One day, many years ago, I was in a Borders bookstore, and I saw this book with a very peculiar cover. It showed a classic fantasy wizard – hat, long white hair and flowing beard, staff, robes, the works – sitting in a 1970s-80s efficiency kitchen like in apartments I'd lived in (formica counters and cheap chairs and all), holding a can of Budweiser. I picked the book off the shelf, slightly annoyed, saying to myself, "There is no way this cover actually represents what's in the book." Given the common history [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: One Piece
October 2, 2013 By 1 Comment
Wealth. Fame. Power. The man who had achieved everything in life, like none before him, was the Pirate King, Gold Roger. The few words he spoke at his execution drove people the world over to take to the seas: "My treasure? If you want it, you can have it. Seek it out! I left everything in my life at that place!" The anime and manga One Piece, by Eiichiro Oda, is a shonen (boy's) adventure series which follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his peculiar crew across one of the most bizarre worlds ever [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Stainless Steel Rat
September 30, 2013 By 2 Comments
"James Bolivar DiGriz, I arrest you on the charge –" I was waiting for the word charge; I thought it made a nice touch that way. As he said it I pressed the button that set off the charge of black powder in the ceiling, the crossbeam buckled and the three-ton safe dropped through right on the top of the cop's head. He squashed very nicely, thank you. The cloud of plaster dust settled and all I could see of him was one hand, slightly crumpled. It twitched a bit and the index finger pointed at me accusingly. His voice was a [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Big Trouble in Little China
September 20, 2013 By 3 Comments
"You know what Jack Burton always says?" "Who?" "Me. Jack Burton. Jack Burton always says… ahh, what the hell." Kurt Russell's played many roles throughout the years – from the Computer in Tennis Shoes to Snake Plissken to Colonel O'Neill in the original Stargate. But in many ways my favorite is his two-fisted everyman trucker, Jack Burton, who gets into a pulp-fiction adventure way over his head… all because he wins a bet and agrees to do a favor for a friend on the way to collect. Big [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: My Neighbor Totoro
September 18, 2013 By 1 Comment
In any discussion of anime, there are very few names that are spoken with almost unqualified awe and pleasure. There is Osamu Tezuka, "Anime no Kami", the founder of the industry in many ways. One could make a case for Leiji Matsumoto, creator of Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers), Galaxy Express 999, and Space Pirate Harlock. And there is Hayao Miyazaki, sometimes called the "Japanese Disney", creator of some of the most wonderful, magical films ever made (which I will review later), including Laputa: Castle in [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Galaxy Quest
September 16, 2013 By 6 Comments
"By Grabthar's hammer… by the suns of Warvan… you shall be avenged!" Galaxy Quest is a parody and tribute to the original Star Trek (with some added flavoring from Next Generation). For those unaware of the basic "setup", it takes place in a world like this one, in which the famous classic SF TV show was called "Galaxy Quest" which featured a fancy starship called the NESA Protector which had a crew featuring a womanizing captain, an alien science officer, and a token female communi... er, comPUTER officer,, and [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: A Wrinkle in Time
September 13, 2013 By 3 Comments
"It was a dark and stormy night…" A Wrinkle in Time does begin with exactly that line, perhaps the most mocked opening line in literary history and certainly the most famous, courtesy of Snoopy's eternally-rejected novel (and originally from the not-quite-as-bad-as-his-rep Edward Bulwer-Lytton). But for A Wrinkle in Time, it's the perfect opening line and helps set the stage, as well as foreshadowing the story to come; for there is indeed a dark and stormy time ahead for Meg Murry, high-school student (about [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Pacific Rim
September 11, 2013 By 2 Comments
Giant robots versus giant monsters. Done awesomely. I could pretty much end my review there, as it says all the important things right up front. But that would be probably overly short, and maybe just copy-and-pasting "GIANT ROBOTS versus GIANT MONSTERS" would get a little boring. Oh, and technically the title of this post should be "Going to be On My Shelves", I suppose, because I haven't got it yet. When I saw the trailers for Pacific Rim, I knew I'd be going to see it. But I still braced myself for [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Hal Clement and _Iceworld_
September 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Hal Clement (Harry Stubbs) was famous throughout the Golden Age and beyond as one of the patron saints of hard science fiction. While he would allow for the existence of an FTL drive to get his protagonists to some particular location, Clement's works were almost entirely focused on constructing worlds that, as far as we knew, didn't exist – but could exist, based on what we knew, and from these hard-edged foundations build stories of first contact, of investigation, of exploration, and of friendship across the boundaries of [ Continue reading... ]
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