Hawk two! (it’s the second one I’ve read anyway) Mike Hawk gets down under and dirty!
I’m sorry, but this one wasn’t as good as the virgin stealers. Howe
Hawk two! (it’s the second one I’ve read anyway) Mike Hawk gets down under and dirty!
I’m sorry, but this one wasn’t as good as the virgin stealers. However, when I take Mike Hawk out, even a bad time is a rad time.
This time, super rich, man of leisure and face puncher extraordinaire: Mike Hawk is in the land of Aus to favour its fine shelias with some first class, yet surprisingly sensual all-American wienering.
And crikey, the American mafia has decided to take over the Australian liquor market. Unfortunately the best they could muster was a guy that dresses like Roy Rogers, his English butler and some circus acrobats serving as “enforcers� Hawk makes instant best friends with a bloke named Fair Dinkum, sets up a corporate fund to help fight the mafia, falls in love with the first Australian woman he meets, goes undercover as an Australian(with accent) using special effects makeup and just swings his dick all around the continent.
It was ridiculous and probably insulting to Australia but it was missing something. Where’s the fun? Where’s the spark? Where’s the chainsaw duel?
Just saying; it was alright but Mike Hawk has been harder. ...more
This is a pretty recent one but fits the mould of the men’s action books I’ve read recently.
It’s interesting because it’s part of the Elvis Cole seriThis is a pretty recent one but fits the mould of the men’s action books I’ve read recently.
It’s interesting because it’s part of the Elvis Cole series By Robert Crais but Joe Pike takes over as the lead character in this one. Pike is like Hawk was to Spenser- he’s the mysterious badass that packs a lot of fire power and usually saves Cole’s ass.
“Pike stood six-one and weighed one ninety-five, all ropy muscles and crimson arrows inked on his delts. He wore a sleeveless gray sweatshirt, sun-faded jeans, and running shoes. Dark glasses masked his eyes�
Pike is a one man wrecking crew. On the outside he’s a machine, no feeling, no pain, no remorse and no hesitation.
He doesn’t talk, barely sleeps and loves just staring at the wall.
In this story though, he is charged with protecting the life of a rich, teenage prima Donna (read:Paris Hilton) Having read some of the other Cole novels I was surprised to find Pike’s layers peeled back to reveal some of the inner character behind the macho facade. He has an interesting philosophy about the face we present to the world:
“Pike believed each person created himself or herself; you built yourself from the inside out, with the tensions and will of the inside person holding the outside person together. The outside person was the face you showed the world; it was your mask, your camouflage, your message, and, perhaps, your means. It existed only so long as the inside person held it together.� His outside person is a fucking brick wall that refuses to remove its sunglasses no matter how inappropriate the situation.
Lots of action, mystery ,cheesy one man army antics and a few laughs. Plus, it’s like Shakespeare if you just read the destroyer or the executioner. ...more
“We are all slaves to the wheel, forever moving forward in pursuit of an unattainable horizon.�
I love a science fiction story that only works as scien
“We are all slaves to the wheel, forever moving forward in pursuit of an unattainable horizon.�
I love a science fiction story that only works as science fiction. The concept of a moving city had been borrowed from this book many times, to lesser effect, those books don’t want to over complicate their stories with a complex “why�. For Priest the city crawling along on its tracks that must be laid down before it and pulled up behind it is only the beginning. Most people living in the city are unaware of the whys and hows of their inexorable journey in search of the “optimum� A system of guilds whose members are sworn to secrecy about the reason they must never stop moving.
A young guild initiate named Helward Man slowly learns the truth of his society and the world they inhabit.
The inverted world brings up questions about time, truth and perception that are difficult to grasp in any world, inverted or otherwise....more
Another entry in the federation hub series by James Schmitz. This is one of the few novel length stories he released. This time around dangerous alienAnother entry in the federation hub series by James Schmitz. This is one of the few novel length stories he released. This time around dangerous aliens send a small force to a water world with scattered floating islands, overgrown with vegetation. The aliens capture a professor doing research on one of the floatwood islands and torture him for information about the human society. Enter Dr. Nile Etland, another of Schmitz’s signature strong,smart and beautiful female protagonists. They’re a dime a dozen today but this was written in the 60s so it was interesting and different for the time. From there on out it’s reverse predator or maybe regular first blood as Nile, along with her mutated, giant, talking otters go H.A.M. On the alien invaders and rescue the professor. This was a quick, fun read that’s on par with Schmitz’s other work. ...more
On a deep space mission to a planet inhabited by intelligent and enlightened reptilians who resemble a ten foot tall iguana mixed with a kangaroo, the
On a deep space mission to a planet inhabited by intelligent and enlightened reptilians who resemble a ten foot tall iguana mixed with a kangaroo, the crew debated whether to establish a relationship with the lizards or close the planet off in order to protect its culture. One member of the expedition, a Jesuit priest, father Ruiz Sanchez has a faith shaking issue with the peaceful beings.
These lizards have no religion, yet they conduct themselves with the highest moral values. They don’t fight or kill, they are totally selfless and share everything.
The problem for the father is twofold: -Morality cannot exist without god (under pain of eternal damnation)
-the devil cannot create, only corrupt. So if these creatures are not children of god they were created by Satan- holding this belief is heresy. They used to burn people for that kind of thing.
I’m not sure if this was written as two separate stories that were put together as a novel or deliberately intended to be two separate parts but part two jumps ahead in time.
The crew returns to earth with a lizard child and try to raise raise it as a human. The child becomes a dissident, undermining the earth’s unbalanced society which allows the majority to suffer for the benefit of a wealthy few.
Expecting to be excommunicated for his heretical belief, Father Ruiz is instead presented with an alternative view by the pope.
For a secular person, the idea that aliens (not created by god) could exist without original sin and behave morally as a matter of nature is not a tough concept to grasp. For a truly believing Christian however it’s untenable.
Very interesting book. I love this kind of science fiction, the kind that’s asking moral and philosophical questions but leaving the reader to ponder those questions, not telling them how they’re supposed to feel about it. ...more
I knew it was big deal in new wave for those in the know but I don’t know exactly what happened. This is the first Malzberg I’ve read a
Bemused Apollo
I knew it was big deal in new wave for those in the know but I don’t know exactly what happened. This is the first Malzberg I’ve read and he’s a great writer, no doubt but my brain still hurts after finishing it. It seems to boil down to the author slinging shit at the space program, how it lacks funding or public support and sends neurotic, unqualified, latently gay dudes into space knowing they will fail (and maybe do some off the books butt stuff) The story takes place in the early 80s when only one man returns from a two man expedition to Venus. The real mind fuck of it is the plethora of stories the survivor tells about the mission. He just rapid fires different explanations, scenarios and possibilities about the events of the mission to the point that I questioned everything. Was there a second guy? Did he even go to space? Was he ever able to make his wife cum? I’m not 100% sure. ...more
This was quite a departure from the first book. A young girl is taken from her family and raised to be the high priestess of the dark ones. She lives
This was quite a departure from the first book. A young girl is taken from her family and raised to be the high priestess of the dark ones. She lives an austere life guarding over the tombs of atuan, which must remain in total darkness and navigated by memory. It seemed at first not to be connected to the first book (a wizard of earth sea) at all besides taking place in a different part of the same world.
Somewhere around the halfway point “Ged� the young wizard protagonist of the first book shows up. Ged’s presence isn’t the only other link though, LeGuin has more connective tissue to the first book that answers some questions left hanging at the end. Like most of her books, this seems like psychological metaphor, I’m guessing for depression and/or finding your true self through shadow work. I’m not super familiar with Jung’s writing beyond the personality archetypes but it’s got that feel to it.
Great book in its own right but it doesn’t have the more adventure oriented elements that the first one had....more
Wow, I thought this was going to be one of those whimsical old yarns. What the hell was this so scary? These robots take over every aspect of human liWow, I thought this was going to be one of those whimsical old yarns. What the hell was this so scary? These robots take over every aspect of human life, and hold humanity in a protective bubble. You don’t work or worry about money anymore but you can’t read a book because it might be disturbing, can’t be around any sharp objects or even open a door for yourself.
I was glued to this story, the longer it went on the more terrifying it was. It seems prescient for something written in the 40s but it stopping us from working and still feeding and housing us is wishful thinking....more
What was considered farce in the 1950s is now not only accepted reality, but we’re quickly passing out of late stage capitalism and into early techno What was considered farce in the 1950s is now not only accepted reality, but we’re quickly passing out of late stage capitalism and into early techno feudalism. Soon we’ll all pine for the good old days of a free market economy where actual people tried to sell us shit we didn’t need, but could afford because they had competition from other companies.
This was a fun book, kinda like if Philip k. Dick wrote mad men.
A top advertising executive in a dystopian world on the edge of ecological collapse finds himself suddenly on the bottom rung of society. He stops at nothing to unravel the mystery of what happened to him and how he can get back to his former life. Along the way there’s a plethora of crazy concepts like corporate powers openly controlling the government, deliberately getting its customers addicted to it’s products, manipulating its workers into an untenable cycle of debt that they can never escape and even legally killing corporate rivals.
I’m not sure you could write a book like this today. You can’t write an absurdist look into the future from now because no matter how bad or silly you go with it, it could never be crazy or horrific enough. If you could go back in time and show Pohl and Kornbluth how the future wound up, they’d shit their dicks off. ...more
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