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Book Log, 2009-02-06 through 2009-02-13
I've been sick, so falling back on lots of comfort reading that is both short and familiar.
4.1. "Damned If You Don't", Randall Garrett (free ebook derived from the Project Gutenberg version)
(Just a short story, so I don't want to count it as new read #5.)
I read this one, finally, through a concatenation of events. First, eReader 2.0 was released for iPhone OS, with my feature wishlist items included. After upgrading, I found that eReader/Fictionwise had reworked some of the ebooks with better metadata, so I wanted to re-download them; the easiest solution was to uninstall eReader, then reinstall and use "download entire bookshelf" to avoid duplication.
One of the books in my collection is The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge, and I wanted to check to see if they'd fixed a typo. (There looks like a badly-done search and replace that's replaced "gu" with "Gu", probably while doing some editing of Fast Times at Fairmont High, but which results in things like "AuGust" appearing elsewhere. Not fixed but hardly a real issue.) I got to the intro to "Bookworm, Run!" and was reminded that I'd never tracked down the Garrett story that Vinge refers to.
After a quick Google search I spotted it on Manybooks.net...which eReader helpfully has a shortcut to, right in the app. Soon thereafter I had the story ready to read. This is so much better than the usual process: check ISFDB, see if it's in an anthology, find the anthology somewhere in the various library systems I have access to, request the book, wait a few days, pick up the book, read the story (in 10 minutes), then have to return the book. In this case, a lapsed copyright renewal made it free, but I'd certainly pay for this kind of stuff. (Fictionwise sells a fair number of short stories by various authors. This is a good thing.)
As for the story itself? I've always liked Randall Garrett's short fiction, and this is no exception, even if the "surprise" was muted by having already read "Bookworm, Run!" Still, it's so unbelievable. The very idea that removing huge amounts of value from one sector of the economy would cause a widespread financial crisis! Who'd believe that one?
RR10. Yendi, Steven Brust (mmpb)
Second published in the Vlad Taltos series. Won the contest for "what's the first book I can find that's fairly familiar, but that I haven't re-read too recently?" As I said previously, most of the folks reading this are already familiar with Brust.
RR11. Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future, Mike Resnick (ebook)
This should count as a re-reread since I'd just reread the paper version late last year. This is basically Resnick doing "Wild West tall tales... IIIIN SPAAAAAACE". Still, very enjoyable; I recommend it. The chapter headings (verses of a notional song about the residents of the Frontier) are particularly well done.
RR12. Assignment in Eternity, Robert A. Heinlein (mmpb)
More short Heinlein. Written for the "prophesied" November 1949 Astounding, "Gulf" mixes super-spies and doomsday devices with a few other things: remember when torturing someone for information made you unambiguously a Bad Guy? There's also a bit of playing-card communication in jail that far predates Cryptonomicon.
The other long story, "Lost Legacy" suffers at the end due to the nature of the "solution" as seen from today's perspective; it's hard for me not to think of the Boy Scouts of America as a discriminatory organization (one made so by the influence of church-provided funding and sponsorships) and therefore the sort of thing that this story's Bad Guys would be pushing.
The two shorter pieces: "Elsewhen" is minor Heinlein, though "Jerry Was A Man" has some good bits.
RR13. The Worlds of George O., George O. Smith (mmpb)
Even his best known stories (the Venus Equilateral series) are far less well known than they deserve, IMO, and these non-VE stories are worth a quick read. (Some of them are also out of copyright and available through PG/Manybooks/etc.) The biggest problem I have with them is that the gender roles are consistently wayyyy too far down the "a woman just wants a husband" trail; this isn't necessarily a surprise given the timeframe, but still...if you can look past it, or read the stories that don't have major female characters while suppressing your thoughts of "hey, where are the women in this story?", they're worth a few minutes.
That said, the stories aren't the real meat of this book. The interstitial memoirs are.
The book was published just after Smith died (to the extent that Frederik Pohl's introduction ends with a few paragraphs considering whether the preceding was "too flippant" in view of his death, as the book was in the pipeline when it happened) and so it contains pretty much his entire writing life from when he started seriously writing (after changes at work left him no longer working overtime). This includes his weekends spent in John W. Campbell's basement workshop; time spent socializing with the Heinleins, Fletcher Pratt, L. Ron Hubbard, L. Sprague de Camp, and many other writers of the era; and his marriage to Doña Campbell. (Yeah, John's then-wife. Well, then-just-ex-wife when she married Smith.) If you're interested in the history of that time among SF writers, try to find a copy of this book.
RR14. The Menace From Earth, Robert A. Heinlein (mmpb)
The title story is still a classic, as is "By His Bootstraps" (though it's better if you haven't just read "-All You Zombies-"). The others are extremely minor Heinlein.
4.1. "Damned If You Don't", Randall Garrett (free ebook derived from the Project Gutenberg version)
(Just a short story, so I don't want to count it as new read #5.)
I read this one, finally, through a concatenation of events. First, eReader 2.0 was released for iPhone OS, with my feature wishlist items included. After upgrading, I found that eReader/Fictionwise had reworked some of the ebooks with better metadata, so I wanted to re-download them; the easiest solution was to uninstall eReader, then reinstall and use "download entire bookshelf" to avoid duplication.
One of the books in my collection is The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge, and I wanted to check to see if they'd fixed a typo. (There looks like a badly-done search and replace that's replaced "gu" with "Gu", probably while doing some editing of Fast Times at Fairmont High, but which results in things like "AuGust" appearing elsewhere. Not fixed but hardly a real issue.) I got to the intro to "Bookworm, Run!" and was reminded that I'd never tracked down the Garrett story that Vinge refers to.
After a quick Google search I spotted it on Manybooks.net...which eReader helpfully has a shortcut to, right in the app. Soon thereafter I had the story ready to read. This is so much better than the usual process: check ISFDB, see if it's in an anthology, find the anthology somewhere in the various library systems I have access to, request the book, wait a few days, pick up the book, read the story (in 10 minutes), then have to return the book. In this case, a lapsed copyright renewal made it free, but I'd certainly pay for this kind of stuff. (Fictionwise sells a fair number of short stories by various authors. This is a good thing.)
As for the story itself? I've always liked Randall Garrett's short fiction, and this is no exception, even if the "surprise" was muted by having already read "Bookworm, Run!" Still, it's so unbelievable. The very idea that removing huge amounts of value from one sector of the economy would cause a widespread financial crisis! Who'd believe that one?
RR10. Yendi, Steven Brust (mmpb)
Second published in the Vlad Taltos series. Won the contest for "what's the first book I can find that's fairly familiar, but that I haven't re-read too recently?" As I said previously, most of the folks reading this are already familiar with Brust.
RR11. Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future, Mike Resnick (ebook)
This should count as a re-reread since I'd just reread the paper version late last year. This is basically Resnick doing "Wild West tall tales... IIIIN SPAAAAAACE". Still, very enjoyable; I recommend it. The chapter headings (verses of a notional song about the residents of the Frontier) are particularly well done.
RR12. Assignment in Eternity, Robert A. Heinlein (mmpb)
More short Heinlein. Written for the "prophesied" November 1949 Astounding, "Gulf" mixes super-spies and doomsday devices with a few other things: remember when torturing someone for information made you unambiguously a Bad Guy? There's also a bit of playing-card communication in jail that far predates Cryptonomicon.
The other long story, "Lost Legacy" suffers at the end due to the nature of the "solution" as seen from today's perspective; it's hard for me not to think of the Boy Scouts of America as a discriminatory organization (one made so by the influence of church-provided funding and sponsorships) and therefore the sort of thing that this story's Bad Guys would be pushing.
The two shorter pieces: "Elsewhen" is minor Heinlein, though "Jerry Was A Man" has some good bits.
RR13. The Worlds of George O., George O. Smith (mmpb)
Even his best known stories (the Venus Equilateral series) are far less well known than they deserve, IMO, and these non-VE stories are worth a quick read. (Some of them are also out of copyright and available through PG/Manybooks/etc.) The biggest problem I have with them is that the gender roles are consistently wayyyy too far down the "a woman just wants a husband" trail; this isn't necessarily a surprise given the timeframe, but still...if you can look past it, or read the stories that don't have major female characters while suppressing your thoughts of "hey, where are the women in this story?", they're worth a few minutes.
That said, the stories aren't the real meat of this book. The interstitial memoirs are.
The book was published just after Smith died (to the extent that Frederik Pohl's introduction ends with a few paragraphs considering whether the preceding was "too flippant" in view of his death, as the book was in the pipeline when it happened) and so it contains pretty much his entire writing life from when he started seriously writing (after changes at work left him no longer working overtime). This includes his weekends spent in John W. Campbell's basement workshop; time spent socializing with the Heinleins, Fletcher Pratt, L. Ron Hubbard, L. Sprague de Camp, and many other writers of the era; and his marriage to Doña Campbell. (Yeah, John's then-wife. Well, then-just-ex-wife when she married Smith.) If you're interested in the history of that time among SF writers, try to find a copy of this book.
RR14. The Menace From Earth, Robert A. Heinlein (mmpb)
The title story is still a classic, as is "By His Bootstraps" (though it's better if you haven't just read "-All You Zombies-"). The others are extremely minor Heinlein.
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And I have what I will admit is an unreasonable fondness for "Project Nightmare."
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But what's interesting is that the producer of the show was to have been William Dozier. So had the show been picked up, he likely would've been unavailable to do the Adam West Batman.
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Is that the Magic of the Free Market waving its Invisible Hand?
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