Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, what have you.

MOVIE REVIEW: Frankenhooker (1990)

If you dig in the heap of “Awful Movies That Are Still Fun to Watch”, you will undoubtedly come across The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962). It’s about a doctor whose radical ideas on transplants has him on the outs with the medical establishment. He gets the chance to Show Them All! When his girlfriend is decapitated in an accident. Fortunately, he manages to keep her head alive – now all he needs is a body to graft it to.

Weird idea, but not one that’s unusual. In competent hands, and with some resources given to it, one just might be able to create a passable movie on that premise.

Frank Henenlotter wrote that he came up with the idea for Frankenhooker out of thin air when his pitch for another movie failed. But the similarities between the two movies are too strong for it to have been a mere coincidence. Perhaps he saw the older movie and vaguely remembered the plot, or perhaps he knew that “Brain” was in the public domain, so he was free to riff on it to his heart’s content.

Anyway…..

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Book Review: Cascade Failure

Cascade Failure
L.M. Sagas
Tor Publishing Group
Copyright 2024 by Morgan Stanfield

It’s almost like these Sci-Fi stories are coming from a Plot Generator:

1. A disgraced former officer
2. A down-on-their-luck small business owner
3. A ragtag crew on an equally ragtag ship

Stumbles on

1. A conspiracy to hide a mass killing
2. An alien race threatening to wipe out humanity (or at least a large portion of it in an interstellar war)
3. Some massive corruption scheme to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

Can they overcome incredible odds to defeat the baddie and save the day? And perhaps

1. Make a nice profit
2. Find love
3. Resolve whatever problems were keeping them “on the outs” in the first place

along the way?

There’s actually nothing wrong with using such a Plot Generator Device; it’s been fairly common in creative writing workshops. The trick is making a good story out of the proposed plot.

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Book Review: In Our Stars

In Our Stars: The Doomed Earth (Part 1)
Jack Campbell
Ace Books
Copyright 2024 by John G. Henry

The Earth Guard is tasked with protecting the space lanes in the inner Solar System. Intercepting ne’er-do-wells, clearing debris that might interfere with travel, and generally convincing people that it’s safe to travel between the planets. But the Guard is corrupt. Not in the way that everyone’s on the take (though that certainly happens at the highest levels); they are corrupt in that, at the command level, they are lazy. Anything that significantly disrupts the normal routine is A Problem. Anything that makes extra work is A Problem. And Problems are to be dealt with as quickly and easily as possible, before they become even bigger Problems.

So when the Vigilant, on a very routine patrol, comes across a HUGE hunk of debris from a spacecraft of unknown design, that’s A Problem. And when Lt. Kayl Owen, leading the team checking it out finds a survivor, that’s also A Problem. When the survivor says she’s Lt. Selene Genji of the Unified Fleet and claims to come from forty years in the future, well, that’s a Much Bigger Problem. And when she says she knows about the aliens who have just arrived in the Solar System, partly because she’s got some of their genetic material in her, well, that’s A Serious Problem that calls for a Solution with Extreme Prejudice. And if that troublemaker Kayl Owen, who believes her story and has take a liking to her, can be dealt with at the same time, well….

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Book Review: Book and Dagger

Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II
Elyse Graham
Ecco Books
Copyright 2024 by the author

You could, if you want, blame Secretary of State Henry Stimson. In 1929, he’s alleged to have stuck his nose in the air and said “Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail”, and then shut down most of the United States’ foreign intelligence apparatus. So we were caught flat-footed when the Japanese attacked twelve years later.

Now it was up to William Donovan, the newly appointed head of the OSS, to put together his agency from scratch. The “Research and Development” side would be easy – just get a bunch of technical people to design and build all the secret devices of spycraft. But for the “Research and Analysis” department, which would collect and study the mountains of data needed by the US Military, you needed people with highly specialized training.

So that’s why a Yale English professor found himself at a “secure location”, learning how to silently kill someone with a knife, and how to deal with being interrogated by the enemy. Oh, by the way, you’d only need to hold up under capture and interrogation for 48 hours. Not because by that time they’d be done with you, or that you could expect to be rescued by then, but because that’s how long it should take for your contacts to forget they ever knew you and “vanish”….

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Book Review: Every Living Thing

Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
Jason Roberts
Random House
Copyright 2024 by the author

The Scientific Revolution kept rolling on. The Copernican Revolution changed how we look at the universe. Isaac Newton crystallized several lines of inquiry into modern physics. Now it was time to tackle the life sciences.

Two geniuses would set things in motion by taking on the huge task of organizing and classifying living things. In Sweden, Carl Linnaeus was set on becoming a doctor, but he found the field of botany more fascinating. In France, Georges-Louis Leclerc, the self-styled Comte de Buffon, used a lucky inheritance to indulge his passion for “natural history”. A brief work in statistics (“Buffon’s Needle”) got him noticed, and soon he was picked to be the “superintendent” of the Royal Garden* in Paris, where he was given the task of cataloging the massive collections.

Roberts treats these two contemporaries with a dual biography, showing how they approached the matter of the abundance and variety of life from two different directions.

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BOOK REVIEW: FTL, Y’All!

FTL, Y’All!: Tales From the Age of the $200 Warp Drive
Edited by C. Spike Trotman and Amanda Lafrenais
Iron Circus Comics
Copyright 2018 by Iron Circus Comics

As an “Old Fogey”, I remember when comic books were something you found in the checkout lines at the supermarket, or perhaps in a bookstore or newsstand. They were just “there”; I never had the inclination (or money, or time) to care about them. And that was pretty much what most people thought of them. Sure, we all knew about Superman and Batman (and Archie), but that was thanks to TV. No one ever took them seriously.

Then Art Spiegelman published Maus, and showed quite convincingly that the format could indeed produce works of real merit. Rather suddenly, all the comic geeks demanded to be heard, because there really was some good stuff being done in the medium. Though I have to differ with the term “graphic novel”; most of the works aren’t long enough to be called a novel – “illustrated short story” is better.

I still didn’t get into them, though. Same reasons – didn’t care to. Then a chance pickup of a little sample flyer from Iron Circus Comics piqued my interest, so I thought I’d give their website a look.

FTL, Y’All! is an anthology of stories based on a simple premise. In the near future, plans for a faster-than-light drive appear online. And the parts are all readily available for the cost of around $200, and can be easily assembled without any special skill.

What happens then, when pretty much everyone who wants to can build their own starship?

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Book Review: The Oxygen Farmer

The Oxygen Farmer
Colin Holmes
CamCat Books
Copyright 2023 by James Colin Holmes

“Mil” Harrison is a stubborn old man. In his seventies, he’s been living on the Moon for half of those years. His job? “Farming” oxygen (getting it out of the lunar regolith) to be used for life support and fuel. He’s got the knowledge that comes with his years to be able to fix most of the physical problems he deals with, the experience to know which rules can be “bypassed” when necessary, and the general respect and collection of favors to be given some slack when he does choose to “bypass” a rule.

While trekking across the lunar surface to collect a part he needs for a repair, he takes a shortcut across an “exclusion zone”. Normally, these are Thou Shalt Not Enter Under The Severest Of Penalties areas. He’s not worried; no one seems to know just why this particular area was given that designation. Then he quite literally stumbles over something that isn’t supposed to be there….. And when he investigates the site – because he can – he finds something really interesting and REALLY dangerous.

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet (1969)

I know you’re asking (and if you’re not, you should be) “Why is this guy reviewing an old soft-core porn flick?” Well, one of my guiding principles here is that any movie worth talking about should have something in it to justify the conversation – even if the movie is an example of what not to do.

I also maintain that there is a difference between pornography and erotica: if you remove all the sex from something and what’s left still has some value and interest, then it’s erotica, not porn.

With that in mind, let’s NOT look at the nudity and simulated sex, and see if there’s anything left that’s worth a discussion. This will require winding up the figurative time machine and program in stops in three different eras.

First, let’s go back to the late 1950s to see what was going on in the movie industry. Continue reading →

MOVIE REVIEW: Lady Death (2004)

Things keep getting worse for Hope, a teenager in 15th century Sweden. Her dad’s a right proper bastard of a nobleman, and he’s forbidding her to leave his castle grounds, much less see her boyfriend. The locals are generally OK with him, as long as he keeps winning battles against whatever heathens are in the area.

Well, Dad goes a bit too far with his “recruiting techniques”, and soon enough, there’s an uprising. Dad pulls an ace out of his sleeve – he’s actually Lucifer himself! He makes his escape – but then the mob turns on Hope. She has to be an accomplice, and must be burned at the stake for her witchcraft!

Before she can die, two flying “things” come and take her away, bringing her to Hell. Dad / Lucifer will let her live, but she must worship him. Well, Hope isn’t having that – especially since Dad has the souls of her boyfriend and mother as prisoners. She winds up being banished to the farthest reaches of Hell (apparently, Dad can’t bring himself to kill her / let her die) – where she sets about plotting her revenge. Continue reading →

Book Review: If it Sounds Like a Quack

If It Sounds Like A Quack: A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
Public Affairs Books
Copyright 2023 by the author

It starts out innocently enough. Maybe you see the rare occasion when an old “folk remedy” actually works. Or the lifestyle changes you promote (usually diet and exercise) along with your treatment help the patient heal themselves while your treatment does nothing. Or maybe it’s just the placebo effect. In any case, the end result is the one you hoped for. So you become convinced that you have the One True Cure that can fix all the things that ail people. You go into business promoting and selling it, and an understaffed FDA (and other government agencies) can’t get out of the way of its own bureaucracy fast enough to stop you.

Word spreads, and people dissatisfied with the current health care industry (which often seems more concerned about profits than patient care) buy your One True Cure. What can go wrong, especially now that the money is coming in?

Multiply this by the Internet which gives everyone both a platform to hawk their wares and a way to find out about these “treatments”, health care “deserts” in rural and poor regions that push people to seek out cheaper alternative treatments, and a political party that encourages “individual freedom” over the needs of the society as a whole, and you’ve got a story that, in the hands of Hongoltz-Hetling, is both funny and infuriating.

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