Book 36

[subplotkudzu]

36) Space Vulture: this little gem by Gary K Wolf and archbishop John J. Myers is a consciously retro adventure, written as it would have been serialized in Planet Stories. It is also an awful lot of fun. I hesitate to tell you anything about it because the story is pure plot, barreling along with lots of plot twists, captures, escapes, "Didn't I Mention" skills and developing enough of a plan to get the heroes through the next 5 minutes. The titular character is an irrevocably evil galactic criminal, slaver and commander of his own zombie army, and the only person who can challenge him is Space Marshall Corsair, owner of two perfectly balanced ray guns and the drive to do good. One thing that I was very happy with is that while the book was written by the archbishop of Newark, NJ (no, really!), the book's religion correct for the characters and the setting. Three of the characters are Catholic. Two of them sometimes pray for moral support. That's it. There's no evangalizing, no hammering of morality, and even the somewhat scummy secondary character's grotwth into a less scummy person felt more like the plot to any "have the guy become a better man via romance/children/telepathy/what-have-you" that populate Hollywood comidies rather than, say, Easutices conversion on the Dawn Treader. In other words nothing to distract from the space opera plot. I was afraid I was going to be lectured, but instead I was just shot at, attacked by zombies, tossed into malfunctioning escape pods, stranded on desolate planets, threated by flesh consuming aliens and other good clean fun.

Non Book Entertainment - I Love A Mystery: Given that I've had to make long drives to the new job , I'm jazzed that Rachel picked up the "I Love A Mystery" radio show collection from the library today for me to listen to on the trip. 20 hours of classic radio show mysteries, many in 15 minute broadcasts so it's easy enough to start and stop.

Groovy! I listened to two whole stories this week (a total of 7.5 hours of ragio goodness): The Thing that Cried in the Night and Bury Your Dead Arizona. As fate would have it Bury Your Dead  is one I'd heard already, provided by doc_mystery  some time back, but since I listened to that while recovering from oral surgery so my pain numbed recollections didn't distract from the enjoyment.  

Comments

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Aha! Here's my own review of Space Vulture, which I read a few months ago. I liked it a lot, too.

http://doc-mystery.livejournal.com/453037.html

Additionally, I'm tickled you got to listen to some new ILAMs. The next in order would be THE RICHARD CURSE and TEMPLE OF VAMPIRES. You can download a bunch of these for free from the following source:

http://www.archive.org/details/otr_iloveamystery

www.archive.org has bunch more OTR shows and serials worth downloading and listening too, including most of the run of THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP MARLOWE, THE ADVENTURES OF SAM SPADE DETECTIVE, X-MINUS ONE, etc. All perfect for either burning to disk to listen to on the drive to Yonkers on your car CD player, or to upload onto your local MP3 player to listen to over the radio via a cheap radio-transmitter.

::B::

[40yearsagotoday.livejournal.com]

"the [space fantasy] was written by the archbishop of Newark, NJ"

There's something you don't see every day.

Eustace's conversion is perfect, by the way. I was reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "The Cost of Discipleship" yesterday, and as he was talking about how the call to salvation must come from God and not man, I was thinking 'Yup, you can't take your own dragon skin off.'

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Oh, I mean no disrespect to Lewis' plotting/Eaustice's conversion. But such a thing would have been sorely out of place in deliberately high pulp space opera.