So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[Daddy Todd]

Several years ago I contributed to a Kickstarter for the 2-volume Jerry Goldsmith Companion. The person in charge of the project apparently absconded with the money, so no books were ever printed, even though they were written, edited, and formatted. They did distribute PDFs of the completed books, so I’ve been reading those.

It’s disappointing these books didn’t make it into print, because they’re very good, and definitely deserve to be widely read.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Re-reading A Flag Full of Stars. Past the flashback to the version of the Tarsus IV massacre that remains my headcanon. Past the broadcast interview. So far, no mention of Lisa Nguyen.

Do other people picture Grace Jones (circa when she was in A View to a Kill) from the descriptions of Anab Saed? Or is it just me?

 

[I am not Herbert]

Re-reading A Flag Full of Stars. Past the flashback to the version of the Tarsus IV massacre that remains my headcanon. Past the broadcast interview. So far, no mention of Lisa Nguyen.

Do other people picture Grace Jones (circa when she was in A View to a Kill) from the descriptions of Anab Saed? Or is it just me?

I picture A View to a Kill-era Grace Jones for all characters until expressly told otherwise.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I picture A View to a Kill-era Grace Jones for all characters until expressly told otherwise.

All characters? Including Harb Tanzer (DD's recreation officer)? Captain David Gold?

 

[Smiley]

My current book with a Star Trek connection is West End Horror by Nicholas Meyer.

Other reads include The Role I Played (a memoir of Canadian goalie Sami Jo Small) and a reread of The Mysterious Mr. Quin (a short story collection by Agatha Christie, which I would not recommend at the halfway point).

 

[Steve Roby]

Haven't been reading Star Trek-related books in the last while. Instead, I read a couple more of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels that I hadn't read back in my far-off teenage years, then decided to look into the various writers who've taken a shot at the character over the decades. So, I've read Robert Markham (Kingsley Amis)'s Colonel Sun, John Gardner's Licence Renewed, Raymond Benson's Zero Minus Ten, Sebastian Faulks's Devil May Care, Jeffrey Deaver's Carte Blanche, and William Boyd's Solo, and I'll get to Anthony Horowitz before too long. Unsuprisingly, Colonel Sun, from 1968, feels the least influenced by the movies rather than Fleming's novels. The others are a strange mix, each writer evidently being free to choose the era in which to place Bond, how much to treat the story as a reboot rather than a continuation, and how to balance the influence of the original novels vs the movies. I found all of them at least reasonably entertaining, though one or two took longer to get into. My impression at the moment is that the ones I found the weakest were by Gardner and Faulks, but they had their moments.

Whether I'll read more of Gardner's or Benson's remains to be seen. I have Benson's two books in the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series; my wife bought those ages ago because she really liked the Xbox games. Might give those a go first. Oh, here's a Star Trek connection. James Swallow, who's written several Star Trek novels, wrote a couple of recent Splinter Cell novels. They were fun.

 

[JD]

Are you going to read any of the Bond comics too? I haven't read it yet, but I've had the first Dynamite collection on Kindle account for a while now.

Re-reading A Flag Full of Stars. Past the flashback to the version of the Tarsus IV massacre that remains my headcanon. Past the broadcast interview. So far, no mention of Lisa Nguyen.

Do other people picture Grace Jones (circa when she was in A View to a Kill) from the descriptions of Anab Saed? Or is it just me?

How many different versions of the Tarsus IV massacre have there been now? I didn't know about A Flag Full Stars, but I do know about Disco: Drastic Measures, and I swear there's at least one other book or comic I've read about.

 

[Steve Roby]

Are you going to read any of the Bond comics too? I haven't read it yet, but I've had the first Dynamite collection on Kindle account for a while now.

I'm curious, but it depends at least partly on just how much is out there and how expensive it is. A heck of a lot of the Bond prose novels are on sale cheap as ebooks. Probably not the same situation with the comics.

 

[JD]

I checked Comixology and the digital version of Dynamite's collections range from $9.99 to $24.99, with a bigger Warren Ellis omnibus for $31.99. Most of them are around $12.99. Or the majority of them are also available for free if you can acess Hoopla through your local library, that's the way I'm planning on reading the rest of the series after I get through the first Ellis collection.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

How many different versions of the Tarsus IV massacre have there been now?

The only other one I'm personally aware of is the one in the Kirk "Autobiography." Which turned out to be not quite as radically different from the one in A Flag Full of Stars as I'd thought (but close to it, which is the cause of my hostility to the latter book and its author).

 

[Troi]

I'm reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

 

[comsol]

Haven't been reading Star Trek-related books in the last while. Instead, I read a couple more of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels that I hadn't read back in my far-off teenage years, then decided to look into the various writers who've taken a shot at the character over the decades. So, I've read Robert Markham (Kingsley Amis)'s Colonel Sun, John Gardner's Licence Renewed, Raymond Benson's Zero Minus Ten, Sebastian Faulks's Devil May Care, Jeffrey Deaver's Carte Blanche, and William Boyd's Solo, and I'll get to Anthony Horowitz before too long. Unsuprisingly, Colonel Sun, from 1968, feels the least influenced by the movies rather than Fleming's novels. The others are a strange mix, each writer evidently being free to choose the era in which to place Bond, how much to treat the story as a reboot rather than a continuation, and how to balance the influence of the original novels vs the movies. I found all of them at least reasonably entertaining, though one or two took longer to get into. My impression at the moment is that the ones I found the weakest were by Gardner and Faulks, but they had their moments.

Whether I'll read more of Gardner's or Benson's remains to be seen. I have Benson's two books in the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series; my wife bought those ages ago because she really liked the Xbox games. Might give those a go first. Oh, here's a Star Trek connection. James Swallow, who's written several Star Trek novels, wrote a couple of recent Splinter Cell novels. They were fun.

I haven't gotten around to reading the Horowitz books, but the library patrons where I work who have read them told me that they enjoyed them. They also have the advantage of being set in and around Fleming's original stories. One author that you may want to look for is Christopher Wood. He was a scriptwriter for The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker , and he wrote novelizations of both movies. The books are based on earlier versions of the scripts, so they are slightly different than the movies, but they are surprisingly good. Of the continuation authors that I have read, his writing is the most like Flemings in my opinion. Both books are worth giving a try.

 

[Christopher]

Instead, I read a couple more of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels that I hadn't read back in my far-off teenage years, then decided to look into the various writers who've taken a shot at the character over the decades. So, I've read Robert Markham (Kingsley Amis)'s Colonel Sun, John Gardner's Licence Renewed, Raymond Benson's Zero Minus Ten, Sebastian Faulks's Devil May Care, Jeffrey Deaver's Carte Blanche, and William Boyd's Solo, and I'll get to Anthony Horowitz before too long.

There's a James Bond novel called Solo? Any connection to Ian Fleming's other spy character, Napoleon Solo of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.?

 

[Steve Roby]

I haven't gotten around to reading the Horowitz books, but the library patrons where I work who have read them told me that they enjoyed them.

Thanks. I'm the wrong kind of librarian myself to have James Bond books in the collection, alas. More legal texts and things like that.

One author that you may want to look for is Christopher Wood. He was a scriptwriter for The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker , and he wrote novelizations of both movies. The books are based on earlier versions of the scripts, so they are slightly different than the movies, but they are surprisingly good. Of the continuation authors that I have read, his writing is the most like Flemings in my opinion. Both books are worth giving a try.

Good to know. I actually bought The Spy Who Loved Me not long after it was published and still have it, but it's been more than forty years since I read it, so I don't remember much about it. I didn't get around to Moonraker at the time, though.

There's a James Bond novel called Solo? Any connection to Ian Fleming's other spy character, Napoleon Solo of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.?

Nope. Just Bond taking off on a personal mission of revenge when he's supposed to be off duty for a few weeks. Going solo. I don't remember hearing about the Fleming/UNCLE connection before. Interesting.

 

[bdub76]

Surprisingly, my library has no Fleming, James Bond eBooks. I do have an old Omnibus that I bought at a used book store a while back, but I haven't read any of the books in years.

What are your favorites?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Whether I'll read more of Gardner's or Benson's remains to be seen.

It has been a super long time since I've read any of Gardner's books.

Benson... I liked the plotting more than the writing, though I've heard the US editions were butchered in the edit, so it may not entirely be his fault. That said, I enjoyed what's know as "the Union trilogy," which starts with High Time to Kill and eventually turns into the sequel to On Her Majesty's Secret Service neither Fleming nor Diamonds are Forever gave us.

I didn't much care for the two Horowitz novels I read, but then, I didn't like his Sherlock Holmes novels, either. Because of that, I've avoided his Jeeves & Wooster novel.

 

[JD]

The only other one I'm personally aware of is the one in the Kirk "Autobiography." Which turned out to be not quite as radically different from the one in A Flag Full of Stars as I'd thought (but close to it, which is the cause of my hostility to the latter book and its author).

I'm assuming Drastic Measures version is probably pretty different since it's a Disco novel focusing on the Prime versions of Lorca and Georgiou.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I'm assuming Drastic Measures version is probably pretty different . . .

I'd completely forgotten that Drastic Measures deals with Tarsus IV. Too bad that my reading time is about to be largely monopolized for 6 1/2 weeks.

*******
Just finished A Flag Full of Stars. Nguyen is indeed JMD's Lisa Nguyen. And there are references to BF's Centaurus colony.

Now: Genesis. And no, not a treatise on instant terraforming technology.

 

[BoldlyGoingNowhere]

I recently finished 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is one of those Arthur C. Clarke novels where the narrative feels like a long climb toward a massive cliff overlooking a most daring and optimistic of human dreams. Clarke provides exhaustive technical details about the lunar base, the logistics of moving across the lunar surface, the vehicles, general quarters, how nutrition is synthesized, etc. All this stuff has a deeper meaning than just technical detail, I'll get to that.

We have the conflict with HAL and the journey to Saturn, which was changed to Jupiter for the film. Then Bowman and the reader reach the cliff and this dream I mentioned. In this story, the cliff is a gate built by an ancient alien civilization, in the shape of the Monolith. It's what allows man to "jump in" and realize his wildest dream: To fully understand the universe, for the human intellect to embrace all of the universe's secrets. To have all, absolutely all, finally revealed. Nothing is beyond his understanding and control.

Once Bowman enters the monolith, hardware and science ceases to be the focus. It is all about man's dreams and aspirations, and the highest of aspirations at that. The whole universe seems to be made for man, and then, in a twist, it can be made BY man. None of that Lovecraftian stuff is in here. The universe is not a cold, indifferent entity, but a sort of playground for the mind. It is not a place of horrors, but a place of amazing possibility. Hardware and science is a means to an end. The end is a realization of spirit.

Technical and scientific progress is framed as a sort of human self guided evolution. It's a well planned, well executed evolution towards the ultimate destiny of humanity: to become masters of the universe. Masters in the true sense of the word. Masters that are supremely intelligent, passionately curious, resourceful, compassionate beings, capable of understanding the inner workings of everything. That is one hell of a purpose, one hell of a dream, and one that technical and scientific progress allow us to have. Clarke saw space exploration not only as a marvel of technical progress, but as the process of the human mind leaving its cradle. He saw it as humanity finally reaching towards adulthood, the direction towards which man's spirit can be fully expressed. To reach for the stars is not only a matter of hardware progress, but a sort of climax of evolution, a fundamental part of the human's journey in this life.

His faith in this destiny is so absolute that his aliens cannot be anything other than stepping stones towards that goal. They care for humans, help them transcend difficulties, and coax humanity to its fullest expression. Clarke's only fear seemed to be that of the destruction of humanity before it could express its true potential. It's understandable, given the Cold War and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction he witnessed with the end of WWII. The first thing Bowman does once he becomes a super entity is destroying all those dangerous toys.

I truly appreciate Clarke’s optimism regarding humanity’s place in the universe. Since I am naturally inclined toward a mild pessimism, I find it extremely refreshing to read his work. Maybe if you are already a person filled with a certain joie de vivre, his novels might sound rather devoid of humanity and human emotions, or unnecessarily obstructed by technical details.

I think his novels will hit you more if you need an external nudge towards a life affirming attitude. Also, they appeal more if you are interested in the hardware behind the narrative. Say, if you don't care if the rocket the cosmonauts are using is based on nuclear thermal propulsion or chemical propulsion and why that matters, then you're probably not going to have a good time with his books. For Arthur C. Clarke and his readers, that is a huge part of the whole show.

And so the novel ends on notes of life affirmation, staunch optimism and an almost childish curiosity towards the possibilities the universe holds for a truly intelligent species. It is one hell of a great novel, in my opinion.

 

[bdub76]

Finished Wuthering Heights. There were some chapters that took a bit to get through. Overall, it was a pretty good novel. It's most definitely not a romance. I'm not sure if I would honestly recommend it. The book was definitely dark.

To lighten up my reading, I've added a compilation of Jeeves stories by Wodehouse, and I'm enjoying them.

This is the collection that I'm reading:

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/p-g-wodehouse/jeeves-stories

Too bad it doesn't include the illustrations from the Post that are in public domain:

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

archive.org

Note: His works are not in public domain in the UK, and not all of his works are in the public domain in the US either. It's very complicated.

I'm still continuing my reading of Dangerous Visions and Skeleton Crew. And I have a M.R. James collection that I'm reading a handful of stories from. I have no shortage of short stories to read at work.

Horror James, M. R.: Ghost Stories of M.R. James (complete collect,illus). v2. 31 May 2016 - MobileRead Forums

Horror James, M. R.: Ghost Stories of M.R. James (complete collect,illus). v2. 31 May 2016 ePub Books

www.mobileread.com

This collection also includes illustrations.

I did DNF Sweetness of Water, so I won't be attending book club this month. I couldn't get into this novel at all. It's definitely not for me.

Next up is Club Dumas, the book that Ninth Gate is based on.