Saturday 31 October 2009

Friday

the thirteenth next month. (Just added this so I don’t have thirteen posts for the month).

Unusual Errors

All over the place. I’ve had a look at the Robert Howard books and I don’t see at least four of them. Sword Woman; there was an American import of the Spicy stories that appeared in the thirties which I can’t remember the title of; I came across the Second Book of Robert E Howard but noticed there was no sign of the Book of Robert E Howard; and similar applies for the Dark Man, I have volume two but can’t find volume one. That was the one I preferred, although my edition had a rigorous spine and therefore it made the pages vulnerable to splitting from the spine – and I remember that some had.

The web sites are back up and I’m told that there shouldn’t be any more problems but I’m not holding my breath. I contacted both my web host and ISP in connection with this problem, and my web host have told me that they have fixed ‘unusual errors in both dns zones for’ my domains. This problem has been appearing off and on since at least July 2008 which is the first time I reported it to them according to the ticketing system in their support centre, but I’m sure it happened prior to that; I just didn’t report it.

With the postal strikes in full swing I’m concerned about some items I’m waiting on. The Bob Shaw book from America hasn’t arrived yet, no doubt it is in limbo at the moment. I also have a signed Theodore Sturgeon book winging its way from America too and that will get caught up in the postal dispute. Plus I have a record (a real honest to God vinyl record) bought on Ebay which has been posted but no doubt is lying in a depot somewhere. I’m still going on Ebay but I don’t think I’ll bid for anything until the postal strike is sorted.

Wednesday 28 October 2009

Books

I was thinking of bidding for some Conan novels on ebay. So I went to my books and had a ruffle through them to see if it was worthwhile my bidding for them. It turns out not as I have some of them, and would only be getting a couple of books (which I’ve read anyway as I had them originally and sold them off) and would end up getting some duplicates, which I don’t need.

I regret getting rid of books – I bought Ian Rankin’s first novel when it came out and it’s apparently very rare nowadays, but I didn’t like it even though it was a fair read; it was some meandering nonsense about the growing pains of some boys from the fictional town of Carsden, which would have been based on the real town of Cardenden – but there you go. (I suppose it goes to show that Ian Rankin is a good writer as I can remember some things clearly about it, most notably – for some odd reason – their lying on their backs in a park discussing masturbation.)

On going through my books I noted a few things. One, I miss second hand bookshops. There aren’t any near me. A lot of the books I was picking through were bought from second hand shops. I got a lot of Star Trek novelizations and novels from second hand bookshops; a few from library sales too seeing as some had plastic covers. Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, odd SF collections, all these and more were acquired. There are charity shops but they aren’t the same.

Two, I’m down on Robert Howard books. I have about thirty including the Conan ones and there should be more than that. On the plus side I have more Philip Jose Farmer books than I thought I did; around twentyish including a couple I’m sure I haven’t read. I also took a note of the Doc Savage books I have in case I bid for more on ebay; again I don’t want doubles. I have around twenty. For some strange reason only one double novel. I did buy a fair few – or thought I did - but didn’t realise I got rid of all except one (The Fortress of Solitude/Czar of Fear), plus I only have one Omnibus edition. I remember getting a few of those too. Again twentyish Doc Savage novels, including two or three that were written in the nineties, although I don’t have the one written by Philip Jose Farmer, Escape From Loki. I also saw one Spider novel, two Shadow novels, the first of the Doom trilogy in paperback. I came across my old manual typewriter too but couldn’t get it open. A lot of TV stuff: the aforementioned Star Trek, Highlander novelizations, Babylon 5, X-Files, Red Dwarf. I really need to sit and rummage through them some more.

Three, the diversity that used to be in book shops is something which was taken for granted and seems to have diminished. i don’t think we have greater choice nowadays, just greater volume. I have lots of odds and ends that I picked up new in shops that would never see the light of shelf space nowadays. There was the equivalent for second hand books too: odds and ends that never appeared anywhere else except second hand book shops. I know the internet can bring you anything but there are times you want to handle the goods and inspect them before handing over money. And I suppose there are just times when you want to browse. Some of the stuff I had never heard of before and probably wouldn’t have bought if I hadn’t held it in my hands and browsed through it first, giving it a chance to pique my interest and make me chose to buy it.

Saturday 24 October 2009

Grumbling

Not general grumbling, more like corporal grumbling. What is it with some sites? After they have loaded some are still giving the message 'transferring data from ...' down at the bottom left of Firefox with pictures and videos and stuff still being downloaded but no way for me to press the escape button to stop them. Well one site in particular does. I wont name it but it seems I wont go there too often either, which is a shame as I like the site. However, I'm not prepared to have it gobble up bandwidth at every visit. It mounts up. This month has seen one of the the lowest use of bandwidth since I signed on to Madasafish for broadband services. And this in the month when I found a couple of new sites, including one that has links to loads of MP3s. I downloaded and enjoyed the free preview of Tom Waits' new album. Pretty generous this was too as they gave eight full tracks as a preview. It was around eighty megabytes to download and I had to give my email address to get the link to the download but it was well worth it. Not a big fan of Tom Waits; I have one CD and a few MP3s bought from 7digital, but if ever the word unique would describe anyone it would be Tom Waits.

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Have no fear the Man of Bronze is here!

Well, three novels anyway. The first of the books I bought on ebay have turned up and I’m looking forward to reading some more of Doc’s adventures. It’s been a long time. I first bought a couple of the double editions way back in the eighties from the Science Fiction Bookshop in Edinburgh: The Czar of Fear was the first Doc adventure I read. I bought lots more after that but I also gave as many away – only a limited amount of room in my house – either selling to book dealers or as donations to my local library.

I got No 8, The Land of Terror, No 30, The Flaming Falcons and No 48 The Feathered Octopus, with more to come. I think I’ll start with No 8. I’ve started reading a crime novel, The Lost Sister by Russel D McLean, but it hasn’t grabbed my interest yet.

Sunday 18 October 2009

Tomorrow Lies in Ambush Part 2, Gollancz, Hardback, ISBN, 0-575-01602-7

While I try and rebuild the blogs I was working on that were lost due to corruption of files by Microsoft Word (I’m guessing version 2002 is the main culprit) I’ll post some notes on Tomorrow Lies In Ambush, Bob Shaw’s first short story collection, issued in 1973, this being part two.

The Cosmic Cocktail Party is a little New Wave-ish, starting with the line A highball on the human reality vector. The founder of an African republic is in a ‘tank’ neither dead nor alive, and communication with him is needed for the incumbent party to win an election. Aliens make a simulacrum of a long dead UK Prime Minister and talk about the Galactic Social Congress. They have been controlling humans via mind to mind telepathic probing and the new computer consciousness cottons on to them. This I felt was one of the least enjoyable stories by Bob Shaw I’ve read, but then again that’s only a personal preference. I couldn’t get into it as I could with other stories of his and perhaps the New Wave-ish impression was responsible for that.

… And isles where good men lie. This is one of the longer stories in the collection. An endless caravan of alien spaceships are heading toward earth, landing every couple of ours, bringing with them large scaly monsters that the military of earth kill as soon as they land. Col John Fortune looks past this and reasons there must be a signal directing them to earth, as all the ships are automated. He starts to hunt for this signal with the intent of destroying it and stopping the alien ships from homing in on Earth. Although it is a race against time adventure story it is also a personal journey for the main protagonist, gaining new insights into himself and other people as a consequence of his actions.

The happiest day of your life is a brief short story only a few pages long. Its’ form is very traditional, get the reader hooked in, build the story and leave on a high. The backbone of the story is now a science fiction staple: quick learning, knowledge achieved and implanted in a short time. Shaw treats it realistically: it isn’t universal or free, children have to have a minimum IQ level and the parents have to be able to pay for it. The twist in the story is an emotional one rather than a revelatory one but it is satisfying nonetheless, and the impact of the story makes the reader think.

The Weapons of Isher II is a decent enough story and you can see that Shaw is tipping his hat to E A Van Vogt; even naming a character old Vogt. And it goes back further than that as the bulk of the plot revolves around an old fashioned gunfight straight out of the Old West, but brought up to date in the form of a sport that is controlled and regulated – only one of the contestants doesn’t want to bother about rules. So a showdown is arranged for Isher II, where the weapons have an inbuilt safety feature, which features in the dénouement to the story.

Pilot Plant. This story is close to novella length and is by far the longest and most complex story in this collection of stories. It was first published in New Worlds in 1966. I picked up a copy of New Worlds with this in it, purchased online quite cheaply. The story starts off with an airplane crash and the main character, Garnett distinctly hears a voice talking before a part of the plane crashes into him. This haunts him as he goes through his rehabilitation back to normal health. His suspicions grow as events lead him to believe that something major is going on when his orders for the special plane his company are working on – which caused the accident - are actively ignored and countermanded. While he develops a relationship with his nurse Garnett gets closer and closer to the cause behind the voice he had heard until finally all is revealed.

Telemart Three involves a husband who notes his wife is spending a lot of money and does something drastic to stop his wife from spending more money than they have. As a compromise he agrees to them getting a special television set called a Telemart Three, which can delivery products from adverts direct to the home (I wonder if this can come true; Bob Shaw did ‘invent’ Sky Plus systems in one of his novels – I’m almost positive it’s in The Peace Machine/Ground Zero Man where the main character rewinds so he can be sure of a news report he is seeing on the TV – and there are such things as 3D printers nowadays plus home shopping channels are entrenched). Ted Trymble is in for a nasty surprise when he tries to stop his wife from buying through the TV.

Invasion of Privacy is a fairly long story and rounds off the collection. A young boy sees dead people then he is rushed off to hospital with pneumonia. The father notices something odd about the place where his son said he said people who were dead and decides to investigate. There he sees for himself people who are supposed to be dead and buried. In fear he causes the house to be burned down. In his mind the local Dr, Dr Pitman, becomes a suspect for mysterious and worrying goings on. There’s a touch of Invasion of The Body Snatchers about this story and also some similarity to themes Bob Shaw would expand in Fire Pattern. There’s a chance this could be considered to be part of the Fire Pattern Series, which includes a couple of stories involving The Prince. It was originally published in 1970; Fire Pattern appeared in hardback fourteen years later in 1984.

Overall the stories in this collection, Bob Shaw’s first, are rewarding, well thought out, and represent a good guide to the quality of stories that Shaw was putting out in the late sixties early seventies. There’s a wide range of subjects and themes and a variety in the length of the stories. If you want something to dip into there are short stories that last only a few pages, if you want something more intense and involving Pilot Plant, … And isles where good men lie and Invasion of Privacy are satisfyingly in-depth enough for most readers. Overall Tomorrow Lies I Ambush is a great collection.

Thursday 15 October 2009

E-Bayin’

I got back into Ebay recently. I bought some things years ago but lost both user name and password so I couldn’t get back into that account. I created a new account and only purchased a hardback edition of Vertigo by Bob Shaw – which turned out to be ex library.

Recently I’ve used Ebay a little more, getting a comic – which when I got it and flicked through realised I’d already bought before; most likely from Ebay a few years ago on the other account – a Philip Jose Farmer novel and some Doc Savage novels, though some of the latter are still pending.

The Philip Jose Farmer one, A Feast Unknown, was bought probably late eighties early nineties and might even have been the first Philip Farmer I read (excluding his biographies of Tarzan and Doc Savage). It was bought from the Bookshop in Dunfermline, now long gone, and I remember flicking through it and noticing that Theodore Sturgeon had written an afterword. Having Sturgeon writing an afterword was the equivalent of Five Michelin stars in my eyes and I bought the book straight away, read and enjoyed it. However, I can’t for the life of me find the copy in my books. I do know I’ve lent out books and not got them back but I don’t recall lending that book out. I do recall lending out a book of his short stories which I don’t seem to have either. Getting the new copy of A Feast Unknown I’ve started reading it again and have went about a third of the way through in one sitting – it really is a rattling good read.

Monday 12 October 2009

Ceres Solved

Just found and bought Bob Shaw’s The Ceres Solution in hardback via Alibris for quite a good price. The standard UK shipping was a reasonable £2.79. Considering that this novel has either not appeared in other book searches or been quite rare and expensive - even for SF book club editions let alone the original Gollancz edition - I'm happy with this purchase. It's coming from the USA so, at that price for postage, it might arrive next year, or it will arrive just in time to be delayed by the UK postal strike. :)

Sunday 11 October 2009

Tomorrow Lies in Ambush Part I, Gollancz, Hardback, ISBN, 0-575-01602-7

While I try and rebuild the blogs I was working on that were lost due to corruption of files by Microsoft Word (I’m guessing version 2002 is the main culprit) I’ll post some notes on Tomorrow Lies In Ambush, Bob Shaw’s first short story collection, issued in 1973.

I’ll split it into two, this being the first part covering 5 stories. The further 6 stories will be covered in part two. (Oops, 4 now and 7 later; totally blindsided by The Cosmic Cocktail Party.) I want to ensure there are at least semi-regular blog posts at the BoshBlog and that it doesn’t go dead for months at a time. I also want to ensure that blog posts aren’t too long. I’m not a fan of really long posts. I lose interest in them quite quickly. The equivalent of a couple of pages, under a thousand words, is a fine median methinks.

I recently received the hardback edition of this collection. I got the paperback edition and read the stories therein way back in the eighties. By the late eighties early nineties I had as much of Shaw’s output as was available. My copy of the paperback was signed by Bob Shaw, the first of his books that I bought that had his signature on them; I’ve bought a few hardbacks since that he signed. This one says it is ‘To Joan, with best wishes,’ but if I convince myself the ‘a’ is an ‘h’. …

Call me Dumbo is a short story where the dénouement arrives about two thirds of the way through. The rest of the story deals with the reaction of the character to the revelation, culminating in a calculated decision. The classic short story is to leave the reader with the twist at the end of the story, but Bob Shaw takes it a little further for a change. An idyllic setting is slowly deconstructed as the main character feels there is something wrong and investigates further to find the truth. Shaw does a good job of setting the story up and the execution is very well crafted. The pacing of this story is also pretty good although the characters – by definition and a little by necessity to the plot – are not as completely as fully drawn as could be.

Repeat Performance still sticks with me even after all the years since first reading it. This story is told in the first person and has a movie going theme. There’s a bit of Last Action Hero in this, with characters coming off the movie screen into real life, but Shaw puts in the Science Fiction twist – plus this was published long before Last Action Hero entered Production Hell let alone left it to become a movie. Cinema owner Jim is experiencing strange goings on at his cinema, with power outages and strange smells. Local reporter Bill Simpson thinks the aliens have landed.

What time do you call this? is a brief story with more than a touch of humour. Humour in stories was one of Bob Shaw’s specialities and something he did very well. A man planning a robbery is interrupted by a scientist from an alternate reality. Seeing an opportunity to use the other dimension as an escape route the robber goes ahead with the robbery with unexpected results. In truth if people think about it while reading the story the ending may be deduced but there are enough possibilities laid down by Shaw during the story to keep the reader guessing. This is a good little story with some neatly developed characters. That is quite an achievement considering the story is only a few pages long, and one of the shortest in the book.

Communication involves a computer salesman who makes a career – nay an art form - out of not selling computers; that is until a man literally knocks on his door and buys a computer for cash. But curiosity gets the better of him and he tracks down the man to see what he is really up to. The answer is a scam but the scam soon turns into something more real. I really enjoyed this story but felt a little let down by the ending. I don’t feel that it gelled properly, and there weren’t enough clues within the text of the story to point towards it as an ending.

Here endeth part the first.

Saturday 10 October 2009

Norton Ghost to Virtual Disk

I had a look at this again. I have an old computer that has XP on it and I backed it up using Norton Ghost, which has the capability of converting Ghost files into Virtual Hard Disks for use by Virtualisation Programmes such as MS Virtual PC and VirtualBox. I haven’t had much luck converting this backup to a working virtual hard disk. I recently updated Norton Ghost and a couple of days ago thought that I should try it again.

There was a little more luck. Ghost was able to convert the backup to VDMK, and eventually VHD. I thought I’d cracked it when the VDMK was created, in 2 gig segments, but the VirtualBox programme turned its nose up at the files, saying it wasn’t recognised and giving an error.

The VHD format always gave an error and stopped halfway through. At first I thought this was due to file size – or to be more accurate the 4 gig file limit for FAT32; but no, it stopped halfway through when I tried to create it on NTFS partitions too. However, after the update, it has now created a VHD file, some thirty gigabytes in size.

Again, fool that I am, I thought that creating the file was the end of the travails.

Virtual PC didn’t recognise the hard disk. When I attached it as a second disk to an already existing XP Virtual PC it couldn’t be read at all. On rebooting the Virtual disk it wanted to check the volume for integrity. I let it, assuming it wouldn’t take long.

So I get up this morning and it has finished checking the disk and re indexing all the files. Unfortunately it wont boot as a separate disk. It appears to be missing at least one file. It can be read in the other XP Virtual Machine but that’s of little use.

It brings another problem as I was looking to load the machine and export parts of, or the whole, registry. In particular the settings for Sophocles. I’ve done some hunting on the internet but can’t locate information on where the information for the registry is stored: to be exact what file. I know there are various reg files on the computer but they are – or should be – extra files where information too large for the registry are stored. Apparently there is a limit to the size of information that can be put into the registry; over two k and it should go into a separate file.

At least I’ve made some progress using Ghost; from being unable to create any files to creating dud files. But I think that’s not too viable an option. I think the main problem is Ghost itself. It may be able to create virtual disks from back ups but they don’t seem to be compatible with the programs that actually use the virtual disks.

Friday 9 October 2009

Amazon’s Run

Trying to buy stuff from Amazon but it's not playing nice. It keeps asking me to put in my credit card information. I've checked the details in my account and the information is there already. Previous to this week buying from Amazon was as easy as a few clicks. I've also checked the address bar during the process of doing the order and I'm not getting redirected to a phishing site; it just informs me that the address the goods are being sent to is a new address (not true) and I have to re enter the details.

So far this week I've cancelled two orders just to be on the safe side and sent Amazon an email. First there was the final (?) volume of the complete stories by Theodore Sturgeon, Slow Sculpture (I tried buying from the publisher but they don't ship outside You Sah) and then today an order for the Region 2 edition of Logan's Run plus Logan's Run comic number six. I have Logan's Run on DVD but it's Region one, and I don't fancy messing about with Regions on the computer or using software to rip the DVD.

I just won Logan's Run comic number seven on ebay: there were only seven editions of this comic printed before it went kaput and I have the first five. I actually came to Logan's Run via the comic. It was a bright and shiny thing on the shelves of a newsagent in Cowdenbeath and I bought it and was hooked. They Film/Comic did the story differently to the book and I actually preferred it to the novel. A few months later I saw the film in Lochgelly (Lochgelly had two cinemas and Cowdenbeath, a bigger town, had one; now there's just the multiplex several towns away) and a few years later got the paperback, then the sequel in paperback and then the final in the trilogy in paperback.

Tuesday 6 October 2009

Another Hardback To Add To My Bob Shaw Collection

I got the hardback edition of Tomorrow Lies in Ambush by Bob Shaw today. The package was littered with stamps – well over twenty. There was very little room for anything else.  And they weren’t small UK sized stamps either, they were big stamps. In fact you could call it a herd of Elephants as that was the animal that was on most of the stamps. I wasn’t expecting it for another two weeks or so. When I ordered it there was a note saying delivery would be between forty and fifty days. In the end it took around thirty. Excluding postage it was one of the more cheaper hardbacks by Bob Shaw I’ve bought; a good bargain considering it’s from 1973, is rare and sells for three figures in the UK.

It actually arrived on Saturday but I missed the post and yesterday was some sort of Holiday. (I think.) There was no post delivery but there were collections; I don’t know if the Post Offices were closed or not as I didn’t go near any. All other shops and businesses were as normal. Well most. The book is in great condition and I may refresh my memory by going through a few stories. My paperback edition of this, bought years and years ago, is signed by Bob Shaw.

Sunday 4 October 2009

Microsoft Wurd

Wurd, although I think I got the first letter wrong, is acting up again. Honestly I don’t know why I bother with it. I have Office 2007 on one laptop and Office 2007 but retaining Word 2002 on my other laptop. I use this program for drafting my blogs about Bob Shaw. I’ve got three or four pieces in progress; various unorganised thoughts and jottings for each book. I tinker with them on a regular basis until one is ready for putting online. Today I go to open one of them and it causes Word to crash; thereafter the file is unreadable by Word. The others turn out to be the same so I have to start them all over again. I’ve had this problem before with Word but it seems to be more prevalent in Word 2002. Not that versions matter as Word 2007 wont open the files either. I can’t remember word for word what is in the documents but I do know Ship of Strangers was almost finished. Now I have to start them all over again: there is something to be said for typewriters.

Friday 2 October 2009

Stupidity or Complete Stupidity?

I got this from a few sites; Ansible (top right hand corner in the October section) and How Publishing Really Works among others, the source is here.

It's sort of caught fire on the Internet and exploded into bad publicity for Richard Ridyard - although he probably wont care. But he should understand that The Internet's Always Going To Get You. A few people have pointed out the futility of plagiarising, as, in this day and age, it will be noted a lot easier and quicker. But some people still try it.  The funniest (saddest?) thing about some of his plagiarising is that he plagiarised Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft! Can anyone imagine Richard Ridyard actually thinking the thought ‘No one’s going to notice this’? Aside from the obvious distaste in plagiarism there seems to be a certain amount of delusion involved in it also.

I have came across a few instances of plagiarism reported in blogs before this incident, so some people obviously think it’s worth trying. Apparently all he mostly did was replace words with similar words and change names. There were some instances of him being paid for the stories; so I suppose he was successful in that he was paid for his plagiarising. He may have profited from it but he hasn’t got away with it, as the furore shows: he wont be able to sell under the name Richard Ridyard again in a lot of markets across the Internet.