TNG - A time to series
A Time to be born
A Time to be born
So What Are you Reading?: Generations
- Thread starter captcalhoun
- Start date
Red Dwarf: Backwards by Rob Grant
It's so long since I read the previous two books that I'd forgotten about Better Than Life, and this picks up directly from the end of that. Fortunately it's a good standalone take on some of the classic situations for our characters – who are all spot-on, as you'd expect from the co-creator of the show, and more so than they were in the books (well, the first one, anyway) written by both creators...
This is good fun, with amusing and effective use of some suitable SF ideas, plenty of well-paced hooks and exciting cliffhangers to keep the reader interested, and both familiar enough to be comfortable for fans of the show, and fresh enough to be fun for others, and to keep fans surprised even if they know the episodes. Grant mixes the situational ingredients nicely, providing a solid and satisfying arc, and suitable conclusion (it didn't help production of the book, I suppose, that it was started by both creators, but they split and Doug Naylor wrote a rival third-book-of-the-trilogy, The Last Human, which thoroughly contradicts this one and doesn't follow on from the previous books)
On the downside, there are plenty of proofing errors, and an annoying tendency for the writer to swtich POVs and even writing styles within paragraphs, but never quite enough to work as a flowing range of pastiches; rather the prose in the latter half (especially the wandering Westernisms in the Gunmen of the Apocalypse finale) feels more like lazy standup transcription. Also, it feels a little padded in places- some of the gags that worked best by inference, letting the audience draw the inevitable conclusion in their own time, are laboured here to no real purpose, especially in the Backwards reality. They neither make the gags any funnier, (nor really less so), or even really any more gross, just longer and slower.
There are some incorrect spellings too, and a vast overuse of “span” instead of “spun”, which I found personally annoying; you can use both for a lot of things, but they're not 100% interchangeable, and “Lister span the top off the flask” doesn't work. In fact it's so prevalent that when, at one point, the Cat “spun his guns” back into their holsters, it stands out glaringly – and then a few pages later he “span” thm back. Argh.
But overall, it felt like good Red Dwarf, it flowed, it made sense, the characters were good, and I did enjoy it a lot.
It's so long since I read the previous two books that I'd forgotten about Better Than Life, and this picks up directly from the end of that. Fortunately it's a good standalone take on some of the classic situations for our characters – who are all spot-on, as you'd expect from the co-creator of the show, and more so than they were in the books (well, the first one, anyway) written by both creators...
This is good fun, with amusing and effective use of some suitable SF ideas, plenty of well-paced hooks and exciting cliffhangers to keep the reader interested, and both familiar enough to be comfortable for fans of the show, and fresh enough to be fun for others, and to keep fans surprised even if they know the episodes. Grant mixes the situational ingredients nicely, providing a solid and satisfying arc, and suitable conclusion (it didn't help production of the book, I suppose, that it was started by both creators, but they split and Doug Naylor wrote a rival third-book-of-the-trilogy, The Last Human, which thoroughly contradicts this one and doesn't follow on from the previous books)
On the downside, there are plenty of proofing errors, and an annoying tendency for the writer to swtich POVs and even writing styles within paragraphs, but never quite enough to work as a flowing range of pastiches; rather the prose in the latter half (especially the wandering Westernisms in the Gunmen of the Apocalypse finale) feels more like lazy standup transcription. Also, it feels a little padded in places- some of the gags that worked best by inference, letting the audience draw the inevitable conclusion in their own time, are laboured here to no real purpose, especially in the Backwards reality. They neither make the gags any funnier, (nor really less so), or even really any more gross, just longer and slower.
There are some incorrect spellings too, and a vast overuse of “span” instead of “spun”, which I found personally annoying; you can use both for a lot of things, but they're not 100% interchangeable, and “Lister span the top off the flask” doesn't work. In fact it's so prevalent that when, at one point, the Cat “spun his guns” back into their holsters, it stands out glaringly – and then a few pages later he “span” thm back. Argh.
But overall, it felt like good Red Dwarf, it flowed, it made sense, the characters were good, and I did enjoy it a lot.
Currently reading Die Last by Tony Parsons.
A detective novel about people trafficking.
A detective novel about people trafficking.
Just finished Vanguard Declassified. The first-person for the Pennington novella was unusual, but I liked it. Now for the rest of the Vanguard books!
Right now, The 7th Python: A Twat's Tale, Mark Forstater's memoir of producing Monty Python and The Holy Grail and his 7 year long legal battle against the Pythons over profits from Spamalot. (Spoiler: He won the court case, which had cost the Pythons so much in legal fees that they had to do the 2014 reunion shows to pay the lawyers and the judgment.) The title comes from his lawyer's argument -- that, contractually, Forstater was to be treated as equal to the six Pythons in financial terms -- and Eric Idle's insistence in a post-trial interview that Forstater was a... ahem... and loser who had sued the Pythons for money from Spamalot he wasn't entitled to.
It's interesting for its portrait of how the sausage is made (ie., what goes on behind the scenes of a movie, from raising money to hiring crew), and there's a certain sadness that permeates Forstater's story as he realizes that these men that he liked working with (and three of whom he considered real friends -- Michael Palin and the Terrys Jones and Gilliam, the latter who had been his roommate in New York in the 1960s) he will have to take to court to enforce the contract he had with them. It's a breezy, page-turning read. My inner editor, though, keeps making the editorial notes I'd have given Forstater -- go deeper with this, rework this and make it cleaner, you don't need to say this.
I haven't finished the book, though I have some opinions on the case, which I'd followed to some extent as it was happening. I always felt that Idle was the Python in the driver's seat on the litigation because of things he's said about how the other Pythons and Spamalot -- that he'd put in the effort and taken the risks, and they were profiting off of his work and making more than they deserved. There's a John Cleese quote about Idle I've seen floating around for years -- "Eric Idle gives selfishness a bad name" -- and that seems to be the case with Spamalot.
Anyway, I don't know if The 7th Python is essential for Monty Python fans, since it's on such a niche chapter of Python history, but it's certainly fascinating.
It's interesting for its portrait of how the sausage is made (ie., what goes on behind the scenes of a movie, from raising money to hiring crew), and there's a certain sadness that permeates Forstater's story as he realizes that these men that he liked working with (and three of whom he considered real friends -- Michael Palin and the Terrys Jones and Gilliam, the latter who had been his roommate in New York in the 1960s) he will have to take to court to enforce the contract he had with them. It's a breezy, page-turning read. My inner editor, though, keeps making the editorial notes I'd have given Forstater -- go deeper with this, rework this and make it cleaner, you don't need to say this.
I haven't finished the book, though I have some opinions on the case, which I'd followed to some extent as it was happening. I always felt that Idle was the Python in the driver's seat on the litigation because of things he's said about how the other Pythons and Spamalot -- that he'd put in the effort and taken the risks, and they were profiting off of his work and making more than they deserved. There's a John Cleese quote about Idle I've seen floating around for years -- "Eric Idle gives selfishness a bad name" -- and that seems to be the case with Spamalot.
Anyway, I don't know if The 7th Python is essential for Monty Python fans, since it's on such a niche chapter of Python history, but it's certainly fascinating.
Just finished Palace of Treason by Jason Matthews, I'll get to the third book in the series next I think.
Damn, that sounds like something I need to read. Thanks!
Here's the website for The 7th Python (which I should have included in my post). I ordered it from there, and it was autographed by Forstater.
That's different than The Seventh Python, a documentary about Neil Innes that has only been shown at a few film festivals.
I agree. They didn’t use that alternate ending for Phasma which I thought was a shame since that at least gave her some character.
DAVID GEMMELL'S LEGEND by Stan Nicholls and Fangorn.
A nice graphic novel adaptation (from 1993) of Gemmell's first book – and it's so long since I read it when it first came out that I'd forgotten mine was a signed copy. It's a bit overly carried by narration captions, as comics go, but captures the essence of the book really well, and brings Druss to life nicely. Some of the descriptions are pulp gold, but the dialogue is good and it all works well.
The obviousness of the source material for the different factions is from the novel, so not the GN's responsibility, but I did nearly fall out of bed when I saw what was clearly Glamis Castle as the Temple of The Thirty....
Still, I was looking for a bit of nostalgic sword and sorcery action, and this did the trick as well as any actual Gemmell novel, with the great art being a wonderful bonus!
A nice graphic novel adaptation (from 1993) of Gemmell's first book – and it's so long since I read it when it first came out that I'd forgotten mine was a signed copy. It's a bit overly carried by narration captions, as comics go, but captures the essence of the book really well, and brings Druss to life nicely. Some of the descriptions are pulp gold, but the dialogue is good and it all works well.
The obviousness of the source material for the different factions is from the novel, so not the GN's responsibility, but I did nearly fall out of bed when I saw what was clearly Glamis Castle as the Temple of The Thirty....
Still, I was looking for a bit of nostalgic sword and sorcery action, and this did the trick as well as any actual Gemmell novel, with the great art being a wonderful bonus!
Ordered. Thanks!Here's the website for The 7th Python (which I should have included in my post). I ordered it from there, and it was autographed by Forstater.
That's different than The Seventh Python, a documentary about Neil Innes that has only been shown at a few film festivals.
TNG A time to sow
Finished the lost Era: Serpents among ruins by David R George, one of the best TLE novel
Now starting on the lost Era: one constant star by David R George
Now starting on the lost Era: one constant star by David R George
since there's no sign of a ton of new star trek novels in the pipeline, i'm going back to the older books that i've never read. I'm currently on TOS: The Tears of the Singers by Melinda Snodgrass. It's been pretty good so far.
I finished reading Murder most howl by Krista Davis. I'm now reading again The newest Titan novel by David Mack.I really don't like Admiral Betininides she's a jerk Certainly a bad Admiral a character you love to hate. And I hope someday she'll get what she deserves in a future Star Trek book
Similar threads
