June 10, 2008
Iron Man (novelization)
By Peter David
As soon as I saw this was by Peter David, I had to get it. And when a "mistake" made by myself at Amazon.com sent a copy winging to me as well as to the friend I was originally ordering it for, well, who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? Right? Bending my rule on buying new books is ok when it's in the pursuit of fangirling, right? Right?
Eh, screw it. I can break my own self-imposed rules.
The novelization is a blast. I knew from the first few pages, where David describes Tony's POV in present-tense during the mortar attack, that I was going to love it, and I was right. David nails Tony's self-destructive and self-deluding nature perfectly (there's a great moment when Tony is considering a friend from college who was a druggie and wonders to himself why anybody would pollute their body with chemicals like that -- and then he takes a sip of his scotch. Heh.). The story of Tony's transformation into Iron Man is handled really well, and there are all kinds of little extra bits of information that are a hoot and a half. This was written from an earlier version of the script and is thus missing a lot of the banter and interplay that were added during shooting, but it's still a lot of fun. Probably only a must-read for fans of Peter David or of the movie, though.
Book 11 in 2008.
June 02, 2008
Science Fiction Omnibus
Edited by Groff Conklin
Wow, this was an amazing anthology. Everything from Lovecraft to Bradbury. Conklin is an amazing editor with fantastic taste. Plus, there's something kind of awesome about reading a book that is physically older than I am by a significant amount. Two thumbs up!
Book 10 in 2008, go me! Only 19 books to go til I can buy more.
March 30, 2004
Otherland Volume IV: Sea of Silver Light
Wow, the last book.
This series kicks butt. Well, it's not really a series, since it's one big story broken into four long volumes, but anyway: it's GREAT.
Tad Williams posesses the ability to create new worlds with such detail and believability that it's hard to imagine them any other way. His vision of the future in these books is so believable that it's hard to imagine that we won't all be jacking in to the 'net through neurocannulas and creating sims and playing weird games online.
Best of all, his characters are all unusual, all fascinating. !Xabbu, the bushman, is a delight, and Renie, who is in many ways the books' main heroine, is a marvel of humanity. !Xabbu's stories are fantastic and moving, and the rest of the group that assembles around Renie and !Xabbu to take down the Otherland network (which has rendered scores of youngsters comatose around the world) is full of idiosyncracies and revelations.
The nature of the Otherland network, when it is finally revealed, is a hammerblow of shock and amazement... and utter believability.
I can't wait to read Williams' newest book.
February 23, 2004
Stranger in a Strange Land
Finally reading this! I've owned it for ages.
Wow, what a neat book! I can really see why people were so affected by this. It's a little dated in spots (it doesn't deal with homosexuality much at all, really) but I enjoyed it. Bits of it are kind of cheesy but I loved the way Heinlein created such a radically different culture for the martians and looked at how it might interact with the culture of humans. Wonderful!