BOOKS: Planet Of The Damned

That damned planet!

Planet Of The Damned, Harry Harrison

Thrashed cover

    A few weekends ago, my wife, daughter, and my mother all went to a fabulous little festival in the town we live in. It's called Derryfest. It's as amazing as it sounds. It's just a big park with vendors set up under tents, basically. There are other things (a talent competition, an exotic animal exhibit, some bounce-houses for the kids, lots of food, etc), but mainly it's just walking around and visiting the tents of various local businesses. The Derry Public Library (which is directly next to this park where Derryfest was taking place) also had a tent. Well, it wasn't a tent, but they were there. You could pay two dollars and get a decent-sized bag, and you were then allowed to fill it with as many books as you could from all the available books they had outside. At first, I was like, "oh man, this is gonna be great! I'll pay two bucks and walk away with like twenty awesome books!" Well, my exuberance was a little premature. There were probably a dozen-or-so boxes of books (humorously, all the boxes were old liquor boxes), and I left there with six books (one was a book I already owned). To say the selection was awful would be an understatement. But, I was determined to somehow try to get my money's worth. I grabbed five books that looked like they might be at least partially interesting, and also looked like they might be partially sci-fi. One such book was this one here, Planet of the Damned, by the creatively-named Harry Harrison. 

    You can tell from the cover that it's thrashed. It's the worst-conditioned book I own, and I was a little concerned I wouldn't be able to finish it before pages started falling out like autumn leaves (the very first two pages fell out, plus most of the spine was ready to give out by the time I finished it. If I ever want to read this book again (improbable, but not impossible), I'll have to purchase a new copy. But hey, for essentially 33 cents, I'll take it!). But, finish it I did. This was a book that I knew absolutely zero about going in. That can oftentimes be an exciting prospect. Although, just from reading the cheesy text on the front and back of the book, my expectations were very low. But it was very short (I believe 135 pages?), so I just decided, what the hell, I'll give it a shot. 

Thrashed back cover!

    Overall, I thought this was an enjoyable book. The plot is pretty easy to follow, and there aren't a whole lot of those alien concepts thrown about that man's imagination (this man's imagination, anyway. I'm looking at you, Solaris!) can barely grasp (this is by no means "hard sci fi". Essentially, a man from a little, fairly isolated planet is recruited to help save another planet from being bombed by yet another planet. See, the planet in question that is in danger of being bombed, Dis, is full of unsociable assholes, basically. Their leaders want to drop cobalt bombs on their neighboring planet (that would be Nyjord, the aforementioned, "yet another planet"). The neighboring planet does not want bombs dropped on it, so in retaliation, they are threatening to drop hydrogen bombs on Dis. The book follows the exploits of Brion, who has been tasked with trying to save the planet Dis from total destruction. The story moves pretty fast, and there is very little down-time. From the opening chapter of Brion fencing on his home planet to win a very prestigious (at least on his planet) tournament, the action never really lets up. There are some chapters with nice violent (but not bloody or gory or anything) action, and some with speculative dialogue. 

    The descriptions of the alien planet, and the strange creatures and humanoids that live on it are good. The narration and dialogue I generally thought was decent too. The story keeps you guessing at what exactly is causing the leaders of the Disan people to want to drop bombs on their neighbors, and it isn't divulged until the last few chapters. Even the penultimate chapter has you wondering exactly what might happen to the protagonists. It's a great chapter, and a good one to (almost) end the book off with. The final chapter is the worst in the book. Without spoiling much, it's just two characters talking (in maybe some of the worst dialogue in the book), then another character joins in, and one of the characters says he wont' do something, then immediately changes his mind and says he will do it. If any of that makes sense. Even this didn't bother me much, because most of the rest of the book was good. I mean, this didn't blow me away, and it's not something that will stay with me for years, but it's a good, light, fast read. Again, for you quick readers out there, I'm sure you could blow through it in probably two days. This seems to be my shortest book post yet, but I honestly don't know if there is a whole lot more to say. Maybe that's an indictment on the book itself? Or, more likely, one on me because I can't think of anything else to write. Hell, the first paragraph was about how I bought books at our town's local festival.

    In summary, this was a good book, but not an amazing book. As far as the other sci-fi I've covered in my blog, this book ranks near the bottom. It may be on par with Orphans of the Sky, but perhaps a small notch below it. Besides that book's dumb sexism, it was enjoyable, had an interesting idea, and memorable characters. Not that Planet of the Damned doesn't have an interesting idea (it does), but the characters aren't as memorable. While I suppose you could say there's sexism to be found here, it's probably not as bad as Heinlein's book. I didn't want to mention anything about sexism, because I really don't want each sci-fi blog post about a book from the 1960's to devolve into a discussion on that, but just know there is a female character in this book, and she's instrumental in solving the book's main problem. She's handled well, but not perfectly. At any rate, it's right around Orphans of the Sky. It's not as good as Solaris, Dolphin Island, or Fantastic Voyage, but it's in no way bad. Okay, since I feel like I'm talking in circles, I'll wrap it up. 

    As far as books go, I started one a few days ago, but won't really start to get into it until next week (around October 20). Look for that post to be up around Halloween probably. Nextly, I have a few more blog posts I need to write, namely a few more Dark Souls II ones, and a brand-spanking new "B-LOG SLAYING" post. Plus other stuff. So much writing, so little time. 

I would suggest this book to fans of sci-fi that focuses on strange alien planets and creatures. It won't blow you away, but it's fast and fun. 

Broken spine

 

BOOKS: Fantastic Voyage

Marvel at the wonders of the human body!

Fantastic Voyage, Isaac Asimov

    Isaac Asimov, as I've mentioned, was (and is still looked at as) one of the big three of sci-fi writers of his day. He's written myriad classic sci-fi books. And in 1966, he wrote a novelization to the movie, Fantastic Voyage. I generally look at movie novelizations as lame cash grabs. Is that unfair, though? Besides this one, I've never read one before, so perhaps I'm wrong. At any rate, this particular novelization was written by a very good, respected author, not Johnny Poor-Pants (...or, something). I picked this book up on a whim, because, I believe, it was stupid cheap at a closing book store (less than a dollar, I wanna say). Very low price, an interesting (albeit sort of silly) concept, and a good author all combined to make me say, "eh, why the hell not. I'll give it a whirl." And a whirl it was given.

Definitely a cool cover

    Overall, I enjoyed this book. It has a similar tone to Dolphin Island, in that both are short, fun adventure novels. Although the stakes in Fantastic Voyage are quite a bit higher than in Dolphin Island, where in Voyage it's basically the difference between winning and losing, "the war". Who are the protagonists warring with? Well, Them, Over There, of course! No enemy is ever mentioned. In fact, where the protagonists are situated is never said either (just, Here). I've read that this is clearly meant to be a Cold War, US vs USSR kind-of-thing, and honestly, that was my first thought when they start mentioning vague enemies in a vague war. At any rate, the basic plot of the novel goes like this: a brilliant scientist has defected from Them to Us, and he holds information that could win the war for either side. As he's being brought to the HQ, an attempt is made on his life. He survives, barely. He has a blood clot in his brain, and it can't be operated on from the outside. Well, what's a government to do? Why, they plan a fantastic voyage, of course!
    As I'm sure everyone knows, from just hearing the title Fantastic Voyage, this is the story of men and women who are shrunk down to bacteria-size (actually, maybe a bit smaller than bacteria?) and are injected into the bloodstream of a living man!This is pure sci-fi goodness, here. Apparently, even Asimov realized the silliness of it all, but I have a feeling he had fun writing the book anyway. Curiously, he wrote a sequel (twenty-something years later, to boot) called Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain. I don't know if I'll ever read that book, but hell, I never thought I'd bother reading this one, so I'm sure at some point I will.
    Since I'm such a pessimist, I'm going to go over, briefly, my main problems with the book. There aren't many, and in fact, I think there is only one. Asimov clearly knows what he's talking about when it comes to the human body. He's very descriptive, and goes into some decent detail about the way the inside of veins, capillaries, lungs, and other bodily-inside-things look. That's all well and good, but for me, Mr. Average Joe Idiot, I had a very hard time visualizing these things in my head. Sure, I can picture well enough a tiny submarine floating down a vein, but corpuscles, arterio-venous fistula, pleura, reticular fibers, and all other manner of biology mumbo-jumbo? I don't want to call them all abstract concepts, because they have definite forms, and scientists can see and study them (so they aren't abstract in the way that all the crazy shit the Ocean from the Solaris novel spewed was abstract), but to my mind, that's the best word. My mental pictures of certain scenes suffered for it. Again, it's probably my problem, and other people can just picture it easily. That's why I sometimes think I'm the least qualified person to read, and subsequently talk about, sci-fi. But I genuinely enjoy it, and I really like the way it gets my mind to think about things (when I can think about things, anyway). But hey, on the bright side, maybe you'll actually learn a few things from the human body as you read this book!

THE MOST INCREDIBLE ADVENTURE NOVEL OF OUR TIME! (if you haven't heard)

    Finally, since I brought it up with Orphans of the Sky by Heinlein, I decided to be on the lookout for bullshit 60's sci-fi sexism. I'm happy to report that while, yes, there is a little bit of it, it certainly doesn't reach Orphans levels of awfulness. I'm not trying to champion any causes here, I just think it's very interesting (and abhorring) how these male authors (and, unfortunately, the male world at large) saw women back in that time. But, there is a woman on the five-person team that gets miniaturized, and it's clear she's very smart, but she gets a good amount of grief from one character (his name is Michaels, for future reference), because she is a female. The other three don't really care. And, I suppose, by the end, there might be a reason why Michaels (hey, future reference!) is a sexist pig towards her. 

    Okay, enough bad stuff. This was a pretty good book. I know sci-fi writing can be seen as cold, sterile, and its not always known for developing characters (characters are pushed aside for story. I'm usually okay with this), but Asimov here differs from those labels. Maybe the characters aren't as fleshed out as in other books, but Asimov is a great writer, and his narrative is easy and casual. Like I said, it was actually fun to read. I'm not sure this counts as, "hard sci-fi", as it were, but that's more than okay with me. 

    The story is good, and it always keeps you interested and on your toes. There's lots of action (including harrowing scenes of: gathering oxygen from the lungs, traversing through the ear, and the final escape from the body, to name three). Besides the action inside the body, there's also a mini-mystery about a potential spy or traitor on the submarine. Also, I'd like to document my enjoyment of the scenes describing white blood cells and antibodies destroying foreign objects. In one chapter (chapter 14, "Lymphatic") the crew witnesses a battle between antibodies and bacteria, and one character (Cora. Okay, sometimes the way she reacts to certain things could be construed as sexist) is horrified to see the antibodies quite literally just squeeze the bacteria to death. Also, one scene at the end shows how terrifying a white blood cell would be to something smaller than it. These parts were some of my favorites, and they gave a sense of the unknown. Asimov isn't writing about space here, but he might as well be, considering how alien everything looks and acts in the human body.

    I think that about wraps it up, ladies and germs (pun definitely intended). This was a fast read (you quick readers could probably breeze through in a couple days. Hell, probably even one!) at only 186 pages. It had good action, an interesting idea, characters that I enjoyed reading about (mostly), and it's very well written. Confusing body part descriptions aside, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the book. I will say, I was never in much doubt about how the book was to end. I've never seen the movie for which the book was based (off of the screenplay, actually), but I had a very hard time believing the crew wouldn't get the job done, one way or another. I don't really consider that a spoiler, because I never thought otherwise during my read. That's a negative too, but it isn't like a mystery novel or anything, so it isn't a huge deal. Besides, all the talk about spies had me guessing until the end (was there one? Wasn't there one? Read to find out!). I'm not sure what I'm going to read next, but it'll probably be more sci-fi. I'm probably only going to have time to read one book in the next few weeks, because I want to focus more time on working on this blog, and gaming. Thanks for reading, everyone! Now, go pick up an actual book by an actual author, won't you?

I would suggest this book to any sci-fi fan, or any fan of short adventure novels. Just keep a medical dictionary near by!

Spines by Epson

BOOKS: Mr. Mercedes

I want my mother!

Mr. Mercedes, Stephen King

 

    Stephen King is an author I hold near-and-dear to my heart. He was the first, "adult" author, I ever read. Goosebumps and Choose Your Own Adventure were fine for a while, but eventually I needed something more. Oddly enough, the first King book I ever got was On Writing, which is a half-memoir/half-writing tips. I was aware of who Stephen King was at this point (I was probably thirteen at the time), but I didn't know very much about him. After reading through, and enjoying On Writing (so many swears! My thirteen-year-old self was at first shocked, then absolutely delighted), I decided it was time for some big boys. My first real novel by King was The Shining. Suffice to say, I was blown away. That hooked me on reading (and specifically, reading his novels). After The Shining, I read It, and from there, I don't really remember the order. I've read at least thirty of his books by now, just a few months away from my 27th birthday. What in the world does this rambling have to do with this book I recently finished? Absolutely nothing, besides to illustrate how much King means to me. He (via his On Writing book) influenced me to start taking writing seriously (which I still do, BARELY), and he really gave me a huge love/appreciation for horror. I've been reading a lot of sci-fi lately, but I can always come back to King.

This book has a great, disturbing dust jacket

    This is Mr. King's most recent fare (as of 8/16/14), and I got it for free, as a matter of fact. A local record shop near me, Bullmoose Music, moved their store and had a grand re-opening. I won a free book voucher, and I grabbed this. This is classic King, yet it's also somewhat of a departure. I know he's been pigeonholed as a "horror writer", but he's written many things that don't come close to that. This book has no traces of horror, supernatural, sci-fi, anything like that. It's essentially a crime story, and even then it has some cliche parts to it. It's got a disgustingly maladjusted killer with mommy issues; an ex-cop contemplating suicide; killer sending taunting letters to people. However, I enjoy the way King writes and narrates, and I wasn't too bothered by that stuff.
    There's a potentially much larger issue with the book, one that I had read beforehand on a Goodreads review, so I tried to keep conscious of it throughout. Without spoiling much, essentially the main character (retired detective Bill Hodges) withholds large amounts of evidence from his old police buddy, and in turn goes after the killer himself (with a misfit crew towards the end). The review I read stated that this was a book-breaking piece of information. If Hodges had just given his information straight to the cops, the reviewer posits, the killer would have been apprehended before other tragic events in the book take place. Does that make sense? I was aware of this piece of information, but it didn't bother me that much. Hodges has just enough justification to keep the police out of his private, and illegal, investigation, as far as I'm concerned.
    Okay, besides the cliche cop stuff, and the "withholding vital information" bit, the final thing that slightly bugged me about this book is the antagonist, the titular, "Mr. Mercedes". His name is Brady (that's hardly a spoiler, it says that right on the inside flap), and he's as vile a villain as King has ever come up with. Besides the fact that he murders several people in the book, he comes off as very unlikeable. Obviously, right, I mean, he is the bad guy? But he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He's a psychopath, through and through. And a damn racist one, at that. Any prospective readers, let me tell you now, if you are offended by the, "n-word" (or other vulgar racist slang), I would not read this book. Maybe not liking the antagonist of a book is a silly qualm to have, but King has made better villains. Brady works as a horrible killer, and nothing more.

Back cover. Creepy as all get-out

    Overall, I enjoyed my time with this book. Perhaps I mis-spoke (mis-typed?) above when I said this was, "classic King". What I meant was, I could tell this was a Stephen King book. Despite the fact that there is almost no violence/gore -- I love the way King talks about, and describes, gore. He's very good at it -- whatsoever (except the very first chapter, the middle, and one scene towards the end), King's casual narrative and great dialogue are still here. There's no horror aspects, as stated, but it's still right in King's ballpark. I'm a bit of a King honk, so I can enjoy his works that others don't like (Tommyknockers still sucks though), so take my opinions for what they are. Most of the characters are likable and unique, the whole story moves fast, there's some action, and a bit of mystery. I don't know how much of this book I'll remember in six months or a year, but there was one chapter that I remember thinking, I cannot wait for this chapter to be over. I don't want to read this anymore. Despite how it sounds, that's actually a compliment. It was just such a disturbing account of a broken family with mental health issues, and how those issues were ultimately dealt with, that was heartbreaking and fairly sickening. This chapter will stay with me for a while, at least.
    I have read a fare amount of King's new material since 2011: besides this, I very recently read Joyland (his second Hard Case Crime novel, and the amusement park in the book was inspired by an amusement park that is five minutes down the road from my work!), which I thought was fabulous, and I read 11/22/63 a few years back, and that was a great read as well. This book is probably my least favorite of his newer books (have yet to read Wind Through the Keyhole or Doctor Sleep), but I would still recommend it to King fans, and I guess to crime fans as well. I'm not sure where else to put this, but there is a fair amount (okay, more than fair) of computer-related stuff in this book (private chat sites, voice-controls for computers, hidden files, computer whiz-kids, etc.), and maybe it's just me, but I always find it weird when Uncle Stevie talks technology. Like, it sorta comes off to me like he is too old to be talking about computers and video games and the like. I know that obviously isn't true, but for whatever reason, it's like my mom trying to tell me about technology.
     I feel this is my most disjointed, rambling book post yet. I'm sorry for that, and if it comes off as even more amateur-ish than my other posts, well, whaddya gonna do? I'm still trying to find my footing with this blog writing. I'm stupidly self-conscious about these, and I constantly think to myself, "man, no one will want to read these, or if they do, they won't take them seriously". It's pretty dumb, because I'm not trying to be a professional blogger or journalist. I'm just a guy that loves writing about stuff. I'm doing this for me. And I have my own style, for better or worse. Anyway, thanks for reading this! Should have another book post (back to sci-fi) up in the next two weeks. Hell, if everything breaks the way I want, I could potentially have EIGHT blog posts up in the next month-or-so. Enjoy!

P.S. Stephen, why does the Under the Dome TV show SUCK SO MUCH?

I would recommend this book to King fans, and maybe crime fans might enjoy this. It's not perfect, but it's still King, and still great to read his new work

Looks great on a shelf!

    

Evolution! v. 2.0

Because genius constantly evolves

  

 NOTE (8/15/14): I'M ABANDONING THE MUSIC IDEA. I'M JUST STICKING TO BOOKS/BOSSES/DARK SOULS II/BACKLOG. THAT'S ENOUGH. I'LL KEEP THIS UP FOR POSTERITY'S SAKE (I say that a lot)

    Okay folks, I wanna make a quick note here. This blog has evolved a LOT in the last 3+ months. Originally, it was going to be used to document boss battles. Then, it was going to just be a blog about my endeavors with all the games I had yet to beat (pay attention to this, it pertains to today). Then, it turned into that plus my thoughts/ramblings on the books I was reading. If a blog about video games and books wasn't random enough, I've decided I wanna bring music into the fold. As with my book thoughts, I'd like to make short posts about the music I listen to. I listen to a decently large variety of music, but it always comes back to metal music. I'm a metal-head at heart, even though I can listen to most music (and indeed, I'll hope to showcase that here). I have 500+ CDs (yup, I'm a chump that still buys physical Compact Discs), and my big idea is to showcase every one. I actually started doing this on Instagram (follow me, I'm @kalameet), and got a good 100+ CDs in, before I just gave up. If I do it here on this blog, I can expand my thoughts a bit, and hopefully I'll keep up with it. I know it's a huge undertaking, but each post won't be huge, so I should, in theory, be able to put up a few a week, at least.
    Now, on to the matter at hand for today. Last night, I went through and wrote down every game that I own that is in my "backlog" as it were. For the layman, basically any game I own but haven't beaten yet. I was shocked (shocked!, actually) to find I have a whopping 94 (that's NINETY-FOUR) games, across thirteen consoles, to play through. I honestly thought I only had maybe 50. Talk about eye opening. So, I'm going to compile that list on a blog post, and I'm going to update with my progress/thoughts/opinions of the games I'm playing. I'll include as many shitty pictures as I see fit. And, to tie the whole thing together, I will be putting special emphasis on games with good boss battles.
    So, that's that then. Thank you for sticking with me throughout this schizophrenic time. Enjoy reading about books/music/and video games.

BOOKS: Dolphin Island

Dolphins Really Are Super Smart

Dolphin Island, Arthur C. Clarke

    This was a book I was weary of reading, or even purchasing for that matter. Firstly, I LOVE Arthur C. Clarke. I've only read a handful of his books (half dozen, I think), but two, Rendezvous With Rama, and Childhood's End, were two of the best books I read in their respective years . His big claim to fame I would say is writing the book 2001: A Space Odyssey (he wrote the book as the movie was being made, which is interesting). That was a good book that I definitely need to re-read at some point. Anyway, the point is, he's known as a a heavy hitter in the sci-fi game. He's part of the "big three" of the sci-fi guys (the other two being Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov). Back to my introductory sentence, why was I weary of reading this? It's a short adventure book about...dolphins? That's the impression I got from reading the back. Doesn't sound too "sci-fi" to me, and frankly, I was thinking it was just a throwaway book amidst Clarke's fantastic bibliography. How wrong I was.
    I enjoyed this book immensely. Much more than I ever thought I might. Why did I enjoy it? Well, mostly for the reasons I said above. It's quick. It's interesting. It's not too-heavy in social commentary (I didn't think so anyway). It's fun. And this book, more so than maybe any book I've ever read, made me really wish I could visit the main location. It's a beautifully detailed island community. It made me want to swim in the ocean and explore coral reefs. I really don't like the water much, and I can't swim, so in general, I stay away from the ocean. The fact that this book made me want to immediately just drive to the beach, well, that says a whole lot.
 

    I'm very glad Clarke wrote this book. I know he is deeply invested in dolphins/the sea, and his knowledge shows. He expresses in the back of the book that some of his writing about dolphins here (mostly about their high intelligence) is fantasy. He says that while dolphins are very smart, they probably aren't as smart as he depicts them in the book. Despite that bit of truth-stretching, reading this book gave me a new appreciation of dolphins in general. It also does bring up some questions of morals, such as dolphins and their general freedom (it's said in the book that dolphins are free-er than humans, because they have the whole ocean, but later in the book humans start training the dolphins to find ship wrecks, coral fish for fishermen, etc., and it's brought into question if we are indeed lessening their freedom by doing this). It's interesting to think about freedom as a whole, and are you still free if you are essentially being controlled, even just slightly?
    One very interesting bit of the story that gets little time spent on it (which, in the end, is probably for the best) is during the middle, and at the very end, of the book, there is a small mention of an alien spacecraft that crashed eons ago. It is implied that there are dolphin storytellers that have heard the tale (or is it really truth?) from older storytellers, who in turn have heard it from even older storytellers, and so forth. I enjoyed chewing on this bit of randomness, and it almost seems, judging by the very end of the book, that Clarke could write a second dolphin book that centers more on the search for this spacecraft.
    This book didn't have the bloody fighting and moral/religious quandaries of Orphans Of The Sky, and it didn't have the bizarre alien presence and mystery of Solaris, but I think this book was my favorite of the three. It's short, and for someone with time, it could be read in one sitting. It's well-written, and concise, and, as I mentioned, man did it have some great descriptions of the reefs and diving.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun adventure book. Maybe you'll learn a thing or two about dolphins!

BOOKS: Orphans Of The Sky

By Jordan! What the huff is going on here?

Orphans Of The Sky, by Robert A. Heinlein

 

    I'd like to get something out of the way now, before I continue with my thoughts of this (generally) good book. I did a little reading on Goodreads about this book. It's average rating is 3.78 (out of 5), so almost 4 out of 5. Pretty good. I saw some people complaining about the misogynistic tones of this (and other Heinlein/50's-era sci-fi work) book, however. I went into this book, not judging, necessarily, but with a keener eye to try to pick up on this. I've enjoyed a few Heinlein novels that I read years ago (Starship Troopers, Door Into Summer, The Man Who Sold The Moon, The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag, and Citizen Of the Galaxy, but I really didn't care for that one), so I'm not new to him. I honestly cannot possible recall any sort of anti-woman things in those. That doesn't mean they aren't there, I just haven't read those books in a long time. I'm sure they do exist in those books, but I was a dumb teenager and didn't notice them. Now I'm a dumb adult. Unfortunately, there is some misogynistic garbage in here.
    The book is short (my copy was 128 pages), and basically the first 100 pages are fine. There is a passing mention of woman at the beginning, and then nothing until the end. Perhaps the fact that there are no female characters in the book, by and large, can be seen as misogynistic, but that didn't bother me too much. I mean, half the characters in the book are mutants anyway. However, the finale of the book has several cringe-worthy passages. The main character, Hugh, has two wives. Apparently, in this universe, it's the husband's job to name his wife (I guess?). He doesn't even give his second wife a name, and is so gracious as to allow his first wife to keep her old name. What a guy! It must be stated, Hugh has both these wives simultaneously. Other than this, the general tone of how the wives are treated is pretty bad. They are basically just less-than-human (maybe even less than the mutants? The mutants get much more respect from Hugh, and the two other main "good guys", Alan and Bill Ertz) pieces of properties of the men. It's a shame that this comes up, and it adds to the underwhelming ending of the book.
    Let's discuss some good. Overall, this was an enjoyable book, and it had an interesting idea. It's kind of a slam on organized religion (which I'm always down for), and shows how easy it is to manipulate people into believing whatever you tell them. The gist of it is that there's a gigantic spaceship floating through space, and it's inhabitants were all born on the ship, and they all think the ship is their entire universe. Nothing exists outside of the ship. I mean, how can something exist outside of the entire universe? Let's just say, all it takes to convince the main characters is a look at the stars beyond their ship, in the recesses of space.
    There is a whole religion and a set of rules based upon the idea that The Ship (as it is referred to throughout) is the universe. Learning about how the people on the ship live is interesting. It's an existence similar-yet-bafflingly-different than ours. I will say, the mutants (oft-referred to as "muties", which I assume is a derogatory term, although the mutants themselves use it too) were my favorite part of the book. They are basically just humans that were born deformed (due to space radiation, I wanna say), and ostracized from society. The humans fear them, and want them dead. The strongest of them is a two-headed man named Joe-Jim (not a hillbilly, actually. One head is named Jim, one is named Joe). They can be brutally violent (especially barely-brained Bobo. He constantly looks for opportunities for violence and to just eat people), but they don't yearn for it.
    This was an easy read, and I faced none of the confusion I did with Solaris, although I still preferred that book. The ending of this book (despite a nice, bloody final battle) was just a bit too deus-ex-machina for me. In describing how the main characters escape certain death, Heinlein uses the word "luck" (or any of its derivatives) at least half a dozen times. They were lucky enough to be able to use the space pod. They were lucky that it was easy to pilot, despite none of them knowing really how to operate it. They were lucky to be close enough to land on a moon. And hey, they were sure as hell lucky that the moon they landed on was inhabitable.
    Besides the final ten-or-so pages (with all the awful treatment of women, and all that damn luck), this is a good, fast read. It's interesting, has some good action, some diverse mutant characters, and some religious/social commentary. I'm sure you could do far worse.

I'd suggest this book. If you are super-sensitive about characters (and most likely the author) subscribing to the ancient bullshit of women not being equal, perhaps you should pass. 

 

BOOKS: Solaris

You'll never look at alien oceans the same again!

Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem

 

    I don't want to relegate these posts to book reviews, per say (because honestly, there's more than enough people doing that, and doing it much better than I ever could, for me to bother attempting a serious review), but more my general thoughts and opinions about the work. I will give no score, but I will indicate my suggestion to read it or not. So, let's begin, shall we?

    Some time back, I was searching the interwebs (or, interwebz) for book recommendations. I've been on a heavy sci-fi kick the last few years, so that's where my searching lead me. I found a few "must read" sci-fi books lists, and this was on one of them (if I could possibly remember where I found it, I'd link to it. It was probably more than a year ago, if not longer). I read the words, "sentient ocean", and I was in. I've been wanting to find this book for a while. My wife and I, a few weekends ago, went to our favorite used books store, called, well, Used Book Superstore (here's a link: http://www.usedbooksuperstore.com/). They used to have five locations in southern NH and Massachusetts. Unfortunately, all but two of the Mass locations remain. However, they are the two best of those five anyway. They always have crazy discounts, and most books are between $1.99-$4.99. Okay, enough advertising for them.
    Anyway, we went to the one in Burlington, Mass, and found nothing. We decided to try the one in Danvers, which is only about twenty minutes away. As I thought I was setting myself up for more disappointment, I saw this: (!!)

    Automatically, a fairly crappy bookstore(s) visit turned into an awesome one. I snatched this up, and I couldn't wait to read it. Finally, last week, I started it. Since my memory is abnormally lousy, I usually have a tough time recalling everything I've read in a book. So I decided I'd keep notes about this book. This decision also made it easy for me to write up these book thoughts.
    I'm a slow reader, but this book is short, and it goes fast. I read it in a week, which is pretty good for my slow ass. Overall, I liked this book. It was imaginative, weird, confusing (more on that in a moment), and thoughtful. It was actually much different than I thought it was going to be. It's not a bunch of scientists just shooting the shit with the ocean for 211 pages (which I thought it might be), it's far different. The sentient alien ocean, which is (most likely) the only creature living on the planet Solaris, doesn't talk in a traditional sense. It doesn't do anything in a traditional sense. It's very difficult for the human scientists to wrap their minds around this thing. It's so alien, very little is known of it. By the end of the book, both the scientists and reader gain little information about exactly how the ocean works. This is fine with me, I enjoy letting my imagination fill in the blanks. Not everything needs an explanation, and some things just don't have an explanation (at least one that can be understood by human minds).
    I'm not going to summarize the book here. Even though it's a short book, my summary would be needlessly long and probably slightly incoherent, as I'm wont to pop in with innumerable parenthetical notes every other sentence. You can find better summaries elsewhere (I'm great at getting people to leave my page), but I'll briefly talk about two chapters that confused me. The first was chapter eight, entitled, "The Monsters". In it, Kelvin (the main character) reads, at length, from a book in the station's library about the ocean, and it's various forms and structures. The basic gist of the chapter is that the ocean, through long, fantastic processes, creates huge, alien structures that line the planet/ocean. They all have strange names like, "mimoid", and, "symmetriad". It was one of the longer chapters in the books, and it dragged a bit. Lots of flowery language and (for me, at least) tough-to-imagine scenarios with alien geography. I suppose you could look at that as further proof as to just how bizarre Solaris, and it's inhabitant ocean, is, but I find it just a bit annoying.
    This book has lots of chapters where Kelvin reads books and disseminates info from them to the reader. The other chapter that I had a hard(ish) time following was chapter eleven, "The Thinkers". This one has Kelvin reading more books/pamphlets from the library. This time, they are about so-called, "Solarists", or people who closely follow/study the happenings of the strange planet. It goes through several theories that scientists throughout the ages have had about Solaris, and it just becomes too much. It gets boring, and it's a dry read. I found myself reading without really absorbing. Almost reading for the sake of getting through, to the next chapter.
    Other than those two chapters, the rest of the book was a delight. It makes you think about life other than human life. It makes you think about how much we just don't know about literally everything, besides ourselves and human life. And even that, we aren't too sure of. I'm interested in reading more from Mr. Lem, and hopefully I have an easier time locating them than I did with Solaris.

I'd recommend this book. Just pay attention when you read some of the info-heavy chapters. 

 

Evolution!

And it didn't even take tens of thousands of years!

    Okay, guys and gals. We've come to a crossroads of sorts. When I first conceived of this blog, it was going to be strictly about boss battles. And since Dark Souls II had just come out, and since those games (in general) have amazing boss battles, I figured what a great place to start. After finishing the game, I was stuck. What game could I go to next that had great bosses that I could write about? Nothing much came to mind (besides the first two Souls games). Then I thought of the God Of War series. Now that's a series that has great boss battles. But, I've beaten all but the most recent game (Ascension). While I would like to go back and replay those games, I have such a gigantic backlog of games (from NES up to PS3) that I decided it was time to start playing through them. I figured, perhaps I could take pictures, and document my blind progress through all these games. Original? Certainly not. But perhaps I could bring a slightly different perspective? Maybe people like my inane ramblings?
    I'll take pictures also, and I'd like to take this space here to apologize, once and for all, for the quality of the pictures. As this is still largely just a service to myself (I'm my target audience at this point, because I'm not convinced, despite the page view numbers, that more than one or two people really even look at this. Thanks spambots!), I don't have the money nor justification to buy that fancy capturing hard/software. I would like it, because I'm sure it makes things much easier, but that's likely not happening. I'll try to take the best pics I can with my phone, and use those. Who knows, if people actually like reading what I write, maybe I can save and splurge on a capture device.
    So, that's that. Going forward, the video game section of this here blog will be my documentations of playing through these games, with an emphasis on bosses, where applicable.
    Wait, video game section? Isn't it ALL video games, you might ask yourself. The short answer is

NO!!

 

    Now, for the long answer. Another passion of mine is reading. After a long drought of non-reading, I'm getting back into it. I've decided I'm going to post my thoughts on what I'm reading. Not reviews, let's say (overdone, eh?), but just my general thoughts and opinions. Now, this may be interesting for the following reason: I'm blind and can't read books* I'm not really smart. I mean, I'm not an idiot, but when it comes to reading and interpreting what I read, well, I'm bad. My imagination has a very difficult time sometimes putting the words on the page into coherent images in my mind. As I read mostly sci-fi, this is sort of problematic. Perhaps with my writings here, I can do two things: help myself figure out/remember things I've read, and let other people know that it's okay not to understand everything you read. You don't need to be an English teacher to appreciate a book. If you read a book, and then you read the reviews of said book, and all you find are people arguing the many enlightened themes of said book, and you say to yourself, "I thought it was just about a planet full of monkeys?", well, then know you are not alone. Maybe this is the place for you. Semi-intelligent book discussion, without people looking down on you!


    So, there it is, ladies and germs. I'd say the split will be 75% video games, 25% books (I'm a slow reader, coupled with my finite amount of time per day I get to read). Hopefully, if any real person reads any of this, they'll enjoy it. My first post under the new format will be for a SNES game called Phantom 2040. I'm not sure when it will be up, but I'd like something to be up by the holiday weekend. See you all there!