Books: Happiness, Piano, Time, Rocheworld, Three, Wednesdays, and the Black Canary

[woodwardiocom]

The Happiest Days Of Our Lives by Wil Wheaton

This is another collection of anecdotes from Wil's childhood. Since he and I have a lot in common (being geeks of a similar age), his books are ever a delight to me. His thoughts on being a dad are particularly valuable for me at this point in my life. Very recommended.

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Vonnegut's first novel, about how mechanization will destroy human society. About halfway through, I got tired of watching the protagonist selfishly (and stupidly) destroy his marriage, and stopped reading. No, dude, buying a pre-electricty farmhouse, without telling your spouse, will not fix your life. Vonnegut's later work is better.

Serving In Time by Gordon Eklund

A brief novel about time travel, which I would swear was a major inspiration for the Homeline-Centrum conflict in GURPS Infinite Worlds, save that it's not mention in its bibliography. Briefly, two timelines are in conflict. One (ours) leads to a tyrannical future. the other (our hero's) leads to a pastoral future. Our newbie members of the Time Service get caught up in this battle as they try to fix American history. Reads a lot like a Heinlein juvenile, including the annoying female character our hero falls in love with. Recommended.

Rescued From Paradise by Forward, Fuller

Fifth in the Rocheworld series, about a human expedition to Barnard's Star, and the numerous intelligent aliens they find there. This is a fine little hard SF novel in which not much really happens, and the conflict arises and is wrapped up too quickly and neatly. Still, when you're about to have a child, having some very hard SF (with female protagonists, even) around the house is important. Mildly recommended; start with Rocheworld first.

The Book Of Three by Lloyd Alexander

For whatever reason, I'd never read this before, but Milholland kept recommending it, so... It's a fun, short, fantasy novel, engagingly different from the post-Tolkien mainstream. I found it interesting to speculate on a variant interpretation in which Fflewddur and Eilonwy are just figments of Taran's imagination, split personalities brought forth by the stress of his incarceration in the Spiral Castle. After all, for most of the rest of the book, none of the three of them interact with anyone else, and in the few exceptions they play minor roles. What if he's hallucinating his companions the whole time? Recommended.

Wednesday Comics

A couple years ago, DC Comics tried an experiment. They published a weekly "newspaper" consisting of nothing but comics done in the style of 1930s Sunday comics. Which is to say, huge, fully-painted, full pages. The characters include mainstays like Superman and Batman, and minor ones like Metamorpho (written by Gaiman!) and Sgt. Rock (by Kubert!). This volume is a hardcover collection of the whole series, with bonus material. While some efforts are weaker than others (Wonder Woman in the style of Little Nemo is genuinely odd), others are worth the price of admission all by themselves (e.g., Kamandi in the style of Prince Valiant). This is an oversized volume, and thus tricky to handle, but apart from that caveat, highly recommended.

The Black Canary Archives, v1, mostly by Kanigher and Infantino

This is the complete collection of all of Black Canary's non-JSA/JLA adventures from her first appearance through the early 70s. They can be divided into her Johnny Thunder teamups, her "solo" stories alongside her eventual husband, Larry Lance, and her early-70s team-ups with Starman. In the Johnny Thunder stories, she's a thief who steals from thieves in her first appearance, a thief doing a good deed in her second, a hero with a hard-boiled background in her third, and a hero in her fourth and thereafter. You almost get whiplash from how quickly they retcon her. In the Larry Lance stories, I truly wish there had been more of their Bogie-&-Bacall banter, and less crimefighting. Watching them snark at each other is delightful. I'm also very pleased that, though Lance is present for every story, he's always slightly bumbling next to the Canary (though good with his fists). The fact that she owns her own business, while he can't pay his rent and ends up sleeping in her storeroom, is also fun. Recommended.

Comments

[bluegargantua]

Huh. I thought Black Canary and Green Arrow were a couple...

*read wikipedia article*

Holy hell, why do I even bother reading big two comics?

later
Tom

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

You just discovered the whole "not really Dinah but actually her daughter who'd been kept in the lightning dimension" thing, huh? Yeah, as idiotically complicated retcons go, that one's atomic-grade.

[bluegargantua]

Not even the retcons so much as relationship whiplash with Green Arrow and just the whole...I suppose spread out over a few years it doesn't seem as insane as the condensed version. They're not super-heroes because they've got fantastic powers, they're super-heroes because they haven't shattered from PTSD.

later
Tom