"Armada" by Ernest Cline

Publisher:New York : Crown, [2015]
Edition:First edition.
Copyright Date:©2015
ISBN: 9780804137256
Characteristics: 355 pages

As in "Ready, Player One" the general storyline is connected to the gaming world (one of Mr. Cline's passions), but this time rather than old style arcade games, the author puts you in the seat of a first-person flight simulator, and in the body of Zack Lightman, a high school student in Oregon that finds out rather suddenly that it isn't just a game.

At first he thinking he's hallucinating when he glances out the window in math class, and sees an unidentified flying object. But the problem is he can identify it. It is a ship he has encountered and destroyed hundreds of times when playing a game called Armada. It's a Sobrukai Glave fighter, which should only exist as so many pixels on his computer - but this one is real, and it wasn't likely to be dropping in to say hello.

What going on? Zack doesn't know and keeps things quiet, while slowing thinking he's going crazy, until a couple of days later at school he and everybody is shocked when real life proof lands in front of him and the rest of the student body and he is recruited to defend the Earth.

Armada is a fantastic second novel, and personally I can't wait to see what Mr. Cline has in store for his next book. Rumour has it that may be being made int a movie as well.

"Armageddon 2419 A.D.: The Seminal 'Buck Rogers' Novel" by Philip Francis Nowlan (1888-1940)

Publisher: New York : Ace Books
No other Publication data available

This is an excellent book that has been in my collection for many years, and I've read it a few times. It's one of those books where every time you read it you tease out some new little gem.

The frontispiece of the book reads as follows:

"The relation between this book and the nationally syndicated comic strip Buck Rogers is worth noting. Armageddon 2419 was originally the title of a long novelette that appeared in Amazing Stories in 1928. A sequel, entitle The Airlords of Han, appeared in that magazine a year later. Both works have been integrated to make the book you hold here."

"When the original magazine story appeared it caught the eye of the John Dille Company, a newspaper feature syndicate. They hired the author, Phil Nowlan, to write the continuity of a comic strip based on it. Considering Buck to be a shorter and more marketable name that Anthony, it was under the name Buck Rogers 2429 A.D. that the strip first appeared in newspapers in 1929. Each year the strip's title was updated by one to keep the five hundred years difference, until eventually the strip was stabilized as Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century."

"During th first two years of syndication, the plot of the strip followed the adventures in this book fairly closely, but as time went on new adventures and characters were introduced, until today''s strip bears virtually no resemblance to the novel now reprinted"

"The role of Buck Rogers in the rise and popularization of science-fiction can scarcely be overestimated."

This frontispiece is signed D.A.W. - but there is no indication who this is.

Because this book was originally written in the early part of the 20th Century there is a considerable amount of racism incorporated into the storyline. As unlike the television series in 1979 (starring Gil Gerard, Erin Gray) where the antagonists are extraterrestrials known as Draconians (now there's an original name for you), in the book the antagonists are Mongolians (referred to an Hans), and it is not until the epilogue that you find out that the Hans are the product of interbreeding with a human-like race that arrived on Earth when a small planet or large meteor hit in the interior of Asia.

The nice thing about this storyline is that outside of the fact Rogers was in suspended animation for close to five-hundred years (in a collapsed mine shift), and the introduction of two special elements (inertron and ultron) there is very little to take this story into the realm of the fantastic and unbelievable. So if you can overlook the racism, then you find that the story itself is very well written, and well worth the read.

"Notes for a Memoir: On Isaac Asimov, Life, and Writing" by Janet Jeppson Asimov

Publisher:Amherst, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 2006.
ISBN: 9781591024057
Characteristics: 207 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates :,illustrations, portraits ;,24 cm

I grew up reading the works of Isaac Asimov, and I've come to  believe that he along with Robert A. Heinlein, and to some extent Arthur C. Clarke are somewhat responsible for my outlook on life.

This book is a glimpse into the life of Isaac Asimov and his wife Janet Jeppson Asimov. The story is told through a series of stories, and musings about their life together. It touches on their thoughts on imagination, identity, and his compulsion to write. Dr. Janet Asimov also talks about various topics such as religion, sex, politics, history, philosophy, mortality and how she has coped with the loss of her husband.

If you haven't read any of Isaac Asimov's works then you are missing out on one of the great storytellers of the modern age. Janet Asimov (a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst) give great insight into how Isaac Asimov's mind worked, and gives the reader a feeling for what it might have been like to sit down and chat with them for an evening.

Also included are a number of short stories by Janet Asimov that have previously been published in various magazines.

A very good read, that I recommend to all.

"Colossus" by D. F. Jones (1915-1981)

Publisher: Berkley [United States]: 1976
Edition:Unabridged.
Characteristics:246 pages

I first read this book may years ago, and was fascinated by it and the implications that it mentioned. Since then, some 40 years later a lot of what is mentioned in this novel has come true although not with the sinister implications that the book foretold. Today humans rely on computers to a great extent, and when you consider that this book was written some 20 year before the internet came to be that is pretty good.

The book itself is a good story, and delves a fair bit into human psychology, emotions, etc. It is the first in a trilogy, and I'll be reviewing the other two books in the near future.

This book was made into a movie in 1970 starring Eric Braeden, Susan Clark & Gordon Pinsent. The director Joseph Sargent was quite true to the book, and captured a great deal of the suspense, which makes the movie worth watching as well. The movie is somewhat dated in it's attitudes towards women, etc. but this is the way things were done in the 70's so unless Hollywood decides to remake this movie were are forced to put up with it. This however, is not a plea for Hollywood to remake another movie - please get some original ideas!

While I have no evidence of this I would venture to guess that this book may likely have influenced some screen writers in Hollywood as shows like the Terminator franchise, West World (original movie and series), to name just a few have technology as one of the protagonists in a classic struggle with humankind.