chris_gerrib: (Pirates of Mars)
[personal profile] chris_gerrib
DucKon

I'm back from DucKon . The con was poorly-attended, largely due to the date. All the librarians were at the ALA meeting (in downtown Chicago), and there are three big regional cons next weekend, so budget-conscious attendees of those cons stayed home. Still, I had fun and moved some books. It appears that next year DucKon will be back to it's usual early June schedule, so I anticipate more turnout.

A Private Little War

Ironically, I have a trunk novel entitled "A Private War" (it's a mess, and will probably never see the light of day) so when I saw Jason Sheehan's debut novel featured on Scalzi's Big Idea I bought the ebook. It's an interesting read. The setup is that futuristic mercenaries are fighting a war on the cheap, and using replica WWI biplanes to bomb the spear-totting natives. Alas for the mercs, things aren't going to plan. Entertaining but not terribly deep.

My Friend the Mercenary

Moving from fiction to fact, I am 99% finished with James Brabazon's memoir My Friend the Mercenary. It's the true story of Nick du Toit, a South African mercenary famous for a botched coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea. The two men became friends when du Toit was Brabazon's bodyguard while filming a revolution in Liberia. Two thoughts:

1) Brabazon befriended du Toit despite the later's heavy involvement in enforcing South African apartheid. This enforcement consisted of a lot of assassinations and bombings, conducted by du Toit personally. There's a fair body of research that suggests men fight not for patriotism but for their fellow soldiers. Brabazon's memoir supports this conclusion - he's friends with du Toit because of the joint struggle they had in Liberia.

2) The Equatorial Guinea coup was poorly-planned and haphazardly conducted, resulting in its failure. Brabazon is befuddled as to how a professional like du Toit could have dropped the ball so badly. Here I can say I've seen (and been guilty of) this before. Basically, competent people with a history of making things happen decide that, based on their track record / skill set, they can gut their way through a project. Sometimes, this works. Sometimes it fails, and when it does it's usually disastrous. Consider it "Gerrib's law of competency."
This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

Profile

chris_gerrib: (Default)
chris_gerrib

July 2025

S M T W T F S
  12 3 45
6 78 910 1112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 16th, 2025 12:54 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios