Space Race by Deborah Cadbury ***1/2
The Assault on Reason by Al Gore ****
The Joke's Over: Bruised Memories, Gonzo, Hunter s. Thompson and Me by Ralph Steadman ****1/2
Sixty Days and Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson *** 1/2
Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson ****
Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson *** 1/2
State of Denial by Bob Woodward *****
Nixon in China by Margaret MacMillan ***
Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the US Empire by Linda McQuaig ****
Marley and Me by John Grogan *****
The Making of Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler *****
Cell by Stephen King ***1/2
The Truth (With Jokes) by Al Franken ***1/2
Mammoth by John Varley ***1/2
Heat by George Monbiot *****
Harry Potter and the Mindharp of Sharu by J.K. Rowling ****
1491 by Charles G. Mann ***1/2
Who Let the Dogs In by Molly Ivins ***1/2
The Mess They Made by Gwynne Dyer ****
Outrageous Fortune by Tim Scott ***
Salt by Mark Kurlansky **
The Zenith Angle by Bruce Sterling ***
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson ****
JPod by Douglas Coupland *****
Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert ****
The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond ***.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Monday, December 31, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Crisis on Infinite Earths
Crisis on Infinite Earths
by Marv Wolfman
review by John W. Herbert
Novelizations generally come out at the same time as the movie/tv show/event that they are tied in to. There seems little point for a novel plugging a 20 year-old comic series to come out now (unless its publication was coinciding with the publication of the sequel to the original comic series. Maybe there is a method to this marketing madness after all).
To begin, originally there were the original DC heroes of the 1930s and 1940s Golden Age: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern et al. But after the war, many comics were cancelled and some heroes disappeared for a while. Batman and Superman continued, but The Flash, Green Lantern and others dropped by the wayside.
But in the 1950s and 1960s, DC began introducing updated versions of these forgotten heroes. The “old” Green Lantern, Alan Scott, was a railroad engineer who came upon a lantern forged from a mysterious metal that gave him super-powers, while the “new” Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, was chosen to join an intergalactic police force and given a ring that allowed him to give form to whatever he willed. The original Flash, Jay Garrick, was a college student who inhaled “hard water vapours” and gained super-speed, while the modern Flash was Barry Allen, a police scientist who suffered an accident with chemicals and was imbued with super-speed.
As the new so-called Silver Age heroes grew in popularity, the natural idea occurred – what if the new Flash met the old Flash? To accomplish this, the writers at DC used the old parallel worlds idea: the current Flash, and his contemporaries, lived on Earth-1, while the previous Flash and his contemporaries lived on Earth-2.
The Flash crossover proved so popular that soon the Green Lanterns crossed over, followed by whole leagues of heroes in annual crossover events. DC began adding more parallel worlds to their canon. There was Earth-3 where the heroes were the bad guys and the super-villains were the heroes. There was Earth-S where Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family lived. There was even Earth-Prime where the DC Comics writers lived and wrote the stories that played out across what was now referred to as the DC Multiverse.
By the mid-1980s, the powers-that-be decided that the DC Multiverse had grown so huge and unwieldy that new readers would be lost learning the previous continuity, and decided to do what is now called a re-boot of the DC Multiverse and collapse it into a single universe that would be easy for writers, editors and new readers to keep track of.
Enter Marv Wolfman and George Pérez who respectively wrote and drew Crisis on Infinite Earths, an award-winning 12-issue mini-series that tore the DC Multiverse asunder and rearranged it into a single, cohesive universe. Sort of. And in 2006, as DC prepared another massive crossover event, Infinite Crisis, to repair the continuity ruptures of the previous 20 years, iBooks published Wolfman’s novelization of the original series.
Wolfman wastes no time getting into the story, told through the eyes of The Flash, Barry Allen. It’s an interesting choice to use Allen as the narrator – the Silver Age Flash was considered by many readers to be a dull and boring character, and it’s for this reason that he was [Spoiler Alert] killed off at the end of the original Crisis mini-series. [He continues to be unappealing to modern fans as the beautiful Alex Ross-painted cover of the novel shows Supergirl’s death, not The Flash’s. And don’t ask me about Supergirl’s screwed up continuity. Oy vey. End of Spoiler Alert.]
Barry has become “unstuck” in time and his incorporeal form bears witness to multiple plot threads, presented in a non-linear manner. As a plot device, it’s a smart way for Wolfman to juggle his numerous stories as the various universes are destroyed by a being known as the Anti-Monitor, who, like most super-villains, can only come up with schemes that require the destruction of All Existence in order to succeed. (Whatever happened to knocking off the corner liquor store? But I digress.) It does make for confusing reading at first, as Barry is just as lost as the reader is, but soon Barry is up to speed with the story and so are we.
There’s no point trying to explain the particulars of the story, and it flies by so fast that who really cares anyway? And the legion of super-heroes (pun intended) that are briefly mentioned must be in the hundreds. Most rate merely a line or two. That said, Wolfman does manage to capture the essence of many of these one-line characters, and he finely draws the personalities of the main players of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. He does an especially fine job with Barry, our narrator, and captures the heroism and the tragedy in this doomed character.
If you really want to read this story, find the original comic. It’s readily available in graphic novel form. But if you’re looking for a few hours to kill with some light reading about the end of everything, this will do the trick, too.
originally published in Neo-Opsis magazine, 2007.
by Marv Wolfman
review by John W. Herbert
Novelizations generally come out at the same time as the movie/tv show/event that they are tied in to. There seems little point for a novel plugging a 20 year-old comic series to come out now (unless its publication was coinciding with the publication of the sequel to the original comic series. Maybe there is a method to this marketing madness after all).
To begin, originally there were the original DC heroes of the 1930s and 1940s Golden Age: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern et al. But after the war, many comics were cancelled and some heroes disappeared for a while. Batman and Superman continued, but The Flash, Green Lantern and others dropped by the wayside.
But in the 1950s and 1960s, DC began introducing updated versions of these forgotten heroes. The “old” Green Lantern, Alan Scott, was a railroad engineer who came upon a lantern forged from a mysterious metal that gave him super-powers, while the “new” Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, was chosen to join an intergalactic police force and given a ring that allowed him to give form to whatever he willed. The original Flash, Jay Garrick, was a college student who inhaled “hard water vapours” and gained super-speed, while the modern Flash was Barry Allen, a police scientist who suffered an accident with chemicals and was imbued with super-speed.
As the new so-called Silver Age heroes grew in popularity, the natural idea occurred – what if the new Flash met the old Flash? To accomplish this, the writers at DC used the old parallel worlds idea: the current Flash, and his contemporaries, lived on Earth-1, while the previous Flash and his contemporaries lived on Earth-2.
The Flash crossover proved so popular that soon the Green Lanterns crossed over, followed by whole leagues of heroes in annual crossover events. DC began adding more parallel worlds to their canon. There was Earth-3 where the heroes were the bad guys and the super-villains were the heroes. There was Earth-S where Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family lived. There was even Earth-Prime where the DC Comics writers lived and wrote the stories that played out across what was now referred to as the DC Multiverse.
By the mid-1980s, the powers-that-be decided that the DC Multiverse had grown so huge and unwieldy that new readers would be lost learning the previous continuity, and decided to do what is now called a re-boot of the DC Multiverse and collapse it into a single universe that would be easy for writers, editors and new readers to keep track of.
Enter Marv Wolfman and George Pérez who respectively wrote and drew Crisis on Infinite Earths, an award-winning 12-issue mini-series that tore the DC Multiverse asunder and rearranged it into a single, cohesive universe. Sort of. And in 2006, as DC prepared another massive crossover event, Infinite Crisis, to repair the continuity ruptures of the previous 20 years, iBooks published Wolfman’s novelization of the original series.
Wolfman wastes no time getting into the story, told through the eyes of The Flash, Barry Allen. It’s an interesting choice to use Allen as the narrator – the Silver Age Flash was considered by many readers to be a dull and boring character, and it’s for this reason that he was [Spoiler Alert] killed off at the end of the original Crisis mini-series. [He continues to be unappealing to modern fans as the beautiful Alex Ross-painted cover of the novel shows Supergirl’s death, not The Flash’s. And don’t ask me about Supergirl’s screwed up continuity. Oy vey. End of Spoiler Alert.]
Barry has become “unstuck” in time and his incorporeal form bears witness to multiple plot threads, presented in a non-linear manner. As a plot device, it’s a smart way for Wolfman to juggle his numerous stories as the various universes are destroyed by a being known as the Anti-Monitor, who, like most super-villains, can only come up with schemes that require the destruction of All Existence in order to succeed. (Whatever happened to knocking off the corner liquor store? But I digress.) It does make for confusing reading at first, as Barry is just as lost as the reader is, but soon Barry is up to speed with the story and so are we.
There’s no point trying to explain the particulars of the story, and it flies by so fast that who really cares anyway? And the legion of super-heroes (pun intended) that are briefly mentioned must be in the hundreds. Most rate merely a line or two. That said, Wolfman does manage to capture the essence of many of these one-line characters, and he finely draws the personalities of the main players of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. He does an especially fine job with Barry, our narrator, and captures the heroism and the tragedy in this doomed character.
If you really want to read this story, find the original comic. It’s readily available in graphic novel form. But if you’re looking for a few hours to kill with some light reading about the end of everything, this will do the trick, too.
originally published in Neo-Opsis magazine, 2007.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
So It Goes
Kurt Vonnegut picked my birthday yesterday to die.
What a pisser.
He was a literary giant; moreso, he was a literary giant who wrote science fiction.
Most famous for Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five, my first Vonnegut was Breakfast of Champions, a funny and sad novel that many of Vonnegut's regular cast of characters wandered through, including Kilgore Trout, a science fiction writer who toils away at his craft making no money and gaining no fame. But it is through Trout that Vonnegut answered that age old question.
It is Trout, while sitting in a men's room stall, who sees the question scrawled on the stall wall:
"Why are we here?"
Trout doesn't hesitate for a moment. He whips out a pen and replies:
"To be the eyes and the ears of the conscience of the universe."
And it is in Slaughterhouse-Five that Vonnegut becomes our conscience, bemoaning the madness of war and lives that spin out of control.
Another moment lost, another giant falls.
So it goes.
Hi ho.
The Works of Kurt Vonnegut
A recent Vonnegut Interview in Rolling Stone
An excerpt from his last book, A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W. Bush's America
What a pisser.
He was a literary giant; moreso, he was a literary giant who wrote science fiction.
Most famous for Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five, my first Vonnegut was Breakfast of Champions, a funny and sad novel that many of Vonnegut's regular cast of characters wandered through, including Kilgore Trout, a science fiction writer who toils away at his craft making no money and gaining no fame. But it is through Trout that Vonnegut answered that age old question.
It is Trout, while sitting in a men's room stall, who sees the question scrawled on the stall wall:
"Why are we here?"
Trout doesn't hesitate for a moment. He whips out a pen and replies:
"To be the eyes and the ears of the conscience of the universe."
And it is in Slaughterhouse-Five that Vonnegut becomes our conscience, bemoaning the madness of war and lives that spin out of control.
Another moment lost, another giant falls.
So it goes.
Hi ho.
The Works of Kurt Vonnegut
A recent Vonnegut Interview in Rolling Stone
An excerpt from his last book, A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W. Bush's America
Friday, November 17, 2006
The Dark Towers Diaries - Day Nineteen Ninety-Nine
To quote very fittingly from Star Wars, "The circle is now complete."
Roland has finished his quest to reach The Dark Tower, and I have concluded my quest to read all seven of Stephen King's The Dark Tower books in a row.
Book seven ends as Roland's band breaks apart. Some leave. Some die. And Roland alone faces the Crimson King at The Dark Tower.
No, wait. He's not alone. In fact. he's accompanied by someone he's met only in the last fourth of the book. It is this new character who defeats the Crimson King, although it is Roland who figures out how. (SPOILER WARNING: The previous sentence contained a major spoiler.)
This may be the only real letdown of the final book, how this new character comes in and plays such a vital role after Roland's faithful companions Eddie, Jake Susannah and Oy have moved on.
The ending may not please many people and King readily admits as much in his afterward, but he also notes that it is the right ending.
And it is.
I've enjoyed the last ten weeks with Roland and his merry band, and am saddened that there will be no more palaver with them. Mr. King, I say thankee, do ya ken.
Roland has finished his quest to reach The Dark Tower, and I have concluded my quest to read all seven of Stephen King's The Dark Tower books in a row.
Book seven ends as Roland's band breaks apart. Some leave. Some die. And Roland alone faces the Crimson King at The Dark Tower.
No, wait. He's not alone. In fact. he's accompanied by someone he's met only in the last fourth of the book. It is this new character who defeats the Crimson King, although it is Roland who figures out how. (SPOILER WARNING: The previous sentence contained a major spoiler.)
This may be the only real letdown of the final book, how this new character comes in and plays such a vital role after Roland's faithful companions Eddie, Jake Susannah and Oy have moved on.
The ending may not please many people and King readily admits as much in his afterward, but he also notes that it is the right ending.
And it is.
I've enjoyed the last ten weeks with Roland and his merry band, and am saddened that there will be no more palaver with them. Mr. King, I say thankee, do ya ken.
Friday, November 10, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day Two Hundred and Four
I'm past the halfway mark of the seventh and final volume. My pace was slowed as I was home sick for a couple of days but had left the book at work. Them's the breaks.
Anyway, King is taking pains to make sure that this is the final volume. He's killed off two main characters in the last 100 pages. One can never be sure in Stephen King's world if a character is going to stay dead or not, but these deaths seem definitive.
King has also written himself back into the story, making his near-fatal traffic accident in 1999 a major turning point in the story. This is making me wonder how much of The Dark Tower series he worked out in advance. He mentions in earlier volumes pre-accident that he figures the series will run to six or seven volumes when completed. And he begins referencing "19" from the very first page of the book. Yet post-accident, he (the character, not the author) mentions that he had an outline, one of the few times he's done one, but lost it. And "19" ties in with the date of his accident. So it's all hard to know what's what.
The first part of the book ties up some loose ends from book five, and frankly, I was really uninterested in this part. Or it maybe I was just getting sick. Anyway, now that Roland and Jake have returned to help Stephen King, the book has picked up.
Only 412 pages to go!
Anyway, King is taking pains to make sure that this is the final volume. He's killed off two main characters in the last 100 pages. One can never be sure in Stephen King's world if a character is going to stay dead or not, but these deaths seem definitive.
King has also written himself back into the story, making his near-fatal traffic accident in 1999 a major turning point in the story. This is making me wonder how much of The Dark Tower series he worked out in advance. He mentions in earlier volumes pre-accident that he figures the series will run to six or seven volumes when completed. And he begins referencing "19" from the very first page of the book. Yet post-accident, he (the character, not the author) mentions that he had an outline, one of the few times he's done one, but lost it. And "19" ties in with the date of his accident. So it's all hard to know what's what.
The first part of the book ties up some loose ends from book five, and frankly, I was really uninterested in this part. Or it maybe I was just getting sick. Anyway, now that Roland and Jake have returned to help Stephen King, the book has picked up.
Only 412 pages to go!
Saturday, October 28, 2006
The Dark Towers Diaries - Day One Hundred and Twenty-Eight
So now the Song of Susannah is behind me and we're on to the the final book of the series, which is entitled The Dark Tower funnily enough.
Susannah ends on a less than satisfactory note. In the previous books in this yarn, Kimg has at least tried to wrap up some of the loose ends in each book to at least give some credence to the idea that each novel can stand alone. Here, he doesn't even try; all the plot threads are left hanging until the next book. And that's an odd choice because one character's story (Father Callahan) comes to end with his death early in The Dark Tower, so by transplanting this bit to the previous book, it might have helped. [SPOILER ALERT: The previous sentence contained a major spoiler.]
This last book is a monster, about 1200 pages. I can't recall ever trying to read a book this long. Simon and Schuster are lucky that Bush never tried to invade them. This is literature of mass destruction. A planeload of these could bomb an entire city flat. I got a flat tire on my bike when I took my copy to work. I've found where all the trees from the Amazon rain forest went -- Chapter Five. Is that a Stephen Kimg novel in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Susannah ends on a less than satisfactory note. In the previous books in this yarn, Kimg has at least tried to wrap up some of the loose ends in each book to at least give some credence to the idea that each novel can stand alone. Here, he doesn't even try; all the plot threads are left hanging until the next book. And that's an odd choice because one character's story (Father Callahan) comes to end with his death early in The Dark Tower, so by transplanting this bit to the previous book, it might have helped. [SPOILER ALERT: The previous sentence contained a major spoiler.]
This last book is a monster, about 1200 pages. I can't recall ever trying to read a book this long. Simon and Schuster are lucky that Bush never tried to invade them. This is literature of mass destruction. A planeload of these could bomb an entire city flat. I got a flat tire on my bike when I took my copy to work. I've found where all the trees from the Amazon rain forest went -- Chapter Five. Is that a Stephen Kimg novel in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Friday, October 20, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day One Hundred and Three
My crazy idea of reading all seven of Stephen King's Dark Tower books in a row continues, despite the fact some great unread books are piling up in my bookcase. The latest from Simon Winchester and Gwynne Dyer are there, along with the sixth Harry Potter book, and a Neil Armstrong biography. Plus I owe Neo-Opsis a book review; all I have to do is read the book!
I'm well into book six, Song For Susannah, and my first thought about is relief that it's 400 pages shorter than book five. I grant you that that sounds unfair, because King's prose and narrative skills are near the top of his game here, but still he does palaver on.
The wolves of book five were defeated, but Susannah, taken over by Mia, has escaped to 1999 New York to give birth to the, er, whatever that she is carrying. Meanwhile, the gang still has to save the Rose in 1977 New York. Meanwhile the second, Father Callahan discovers that his life was written as a novel by some guy named Stephen King. (This makes for some quiet and hilarious asides, as when Callahan notes that the novel was well-reviewed "...if you can believe all the blurbs on the jacket.")
Things are getting strange!
I'm well into book six, Song For Susannah, and my first thought about is relief that it's 400 pages shorter than book five. I grant you that that sounds unfair, because King's prose and narrative skills are near the top of his game here, but still he does palaver on.
The wolves of book five were defeated, but Susannah, taken over by Mia, has escaped to 1999 New York to give birth to the, er, whatever that she is carrying. Meanwhile, the gang still has to save the Rose in 1977 New York. Meanwhile the second, Father Callahan discovers that his life was written as a novel by some guy named Stephen King. (This makes for some quiet and hilarious asides, as when Callahan notes that the novel was well-reviewed "...if you can believe all the blurbs on the jacket.")
Things are getting strange!
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day Eighty-Eight
Now we're into the final 100 pages of Wolves of the Calla. It's very interesting, King's prose has never been better, but damn, this is a long book.
Anyway, Roland has his plan in place, the Wolves are just a couple of days from returning to town, and Roland thinks he's rooted out the traitor. Everything's coming together, so naturally it should all fall apart any page now.
I'm enjoying seeing Father Callahan from 'Salem's Lot return, and I'm interested to see where he ends up (dead is my guess).
I should finish this off today, then it's on to the next book, Song of Susannah (which, mercifully, is 400 pages shorter than this one).
Anyway, Roland has his plan in place, the Wolves are just a couple of days from returning to town, and Roland thinks he's rooted out the traitor. Everything's coming together, so naturally it should all fall apart any page now.
I'm enjoying seeing Father Callahan from 'Salem's Lot return, and I'm interested to see where he ends up (dead is my guess).
I should finish this off today, then it's on to the next book, Song of Susannah (which, mercifully, is 400 pages shorter than this one).
Thursday, October 12, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day Sixty-Nine
I'm finding Wolves of the Calla a tough slog. I am enjoying it, but it's long. The main narrative gets sidetracked by lengthy flashbacks and it seems to suffer for it. While the flashbacks are interesting (and important plotwise), they interrupt the flow of the main plot. And one character has decided to not even finish his flashback, at least not until a more dramatically convenient moment. Still, King has set up an interesting situation here: a small village where most pregnantcies result in twins, but once a generation raiders (wearing wolf masks) come and take away one child from each set of twins, returning them a month or so later after they have been made into drooling idiots. "Roont" as the townfolk say.
Needless to say, Roland and company have rolled into town just before the next attack by the wolves.
How will it end? Who can say. Only Stephen King (and the millions of people who have the read the book before me) know for sure.
Needless to say, Roland and company have rolled into town just before the next attack by the wolves.
How will it end? Who can say. Only Stephen King (and the millions of people who have the read the book before me) know for sure.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day Forty-Two
Finally knocked off Wizard and Glass, and moved onto book five, Wolves of the Calla. Calla checks in at a whopping 931 pages. Is bigger better? We'll find out.
It's ten years and one near-fatal accident later when King decided to finish off the last three books of the series in one go (close to 2500 pages).
Interestingly, there is a stylistic difference between the books over the 30-plus years King wrote them.
But now, it's time to find out who the wolves are and where the Calla is.
It's ten years and one near-fatal accident later when King decided to finish off the last three books of the series in one go (close to 2500 pages).
Interestingly, there is a stylistic difference between the books over the 30-plus years King wrote them.
But now, it's time to find out who the wolves are and where the Calla is.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day Twenty-Nine
The end is in sight. The end of the fourth book, anyway.
With Wizard and Glass, King is telling a flashback, the long, very long telling of the story of Roland's long-gone first love Susan. After Roland became a gunslinger, he and two friends were sent away by Roland's father to a far off village where they found strange goigns-on that threaten their homeland. Roland also finds his first love with Susan Delgado, who has "sold" to the local mayor as a consort, since his wife is barren, alas.
King has dropped enough hints about Susan that we know that it will not end well. With about 150 pages to go, Roland's and Susan's illicit liasons have been revealed, and Roland and his friends have been captured, framed for the murder of the mayor, who was actually killed by the dark forces that have infiltrated the town.
This is the first book of the series when I started to think that King was padding things a bit. Mind you, padded King is better than many authors' tight prose, so that's not much of a complaint.
With Wizard and Glass, King is telling a flashback, the long, very long telling of the story of Roland's long-gone first love Susan. After Roland became a gunslinger, he and two friends were sent away by Roland's father to a far off village where they found strange goigns-on that threaten their homeland. Roland also finds his first love with Susan Delgado, who has "sold" to the local mayor as a consort, since his wife is barren, alas.
King has dropped enough hints about Susan that we know that it will not end well. With about 150 pages to go, Roland's and Susan's illicit liasons have been revealed, and Roland and his friends have been captured, framed for the murder of the mayor, who was actually killed by the dark forces that have infiltrated the town.
This is the first book of the series when I started to think that King was padding things a bit. Mind you, padded King is better than many authors' tight prose, so that's not much of a complaint.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day Thirteen
Alright, we've knocked off The Waste Lands and are now 82 pages into book four, Wizard and Glass. This one was written five years after book three and checks in a whopping 694 pages.
They ain't getting any smaller, these books.
The Waste Lands ends on a bit of cliff hanger. Roland and company have fought there way into an old city and found a train (actually a monorail) that will take them on their next step towards the tower. But (and there's always a "but") its AI unit is hundreds (thousands?) of years old and has gone bananas. It agrees to take them to their destination, but it plans to commit suicide at the end of the line by crashing, taking Roland and co. with it. It agrees to spare the group only if they can tell it a riddle that it cannot solve.
Wizard and Glass opens with the crazy monorail driving them to their doom, and the group doing their best to our riddle-it. Surprisingly, it is Eddie who ends up Kirk-ing the monorail whose mind goes up in a puff of its own illogic. But where Roland and gang end up is the flu-ravenged world of King's earlier novel The Stand.
There is something I've always found eminently readible about the best of King's work, and certainly this is his magnum opus. It should be fun to see how he starts tying all this into his other works.
They ain't getting any smaller, these books.
The Waste Lands ends on a bit of cliff hanger. Roland and company have fought there way into an old city and found a train (actually a monorail) that will take them on their next step towards the tower. But (and there's always a "but") its AI unit is hundreds (thousands?) of years old and has gone bananas. It agrees to take them to their destination, but it plans to commit suicide at the end of the line by crashing, taking Roland and co. with it. It agrees to spare the group only if they can tell it a riddle that it cannot solve.
Wizard and Glass opens with the crazy monorail driving them to their doom, and the group doing their best to our riddle-it. Surprisingly, it is Eddie who ends up Kirk-ing the monorail whose mind goes up in a puff of its own illogic. But where Roland and gang end up is the flu-ravenged world of King's earlier novel The Stand.
There is something I've always found eminently readible about the best of King's work, and certainly this is his magnum opus. It should be fun to see how he starts tying all this into his other works.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day, er, um, er, Eleven...?
Now I'm deep in the meat of the last half of The Waste Lands. It checks in at 588 pages and fits in quite nicely with the previous book.
Turns out that I was correct, Roland is slowly going mad because of the paradox he created by saving Jake. Turns out that Jake, back in his world, is also going mad because he's living out the other end of the paradox -- he should have died, but he's alive.
Neeless to say the paradox will be resolved, sort of, and Jake will join Roland's merry band of gunslingers.
They'll also be attacked by a giant robot bear, travel through ancient ruins, and encounter artifacts far beyond the current technological abilities of Roland's world. I keep thinking of Atlantis as I read these passages, that Roland and his pals have discovered an ancient civilization.
But the roads must roll, and I must keep reading.
Turns out that I was correct, Roland is slowly going mad because of the paradox he created by saving Jake. Turns out that Jake, back in his world, is also going mad because he's living out the other end of the paradox -- he should have died, but he's alive.
Neeless to say the paradox will be resolved, sort of, and Jake will join Roland's merry band of gunslingers.
They'll also be attacked by a giant robot bear, travel through ancient ruins, and encounter artifacts far beyond the current technological abilities of Roland's world. I keep thinking of Atlantis as I read these passages, that Roland and his pals have discovered an ancient civilization.
But the roads must roll, and I must keep reading.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
The Dark Towers Diaries - Days Six and Seven
I've finished off The Drawing of the Three, and have moved into The Waste Lands.
After picking up Eddie, Roland has gone through the second door and picked up Odetta, a black woman from 1964 whose legs were cut off when she was pushed in front of a New York subway train. She is damaged in other ways, too, and this plays a key role in the story of the third person Roland must meet. I'm not going to give that part of the story away -- suffice it to say, that King pulls some unexpected rabbits out of his hat. (Eddie also makes reference to having seen the movie version of The Shining. I'll save that piece of info for later.)
By the end of the book, Roland and Eddie are joined by a "new" companion, Susannah, and the story segues into The Waste Lands. It seems that at the end of Drawing, Roland may have prevented the death of Jake (the boy from The Gunslinger that Roland had to sacrifice) in our world. This creates a paradox, of course, since if Roland had saved Jake, Jake would never have been drawn into Roland's world and his quest would have ended.
This fact doesn't seem to be sitting well with Roland. And since the first part of the book is called Jake, one suspects that something is up.
After picking up Eddie, Roland has gone through the second door and picked up Odetta, a black woman from 1964 whose legs were cut off when she was pushed in front of a New York subway train. She is damaged in other ways, too, and this plays a key role in the story of the third person Roland must meet. I'm not going to give that part of the story away -- suffice it to say, that King pulls some unexpected rabbits out of his hat. (Eddie also makes reference to having seen the movie version of The Shining. I'll save that piece of info for later.)
By the end of the book, Roland and Eddie are joined by a "new" companion, Susannah, and the story segues into The Waste Lands. It seems that at the end of Drawing, Roland may have prevented the death of Jake (the boy from The Gunslinger that Roland had to sacrifice) in our world. This creates a paradox, of course, since if Roland had saved Jake, Jake would never have been drawn into Roland's world and his quest would have ended.
This fact doesn't seem to be sitting well with Roland. And since the first part of the book is called Jake, one suspects that something is up.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day Five
Eddie has his showdown with the mob bosses who think he's turned over for The Feds, then he well and truly joins Roland on his quest.
And after all this talk about the "man in black," it had to be only a matter of time until some reference was made to Johnny Cash. And a pretty fun one it was, too.
I'd forgotten how time can stop when reading novel. The best of King has always done that to me. Sucked me in, wrapped me in up a blanket and fed me cookies
sour milk and poisoned cookies, of course, with maggots in them
and made time simply disappear. Subjectively, of course. Objectively, time has not halted its relentless march and suddenly the lunch break has vanished without a trace.
Einstein was right. Time is relative.
And after all this talk about the "man in black," it had to be only a matter of time until some reference was made to Johnny Cash. And a pretty fun one it was, too.
I'd forgotten how time can stop when reading novel. The best of King has always done that to me. Sucked me in, wrapped me in up a blanket and fed me cookies
sour milk and poisoned cookies, of course, with maggots in them
and made time simply disappear. Subjectively, of course. Objectively, time has not halted its relentless march and suddenly the lunch break has vanished without a trace.
Einstein was right. Time is relative.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
The Dark Towers Diaries - Day Four
Now I'm 100 pages into book 2, The Drawing of the Three.
The first door appeared to Roland, and it was a nice bit of business, how Roland could see the door from one side, but not the other.
We also meet the first of the "three," Eddie Dean, drug dealer and user. Interestingly, he has a family member (brother?) named Henry Dean. Named after Harry Dean Stanton?
Nice stuff on the airplane, through customs and Eddie's police interrogation.
Back to the quest!
The first door appeared to Roland, and it was a nice bit of business, how Roland could see the door from one side, but not the other.
We also meet the first of the "three," Eddie Dean, drug dealer and user. Interestingly, he has a family member (brother?) named Henry Dean. Named after Harry Dean Stanton?
Nice stuff on the airplane, through customs and Eddie's police interrogation.
Back to the quest!
Friday, September 08, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day Three
Now
Has this ever happened to you?
You're reading a book at work. It's going to be a photo finish to see which finishes first, the book or your lunch hour. You find yourself skimming quickly, trying to squeeze every last second of readable time out of your break, a desperate race to beat the clock. But in the end, you just run out of time (much like Jake did a couple of pages back).
That's where I am with The Gunslinger. Page 292 out of 300.
Maybe I can sneak a quick glance at the book at my desk. It's not like I have any real work right now. Wait -- is that the boss? Gack!
It appears that the end of The Gunslinger is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. I know this because Roland says it, the man in black says it, the narrator says it, heck, I think even Jake says it.
Thanks to the man in black's explanations (of which he has not yet finished -- curse that lunchroom clock!), Roland appears to live on a parallel earth, one that may have suffered some sort of plague, possibly man-made. Hmmm, some tie-in to The Stand here? Anyway, it appears that Roland's quest will take him to the Tower, some sort of nexus point of all these parallel universes.
Well, d'uh. The series is called The Dark Tower, after all.
Later
Okay, I've finished off The Gunslinger and moved onto book two, The Drawing of the Three. At 463 pages, this is more like a typical length for King, as opposed to The Gunslinger's rather scant (scant for King, anyway) 300 pages. And it reads like a more typical King book. Drawing was published in 1987, five years after Gunslinger, and seems less stylish and more assured in its narrative voice. King had also just finished an amazing run of releasing four novels in a year, including two of my favourite King novels, It and Eyes of the Dragon. The other two were Misery, not exactly a slouch itself, and The Tommyknockers (as Meatloaf might have said, three out of four ain't bad).
Anyway, I'm not too far in. Roland has just gone sleepwalking in the surf and has had bits of himself eaten by the giant lobster.
Has this ever happened to you?
You're reading a book at work. It's going to be a photo finish to see which finishes first, the book or your lunch hour. You find yourself skimming quickly, trying to squeeze every last second of readable time out of your break, a desperate race to beat the clock. But in the end, you just run out of time (much like Jake did a couple of pages back).
That's where I am with The Gunslinger. Page 292 out of 300.
Maybe I can sneak a quick glance at the book at my desk. It's not like I have any real work right now. Wait -- is that the boss? Gack!
It appears that the end of The Gunslinger is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. I know this because Roland says it, the man in black says it, the narrator says it, heck, I think even Jake says it.
Thanks to the man in black's explanations (of which he has not yet finished -- curse that lunchroom clock!), Roland appears to live on a parallel earth, one that may have suffered some sort of plague, possibly man-made. Hmmm, some tie-in to The Stand here? Anyway, it appears that Roland's quest will take him to the Tower, some sort of nexus point of all these parallel universes.
Well, d'uh. The series is called The Dark Tower, after all.
Later
Okay, I've finished off The Gunslinger and moved onto book two, The Drawing of the Three. At 463 pages, this is more like a typical length for King, as opposed to The Gunslinger's rather scant (scant for King, anyway) 300 pages. And it reads like a more typical King book. Drawing was published in 1987, five years after Gunslinger, and seems less stylish and more assured in its narrative voice. King had also just finished an amazing run of releasing four novels in a year, including two of my favourite King novels, It and Eyes of the Dragon. The other two were Misery, not exactly a slouch itself, and The Tommyknockers (as Meatloaf might have said, three out of four ain't bad).
Anyway, I'm not too far in. Roland has just gone sleepwalking in the surf and has had bits of himself eaten by the giant lobster.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day Two
Now we're well into the meat of The Gunslinger. In the second novella, The Way Station, we officially learn that he is called Roland -- he is no longer the gunslinger with no name. While continuing his pursuit of the man in black, he encounters a boy named Jake. Here King drops all kinds of hints about the connection between Roland's world and ours. Jake lived in "our" world, until he was killed by the man in black who pushed Jake out into traffic. Jake is slowly forgetting his connection to our world, only through hypnotism can Roland learn Jake's story. And we flash back and experience an incident from Roland's childhood, where we learn that the mysterious Cort alluded to earlier was Roland's teacher who talks like the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. Roland seems to have some knowledge of "our" world as well. It will be interesting to see how all this is tied together.
This is an early King novel, his eighth published, but one of the first he started writing and it will be also interesting to see how the novels' voice changes over the 30 years he took to write the series. (That makes me feel old, imagine how old that makes King feel!) King also made me go "Ick!" over one line of dialogue as Jake remembers his accident. I've read a lot of King; there isn't much that can make me squirm anymore, but he managed to at the top of page 114.
Today I finished off the second and third novella (The Oracle and The Mountains) and got into the fourth one, The Slow Mutants (no, it's not about Star Trek fans). We keep learning little things about Roland's past --Cuthbert and the horn, Susan Delgado-- but also more things about the strange world he lives in. An underground railroad with talking hand-cars? What is going on here?
We also get the first mention of The Tower. Some sort of nexus in time. And time has gone soft here, as Roland says.
And more numerology. I assume that King is using "nineteen" because he was 19 when he started writing this, but the oracle mentions the number three (which I assume plays into the next book, The Drawing of the Three), and then the oracle mentions that another number will become important later.
But now Roland has just had his first conversation with the man in black. Back to the book!
This is an early King novel, his eighth published, but one of the first he started writing and it will be also interesting to see how the novels' voice changes over the 30 years he took to write the series. (That makes me feel old, imagine how old that makes King feel!) King also made me go "Ick!" over one line of dialogue as Jake remembers his accident. I've read a lot of King; there isn't much that can make me squirm anymore, but he managed to at the top of page 114.
Today I finished off the second and third novella (The Oracle and The Mountains) and got into the fourth one, The Slow Mutants (no, it's not about Star Trek fans). We keep learning little things about Roland's past --Cuthbert and the horn, Susan Delgado-- but also more things about the strange world he lives in. An underground railroad with talking hand-cars? What is going on here?
We also get the first mention of The Tower. Some sort of nexus in time. And time has gone soft here, as Roland says.
And more numerology. I assume that King is using "nineteen" because he was 19 when he started writing this, but the oracle mentions the number three (which I assume plays into the next book, The Drawing of the Three), and then the oracle mentions that another number will become important later.
But now Roland has just had his first conversation with the man in black. Back to the book!
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
The Dark Tower Diaries -- Day One
One day in and I'm well into the first book. Volume One is called The Gunslinger and is divided into five novellas. (Disclosure: I should point out that I am reading the 2003 revised and expanded text.) I've finished the first novella, the longest in the book, which is called (surprise!) The Gunslinger.
King seems to have a fascination with "Nineteen." I wonder what that's about.
This is our introduction to Roland the gunslinger. King is doing a good job at slowly constructing his world, a strange Sergio Leono western-world that seems lost somewhere else in time and space, yet clearly has some connection to our own (with the bar patrons belting out a boisterous version of "Hey Jude.) It's these little details that King has always excelled at. We don't even know Roland's name at this point, yet King has dropped tantilizing little hints at his back story and his pursuit of the man in black. And who's Cort? (Named after Bud Cort, I'm guessing.)
King seems to have a fascination with "Nineteen." I wonder what that's about.
This is our introduction to Roland the gunslinger. King is doing a good job at slowly constructing his world, a strange Sergio Leono western-world that seems lost somewhere else in time and space, yet clearly has some connection to our own (with the bar patrons belting out a boisterous version of "Hey Jude.) It's these little details that King has always excelled at. We don't even know Roland's name at this point, yet King has dropped tantilizing little hints at his back story and his pursuit of the man in black. And who's Cort? (Named after Bud Cort, I'm guessing.)
Sunday, September 03, 2006
The Dark Towers Diaries - Prologue
Many years ago I knew a fellow who would buy all the books in a series in hardcover and not read them until the series was complete. I thought this was interesting because at the time we were reading the same five-book series, The Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony. I used the word "reading" rather loosely here; I was reading them in paperback as they came out, he was collecting them in hardcover to read when the entire five-book series was published. I asked him why he was doing this, and he said something about reading them all in one go like a giant novel so that he could enjoy the subtle nuiances that are lost by reading each one a year apart.
"Subtle nuiance"??!? It's Piers Anthony! His writing style is about as subtle as W's smirk!
Anyway, I bumped into him again just after book five, the final book, came out in hardcover and he was merrily reading the series and enjoying it very much. He was having such a good time reading it that I didn't have the heart to tell him that Anthony had gone to another publisher for books six and seven.
And I guess he's still hasn't cracked the spine on any of his Robert Jordan books.
(For the record, The Incarnations of Immortality series was a nifty idea and the first couple of books were great, but it became progressively less great as the series went on. And on.)
Okay. I'm going to do something crazy. Starting today, I am going to start to read all seven volumes of Stephen King's Dark Tower series in a row.
I've never read a completed series all the way through in one go. (The clever dicks among you will now realize that I've never read The Lord of the Rings all the way through. Loved the movies, hated the books. Couldn't make it through Fellowship. If those stinky little hobbits had stopped for another meal, I'd have killed the little fucks myself.)
I've read the Dune books, but Frank Herbert was still adding to the series when I was reading it so it wasn't complete when I read it. (And it still isn't, apparently. There's so many Dune prequels and sequels coming out these days. Fishmonger of Dune is the latest, where Paul learns that to catch the legendary sandfish of Dune, he's going to need a mighty big worm.)
I have no illusions that I'll finish all seven books in seven days. That'd be really nuts to expect that's gonna happen. But with lunchbreaks at work, I should get through them at a fair clip. Except that the last one is 1072 pages. In paperback.
Call me nuts if you want. Better people than you already have.
"Subtle nuiance"??!? It's Piers Anthony! His writing style is about as subtle as W's smirk!
Anyway, I bumped into him again just after book five, the final book, came out in hardcover and he was merrily reading the series and enjoying it very much. He was having such a good time reading it that I didn't have the heart to tell him that Anthony had gone to another publisher for books six and seven.
And I guess he's still hasn't cracked the spine on any of his Robert Jordan books.
(For the record, The Incarnations of Immortality series was a nifty idea and the first couple of books were great, but it became progressively less great as the series went on. And on.)
Okay. I'm going to do something crazy. Starting today, I am going to start to read all seven volumes of Stephen King's Dark Tower series in a row.
I've never read a completed series all the way through in one go. (The clever dicks among you will now realize that I've never read The Lord of the Rings all the way through. Loved the movies, hated the books. Couldn't make it through Fellowship. If those stinky little hobbits had stopped for another meal, I'd have killed the little fucks myself.)
I've read the Dune books, but Frank Herbert was still adding to the series when I was reading it so it wasn't complete when I read it. (And it still isn't, apparently. There's so many Dune prequels and sequels coming out these days. Fishmonger of Dune is the latest, where Paul learns that to catch the legendary sandfish of Dune, he's going to need a mighty big worm.)
I have no illusions that I'll finish all seven books in seven days. That'd be really nuts to expect that's gonna happen. But with lunchbreaks at work, I should get through them at a fair clip. Except that the last one is 1072 pages. In paperback.
Call me nuts if you want. Better people than you already have.
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