Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers, Matthew J. Pustz, University Press of Mississippi, 1999
Force of Fire, Rosa Turner Knapp, Pulsar Books, 2000
and a body to remember with, Carmen Rodriguez, Arsenal Pulp Press, 1997
Messenger Twelve, James Lynn Bartz, The Westbound Stage, 2000
Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground, Lionel Rolfe, California Classics Books, 1998
Radical Walking Tours of New York City, Bruce Kayton, Seven Stories Press, 1999
The Indictment, John A. Murphy, Brockston Publishing Co, 2000
Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don’t Want You to See, David McGowan, Common Courage Press, 2000
Poverty, Wealth, Dictatorship, Democracy: Resource Scarcity and the Origins of Dictatorship, Jack Barkstrom, Pericles Press, 1998
Dance Sisters, Alan Clay, ArtMedia, 1997
Seek!, Rudy Rucker, Four Walls Eight Windows Press, 1999
Time Trial, R.E. Derouin, Western Reflections Inc,1999
The Eighth House, Karen Sealy, Highbridge Press, 2000
Factoring Humanity, Robert J. Sawyer, Tor, 1999
A Place Called Milagro de la Paz, Manlio Argueta, Curbstone Press, 2000
Force of Fire, Rosa Turner Knapp, Pulsar Books, 2000
and a body to remenber with, Carmen Rodriguez, Arsenal Pulp Press, 1997
Messenger Twelve, James Lynn Bartz, The Westbound Stage, 2000
Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground, Lionel Rolfe, California Classics Books, 1998
Radical Walking Tours of New York City, Bruce Kayton, Seven Stories Press, 1999
The Indictment, John A. Murphy, Brockston Publishing Co, 2000
Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don’t Want You
to See, David McGowan, Common Courage Press, 2000
Poverty, Wealth, Dictatorship, Democracy: Resource Scarcity
and the Origins of Dictatorship, Jack Barkstrom, Pericles Press, 1998
Dance Sisters, Alan Clay, ArtMedia, 1997
Seek!, Rudy Rucker, Four Walls Eight Windows Press,
1999
Time Trial, R. E. Derouin, Western Reflections Inc, 1999
The Eighth House, Karen Sealy, Highbridge Press, 2000
In the early 1900s, Edward Hastings grows up on the Lower East Side of New York as
the son of a career prostitute. One day, while his mother is being beaten up by Rick, the
bordello owner, Hastings takes out a pistol and kills him. While still a teenager, Hastings
runs the bordello for a while, until he is arrested and sent to juvenile prison, where he is
killed in a fight with other inmates.
Factoring Humanity, Robert J. Sawyer, Tor, 1999
Set in near-future Toronto, for the past several years humanity has been receiving messages, so far untranslated, from a planet in the Centauri system. One day, the messages stop. Have the aliens sent everything they planned to send, or have they destroyed themselves through some sort of holocaust?
Ana Kane is a sub-contractor for the State Department working in the Central American country of Costa Negra. On a recent trip, her driver is killed, her escort, Joe McFadden, is left for dead, and Ana is kidnapped. The rebels, part of a Basque separatist movement that wants to overthrow the Spanish Monarchy, don’t want money in exchange for Ana. They want the Blue File, a very secret file supposedly kept by Albert Kane, her father, formerly a senior member of US intelligence. He died when Ana was little, so she has no idea what they are talking about.
The file of Ana’s disappearance lands on the desk of Mark Neal, intelligence analyst at the Defense Operations Service, one of those Defense Department agencies that officially
don’t exist. He and McFadden travel to Spain to begin their search for Ana. While the bullets start flying, they seem to acquire an invisible guardian angel who watches their
backs and helps them out of some tough spots. Could it be another Basque separatist faction is on their side, or perhaps the Spanish Government?
This novel is excellent. The author’s experience as a State Department contractor in Central America, living for a time in Spain, and her knowledge of US intelligence really shows. It’s thrilling, an easy read, and is very well done. This one is well worth the reader’s time.
These stories are about living in a time of hope for the future, which characterized life in early 1970s Chile. After the bloody 1973 coup which put Gen. Pinochet in power, life becomes a time of fear, uncertainty, and, for some, including the author, emigrating to Canada, a place with a totally different set of rules.
A woman sees, and is recognized by, the man who tortured her in Chile on the streets of Vancouver. Soon after, she commits suicide. On her way back to Canada after her first
visit to Chile after many years of exile, a woman stops in Argentina to visit grandparents who emigrated from 1930s Germany. They emigrated seeking a better life; now her
children have emigrated to Canada, also seeking a better life. Another story is about life in Chilean Resistance, never living in the same place for very long, and never letting anyone
get too close. A member of the Resistance decides to risk everything to attends a concert in Chile given by a world-famous musician whose records he plays religiously. He is unable to get a ticket at the door, but tries again years later in Vancouver. That night, he gets a call from the hospital saying that a friend has been critically injured, and misses the concert. Soon after, the musician dies.
A woman takes in an injured member of the Resistance, and nurses her back to health, only to have her suddenly disappear. Another tale looks at the actual process of emigrating to Canada, trying to get used to a whole different landscape (in more ways than one).
These stories are short, poetic gems that do an excellent job of showing what it is like to leave your homeland, and live in a very different place. This one is well worth reading.
In the early 1800s, Reef Atherton grows up as a seaman on a slave ship called the Polar Star. He learns to put the suffering of the slaves out of his mind until he becomes rich enough to buy his own fleet of ships.
In the meantime, he meets, and marries, Robin Larrimore, a "god-kneeler" from upper-class Boston society. To enhance his wealth and position, she goads him into getting back into the slave trade. He refuses, and is forced into bankruptcy when his ships
fail to return.
He travels to San Francisco in the midst of the Gold Rush days. He finds that the Polar Star has been dry-docked and turned into a floating brothel owned by Lin Thai-Saing, a totally unscrupulous person. A native of Hong Kong, he moved to San Francisco when the local competition got too fierce. Among the women forced to work for Thai-Saing is Caralina, a ten-year-old Italian girl with a beautiful singing voice.
Atherton gets on Thai-Saing’s bad side, and is almost killed by a couple of his assassins when he tries gold prospecting to get money to buy another fleet of ships. When he recovers, Atherton becomes a Wells Fargo messenger, with the authority to carry a gun, and use it, to protect his cargo.
Thai-Saing legally sells Caralina to a Mormon doctor for $2500 in gold. He then pays a judge to issue a fugitive arrest warrant and sends a couple of his goons to get her back.
Atherton’s authority, and willingness, to use a gun ultimately foils their plans.
This is a very interesting and well done story. It gives the feeling of being historically accurate, and is a fine piece of writing.
The author has spent the last forty years as a traveling newspaperman in California, writing for everybody from the Los Angeles Free Press to the San Francisco Chronicle. This group of essays explores his travels and the people he has met along the way.
In the post-war era, San Francisco may have been the "center" of bohemian living, but Los Angeles had quite a thriving bohemian community of its own. His leftist political leanings got him blacklisted by the California Newspaper Association. Rolfe was
the only member of the Menuhin family (the virtuoso violinist Yehudi Menuhin was an uncle) to actually work for a living; his politics also got him cut out of the family will. He explores the joys, and heartbreaks, of owning six cockatiels. His parents divorced when his mother wanted to live in London and continue her musical career; Rolfe’s father, a worker’s compensation attorney, didn’t want her to go on tour, even some of the time. He talks about an emergency trip to Los Angeles County Hospital. It’s a rather old teaching hospital that may not be state of the art in all things, but Rolfe found it to be full of
conscientious doctors and nurses (not something that every hospital can boast), and it survived the 1994 Northridge earthquake, when many other newer buildings collapsed.
I really enjoyed this book. It isn’t just a heartfelt autobiography in essay form, or a history of modern California as seen from the underside of society; it’s more than that. This is well worth reading.
Did you know that among the former residents of New York City are Leon Trotsky and Fidel Castro? Neither did I, until I read this book.
Kayton has been leading walking tours of the city for the last ten years, looking at life from the point of view of those on the bottom of the ladder, those fighting for a better
world. Covering the entire city, from Harlem to the Lower East Side to Battery Park to Wall Street, the twelve tours in this book show the rich radical history of the Big Apple.
Among the places visited in this book are: the site of Margaret Sanger’s first birth control clinic, the house of Langston Hughes in Harlem, Ed Koch’s rent controlled apartment, the
site of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 people, mostly immigrant Jewish women, the present home of the War Resister’s League, the national headquarters of the Communist Party, the home of Marcus Garvey, and the home of the
Black Panthers. Among the Yippies who, in 1967, threw dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was Candice "Murphy Brown" Bergen.
This is a wonderful book. Not only is it an excellent history of radicalism in America, it also works as a history of New York City. For those who can’t get to the city to go on one of these tours, this book is a very worthy alternative.
As a US Senator from Ohio in the early part of the 20th century, Warren G. Harding could charitably be called "undistinguished". Not having much in the way of formal education, he spent his life without making any constructive public achievements and
without advocating any public measure at all, while missing hundreds of Senate votes. In short, he makes some of today’s less intelligent politicians look like intellectuals.
Harding was reluctant when asked to run for President in the 1920 election. But with enough pressure from the bosses, and liberal amounts of cash paid to delegates at the
convention, Harding received the Republican nomination.
Around this time, William Estabrook Chancellor was a tenured professor at the College of Wooster in Ohio. A veritable one-man teaching and writing machine, in his life he wrote at
least 40 books on subjects like education, history and politics, his list of published articles numbers well over a thousand, while teaching twenty-three (yes, 23) different courses at
the College of Wooster. Finding that there was nothing like a definitive biography of Harding, Chancellor set out to write it. He found that Harding was approximately one-eighth negro, a fact known, and not considered a big thing, by the people of Harding’s
hometown.
Despite several signed affidavits by Chancellor that he never gave his research to anyone for political purposes, Harding’s ancestry was spread all over the country, giving the
impression that he was all negro. Having little or no resemblance to his original research, the flyers all had Chancellor’s name on them. The resulting bad publicity caused
Chancellor to lose his job.
Chancellor then decided to put his research into a book-length biography of Harding, privately printed and sold only by mail order. Safely in the White House, Harding heard about this and blew his top. He ordered the Secret Service to open Chancellor’s mail and take down the addresses of everyone who ordered a copy of the book. Agents also went to Chancellor and made it very clear to him that burning the manuscript and forgetting the
whole idea would be a very healthy thing to do. Chancellor’s fear that he would either be jailed or forcibly confined to a mental institution for the rest of his life forced him to seek
asylum in Canada. (This is also the same President Harding who gave Cabinet positions to his friends and cronies, and fathered an illegitimate child while in the White House.)
It’s hard to believe that the events in this book really happened. I found this to be a very interesting and well done story, not just for history buffs, but for everyone.
A sort of book-length version of Harper’s Index, this book presents quite a portrait of an
America far removed from the official portrayal of peace, justice for all, and a booming
economy that will go on forever. It uses quotes from sources like Amnesty International,
the New York Times, and the United Nations.
Here are a few examples: the state of California, among others, does exactly the same
thing that the US criticizes China for doing, that is, exporting prison-made goods. All
countries in the world have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child, which bans juvenile executions, with two exceptions, Somalia, which has had no
effective government for the last decade, and the United States. The assets of the three
richest people in the world are greater than the combined GNP of the 48 least developed
countries, comprising approximately 600 million people. The US has the highest death
row population in the world, over 3,500 people. Between 1992 and 1993, major network
evening news coverage of homicide rose 300%, while the actual homicide rate went down.
During President Clinton’s first year in office, US arms sales more than doubled.
Here is a fascinating, and well documented look at an America that talks a lot about
human rights elsewhere, but doesn’t deliver those same human rights here at home. It is
very highly recommended.
The author, a lawyer and CPA with a Bachelor’s degree in history, presents a fascinating
argument. He says that availability of natural resources will determine whether a country
becomes a democracy or dictatorship. Countries with lots of resources will become
democracies. Those with little access to resources are destined to become dictatorships.
Those whose resource availability is somewhere in the middle will go fascist. He looks at
seven different governments: Athens, Sparta, Rome, Revolutionary France, the Soviet
Union, Nazi Germany and the United States.
The author spends a lot of time looking at communism and the Soviet Union. Another
major assumption is that a country’s economic system, capitalism or socialism, is also
based on resource availability. A free market system requires large amounts of resources
and will only develop in countries where this is the case. Resource scarcity leads to
planned economies.
Barkstrom also asserts that communism was the only possible explanation for Russia’s
economic problems. Put another way, did communism cause Russia’s economic problems,
or was it the result of already existing conditions of poverty and resource scarcity?
This is a big book, in size and in scope, that is not for everyone. But, for those with even a
small interest in history, economics and/or politics, this book is extremely
recommended.
The Dance Sisters are a female singing and dancing duo, recently expanded into a trio.
They are in the running for an Australasian Song Award, and are practicing hard for their
performance on awards night. But Pearl, the leader, has ended a relationship with Moana,
the other original member, and has become involved with a cult that deals in things like
astrology, group sex and virtual dreaming. Pearl begins to attach more importance to the
cult than to the Dance Sisters, very much threatening their chances at the Song Awards.
The pressures on the trio are explored from the point of view of Eva, the third member, as
possibly the biggest night in their careers comes ever closer.
This is quite an enjoyable read. It’s convincingly written, and the characters are real
people, too. It’s a story of friendship and camaraderie, but also a story of the impact of
technology on society and is well worth reading.
This group of essays, written over the last twenty years by one of the founders of
cyberpunk, covers three main areas: Science, Life and Art.
As a professor of computer science with a doctorate in mathematics, Rucker spends his
days dealing with subjects like cellular automata, artificial life, fractals, chaos and
nanotechnology, and writes about them in Science. He includes a brief, and very readable,
history of computers, from Charles Babbage to the Apple II. He also gives a
behind-the-scenes look at a microchip fabrication plant.
In Life, Rucker talks about the unpleasantness of living in Lynchburg, Virginia (home of
Jerry Falwell), while teaching at a nearby women’s college. He includes a piece on the
central teachings of mysticism, and explores the feeling that he is haunted by the ghost of
science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. He talks about camping with his son in Yosemite
National Park. He looks at cyberculture in present day Japan. Rucker also explores
traveling to Portugal to appear in an independent film. There is an elegy to Arf, his
beloved dog.
The Art section looks at transrealism (a type of avant-garde literature that looks at
immediate perceptions in a fantastic way). Rucker gives his answer to the question What is
cyberpunk? Included is an interview with Ivan Stang of the Church of the Sub-Genius.
The author also looks at Dutch artist Pieter Brueghel.
There is certainly something here for everyone. Much of the Science section went over my
head, but I enjoyed the rest, and can give this a strong recommendation.
Pennsylvania police detective David Dean is spending time in present day Ouray County,
Colorado, recovering from a gunshot wound received in the line of duty. One day, his
quiet convalescence is shattered by the sudden arrival of five unwanted and eccentric
individuals. They seem to have a strange interest in a place called Byrd’s Song, an old
homestead high above the ghost town of Sneffels.
Among Dean’s "visitors" are Dorrie Briscoe, a woman who is less-than-picky
about her choice of sleeping partners, and whose teenage daughter, Natalie, brings new
meaning to the word "precocious." Neil Archer is a history professor and old
friend of Dean’s with a taste for much younger women, like Natalie. The group is led by
Henry Whitcomb, an obnoxious millionaire whose wife and son were murdered two years
earlier.
Whitcomb claims to have a found a device, worn on the head, called the Klaxton Turban,
that will send the mind of the user back in time. He is convinced that he was in Byrd’s
Song over 100 years ago, and is obsessed with finding out for sure, one way or the other.
A trip to present-day Byrd’s Song brings up many clues that tend to support Whitcomb’s
memories of his journey. Could this be a sort-of time machine, or something more
mundane? Dean doesn’t believe it for a second, but. . .
I really enjoyed this book. Derouin does a very good job with the characters and
descriptions of the Colorado landscape. The mystery part was also well done. I’m looking
forward to the next David Dean story.
Edward finds himself in Hell, face to face with Satan. Edward learns many things,
including how to manipulate electricity and change his appearance at will. Satan’s
intention is to send him back to earth on a mission to create as much pain, death and chaos
as possible. Edward keeps a journal, written in a Latin dialect and filled with astrological charts, of his past and future activities.
It falls into the hands of Tericita Ellis, a Caribbean-American professional astrologer in present day New York City. Along with her new husband, Aaron Jacobs, a professor of ancient religions, Ellis deciphers the journal. They flee just before a Hastings-caused disaster hits the city when they realize that he will stop at nothing to retrieve the journal. If Satan finds out that the journal is missing, he will be most displeased.
For a first novel, this is sufficiently weird and creepy and very good. Some may question the prominent place given to astrology in this story, but that shouldn’t take away from a novel that is more than worth reading.
Heather Davis, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, has spent her career trying to decipher the messages. Her personal life is something of a shambles; she and her husband, Kyle, a computer professor at the same school, separated after their older daughter, Mary, killed herself. After seeing a therapist, Becky, their younger daughter, confronted Kyle with the accusation that he sexually molested her many times, something he vehemently denies.
Heather is able to understand the pattern of the messages, rather than actually translate them. With help from the school’s Engineering Department, she puts together something that looks like a giant three-dimensional cross, big enough for somebody to get inside. She undertakes a journey that cuts through barriers of space and time like a knife through warm butter. It isn’t exactly space travel; it’s more like touching the human Overmind, being able to enter the mind of anybody, anywhere, at any time. Heather brings Becky on a later journey, and, by touching the mind of Becky’s therapist, convinces Becky that she has been the victim of false memory syndrome. The technology, and the resulting loss of human privacy, promises either a quantum jump in human evolution, or the end of mankind.
I loved this book. Some of the science gets a little overwhelming, but, otherwise, it’s a well done, idea filled story that is very highly recommended.
