Castaways of Eros

Project Gutenberg is a massive digital library of public domain works. Its archives contain not merely novels, but also numerous short stories from magazines with adjectives like “Amazing”, “Thrilling”, “Startling” and “Wondrous” in their titles. I’m making my way through its vast catalogue of these speculative fiction works. Today, I’ll be looking at “Castaways of Eros” by Nelson S. Bond, published in Planet Stories in 1943.

Gutenberg Link

Castaways of Eros

SPOILERS BELOW

In “Castaways of Eros”, a family is looking to colonize the asteroid Eros (which is in this story is inexplicably Earth-like, with atmosphere, water, plants, etc). After a rough crash landing, they begin setting up a homestead, only to run into another family that has also landed on Eros and is trying to stake a claim to it. They spend a long time pointlessly arguing over ownership – both their ships were wrecked upon landing, so it’s not like either of them is going anywhere anytime soon – until they resolve it by having two of the younger family members marry each other so they can own it jointly.

This story was long, boring, pointless, and predictable. The blurb at the beginning promises an “ending even these embittered rivals could not foresee”, but I saw it coming right away. I mean, they’re the only ones on the asteroid; who else were they planning on marrying? Also, just to really rub salt in the wound, one of the family members had a phonetically-transcribed accent, which is always painful to read. The result is a story that I did not enjoy in the least.

Final Rating: 1/5

Titan (2015)

Far, far away from those city lights might be shining on you tonight. Far, far away from you, on the dark side of the moon. I long to hold you in my arms and sway, kiss and ride on the CTA. I need to see you tonight and those bright lights, oh, I know it’s right deep in my heart. Let’s travel to Titan, by François Vigneault.

Synopsis:

When MNGR First Class João da Silva arrives on the moon of Titan to take charge of Homestead Station, he finds the massive mining colony plagued by tensions between the giant, genetically-engineered Titan workers and the Terran management. As anger mounts, what began as a routine posting quickly turns into something far more dangerous.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Titan sees manager João da Silva dispatched to Homestead Station, a mining colony on the moon Titan manned mostly by genetically-engineered workers of immense size (called Titans, naturally). However, advancing technology has rendered the once-profitable facility obsolete. While corporate would be happy to shut it down in order to save on budget, that poses a problem for the Titans, who were engineered for the moon’s gravity and can’t survive on Earth. Silva hopes to find a solution that will work for both the company and the Titans, but the fundamental problems – that their livelihood is obsolete, no new jobs are available, and the company is too greedy to grant fair wages, let alone charity – are insoluble, and it doesn’t help matters that Silva spends most of his time romancing Titan worker Phoebe Mackintosh rather than, say, investigating the suspicious “illness” of the manager that he’s replacing or the origin of the large credit deposits his nominal second-in-command is receiving. The spark of revolution has been lit, and nothing can stop it now.

For the most part, this book was OK. I liked the worldbuilding, down to little touches about the realities of space living like the use of the term E-day to distinguish between Earth days and local days. Silva was a sympathetic protagonist, with his desire to find a compromise that would work for everyone; and while he was doomed to failure from the start, which doesn’t make for a good story – ideally, the protagonist should be someone who has an impact on things, not a random bystander carried along by the current of events – it did deliver some exciting scenes of him fighting to survive once the revolution began. The pacing of the story was slow to start, but I appreciated the character development it gave Silva and Phoebe. So, overall, I’d be willing to call this story decent… if it didn’t go and sour things with a Dead Lesbian Penalty. Pour one out for Sonja, a former lover of Phoebe’s who is killed during the riot at the Bloody Gate, and strike one point off the book’s final score.

Titan was nearly good.

Final Rating: 2/5

Phantom Out of Time

Project Gutenberg is a massive digital library of public domain works. Its archives contain not merely novels, but also numerous short stories from magazines with adjectives like “Amazing”, “Thrilling”, “Startling” and “Wondrous” in their titles. I’m making my way through its vast catalogue of these speculative fiction works. Today, I’ll be looking at “Phantom Out of Time” by Nelson S. Bond, published in Planet Stories in 1943.

Gutenberg Link

Phantom Out of Time

SPOILERS BELOW

In “Phantom Out of Time”, Graed Garroway, evil tyrant of Earth, has finally captured rebel leader Dirk Morris. What’s more, he has discovered the secret weapon that was to be the rebels’ last hope against him: the disintegration machine. Quoth Dirk: “Disintegration machine? What disintegration machine? Do you mean the telep-, oh, right, of course, that disintegration machine. Please, whatever you do, don’t execute me by throwing me into the disintegration machine; anything but that.” But deaf to his pleas, Garroway throws him into the disintegrator – which, of course, is actually a teleporter. It takes Dirk to the planet Nadron from which he launches a campaign of guerilla warfare in the guise of the Galactic Ghost. He steals tax money, blows up munitions deposits, forcibly kisses Garroway’s daughter… wait, what? Oh, but she’s evil, so it’s OK to sexually assault her. And actually, she’s immediately overcome by his virile manliness and falls in love with him, so it isn’t sexual assault at all. So everything’s good, right? … Um, let’s just skip to the end: Dirk falls into an obvious trap despite being warned by his allies that it’s an obvious trap, so a woman of Nadron both rescues him and finishes the job of overthrowing the empire, to the joy of all.

Wow, was this bad. The twist of the disintegration machine being a teleporter is so heavily telegraphed that it’s hardly a twist at all; the alleged “romance” between Dirk and Garroway’s daughter is incredibly skeevy, and it isn’t even Dirk who saves the day in the end. Terrible, just terrible.

Final Rating: 1/5

Dave Barry #25: Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland

You can beat the heat if you beat the charges too. They said I was a cheat, I guess it must be true. And my friends all smell like weed or little babies. And this city reeks of driving myself crazy. Let’s use one hell of a drug with Best. State. Ever. by Dave Barry.

Synopsis:

A brilliantly funny exploration of the Sunshine State from the man who knows it best: Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times–bestselling author Dave Barry.

We never know what will happen next in Florida. We know only that, any minute now, something will. Every few months, Dave Barry gets a call from some media person wanting to know, “What the hell is wrong with Florida?” Somehow, the state’s acquired an image as a subtropical festival of stupid, and as a loyal Floridian, Dave begs to differ. Sure, there was the 2000 election. And people seem to take their pants off for no good reason. And it has flying insects the size of LeBron James. But it is a great state, and Dave is going to tell you why. Join him as he celebrates Florida from Key West at the bottom to whatever it is that’s at the top, from the Sunshine State’s earliest history to the fun-fair of weirdness and gunfire (“Our motto: ‘Come back! We weren’t firing at you!’”) that it is today.

It’s the most hilarious book yet from “the funniest damn writer in the whole country” (Carl Hiaasen, and he should know). By the end, you’ll have to admit that whatever else you might think about Florida—you can never say it’s boring.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Best. State. Ever. begins with an introduction discussing the “Florida Man” meme, then setting out the book’s thesis: to prove that despite being the subject of much mockery, Florida is in fact a wonderful state. The chapters are then devoted to describing a number of trips he took to various Florida landmarks and tourist attractions.

Unfortunately, this means that the introduction is the best part of the book. See, there’s a reason that people laugh at the “Florida Man” meme: it’s fun. We like hearing about these wacky, outrageous, only-in-Florida shenanigans. Going on to say that actually, Florida isn’t wacky and outrageous like the memes say… well, that’s not funny, that’s a downer. Dave Barry should know this – part of his style of comedy is inserting outrageous lies into his actual descriptions, because reality is often bleak and uninteresting. As it is, there are a few humorous bright spots scattered here and there throughout the book, but for the most part it’s a boring advertising brochure for various tourist traps I have no interest in visiting.

Best. State. Ever. was pretty underwhelming. This Dave Barry book is a bust.

Final Rating: 2/5

Trouble on Tycho

Project Gutenberg is a massive digital library of public domain works. Its archives contain not merely novels, but also numerous short stories from magazines with adjectives like “Amazing”, “Thrilling”, “Startling” and “Wondrous” in their titles. I’m making my way through its vast catalogue of these speculative fiction works. Today, I’ll be looking at “Trouble on Tycho” by Nelson S. Bond, published in Planet Stories in 1943.

Gutenberg Link

Trouble on Tycho

SPOILERS BELOW

“Trouble on Tycho” is about Isobar, who works on a moon base where he performs meteorological observations of Earth and annoys the rest of the staff with his bagpipe playing. Some members of the staff are attacked by native Lunarian creatures called granitebacks, or “grannies” for short, which prove immune to all conventional weapons, only for the sound of Isobar’s bagpipe-playing to destroy them. How convenient!

This is very conventional story in the “main character’s talent, which others deride as worthless, saves the day” mold. But, putting aside the plot contrivance of the invincible grannies’ one weakness being the sound of bagpipes of all things, it’s decent enough.

Final Rating: 3/5

At the Shore

Go down to the ocean, the crystal tide is raising. Waters’ gotten higher as the shore washes out. Keep your eyes wide open, even when the sun is blazing. The moon controls the tide, it can cause you to drown. Let’s go swimming At the Shore, by Jim Campbell.

Synopsis:

Bernard, Dean, and Jorge look forward to some serious Frisbee-tossing and are psyched when Astrid shows up to swim, but Gabi is so freaked out she doesn’t want to leave the car. Why is Gabi demanding they head home before dark? Maybe if anyone paid attention to her childhood tales of seaweed harvesting, they’d know something lurks beneath the waves. Jim Campbell is a cartoonist, comic book colorist, and animator who is well known for his work on Patrick McHale’s Over the Garden Wall series on Cartoon Network and the comic books from Boom! Studios. Jim has been drawing comics off and on since teaming up with the Meathaüs collective in 2001. He has been a color artist for Dark Horse, Marvel, Spongebob Comics, Mad Magazine, and Tony Millionaire for several years. In his spare time, he plays in the Brooklyn band Paper Fleet.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

At the Shore is about Gabi, a schoolgirl who is invited by some of her classmates on a trip to the seashore. Gabi tries to warn them that the shore is dangerous; but being stupid teens in a horror comic, they don’t listen. (Also, it doesn’t help matters that Gabi is a terrible storyteller, taking forever to get to the point). Then their cars get stuck, leaving them stranded as night falls, and it becomes a fight to survive.

This comic didn’t really work for me. The art style is a little goofy – not terrible, I’ve certainly seen and even enjoyed comics with worse art, but more suited towards comedy than horror. Indeed, the story has a lot of jokey moments, and I feel like it’s going for a blend of horror-comedy vibe, but it doesn’t really nail the tone: the potentially serious stakes of the horror plot made the comedy parts frustrating rather than entertaining; and the art style, while well-suited for accentuating the comedic moments, doesn’t work for the bits that are supposed to be scary. It tries to be two things at once, and as a result doesn’t succeed as either.

The characters didn’t really get me invested in the story, either. Most of them felt pretty shallow; the only ones that I felt a hint of interest in were Gabi and the Professor, and even then it was undermined by their more annoying aspects (Gabi endangering everybody’s lives because she cannot get to the point when trying to warn them, the Professor deciding to pull a practical joke on the kids trying to help him save the day).

Of course, it doesn’t really help matters that the horror turns out to come in the form of… sigh… zombies. Yes, that’s right, the most overused, overexposed horror antagonist, once again lurching and groaning forth to give stale scares. The zombies have some unique quirks which you think might be able to give the story some twists: they aren’t contagious, but result from exposure to a chemical which affects animals as well as humans, and re-die when exposed to light but reanimate once it’s dark again. However, neither of those traits are used by the story: no non-human zombies attack the protagonists, and they never try using light as a weapon against the zombies. (It’s not specifically sunlight, it’s demonstrated that electric lights have the same effect, so you think that would lead to our heroes doing something with flashlights or car headlights… but nope, it’s just an excuse for why the attack comes at night). Why even introduce such gimimcks if you aren’t going to use them? I am underwhelmed.

At the Shore #1-6 are collected in At the Shore.

Final Rating: 2/5

Ekalastron #4: Colossus of Chaos

Project Gutenberg is a massive digital library of public domain works. Its archives contain not merely novels, but also numerous short stories from magazines with adjectives like “Amazing”, “Thrilling”, “Startling” and “Wondrous” in their titles. I’m making my way through its vast catalogue of these speculative fiction works. Today, I’ll be looking at “Colossus of Chaos” by Nelson S. Bond, published in Planet Stories in 1942.

Gutenberg Link

Colossus of Chaos

SPOILERS BELOW

“Colossus of Chaos” is set on the moon Titan, where the protagonists are investigating suspicions that the local governor is plotting to lead the natives in an uprising. This suspicion turns out to be correct, but what they weren’t counting on was the arrival of an alien colossus from space. The governor tries enslaving it to use as a weapon, but it quickly grows beyond his control. As it proves immune to all weapons, they’re eventually forced to use tractor beams to fling it off the planet entirely – at which point it evaporates due to bullshit physics which need not concern us.

The real problem with this story is not the bullshit physics, but the ugly colonialism. The native Titanians resent human colonization of their moon, which is presented as entirely unreasonable and proof that they are barbaric savages. The planned uprising, however, has a human traitor coordinating, because of course it’d be silly to imagine primitive natives being able to do anything of their own accord. Furthermore, Titan emits a mysterious T-radiation that is harmless to natives but kills any human is exposed; the only way they’ve been able to colonize is by paving large areas of the planet over with lead, an environmentally-friendly approach which of course in no way contributes to the natives’ hostility towards them. Why even bother trying to inhabit such an inhospitable world, if not for colonialist entitlement? And yes, the phrase “white man’s burden” is unironically used.

Final Rating: 1/5

Ravensong #2: Clarion Call

Watch the earth below me unfold as I complete the primordial rites. My greatest desire in legend foretold, the master of the skies. For I long to feel the tears of the stars, the wind caressing my wings. Oh gods, by my sacrifice, grant me the freedom it brings Let’s sound Clarion Call, by Cayla Fay.

Synopsis:

Neve faces her vengeful cousin, the leader of the legions of hell, forcing her to decide where her loyalties truly lie in this thrilling sequel to Ravensong that’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Celtic mythology.

Neve and her sisters failed in protecting the mortal world against the legions of hell when the Veil they had spent their lives guarding split and the vengeful cousin they forgot ever existed, Aodh, managed to slip through. Dangerous and bitter, Aodh is on a mission to free the rest of their family still trapped behind the veil and set them loose on the mortal world.

Still injured from her last battle, Neve is not only working to track Aodh, but also trying to navigate painful memories that keep rising to the surface. Memories of her past lifetimes protecting the Gate…and of her first life, before she and her sisters scrubbed it from their minds. More questions arise when a new family member reveals themself, someone Neve and her sisters have been missing. Someone who might just be able to save them all.

Neve must face the sins of her past while navigating the dangers of the present. The more she remembers, the more it seems like everything she was raised to believe was a lie, and the fallout might decimate everything she has worked so hard to build in the present, including her relationship with Alexandria.

Caught between humanity and divinity, the past and the present, Neve must try to strike a balance between the warring forces both within and without, because if she doesn’t, it might not just be her relationship at stake, but the whole world.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

As a result of the events at the end of the previous book, Neve’s sisters Bay and Mercy have been trapped inside the Hellgate while her enemy Aodh has escaped. Though determined to rescue them, Neve is still haunted by questions about the Veil spell: why it disguises those who pass through it as demons, and why the sisters erased their own memory of that fact. The answers may lie with Danu, the long-vanished mother of the gods, who is also the only one who can help Neve disassemble the Veil and rescue her sisters.

This book wasn’t as good as the first one. The problem is that Neve spends most of it whining and moping and angsting. Now, she was also a very angsty character in the first book, but that one had frequent demon battles and her blooming romance with Alexandria to liven things up. This book is very light on the action – only three fight scenes, and there are 200 pages between the first and the second – and her relationship with Alexandria has already reach its culmination, so there’s really not much actually going on other than said aforementioned whining and moping and angsting. It’s not the most compelling thing to read about, and means the story drags for the long bit in the middle where no action is occurring. The fight scenes were good when they happened, and the ending was satisfying; I just wish there was more substance to the stuff in between.

Clarion Call was decent, but not as good as the first Ravensong book.

Final Rating: 3/5

Ekalastron #3: Captain Chaos

Project Gutenberg is a massive digital library of public domain works. Its archives contain not merely novels, but also numerous short stories from magazines with adjectives like “Amazing”, “Thrilling”, “Startling” and “Wondrous” in their titles. I’m making my way through its vast catalogue of these speculative fiction works. Today, I’ll be looking at “Captain Chaos” by Nelson S. Bond, published in Planet Stories in 1942.

Gutenberg Link

Captain Chaos

SPOILERS BELOW

“Captain Chaos” is another entry in the Ekalastron series. A military ship preparing to run a blockade has to hire a new cook. The cook, nicknamed Captain Chaos, turns out to be absolutely insufferable, offering constant unsolicited advice to the senior military crew that is roundly ignored – which turns out to be unfortunate, as the cook was in fact right about the ship’s planned course being a terrible route that leads them straight into an ambush. Fortunately, Captain Chaos is able to save the day using a cannon that was repurposed into an incinerator for the kitchen garbage, knowledge of cooking, and some bullshit made-up physics. Space does not work that way!

This was actually a pretty decent story, so long as you mentally swap out the bullshit physics in the climax for something that actually makes sense.

Final Rating: 3/5

Zero Jumper

I get up, and nothing gets me down. You got it tough, I’ve seen the toughest around. And I know, baby, just how you feel. You got to roll with the punches to get to what’s real. Let’s go ahead and jump with Zero Jumper, by Patrick Mulholland.

Synopsis:

An ancient power source that can manipulate space and time is buried deep on a barren world and Juno, the last human, must embark on a dangerous journey to find it. Her mission is simple: go back in time and save humanity from extinction. The cost? Her life.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Zero Jumper is set in a future where the Earth has been destroyed. We follow the last survivor, a young woman named Juno with a mechanical arm, and the AI assisting her as they search the galaxy for Zero Point Energy crystals that they can use to power a time machine in order to go back and prevent the planet’s destruction. Opposing them is the Ancient One, an alien with the ability to see the future, who has been using his power to eliminate future threats to his tyrannical rule before they come to fruition.

This series is only four issues long, and suffers from greatly compressed pacing as a result. Nothing has time to be explained, none of the reveals have time to sink in. Juno meets Elara for the first time at the beginning of issue two and teams up with her, then Elara betrays her at the issue’s end. That should be a dramatic turn, but it doesn’t have any impact because there was no time for the characters to build up any kind of bond of trust. We don’t know the first thing about Elara; in fact, I’m not even sure Elara is her name: later on, the Ancient Once calls her Novah. Is her name Elara Novah? Novah Elara? Was Elara a fake name and Novah is her real one? Who knows, not enough time to explain, page count is running out, gotta move on to the next plot point.

Then there are the plot points that I can’t even blame on bad pacing because they just make zero sense, period. For instance, at the end of issue three, it’s randomly revealed that the crystal the Ancient One is using as a power source is going to explode and destroy half the galaxy. Wait, what? Why? Is the Ancient One doing that on purpose? Why would he; his stated motivation is to rule the galaxy, not destroy it. Does he not know it’s going to happen? I mean, he has future vision, that’s kind of his whole gimmick; it shouldn’t come as a surprise. And then, when Juno finally faces the Ancient One… neither of them mention it. It doesn’t impact the climax in any way, or indeed get a single mention in all of issue four. Which, pretty big plot point to ignore. You’d think Juno would say, “Your mad hunger for power at any cost has blinded you to the fact that you’re going to destroy everything!” or that the Ancient One would be, “Fool! Don’t interfere! I am the only hope of stopping the explosion and saving the galaxy!” or maybe “Fool! I intentionally overloaded the crystal so that you would could running here, straight into my trap!” Instead, the plot point is just completely dropped and never brought up again. That’s just bad writing.

Zero Jumper was too much of a mess for me to enjoy.

Final Rating: 2/5