Books: Asimov, Heinlein, Niven, Gaiman, Warlock, Robo, Vertigo

[woodwardiocom]

The Winds Of Change by Isaac Asimov

An acceptable little anthology from around 1980, though with a few too many shaggy dog stories for my tastes. I'm starting to find Asimov a bit didactic (and he never got good at writing women), but I can still enjoy his work.

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century v1 by William H. Patterson, Jr.

I suppose the words "authorized biography" on the cover should have tipped me off that this recounting of Heinlein's life would be a tad worshipful. All the facts are relentlessly backed up by reams of endnotes, but I find the interpretations a bit suspect. (E.g., one of Heinlein's dalliances is presented as nearly a religious epiphany, when there's no indication it was other than adultery, with the woman's husband entirely cuckolded.) Heinlein's endless reluctance to get a real job, even when he and Ginny were arguing over 30 cents, also grates. (I know, circumstances.) All that said, I came out the other end of this book thinking that I would have liked the man, and it improved my opinion of Ginny, too. I'm looking forward to volume 2 (this one ends with his wedding to Ginny).

Ringworld, The Graphic Novel, Part One by Niven, Mandell, Lam

This is an adaptation of Ringworld in a manga style, and suffers, like many adaptations to comics, from being too faithful. Mandell does not know what to cut, what to add, when to put in beat panels, or when to modify Niven's arch dialogue. And, inevitably, the art has trouble dealing with the scale of the Ringworld, as all depictions of Ringworld do. Still, Teela, Speaker, and Nessus are all cute, and the novel is a classic. I'll pick up v2.

The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman

A very dark illustrated novel of two men, Scotland, and revenge. As a father, this was hard to read, but good.

Marvel Masterworks: Warlock v1 by Thomas, Kane, Freidrich, Brown, et al

While DC did occasionally recognize that the 1970s were happening (Green Arrow, "I Am Curious - Black!"), they mostly kept publishing the same kind of formula they'd been doing. Marvel, by contrast, tried very hard to tap into the counter-culture, and while their successes were few, and their failures epic, even the failures are trippy and interesting forty years later. This volume collects Warlock's time on Counter-Earth, where "counter" in this case means both "the Earth on the opposite side of the Sun", and "counter-culture". He's a gold-skinned alien hippie savior who talks like Shakespeare, hangs out with radical youth, and dies like Jesus. Starlin took him further, but he started out here. Far out, man.

Atomic Robo And The Fighting Scientists (v1) by Clevinger & Wegener

Fun, but I kept expecting Robo to rip off his helmet and turn out to be Hellboy. (Though this is certainly more, as I said, fun than the last ten years of Hellboy.) But, yeah, the basic formula of "guy who wants to be human and spends his time punching Nazis and weird menaces in the face while making smart-alec remarks" is not new.

Comic Book Babylon by Tim Pilcher

The story of a man not much older than me, who got involved in the London comics scene at just the right moment to become an assistant at Vertigo Comics' London office, which largely ran on dubious expense reports, gay sex, and lots of ecstasy. Many great comics that I own passed through his hands, but it is now clear why so much of Vertigo's early output seemed disjointed and incomprehensible: Their only plan was to throw things at the wall and hope they stuck. If you've read any biographies in which drugs ruin everything, this is another one, but it's interesting to see how other comics fans live.

Comments

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

Note: Since my readership contains a high percentage of white male SF readers over the age of 45, someone is gonna comment on my review of the Heinlein bio. This comment itself will only stop a percentage of them; the rest will get stubborn.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

I don't fit that category, but: I find that my patience for Heinlein, the man, is going the same path as my patience for Lazarus Long. When I was twelve, I was heartbroken to learn of his death, but the more I learn, the more certain I become that if he showed up (miraculously undecayed) in my living room today, I would usher him out with the same speed and gracelessness I would apply if the children opened the door themselves and invited in a recruiter from the KKK.

Anyone too proud to accept his partner's contribution to the household should fly solo, lest he hypocritically require that partner to go hungry to soothe his ego. That guy is not a good guy.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's a bit where he rips a university president a new one for not allowing women to get engineering degrees... then a few chapters later he states that no woman should ever take a job from a man with a family to support. So, those degrees are purely ornamental outside wartime? Or, when he was writing Rocket Ship Galileo, he was very clear about wanting to include boys of different ethnicities, but "females only in minor roles, of course". The hell?

If he materialized in my living room, I expect we'd have a pointed conversation about that stuff.

[drwex]

My way of viewing Heinlein is indelibly colored by my experiences with my grandfather, who was of the same age/era and many of the same views. I don't think Heinlein is deserving of worship but I suspect I would have the same problem condemning him that I had trying to talk with my Granddad about "negroes" and explaining why he should not use words like "coloreds".

F'rex my Granddad had no problem playing bridge socially with black couples, but also saw no problem belonging to a golf country club that was whites-only for at least a chunk of my childhood. Decades on I cannot find a way to wrap my head around what I see as a screaming contradiction but he saw as perfectly normal.

[ckd]

I'm not yet over the age of 45. :-)

I haven't read the Patterson bio yet, though I've read the Stover and Franklin (and hoo boy did Franklin ever have an axe to grind). The impression I get from those and the reviews of Patterson are that I'd both like RAH and find him irritating, sometimes at the same time. (Much like the relationship I had with my maternal grandfather, come to think of it.)

[drwex]

On another note, I saw the Carnegie Hall show where Gaiman read "Truth is a Cave". He also read his version of "Hansel and Gretel", which he said was due out this November.

From the stage he told the story of a woman who asked him if it would be suitable to bring her child to the reading. Gaiman warned her that although he thought the Truth story would be OK, he was planning to read H&G and the child might not be able to cope with that.

Chacun a son gout, I guess.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

I suspect that I won't actually buy a copy of the Ringworld graphic novelization, but I'd love to see what Speaker-to-Animals winds up looking like.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

He's in a few of the panels shown here.