This weekend’s reading was Rowenna Miller’s TORN and Colson Whitehead’s THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.
So What Are you Reading?: Generations
- Thread starter captcalhoun
- Start date
Finishing up Ishmael.
A bit of a shame that Steiner is the only Drelb we've met so far. I like her.
Fascinating concept, the Whitehead.
A bit of a shame that Steiner is the only Drelb we've met so far. I like her.
Fascinating concept, the Whitehead.
I’ve just finished Coda Bk 1. Dayton Ward does a great job with the characters but the book is ruined by way too much technobabble. I’m hoping Book 2 will be better.
Currently reading Ryan Britt's Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World. So far a lot of it is familiar material for longtime fans, but he does a little mythbusting along the way and drops in a few little known facts, and it's one of the breezier reads on the history of Star Trek out there. Seems like a great book for newbies that also has something to offer to those of us who've been part of this whole Star Trek fan thing for a few years. Or decades.
I feel your pain. Not that it's poorly written; just insanely depressing.
I'm rereading Star Trek Tos Janus Gate Past Tense book 1 by LA Graff book one in a Tos mini series that came out in 2002. I'm really liking the fact we get to see the crew members get alot to do in this book. Uhura gets a great storyarc in this book. The story takes place after the tv show where the Psi 2000 planet flings the Enterprise in time crew 3 days into the future. They go back to the planet to pick up crew members on a mysterious planet when strange things start to happen inside some strange caves with alien technology. And trying to unravel the mystery is really intriguing.
I'm enjoying it so far. Very nicely written, with, yes, some poignant foreshadowing.
I find myself thinking of Ray Middleton's portrayal of McKean, in the film version of Edwards & Stone's 1776. Who found that Washington's dispatches to Congress would "deprrrress a hyena."
Coming to it late, Nicholas Meyer's Sherlock Holmes novel, The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols, mentioned by @Greg Cox here.
London, January 1905. An agent of British intelligence is found dead in the Thames, and Mycroft asks his brother Sherlock to look into the origins of a document, written in French, she was carrying, a document called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Soon, Holmes and Watson, are pursued by agents of the Okhrana (the Russian secret service) as they journey to Odessa and, eventually, the site of a Jewish pogrom, in search of the origins of the document.
I'm not sure I really knew what the book was about -- more specifically, what Holmes was investigating in this pastiche -- before reading it. I knew that Meyer said he was motivated by very modern concerns of "alternative facts" and Russian disinformation, and these elements are definitely present in some occasionally uncomfortable ways.
The Peculiar Protocols is a very good, if unconventional, pastiche. It's written in the form of Watson's contemporaneous diary, more like Dracula than The Hound of the Baskervilles. I've sometimes drawn a distinction between "Sherlock Holmes stories" and "stories about Sherlock Holmes," and I would put this on the "stories about" side of the ledger; this is more of an adventure than a mystery, and while there are puzzles to be solved there's very little in the way of deduction. Like Meyer's other pastiches, this is grounded in the real world, with Holmes and Watson encountering real people in the course of their adventure, but unlike his other pastiches the central conceit of the book -- The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and anti-Semitism -- are real in the way that the plague rats in The West End Horror or Erik the Opera Ghost in The Canary Trainer are not. Sherlock Holmes is not going to debunk and stop the spread of the Protocols or end anti-Semitism any more than he could identify and stop Jack-the-Ripper.
For me, one of the joys in a Sherlock Holmes story like this is seeing the pieces getting set up, being misdirected to not recognize them as pieces, and then seeing the reveal of what the pieces actually are and/or how they tie together. Meyer plays this game well; there's one thing I saw through immediately (though Watson does not), another that I expected would come into play (though not even remotely in the way that it did), and one that I didn't even remotely expect because (misdirection!) I took it as a piece of color, not as a domino to be toppled.
It's a worthwhile book. Meyer's take on Holmes and Watson is always interesting (even if it doesn't line up with Doyle's), he introduces readers to some interesting real-world characters, and he sent me to Wikipedia a couple of times for more information, not to mention to Project Gutenberg to download a couple of books written by the novel's characters.
I'll have to move up The Return of the Pharaoh, Meyer's next pastiche, in my reading queue. And I hope he eventually gets around to telling the true story of "The Empty House" is.
London, January 1905. An agent of British intelligence is found dead in the Thames, and Mycroft asks his brother Sherlock to look into the origins of a document, written in French, she was carrying, a document called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Soon, Holmes and Watson, are pursued by agents of the Okhrana (the Russian secret service) as they journey to Odessa and, eventually, the site of a Jewish pogrom, in search of the origins of the document.
I'm not sure I really knew what the book was about -- more specifically, what Holmes was investigating in this pastiche -- before reading it. I knew that Meyer said he was motivated by very modern concerns of "alternative facts" and Russian disinformation, and these elements are definitely present in some occasionally uncomfortable ways.
The Peculiar Protocols is a very good, if unconventional, pastiche. It's written in the form of Watson's contemporaneous diary, more like Dracula than The Hound of the Baskervilles. I've sometimes drawn a distinction between "Sherlock Holmes stories" and "stories about Sherlock Holmes," and I would put this on the "stories about" side of the ledger; this is more of an adventure than a mystery, and while there are puzzles to be solved there's very little in the way of deduction. Like Meyer's other pastiches, this is grounded in the real world, with Holmes and Watson encountering real people in the course of their adventure, but unlike his other pastiches the central conceit of the book -- The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and anti-Semitism -- are real in the way that the plague rats in The West End Horror or Erik the Opera Ghost in The Canary Trainer are not. Sherlock Holmes is not going to debunk and stop the spread of the Protocols or end anti-Semitism any more than he could identify and stop Jack-the-Ripper.
For me, one of the joys in a Sherlock Holmes story like this is seeing the pieces getting set up, being misdirected to not recognize them as pieces, and then seeing the reveal of what the pieces actually are and/or how they tie together. Meyer plays this game well; there's one thing I saw through immediately (though Watson does not), another that I expected would come into play (though not even remotely in the way that it did), and one that I didn't even remotely expect because (misdirection!) I took it as a piece of color, not as a domino to be toppled.
It's a worthwhile book. Meyer's take on Holmes and Watson is always interesting (even if it doesn't line up with Doyle's), he introduces readers to some interesting real-world characters, and he sent me to Wikipedia a couple of times for more information, not to mention to Project Gutenberg to download a couple of books written by the novel's characters.
I'll have to move up The Return of the Pharaoh, Meyer's next pastiche, in my reading queue. And I hope he eventually gets around to telling the true story of "The Empty House" is.
Summer Reading Entry #3. I just finished reading the twelve-issue Superman: Birthright comic book limited series written by Mark Waid, penciled by Leinil Francis Yu, and inked by Gerry Alanguilan, that was originally released from 2003 to 2004 by DC Comics. I read these issues on the DC Universe Infinite digital comics platform. I'm putting my review on GoodReads on the earliest released hardcover reprint collection (2004). There has been a subsequent softcover trade paper release (2005), a second hardcover (2016), and coming in December 2022 will be a DC "Deluxe Edition" hardcover release of Birthright.
Birthright, when it first came out in 2003, was touted as a brand new reboot (although I don't recall if they used that actual word or not) of Superman's origin story, the second such major reboot of the modern comics era (the first being John Byrne's 1986 six-issue Man of Steel mini-series. There have been several other reboots and reimaginings since Birthright (including Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Superman: Secret Origin mini-series (2009-2010), another on my list to read).
At the time, however, it was a bit of a major thing, DC announcing that they were basically ditching the Byrne version (which had been *the* canon Superman origin in the comics for nearly twenty years) in favor of a new one written by Mark Waid, and, I must admit, I was resistant to it because of that. I didn't see any reason to jettison the Byrne origin story yet. (There was no galaxy changing event going on at the time to explain such a change--those would come along not too long after--and Byrne's origin just didn't seem to need to be changed, in my opinion.)
So, when I first read the first five issues of Superman: Birthright back in 2003, I thought they were all right but probably didn't give then a fair chance. My memory (now) of reading them then was that I had not finished reading the entire series (although I did buy the entire run of issues), and looking now at what notes I kept back in those days, it appears that I only read through the end of issue five.
I decided to revisit (and finish reading) Birthright now because I'd already decided that I wanted to read Superman: Secret Origin and decided, prior to that, that I should probably read Birthright to be able to compare the different versions of the Superman origin story. (I've read John Byrne's Man of Steel so many times over the years that I have that one practically memorized, so no need to revisit that one at this time.)
This time I had the advantage of going into reading Birthright with a bit of a more open mind, plus the advantage of being able to put all that issue of it being the new "canon" version of Superman aside because this story no longer is. Birthright was quickly overridden by other tales, including several of those universe (sometimes multiverse) changing company-wide crossover "events". So, reading Birthright now, I can view it entirely on its own merits as one of the many varying Superman stories out there.
The Krypton scenes (which visually are very distinctive and different from the versions that came before it, thanks to the penciling art of Leinil Francis Yu here) are actually quite short. Only a few pages long. The most noticeable change there in my opinion was that Waid presented Jor-El as very hesitant to send Kal-El away in his experimental rocket ship, and that Lara basically has to convince him that it's the only chance the baby has to survive.
We then jump to a young adult Clark Kent in Africa working as a freelance journalist and befriending the leader of a rebel tribe seeking out fair and equal representation in their county's government. There are attacks upon them by those in power and Clark has to use his powers to prevent many people from being killed. It becomes his motivating incident to return home to his adopted parents (Jonathan and Martha Kent in Smallville, Kansas) to come up with a way for him to be able to use his powers to help people without revealing who he is.
They, of course, come up with the Superman costume and also the idea of the more mild-mannered Clark Kent persona as the real "disguise". While doing so, we get glimpses of Clark's upbringing. Again, here, Martha Kent is much more of an eager aid to Clark, initially. Jonathan is very reluctant and worried that this will all lead to their losing their son. He does, eventually, come around to the idea.
Next, Clark arrives in Metropolis, first encounters Lois, Perry, and Jimmy, and gets his job at the Daily Planet (and Superman makes his debut). All of this is pretty common to most tellings of the origin story.
Where things are different are where they involve Lex Luthor. In this version of events, Clark and Lex knew each other in high school in Smallville, Lex and his father briefly moving to town. Lex, a clear genius but with really bad social skills, quickly ostracizes everyone around him except for Clark. His big experiment (which just happens to involve a piece of glowing green radioactive meteorite; Clark's first encounter with Kryptonite) ends up destroying his house, killing his father, and driving Lex into seclusion, having blamed Clark and everyone else for his failure.
Now, as an adult, Lex is a major leader of industry in Metropolis, a business man with his own company. But he still has a secret agenda behind it all, one that gets kicked into its next phase with the arrival of Superman in Metropolis.
From there it becomes a pretty standard Superman vs. Lex Luthor story with bits of the new version of Clark's Kryptonian heritage tossed in. The last two or three issues deal with that major confrontation, and Lex's turning the people of Metropolis against Superman by convincing them that he is actually the scout for a large invasion by Kryptonian soldiers.
Waid does a good job throughout at presenting the major characters in an interesting way, especially Clark, the Kents, and Lois. His Perry and Jimmy are pretty non descript (Perry is grumpy and yelling at people most of the time). This portrayal of Lex is the most problematic to me. He is a genius but most of the time he carries on like a crazed fanatic (although his plan, as convoluted as it is, seems on the verge of succeeding). Of course, it depends on that piece of Kryptonite Lex found back in Smallville, which he has discovered how to use as a powerful energy source (which, as a bonus, just happens to be able to eliminate Superman, as well).
The thing that makes Birthright very uneven, in my opinion (and this is going to be a very subjective thing) is the artwork of Leinil Francis Yu. Yu is a Filipino artist who began with Wildstorm Productions, and then moved over to Marvel to do long runs on Wolverine and X-Men. Yu has a very distinctive art style. His page layouts are often quite exciting looking and are also easy to follow what's happening. However, his characters faces are often very stylized, especially those of the male characters (other than Clark/Superman). Many of the faces in Birthright are quite grotesque looking (crazed expressions, eyes bulging, veins popping). Not all the time but enough to be distracting and at times hard to look at. (His early issues with Clark in Africa, in Smallville, and first appearing in Metropolis are his best work here.)
I can't help but wonder how Birthright might have been if they'd gone with a more naturalistic/"realistic" style artist. Then, again, I know that Yu has his fans who would totally disagree with my assessment here. (And, honestly, I found Yu's style to be much more appropriate to Wolverine and the X-Men.)
Overall, it's is an interesting read (one I'd recommend that all regular Superman readers check out at some point). I ended up giving it three stars out of five stars on GoodReads (would probably have been three and a half stars if I was allowed to use half stars).
(Previous 2022 Summer Reading Entries: #1: Star Trek: Avenger by William Shatner (1997; novel); #2: Batman vs. Ra's Al Ghul by Neal Adams (2019-2021, six-issue comic book mini-series; 2021 collected hardcover edition).)
—David Young
Birthright, when it first came out in 2003, was touted as a brand new reboot (although I don't recall if they used that actual word or not) of Superman's origin story, the second such major reboot of the modern comics era (the first being John Byrne's 1986 six-issue Man of Steel mini-series. There have been several other reboots and reimaginings since Birthright (including Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Superman: Secret Origin mini-series (2009-2010), another on my list to read).
At the time, however, it was a bit of a major thing, DC announcing that they were basically ditching the Byrne version (which had been *the* canon Superman origin in the comics for nearly twenty years) in favor of a new one written by Mark Waid, and, I must admit, I was resistant to it because of that. I didn't see any reason to jettison the Byrne origin story yet. (There was no galaxy changing event going on at the time to explain such a change--those would come along not too long after--and Byrne's origin just didn't seem to need to be changed, in my opinion.)
So, when I first read the first five issues of Superman: Birthright back in 2003, I thought they were all right but probably didn't give then a fair chance. My memory (now) of reading them then was that I had not finished reading the entire series (although I did buy the entire run of issues), and looking now at what notes I kept back in those days, it appears that I only read through the end of issue five.
I decided to revisit (and finish reading) Birthright now because I'd already decided that I wanted to read Superman: Secret Origin and decided, prior to that, that I should probably read Birthright to be able to compare the different versions of the Superman origin story. (I've read John Byrne's Man of Steel so many times over the years that I have that one practically memorized, so no need to revisit that one at this time.)
This time I had the advantage of going into reading Birthright with a bit of a more open mind, plus the advantage of being able to put all that issue of it being the new "canon" version of Superman aside because this story no longer is. Birthright was quickly overridden by other tales, including several of those universe (sometimes multiverse) changing company-wide crossover "events". So, reading Birthright now, I can view it entirely on its own merits as one of the many varying Superman stories out there.
The Krypton scenes (which visually are very distinctive and different from the versions that came before it, thanks to the penciling art of Leinil Francis Yu here) are actually quite short. Only a few pages long. The most noticeable change there in my opinion was that Waid presented Jor-El as very hesitant to send Kal-El away in his experimental rocket ship, and that Lara basically has to convince him that it's the only chance the baby has to survive.
We then jump to a young adult Clark Kent in Africa working as a freelance journalist and befriending the leader of a rebel tribe seeking out fair and equal representation in their county's government. There are attacks upon them by those in power and Clark has to use his powers to prevent many people from being killed. It becomes his motivating incident to return home to his adopted parents (Jonathan and Martha Kent in Smallville, Kansas) to come up with a way for him to be able to use his powers to help people without revealing who he is.
They, of course, come up with the Superman costume and also the idea of the more mild-mannered Clark Kent persona as the real "disguise". While doing so, we get glimpses of Clark's upbringing. Again, here, Martha Kent is much more of an eager aid to Clark, initially. Jonathan is very reluctant and worried that this will all lead to their losing their son. He does, eventually, come around to the idea.
Next, Clark arrives in Metropolis, first encounters Lois, Perry, and Jimmy, and gets his job at the Daily Planet (and Superman makes his debut). All of this is pretty common to most tellings of the origin story.
Where things are different are where they involve Lex Luthor. In this version of events, Clark and Lex knew each other in high school in Smallville, Lex and his father briefly moving to town. Lex, a clear genius but with really bad social skills, quickly ostracizes everyone around him except for Clark. His big experiment (which just happens to involve a piece of glowing green radioactive meteorite; Clark's first encounter with Kryptonite) ends up destroying his house, killing his father, and driving Lex into seclusion, having blamed Clark and everyone else for his failure.
Now, as an adult, Lex is a major leader of industry in Metropolis, a business man with his own company. But he still has a secret agenda behind it all, one that gets kicked into its next phase with the arrival of Superman in Metropolis.
From there it becomes a pretty standard Superman vs. Lex Luthor story with bits of the new version of Clark's Kryptonian heritage tossed in. The last two or three issues deal with that major confrontation, and Lex's turning the people of Metropolis against Superman by convincing them that he is actually the scout for a large invasion by Kryptonian soldiers.
Waid does a good job throughout at presenting the major characters in an interesting way, especially Clark, the Kents, and Lois. His Perry and Jimmy are pretty non descript (Perry is grumpy and yelling at people most of the time). This portrayal of Lex is the most problematic to me. He is a genius but most of the time he carries on like a crazed fanatic (although his plan, as convoluted as it is, seems on the verge of succeeding). Of course, it depends on that piece of Kryptonite Lex found back in Smallville, which he has discovered how to use as a powerful energy source (which, as a bonus, just happens to be able to eliminate Superman, as well).
The thing that makes Birthright very uneven, in my opinion (and this is going to be a very subjective thing) is the artwork of Leinil Francis Yu. Yu is a Filipino artist who began with Wildstorm Productions, and then moved over to Marvel to do long runs on Wolverine and X-Men. Yu has a very distinctive art style. His page layouts are often quite exciting looking and are also easy to follow what's happening. However, his characters faces are often very stylized, especially those of the male characters (other than Clark/Superman). Many of the faces in Birthright are quite grotesque looking (crazed expressions, eyes bulging, veins popping). Not all the time but enough to be distracting and at times hard to look at. (His early issues with Clark in Africa, in Smallville, and first appearing in Metropolis are his best work here.)
I can't help but wonder how Birthright might have been if they'd gone with a more naturalistic/"realistic" style artist. Then, again, I know that Yu has his fans who would totally disagree with my assessment here. (And, honestly, I found Yu's style to be much more appropriate to Wolverine and the X-Men.)
Overall, it's is an interesting read (one I'd recommend that all regular Superman readers check out at some point). I ended up giving it three stars out of five stars on GoodReads (would probably have been three and a half stars if I was allowed to use half stars).
(Previous 2022 Summer Reading Entries: #1: Star Trek: Avenger by William Shatner (1997; novel); #2: Batman vs. Ra's Al Ghul by Neal Adams (2019-2021, six-issue comic book mini-series; 2021 collected hardcover edition).)
—David Young
Re-reading Diane Carey's Best Destiny.
I haven't actually seen a single episode of Strange New Worlds (anybody know when the next ST DVD set is due out?), but
I haven't actually seen a single episode of Strange New Worlds (anybody know when the next ST DVD set is due out?), but
specifically, casting a Black actor as Robert April, I really don't see much of anything in Best Destiny that would be irreconcilable (I can picture, for example, Paul Winfield as Carey's Robert April), at least so long as he can speak with a Coventry accent. (Better than Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart, without even his even attempting Don Adams' William-Powell-caricature voice that's so indelibly linked to the character, ditto for Terence Stamp's Siegfried-without-the-accent.)
The next one is Lower Decks: Season 2 on July 12, and then the only other one announced at this point is Picard: Season 2 on October 4. SNW is still airing, so it's too early to expect an announcement for it.
Now almost 2/3 of the way through Best Destiny. Past the point where Veronica is injured by a coolant leak, and just past the point where Kirk sabotages the pirate ship's gravity generator (its only source of inertial dampening).
It occurs to me (and this is not the first time, and setting aside "autobiography-Kirk" entirely) that the teenage Prime-Kirk is a juvenile delinquent with a mostly-absentee father, whereas the Abramsverse-Kirk is a juvenile delinquent with a dead father.
It occurs to me (and this is not the first time, and setting aside "autobiography-Kirk" entirely) that the teenage Prime-Kirk is a juvenile delinquent with a mostly-absentee father, whereas the Abramsverse-Kirk is a juvenile delinquent with a dead father.
Kurtzman & Orci did cite Best Destiny as one of their influences for the '09 movie.
As the late Johnny Carson was known to say,
"I did not know that."
*****
Finished Best Destiny late last night. Better than I remember it. Also much more complex than I remember it.
*****
Began ADF's Glory Lane last night. One of his few original novels that aren't either HC or Spellsinger. And the first edition cover painting is one of the best I've ever encountered, both in and of itself, and as a perfect reflection of the book itself. I'm at the end of the first chapter, and Seeth has just seen a bowling ball make flagrant violations of the laws of physics.
"I did not know that."
*****
Finished Best Destiny late last night. Better than I remember it. Also much more complex than I remember it.
*****
Began ADF's Glory Lane last night. One of his few original novels that aren't either HC or Spellsinger. And the first edition cover painting is one of the best I've ever encountered, both in and of itself, and as a perfect reflection of the book itself. I'm at the end of the first chapter, and Seeth has just seen a bowling ball make flagrant violations of the laws of physics.
Last edited:
Similar threads
