There are movies that as soon as you hear about them, you know you're going to go see them. Movies that are the realization of some childhood dream come true, that you shout "YES!!" as soon as you hear they're going to be made. Speed Racer was NOT one of those for me. My wife showed me the first trailer, and said that she wanted me to take her to see it. My eyeballs crossed at the psychedelically intense colors and the apparent cheesiness of the trailer itself, but she had been a Speed Racer fan when she was [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
February 22, 2013 By 5 Comments
Today, making fantastic creatures onscreen seem to move and breathe and interact with real people is commonplace, almost easy; one can go online and see some pretty darn impressive work being done by people with a little time and money on their hands. But back before the days of computer animation, there were only three ways to put fantastic things onscreen. The first was to have a human being (or, rarely, another animal) wearing a suit that looks like the fantastic creature in question. This rarely worked very [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: H.G. Wells
January 21, 2013 By 2 Comments
While the bulk of his written work was general fiction and commentary, Herbert George Wells is remembered today along with Jules Verne as one of the fathers of modern science fiction. I first encountered his work somewhat secondhand, as part of the script for the Orson Welles version of War of the Worlds; this was published in a marvelous anthology called simply Contact!, a collection of "first contact" stories (humanity's initial encounter with alien intelligences). It was many years later that I was looking [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Count of Monte-Cristo
January 7, 2013 By 3 Comments
There is perhaps no more famous account of love, betrayal, and revenge in literature than The Count of Monte-Cristo by Dumas. I first encountered the story in my mid-teens and was instantly captured by it. The basis of the story is simple: young Edmond Dantes is a sailor with a bright future – soon to be made Captain of a profitable merchantman, engaged to Mercedes, a Catalan girl noted for her beauty, having just completed an extremely profitable trading voyage for his employer, Morrel. It seems that he has already reached his [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Persona 4 Arena
January 4, 2013 By 2 Comments
WARNING: Completely uncritical raving ahead! When I saw that the Persona series was going to have its own fighting game, I was pretty skeptical; what's an RPG series going to do with a fighting game that makes it worth getting as such? But hey, I didn't have any fighting games for PS3, so I put it on my Christmas list; at least it would feature characters I knew, so that was a plus. Before I go on, I will state that as a fighting game, it's a solid entry. It's of the "Street Fighter" style, [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Airwolf
January 2, 2013 By 8 Comments
File A56-7W. Top secret. Subject: AIRWOLF, a Mach-1 plus attack helicopter. Sought by governments friendly and foreign, AIRWOLF has been hidden by test pilot Stringfellow Hawke - to be returned to the government only if his brother, St. John, an MIA in Vietnam, can be found… Backed by unmatched firepower, AIRWOLF is a weapon too dangerous to be left in unenlightened hands. Finding AIRWOLF is your number one priority. END OF FILE. The 1980s saw several "gadget as star" shows, with the most well-known probably being Knight [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Clive Cussler’s “Dirk Pitt” series
December 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment
In the late 70s, I was wandering the stacks of our local library and came across a book with a dramatic title: Raise the Titanic! I had – like many other people – something of a fascination with the Titanic, so this, along with the cover showing the huge liner rising from the deeps, grabbed my attention. This was the first novel of the genre "techno-thriller" I remember reading; it's possible I read one such earlier, but I can't say for sure. What I can say is that Raise the Titanic grabbed me and held me riveted [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: When Worlds Collide/After Worlds Collide
December 19, 2012 By 2 Comments
It is often said that "The Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12". It is certainly the case that I remember fondly many books that I discovered at that age; that was in the middle of my Junior High career, and I had been introduced the year before to Doc Smith and Christopher Anvil. Subsequently, I decided to start looking for more science fiction, and went into the library of Shaker Junior High to start looking. Having no better idea, I started looking for books that caught my eye starting at the beginning of the alphabet, and [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Brian Daley’s Coramonde
December 17, 2012 By 5 Comments
Brian Daley was a science fiction and fantasy author with a great talent for painting worlds with words – his own worlds, or those of others. He was probably best-known personally as the writer of three Han Solo novels (I believe the first three published, aside from Splinter of the Mind's Eye), and most successful as one-half of Jack McKinney, the author of the Robotech novelizations. He died, unfortunately, in the middle of his career, victim of cancer at the age of 49. I, however, remember him for two original [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Lords of Dûs
December 14, 2012 By 8 Comments
Some years ago, I belonged to a writer's group, one of whose members worked at a bookstore. On occasion he'd bring in a box of stripped (front cover removed) books for people to take home if they wanted. NOTE: This is an illegal practice, though I didn't know it at the time. "Stripped" books are recorded as "returned" by publishers and are supposed to be destroyed. There are aspects of this practice that I'm unsure of in terms of whether it really makes sense, but I just want to make clear I'm not promoting [ Continue reading... ]
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