From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 27, 2004
And shame on me for NOT borrowing that book "The
Descent" at the
library. I WAS a fool to buy it.
It is NOT very good.
Granted, it grabbed me with the concept, and had nice
standard thriller
suspense, and some okay characters, up to a point, and
I couldn't put
it down, but JEEPERS, man, the whole story turned into
"made-for-TV"
bullshit about halfway through! There are HUGE, GAPING
holes in the
logic of the plot, and the ending has got to be the
most confused and
mis-handled thing EVER in a modern potboiler. Unless
I MISSED a scene
where our heros got INNOCULATED, they should be dead
too along with
everybody else down there. That's only one of many GLARING
plot errors,
the kind where you're trying to suspend disbelief but
you have to go,
"Wait a minute, I simply CANNOT swallow this resolution...
it's like
the author has forgotten or BLOWN OFF half the conditions
he set up
earlier!" In the end I decided it was actually
WORSE than the most
recent Michael Crichton thriller I read ("Prey"),
and that's really
saying something, because THAT guy is UNRELENTINGLY
mediocre.
I HOPE you were recommending the book seriously, and
not as some kind
of mean insult to my intelligence, because I thought
that book was
basically DUMB.
Couldn't put it down, but it was still DUMB and made
me feel dumb for
having BOUGHT it.
And now I'm stuck with the guy's Jesus Clone book!
Well, maybe it'll
be the same way. An engrossing distraction that ends
up making me feel
superior in some ways and like an inferior dumbass in
other ways.
I switched to rereading The First Men in the Moon --
a paperback I got
when I was ten years old and have kept all this time,
although it seems
the last time I read it must have been in the 70s.
I will again mention China Meiville's "Perdido
Street Station" as a
"rollicking good read."
--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath
of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
PRABOB
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>
"Rev. Ivan Stang" wrote:
> I HOPE you were recommending the book seriously,
and not as some kind
> of mean insult to my intelligence, because I thought
that book was
> basically DUMB.
I was recommending it because I liked it enough to read
all his other
novels afterward. Sometimes we match up, you and I,
and sometimes we
don't. I have read so many hundreds and hundreds of
various types of
fantasy novels that sometimes just creating a good mood
and having a
good hand with imagery fools me into a happy reading
experience. Must
not be analytical enough.
So I guess you probably won't want to look for three
novels by Geoffrey
Jenkins which I really enjoyed, A Twist of Sand, The
River of Diamonds,
and The Disappearing Island (aka A Grue of Ice), which
would probably be
a lot cheaper since they were published in the '60s
and are that old
little kind of paperback they used to have instead of
what they have now
which is basically a hardback without the back.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>
nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com> wrote:
> I was recommending it because I liked it enough
to read all his other
> novels afterward. Sometimes we match up, you and
I, and sometimes we
> don't.
You do seem to get something out of croquet that I'm still missing.
>I have read so many hundreds and hundreds of various
types of
> fantasy novels that sometimes just creating a good
mood and having a
> good hand with imagery fools me into a happy reading
experience. Must
> not be analytical enough.
Depends on what's being analyzed. If a movie is somehow
sweeping me
along I don't see the microphones accidentally left
hanging in the
frame. But if suddenly the hero pulls a MAGIC GUN out
of nowhere to
save his ass, it wrecks the mood because they've forced
me to think
about the scriptwriter instead of the hero.
A long time ago I realized that I didn't understand
storytelling and
plotting all that well, but I wanted to write a SubGenius
Movie before
some fuckwad did, so I started really paying close attention
to the
"PLOT OUTLINE" shall we say, while watching
a movie or reading a book.
(This started in 1984 I would say.) When I watch a movie
there's a
little typewriter in my head that's compiling all the
main plot events
in a kind of mental list, and putting them on the curve
or series of
curves which denote rising suspense, break for comedy
relief, all that
standard shit. (TV movies are grossly different from
real movies or
books in the way they're plotted, revolving around 10
minute chunks for
commercials, as they do). I never did write the movie,
although the
folder of keen bits and details is now a foot thick.
Anyway, I still
have this habit of mentally examining the WRITING behind
a movie, and
the PLOTTING behind a novel, while it's in progress.
Since my memory is
well you know, this had grown to be quite a mental discipline.
It comes
in REAL handy with deliberately complex and mysterious
movies, where
you have to mentally juggle various levels of double-crossing
or
whatnot to keep up with events.
But this habit also makes it easier for a well-inflated
novel to
suddenly deflate for me, if the author appears to have
FORGOTTEN
something that EVEN *I* was able to remember. If the
author appears to
have DELIBERATELY "forgotten", that's really
a boner-killer.
> So I guess you probably won't want to look for
three novels by Geoffrey
> Jenkins which I really enjoyed, A Twist of Sand,
The River of Diamonds,
> and The Disappearing Island (aka A Grue of Ice),
which would probably be
> a lot cheaper since they were published in the
'60s and are that old
> little kind of paperback they used to have instead
of what they have now
> which is basically a hardback without the back.
I guess I might anyway.
I'll tell you what though, despite the glaring plot
holes, that novel
"The Descent" does indeed set up a hell of
a great concept -- nyuk nyuk
-- and maintains such a vivid atmosphere around it that
it does stick
with you. I couldn't stop thinking of all those troglodytes
down there
in the underworld and I even found myself blabbering
to friends about
them spontaneously just as if they were real.
I just started the Jesus book after re-reading First Men in the Moon.
I realized something when reading First Men in the Moon.
I read that
novel probably at least 4 times before I was 25 ...
but NOW, IT'S
ALMOST AS IF I WAS READING IT FOR THE FIRST TIME. Rather,
it's like
somebody ELSE read it 4 times, on some other planet,
and that's a fact
that I know about, but only in a theoretical way...
that's how few real
and accurate memories I had of the book. What I did
remember was
actually an amalgam of the book (as understood by an
11 year old), the
comic book, the movie, and the comic book of the movie.
(I think the movie's ending is an IMPROVEMENT over the
book's ending!
In my opinion. In the book, the Selenites simply kill
Cavor so he
can't radio the instructions for Cavorite back to Earth.
The movie
ended with all of the Moon civilation destroyed by contamination
by
Earth microbes from Cavor and Bedford. This was more
thought-provoking.
Of course, when HG write the original in 1899 or whatever,
there
weren't 18,000 Star Trek episodes around to make his
ending look old
hat.)
My paperback copy of First Men is from 1964 and the
cover bears the
blurb, "NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!" On the
inside back cover are
shitty drawings by me of "A Selenite Butcher"
and "The Grand Lunar".
Geoffrey Jenkins you say. This isn't some homo thing
for writers named
"Jeff" is it? I'll check it out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>
"Rev. Ivan Stang" wrote:
> I'll tell you what though, despite the glaring
plot holes, that novel
> "The Descent" does indeed set up a hell
of a great concept -- nyuk nyuk
> -- and maintains such a vivid atmosphere around
it that it does stick
> with you. I couldn't stop thinking of all those
troglodytes down there
> in the underworld and I even found myself blabbering
to friends about
> them spontaneously just as if they were real.
There, you see? I also came to appreciate the fact
that when Jeff Long
describes falling off a mountain and landing in a heap
with half a dozen
bones broken, that's what it is REALLY LIKE. And I
just have a real
fondness for the idea of the ancient lost city of THE
DEVILS in the vast
caverns beneath the Pacific ocean.
> (I think the movie's ending is an IMPROVEMENT over
the book's ending!
> In my opinion. In the book, the Selenites simply
kill Cavor so he
> can't radio the instructions for Cavorite back
to Earth. The movie
> ended with all of the Moon civilation destroyed
by contamination by
> Earth microbes from Cavor and Bedford. This was
more thought-provoking.
> Of course, when HG write the original in 1899 or
whatever, there
> weren't 18,000 Star Trek episodes around to make
his ending look old
> hat.)
I had a phonographic dramatic recording on LP of the
story that I
listened to over and over again in the late 60s and
early 70s, told
primarily from the viewpoint of Cavor's compatriot on
earth receiving
morse code messages from the moon. It ended hauntingly
with the last
feeble beeps fading out and the protagonist sighing,
"Poor Cavor..."
> Geoffrey Jenkins you say. This isn't some homo
thing for writers named
> "Jeff" is it? I'll check it out.
He is/was apparently a South African gentleman and the
stories of his
that I have read are pretty straight-forward adventures
but they take
place in insanely harsh and bizarre environments like
the thousands of
miles of murderous scorching rocky desert seashore of
the Skeleton Coast
of south west Africa, or the semi-legendary Thompson
Island in the far
far south storm-whipped deadly freezing grey fogbound
Atlantic. The
sometimes feature strange lost Nazi submarine bases
and vast but
inaccessible fortunes.
You're just lucky I didn't get you to buy five or six
John Lymington
novels, all of which would turn out to be about a small
English village
mysteriously isolated from the surrounding countryside
by an unknown
force seeming to emanate from strange machinery installed
in the Manor
House, causing the residents to lose their inhibitions
in a riot of
violence and lust, making ghosts and spirits visible,
and summoning a
vast incomprehensible Power from Far Away to head for
earth in a ticking
deadline rush of impending doom. I swear, they are
almost all that
story. The rather tedious and agonizing movie Night
of the Big Heat aka
Island of the Burning Doomed is based on one of his
novels and I somehow
ended up watching it at least three times because I
kept mistaking it
for something with a similar title which I can't remember
what it is
now. Everybody is just hot and angry and sweating
and then these weird
blob things show up and stuff happens but not a lot.
(http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0062037/)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "nikolai kingsley" <nikolai@broadway.net.au>
> I switched to rereading The First Men in the Moon
-- a paperback I got
> when I was ten years old and have kept all this
time, although it seems
> the last time I read it must have been in the 70s.
i still do that with "Lords of the Starship",
by Mark C Geston. i don't know
why.
nikolai
--
think of it as a personality flaw.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>
I have found myself reading "The Autumn of the
Patriarch" by Gabriel
Garcia Marques every two or three years. It's very liberating
from the
punctuation standpoint. PERIODS? We don't need no steenking
PERIODS.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>
"Rev. Ivan Stang" wrote:
> I have found myself reading "The Autumn of
the Patriarch" by Gabriel
> Garcia Marques every two or three years. It's very
liberating from the
> punctuation standpoint. PERIODS? We don't need
no steenking PERIODS.
I used to read Somebody In Boots by Nelson Algren once a year.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: hellpopehuey@subgenius.com (HellPopeHuey)
HAH! Foolish mortals, Nenslo has no Shame Receptors,
that's for the
lesser beings!
Yeah, I have a book like that. Its by Dean R. Koontz,
of all the
bizarre authors. Long before he became a mega-seller
horror-hack, he
wrote this slim, wonderful tome called "The Haunted
Earth." Its about
a situation in which another dimension becomes melded
with ours and
all supernatural and legendary characters from both
are discovered to
be REAL, or are at least given tangible form by people's
belief in
them. They have to register with the authorities and
pay taxes,
banshees are hired to harass opposing CEOs, spookies
are hired to
scare bad children and the main characters are a detective
and a
smartassed hellhound partner who makes underworld connections
at key
moments. They do trashy investigations in cases such
as a horny woman
keen on having a vampire bite her. The guy leaps out
of a closet with
a plastic neon crucifix just as the fangs are about
to sink in and
tells the vampire he is in legal violation of the Kolchak-Bliss
Agreement. The vampire says "I was Jewish, that
shouldn't affect me."
"Tough, its the law." HAH!
There is a club where all the icons and ghoulies hang
out. A drunken
God and Santa are there with blousy babes on their arms,
iconic
negroes are forced to eat watermelon and fried chicken
before they can
order what they really want and the whole thing is a
wild send-up of
superstition, legends and whacky beliefs. One of those
fun little
discoveries you stumble over as you go. On Amazon, there
are over
27,000 entries including the words "haunted"
and "earth," heh... guess
its never been pushed that hard; it never popped up
as a specific
title. Still, its a fun little read from left field.
--
HellPope Huey
My head is like a tiny Japanese cork garden
with a small porno scene in the gazebo in the
middle
and something truly awful in the pond
"Your opinion of me weighs less than sunlight."
- "Angel"
No matter how cynical you get,
it is impossible to keep up.
- Lily Tomlin
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" <SeventhSqueal@SlowOnTheUptake.edu>
Want to trade? If it's a real book by Koontz I'd like to see it.
seventhsqueal (at) yahoo (dot) commie
~Salacia
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>
"HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" wrote:
> > Yeah, I have a book like that. Its by Dean
R. Koontz, of all the
> > bizarre authors. Long before he became a mega-seller
horror-hack, he
> > wrote this slim, wonderful tome called "The
Haunted Earth."
> Want to trade? If it's a real book by Koontz I'd like to see it.
Published by Lancer, 1973 (Lancer - "The ones that
fall apart") About a
jillion available, ranging from $9.95, to $100.00 for
VF signed by author.
You folks need to know about http://www.bookfinder.com
Amazon is for schmucks. Bookfinder carries listings
from hundreds of
independent and a dozen or so major databases of which
Amazon is merely one.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" <SeventhSqueal@SlowOnTheUptake.edu>
Well now. That takes all the fun out of *trading* for
books doesn't it?
However, being able to reference a 'blue book' value
on an out of print book
is useful. Thanx.
~Salacia
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: hellpopehuey@subgenius.com (HellPopeHuey)
"HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" <SeventhSqueal@SlowOnTheUptake.edu>
wrote:
> Want to trade? If it's a real book by Koontz I'd
like to see it.
> seventhsqueal (at) yahoo (dot) commie
Wish I could accomodate you, but the evil alien reverse-vampire
flying monkeys stole it during one of my last 7 moves
as I tried to
stay one step ahead of the Trilateralist brain-sucking
C.H.U.D.
snake-handling zombie Shriners. Besides, it was falling
apart. If
that's not a straight line or KILL ME.
You people bring out either my best or my worst and
I am too crazy to
say which. Hey-"Bob"-A-Re-"Bob!"
--
HellPope Huey
My head is like a tiny Japanese cork garden
with a small porno scene in the gazebo in the
middle
and something truly awful in the pond
"Your opinion of me weighs less than sunlight."
- "Angel"
No matter how cynical you get,
it is impossible to keep up.
- Lily Tomlin
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Rev. Jihad Frenzy" <cht@gis.net>
hellpopehuey@subgenius.com (HellPopeHuey) wrote:
> Yeah, I have a book like that. Its by Dean R.
Koontz, of all the
> bizarre authors. Long before he became a mega-seller
horror-hack, he
> wrote this slim, wonderful tome called "The
Haunted Earth."
YES! That is the ONLY Koontz book I own and it's the
only Koontz book I
will ever own, despite the fact that the incredibly
dirty sounding name
Koontz appeals to me.
Truly a marvelous novel. I think I'll reread it this weekend.
Thanx, Huey, for reminding me of it!
--
Rev. Jihad Frenzy
"I've got monkeys in my pants!"
Robert John Cusack
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "nikolai kingsley" <nikolai@broadway.net.au>
> I have found myself reading "The Autumn of
the Patriarch" by Gabriel
> Garcia Marques every two or three years. It's very
liberating from the
> punctuation standpoint. PERIODS? We don't need
no steenking PERIODS.
if you're the sort of person who reads out aloud under
their breath, this
could be fatal.
nikolai
--
i do this, but only for the good bits:
"And omnipresent amid all the frenzy of Shanghai
is that famous portrait, that modern icon. The faintly
smiling, bland, yet somehow threatening visage
appears in brilliant red hues on placards and posters,
and is painted huge on the sides of buildings. Some
call him a genius. Others blame him for the deaths
of millions. There are those who say his military
reputation is inflated, yet he conquered the
mainland in short order. Yes, it's Colonel Sanders."
- P.J. O'Rourke, "Eat the Rich"
Original file name: Shame On You, Nenslo.txt - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05
This page was created using TextToHTML. TextToHTML is a free software for Macintosh and is (c) 1995,1996 by Kris Coppieters