Jonathan Palfrey
This is a less clear account of Kipling's life than an independent biographer might aspire to write. It is basically a collection of old memories and musings written down at the end of his life, but they are at least separated out into chapters in chronological order, and written in his own readable and distinctive style. He seems to have had a good memory, stretching back to his early childhood, although of course no human memory is reliably accurate.
He was born in December 1865, survived various early hardships, and lived to January 1936, reaching the age of 70. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, arriving in Stockholm in December 1907 to find the country in mourning for the death of the King.
Not my kind of book: I found it uncomfortable reading, and didn't really understand it.
I bought this at the end of 2014, with a dim memory of having seen perhaps part of the film long ago. It's not the kind of thing I normally read, and I didn't get around to reading it until 2024. Then I read the introduction, the first six chapters, the last three chapters, and didn't feel a need to read the middle nine chapters.
It's a study of the psychology and methods of a mostly successful gang of three confidence tricksters—Silas, Liz, and Bob—and the sexual and other tensions between them.
The book is copyright 1967, and the film was released very promptly in 1968—co-produced by the author, though he didn't write the screenplay. I lived through the 1960s as a child, and I've read a fair amount of science fiction written in the 1960s, but I haven't read much fiction set in the real 1960s, and it feels a bit odd now to be taken back to that time, when the Second World War was a relatively fresh memory and some of the slang in use was left over from the 1940s and 1950s.
The author, Len Deighton, was born in 1929, so he was about 38 by the time this book came out: younger than Silas, older than Bob and Liz.
The book is quite well and carefully written, but it's not the sort of book I really enjoy. The ending is OK but seems rather inconclusive and undramatic; perhaps the author wanted to say that stories don't have to end in triumph or disaster. I see from a synopsis that the film altered the ending in an attempt to add drama to it.
I read this in 1969 “for the first time in years. Better than I thought it would be—quite good, in fact.”
I suppose I'd read it as a small boy; in 1969 I was 15. I probably haven't read it again since then, and don't have a copy of it.
When I read it in 1979, I commented, “Find it quite absorbing despite its faults.” But I no longer have the book, so apparently I didn't think it worth keeping.
This is a collection of five short novels—novellas, really—and a few other bits and pieces. Each of the novellas is preceded by an introduction written by, respectively: Russell T. Davies, Terry Jones, Simon Brett, Neil Gaiman, and Dirk Maggs. The introductions may be of some interest to Douglas Adams fans.Apart from that, only three of the novellas are any good, and if you already have [b:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 133781708 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (2009-09-01) Douglas Adams https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1698005239l/133781708.SY75.jpg 3078186], [b:The Restaurant at the End of the Universe 123957372 The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Douglas Adams https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1680044961l/123957372.SY75.jpg 145358152], and [b:So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish 6091075 So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #4) Douglas Adams https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327873354l/6091075.SY75.jpg 3078120], you don't need this collection unless you're a Douglas Adams completist or like to have everything in one package.
With this book, the author's inspiration ran out. In its pages, his characters continue to have mind-boggling adventures all over the galaxy, but somehow they've ceased to be memorable or funny.
It's not so bad a book that I can't finish it. It's not actively unpleasant, and it's more entertaining than watching paint dry. However, having finished it, I wonder why I bothered.
It reminds me of the aimless adventures of Rincewind, the least entertaining of Terry Pratchett's principal characters. Arthur Dent differs from Rincewind in some ways, but he has much the same function of escaping from each pointless adventure only to land in another.
This short novel was written in 1970, and it's very much of its time. It's mostly set in 1985 (15 years in the future), but the protagonist (Freddie Fong Fine) and indeed most of the other characters are mainly preoccupied with sex, drugs, and rock music.Freddie is an agent of a strange organization called WAIT SOME, and is investigating a possible grave threat to the security of the USA; but he's amateurish, easily distracted, and often high on something.Now and then we get news items and samples of what life is like in the imagined future year of 1985. On the whole it's an exaggerated version of 1970. Partway through, I realized that I was slightly reminded of [b:Stand on Zanzibar 41069 Stand on Zanzibar John Brunner https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1360613921l/41069.SY75.jpg 2184253] (published in 1968), although that's a better book and three times the length of this one.I initially found this book so tedious and unappealing that I was planning to give it one star. It's not immediately obvious that it has any plot at all. Later on, a slender and implausible plot gradually emerges. I decided that maybe I could be generous and give it two stars: which means that I could tolerate reading it once, but I don't plan ever to read it again.There were some creative works from the years around 1970 (books, music) that I still much appreciate. The best seem almost timeless; some are dated but still good; this is very dated and not much good.There's an introduction by the author written some 30 years after the novel, in which he says he intended it as absurdist, comic satire. Well, it's absurd, but it doesn't strike me as effective, either as comedy or as satire. And Richard Lupoff died in 2020 at the age of 85, so nothing I say will bother him in the slightest.
This is the story of five modern Americans who are unexpectedly and involuntarily thrown back in time to the Roman Empire in the year 165 AD, with no possibility of return, and decide to make it their mission to avert the decline and fall of the Roman Empire—partly in their own personal interests, and partly because they think that a thriving Roman Empire would be better for the world as a whole than the Dark Ages that followed the decline and fall in our history.
This objective would be absurdly over-ambitious, except that they arrive loaded down with advantages. They have a combined skill set that’s almost ideal; they've been sent back with a small fortune in Roman cash, plus books, seeds, medicines, and equipment; and the first person they meet after arriving is perfectly suited to helping them adapt to second-century life.
This is quite a long novel, but it doesn’t stand alone: it’s intended as the first of a series. However, it ends at a reasonable stopping point, not a cliff-hanger, and you can make up your own mind whether to read any further in the series.
It’s a well-researched book, giving details of many aspects of the Roman Empire: if you like reading about the Roman Empire, this one’s for you. It’s easy to read, although rather slow-moving in the first half, and rather preoccupied with warfare in the second half.
As a novel, it has the weakness that its heroes are never seriously challenged: they arrive with all they need to make progress, all the people they meet in the Roman Empire are remarkably cooperative, and their various technological projects encounter only minor difficulties. They have a major challenge hanging over them in the form of a barbarian invasion that could have wiped them out; but their introduction of gunpowder enables the barbarians to be defeated relatively easily.
If you’ve read Stirling’s Island in the Sea of Time, try to imagine it without William Walker, and you’ll have a fair idea of what this book is like. Walker was an exaggerated villain, a Voldemort, and I dislike reading about Voldemorts; but they are an easy way of providing setbacks and surprises to liven up the plot.
I’ll be interested to see whether the next novel in this series provides a more eventful plot and a rather more challenging experience for the heroes. As it stands, this one makes a rather bland novel. I learned from the story at least one interesting new thing about the Roman Empire. I decided years ago that the Romans never conquered Germany because it wasn’t worth the trouble; but I read here that it could have been well worth the trouble if the Romans had known about the silver deposits to be found in Germany.
I also learned a little about the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who had previously escaped my attention because my reading about Roman history has been haphazard.
This novella is the last and longest of Piper's Paratime stories, apart from the novel [b:Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen 1440162 Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen H. Beam Piper https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1264374069l/1440162.SY75.jpg 1430769]. It describes the biggest threat that the Paratime Police have encountered: a large and wealthy criminal organization, including some politicians among its members, that has been slave-trading across different timelines for at least a decade without being noticed, because it operated on timelines unexplored by anyone else.Although it's a good story, it may be a bit confusing if read on its own: it would be better to read the preceding short stories first. In particular, “Police Operation” was the first story about the Paratime Police, and introduces the overall scenario more gently.Note: This novella was first published in 1955, so it is of course old-fashioned in style, in attitudes to men and women, etc. But it's silly to criticize old fiction for being old; if you don't like old fiction, then don't read it.
I read this perhaps more than once in the 1960s and/or 1970s, but I don't think I read it again until just recently. It's a dystopian story, and I tend to avoid dystopias, because I like to be happy, and dystopias don't cheer me up.
I managed to plod through this one. Fortunately, it's a short novel, and there's a happy ending.
The dystopia is actually quite interesting and thought-provoking, although it's set in a far future that none of us will see, apparently long after a nuclear war devastated most of North America at least, and probably most of the rest of the world. The world is very slowly recovering, and humanity is very slowly recovering too, but the small community we visit has a religious dread of mutations, even those that are harmless or possibly beneficial.
The happy ending is flawed in a couple of ways, which I may not have noticed when I read the story long ago.
1. Only three of the characters actually benefit from it.2. The rescuers from far-away New Zealand could just have been nice people, and that would have made a pleasant ending. Instead, they turn out to be as ruthless in their way as the society that the chrysalids are fleeing. I don't see what good that does to the story.
This is a fairly memorable book (I still remembered the outline of the story some 50 years after last reading it), well done in some ways, and I was thinking of giving it three stars, but the flawed ending deprives me of a full reward for plodding through the dystopia, so I'll give it two.
The Bolo is a fighting machine of the future: starting off as just a tank with a little added automation, it gradually evolves over the course of time into an intelligent, self-aware machine capable of operating under its own initiative.
This collection contains six stories, all written in the 1960s, featuring different models of the Bolo in different time periods.
The more substantial stories here are ‘The Night of the Trolls', ‘The Last Command', and ‘Combat Unit'.
‘Courier', ‘Field Test', and ‘A Relic of War' are readable enough but relatively feeble stories.
Like any collection of unrelated stories, this is a mixed bag.
Of the stories, I particularly like and periodically reread “Odd” and “Stitch in Time”, which are both rather poignant little time-travel stories. In the first case, an accidental time-jump seems to have a beneficial effect; in the second case, its effect is unfortunate in at least one way, although the overall balance of effects is hard to assess (a common problem).
“Random Quest” is a somewhat similar story, although the jump is sideways in time, rather than forwards: it's an alternative-world story. I like it a little less, but I also reread it.
“A Long Spoon” is a light-hearted fantasy story, mildly amusing, with a little twist at the end.
“Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty?” is a tedious story that may have seemed more original when it was written than it does now.
And finally we have the title story, the novella called “Consider Her Ways”, which I usually avoid because I find it repulsive. It's about a future world with no men, only women; but that's not inherently repulsive. I think it's repulsive because Wyndham (a male writer, born in 1903) deliberately made it so. Sigh.
This book was first published in 1916; it's an adventure story from a bygone age.
The British protagonist and a few others (not all British) undertake an urgent espionage mission during the First World War, making their different ways across a Europe at war to meet up in Turkey. They experience considerable discomforts and dangers throughout, but in the end their mission is accomplished.
This is not my usual kind of reading, and I don't expect to reread it much, but it's quite readable and passes the time well enough.
I'm not sure that I've ever read it until now (2024). I noted the book briefly in my 1963 diary, but I suspect that I started it without finishing it. I turned 9 years old in 1963.
I commented in 1971, “Quite a good book, but not as good as [b:Stranger in a Strange Land 350 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1156897088l/350.SY75.jpg 908211], which it somewhat resembles.”
Reading this in 1969, I commented, “Good, with a style reminiscent of Buchan in the ending.”
At the age of 14 I found this in the school library and read it out of curiosity; as far as I remember, it was an old copy acquired in the 1930s, soon after publication. I don't remember being much impressed in any particular way. “Funny little bloke,” I commented in my diary.
I commented in 1971, “Imaginative in style, but almost plotless, and I wearied of the semi-intelligibility of the imaginative style.”
I commented in 1971, “As a detective story, a work of art. Not great literature—although better than most—but beautifully arranged, so that one suspected almost everyone in the story without suspecting the real murderer—and yet without the final revelation appearing too contrived.”
This collection contains 14 short stories, average date of first publication 1956. They're all dated, of course. Nevertheless, they're all readable and they display Sheckley's wacky imagination; but by his standards this is a relatively weak collection. Its main value to me is that it includes the story “Ghost V”, which I've been fond of for a long time.
I give the collection as a whole 3 stars, which is a bit generous, but Sheckley's imagination deserves more than 2 stars, even if this collection doesn't show him at his best.
My comments in 1972: “Interesting observations on the writing habits of Larry Durrell (2000 words per morning) and Gerald Durrell (nocturnal). Writing style about adequate, but a mere shadow of her husband's books.”
This is an old story by science fiction standards, originally published in a shorter form in 1941, then expanded in 1958. If you're accustomed to reading old sf, it's readable enough and includes various ideas of some interest, although the plot is highly implausible at various points and characterization is rudimentary.
It features a secret society that is deliberately and successfully breeding humans for longevity, which is quite interesting and a promising start to the story. However, the secret gets out, the society is persecuted by the rest of humanity, and all hundred thousand of its members manage to escape by stealing a huge interstellar spaceship that is very conveniently both present (in Earth orbit) and unguarded. Even more conveniently, one of them promptly invents a new spaceship drive that accelerates the ship to close to the speed of light.
They go on to discover two planets in different solar systems, Earthlike but inhabited by scarily powerful beings of different kinds, before eventually returning to an Earth that is now less hostile to them.
This novel introduces Woodrow Wilson Smith, also known as Lazarus Long, born in 1912 and already 213 years old at the start of the story. He turns up again in various of Heinlein's later novels.
I bought and read the paperback in 1979, and commented in my diary that it was “quite good really. A bit Sheckley-ish.”
The paperback then sat forgotten among my other books until I decided to try it again in 2024. It is quite good really. The story is imaginative, exciting, and frequently surprising. It's a short novel and not an award-winner, but it makes an entertaining ride. For me, it's let down a bit by the ending, which is not really bad but seems a bit frivolous. It's hard to end a novel in a way that will satisfy everyone.
The Kindle edition, which I now have, also contains a short story, “The Gioconda Caper”, which is frankly frivolous, but quite amusing. It's not in any way related to “Who Goes Here?”.
Like the first book in this series, this is chaotic, rambling, and short. However, along the way, it's quite entertaining, and it features a few memorable ideas that you may find referenced here and there in other places:
1. Arthur locking up the computer by demanding a cup of tea.2. The Total Perspective Vortex (and Zaphod's reaction to it).3. The spaceliner delaying takeoff for 900 years, waiting for supplies of damp napkins for the passengers (in suspended animation).4. Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe; and the Dish of the Day.5. The Golgafrincham B Ark.
It remains basically a radio comedy series rather than a novel (or novella).