Reviews and Comments

I've finished the first novella in this - "12 Must Die". It's honestly a lot. Dr. Death is apparently a super-scientist with occult powers who uses hypnotism, death rays, Communist agents, and a literal army of zombies to fulfill his goals - ending science and industry in order to drive humanity into a new Dark Age. His method is to murder leading scientists, businessmen, and engineers.

Basically he's Dr. Doom with Ted Kaczynski's ideology.

As is common in old (and modern) pulp tales, the plot doesn't slow down for a second. One wild action scene after another. I was expecting all this, but not so much of it. Like junk food, Dr. Death is best consumed in small doses.

Decided to read something a little lighter, and I'm a big fan of old pre-war pulps.

This one is a villain pulp, built around a scheming evil mastermind instead of a pulp hero. There were a bunch of these back then, all inspired by Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu stories. Few of these were particularly successful, usually only lasting a few issues.

I'm quite fond of them, and this one looks particularly over the top (in a good way).

The somewhat satirical tale of Uncharles, a robot programmed as valet traveling across a collapsing, nearly post-human society, after the death of its master.

Very reminiscent of a lot of 50s and early 60s sci-fi, in that it uses bits of the apocalypse setting to satirize modern scoeity. It's pleasant, but somewhat unchallenging. Good as a lighter read.

My first Didion. Fascinating tour though a vision of a drug-soaked, nihilistic, 1970s Hollywood.

Most of it was seen through the point of view of Maria, the main protagonist, as we follow her slow decline. There are a few bits where POV switches to other characters so we see Maria through their eyes.

I expect all of the sex & drug scenes were a lot more shocking in 1970, but the cynical mood is as up-to-date as ever. Planning on checking out more of Didion's stuff.

Just had a copy of this delivered. I'm a fan of Palmer's writing from her history blog: www.exurbe.com/

Looking forward to reading her stuff in a longer format.

One of the classic works on the Renaissance. I'm told it's quite influential, though Renaissance scholarship has advanced greatly since 1860, so a lot of this quite obsolete. Apparently a lot of the popular preconceptions about the Renaissance come from this book.

It's still well written (and well translated from the Italian).

Found this curious book in a West Florida used bookstore. I've got a weakness for these old, somewhat dry, in-house corporate histories.

I never really gave much thought the exploits of long-dead Floridian telecommunication corporate execs, but I'm fascinated by the old-time corporate culture of company books and musicals. Big companies today don't really have stuff like this anymore, apart from the occasional in-house company magazine.

It was published by the long-defunct General Telephone Company of Florida, which after multiple corporate buy-outs is now a small part of Verizon.

Picked this up in a used bookstore. Don't generally have an interest in military history, but I was a big fan of the author's earlier book - Warrior Dreams - an exploration of American paramilitary culture. It was full of fascinating details about Soldier of Fortune magazine, the rise and evolution of paintball, and the wannabe mercenaries of the American far-right.

Hoping this book will be just as interesting.

Decided to brush up on my Clark Ashton Smith. Probably one of the great unsung pulp fantasists of the 20th century. A contemporary of Lovecraft and Robert Howard, who was probably a better writer than either one.

This 1970 paperback collects all of his stories set in Zothique, his Dying Earth-style fantasy setting.

A band of US Army Rangers battling a robot rebellion. It's pretty disappointing. I wasn't expecting high art from a self-published action-adventure novel, but it's so workmanlike and by-the-numbers.

Very much in the mold of old-school men's adventure fiction, but without the verve that made the best of that genre fun.

All of the soldiers are walking stereotypes: A Texan who says “Whoooooo Dawgies"...a lot. A Native American with mystical beliefs, going by the handle "Chief". The black guy calls the head of the team "Boss" and most everyone else "white boy"

The plot, what there is of it, is simple. A military AI gains sentience and tries to wipe out the human race, and a heroic band of Rangers fights back. Once you know the basic idea, very little of it is surprising.

I'm not opposed to junky pulp fiction, but there are much better options.

Always heard good things about Richard Ford, and thought I'd start with his big award winning book. It got both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, so it's probably not horrible.

Don't want to pre-judge it, but it does seem at first glance, to be another 20th century sad, middle-age, white guy novel. Which isn't necessarily bad, but it's well covered territory.

The story of the Posadists - a Trotskyite faction in leftist politics, best known for their reputation as enthusiasts for UFOs and global thermonuclear war.

It wasn't quite what was I expecting. The reputation of Posadists (at least that I had heard of) was a wild, UFO obsessed subculture. The Posadists, were in reality, a basic political personality cult built around J. Posadas. The details of the cult are depressingly familiar, and the excursions into more Fortean ideas were infrequent.

Quite a bit of detail about the various postwar Communist factions, and their endless machinations.

The Posadists became somewhat more interesting after Posada's death, when the group withered as a political force, but Posadism entered its strange afterlife as a vector for futurist and science fiction ideas.

Worth reading if you've got any interest in the history of the Left or fringe culture.

Solid pulp adventure. The overall plot was a bit too twisty to always follow clearly, but the individual set pieces were fun.

The big gimmick was an entertaining mysterious fear ray.