Tag: science fiction

  • book reviews: may the forth

    (…be with you!)

    It’s Star Wars day and I haven’t done much of anything intergalactic, but I have been doing a lot of reading lately.

    A lot of science fiction, too. So. Almost?

    Worse than my neglect of Star Wars, I checked out a bunch of library books and in such a flurry that a couple have expired before I even got part way through them. I could be here writing a bunch of different reviews if it were not for my distracted self bopping and hopping between titles, I guess.

    That said, the last couple weeks I’ve read:

    Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis

    I don’t know if you’d call Ms Ellis a film maker, reviewer, or an influencer, but it turns out that she’s a helluva author. I’ll be honest, I put this book on my list way back when the algorithm was dropping her video essays into my feed with more frequency and yet my lazy, distractible reading brain took over four years to clamber this clever first-encounter-kinda story to the top of my book stack. But the story sucked me in from the start when I finally started reading it, twisting through the tale of a young woman who finds herself at the centre of an alien government entanglement. It evoked emotions. And it left me adding the sequel to my reading list (though if I’m continuing the trend of being completely honest, it may take me another couple years to finally get around to that one.)

    I Want To Go Home by Gordon Korman

    And speaking of algorithms, whatever secret formula was recommending me digital titles in the Libby app connected to my library account must have pegged me as a middle aged Canadian and realized that I, like a million other Canadian kids who grew up in the 80s, lived on a steady diet of Korman’s goofy stories. I have a whole writer-origin story that revolves around this guy that I’ll happily share in detail to anyone who asks, and so by the way that algorithm might have been onto something. Yeah, this is a kids book and yeah it was a still a little corny like it was when I read it forty years ago, but there is something about the over-the-top silliness of a kid trying to escape sleepaway camp that evoked not only memories of my own childhood reading this same book until the pages were falling out, but the aching familiarity of a youth spent in scouts and church camps I would have fled were I more resourceful. A quick read, but I won’t begrudge the algorithm for taunting me with my lost youth.

    Wool by Hugh Howey

    A different sort of algorithm sucked us into watching the Apple TV adaptation of this decade old collection of linked dystopian science fiction novellas, more plainly called Silo. I had read Wool, the first in the trilogy that is the basis for Silo, waaaaaay back when it first came out and have been telling people to read it ever since. It’s a fantastic story, particularly if you like dark science fiction driven by strongly developed and complex characters. I had told all sorts of people to read it, but sadly I had never read it since. Nor had I read any of the sequels. Having finally caught up with the show, then, I loaded it up and decided to work my way through all three books. I finished Wool this very evening and was reminded of just how much I like this story. I mean, I may let it breath before I jump into book two, but like months. Only months. Not ten years this time, I promise.

  • the three buck book club

    It only makes sense that a guy who cooks on cast iron, spends time in the outdoors and enjoys cooking clean, simple food would also be into vintage books, right?

    I decided that I want to read more in 2023.

    I want do do a lot of things in 2023, but reading is something that is pretty achievable.

    Book. Quiet. Go.

    That said, books are getting expensive. (Grumpy old man alert!) For example, I bought myself a few of the Witcher novels for a Black Friday sale and even discounted they still cost me something like $18 each for paperbacks. And while I love the library, I’ve always been something of a slow, scattershot-type reader and tend to need to renew every book two or three times, or I end up returning it and never finishing it. I also got into e-books for a while but have resorted back to the tactile paper novel for things that are not work-related.

    So, spend a lot of money on books? Read less? Ugh! What’s a guy to do?

    One solution: I was at the local used bookshop on my lunch break the other day. I was hunting for something very specific, but then on a whim started picking out other books that caught my eye…. books that fit a particular set of characteristics:

    1. They were all science fiction
    2. Based on copyright dates, every one of them were written and published before was old enough to really get into reading proper novels, so say mid-80s and prior vintage stuff,
    3. Each of them plot summarized some absolute cheese, camp, cornball, classic sci fi (which is kinda my vibe recently)
    4. None were going to cost me more than $3 per book… used of course

    In other words, I had the makings of a 2023 project in my hands, right there at the cash register.

    The Three Dollar Book Club was born.

    How many of these old campy books from the last century could I read through this year?

    Would people be interested in semi-serious reviews of corny old books?

    When could I start reading?

    What I’m trying to say is that if you’re the kind of person who cooks on cast iron, spends time in the outdoors and enjoys cooking clean, simple food … are you also, maybe into vintage books? Or at least, into reading about a guy who finds himself with a small stack of three dollar used novels from the seventies and eighties?

    If so, you might be in the right place. Stay tuned.

  • Caribbean Star Wars Day & That Yoda Guy

    It’s Star Wars Day. May the Fourth be with you.

    And back in February of 2013, we had a weird and wonderful Star Wars morning on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin (or Sint Maarten).

    While the idea of big ship cruising these days seems about as fantastic as starships and galaxies far, far away, eight years ago we splurged and spent seven days on one of those mega cruise ships touring a short list of tropic islands.

    On one of those islands we found an unlikely science fictional cultural touchstone.

    From where I stand Nick Maley, “that Yoda Guy” seems to be living the dream.

    After a successful career doing special effects for over fifty movies, including co-creating the puppetry work that brought Yoda to life, he semi-retired to a tropical island and opened a museum to showcase his life’s work.

    He also sells prints of his personal paintings… one of which hangs framed on the wall of my living room. A sunset over the water.

    That is roughly the extent of my knowledge of Mr. Maley. Though I do seem to remember nodding a friendly greeting to him back in 2013 when, on a morning off-ship walkabout in Philipsburg, Sint Maarten a few kilometers from the docks, my wife and I stumbled upon the “that Yoda Guy” museum and exhibit in a sand-coloured mos-eisley-esque building adorned with multiple colourful signs beaconing lost Star Wars fans hither into it’s mysterious realms.

    It’s not a big exhibit.

    At least it wasn’t when we visited in 2013.

    The website says that they expanded in 2016, and that Mr. Maley was honoured by Lucasfilm for his work that same year. The tone of the museum space was part Caribbean art shop, part Star Wars artifact collection, and part examination of the lifelong quest for the proprietor to reclaim the credit for his work for which he seemed to have been unfairly deprived. I hope he found his due, and perhaps 2016 marked a new chapter in that legitimacy he seemed to be seeking.

    We brought our art back to the ship and later that day we went snorkeling and ate a big buffet meal back on the boat. That night the massive ship fled out of the Sint Maarten harbour like a rebel transport ship off to the next destination in the inky star-filled blackness of a nighttime sea.

    If your nerdy self happens to dock in Sint Maarten and you need an hour break from shopping for perfume, diamonds or tacky souvenirs, you can’t go wrong embracing the sunny side of the force and paying that Yoda Guy a visit. It’s a sequel I’d like to see myself.