Moonboy by Anna Ciddor. Sydney: Allen And Unwin, 2025

 

This is the latest of Anna Ciddor’s delightful time slip novels. In the others, the characters time travelled to Roman times. In this one, our heroine, Charlotte, time travels only as far as 1969, where she meets her grandfather when he was her age. Keith, nicknamed Moonboy during his childhood for his passion for the space program, is suffering dementia in his older years and is living in an aged care facility which looks after several dementia sufferers. Charlotte and her grandfather had been very close and it is hard for her to see him like this. 

Checking out his box of childhood treasures, mostly cuttings connected with Apollo 11, she puts on his footy jumper and finds that it takes her back to the past, where she meets and befriends young Keith and his family. 

She finds she can change the past, such as persuading his older sister Gwen to go to do a job at Honeysuckle Creek, the Australian tracking station which showed visuals from the moon. There Gwen becomes interested in the space program and becomes an engineer instead of working at a shop in Queensland as Charlotte remembers. This inspires Charlotte to change some more history for the better.

Charlotte finds ways to get her grandfather to recover some memories and speak again, by reminding him of the space program.

The scenes in 1969, with the moon landing approaching, are fun, especially for people like me who were there. There is one scene in a classroom where the children are given milk. I remember that. To this day there are people remembering this program with disgust because the milk was warm. My school was built of bluestone, so the milk was cool and I enjoyed it. 

There is a milk bar where Keith and his family live and sell stuff. Milk bars were convenience stores that sold groceries and sweets in the days before supermarkets became the main places to shop. Actually, there were still milk bars around till only a few years ago, near where I live(the most recent to close was replaced with a cafe). It definitely made me sentimental, but for the younger children at whom this novel is aimed, it’s history, as much as the details about Apollo 11. 

Anna has done a huge amount of research and has given links to the web sites she used, including one that shows a video mentioned in the book. 

The style of this particular novel reminds me of the work of the amazing Gabrielle Wang, best known as the author of A Ghost In My Suitcase, which was turned into a play some years ago. 

The chapters are short, and easy reading.

Highly recommended for readers 9-12. 

Available in ebook and print, at all good web sites. 

Septopus by Rebecca Fung.Owltitude Press, NSW, 2024

 

Stanley is a Septopus, born with only seven tentacles instead of eight. He can do what everyone else needs eight tentacles to do, but his father treats him like a fragile person who needs regular doctor appointments and is too weak to go anywhere, his mother, a scientist, pays very little attention while doing her experimenting and his siblings - and other octopus children - bully him.

Fortunately, Stanley, while he puts up with his family’s behaviour, finds ways around it. The first time involves embarrassing his oldest brother, Oswald the jock, in the middle of an octoball game.   He manages to get into a party which his family don’t want him to attend, inspired by the story of “Octorella”, and makes his first friend there.

It’s good to see a story in which a bullied child - even if they’re a sea creature - refuses to be a victim. It should inspire young readers.

The cartoon-style art of veteran children’s book illustrator Kathy Creamer, cover and internal, is delightful, funny and over the top. 

This book is suitable for readers from 8-14, as well as adults like me who love children’s books. Plus it will be good to read to children.

It’s currently only available in Australia, though it might be available elsewhere once Owltitude Press expands. It’s the first book by a new publishing company, though the author has written more books, some of which are already available on Amazon. Here is the Australian Amazon, but also available on the American and British sites. https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=rebecca+fung&crid=2QXCD8W5NMVMC&sprefix=%2Caps%2C244&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_1_0_recent

If you live in Sydney, try Abbey’s Bookshop, which has already sold out its current stock of Septopus, but should be willing to get in more. Or ask your local bookshop to order it if you live elsewhere in Australia. It’s past Christmas but this will make a good birthday gift for the child in your life.

The Owltitude web site is down right now, but I will put it here when it’s back.

Just Finished Re-Reading Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp.

 I seem to be doing a lot of re-reading lately, while there is a pile of review stuff to do. Sometimes I’m stressed out and just want something familiar to read. 

Recently, I binged on L.Sprague De Camp’s Compleat Enchanter series. That made me feel like going back to another book I’d read years ago, by the same author, Lest Darkness Fall. An interesting thing about this book is that it inspired Harry Turtledove, now best known as the king of alternative universe fiction.

It was written in the early 1940s, starting off in the late 1930s. The hero, Martin Padway, is in Italy doing research for a thesis. He is an archaeologist, so knows, not only history, but how quite a few things are made. Padway is talking to an Italian scholar who has theories about alternative universes, important to the plot, because he suggests that, if you went back into the past, you could change things without worrying that you might keep yourself from being born, because you’d just create another branch of the tree of time.

When Martin takes a walk, he is struck by lightning and finds himself in sixth century Rome, run by the Goths. He speaks Latin, so can communicate. He also eventually learns the language of the Goths.

Figuring he isn’t going back to his own time, he decides the best thing is to start a small business. He understands that it has to be something simple, because some things require the technology to build the technology to build the impressive stuff. He starts off with getting a loan to make brandy, and it goes from there. Eventually, he builds a telegraph line and a printing press, then creates paper to publish his weekly newspaper, because vellum is not easy to get hold of. 

Knowing that the armies of Justinian are on their way, he decides the Goths are a lot more laid back in their attitudes and he changes the things that will happen. 

This edition contains the original novella and a number of other stories  by well known authors that are basically Lest Darkness Fall fan fiction.  I bought it in Apple Books ebook and it wasn’t expensive. It’s also available in Kindle or print. If you haven’t read it, or not recently, it’s well worth a read. 

On Seeing Rocky Horror On New Year’s Eve!

 Tonight I went to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show at my local cinema, the Classic, as an annual New Year’s Eve event. I’m not one to wear costumes, but when I have worn them, at SF cons, I made my own. Tonight, those people in costume I met had bought them online. It was still fun to watch the costume parade. 

We received a glass of sparkling wine on arrival, a nice way to celebrate New Year’s Eve, if not really connected with the film. They also gave us a goodie bag of items to use in the show, eg a newspaper to cover our heads while being sprayed with “rain” early in the film, confetti to throw when the bride and groom were coming out of the church at the beginning. I wouldn’t want to be the cinema staff having to clean up afterwards, I can only hope they got paid extra.

There’s quite a cast. Richard O’Brien, who played Riff Raff, is the show’s composer and lyricist, who also co-wrote the film script and I’m assuming he did the script for the original show, which I’ve seen a few times. I’ve seen him also in Robin Of Sherwood, as an evil sorcerer, and in Flash Gordon, as one of Prince Barin’s men.

Tim Curry, who played Frank N Furter, was also, as far as I know, the Pirate King who made the role sexy, in The Pirates Of Penzance,  but I’ve only seen a snippet when it was performed at the Royal Command Performance. My favourite of his roles was Shakespeare in The Life Of Shakespeare. He absolutely was Shakespeare. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find it again. 

Patricia Quinn, who played Magenta, was in I, Claudius, as one of Claudius’s dreadful sisters.

I think there was a production of the stage show with Richard O’Brien, on YouTube, if it hasn’t been taken down. It’s worth checking out. 

Any fans out there? 

On Watching YouTube!

 I do enjoy watching YouTube. There is such a variety of channels. I download Andre Rieu concerts for my mother. There are quite a few films and TV shows I would be happy to buy, but which are not available for download, at least not in Australia - films such as The Last Starfighter, Love at First Bite, some Shakespeare films not available for purchase elsewhere(maybe on American streaming  services?). I’ve gone to Premium, which allows me to download and is ad free. It costs, but is worth it.

I also have favourite channels.

Scottish comedian Eleanor Morton does skits in which she plays all the roles. My favourites are the hilarious conversations between J.R.R Tolkien and C.S Lewis. As Tolkien, she puffs on an invisible pipe. The skits always end with Tolkien saying that author Mervyn Peake is coming in later. She also does skits about someone famous reading their hate mail, from Marie Antoinette to Edgar Allan Poe. Arthur Conan Doyle reads a long list of hate mail from people annoyed about his killing Sherlock Holmes. One of the letters is signed, “Love, Mum.”

Someone else who plays all the roles in his skits is Ryan George, whose channel Pitch Meeting mainly focuses on pitch meetings for various films. There are two characters, the writer and “Producer Guy.” If the film is an old one, eg the original Star Wars, there is a typewriter in the background, otherwise a computer, depending when the film was made. The writer then tells the story, including whatever about the film didn’t make sense, pointed out by Producer Guy. His response is “I don’t know” why or “I need you to get all the way off my back about this.” The best known line, after the producer says “That must be very hard” is “No, super easy, barely an inconvenience.”

There is a rather nice channel called Cinema Therapy, in which a film loving therapist and a friend talk about characters from films and analyse them. It really gives you something to think about.

I also have some book and history themed channels. My favourite book channel is owned by Dominic Noble, who begins every review with “Hello, my beautiful watchers!” Most of them are comparing books with their film adaptations, though he did spend some time just talking about books during the Hollywood writers’ strike. He has done several reviews of the Narnia books, several more of the Hercule Poirot novels and film adaptations. He is very lively and often puts on costumes and acts out scenes from the stories. He has also reviewed some cringeworthy novels which are about women who start as feminists, but change their minds, often with Donald Trump as a character or mentioned positively. His descriptions of the stories are hilarious.

Claire Ridgway, a Tudor England expert, has a channel dedicated to her Anne Boleyn Files and Tudor Society. She does also have a web site of the same name, but pretty much everything there ends up on her YouTube channel anyway. It’s chatty and interesting. It’s not just about Anne Boleyn, also about well known people in Henry VIII’s England, but Henry VIII also plays a major part. Sometimes she answers fan questions. Sometimes it’s “What if this or that was different?” such as “What if Arthur Tudor had lived?” But she never says, “I’m right!” She usually says, “This is what I think, and here’s why, I’m not necessarily right, what do you think?” She has written some books, which are available in ebook.

Another chatty Tudor era historian is “Dr Kat.” She is very similar to Claire Ridgway on her channel Reading The Past. 

There are quite a few comedy channels. Aussie Mark Gallagher slips himself into scenes from Harry Potter as an Australian student who abuses characters like Malfoy. He is hilarious. Foil Arms and Hog are an Irish comedy group, also very funny. The most recent is someone trying to get workmates to swap work on Christmas Day.

A very recent channel for me, and a new favourite is Tasting History with Max Miller. He researches historical foods, talks about them and makes them. I have tried one of them, First Class breakfast on the Titanic. Apart from the sad story, it really was fun to have a go. I made buckwheat pancakes and a baked apple, added smoked salmon and marmalade. I couldn’t get Oxford marmalade, but the one I bought was acceptable. I used it on the pancakes. I did think baked apple was a bit over the top for breakfast, but did it anyway, just to see what people ate in First Class on that ship. It worked beautifully. He has written a cookbook called Tasting History. I might get it some time, but for now the YouTube channel will do. I’m currently watching his video on making real historical sugar plums. 

So, any YouTube fans out there?

What I’m Reading Now!

 As usual, I’m reading or rereading several books at a time. Some are books I read years ago and have indulged in buying ebook versions. 

To my astonishment, I discovered that a book I read in my teens, Those About To Die, by Daniel P Mannix, a history of the Roman games, is still around as The Way Of The Gladiator. Interestingly, the intro is written by someone who read it at fourteen, about the same age as I was when I first discovered it. It’s quite charming, for a book about gruesome happenings. The author describes them through the eyes of real people who were there, or at least, chooses those real people, in order to describe the games. So it’s not just “this and this happened” but the possible story of top gladiator Flamma or bestiarius Carpophorus. We know their names, but nothing else. Who knows? I’m halfway through a reread and enjoying it again

I’m reading children’s book Septopus, about a seven tentacled octopus, by Aussie author Rebecca Fung. It will be reviewed here soon, plus I am hoping to interview the author, who has started a publishing company. 

I found the ebook of Drinking Gourd by Barbara Hambly, one of her Benjamin January series about African American musician, teacher, surgeon - and sleuth, sometimes even paid for it - Benjamin January, set in the 1830s and 1840s. I read it years ago, but remembered so little that it was worth a reread. This one involves a murder, as usual, and the Underground Railroad.

The Incompleat Enchanter, by L.Sprague De Camp and Fletcher Pratt, is a book I read years ago when I was first discovering speculative fiction. Someone mentioned it, oddly enough, while commenting on some fan fiction on web site Archive Of Our Own. It made me decide to check it out on Apple Books as I have no idea where my print copy is. I ended up buying all three books in the series. It’s strange to remind myself that this was written in the 1940s. The premise is that a couple of psychologists working at an institute figure out the mathematics of magic. You use a formula and are taken to an alternative universe where a literary world is real. The hero, Harold Shea, first decides to visit the world of Irish myth, but ends up in the world of Norse mythology instead - right before Ragnarok. He does eventually get the hang of it, and the next world is based on Spenser’s Faerie Queen, where he falls in love with warrior girl Belphebe, and takes her home. Other worlds are Orlando Furioso, Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, which, being unfinished, is a repeating world, The Kalevala and, finally, Irish myth. A lot of fun! 

I have finally bought The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. It’s the first of a series set in a rather lavish retirement village. Four residents, Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim, have weekly meetings to discuss - and hopefully solve - cold cases. This time someone actually has been murdered and they work on the case, with the reluctant help of police officers Chris and Donna. A nice cosy, though a number of characters die in the course of the novel. Still, nice to see a story centred around older sleuths. I’ve bought the second book.

There are more - I’ve recently bought the audiobook of Joanne Harris’s Gospel Of Loki, for example - but these will do for now. Are you a person who reads several books at a time, like me? Tell us about your current reading! 

Eric Idle At Hamer Hall

 Tonight I went to see Eric Idle, one of the members of the Monty Python group. I only found out it was on last night because he is on Twitter and mentioned he was having fun in Canberra and was doing a show in Melbourne tonight. The tickets were sold out except some in the choir seats, on the sides. I knew it would be fine, having seen Henry Winkler earlier this year, also from last minute choir seats, so I booked on line. It was not cheap, even in those seats, but well worth it. 

Mr Idle was very funny, but the show was mainly about how the Pythons got together (university) and how they made their shows and their films, even some of the TV shows on which they appeared, with clips. There was a Virtual Band playing every now and then, sometimes with Eric on the video.

He wrote the songs, including, of course, “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” from Life Of Brian. In fact, his show ended with him leading the audience in a sing-along of it, and quite a few people whistled during the chorus(good on them, I can’t whistle these days). I did sing along. 

He said he wrote it when they were trying to think of an ending for the film - in his hotel room! 

He had a story to tell about the help they got from the Beatle George Harrison in making Life Of Brian. They were in the middle of building sets in Tunisia when Lew Grade cancelled  their budget, after reading the script. With no money they had to go to the US to see if they could somehow raise the money, but no one was interested. Then Eric got a call from George, saying he had the money. To get it, he had to mortgage his home and his business. When Eric asked him why he did it, George said, “I wanted to see the film.”

Fortunately it became a classic, so he got his money back, but I remember the fuss made by Christians who hadn’t even seen it. A friend of mine who was religious said she had heard bad things, but I assured her it wasn’t making fun of Jesus - far from it! - so she went to see it and loved it. 

I had heard that George Harrison had helped, but not that he risked losing his home to do it.

He told stories about his other friends, including Robin Williams, who was disappointed that no one recognised him in France when they went out to a club - after saying he didn’t want to go out because people in the US always made a fuss. 

That reminded me of a friend of mine who hosted Leonard Nimoy when he was here(she knew all the Trek folk). He said he didn’t want a fuss made of him, then was disappointed that nobody recognised him when he went out for a walk. Well, it was the suburbs. You don’t expect to meet Mr Spock in Mordialloc, do you? 

He also talked about the sadness of losing friends as the years go by. He was asked to speak at Robin Williams’ funeral - and George Harrison’s. Both times he wrote a song, which he sang for us.

He spoke about the death of Python Graham Chapman, then showed a clip of a show they were on. They brought on an urn, supposedly with Chapman’s ashes in it, and a picture of him hanging on the side… then the urn was knocked over when John Cleese was in the middle of a sentence. They all got up and frantically started brushing up the ashes. I suspect Graham would have enjoyed the joke. 

I really enjoyed the show and am glad I was able to catch it. It was fascinating to look at the jam packed auditorium and think, everyone in the audience is a Monty Python fan. 

Good night!