Bruce Dorluin: A Guest Post!

 

Here is a guest post from SF author Bruce Dorluin, who kindly agreed to write for the Great Raven about his space opera/dystopia. He has supplied links to where you can buy his books. 

And here is a very impressive book trailer for Bruce’s series! 

https://brucedorluin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/shards_of_space_third_draft-1080p1.mp4

I admit we have one thing in common, which is playing Dungeons And Dragons, though I never got as far as playing the Dungeon Master! 

Take it away, Bruce!

My whole, adult life, as I struggled to pay the bills, I have always wanted to write at least one book. As a teenager, I loved creating storybook format Dungeons and Dragons games for my friends. Oftentimes, while playing, four hours would pass before someone would say, “Wow, look what time it is!” The enjoyment and emersion of the players into my games was genuine and I felt appreciated and encouraged to create more. 

Well, after twenty years since I hung up my dungeon master hat, I finally got to write a book. 

Just for context, my youth was filled with video games, Star Trek, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. To this day, I would choose to watch Stargate SG-1 over any other TV show. When I wasn’t glued to a TV screen, I built custom Lego castles. My brother and I spent hours assembling our Lego armies and having castle battles with a dungeons and dragons style battle system applied to each figure, based on their equipment. Those days will never come back. 

Today however, I have new opportunities to enjoy life. I have four children who each have their own personalities. I spend a good share of my time with them, helping and guiding them to be productive, emotionally stable individuals. My motto is, “Raise good adults, not kids.” So far, as I try to instill in them all the wisdom I can muster, teaching them the failures of my life, I am encouraged and excited to see each of them grow into adulthood.  

As far as book writing, I have considered writing a book for some time. For instance, I have had a dungeons and dragons campaign that has been stuck in my head, unplayed for twenty years. I plan to advance that campaign, but it will be in a book rather than rolled by dice. But I didn’t want to start with writing a fantasy series, relieving my imaginary story queue into a sea of other fantasy books. I wasn’t ready for that. 

However, there was story I had in mind. It’s a story, or at least a memory I kept in queue for much longer than the dungeons and dragons campaign. When I was a youth, in my early to mid-teens, I had many episodes of déjà vu and vivid dreams. 

One night, I had a dream I was an older version of myself. In my dream, I was a person of reasonable dexterity, but not exactly youthful. I was on the rooftops of city brick apartment buildings, jumping from one building to the next. It was dark and I was afraid but driven. Inside one of those apartment buildings, was a young blonde woman who I loved very much and was trying to rescue. Within in the dream, in my mind I held the image of a blonde woman I did not know. 

As I jumped from building to building, part of me wanted to seek the local police to help me. After all, police were trustworthy and could help me. However, within the dream, I pushed away the thought. My trust of the police, replaced by betrayal and fear, drove me to vigilantism. Within the dream, I reminded myself of who I feared with an image of the new police. These police were different from the heroes in blue. These police wore black outfits with matching knee-high black boots and black hats. These police were more likely to beat you and send you to jail for nothing, than help. 

The fear of the police in black startled me awake. For thirty years, I have held the memory of that dream. 

While in my twenties, that dream remained in my mind as a permanent memory. The dream had little meaning, until I met my would-be blonde wife. I thought for several years that the woman in the dream was her. 

As the years passed, and we didn’t get police in black, I considered the dream was drawn from my imagination and not an example of a precognition dream. However, as life would have it, my eldest daughter looks like my wife. My daughter is eleven. Needless to say, I will be on high alert for police who wear black for the next twenty years. 

That’s enough about the ‘police in black’ story. 

In 2019, I sat awake night after night, lying in bed, reliving a new story in my head. After a time, I wrote it down on paper, refining the story as it progressed. While I always wanted to write a book, I didn’t consider myself great at writing and I didn’t know how to publish. However, I had a ‘Go-For-It!’ moment and I have not looked back. At the end of 2021, after many re-writes, revisions, and WTF’s from my wife, I published my first book. 

For my first book, The Shards of Space: Echoes of Destiny, I created a future when the police in black exist. Additionally, I love sci-fi and I came up with a plot where humans search for planets to colonize. For this book series, I mixed the despotic future, space exploration, and sci-fi components. 

The entire series is about Curtis Jecker, 16 sent on missions to find a new planet to colonize, to save humanity. Along his search for a new planet, his ship collides with a space anomaly causing his ship to spiral out of control causing a rift in space. He is lost, alone, and out of fuel when he arrives on an Earth-like planet. On this Earth-like planet, he finds humans and an angrier Curtis Jecker, who is hell-bent on killing him. 

In the second book, The Shards of Space: Frequency Stone, Curtis tries to find his way home as hostile aliens and more Curtis Jeckers are in search of him. Curtis falls in love and begins to unravel the mystery that is his life. 

Overall, after finishing the first book and ready to publish my second book, I am happy to have experienced the trials of writing a book. I learned many lessons the hard way. And unfortunately, if you read Echoes of Destiny, you can likely tell it was re-written several times. For those who want to know how this story progresses and ends, you will not be disappointed. 

For my next series, which I will write next and is intended for a younger audience, I am excited to apply the learned lessons. 

Thank you Sue, for letting me take up precious blog space. And to anyone reading this, feel free to reach out anytime. 

I am taking pre-orders for book 2 at brucedorluin.com_book2

If you want book 1 and 2 together, you can order them together

Also, some people have read the first book and rated/reviewed it. If you read it, please provide feedback directly or on these sites. 

Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/157846538-bruce-dorluin

Amazon Author:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Bruce-Dorluin/author/B0BL73YC1D?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

OnlineBookClub:

https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/shelves/author.php?a=236027

CBCA Night Of The Notables 2023

 Tonight I went to this year’s Night Of The Notables in which the Children’s Book Council of Australia(CBCA) announced this year’s long list for the CBCA Awards. It was held in the North Fitzroy library.

It was a pleasant event as always, though a bit shorter than when they were doing it on Zoom. They fed us and I met a friend, George Ivanoff, who is actually making a living out of his writing, something very unusual here.

I think it’s sponsored by Walker Books Australia, so there was a panel with two Walker authors. One was a new picture book author I hadn’t heard of and they only gave us her first name, but the other was an old favourite of mine, Rebecca Lim. Among other things, she wrote the Mercy series, which she mentioned tonight as having done well - and no wonder! Mercy is an angel who was stupid enough to hang out with the angels who led the rebellion in heaven. A small group of other angels are hiding her on Earth, where she bounces from body to body, a la Quantum Leap. 

There was also some discussion of the current situation with the editing of the Ronald Dahl books. Rebecca pointed out that it was done years ago to Enid Blyton and nobody made a fuss, or at least nobody who wasn’t around at the time remembers. I do remember and there was some fuss, just not as much as there is about Ronald Dahl. And it was over much more quickly.

Then there was a video of this year’s long listed books in all categories from Older Readers to picture books. It was pretty, but didn’t go for very long and though I too, photos, I really couldn’t make out what was on the list. In the end, I had to go to the CBCA web site to find out, and there was no link to anything that could tell you what the books were about, but there were some of my favourites on the list, such as Pamela Rushby, who writes very good historical fiction, and Ellie Marney, who did a series about a young Australian Sherlock Holmes type boy and his Watson, a girl called Rachel.

 I don’t think I will be able to catch up with anywhere near all of them, but will buy some of those that look interesting.

If you’re curious, here is a link to the long list.

https://cbca.org.au/notables-2023

A Trip To Sydney - And Books!

 So, last week I went to Sydney to see Amadeus. It was a wonderful, if short, visit, and worth every cent I paid.

And I bought books, despite promising myself I wouldn’t. More of this later. 

I arrived in the late afternoon and took the train from the airport  to Central railway station. I knew my hotel, the Great Southern, was near the station, but not how very close it was, so a two minute walk brought me there. 

It’s a very old building, 19th century, although renovated, of course, so it’s a bit shabby, but clean. I had a small room, mostly taken up by a huge bed, with a small bathroom that had a decent sized shower. It was clean and comfortable, which was what I really wanted. Unfortunately their entire breakfast offering was something called “Carnivore Hot Plate” filled with meat, meat and more meat, as I discovered next morning. And a toast and fried egg. I know that hotels no longer have a buffet, since COVID, but surely a menu? Ah, well. A nice gent in the nearest open shop, a tobacconist, directed me to the food court at a shopping mall around the corner. That was open, so I bought breakfast, a salmon Benedict and fresh squeezed juice.

The first night, though, I caught up with my great niece, Rachel, and her sweet boyfriend Benjy. We got on the light rail, aka tram, which was right across the road from the hotel, and went to their favourite falafel joint, which you had to book for! Rachel has grown, she is now taller than me. It was a delight to see her and have a chat with Benjy. They are both about to start their second year at university.

Tuesday I met my friend from the Blue Mountains, Anne, whom I know through science fiction fandom, but who is also a Ricardian. We caught up after a long time. We have both seen and loved The Lost King, and Anne, who is picky about these things, has seen it three times! After we had had lunch at her favourite cafe in the Queen Victoria Building, we crossed the road to Galaxy Bookshop, which is Sydney’s big SF shop. Minotaur in Melbourne is big too, but it’s mostly devoted to comics and knick knacks. Its SF book shelves are limited.

I decided that if I was going to buy anything, it would be a classic that I couldn’t get in ebook. I’d hoped to find some of C.J Cherryh’s Chanur books, but no such luck. Nobody seems to have them, so I ended up ordering a three-book volume from Amazon, which did have it, but there is a long story around that which I will tell you when it arrives.

So I bought Samuel R. Delany’s classic novel Babel-17, something definitely not in ebook. I’ll let you know how it goes when I’ve finished it. It was slim enough to fit into my overnight bag.

That night I went to the Sydney Opera House to finally see Amadeus. I had only seen the building from a distance before, while going to Manly on the ferry. This time, I stood on the terrace and took photos of ferries going past. 

The production was brilliant. I think they must have hired opera singers to be in it, because, unlike when I saw it with the Melbourne Theatre Company, that wasn’t a recording when Mozart’s operas were on. They were actually singing. It must have been very expensive to stage. Worth it! And Michael Sheen was amazing as Salieri - what a plum role for the right actor! He has also played Mozart when he was younger, so he knows this show well. 

The trams to Circular Quay were not working that night due to track work, so I walked to the railway station, which got me back to Central and my two minute walk to the hotel. 

Next morning I checked out early and found a cafe on the way to the station to have breakfast. 

On the plane flight home I didn't read my new book, because a young man sitting next to me wanted to chat. He was a teenager, about to start Year 9, and had just been for his first trip on his own.  He wanted to talk about his favourite things, such as history and books. I let him, and answered. I’m a teacher, after all, and he was about the age of the students I used to teach.

So, my first trip since the pandemic. Very enjoyable! And now I know it’s possible, I will do it again.

January 15 - Happy Birthday, Dad!

 Today, January 15, is my late father’s birthday. He was born on this day in 1925 and died December 28 2009. 

I miss him terribly! He was funny, sweet and amazingly gifted in a lot of areas. He built me floor to ceiling book cases. He turned an old desk from an ugly, shabby piece of office furniture into something people would pay thousands of dollars to own. He could make silver jewellery, including a necklace with an open book pendant he made for me when I qualified as a librarian. He drew delightful cartoons of himself, which he left at my home when he dropped off stuff for me. He had a beautiful baritone singing voice, which he passed on to his male descendants (my brother and all my nephews). He was a “silver surfer” who discovered the Internet in his later years and loved it.

To me, he was the head of my fan club. That Shakespeare? Nowhere near as good as his daughter! He argued with bookshop owners to put my books in the window and pestered his friends to buy my children’s books for their grandchildren. When one of them said his grandchild was only a year old, Dad said, “So? Is it going to go off?” And he read my books, he really did. I’m not sure any of my other family members did, though my sister did beta read an early version of my novel.

I wish he could have lived long enough to see my novel Wolfborn published. I did dedicate it to him. 

Anyway, here are some people and events he shared a birthday with.

The most famous, of course, is civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jnr., born on this day in 1929, who gets a public holiday in the US

. I’ve just read that he was in a black church children’s choir that sang for a bunch of white guests(Black ones not welcome) celebrating the release of the film Gone With The Wind. 

In 1927 Phyllis Coates was born. She was in the first season of The Adventures Of Superman, with George Reeves(who played a minor role in Gone With The Wind)as Lois Lane. She isn’t as well known as Noel Neill, who came after her, but she was very good. 

Children’s writer Jenny Nimmo was born in 1944. I have only read a couple of her books, but they were amazing and one of them, fantasy novel The Snow Spider, was turned into a TV mini series - twice! One was produced in 1988, the other in 2020. Dad would like that - I’m a children’s writer.

Science fiction novelist Robert Silverberg is another January 15 baby, born in 1935. I have only read a few of his books, but my favourite is Gilgamesh The King, based, of course, on The Epic Of Gilgamesh, which was about a king of Uruk who goes in search of immortality after losing his best friend to death. In the novel, he first becomes aware of death as a child, at his father’s funeral, the burial found by archaeologist Leonard Woolley and written about in his book Ur Of The Chaldees(I have read that book too). Woolley had a theory that the many courtiers buried with the king went voluntarily. In Silverberg’s novel, young Gilgamesh watches as a lady in waiting who looks like his mother and a slave boy dressed in his clothes go into the grave. 

I heard Silverberg speak at a Worldcon, at which  he said that if he spent a lot of time plotting and researching before writing a book, he’d never get it done! I agree with him in one way, you can always go back and fix your story afterwards, but I have been known to read entire books while researching an article. 

There are more authors born on this day, but these are the ones I have read.

Just a few events:

On this day in 1559, Queen Elizabeth I was crowned Queen of England and Ireland at Westminster Abbey - not Scotland, of course, that became a part of the kingdom after her death. 

1759 - the British Museum opened to the public. That was a very special occasion. I’ve only visited once, but the collection is amazing! 

2001 - Wikipedia first goes on line. My Dad would have loved to know that, because he adored looking up stuff on line. I never asked, but I bet he used Wikipedia. I think it’s better than people give it credit for. Yes, it can be edited by whoever, but I believe it is at least as accurate as quite a few other encyclopaedias. The only thing I used to tell my students was that my issue with it, as far as they were concerned, was that entries tend to be too long for their needs, and the language is too complicated for some students. 

It’s getting a bit late, so I will end this post here. 

Do you share your birthday with anyone interesting, or with an exciting event?

 

Look What I Got This Week!

 Look what I found! 

It was on my book case in the living room and I needed a print book to take to Sydney, in case they don’t let me read on my iPad on the plane. I had totally forgotten I had it. 

I think I must have bought it from the wonderful Collected Works bookshop in the CBD, before it closed down. I’m not sure how they had it, as it was printed by a micro press in Melbourne, only 300 copies. Maybe the author brought it in to one shop likely to sell it. Anyway, here it is. I have started reading it and am enjoying. I’m guessing the author must have read all the History of Middle-Earth books, plus LOTR and The Hobbit. The first chapter is about books in the different regions of Middle-Earth. Fascinating stuff! According to the cover, Hobbits play football… I haven’t read that yet.

Something else I received was the last several ebook issues of Andromeda Spaceways, from #79 to #88. They are giving these to slush readers to say thank you for their work. I used to be a member of the co-op itself, but for the last several years I have been just reading slush, to keep me connected. Only one story a week, but I appreciate the goodies they have given me, and am looking forward to a binge read. Here is the cover of the issue I’ve just started reading. They have certainly chosen their cover artists well. 

If you like reading ebooks, ASM might be worth considering. You can buy an individual copy or subscribe, and it’s not very expensive.

I admit I rarely put a story through to the next round. I wish I could do it every week, but the truth is, we tend to receive stories that have clearly been rejected elsewhere, usually the US. With good reason… And I absolutely understand why these authors probably started with Asimov’s or Fantasy And SF, but just because ASM is a semiprozine which pays authors and artists but not the people who produce it doesn’t mean it’s an easier sell than the prozines. If you make it through the first and second rounds to the Slushpool, you still only have a small chance of selling your story. It doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with it if it got that fae,  just that there are only so many stories that can be fitted into an issue and every editor has different tastes. 

I remember once browsing in a bookshop and overhearing someone complaining about us because we had rejected his story. “They aren’t writers!” he declared. His friend had got as far as the slushpool, the list of stories for editors of future issues to choose from.

I turned and said, “Excuse me, but actually, we’re ALL writers. But I read as a reader, asking myself if I’d be happy to buy a magazine with that story in it.” I told his friend that if he had made it to the slushpool and not sold to us, he would certainly sell it elsewhere. And that’s true, I have seen stories I read in slush published elsewhere. Once, I was chuffed to see the author had taken the advice I gave in my comments. 

I always make comments, whether I put the story through to the next round or not. Only once have I been remotely rude. It was an item that had the politically correct tyrants executing anyone who didn’t follow the PC rules, including a twelve year old boy. I just said it wasn’t a story, it was a political tract. Usually, I will just say what didn’t work for me and why. Sometimes I’ll say, truthfully, that I missed the point. 

Anyway, now I can read a pile of stories that did make it, in bed during my visit to Sydney! 

My Fan Fic World!

 So, I’ve been hunting up some old fanzines with my stories in them, from back in the days when fan fiction was printed and posted out to fans. I published a few myself, which gave me the practice for when I edited an issue of semiprozine Andromeda Spaceways. 

The hunt for fanzines made me remember the worldbuilding I did with my friend Robert Jan, when we created our planet New Wales, which was in the constellation of the Unicorn and had been settled centuries ago by a group led by Arthur’s knight Bedwyr, after the battle of Camlann, where both Arthur and his son Medraut died. 

They had reached the planet using a teleport portal from Earth. They found themselves with some Earth animals which had wandered through the portal themselves - animals such as unicorns, now extinct on Earth. There were also intelligent dragons which walked on two feet and were a part of the community. One dragon in our world was a space fleet admiral, Admiral Kirilli - Robert created that character. Mine was a pipe-smoking university professor, Rhisiart. 

We kept it as silly and over the top as we could. (I remember one reviewer referring to it a a sweet little tea party of a world - which I guess it was). It existed in three media universes - the worlds of Star Trek, Blake’s 7 and Robin Of Sherwood.  

Although Robin Of Sherwood might seem the most appropriate universe to host New Wales, I only wrote one story set there. 

Most of the New Wales stories were set in the world of the original Star Trek series. Robert and I alternated those stories, which were published first in the fanzine SPOCK, then some reprinted in my own fanzine, Trek Tales From New Wales. In one story, Ensign Chekhov, trying to impress a girl (a fellow crew member) while on shore leave on New Wales, was horribly embarrassed when a local unicorn, a mare called Maggie, followed him around. 

But our unicorns were shaggy Shetland ponies with horns, and had nothing to do with the traditional tropes about unicorns. If they liked you, they liked you, simple as that. I confess I got the idea for them from an early episode of Lost In Space, when the Robinsons, exploring their new planet, found a chimpanzee with a high domed head and a Shetland unicorn. Penny kept the chimp as a pet, not the unicorn! Still, I think I made those Shetland unicorns very much my own. Maggie was a semi regular character.

In the Blake’s 7 universe - which you will probably not be familiar with unless you are my age or were brought up by fannish parents - New Wales was the original home of the anti-hero Kerr Avon. He still had relatives there. The evil Federation had tried to take it over but not succeeded, due to - well, magic. Sort of. More of a mass telepathic barrier. One of the original characters, the telepathic alien Cally, who was killed during the fourth season of the show was, in fact, in a healing trance (like Spock) and was found alive by members of New Wales’ space fleet. She ended up joining them and settling on New Wales.

I did consider working up a novel using the world, without the media universes, but then Patricia Kennealy Morrison published a novel called The Copper Crown which had a similar premise to my universe, and she was a much bigger name than me, so that was that. 

The annoying thing is, her novel was much more deadly serious than my stories. I much prefer funny, myself.

Ah, well…

In Which I Spoil Myself Outrageously!

 This has been an exhausting week in many ways, and it’s not over yet. I even forgot, on January 3, to wish a happy birthday to the sublime J.R.R Tolkien! Here, have a Tolkien birthday post from a previous year! https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2019/01/happy-birthday-tolkien.html

However, I am about to do something I haven’t done since well before the pandemic: I’m going to Sydney to see a show, inspired by AJ Blythe whose comment appeared on this site a few posts ago. I don’t have much time, due to family commitments, but I’m using the time I have. Monday afternoon, I am heading for Melbourne airport and flying off to Sydney. There, I will take a train to Central Station and walk to my hotel. 

I used to use the YHA regularly when travelling, and there is quite a good one right near Central, but this time I decided to spoil myself with a four star hotel, the Great Southern, which is also within easy walking distance. I just want to get there, buy dinner and head for my room, not have to go shopping for groceries and cook my own meal. And my membership has long expired, so I’d have to rejoin. Maybe next time.

On Tuesday I’m meeting a friend, Anne, who lives in the Blue Mountains, during the day, and going to the theatre at the Sydney Opera House, a world-famous building which I have only passed on the Manly Ferry, but never visited.

So, what is this show? Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus, starring Michael Sheen, whom you may know from Good Omens or Staged. He has done a lot of other stuff - I saw him as Tony Blair in The Queen. This production is not, as far as I know, coming to Melbourne, so… 

I saw the play many years ago, starring Fred Parslow, a wonderful Melbourne actor, as Salieri, and also the movie, with F.Murray Abraham in the role(winning an Academy Award for it), Tom Hulce as Mozart. I believe Michael Sheen once played as Mozart in this play. 

I wouldn’t go to see something just for the actor, but it’s an amazing play and an actor I admire is in it, so why not? 

In case you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s about the rivalry between composer Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, seen from the viewpoint of Salieri, who is hugely popular in his time, but insanely jealous of Mozart, whom he knows is much more talented than he is, but is also thoroughly irritating. So he sets out to destroy Mozart’s life…

I’ve actually heard some of Salieri’s music and it’s absolutely fine. But it’s Mozart whose music I play, and his operas I go to see. The Marriage Of Figaro and The Magic Flute are two I have not yet tired of, unlike some others, such as Madama Butterfly, which Opera Australia has a tendency to perform far too often.

Anyway, I’m going! And, expensive as this trip is, I’m worth it! 

Have you ever done something outrageously expensive just because?

Just Been To See… The Lost King and 2001: A Space Odyssey!

 I usually write an end of year post. This year I forgot. It has been a long time since I did midnight for New Year’s Eve anyway, since Dad passed away on December 28, 2009, and I couldn’t be bothered, but I used to at least go and see a movie with family or friends and get home before midnight. This year I was looking after Mum, and the day was so exhausting, I just forgot and went to bed.

So, here are a couple of things I did just before the year ended. No Doctor Who Christmas or New Year special, of course, since the Doctor has regenerated. 

But I have been reading - I read The Lost King: The Search For Richard III in bed, for Jolabokaflod, on Christmas Eve. I’m still reading it, over halfway through. Its chapters alternate between the history chapters and the chapters about the archaeological dig organised by Philippa Langley- right now, I have just read the chapter about the finding of the remains and am reading about Richard’s coronation and what happened there. 

Film poster - fair use

Monday afternoon I went to see the film inspired by - not really based on - the book. I mean, if Philippa Langley spent any time chatting to the ghost of Richard III, she doesn’t mention it in the book! The film is another matter. 

It is a sweet, funny and touching movie I will have to buy on DVD when it comes out, or hope it turns up on one of my many streaming services. At the start of the film, she goes to see a performance of the Shakespeare play in Edinburgh. Later, when she encounters Richard, he wears the face of the actor who played the role in the performance she saw. 

She goes to Leicester to look around and one of the places she visits is the bridge across the River Soar, where it was believed for a very long time that Richard’s remains were thrown in the time of Henry VIII, during the dissolution of the monasteries. Richard stands on the railing and throws himself backwards. 

She sees him a minute later on land and asks him why he did that. He replies, “I thought it’d be funny!”

He seems to be the person she talks to the most about what she is doing, though she does get a lot of support from her ex husband and her children(also not in the book). When his bones are found, she is sitting in a cafe, getting a text to come back to the dig - and sees Richard ride past on a white horse(I think he did have a white horse called White Surrey). 

It might have been fun to have a cameo with Benedict Cumberbatch, who was at the funeral, reading a poem, as he is related to Richard, a distant cousin, but still a nice scene and touching to see the procession going to the cathedral with his coffin, made by Michael Ibsen, a descendant of one of Richard’s sisters, who crafts wood for a living. (Carpenter or cabinet maker?)

If you get a chance, see this film!

Film poster - fair use

The other film I saw this week was a much older one, Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. I have seen this many times - in fact, I first saw it in my school’s General Purpose Room when it first came out. In those days you could rent a movie on film, if you had a projector and someone who could use it. 

Not the same, of course. The Astor Theatre, a 1930s cinema in my area, has what I believe is the largest screen in Melbourne and we fans got to see it in its 70mm glory. They had an intermission and all! It’s one of those special movies that is shown there once a year. 

It’s inspired by - again, not really based on - a short story by Arthur C Clarke, “The Sentinel.” In it, astronauts get to the moon and discover an artefact humans certainly didn’t make. When touched, it goes off, sending a signal. They figure it must be to a distant civilisation, to let them know humans have left their planet. The question then is… what next? Do they have benign intentions towards us or is it to warn them humans might be headed their way? Nobody knows.

The film is a piece of art that doesn’t need to be asking the questions of the story. The Monolith turns up at “the dawn of man” and inspires a prehistoric ape-like creature to pick up a bone and use it to kill a wild boar for food, then fight off a rival clan for a waterhole. It turns up again centuries later on the moon, for different reasons. The bone flung triumphantly into the air by an ancestor appears to turn into a spaceship travelling to a space station to the tune of the Blue Danube waltz. The spaceship is Pan Am, complete with flight attendants and pilots who aren’t astronauts. 

And the ending? I have no idea what it’s about, even after many viewings, but that’s okay, neither did Arthur C Clarke, according to an interview. I did see the sequel, 2010, in which much is explained and we find out that poor Hal 9000 was not at fault for his part in that ending. And I enjoyed that, but this one is the classic.

If you haven’t seen the film on the big screen, keep an eye out, it’s well worth it!

I wish all of you a great 2023. To be honest, for me, 2022 can get in the bin! Fingers crossed for this year and I hope I write many more posts than last year.

What I’m Reading Right Now

 I have done a lot of reading and listening this year. I just can’t stick to one book at a time.

Here are a few things I am reading or listening to right now! 

The Lost King: The Search For Richard III by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones. This is the story of the archaeological dig in Leicester which found the remains of Richard III under a car park. Richard was buried in the church of St Francis,  part of one of the many monasteries that Henry VIII destroyed during the Dissolution. For quite some time it was believed that Richard’s remains were thrown into the river Soar at that time, but no. The church was buried and Richard with it. And eventually it was buried under that car park. He was examined and found to have scoliosis, which made one of his shoulders higher than the other, but not a hunchback. Then he was given a proper funeral, with a poem read by Benedict Cumberbatch, who is related to Richard through Richard’s mother, and buried again in a coffin built by a many times great grandnephew, Michael Ibsen. 

I’m going to see the film on Monday. It’s not a documentary, and looks like fun.

I have just downloaded The Lady With The Gun Asks The Questions by Kerry Greenwood. It’s a collection of Phryne Fisher short stories, originally published as A Question Of Death. I do have that book, but this one has four new stories in it, so I sighed and bought it. As they are all together at the end, I’m rereading the lot before I read the new material. 

I first read The Art Of Coarse Acting by Michael Green many years ago. It’s a hilarious book about the bizarre things that go on in amateur drama. You can’t get it in paperback any more, or even in ebook, but you can get the audiobook read by the author, and I bought it a few months ago. He read it when he was an old man, but that is fine; the humour shines through. I have listened to it a few times while doing housework and I’m still laughing, no matter how many times I listen. Interestingly, he seems to have updated it, mentioning things that happened later than the 1960s when the book was first published.  It’s very much comfort listening for me.

Another book you can’t buy in ebook and which seems to be out of print but which is available in audiobook is Barbara Hambly’s Bride Of The Rat God, narrated by Marguerite Gavin. I like the reader’s style. She does a good job of playing the different characters, whether it’s the English heroine Norah or the studio owner Frank. Norah Blackstone is a widow whose American soldier husband was killed in France during the Great War. His beautiful sister, Christine, a silent movie star, has brought Norah to live with her in Hollywood. There is this cursed necklace which Christine wears everywhere, which has a scary Manchu rat god trying to kill her. Fortunately she has three adorable Pekingese dogs protecting her.

Incidentally, if you would enjoy this story more as a murder mystery, Barbara Hambly has rewritten it as Scandal In Babylon. I bought that earlier this year, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I see there will be a sequel early next year.

I’ve been downloading from Project Gutenberg recently. There are some Robert E.Howard swords and sorcery stories, including Queen Of The Black Coast, about Conan’s love for a pirate queen, Belit. I like Conan. He may be a raging, roaring mercenary, but he doesn’t do rape. Women may be drawn, panting, to his armoured breast, but they are there because they want to be - if they don’t want to be, he protects them from those nasty men who do have rape in mind. And he respects strong women; the love of his life is a fellow warrior. I have posted on this site about Conan as a next door neighbour. 

There are about seven Agatha Christie titles up on Gutenberg, increasing as they go out of copyright. I have recently downloaded The Secret Adversary, her first Tommy And Tuppence book.

Apple Books has a free comic book by Laurie Halse Anderson, better known for her very serious YA fiction, a Wonder Woman origin story. Who would have thought it? I downloaded it, of course!

The Children Of Ash And Elm by Neil Price is about the Vikings, written by the archaeologist who advised the production of film The Northman, which is inspired by Hamlet. I haven’t read very far yet, but I’m finding it fascinating so far. 

When I heard that SF author Greg Bear had died recently, I thought it might be time to finally read his work, so I bought The Complete Short Fiction Of Greg Bear. I like to discover new authors via their short fiction. If I like this, I will invest time in their novels. If not, at least I didn’t invest more time than I wanted.

My sister and I were talking about Neville Shute’s On The Beach, which I read years ago, and on impulse I bought the ebook. That is about the world gradually coming to an end after a nuclear explosion, and the last days of Australians; the poison is spreading from north to south, so Australia is the last place in the world where people are still alive. You may have seen the film, made in the 1950s, with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. Like other films of the time, of course, the cast was not Australian, but it was made here in Melbourne. One of my teachers was an extra in it.

I bought the hardcover Marvel’s Loki: Art Of The Series, which is filled with concept art and goes through each episode telling us what the artist had in mind and why. Originally, the plan was to end the show with Loki going off on adventures, so various possible costumes were painted, including one taken from the comic book Agent Of Asgard. Then they gave it a second season, so those costumes were no longer relevant.

 It is a stunningly beautiful book. I paid a lot for it, but don’t regret a cent of it. 

And, finally, I’ve been reading quite a lot of fan fiction, downloaded from the Archive Of Our Own website. Recently I have discovered masses of Blake’s 7 fan fiction. Some was written recently, but there are some classics I first read in fanzines, such as those by Lillian Shepherd, who is a very good writer and should be having a go at writing stuff she can sell. I don’t think she is interested. A pity - another former fan writer and editor, Janet Reedman, who used to do Robin Of Sherwood fanzines, is now writing and self publishing Richard III novels. She is doing well. I bought one of her novellas and it was excellent. 

There are also quite a few that were stored on Hermit. org, which was closed down and they have been moved to this site instead.

I have mostly been reading Loki-themed fiction, but it’s been nice to find Blake’s 7 stories as well. My favourite character, Kerr Avon, is an anti-hero. He did end up killing Blake, the titular character and leader of the group, though personally I thought Blake had it coming under the circumstances. But for most of the series he was talked into doing good deeds, much against his will. 

So there are quite a few Avon stories on this site, and I have had fun looking them up. 

I have recently been considering hunting up some of my old fan fiction and popping it up on Archive Of Our Own. Only a few stories, but hey, why not? 

What do you think? 

Just Been To See…The Nutcracker Ballet

 It’s Christmas. Among other things that means The Nutcracker ballet, which I saw tonight. This performance was by the Australian Conservatoire of Ballet, a ballet school founded by former Australian Ballet dancer Christine Walsh, and oh, goodness, what a production it was! 

Most of the cast were members of the ballet school, with a scattering of adults in the character roles. The younger cast members played everything from the children at the Christmas party to the mice, and Clara, the little girl who gets a nutcracker for Christmas from her godfather Drosselmeyer and is taken to the kingdom of sweets, got to dance a lot more than in most productions. She was watching the divertissements in Act 2, yes, but kept jumping up and joining in. I think that kid is going to be a professional by the time she finishes school. 

I have downloaded the original E.T.A Hoffman story, The Nutcracker And The Mouse King from Apple Books and am reading it now. It was only 99 cents, and I had been intending to read it for some time. The original name for the girl was Maria, which is sometimes used in the ballet.

Public Domain

I have seen this ballet before, many times, though not recently on stage. There was a production done by the New York Ballet, which I saw on YouTube, but the most recent ballet I saw on stage was Spartacus, a few years ago. I just felt it was the right time of year to see The Nutcracker and booked on an impulse - an impulse I’m not regretting at all. 

If you want to see the ballet free, there are plenty of versions on YouTube. It’s a nice way to celebrate the lead up to Yuletide.

 

Just Been To See…Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever

 I haven’t posted in a while, I admit, due to family issues, such as my mother being in and out of hospital. But I’m back, briefly, and I’d like to share with you the film I have been to see most recently, Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever. 

Movie poster: Fair use

If you are at all familiar with the Marvel films or the comics, you will know that Wakanda is an African nation ruled by a king - or, as in this film, a Queen - who takes a potion that gives the new ruler super powers, though the last king, T’Challa, also had a scientific genius kid sister, Shuri, who made his suits. The new ruler takes the potion and sees an ancestor who gives wise advice. And Wakanda has a mineral, vibranium, which is found nowhere else in the world. Everyone wants it, including the US - and everyone is prepared to do whatever it takes to get it. Just as well Wakanda has an almost entirely female army, who can wipe out mercenaries! 

In this film, we learn that, actually, there is another place that has vibranium, and Namor, the ruler of this underwater realm, is not happy to have it raided by the above-water world. Quite understandable, though his way of dealing with it may be less understandable.

But the main theme of this film is grief and dealing with it. T’Challa dies offstage and his mother, Queen Ramonda, rules for the time being, presumably because her daughter is too young and inexperienced to do the job. This, of course, is because the actor, Chadwick Boseman, died of cancer, but it is worked very well into the film. Shuri, who was a supporting character in the first film, is now playing the lead role. She becomes the Black Panther when needed, and makes her own suit, as well as some more for other characters. 

I’ll try not to do spoilers here, but I personally think this film is even better than the first one, which I enjoyed very much. I liked the fact that most of the characters were black. In this film, I like the fact that most of the characters are also women - strong, intelligent women, including another brilliant young scientist, Riri Williams, who has built a vibranium detector - as a class project at university! I believe she is going to be Ironheart, the replacement for Iron Man, as Tony Stark is dead, and she wears her first suit in this film, fighting for Wakanda.

And there is a female villain…

Namor isn’t really a villain in the traditional sense. He wants to protect his kingdom, even if he is doing it wrongly - and when you see what happened to his people in flashbacks, you don’t blame him.

I confess I haven’t read the Black Panther or Namor the Submariner comics, except one very short piece in a comic featuring various Marvel characters over the decades. But as a viewer, I think the film makers have done a very fine job here, making us feel for the characters.

If you enjoy fantasy adventures, I do recommend this, but watch the first film, Black Panther, before you get into this one.

Just Finished Listening To… Norse Mythology BBC Radio 4 Full Cast Dramatisation by Neil Gaiman!

 I have just listened to the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology. I do have the book and was hoping to find the actual audiobook of the original, but it wasn’t on Apple or even Kindle, for some reason, and it’s constantly out from my library, so I bought this instead, and I have to say, it’s very good, especially for the amazing cast. 

Neil Gaiman himself does his usual cameo role, in this case a radio announcer talking about the weather. It starts with a mysterious woman who calls herself Njordsdottir -presumably the goddess Freya - visiting a hospital and talking to a sick child, Magnus. She ends up as the storyteller, telling him the Norse myths, which are acted out as a play. 

The role of the Teller -  Njordsdottir - is played by the wonderful Diana Rigg, but she is not the only one listeners might have heard before. We hear Derek Jacobi’s distinctive voice as Odin and goodness, he is Odin! I’ve been a fan of this actor since I, Claudius and Brother Cadfael. Natalie Dormer, whom you have probably seen as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors or as Margaery Tyrrel in Game Of Thrones plays the goddess Freya. The adorable Colin Morgan, Newt Pulsifer in the radio play of Good Omens and Merlin in the TV series of the same name, is Loki. Colin Morgan’s voice is delightful as always. 

If you do want to hear the audiobook for free, I have come across it on YouTube, read by the author. There is another audiobook of it read by Tom Hiddleston, though to be honest, I prefer the one read by Neil Gaiman. He is a fabulous reader who does most of his own audiobooks. Tom Hiddleston has a beautiful speaking voice, but his performance of this one is rather dull, I’m afraid. I have no idea why. He is a fine Shakespearean actor, as well as wonderful in the role for which he is best known, Loki, but really, he might as well be reading the phone book in this. 

The radio play, though, is well worth a listen. I got my copy on Apple Books for a very reasonable A$12.99. If you are on Audible it’s free with the trial.

Or perhaps your library has a copy!