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Weekend Media Update, a Continuing Series
Jan. 26th, 2015 09:15 amA continuing report of media consumed over the prior weekend.
The Way Station by Clifford Simak
Having been told that All True SF Fans have read The Way Station (and having caused a tempest in the teacup of fandom over it) I dug up a copy and read the book.
If you hadn't told me it won the 1964 Hugo, I would have guessed it was written in the 1940s or 1950s. That doesn't mean it's bad, rather it's old school. Written down to a word-count, the brief story is of a Civil War veteran who gets a gig running an intergalactic relay station for aliens. It was entertaining enough, although the ending was close to a dues ex machina.
I was also struck by the economics of transport. The largest group of people that travel through the device is five, and per the story sometimes Enoch goes a day or two with no travelers. Granted, Earth is a backwater, important only as a way to access other backwaters, but still, I don't see how one runs a Galactic civilization on that low of a bandwidth.
Death Stalks Door County
I was at a local authors's fair last weekend, shilling my book. I ended up buying a book from Patricia Skalka, Death Stalks Door County. As one could guess, it's a mystery, set in Door County, Wisconsin, a resort area north of Chicago. (For reasons cultural and geographic, when Chicagoans want to get away for the weekend, we go north.)
Death Stalks was an entertaining read. It's published by the University of Wisconsin Press, so it's a small press book, but per my conversations with other readers heavily marketed in Door County. I'll have a more detailed review up on Heroines of Fantasy.
The Way Station by Clifford Simak
Having been told that All True SF Fans have read The Way Station (and having caused a tempest in the teacup of fandom over it) I dug up a copy and read the book.
If you hadn't told me it won the 1964 Hugo, I would have guessed it was written in the 1940s or 1950s. That doesn't mean it's bad, rather it's old school. Written down to a word-count, the brief story is of a Civil War veteran who gets a gig running an intergalactic relay station for aliens. It was entertaining enough, although the ending was close to a dues ex machina.
I was also struck by the economics of transport. The largest group of people that travel through the device is five, and per the story sometimes Enoch goes a day or two with no travelers. Granted, Earth is a backwater, important only as a way to access other backwaters, but still, I don't see how one runs a Galactic civilization on that low of a bandwidth.
Death Stalks Door County
I was at a local authors's fair last weekend, shilling my book. I ended up buying a book from Patricia Skalka, Death Stalks Door County. As one could guess, it's a mystery, set in Door County, Wisconsin, a resort area north of Chicago. (For reasons cultural and geographic, when Chicagoans want to get away for the weekend, we go north.)
Death Stalks was an entertaining read. It's published by the University of Wisconsin Press, so it's a small press book, but per my conversations with other readers heavily marketed in Door County. I'll have a more detailed review up on Heroines of Fantasy.
