Saturday, June 22, 2013
Alive! -- Loren D. Estleman
It seems as if every time Valentino begins looking for some piece of old film, somebody dies. This time it's an old friend, Craig Hunter, who's the one who knows where the missing footage is. Other people want it, and they don't mind killing to get it. No one knows what the value would be, but a million dollars isn't out of the question.
What entertains me most about the Valentino stories is all the great film lore that Estleman includes. All of it's authentic, and Estleman provides a bibliography and notes at the end of the book. You can skip the bibliography if you want to, but I recommend reading the notes.
Another thing that was fun in this book was Estleman's take on "steampunk." Valentino's very sympathetic to it. Check it out.
Would you wear a 'Twitter dress'?
BBC News - Would you wear a 'Twitter dress'?: We are used to reading and sending tweets and status updates on smartphones and tablets - but will we soon be doing this on people's clothes?
Once Again Texas Leads the Way
Houston - News: A few weeks ago, we noted that the Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen in Terminal E of George Bush Intercontinental Airport had been ranked as the best spot for an airport hookup in America by MeetAtTheAirport.com. Turns out good old Terminal E has more than just a casual spot for meeting Prince Charming, it also has the best airport lounge in North America.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Archaeology Update
The Raw Story: Archaeologists have found an ancient Maya city that remained hidden for centuries in the rain forests of eastern Mexico, a discovery in a remote nature reserve they hope will yield clues about how the civilization collapsed around 1,000 years ago.
The team, led by Ivan Sprajc, associate professor at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, found 15 pyramids – including one that stands 75 feet tall – ball courts, plazas and tall, sculpted stone shafts called stelae.
The team, led by Ivan Sprajc, associate professor at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, found 15 pyramids – including one that stands 75 feet tall – ball courts, plazas and tall, sculpted stone shafts called stelae.
Forgotten Books: Selected Stories from Science Fiction Adventures in Mutation -- Groff Conklin
- "Introduction", Groff Conklin
- "Battle of the Unborn", James Blish (Future 1950)
- "Keep Out", Fredric Brown (Amazing 1954)
- "Limiting Factor", Theodore R. Cogswell (Galaxy 1954)
- "The Lysenko Maze", Donald A. Wollheim (F&SF 1954)
- "The Patient", E. Mayne Hull (Unknown 1943)
- "Cold War", Henry Kuttner (Thrilling Wonder Stories 1949)
- "Skag with the Queer Head", Murray Leinster (Marvel Science Fiction 1951)
- "Family Resemblance", Alan E. Nourse (Astounding 1953)
- "And Thou Beside Me", Mack Reynolds (F&SF 1954)
- "This One’s on Me", Eric Frank Russell (Nebula 1953)
- "The Love of Heaven", Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding 1948)
- "The Conspirators", James White (New Worlds 1954)
- "The Better Choice", S. Fowler Wright (original to the anthology)
- "Bibliography of Mutation Stories"
How many of you SF readers came to the genre by way of a Groff Conklin anthology? If you didn't, and if you're my age, you must at least have encountered two or three of them during your younger days since he edited 40 of them. He was a huge influence on me. I was reading SF novels, but I knew nothing of the existence of the SF magazines until I came across the Omnibus of Science Fiction in my school library. When I looked at the copyright page and saw the sources for the stories, I decided to see if I could find any of those magazines in the small local bookstore. Sure enough, I could, and I was off on a buying frenzy that still hasn't ended.
Conklin's hardcover anthologies were sometimes big, thick books, so when they were reprinted, a few stories were often left out. As you can see from the title of this Berkley edition, only "selected stories" are included. This abridged edition came out in 1965, and as the copyright dates show, it included stories more than 20 years old. Conklin's books were great for those of us who were interested in seeing some of the older SF that we hadn't been around to read when it first appeared.
While I think of this as a forgotten book, it's not entirely out of mind. I borrowed the ToC from Wikipedia, and it even has a Facebook page. Only 5 "likes" (including mine), but at least there are a few of us who remember.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Bathing Beauties, Booze And Bullets (A Jazz Age Mystery #2): Ellen Mansoor Collier: Amazon.com: Kindle Store (Sequel to Flappers, Flasks and Foul Play) It’s 1927 in Galveston, Texas—the “Sin City of the Southwest.” Jasmine (“Jazz”) Cross is an ambitious 21-year-old society reporter for the Galveston Gazette who tries to be taken seriously by the good-old-boy staff, but the editors only assign her fluffy puff pieces, like writing profiles of bathing beauties. The last thing Jazz wants to do is compare make-up tips with ditzy dames competing in the Miss Universe contest, known as the “International Pageant of Pulchritude and Bathing Girl Revue.”
She’d rather help solve the murders of young prostitutes who turn up all over town, but city officials insist on burying the stories during Splash Day festivities. After Jazz gets to know the bathing beauties, she realizes there’s a lot more to them than just pretty faces and figures. Jazz becomes suspicious when she finds out the contest is also sponsored by the Maceos, aspiring Beach Gang leaders and co-owners of the Hollywood Dinner Club, where the girls will perform before the parade and pageant.
Worse, her half-brother Sammy Cook, owner of the Oasis, a speakeasy on a rival gang’s turf, asks her to call in a favor from handsome Prohibition Agent James Burton—an impossible request that could compromise both of their jobs and budding romance. While Agent Burton gives her the cold shoulder, she fends off advances from Colin Ferris, an attractive but dangerous gangster who threatens Sammy as well as Burton. In the end, she must risk it all to save her friends from a violent killer hell-bent on revenge. Inspired by actual events.
Now Available as an E-Book!
Amazon.com: Outrage at Blanco (Ellie Taine) eBook: Bill Crider: Kindle Store: Western action thriller in the tradition of Elmer Kelton and Louis L'Amour. The bank robbers killed Ellie Taine's husband. They didn't kill Ellie. That was their mistake. Now Ellie's going to make them pay.
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .
Central Somerset Gazette: Man in penis costume assaulted in Glastonbury High Street
Chet Flippo, R. I. P.
Famed music journalist Chet Flippo, 69, dies: Chet Flippo launched his music journalism career during Rolling Stone's formative years, and helped bring country music to the rock-and-roll mainstream.
"Chet was a fierce advocate for country music long before country was cool," said CMT president Brian Philips, characterizing Flippo's reporting for Rolling Stone in the 1970s as "the kind of no-holds-barred music journalism that doesn't exist anymore, anywhere."
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
"Chet was a fierce advocate for country music long before country was cool," said CMT president Brian Philips, characterizing Flippo's reporting for Rolling Stone in the 1970s as "the kind of no-holds-barred music journalism that doesn't exist anymore, anywhere."
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
James Gandolfini, R. I. P.
NY Daily News: James Gandolfini, the New Jersey-bred actor who delighted audiences as mob boss Tony Soprano in “The Sopranos” has died following a massive heart attack in Italy, a source told the Daily News.
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
Beyond Group Sex: Doing Their Own Thing (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior): as John Warren Wells, Lawrence Block: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: No one has done more to reveal the full extent and variety of the new kinds of sexual activity than John Warren Wells, controversial author of The Wife-Swap Report, Three is Not a Crowd, and other sensational bestsellers. Now his investigations have turned up some of the most amazing erotic case histories of his career. You'll be surprised, startled, even shocked. But you'll read every word!
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
But the race is cut short when their opponent is shot dead, and Shmuckler is arrested for the crime. Jacob knows his friend is innocent - and he sets out to prove it. Between the dead man's secret paramours and his even more secret campaign contributors, there is no shortage of suspects - and they take Jacob from the quiet streets of Saratoga Springs to Albany's halls of power, where he finds that some people will do anything to get a vote. Fortunately, Jacob's wife Andrea is able to help him solve the murder.
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Slim Whitman, R. I. P.
Slim Whitman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Ottis Dewey Whitman, Jr. (January 20, 1923 or 1924[1] – June 19, 2013),[2] known professionally as Slim Whitman, was an American country music and western music singer/songwriter and instrumentalist known for his yodeling abilities and his smooth high octave falsetto. He sold in excess of 120 million records.
Vince Flynn, R. I. P.
Mystery Fanfare: VINCE FLYNN: R.I.P.: This sad news just in. Thriller author Vince Flynn has died at the age of 47. Diagnosed with Stage III metastatic prostate cancer in 2010, Flynn succumbed.
The Prettiest Publications of the Past
The Prettiest Publications of the Past on AbeBooks: Being exposed to images of books day in and day out here at AbeBooks means we come to appreciate books not only for their content - the joy of reading and education that books bring us - but also for their value and beauty as objects. Positive response to features about attributes such as beautiful bindings and gilt decoration encourage us to keep admiring and sharing the most aesthetically pleasing books we come across. How has book design changed over the years, decades and centuries? What books are most pleasing to the eye, and why? Our ideas of beauty are highly subjective but one thing is certain - they are constantly changing.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Maxine Stuart, R. I. P.
Los Angeles Times: Maxine Stuart, 94, a stage, film and TV actress whose long career included memorable guest appearances on "The Twilight Zone" and "The Wonder Years," died Thursday of natural causes at her Beverly Hills home, according to her daughter, Chris Ann Maxwell.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
It was good sex. Carl hadn't seen Jessica in twenty years... not since high school... and they passionately ravaged each other as if it was yesterday. There's just a couple of little problems with their hot encounter. For one thing, Jessica thinks that it is yesterday and that they are still teenagers. And Carl discovers that she was killed three weeks ago.
Is she insane? An imposter? A ghost? Finding the shocking answer could cost Carl and Jessica their lives in this wildly inventive, exhilarating, sexually-charged thriller from Emmy-award winning writer Phoef Sutton that critics are already hailing as "Elmore Leonard on crack."
This is the Sutton's long-awaited, significantly restored & revised "author's cut" version of his acclaimed novel "Always Six O'Clock"
Either Fluorescent Fluid or Radioactive Sinkholes WBAGNFARB
"Radioactive-Looking" Sinkholes: A hole opens up in the street and a fluorescent green fluid appears inside.
The Mundaneum
Paul Otlet, forefather of information science: The Mundaneum was, to put it mildly, an ambitious undertaking. Belgian lawyer Paul Otlet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henri LaFontaine established the project in 1910 with the aim of compiling the entirety of human knowledge on 3-by-5 index cards.
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .
Mail Online: Shocking video captures bus driver punching passenger who tried to use the wrong kind of metro card
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Overlooked Movies: Mister Roberts
Roberts is serving on a cargo ship during WWII, and he desperately wants to transfer to a combat vessel. His requests for transfer are always sabotaged by Morton, who's interested only in his career and who knows that Roberts is the one responsible for his success. Morton is in constant conflict with Roberts, but he needs him too much to let him go. The crew of course is devoted to Roberts and hate Morton. It appears at one point that Roberts has gone over to the other side, and the crew members turn against him until they learn the truth. Pretty much the Luke and Cuckoo's Nest template, too. The resolution is the pretty much the same, and the characters all come to about the same end, too.
The poster clues you in to one of the best things about this movie: the cast. Lemmon was the one who won the Oscar, but Cagney, Powell, and Fonda are great. There are a lot of laughs, but it's not all fun and games. The ending really got to me long ago. Still does. If you haven't seen this one, take a look and see what you think.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
Hallowed Ground: David Niall Wilson, Steven Savile, Robert Sammelin: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: When a man known only as The Deacon set up camp outside Rookwood, a murder of crows took to unnatural, moonlit flight. The crows came to Rookwood; trouble soon to follow. Things were already strange in that God-forsaken town, but no one could have predicted the forces and fates about to meet in a dust-bowl clearing in the desert. A Preacher. A Demon. An Angel. A Gunslinger. A bargain with the darkness was signed in blood, and broken, and as such deals usually do, it went south. Now the fate of lost lovers, faith healers, ancient Gods and the Devil himself collide in a circle of wagons tended by the damaged and deformed, the saved and the shorn. There's a power come to Rookwood, and this one-horse town is about to be transformed. Such deals are only made and broken…on Hallowed Ground.
Hammett Unwritten -- Owen Fitzstephen (Gordon McAlpine)
Hammett Unwritten is a "What If" novel. What if the Maltese Falcon were based on an actual case that Hammett worked on when he was a Pinkerton? What if all the people in it were real people. And what if the Falcon was real, and if not encrusted with jewels nevertheless a bird of legend? And what if Hammett wanted to get his hands on it in 1959? If you'd like to know the answer to those questions, this is the book for you. All the old characters are back, some more briefly than others, and the model for Brigid O'Shaughnessy is the trickiest of the bunch.
McAlpine knows his Hammett, and it shows. Hammett Unwritten is a real tour de force. Highly recommended.
As I've Been Telling You, They Really Are Everywhere
Alligator captured on northwest Phoenix lawn: “They saw something running across the lawn and thought it was a monitor lizard and lo and behold - it was an alligator,” said Nick Burge, vice president of the Arizona Herpetological Association, the group that originally rescued the animal.
Reading novels makes us better thinkers
Salon.com: Reading novels makes us better thinkers
New research says reading literary fiction helps people embrace ambiguous ideas and avoid snap judgments
I Miss . . .
. . . wait a minute. Are these the old days now?
12 Entertainment Weekly Covers That Immortalized 1993 In Pop Culture
12 Entertainment Weekly Covers That Immortalized 1993 In Pop Culture
New Poem at The 5-2
The 5-2 | Crime Poetry Weekly Gerald So, Editor: David S. Pointer
MEMORIES OF HOLDEN, MO
Sunday, June 16, 2013
2013 Munsey Award Nominees
2013 Award Nominees | PulpFest: The Munsey Award is presented annually to a deserving person who has given of himself or herself for the betterment of the pulp community, be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps or through publishing or other efforts to preserve and to foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy.
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Amazon.com: THE MAN IN THE MOON eBook: James Reasoner: Kindle Store: Markham is a private detective, but instead of a client he has a personal stake in this case. He's the one who finds the two kids wandering along a desert highway in the middle of the night. Their father is missing, and Markham's efforts to discover the man's fate draw him into a dark web of crime, hate . . . and murder. THE MAN IN THE MOON is a 10,000 word novella from legendary author James Reasoner. It originally appeared in the April 1980 issue of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE and is one of several stories about Markham, a classic Southern California private eye.
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .
KFMB Channel 8 - cbs8.com: A man was so upset that another man was drinking out of a glass bottle at a condo's swimming pool that he grabbed a bottle from the victim's cooler, conked the offending party on the head, and then slashed the offending party's back with a fresh shard, police said Sunday.
They're Everywhere!
Another alligator sighted in Long Island river: Incredibly, 17 gators over the last nine months have been found in the wild or turned onto authorities on Long Island – and Hickey says he thinks he knows why.
Once Again Texas Leads the Way
And keep off her lawn!
Texas ‘witch’ mom beats down robber then runs him over with minivan: Confronted by a knife-wielding robber who sprang out of the back seat of her minivan on Friday, a Texas mother did what she had to in order to protect her two young sons, crashing into a telephone pole, taking the man’s weapon out of his hands and punching him in the face before throwing him out of the still-moving vehicle and finally running him over.
Texas ‘witch’ mom beats down robber then runs him over with minivan: Confronted by a knife-wielding robber who sprang out of the back seat of her minivan on Friday, a Texas mother did what she had to in order to protect her two young sons, crashing into a telephone pole, taking the man’s weapon out of his hands and punching him in the face before throwing him out of the still-moving vehicle and finally running him over.
Life Is So Unfair
Second Vintage Superman Comic Found By David Gonzalez After First Sells For $175,000: A Minnesota contractor who found a rare Superman comic book that sold for $175,000 this week discovered another vintage Man of Steel comic in the walls of the same house.
David Gonzalez recently unearthed a copy of Superman #4 from the spring of 1940, ComicConnect.com COO Vincent Zurzolo told The Huffington Post on Friday. The comic could be worth between $500 and $5,000, Zurzolo estimates.
David Gonzalez recently unearthed a copy of Superman #4 from the spring of 1940, ComicConnect.com COO Vincent Zurzolo told The Huffington Post on Friday. The comic could be worth between $500 and $5,000, Zurzolo estimates.
Mr. Monk Helps Himself -- Hy Conrad
The book opens with Natalie Teeger back in San Francisco, just as the last book ended. Teeger, formerly Monk's assistant and now his partner, is a police officer in New Jersey, but she's not entirely happy there. She knows that her career is really in San Francisco, working with Monk. When she witnesses what everyone else believes is a suicide, she's sure it's murder. Not even Monk believes her, and he sets to work on a case for the SFPD, a case that involves clowns. Monk, as you might figure, has a terrible fear of clowns.
Aside from the murder investigations, the question is whether Natalie and Monk will become true partners. Will Monk accept her as an equal and not just an assistant? I was worried that Conrad might find a way to develop both Natalie and Monk's character further, but I should've known better. Mr. Monk, as the title says, helps himself, and so does Natalie. I'm glad to see that the series will continue its winning ways.
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Happy Father's Day!
The LOC.GOV Wise Guide : Honor Your Father . . . At Least Once a Year: In June of every year, we honor fathers. The first Mother's Day was celebrated in 1914, but a holiday honoring fathers did not become official until 1966, when President Lyndon Johnson declared that the third Sunday in June would be Father's Day. President Richard Nixon made this proclamation permanent in 1972. But this doesn't mean that the holiday was not celebrated before this time.This picture of my father was taken in 1940, the year before I was born.
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