Book Log, 2009-01-07 through 2009-01-13

[ckd]

2. You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger, Roger Hall (tpb)

I originally requested this from the library in July, after Hall's death led to a number of blog posts and obituaries that mentioned the book. It finally arrived at the end of December. (There are still 17 holds on the book, with only five copies in the Minuteman system.) It was worth the wait, however.

This is nothing more, and nothing less, than his memoir of his days in the OSS during WW II; it starts with him transferring to the OSS, and ends with the OSS disappearing around him. The book was very funny, though not quite what I'd expected; I'd been thinking it likely to be more like Eric Frank Russell's Wasp with derring-do behind enemy lines, but in fact his adventures were generally in training facilities and the like. (His various visits to the British parachute training were quite amusing, for example.)

Naturally, his one big mission (a drop into occupied France to work with the Resistance) resulted in him winding up well behind the lines...the Allied lines. (Oops.) It was just his luck that the drop was made just after there'd been a rapid advance in that area that wasn't reported through to OSS HQ quickly enough to abort the mission.

RR3. A Matter of Metalaw, Lee Correy (mmpb)

Not one of my favorites of "Correy"'s work (G. Harry Stine's pseudonym for his fiction), this suffers badly from repeated "but if he'd only realized that he was missing the vital clue" asides and doesn't really ever gel for me. The far-future setting also seems to be weaker than his usual near-future SF (some of which is now not-so-near-past SF; Star Driver has a minor plot point hinge on the protagonist not being able to get time on the one available minicomputer!).

Of his other work, Shuttle Down (alt-hist after the decision was made not to launch the Shuttle into polar orbits from Vandenberg AFB) is probably my favorite, and gets a bit of a shout-out in David Brin's Earth. Star Driver and Space Doctor are both stereotypical Analog stories: the former portraying the invention of the Dean Drive a reactionless thruster; the latter a fairly standard (but well done) "life IIIIIN SPAAAAACE" story of medicine at an under-construction space station. Manna is what today I'd probably call Prometheus Award bait[1]; it's better done than The Probability Broach since it doesn't require a complete alternate universe, but the wonderfulness of the Republic of Mary-Sue United Mitanni Commonwealth is hard to suspend disbelief for.

Upcoming: Why Does Popcorn Cost So Much at the Movies?, as well as a re-read of Carpe Jugulum. The post may be delayed by Arisia and post-con recovery time, though. (I may get a boardgame post in about BSG before the weekend, if I'm lucky. yendi, we absolutely have to play this. It's made for your namesake House.)

[1] Looking it up, it was nominated in 1985 and lost to Vinge's The Peace War.

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I read You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger about 30 years ago and remember it as great fun - I really must try to get hold of a copy.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

And found one instantly on Amazon.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I read Space Doctor ages ago and remember it being the sort of thing I liked at the time. It had an embarrassingly written sex scene of the sort that you get in techno-thrillers.

A few years ago I discovered that Stine genuinely believed in the Dean Drive and wrote an embarrassingly written physics essay about the super-scientific theory of Davis Mechanics that made it work. And that Eric S. Raymond thought it was being unfairly rejected by closed-minded scientists.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Roger Hall was my personal friend! That is, his wife and I had a regular email correspondence because he didn't do email. I wrote extensively about how much I loved that book several years ago, and noted his passing last year.

[ckd]

Did you mention it then? It's likely that you were among the people posting about him that got me to request the book.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I wrote extensively about how much I loved the book, so much so that I stole it from my junior high library when I left junior high, because I'd been the only person checking it out for the previous two years. And so when it was reissued, I sent a replacement copy to the school with a note about it all. It was quite a story.

[ckd]

Yeah, that's the post all right. Thanks for recommending it!

[yendi]

Seriously? You do realize that no one in our house watches BSG, right? Mind you, that doesn't mean I won't like it (I enjoy the LotR game, much as I can't stand the books), but I haven't heard anything about this one. Still, I do feel a need to try at least one new game every Arisia, so if you bring it, I'll try it.

[ckd]

Seriously.

I had completely avoided watching the new series until after I'd already played (and bought) the game, at which point you conveniently posted a link to a nice Amazon deal on seasons 1-3 on DVD. (You should have gotten the Amazon referral kickback, too, since I made sure to click through your link.)

The game sold me on getting the DVDs; it's really that good. (I've got most of a post about it written; I'll try to post it tonight either before heading to Pandemonium, or more likely after getting back.)