dark, very funny, and all too true.  It is a book that should be read by every SF author (it likely has been!) and fan of the genre.  Too incredible, and a must-read!  Book of the month, if not the year!

 

Concluding my cycle of Avon/Equinox books (before starting over with Silverberg--see above) was James Blish's All The Stars A Stage, about a generational life ship heading for the stars with its hopeful human colonists.  The story is slow to begin, but once in space things pick up a lot.  First one planet is visited, but hope is abandoned after several unforeseeable obstacles prevent them from staying.  One of these obstacles concerns insects, and is quite a fascinating take on alien life.  A second planet is reached, again with not much hope of colonizing.  The reasons this time are military, but too late the crew realizes that they could have made this one work.  Will there be a third planet?  By now most of the original crew have passed away, and it is the 2nd generation running things now.  A good, solid SF story, sometimes reminding me of Aniara.

 

I had time for two books off of my 'normal' shelf of books to read.  The first was given to me by Amanda, finally managing to work its way to the top of the pile, after a wait of several years.  The Map and The Territory, a novel by Michel Houellebecq, concerns a successful artist and his sad life.  The character is bland, uninteresting, and unemotional, and halfway through the book I didn't think I would finish it.  He is supposed to be a great author, so I won't judge him by this book.  But it seems to be a stinker.  The book is so unmoving and uninvolving that suddenly, about two thirds of the way through, it becomes a murder mystery.  Even the author must have realized he had dug himself into a nasty hole.  Not recommended.

 

I finished off the month with a wonderful youth novel, Black Jack by Leon Garfield.  This is a first rate adventure novel for young readers (early teens), and I ordered the book a while back after seeing the excellent film based on the book.  Some authors are just so good at writing for young people that it makes me want to give up in despair.  A joy to read!

 

Finally, in art news, I will begin the new year pretty much like the old one ended, with a Utopian painting that allows me some escape from this brown winter, where we are mostly stuck inside the house.  This one involves the sea at sunset, with a ship waiting to take us away from here (though in this case, 'here' doesn't seem too bad).

 

        A Seaport At Sunset, 1643, Claude Gellee, French (1600-1682),  Oil on copper; 16" x 21".  

 

                                                                    Detail of left side.

 

        Detail of right side.  I can see Jan Brueghel and David Teniers enjoying this painting.

 

I have two astronomy articles to write before my next post here, and another challenging vocal task for one of Deb's film series.  After tackling these, I will return with more time filling excitement.  Happy New Year!

 

Mapman Mike