My Review of “The New Lensman”

New Lensman: The Space Age Sequel To E. E. Doc Smith’s Immortal LENSMAN Series by William B. Ellern

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I am a huge fan of Doc Smith’s Lensman series, but there was one book I had never read because I needed to locate a copy. This is that book, and I located an old but quite readable paperback copy online. This novel is not by Doc Smith, but it was authorized by him. Would it stand up?

The story is set contemporaneously with the events of First Lensman, and a number of those happen off-stage in this book. Some of these include the attempt on Virgil Samms’ life, and the climactic battle between the Grand Fleet of the Galactic Patrol and the Black Fleet of the enemy. And characters like Knobos, the Martian Lensman, Roderick Kinnison, and Virgil Samms make appearances. But while the Lensman novels cover vast distances, this novel is all set in one place, the Moon. Our hero, Lieutanant Larry McQueen of the Triplanetary Service, goes to Copernicus Base because there are plots afoot. Early on in the book he is kidnapped by enemy agents, but manages to escape. But people keep showing up to attempt sabotage, and it eventually becomes clear they are part of the same enemy as the Black Fleet, and that their sabotage is intended to coincide and align with the Black Fleet attack. Copernicus Base is a major military installation and taking it out of action would be a major loss to the Patrol. As Lieutenant McQueen is trying to stop these attacks, he starts to hear that Virgil Samms is turning the Solarian Patrol into the Galactic Patrol, and that he is creating a force of “Lensmen”. And in due course McQueen receives his Lens and joins that elite fraternity. Of course, in the end the good guys prevail.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to fans of Doc Smith. That said, unlike the Lensman books proper, this isn’t really Space Opera because all off the action happens in one small, confined space. But I think the fans will find it very familiar, and it does touch on an aspect not really covered in the series proper, about how the changes Samms made affected the lower level operatives of the Triplanetary Service.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Ebooks and Audiobooks

I no longer wish to devote space to accumulating and storing physical books. As a former college professor I had more of them than most people, and tended to fill the house with bookcases and shelves. That made a certain sense in the pre-Internet years since I would often want to go back to them to look up things. But now I have more information at my fingertips than I ever had in those days, and I find it more convenient to just look up anything I need to know. And with Ebooks I can take my library with me anywhere I go. This means if I am sitting in a waiting room for a Doctor’s appointment (and at my age that happens often enough) I can just pull out my phone and open up a book. I always have at least one. Right now on my phone I have apps for Kindle, Google Play, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo Cantook (successor to Aldiko), Bookshop.org, and Calibre. As for devices other than my phone, I own a kindle, I once owned a Nook, and I will buy a Kobo reader when Trump is gone. Kobo is Canadian, and last time I looked Trump had put on a tariff that was twice what the device costs. And finally I have the Bookshop.org app and Calibre.

I started collecting Ebooks some years back, and at first the only option seemed to be buying them from large corporations. That has changed now, but I still have collections On Kindle, Google Play, Nook, and Kobo. I have all four because it seemed prudent to not put all my eggs in one basket. But now there are other options. One I like to use when possible is Bookshop.org. It is group of independent bookstores and I would rather support them than some giant corporation. And they seem to have all of the popular titles. Another similar site is Books-a-Million, which lets you order online and pick up at a local store if you need a physical book. Cantook and Calibre are both good for holding any miscellaneous Ebooks you have, and you can give them your Ebooks from the other sellers, though I have found that the native apps tend to work better. These days I rarely purchase books on Kindle, etc. But sometimes they have a special deals.

If you want to build your library, there are some good places to try. One is BookBub which will send you emails with deals on books. On any one e-mail you may not see anything you want, but I found that once or twice a month I did see books I wanted and at good prices. And Books-a-Million has 99 cent deals to check out. But if you want to get free books, you have several options. If you want a chance to read a popular Ebook but don’t need to own it, see what your local Library offers. Mine offers Hoopla which is good for Ebooks, Audiobooks, and streaming music. What you can find depends on what your library has in its collection, but my wife uses it almost daily for audiobooks. Then there are the works that have become part of the Public Domain. This varies somewhat by your country, but you might be surprised to learn how much is available. For Ebooks one of the biggest sites is Project Gutenberg. They follow US Copyright law for their collection, and they are a non-profit that can always use some support, so if you use them, give them a few Dollars or Euros. They tend to be the source for many or most other sites for Public Domain Ebooks They have over 75,000 free Ebooks. A newer site is Faded Page which is much smaller but focused on Canadian works. Standard Ebooks is a site that pulls from Project Gutenberg but does some additional formatting and is very easy to read online in your browser. For Audiobooks a good source is Open Culture, which advertises it has 1,000 free Audiobooks. We should also mention LibriVox, which also pulls from Project Gutenberg for its texts, but then turns them into Public Domain Audiobooks. They are always looking for volunteers who have a microphone and a computer to record Public Domain audiobooks. And last but not least the Internet Archive has tons of Ebooks and Audiobooks that are free.

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in How-to, Reviews | Comments Off on Ebooks and Audiobooks

My Review of “Nixonland”

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein

This is the second volume in Perlstein’s masterful quadrilogy on the rise of the right in twentieth century America. This long volume covers both the rise of Nixon from his earliest days his political collapse in the early 1960s when he consecutively lost both the Presidency (in 1960) and the Governorship of California in 1962. Then it traces how he worked a resurrection that would see him elected President in 1968, and re-elected in a landslide in 1972. It includes the rise of the anti-war movement in the 1960s, civil rights conflicts, and looks at both the politics of the Republican party and of the Democratic party. It ends with the 1972 election, but of course covers the Watergate break-in and the initial investigations of White House criminality. So it covers a lot, and that means it is not a quick read. It is, however, an indispensable guide to this important period in American history.

Reading it in 2025, as I did, is to see just how much of of the problems we face now originated with Nixon. He really initiated the Imperial Presidency that Trump is trying to complete. Nixon really stated once that if the President does it, it isn’t illegal. But Perlstein makes a more significant point, which is the kind of polarization we now see tearing the country apart really started with Nixon, who stoked it as a path to political power. The big difference between now and then is that in the 1970s there were Republican politicians who valued principles of Americanism. Sadly, we now have a bunch of spineless politicians. There are a few that stand on principles, but not nearly enough to restrain the most corrupt Presidency in American history.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , , | Comments Off on My Review of “Nixonland”

My Review of “Before The Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus”

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is the first volume in a 4-volume set about the rise of the far right in America, and it is very full of the backgrounds and people who made that happen. Interestingly, Goldwater himself had less to do with it than I had thought. There was a longstanding project among the right going back to the FDR administration, to somehow erase everything FDR did. This was impossible, of course, and unwise, but it was there. Long before Goldwater you had the John Birch Society and Joseph McCarthy. They had both been rejected by the mainstream of American society, but persisted in the margins. And in 1964 they succeeded in temporarily taking over the Republican Party.

A lot of the conflict in this book is really between wings of the Republican Party, rather than between Republicans and Democrats. It is interesting to read about this now in a time when the worst elements have take over the Republican Party and made it essentially a fascist movement, but in 1964 the fight for the nomination of the Republican Party was between the conservatives and the moderate/liberals. Just 4 years earlier the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower had finished his second term and was still popular. In his term in office the Republicans were basically a moderate party. His Vice-President, Nixon, came very close to winning election in 1960, and while Nixon had made his name as a staunch anti-communist, in terms of policies he was basically a moderate, as his later Presidency illustrated. Contenders like Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, and Henry Cabot Lodge were considered strong contenders, but as you may notice they all represented the Eastern establishment.

So this story is partly about the conservative rising in the Republican Party, and also about a realignment where the West becomes more important. And it is also pertinent to note that this election was the beginning of the movement of the once solid Democratic south into the Republican column. It features the entry into politics of a certain actor named Ronald Reagan, and while Johnson managed landslide victory, the seeds of his fall in Vietnam are apparent. In 1964 Johnson ran as the peace candidate while concealing from the public what he was doing in Vietnam. That would finally drive him out in 1968.

If you have any interest in American political history you will want get this book and read it.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | Comments Off on My Review of “Before The Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus”

My Review of The Making of Doctor Who

The Making of Doctor Who by Terrance Dicks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a Young Adult volume, and much of it may seem superficial, such as the summaries of the Doctor’s adventures to that point. I found a copy of the First edition, published in 1972, which was in the middle of Jon Pertwee’s run as the Doctor. A Second Edition was published in 1975 and includes some of Tom Baker, and some other changes. The biggest value for having this is that it gives a lot of good behind-the-scenes material on how the rehearsals are run, how the special effects are organized, and so on. It is all at the YA level of course, but if you can pick up a copy without spending too much money I would consider it.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | Comments Off on My Review of The Making of Doctor Who

Traveling

Cheryl and I got engaged during a trip to San Francisco in 1979, got married later in the year, and then went to Austria for our honeymoon. So travel was something we loved right from the start. Then we moved to Michigan so I could go to Graduate School at the University of Michigan, and that was the end of travel for a while. Grad students are chronically poor, and new Assistant Professors are only marginally better off. But I eventually left academia for a more lucrative career as a Project Manager, and in 2015 I got hired in at Ford Motor Credit. So in the fall of 2015 we took a trip to Ireland in the company of my brother Dennis and his wife Lyra. And that got us back into it.

We always said that we wanted to travel more when retired, and we have. In 2016 we took a Boat and Bike trip through the Netherlands and Belgium. In 2017 we took our niece Erin with us on a trip out west to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Utah, and Colorado. In 2018 we started preparing for planned RV travels by renting an RV in Suttons Bay, Michigan for a week. And in 2019, when Ford decided they could somehow manage to get along without me and few thousand other employees, I retired but we took a planned 40th anniversary trip: a Viking River Cruise along the Rhine River. When we returned from that, we were not yet ready to go RVing, but I had promised Cheryl a break from the cold winters, so we booked a Caribbean Cruise with MSC. We were lucky, we got that in just before the Covid pandemic hit. But for the rest of 2020, and most of 2021, we were doing what a lot of other people were doing, wearing face masks and trying to stay safe. But by the end of 2021, we had purchased an RV and a truck to tow it with, and we had been vaccinated, so we ventured out on an RV trip. This took us to the Southwest for several months, and we really enjoyed it. Plus it was much warmer than Michigan.

Then in 2022 we took another Viking River Cruise, this time on the Danube River, where we learned you don’t want to travel to Europe in summer if you can avoid it, at least anywhere south of Scandinavia. And in the fall we took another trip to Ireland with family, again including Dennis and Lyra, and this time with my sister Eileen. And in December we took off on another RV trip, this time to the Southeast of the U.S. Then it was a week in Hawaii, two weeks in Spain, and a week in Colorado. This caused us to cancel another RV trip, and in 2024 we sold the RV and the truck. But in the fall of 2024 we spent a month in France, and were joined for part of the trip by my sister Eileen and her son Felix. And while we were in Paris, we got an e-mail about a good deal, so we booked a 2025 trip to Spain and Portugal for 9 days. Later on in 2025 we plan a short trip to New york City so I can perform with a group at Carnegie Hall, and then we have booked a cruise of the Eastern Mediterranean, from Venice to Athens.

I know this makes it sound like we are fantastically wealthy, but we aren’t at all. We do two things pretty well. First, we look for bargains. This does not mean always the lowest possible price, though we have done well in that regard. It means the best value for money. That Hawaii trip, for instance, was largely paid for by spending an afternoon fending off a time-share salesman. So we had to buy round-trip airfare, and about $1000 for a room on Waikiki Beach. And the two weeks in Spain in 2023 was done using an exchange for the time share we inherited from Cheryl’s parents. Our two trips to Ireland and our recent Spain and Portugal trip were purchased through Great Value Vacations, which has fantastic deals. Our Caribbean Cruise was through Vacations to Go, which specializes in cruise deals. And because we are retired, we can jump on a deal on short notice if it comes up.

The other thing we did well is to decide on our priorities. I drive a 2012 car, and Cheryl drives a 2008 car. Our home is modest, and completely paid off. At this point in our lives, more “things” is just a burden, so we use what money we have to obtain experiences and memories. Every Sunday we go out to breakfast together, and spend the time looking at different travel ideas. We bring travel brochures, a laptop, and a tablet, and look at how we can do things within our budget. And we talk to other people to pick their brains. On our recent trip to Spain and Portugal, Mike and Lorrie mentioned TravelZoo, but after looking at the reviews we decided it was not a good bet. But Bernie and Jan mentioned Caravan Tours, and they had great reviews and some itineraries we loved. So what are we looking at for 2026 and beyond?

Right now we are waiting to hear about a Church-sponsered trip to Rome that our friend Don told us about. This would be a guided trip, and hit a few places outside of Rome as well. But since we first expressed interest we haven’t heard much. I hope it does happen, and for an affordable price, and that would be my first choice. But if that falls through, our next choice would be a Caravan Tours guided trip to South Dakota and Yellowstone. It starts in Rapid City, South Dakota, goes to Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, and the Crazy Horse memorial, then to Little Bighorn Battlefield. Then to Yellowstone Park, the Grand Tetons, Jackson, and finally ending in Salt Lake City. All you need to add is airfare and a few meals, and their charge starts at $2395 per person. This is relatively inexpensive, and allows us to save up some money for a bigger trip the following year. And that would be the Road Scholar tour of Egypt and Jordan. This is a 15 night guided tour, with most meals and airfare from selected cities included. And it is very nice. The trip starts in Amman, Jordan, takes you to several historic sites in Jordan, and works down to the Dead Sea, and finally Petra! Then it is off to Cairo, the Great Pyramids, a boat trip on the Nile to the Valley of the Kings and theTemples before returning to Cairo. For me this is once in a lifetime trip. It is more expensive at $6399 per person, but I think we can save that much by the end of 2026 if we are careful. It is more expensive, but the value is really high.

And then, if we are happy with our Caravan Tours experience, there is a tour in Mexico that looks very interesting. It is called Mexico Ancient Civilizations. It is a 9 day guided tour that starts in Mexico City and ends in Cancún, and it focuses on Native history, such as Teotihuacan, the Olmec Heads at La Venta, Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichén Itzá. Most meals are included, but airfare is not. But the whole package is a very reasonable $1495 per person.

So, this is what we are looking at for our future travel. I think is quite exciting.

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Traveling

Terraformers

I have been getting into a new game lately, which is called Terraformers. It is a turn-based strategy game that is all about terraforming Mars. It is available on a number of platforms, but I bought it on GOG (Good Old Games), which is one of the two platforms (the other is Steam) that I tend to use. I find the gameplay very attractive, and the game is built with a lot of replayability in mind. You can start out with a good tutorial game that introduces you to the basic concepts, but you might want to supplement this with a written manual, which you can download from the Steam community. I think it would appeal to anyone who enjoys games that involve building things.

You start with single city on Mars, and then you explore to find resources which can help you to expand your Mars colony. You can develop trade routes that let you trade any resources you have a lot of for resources you are lacking, and you need to do this because everything you do in the game uses resources of one kind or another. Balancing all of your resource demands is a key part of the game. But there is another balancing act you have to master, and that is how happy your colonists are (called Support in the game). Support can be though of as a resource as well, and some things can add to your support, and others subtract from it. Just make sure your support never falls to zero or it is Game Over.

As you win games on lower levels, additional content is unlocked that you can use on higher levels. And there are several DLC packages available as well. You can check it out for free by downloading a demo version called Terraformers: First Steps on Mars, and if you like it, the basic game package is only $9.99 at this time. which is pretty reasonable as I think you can get more than $9.99 worth of entertainment from it.

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Terraformers

My Review of The Courts of Chaos

The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Well, finally a story wraps up, and it is a good one. Corwin has moved from the center of things to some extent with the return of Oberon, and is now sulking in the Library, but Random talks him into leaving and taking an interest in things. Dara now appears as Oberon’s messenger with instructions for everyone in the family. And from Random’s son Martin, Corwin learns that he has a son named Merlin who will take center stage with the next set of novels.

Oberon is going to try and repair the pattern that Brand disrupted, but Corwin steals the Jewel and tries to do it himself. He is stopped before he can make the attempt by Oberon and Dworkin. Oberon instead takes a little of Corwin’s blood and turns it into a red raven that will accompany Corwin. They have a final talk, and Corwin tells Oberon he no longer is interested in the throne of Amber. He mostly wanted it in competition with Eric, and now that Eric is gone he knows he is not right for it. Oberon tells him he has to Hell Ride to the Courts of Chaos, and to bring the Jewel to the battle there, but first Oberon needs it to try the repair of the Pattern. The other members of the family have their instructions to gather their armies and go to the battle.

While on his ride, Corwin is visited by the red raven who brings him the Jewel, but he does not know at first whether Oberon succeeded in repairing the pattern or died in the attempt, but as the monster storm gathers it looks like Oberon failed. Corwin is able to create a new pattern, but when he falls exhausted Brand appears and takes the Jewel. So now Corwin has to go the Battle and find Brand and get the Jewel back somehow. He finds Brand, and so do the others, but Corwin is better attuned to the Jewel and uses it to burn Brand, before an arrow kills Brand, and he and the Jewel go into a chasm.

Oberon’s face appears in the sky and tells them that the decision of who is to rule in Amber will be left to the horn of the unicorn. The unicorn duly appears, with the Jewel hanging from its horn, and places the Jewel in front of Random. Corwin helps Random to become attuned to the Jewel, and Random disperses the storm.

This ends the 5 novel “Corwin Cycle” of Amber, to be followed by the 5 novel “Merlin Cycle”. It is a very satisfying ending that ties up a lot of loose ends, and is well worth a read. But at the very least you have to commit to reading all 5 novels to get any value out of this. It is really one long novel divided into 5 parts. But if you like fantasy, give it a shot. Zelazny is fantastic writer, and I have never regretted reading any of his work. I even got to hear him read from one of his novels (A Night In The Lonesome October) at a local science fiction convention some years ago.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | Comments Off on My Review of The Courts of Chaos

My Review of The Hand of Oberon

The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Basically, so far every book in the series makes a turn that renders what you thought you knew to be wrong and making everything appear in a new light. There are some clues here to what is going on, but you need to be paying careful attention to pick them up. Otherwise, you will get that complete turn on the next book.

Corwin has come to realize that he really does not want the throne of Amber, but he does feel some responsibility for setting things right. Part of it comes from the curse he placed on Amber previously, which he thinks may haver caused, or at contributed to, the black road and the corruption of the Pattern. When he, Ganelon, and Random go to the original Pattern, they see objects at the center which Ganelon retrieves, and they prove to be a dagger and a Trump, which Random realizes depicts his son Martin. The Trump was stabbed by the dagger, and they realize that it was drawn by Brand, who must have used it lure Martin there and stab him, with his blood causing the corruption of the Pattern and the Black Road. So now it completely clear that Brand is the enemy they neeed to defeat.

Corwin can see what needs to happen, but he requires the Jewel, which he had hidden in the Earth shadow. But when he gets there he discovers that Brand got there ahead of him. But Brand needs to walk the Pattern with the Jewel before he can be completely attuned to it. So the main objective now is make sure Brand cannot do that. They place guards at all of the Pattern sites, and Corwin first has a crack at Brand. He is succeeding when Brand is able to “teleport” away in some fashion. Then Benedict confronts him in Tir-na Nog’th, and despite being immobilized by Brand, his metal arm (which came from Tir-na Nog’th) moves of its own volition the wrest the Jewel from Brand.

This is another good chapter in the overall 10-book cycle that is Amber, but like all of them it does not stand alone. You have to read all of them, in order, to get the full effect, and if you cannot commit to that you probably should not even start. If you can make that commitment, though, it is worth your investment as Zelazny is a very good writer.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | Comments Off on My Review of The Hand of Oberon

My Review of Doctor Who: 25 Glorious Years

Doctor Who: 25 Glorious Years by Peter Haining

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Peter Haining is a well-known author in the world of Doctor Who, and this book is part of the reason. As you might infer from the title, it was published in 1988 for the 25th anniversary of Doctor Who. It has a lot of good information concerning those first 25 years, but do not expect to read anything critical beyond some mild criticism of the hiatus in the middle of Colin Baker’s run. This reads like a release from the BBC publicity department: everyone is brilliant, the decisions were all sound, and no mistakes were ever made. That said, it deserves a place on the bookshelf of any Doctor Who fan.

Since the Doctor at the time of this book was Sylvester McCoy, it is not surprising that he gets a little more attention than the other Doctors, but all of them are covered. In addition, there is some discussion of the various companions and many of the guest stars. Other chapters address the various merchandise you could have gotten (mostly Dalek figures), Doctor Who in the comics, and the status of the lost episodes at the time it was written (some additional episodes have been discovered since, thankfully). And the many photographs are a welcome addition. So if you see a copy, pick it up. I think you will like it.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | Comments Off on My Review of Doctor Who: 25 Glorious Years