So What Are you Reading?: Generations
- Thread starter captcalhoun
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oh wow! excited about this series.. just checked out from Libby.. thanks!
Finished the first and enjoyed it. Planning on getting the rest.
For now though, I've started on Sharpe's Assassin by Bernard Cornwell.
Just finished Never Panic Early. About to start Triplanetary.
Just finished the last two Slings and Arrows eBooks (A Weary Life (Greenberger) and Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment (DeCandido)) and will be putting up review threads for those shortly.
Next on my plate: the second volume in the two-book The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (by Tara Bennett) and, on the comics side, Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland’s Camelot 3000 (which I’ve known about since it first came out in 1982-1985 but I’ve never gotten around to reading).
—David Young
Next on my plate: the second volume in the two-book The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (by Tara Bennett) and, on the comics side, Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland’s Camelot 3000 (which I’ve known about since it first came out in 1982-1985 but I’ve never gotten around to reading).
—David Young
I'm now reading "Doc" Smith's Triplanetary. I think the operative word here is "quaint."
And my copy of Star Trek Lost Scenes just arrived. Thumbing through it for Dr. Adams explaining his motivation, and then continuing to thumb through it, I stumbled upon another instance of Sandra ("Salt Vampire") Gimpel being called "Sharon" by mistake. Not sure if this was the first appearance of the error, or if the authors were perpetuating an earlier appearance; I'm pretty sure I saw it in a magazine (maybe Starlog), or possibly a web site.
And my copy of Star Trek Lost Scenes just arrived. Thumbing through it for Dr. Adams explaining his motivation, and then continuing to thumb through it, I stumbled upon another instance of Sandra ("Salt Vampire") Gimpel being called "Sharon" by mistake. Not sure if this was the first appearance of the error, or if the authors were perpetuating an earlier appearance; I'm pretty sure I saw it in a magazine (maybe Starlog), or possibly a web site.
Re: Triplanetary,
If "Doc" Smith's prose had been any more purple, it would have to be reproduced on a Ditto machine.
He makes ADF's most vivid descriptive passages seem downright laconic. And gives me hope that my own opus may yet see publication without my having to buy and burn my own offset plates, and learn how to run one of the Museum's offset presses. (No way in Hell that I'm going to bang out hundreds of pages on a Lino, even if we do get the Heidelberg Cylinder up and running again.)
This is interesting: the edition I'm reading (from an outfit in South Africa called CruGuru) appears to completely omit the section that Wikipedia calls "Background," covering the conflict between the Arisians and the Eddorians, jumping directly into what Wikipedia calls the "Main Story," with Conway Costigan, Clio Marsden, and Captain Bradley. Then again the typesetting is rather crude: the lines are justified, but it uses neutral quotation marks instead of 6-quotes and 9-quotes (not unheard of; the Linotype font we currently use for souvenir slugs at the Museum also has neutral quotes on both the 6-quote and 9-quote keys), and it uses double-hyphens in place of em- and en-dashes.
(Note that even something as antiquated as Xerox Ventura Publisher, from the 1980s, has full support for typographic quotes, including keyboard access, and can even automatically convert quotes and doubled hyphens when importing text.)
If "Doc" Smith's prose had been any more purple, it would have to be reproduced on a Ditto machine.
He makes ADF's most vivid descriptive passages seem downright laconic. And gives me hope that my own opus may yet see publication without my having to buy and burn my own offset plates, and learn how to run one of the Museum's offset presses. (No way in Hell that I'm going to bang out hundreds of pages on a Lino, even if we do get the Heidelberg Cylinder up and running again.)
This is interesting: the edition I'm reading (from an outfit in South Africa called CruGuru) appears to completely omit the section that Wikipedia calls "Background," covering the conflict between the Arisians and the Eddorians, jumping directly into what Wikipedia calls the "Main Story," with Conway Costigan, Clio Marsden, and Captain Bradley. Then again the typesetting is rather crude: the lines are justified, but it uses neutral quotation marks instead of 6-quotes and 9-quotes (not unheard of; the Linotype font we currently use for souvenir slugs at the Museum also has neutral quotes on both the 6-quote and 9-quote keys), and it uses double-hyphens in place of em- and en-dashes.
(Note that even something as antiquated as Xerox Ventura Publisher, from the 1980s, has full support for typographic quotes, including keyboard access, and can even automatically convert quotes and doubled hyphens when importing text.)
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The 1934 magazine serial version of Triplanetary wasn't set in the Lensman universe. Smith later updated it for book publication in 1948, adding material to make it the first book in the Lensman series. Because the magazine version is now Public Domain, that's the version you can buy for cheap from dozens of "publishers" and get for free from Project Gutenberg.
My mistake: BOTH version are now PD. The Lensman version is also available at Project Gutenberg: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/32706
I'd kind of figured that the section that Wikipedia calls "Background" wasn't in the original serialization. Looking through the editions for which Amazon has "Look Inside," I found some that do have it, and some that don't.
A couple days ago I finished Star Trek SCE: Invincible by @KRAD & @David Mack, and I'm now almost done with Planet Hulk written by Greg Pak, with art by Carlo Pagulayan, and Aaron Lopresti.
I really enjoyed Invicible, it was cool to get a first person, epistolary novella, which is something we don't get very often in Trek outside of The Captain's Table. Gomez dealing with the Nalori on the planet, and all of the mysteries around the shii were pretty good. My only real complaint is that we didn't really spend much time with the rest of the cast, but there's another 60+ novellas with the other characters in them, so it's not that big of a deal.
I really enjoyed Invicible, it was cool to get a first person, epistolary novella, which is something we don't get very often in Trek outside of The Captain's Table. Gomez dealing with the Nalori on the planet, and all of the mysteries around the shii were pretty good. My only real complaint is that we didn't really spend much time with the rest of the cast, but there's another 60+ novellas with the other characters in them, so it's not that big of a deal.
Still in Triplanetary. I will note that Smith's doctorate was evidently not in nuclear physics:
(1) if I remember right, iron is the most stable of atomic nuclei: there is no fission, decay, or fusion process it can undergo that releases energy. And yet the Nevians somehow use it as a source of enormous power.
(2) Radium as a precious metal?!? I can believe Baum used it as such in at least one Oz novel; he died little more than a decade after its discovery (and I can likewise get all the technobabble about plutonium in the Batfink cartoons I remember from childhood; the whole series was a mix of farce and parody), but I would have thought by the 1930s, it would at least be known that if you invested in radium, it wouldn't be that many years before it decayed to lead (WNM allusion intended).
(1) if I remember right, iron is the most stable of atomic nuclei: there is no fission, decay, or fusion process it can undergo that releases energy. And yet the Nevians somehow use it as a source of enormous power.
(2) Radium as a precious metal?!? I can believe Baum used it as such in at least one Oz novel; he died little more than a decade after its discovery (and I can likewise get all the technobabble about plutonium in the Batfink cartoons I remember from childhood; the whole series was a mix of farce and parody), but I would have thought by the 1930s, it would at least be known that if you invested in radium, it wouldn't be that many years before it decayed to lead (WNM allusion intended).
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Currently reading Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher. I've read some others of his and generally liked them, but I hadn't read this series before.
Most of my Lensman novels are the editions from Old Earth Books, which have retro covers but are of good quality construction. Recommended.
Still reading Triplanetary (pre-Lensman version). I've got The Sound and the Furry: The Complete Hoka Stories on-deck, I've got War of the Worlds and the Lensman version of Triplanetary on order from Amazon (along with enough other stuff to make the minimum for free shipping), and I've got a used copy of David Gerrold's Starhunt and a new copy of Tom Kelly's Moon Lander both on order through Alibris (from two different vendors).
Why do I keep typing "Triluminary" (and having to correct myself) when I mean Triplanetary?
Why do I keep typing "Triluminary" (and having to correct myself) when I mean Triplanetary?
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Mr midshipman Hornblower( my first Hornblower book), a little difficult to get into the story but I will give It a chance.
And I give up on Hornblower after one hundred pages. Not my kind of book.
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