Overdue books
Well, The New Job has as one of it's... um... perks. Yeah, that's the word for it. Perks. One of its perks is a long commute by bus, and I have had a chance to read a few books and catch up on some TV that I missed when I was about eight. Here are the quick reviews, just so nobody thinks I'm holding out on you.
Some Golden Harbor [sic] and When The Tide Rises by David Drake:
Two more books in the Lt. Leary series, following in the same vein as the others. The author describes it as not so much a knock-off of C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower, but rather a knock off of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books (Starting with Master and Commander), which were themselves knock-offs of Hornblower. So it's a knock-off of a knock-off, which makes it twice as good.
The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman.
While I was entertained by reading the entire series, I felt that the religious aspects were pushed a little too heavily, particularly in the later two books. My enjoyment of reading them was always tempered by an image of Pullman as Julien, King of the Lemurs sitting over a typewriter and congratulating himself madly. In Sascha Baron Cohen's voice, of course. "Oh, look at me. I'm writing a novel about athiesm. Here I am, making a drawing of God with a very tiny penis. Don't you wish you were as clever as me? Oh, there I go again! I just wrote about how angels were really just sad little bastards. Look! Did I just do that? Oh, silly me, God is dead now and I made it happen. See what an iconocast I am being, stomping all over those silly people's precious idols. Aren't you all impressed now?"
Maybe I should have just read the real Milton and been done with it.
Reading the book did inspire me to see the movie. Um, at least to see a movie with some vague connections to the book. It had the same title, at least.
Imagine if you will that you took a whole bunch of impressive Lord of the Rings style special effects scenes which closely paralleled key points in the book, and then strung them all together. Then you cut all of the character and story development out because the resulting film was too long and those parts hadn't cost enough. Key characters in the story, who take several chapters just to introduce, are reduced to showing up at the wrong time, saying their own names and then running off, never to be seen again. But don't worry, there's a two minute long narration at the very beginning which explains the entire plot and gives away everything that is slowly revealed in the first two thirds of the book.
And all of the moral relativism that the original story had, which made the characters interesting? Well that kind of thing just cannot be, so a new, nameless character was introduced whose sole job is to run around from scene to scene doing evil things so that nobody else has to. All he needed was a top-hat, monocle and a big mustache to complete the picture.
So, in short, the books were entertaining but mildly irritating, while the movie would have been great if I only hadn't paid any attention to it.
Which brings us to...
Sapphire and Steel, created by Peter J. Hammond.
An old British SF series that I had heard mentioned a few times and thought might be interesting. It originally ran from 1979 to 1982 as a knock-off of Dr. Who. Knock-offs can be good things, so that's okay.
The first story hooked me. It was well written, presented interesting characters, and is sort of a mix between Dr. Who and The X-Files with a special effects budget which would have been a bit low for a BBC radio drama. It is very much stuck somewhere around 1980, but even that can be charming. There was one thing I couldn't quite figure out until I had gotten to the tenth episode or so, though...
Each story focuses on two not-quite-human agents of an unnamed organization as they try to deal with breaks in Time. David McCallum plays Steel, the tough, unyielding bad cop of the pair while his partner Sapphire is sweet, quiet, unfailingly polite...
And played by Joanna Lumley.
Who then went on to play the role of hard drinking, chain smoking, verbally abusive Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous. Once I caught on to why she looked familiar I kept waiting for her to give her co-star a swift and possibly deserved knee to the groin, but it never happened.
Well, right cheers. Thanks a lot.
Some Golden Harbor [sic] and When The Tide Rises by David Drake:
Two more books in the Lt. Leary series, following in the same vein as the others. The author describes it as not so much a knock-off of C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower, but rather a knock off of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books (Starting with Master and Commander), which were themselves knock-offs of Hornblower. So it's a knock-off of a knock-off, which makes it twice as good.
The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman.
While I was entertained by reading the entire series, I felt that the religious aspects were pushed a little too heavily, particularly in the later two books. My enjoyment of reading them was always tempered by an image of Pullman as Julien, King of the Lemurs sitting over a typewriter and congratulating himself madly. In Sascha Baron Cohen's voice, of course. "Oh, look at me. I'm writing a novel about athiesm. Here I am, making a drawing of God with a very tiny penis. Don't you wish you were as clever as me? Oh, there I go again! I just wrote about how angels were really just sad little bastards. Look! Did I just do that? Oh, silly me, God is dead now and I made it happen. See what an iconocast I am being, stomping all over those silly people's precious idols. Aren't you all impressed now?"
Maybe I should have just read the real Milton and been done with it.
Reading the book did inspire me to see the movie. Um, at least to see a movie with some vague connections to the book. It had the same title, at least.
Imagine if you will that you took a whole bunch of impressive Lord of the Rings style special effects scenes which closely paralleled key points in the book, and then strung them all together. Then you cut all of the character and story development out because the resulting film was too long and those parts hadn't cost enough. Key characters in the story, who take several chapters just to introduce, are reduced to showing up at the wrong time, saying their own names and then running off, never to be seen again. But don't worry, there's a two minute long narration at the very beginning which explains the entire plot and gives away everything that is slowly revealed in the first two thirds of the book.
And all of the moral relativism that the original story had, which made the characters interesting? Well that kind of thing just cannot be, so a new, nameless character was introduced whose sole job is to run around from scene to scene doing evil things so that nobody else has to. All he needed was a top-hat, monocle and a big mustache to complete the picture.
So, in short, the books were entertaining but mildly irritating, while the movie would have been great if I only hadn't paid any attention to it.
Which brings us to...
Sapphire and Steel, created by Peter J. Hammond.
An old British SF series that I had heard mentioned a few times and thought might be interesting. It originally ran from 1979 to 1982 as a knock-off of Dr. Who. Knock-offs can be good things, so that's okay.
The first story hooked me. It was well written, presented interesting characters, and is sort of a mix between Dr. Who and The X-Files with a special effects budget which would have been a bit low for a BBC radio drama. It is very much stuck somewhere around 1980, but even that can be charming. There was one thing I couldn't quite figure out until I had gotten to the tenth episode or so, though...
Each story focuses on two not-quite-human agents of an unnamed organization as they try to deal with breaks in Time. David McCallum plays Steel, the tough, unyielding bad cop of the pair while his partner Sapphire is sweet, quiet, unfailingly polite...
And played by Joanna Lumley.
Who then went on to play the role of hard drinking, chain smoking, verbally abusive Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous. Once I caught on to why she looked familiar I kept waiting for her to give her co-star a swift and possibly deserved knee to the groin, but it never happened.
Well, right cheers. Thanks a lot.