Monthly Archives: July 2018

Quarry’s List, by Max Allan Collins

Posted on July 29, 2018 by pete

But I did have a system. Not an alarm system; nothing more than my own built-in alarm, which comes from those rice-paddy warfare years I suffered through, where you learned to sleep light unless you didn’t care about waking up. … Continue reading →

Posted in books, crime fiction | Tagged , , | 20 Comments

Captive Universe, by Harry Harrison

Posted on July 26, 2018 by pete

A theme running through many Harry Harrison (1925-2012) titles is the battle of an enlightened individual against an all-controlling state apparatus. His Deathworld and To the Stars trilogies feature a can-do protagonist attempting, and mostly succeeding, to “solve” the metaphorical … Continue reading →

Posted in books, science fiction | Tagged | 7 Comments

Eyes of Fire, by Michael Bishop

Posted on July 25, 2018 by pete

Eyes of Fire (1980) is a remake of Bishop’s first published novel, A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire — EoF was meant to be the replacement, and the only version to exist in post-1980 editions. I read the earlier version … Continue reading →

Posted in books, science fiction | Tagged | 3 Comments

a preview

Posted on July 20, 2018 by pete

Life and work have been getting in the way of writing reviews lately, so I thought I’d share an update of what’s coming up …. So far, I’ve only read through the bottom three (plus another Charles Williams: Nothing In … Continue reading →

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Quarry, by Max Allan Collins

Posted on July 10, 2018 by pete

Many of the novels of the Hard Case Crime series take place in the time between 1940 and 1970 (all of those rediscovered titles) or in the last decade (the debut printings of Charles Ardai’s books, among others). These have … Continue reading →

Posted in books, crime fiction | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

The Luck of Barry Lyndon, by William Thackeray

Posted on July 7, 2018 by pete

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was, during his time, one of the prominent novelists of Victorian England and the primary competition to Charles Dickens. These days he is known mostly for the satirical Vanity Fair, but it was the fictional memoir The … Continue reading →

Posted in books, literary fiction | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

The Rakehells of Heaven, by John Boyd

Posted on July 5, 2018 by pete

Satirizing our (Western) past of imposing religion onto new cultures is a familiar theme of SF, using spacecraft or time travel as a substitute for ships and covered wagons. One of my favorite stories in the Harry Harrison collection The Best … Continue reading →

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U.S.A., by John Dos Passos

Posted on July 4, 2018 by pete

John Dos Passos (1896-1970) is not among the most celebrated names in American literature anymore, but several of his books had major cultural impact when they were published in the first half of the 20th Century. An ambulance driver during … Continue reading →

Posted in books, literary fiction | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments