Due to some (non-emergency) family stuff here I’ve gotten a later start than planned, so today I need to dive right into the creation of some prose rather than taking a little time for a longer post.
But here’s a tasty tune in the mean time.
It’s been a relaxing weekend here at Jones central. On Thursday afternoon we saddled up the horses and rode around the pasture for a while. Some family friends came by and the thought was we might pull out Martian Rails, but the weather was so nice we just remained outside after the pitch-in dinner.
We could see some fairground fireworks going off over the hill, and the new neighbors, atop said hill, seemed to have sunk a chunk of change into fireworks themselves, because some pretty big stuff was launched into the sky. Our own fireworks display was much more subdued, although our old friend Bruce brought some pretty cool ones.
Some of the most delightful moments came when something went slightly awry. For instance, I discovered I’d purchased a box of cardboard tanks a few years back, and we set them rolling on the drive way. Anyone who has lit up those tanks knows they generally don’t roll very far, which was true for most of these. One, though, worked exactly as must have been intended by the designer, except for the sudden ninety degree turn. Not only did it zoom ten feet at a pretty good clip, when it launched its fireworks it wasn’t a bright fizzle, but a projectile that went halfway to one of the cars!
For the last week or so my son’s been playing an old Sega adventure game called Landstalker, aided by my wife. I bought it for my wife years ago when she couldn’t find anything to satisfy her Zelda fix (anyone who plays the Zelda-style adventure games knows that there are long gaps between releases of new games). I think it might have been a used game when I picked it up for her, because when I looked it up the other day on the interwebs I discovered it was more than a quarter century old!
I’ve since made two deductions. First, it’s pretty neat that an older style game can still prove completely entertaining and immersive to someone from the new generation. Second, when did I get so old that a game I saw played as an adult is now 25 years old?
The Jones family summer movie viewing continues. My wife and I have been introducing our children, both teenagers, to features we remembered enjoying when we were about their same age.
Some of the movies I enjoyed in the ’80s don’t stand up well. Alright, a lot of them don’t. I remember thinking that Sixteen Candles was hilarious, and when I sat down with the wife and kids to re-watch it there were plenty of moments of humor… until I was suddenly aware how unconscious I’d been about all the sexism. That the love interest, Jake Ryan, passes over his girlfriend to the geeky character played by Anthony Michael Hall to do whatever he likes with is awful. I vaguely recall being uncomfortable with the moment before, but not so much so that I’d remembered it in detail. Now it struck me as incredibly icky. THIS same guy is the one we’re supposed to be pleased Samantha ends up with? I could no longer shrug the moment off and say, “oh, it’s just a comedy, Howard. It’s supposed to be light.” How could any father, brother, or son have written those scenes? Blech.
The Emerald Forest is a very different animal from Sixteen Candles. But it was an ’80s flick, and I’m a lot older, and I wondered if the messages about deforestation I thought subtle would now be like hammers on a gong.
In the past I’ve usually read Jack Vance in short spurts, but this time I’ve been on a huge binge and am still enjoying the prose. The whole exploration (and re-discovery in the case of Planet of Adventure) was unfortunately sparked by the author’s death.
I’ve just closed the last page on The Planet of Adventure omnibus and I found it just as difficult to set down as I had the first time, which really says something. It has all the usual Vancian touches: fascinating cultures, religions, and philosophies, not to mention truly alien aliens. Protagonist Adam Reith isn’t that different from Vance’s other non-satirical protagonists (like Kirth Gersen, say) but his straightforward outlook and intelligence remain refreshing, not to mention his sense of decency, his bravery, and his loyalty to friends. And speaking of friends, one of the things I like about this sequence is that there is a cast of loyal companions. Vance’s protagonists are usually lone wanderers. There’s plenty of wandering on the planet Tschai, but Reith is usually with at least one of his friends.
Interestingly, I can’t believe I never noticed this before, but it is becoming more and more clear to me that Vance had a huge impact on the first big science fiction game, Traveller. Reith is a planetary Scout, and is a jack-of-all-trades and survival expert, just like the characters in Traveller‘s Imperial Scout service. There are Traveller’s aid hostels in the Alastor books, not to mention air rafts and, perhaps more importantly there’s the general feel of independent planets in a sector but a unified sector government. In Vance, as with Traveller, every planet is a potential adventure setting. Vance, then, was a huge influence not just on D&D (the fire and forget spells, the hand and eye of Vecna) but upon Traveller‘s default setting.
Last week, both here and on Facebook, I mentioned my love for the works of Jack Vance and my new found appreciation of the Cugel stories, which had left me wanting 8 or 10 years previous.
Now I’m wishing that I hadn’t sold off my Ernest Bramah Kai Lung books. Earlier I had found the tone forced and a little twee — now I’m thinking my tastes have broadened a bit and that I might have missed out on something grand… and rather Cugel-like in some ways. Anyone out there have an opinion on the Kai Lung stories they want to share? I see that the first two collections are available from Project Gutenberg if anyone is truly curious, and I suppose I will turn there myself eventually.
John O’Neill will probably faint in horror, but I’ve actually been downsizing my book collection and getting rid of things I don’t think I’ll re-read (as I get older, the things I’m unlikely to re-read gets longer) and things I’m no longer interested in. Occasionally I regret my choices. It wouldn’t have taken up too much room to hold onto my two Kai Lung books from the old Ballantine Adult Fantasy line. I just thought that they weren’t to my taste. Now, as I’ve discovered that my tastes are widening, I think I’ll be a little more judicious about unloading books going forward.
If Ernest Bramah and Kai Lung aren’t familiar to you, there’s a wonderful essay about the books over at a site titled Greatsfandf.com. Here’s the link.
I sat down the other evening with my wife and son for my second viewing of The 13th Warrior. I hadn’t seen it for a long while, and I discovered I enjoyed it just as much or more than I had the first time.
I was surprised to learn that it had only a 33% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes and that it hadn’t done at all well in the cinema. It’s a very fine story of heroic adventure with comrades-in-arms, with some honest-to-goodness chills, thrills, and mystery. At least that’s my opinion. It’s one of the better heroic movies filmed in the last quarter century. God knows I’d rather watch it a few more times than, say, Conan the Destroyer. Apparently I’m out of step with the consensus. I flipped through the various negative reviews and shook my head at the comments and lack of appreciation. As an adventure story it does so many things right that many movies do wrong… but that’s not what makes it great. For all the in-your-face violence, much of what happens is understated, including character development and the themes of heroism.
Mostly that thing I’ve been doing is getting the house ready for two birthdays. Owing to my son’s immense high school homework load there was no real birthday gathering, so we’re readying for one shortly after my daughter’s, and both are taking place this weekend. Add that to the deadline run at the most recent Pathfinder book I finished and the mini-trip in the middle of the week, and I haven’t been able to get much done on other writing projects. That will change come Monday.
I did sit down and watch That Thing You Do with the family, and I liked it even more than I had the first time. What a fine little movie. And for all of us would-be 1960s rock stars, it provides just a little taste of what it might have been like to be a one-hit wonder.
I finished up Cugel’s Saga and then went straight into Rhialto the Marvelous, the fourth and final Dying Earth book. They were in an omnibus that’s been sitting on my shelf for 5 or 6 years, beside the two volumes of Jack Vance’s The Demon Princes. I’m now picking up the second volume of those, which I likewise set aside some years back after finishing volume 1. Who knew how excellent these treasures would be when I finally cracked them open? I suspected, but I didn’t know. I imagine I have some other treasures waiting to be opened on the shelves as well…
I’m away from home on a borrowed laptop, so I’ll keep this short. I just wanted to drop in and say how much I enjoyed the wrap-up of Jack Vance’s Cugel’s Saga, a novel contained in the orb omnibus Tales of the Dying Earth. I just finished it about a half hour ago on this mini-vacation, after slowly savoring it during the last month, and it was pretty marvelous… although keeping in line with previous comments I’ve made on my blog, I’m not sure younger Howard would have appreciated it as much.
I’m not sure if I’m ready for more Vance right away or not, but I enjoyed it so much I think I’ll stockpile some more for later reading. I see that there’s an Alastor omnibus, which I should probably explore before I re-read his Planet of Adventure series. I love Vance’s writing, though I usually tackle it in limited doses. I have a few standalones lying around the house, as well as some other series I’ve read or partially read.
Are any of my regular visitors Jack Vance fans? What are some not-miss titles? How do the Durdane books stack up?
To the races? Nay, Stalking the Beast is lumbering back to editor James Sutter at Paizo. Whew. I’m starting to feel pleased, although I’m also a bit dazed after the final push. Today, apart from a laborious spell check (a lot of words from Pathfinder aren’t recognized by the spell checker) I was mostly tweaking some really subtle things that will probably never get noticed. Getting them fixed made me feel better, at least.
I finally managed to win a crayon rail game, the first in probably the last ten I played against my brilliant wife, and the second time I played Martian Rails. Also, I pulled the one Leigh Brackett title card in the game near the last hand, as if the gods of Mars and random chance were operating in my favor. Nice. Father’s Day was pleasant, and included a slightly moist walk in some woods near our old house and a tasty lunch with fried oysters. Well, with the family, actually, but I ate fried oysters.