So What Are you Reading?: Generations
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Over the weekend I read Mary Trump;s Too Much and Never Enough.
I don't want to say anything political, so I'll be brief and vague. If you're inclined to believe it, you'll probably like it. If it's something you'd dismiss, you probably shouldn't bother. I can't say that I enjoyed reading it, but it's compelling and very well written.
I don't want to say anything political, so I'll be brief and vague. If you're inclined to believe it, you'll probably like it. If it's something you'd dismiss, you probably shouldn't bother. I can't say that I enjoyed reading it, but it's compelling and very well written.
It's been twenty-five years since I've read either, but I remember liking the first volume more than the second. The first was, and there's no other way to put this, weirder. The stories have more of an edge to them and are a lot stranger.
I just completed the first volume a few days ago. And yeah, some stories were pretty far out. I did like "Mind Sifter"--I thought that was a good Kirk story in particular. I also liked the story where the real Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley actually found themselves on the real Enterprise and for a time had to fake that they were the real deal until they figured out what happened. It was amusing when they were trying to figure out where things were on the ship. And I actually sort of liked when Spock ran into the officer who had to pretend to be like the "Lady in the Water" basically to hide from renegade Andorians. Spock's usual stubbornness actually prolonged his stay there. But because he was reluctant to kiss her behind the falls it ended up taking him longer to complete his mission. I didn't care for the first story too much, which was basically an "Enemy Within" redux with Spock instead of Kirk.
Still trying to find my 2nd volume. Hopefully it turns up.
Star Trek TOS Child of Two Worlds by Greg Cox. I had put this book off for the last few years because it wasn't set during Kirk's command with Bones and the others. Boy I regret that. This book has been amazing so far.
Planning on a reread of The Corps of Engineers series.
(Copy of what I just posted on my Facebook page.) Last night (or, actually, early this morning), I finally finished “Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons” (1987 “Revised and Updated Edition”) by Leonard Maltin. Easily one of the best nonfiction books that I’ve read in a long time.
Now, I should qualify things a bit first. One, as I said above, this revised edition came out in 1987 (the first edition came out in 1980). So there is thirty-three years of animated cartoons not covered here (1987-2020). Also, some of the more “social” aspects of the history are addressed differently than Maltin probably would today. (I saw one GoodReads reviewer mark him down for mostly glossing over the troublesome racial stereotypes in several cartoons. Maltin does mention them at times but does not ever really focus on it.)
Also, to appreciate and enjoy this book as much as I did, one must already have at least a partial interest in the history of animated cartoons. If that is not a subject that one finds of interest, then he or she will probably be at the very least a bit overwhelmed (if not bored) by the level of historical detail presented here.
However, for “cartoon buffs” like me, this is *the* book on the subject. There are loads of books out there specifically on the history of the Walt Disney Studios and their cartoons, and books also on some of the other studios like Warner Brothers.
However, this book has chapters on *all* of the major and minor studios that produced theatrical cartoons (both shorts and feature films, although the focus is often on the theatrical shorts; animated features by the studios are covered as well but to varying levels of detail).
Chapters on...
Walt Disney/Disney Studios (over thirty pages),
Max Fleischer/Fleischer Studios (Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman, etc.; over forty pages),
Paul Terry and Terrytoons (Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle; over thirty pages),
Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, Chilly Willy; nearly thirty pages),
Ub Iwerks (when he was running his own studio after leaving Disney (for those who don’t know, Ub Iwerks was a major creative force/partner of Walt Disney in Disney’s early years and a co-creator of Mickey Mouse); ten pages),
the Van Beuren Studio (Felix the Cat, etc; ten pages),
Columbia/Charles Mintz and Screen Gems (Krazy Kat, The Fox and the Crow; twelve pages),
Warner Brother (or “Warner Bros.”; Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn, Road Runner and the Coyote, Tasmanian Devil, Speedy Gonzales, etc.; nearly sixty(!) pages (and I should mention that these pages, while loaded with black and white photographs and eight color photos pages, are two columns of text per page making it a very text heavy book; which is not a bad thing as it lets Maltin cover a lot of history and personal anecdotes in each chapter)),
MGM (Tom and Jerry, etc.; thirty pages),
Paramount/Famous Studios (Popeye, Casper, etc.; twelve pages),
UPA (“Gerald McBoing Boing”, Fox and the Crow, Mister Magoo, etc.; twenty pages),
and “The Rest of the Story” (works produced by other studios and independent animators from the 1960s onwards, the phasing out of animated theatrical cartoons at most of the studios in favor of animated feature films and animation made specifically for television, including the Pink Panther, “Yellow Submarine”, “Heavy Metal”, Saturday morning shows turned into animated features like Care Bears, He-Man and She-Ra (“Secret of the Sword”), and the films of Ralph Bakshi (“Lord of the Rings” and his more adult films) and Don Bluth (“An American Tale”); twelve pages).
And those are just the more well known characters I mentioned. Maltin follows the careers of seemingly all of the major animators, directors, writers, and (some of the) voice actors throughout their careers, way too many for me to list here.
At Warner Bros alone: Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Frank Tashlin, Robert McKimson, and famous voice man Mel Blanc.
At Disney, Ub Iwerks, music man Carl Stalling, John Hubley, Jack Hannah, Ward Kimball, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl, Marc Davis, Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, and John Lounsbery (many of whom would as a group become referred to as Disney’s “nine old men”, a group of veteran animators who worked with Disney from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” onwards).
And several key figures moved from one studio to the other, the aforementioned Ub Iwerks who went from Disney to running his own studio, some time at Warners, and then back to Disney again, and Shamus Culhane, who spent time at Bray, Disney, Fleischer, Lantz, Warners, and Paramount.
The last one hundred plus pages of this book are devoted to complete filmographies for each studio, a listing of Academy Award nominee and winner theatrical cartoons (these two being things one can easily find online these days at places like Wikipedia but which would have been an important resource back in the pre-internet days of 1980 and 1987), a glossary of animation terms, and a now out of date “Sources for Cartoons on Film and Video” (on 16 mm film and VHS).
I could go on and on about this one but I won’t. I would have thought that a book from 1987 would be long out of print but I just checked and it’s still available from Amazon. I checked this copy out from my public library but will most likely be obtaining a copy for myself at some point. (Unfortunately, it is not available on eBook.)
I gave this one a rare (for me) five stars out of five on GoodReads.
Now, I should qualify things a bit first. One, as I said above, this revised edition came out in 1987 (the first edition came out in 1980). So there is thirty-three years of animated cartoons not covered here (1987-2020). Also, some of the more “social” aspects of the history are addressed differently than Maltin probably would today. (I saw one GoodReads reviewer mark him down for mostly glossing over the troublesome racial stereotypes in several cartoons. Maltin does mention them at times but does not ever really focus on it.)
Also, to appreciate and enjoy this book as much as I did, one must already have at least a partial interest in the history of animated cartoons. If that is not a subject that one finds of interest, then he or she will probably be at the very least a bit overwhelmed (if not bored) by the level of historical detail presented here.
However, for “cartoon buffs” like me, this is *the* book on the subject. There are loads of books out there specifically on the history of the Walt Disney Studios and their cartoons, and books also on some of the other studios like Warner Brothers.
However, this book has chapters on *all* of the major and minor studios that produced theatrical cartoons (both shorts and feature films, although the focus is often on the theatrical shorts; animated features by the studios are covered as well but to varying levels of detail).
Chapters on...
Walt Disney/Disney Studios (over thirty pages),
Max Fleischer/Fleischer Studios (Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman, etc.; over forty pages),
Paul Terry and Terrytoons (Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle; over thirty pages),
Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, Chilly Willy; nearly thirty pages),
Ub Iwerks (when he was running his own studio after leaving Disney (for those who don’t know, Ub Iwerks was a major creative force/partner of Walt Disney in Disney’s early years and a co-creator of Mickey Mouse); ten pages),
the Van Beuren Studio (Felix the Cat, etc; ten pages),
Columbia/Charles Mintz and Screen Gems (Krazy Kat, The Fox and the Crow; twelve pages),
Warner Brother (or “Warner Bros.”; Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn, Road Runner and the Coyote, Tasmanian Devil, Speedy Gonzales, etc.; nearly sixty(!) pages (and I should mention that these pages, while loaded with black and white photographs and eight color photos pages, are two columns of text per page making it a very text heavy book; which is not a bad thing as it lets Maltin cover a lot of history and personal anecdotes in each chapter)),
MGM (Tom and Jerry, etc.; thirty pages),
Paramount/Famous Studios (Popeye, Casper, etc.; twelve pages),
UPA (“Gerald McBoing Boing”, Fox and the Crow, Mister Magoo, etc.; twenty pages),
and “The Rest of the Story” (works produced by other studios and independent animators from the 1960s onwards, the phasing out of animated theatrical cartoons at most of the studios in favor of animated feature films and animation made specifically for television, including the Pink Panther, “Yellow Submarine”, “Heavy Metal”, Saturday morning shows turned into animated features like Care Bears, He-Man and She-Ra (“Secret of the Sword”), and the films of Ralph Bakshi (“Lord of the Rings” and his more adult films) and Don Bluth (“An American Tale”); twelve pages).
And those are just the more well known characters I mentioned. Maltin follows the careers of seemingly all of the major animators, directors, writers, and (some of the) voice actors throughout their careers, way too many for me to list here.
At Warner Bros alone: Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Frank Tashlin, Robert McKimson, and famous voice man Mel Blanc.
At Disney, Ub Iwerks, music man Carl Stalling, John Hubley, Jack Hannah, Ward Kimball, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl, Marc Davis, Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, and John Lounsbery (many of whom would as a group become referred to as Disney’s “nine old men”, a group of veteran animators who worked with Disney from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” onwards).
And several key figures moved from one studio to the other, the aforementioned Ub Iwerks who went from Disney to running his own studio, some time at Warners, and then back to Disney again, and Shamus Culhane, who spent time at Bray, Disney, Fleischer, Lantz, Warners, and Paramount.
The last one hundred plus pages of this book are devoted to complete filmographies for each studio, a listing of Academy Award nominee and winner theatrical cartoons (these two being things one can easily find online these days at places like Wikipedia but which would have been an important resource back in the pre-internet days of 1980 and 1987), a glossary of animation terms, and a now out of date “Sources for Cartoons on Film and Video” (on 16 mm film and VHS).
I could go on and on about this one but I won’t. I would have thought that a book from 1987 would be long out of print but I just checked and it’s still available from Amazon. I checked this copy out from my public library but will most likely be obtaining a copy for myself at some point. (Unfortunately, it is not available on eBook.)
I gave this one a rare (for me) five stars out of five on GoodReads.
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That's thirty-three years.
I think we were just as aware of such issues in the '80s; if anything, I feel that in some ways the country has gone backward in race relations since then, at least in terms of how overt the racism has gotten. The debate about racial stereotypes in old cartoons and movies was going on even then. Certainly people in the '80s were less sensitive to stereotypes about Asians, Arabs, Indians (see the Short Circuit films), and others, but when it came to stereotypes about black people, there was plenty of awareness due to the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s and '70s not being that far in the past.
But it was true then and is still true now that most works of fiction are subject to the preconceptions and stereotypes of their time, and while some are problematical in actively promoting racist values or revisionist history (e.g. Birth of a Nation or Song of the South), others do it innocently without knowing any better, and their other aspects can still be appreciated -- or at least they can be viewed from a scholarly perspective as historical artifacts. I'm sure our children and grandchildren will look back on today's most progressive fiction and find it mired in prejudices and stereotypes we don't even recognize yet.
You Owe Me a Murder by Eileen Cook
This is a modern, YA retelling of Strangers on a Train. The teenage girl protagonist makes some questionable decisions (imagine that from a teenager), but it was still suitably thrilling. I enjoyed having the setting be London.
Bimbos of the Death Son by Sharyn McCrumb
I read this for a local sci-fi book club. The title is horribly misleading, as it is basically a cozy mystery set at a DC SF/F convention. The title of the book is the title of the main character's book that netted him an invitation to the convention. It was written in the late 1980's, and it spends as much time laughing at SF/F fans as with them. If you can get past that, it does also show some of what makes cons fun, too.
You Owe Me a Murder is the better book of the two, but I enjoyed my experience with each.
This is a modern, YA retelling of Strangers on a Train. The teenage girl protagonist makes some questionable decisions (imagine that from a teenager), but it was still suitably thrilling. I enjoyed having the setting be London.
Bimbos of the Death Son by Sharyn McCrumb
I read this for a local sci-fi book club. The title is horribly misleading, as it is basically a cozy mystery set at a DC SF/F convention. The title of the book is the title of the main character's book that netted him an invitation to the convention. It was written in the late 1980's, and it spends as much time laughing at SF/F fans as with them. If you can get past that, it does also show some of what makes cons fun, too.
You Owe Me a Murder is the better book of the two, but I enjoyed my experience with each.
Just started re-reading "The Entropy Effect" by Vonda McIntyre. I last read it at least 30 years ago so it's basically brand new again.
I wasn't sure about how much I'd like it because I didn't care for "Enterprise: The First Adventure" when I re-read that about a year or so ago. But so far, about halfway through, it's looking pretty good. It can certainly fall apart in the 2nd half but so far so good. I did note her 'partnership in lieu of marriage' idea that I recall seeing in E:TFA appears to have been started here. As I re-read the early Pocketbook novels I plan on reading authors books in order since in those days some authors sometimes built on prior stories, to varying degrees (sometimes it's just reusing characters or ideas--but it'd be interesting to compare authors books with their prior works).
Oh, and she is also apparently the one that created Sulu's first name which was later made official in TUC (not sure if she was given the name by a prior source or not or if she actually came up with it on her own).
It looks like this and E:TFA are the only original novels she wrote, the rest apparently are the movie novelizations for TWOK, TSFS and TVH from what I can tell. So I guess after this I'll move on to book 2
I wasn't sure about how much I'd like it because I didn't care for "Enterprise: The First Adventure" when I re-read that about a year or so ago. But so far, about halfway through, it's looking pretty good. It can certainly fall apart in the 2nd half but so far so good. I did note her 'partnership in lieu of marriage' idea that I recall seeing in E:TFA appears to have been started here. As I re-read the early Pocketbook novels I plan on reading authors books in order since in those days some authors sometimes built on prior stories, to varying degrees (sometimes it's just reusing characters or ideas--but it'd be interesting to compare authors books with their prior works).
Oh, and she is also apparently the one that created Sulu's first name which was later made official in TUC (not sure if she was given the name by a prior source or not or if she actually came up with it on her own).
It looks like this and E:TFA are the only original novels she wrote, the rest apparently are the movie novelizations for TWOK, TSFS and TVH from what I can tell. So I guess after this I'll move on to book 2
Yes, Vonda McIntyre is the one who came up with "Hikaru" as Sulu's first name. It stuck in the other tie-in fiction, and then was used by George Takei when he recorded his log entry for The Undiscovered Country. Takei had invited Peter David to visit the set with him, and Peter has often told the story about how he encouraged Takei to include the first name in the log entry to make it official. It obviously took....
It's rare for the tie-in fiction to influence the onscreen canon, but it happens sometimes. Uhura's first name of Nyota is another instance, as Kirk's Mom's name of Winona (that last also from Vonda McIntyre, in Enterprise: The First Adventure).
It's rare for the tie-in fiction to influence the onscreen canon, but it happens sometimes. Uhura's first name of Nyota is another instance, as Kirk's Mom's name of Winona (that last also from Vonda McIntyre, in Enterprise: The First Adventure).
Isaac Asimov, Foundation.
I've read a fair amount of Asimov's books on physics, chemistry, and humor, but I haven't read much of his science fiction.
I've read a fair amount of Asimov's books on physics, chemistry, and humor, but I haven't read much of his science fiction.
As mentioned in dialogue in The Entropy Effect, McIntyre got the name Hikaru from the classic Japanese novel The Tale of Genji. Although I find it an odd choice, because I read Genji in college and found the title character (nicknamed Hikaru, "Shining") to be one of the most worthless, reprehensible literary protagonists I've ever encountered, a superficial spoiled brat who sails through life on beauty and upper-class privilege, contributes nothing of worth to the world around him, and rapes numerous women (even abducting a young girl and holding her hostage for years until she's old enough to marry him), though the book portrays him as a soulful romantic figure who genuinely cares for the women he forces himself on.
Maybe she wanted to 'rehabilitate' the character since Sulu is none of those things. Or it might simply be that she liked the name itself, regardless of it's origins.
I do find it interesting that she decided to make Sulu almost on the level of a main character in her story. I mean, that sort of thing has been done many times since then, focusing a book on an 'also starring' character, so maybe not such a surprise. Though this is one of the earlier novels to do something like that.
Well, Genji was written by a Heian noblewoman for a female audience, and many readers over the generations have seen Genji/Hikaru as an idealized, romantic figure. (I gather there's a long tradition of romance novels portraying a fantasy of what's essentially sexual assault in a positive way -- that's literally where the nickname "bodice-ripper" for romance novels comes from. It's sort of like horror movies, I guess -- you can enjoy a fantasy of being victimized since it is just a fantasy and you know you're safe and in control.) But I have trouble seeing it. Even aside from the sexual assaults, he's just so utterly shallow and pathetic. I guess if you romanticize the idle rich, you'd find Genji and his world appealing, but I found them utterly empty, superficial, and self-indulgent.
But yeah, the name itself is cool. I named a character in Only Superhuman Hikari (the noun form, meaning "light") because I like the name.
True for me when it comes to horror films. I can watch pretty much anything gore wise in movies. The Saw movies for instance are quite graphic. But if I were ever to see any of that in real live I'd be the first to lose my lunch. I had my wisdom teeth out a few weeks back and they wanted to show me what they took out and I couldn't even look (I always wondered why doctors do that--though I guess maybe it's to prove they actually took them out maybe).
The only thing I don't like is sexual assaults like rape scenes. For instance I did find the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes" very disturbing because it included a graphic rape scene. I managed to finish the movie (and the victim of that scene did have a moment of sweet revenge on the mutant perp) but I never watched it again. There was another disturbing scene as well that bothered me. Crime dramas, thrillers and so forth that involve sexual assault I can deal with, but I just don't want to see it.
Oh, and you typically can't kill young kids or dogs. That's a no-no.
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