Well, actually, I could rant about the horror of the meatpie I had at the Aussie Rules football game we went to, but instead I’m going to talk about beer. I had a lot of different beers in Melbourne this week, and many of them are worth talking about: Carlton Draft: This was plain old terrible stadium lager. Pass it, or pass out. I had one cup and shuddered at the idea of drinking more, but it was the stuff that everyone at the football game was having. Apple Cider — Bulmer’s? Mangan?: I’m not sure which brands I tried, …
Tag: reviews
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Well, it took me almost a decade–due mostly to lack of interest, I’ll admit, since it’s less than 600 pages of text in total–but I finally have finished Asimov’s “Foundation Trilogy.” I know there are more books in the series, but all I ever intended to read was that main, original trilogy. I read the first book in 2002, mainly because it was among the books I’d brought over to Korea, thinking a lack of English-language books would force me to read it. But there were more English books here than I expected, and I’m a slow enough reader that …
On Recent Post-Apocalyptic Films
Not long ago, someone in an email described called this past winter as having been cruel and cold and hard. It is, surely, only chance that this was a winter of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic films. I count three, though I may have missed one or two during my travels: The Road in 2009, and The Book of Eli and Crazies in 2010. Having seen all three of these films in the space of a week, some thoughts occur to me. This rambles, but I am going to post it anyway, as I have other things to do right now…
The Last Books of H.G. Wells — The Happy Turning: A Dream of Life & Mind at the End of its Tether by H.G. Wells, Forewords by Rudy Rucker and Colin Wilson
Much as I enjoyed it myself (primarily as a curio of sorts), this slim little book is one that most SF fans, I think, need not hurry to read. Unless one is truly interested in Wells as a man, in seeing how old age and the knowledge of his approaching death (by liver cancer) affected his thinking and writing, I don’t think someone is likely to get much out of it. But if you are interested in Wells, this book can help you get a handle on his last few years. These works, especially Mind at the End of its …
Shadow Lovers: The Last Affairs of H.G. Wells, by Andrea Lynn
Not so very long ago, in a post where I requested some help regarding some articles, and discussed some of my ongoing readings, I bashed Terry Eagleton’s self-righteous and dismissal of H.G. Wells, in the course of his review of the book I am now reviewing myself, University6 of Illinois scholar Andrea Lynn’s Shadow Lovers: The Last Affairs of H.G. Wells. Leaving aside Eagleton’s ignorant and sniping attack on Wells as a writer — it’s par for the course when self-appointed cardinals and pontiffs of literature look in any direction that even faintly bears the markings of popular fiction, be …