Firefox 2

Looks like I might have to forego using Firefox 2 and start using the bloated and fault ridden version 3. There have been a few sites lately that have had errors of presentation with Firefox 2 when I visited them (and it took me a couple of attempts to log into Facebook) but have been ok with Internet Explorer when I tested the sites. The main problem is that I use a U3 USB stick rather than run Browsers from my computer; and Firefox 3 isn't available for U3 at the moment, only as a portable app. Which is something entirely different.

I've downloaded a couple of different portable browsers to play around with, and see if any of them are worthy of replacing Firefox.  The only thing is that I’m settled with Firefox; I’m comfortable with it, like it and there are a lot of settings stored such as passwords to sites and forums. I know a browser is basically a browser but they are not all the same.

The Sturgeon complete short stories Volume 12 has turned up and it looks like I haven't read most of the stories in that volume. They were mostly first printed in ‘Sturgeon is Alive and Well’ which is a book I don’t have in my collection. Don’t know why I never bothered to buy a copy. There's also an unpublished story in this collection which I made a bee line for.

The Doc Savage book has arrived too, and I'm looking forward to reading his last ever adventure. I'm in two minds about which one to tackle first as the second last one, Return From Cormoral, sounds very interesting too.

While I’m Waiting

While waiting for a couple of books to arrive I decided to look through my pile of ‘to be read’ books for something to engage my time. I’m waiting on Volume twelve of Theodore Sturgeon’s complete short stories, a collection of shorts from Harlan Ellison and the last omnibus of Doc Savage (winging its way from America with free postage so that’ll take forever) with his final adventure, Up From The Earth’s Centre. I didn’t find anything I wanted to read, or anything that captured my interest. Everything seemed to be four hundred pages or above. I’m growing averse to big thick books; they don’t entice me at all. A novel of a couple of hundred pages is just fine for me at the moment.


A couple of days later while sorting out some books that could go onto the bookmooch list I came across a boxed set of James Herbert novels. I remember buying it for £9.99; five books so that works out at a couple of pounds each. There was only one or two that I had read before.

I used to read a lot of James Herbert; I either bought his books new, second hand or borrowed from the library. He’s a good solid writer that has produced a quality laden body of work over the years. I briefly checked through them before deciding on ‘The Haunted’ (Cheers Larry) and I’m now about a third of the way through it – mainly due to the short chapters he has with this book. After reading one I look at the page count of the next chapter and think, ‘yeah, I can read one more.’


There may be a little nostalgia about choosing this book and James Herbert as, even though his books are horror novels, I know it’s not likely I’ll come across a lot of swearing, sex and mindless violence. It’ll be just a good story well told. Not that I’ve got anything against swearing sex and mindless violence; that can be a good night out. Sometimes they can be out of place in fiction, sometimes they fit perfectly and sometimes they are required. But it’s good to read something that is story and character based, well paced and from a master writer.

Killer Planet, Gollancz, Hardback, ISBN 0-575-04510-8

A little confession here: I bought a second hand copy of Killer Planet in hardback sometime in the early nineties but I never got round to reading it. When bought the book was put at the bottom of my reading pile, and it sort of stayed there. As books moved from room to room when space was needed here and there I never actually got round to reading it.

When I started completing my collection of Bob Shaw Gollancz hardbacks again (I briefly tried years ago with little success) the book Killer Planet was brought to my attention again as I looked through the books to see what was still to get and I put Killer Planet further up my list of books to read. But, again, it never made it to the front row – even though I found time to skim trough his other books while creating these reviews and on a couple of occasions completely re read some of Shaw’s books.

So. I set aside some time and decided to concentrate on this book. Unique among Shaw books in that it is for a specific audience. Killer Planet is a Young adult novel from Bob Shaw and so is a very slim book, coming in at just over one hundred pages.

Published in 1989 the brief prologue sets us up for many dangers, telling us that after mankind learnt to cross the distance between stars with the Gemmell drive he came across Mother Nature at her fiercest, with new dangers everywhere he turned.

The most dangerous of these was Verdia, nick named the Killer Planet. Many people had gone to the planet never to return, including the brother of Jan Hazard. Hazard’s father, Donn, had spent the last few years working toward sending an expedition to the planet to rescue his son. A mission he intended to do alone. Jan though has other ideas; he knows his father would not be up to the job and is adamant that he will take his father’s place, go to Verdia and rescue his brother.

Unfortunately Donn Hazard has neglected to pay the bills during his quest to build a spaceship to go to Verdia and with the most inappropriate timing bailiffs turn up the day before the launch to confiscate all of Donn’s possessions to pay off his debts. Jan has no other option. The flight must go ahead; the rescue attempt must be made. And so Jan steals the ship and the rescue attempt is still on.

He makes it to the system where the Killer Planet is and is surprised to discover someone else on board. Petra is the love interest of the story, introduced in Chapter one as a friend. Jan is initially against her presence but as luck would have it Petra manages to take control of the ship when Jan is knocked semi unconscious at the final take off toward the planet.

The ship struggles through the cloudy atmosphere of the planet, nearly destroying the vessel – which is made out of hard plastics rather than metal due to the nature of Verdia, which attacks metal. They land on the planet and straight away are caught up in the weird and dangerous life forms on the planet as they try to investigate an old ruined city.

But it is when they discover the shattered and seared ships and equipment that the real surprise of the Killer Planet shows itself.

This is pretty much an action adventure from Bob Shaw, as mentioned geared toward the younger reader. There is a lot of vivid descriptive writing from Shaw and the characters are the straight forward no nonsense hardy type. Also, being designed for the younger reader, the book isn’t very long, in fact it is too short.
It took me a little while to get into the swing of the book, and Shaw only gave us minor glimpses of characterisation to help identify with each character in the book. The emotional attachment of going to the Killer Planet to rescue their sibling gave a good enough motive, and the action of the escape from earth forces was well written, well paced and enthralling, however the characterisation lacked a little in my opinion.
Overall it was an enjoyable read, really only picking up in pace and excitement when the protagonists actually reach the Killer planet around Chapter Five, and Shaw is very inventive in getting his heroes out of the scrapes they find themselves in on the planet. A mixture of daring do and brains keeps the two – Jan and Petra – alive to fight again. The whole story is neatly tied up with a happy outcome for all concerned following an adventurous and thrilling dénouement. This novel would make a good introduction to Bob Shaw, particularly for the target audience of the young adult.

Shaw Mooch

I joined bookmooch recently, mainly to get rid of some paperbacks that have been lying around and have no chance of ever being read. But I decided also to add the SF Book club editions of the Bob Shaw novels I own.  A couple I bought ages ago and a couple I bought by mistake recently – when they were advertised as the Gollancz editions. For the ones I bought years ago I now have the Gollancz editions so they are surplus.

I’ve nothing against the SF Book club – if it still exists – I just don’t personally like them. They don’t look good and their jackets are dull in my opinion.

I did belong to book clubs years and years ago but they never issued their own editions, just clipped editions from the original publishers.

So, if you’re in the market for free books have a look at bookmooch.

First of April

First of April and all that. Didn't get caught out by any April fools this year. Not that I’ve noticed much. Spotted a couple online but that’s it. Since Climategate I'm a lot more suspicious of anything I read and take less and less on trust - having said that someone emailed me and said they had millions of pounds waiting to be transferred to my account ...

Bought my name again; the dot com, the dot co dot uk seems to be still suspended, even though it ran out at the beginning of the year.

So, another blog. I've put WordPress in a folder on my main site and when the dot com is up and running I'll just get it redirected to the new folder. (Hopefully.)

Wordpress is great. I had the blog up and running after about ten minutes. The only problem with it is that you can't change the user name, and the default user for everyone is called admin. Ergo I have to make sure I'm typing the correct password into the correct admin for the blog. There are now three at the same dot com. I'm trying a new theme there and have made a few test posts with pictures. A couple of glitches but things are alright now. Just have to get pictures to fit into the picture frame in the theme; right now they are being stretched a little.

I'll have to tinker with the blog a little before it'll be perfect but it's looking good. Widgets and plugins have been installed and it's on the latest version of WordPress from the get go.

Snow??!!

More snow! Go out to the car today to go to work and there is snow lying on the top of the hills. Everything else had turned to rain and it's probably too warm for that snow to lie too long but the clocks have just went forward; we are now in summer time. There should be no snow.

Google Analytics seems to be working now on two of my sites. I pasted the code given to me by Google into all the sites but a couple don't recognise it. Now I can see pretty graphs showing me who is visiting and from where. Mostly UK, some form North America and some the far east - that'll be the spammers. Germany is coming up as a country with a lot of visits too. Don't know why that would be.


I need to get a few more Bob Shaw blogs up and posted on the Bosh blog; I've only made two posts there this month. Speaking of Bob I missed out on a cheap copy of his Interzone special on eBay. Never mind, perhaps next time.

Rainy Day In March

As per, triple whammy with road tax, first community charge payment and electric bill. I delayed road tax till last possible moment in the hope that the payment will be on next month's credit card. I'll find out whether I was successful or not when the bill comes in. Phone bill also came in and there was a one off charge which, after I called and complained, was removed from my bill with apologies. It just shows you what chancers companies are nowadays.

Bought some DOS software on eBay; £20 and half of that was postage. I only got it because it came with a pack of printed manuals. Online help is quick and nice but sometimes you want to sit and read a book not stare at pixels. I've got DosBox on my USB drive, so if I can find or borrow a USB floppy I can install the software on the U3 USB.

1.5GB of broadband used this month, with over one week when I wasn't even online. Must be the lowest usage month since I got broadband. I did look at some of the broadband providers, as I was thinking of switching, but if I'm not using my allocated amount. ... Sky seemed good, but they have set up fees for two out of the three packages they offer, and set up fees to me are deal killers.

Finally finished Son of Retro Pulp. I left Harlan to last and he didn't disappoint. There were some really good stories in the collection, particularly Joe R. Lansdale's 'The Crawling Sky', and there were a wide variety of pulp genres presented, from hard boiled detective to weird. I might try and hunt down the first book. That being said there were a few errors not spotted by the proof readers, page 101 (I think that's the page) having a few of its own, with one or two dotted around in a couple of other stories. These didn't distract from the reading of the stories but were noticeable.

Street Map

Eek! I've just found out that ninety five percent of the UK is on Google Street View! So I checked my town, and yes, my house is there. Luckily the grass was cut. Don't know when it was that Google streeted the place but I'd guess the pictures were taken less than a year ago. The time is around mid morning I think.  Hardly any cars parked in the streets, not many people going about. Although, having said that it appears to have been taken over a series of days. Some of the pictures show sunny skies some a little cloudier. I noticed a few chavs as I viewed the rest of the town and the surrounding area. I’m still undecided if Google Street View is a good thing or a bad thing.

Pruning and stuff

I did a serious pruning of my bookmarks (backing up beforehand of course) and it went from over 2MB as an export down to 731 K for an export. Firefox now loads a little quicker (or is that just me?). I just took off all the sites I visit rarely, or haven't visited for a long time. It's amazing how much there were. Of course, I have a habit of bookmarking sites often and on whim, so they do tend to build up.

I use Google Reader so any site that I'm going to regularly means that I can visit it through that; it doesn't do just blogs. I've added other sites to the list on Google Reader, so it's becoming a default one stop shop. Not that I've been online much lately. I've access to broadband usage through my Madasafish account and there are a lot of days where it says 0 K.

Driving back into my home town at the weekend I noticed there was still some snow on hill tops. Not much but it was noticeable, and it hasn't gone during the week either. So we’re well into March and still some snow lying.

I bought a couple of Quick Reads recently, one of them turned out to be pretty naff even though it was from a top name author; I'll leave the other one till later. I think they’re a great idea. About a hundred pages, £1.99. Great for a short burst of reading; provided you can get decent enough stories. I'm halfway through a Doc Savage at the moment and I've just one story left in Son of Retro Pulp Tales. Plus the new issue of Interzone has arrived. Gadzooks! subscription up after next issue.

When I was in town at the weekend situations conspired to give me a free lottery ticket. I found out when I got home and was putting the receipt into my accounts package.  Yes, I'm anal like that. It used to be that there was no money left at the end of the month and I was asking Where has it all gone? I got Sage Instant from eBay for about £40 a couple of years ago and keep track of all my finances now. Bank accounts, Credit Cards, ISAs, cash in hand. There's still no money left at the end of the month but I know where it all went. I'd like to say that the free ticket made me a millionaire but it didn't. Only two numbers came up on it. Not even a tenner.

The Two Timers, Gollancz, Hardback, ISBN 575-0037-3

The Two Timers is one of Bob Shaw’s earlier novels, dating from 1968, and like his first few early novels published in America before being published in the UK. Indeed The Two Timers, actually his third novel, was the first of Shaw’s novels to be published in the UK, by Gollancz in 1969.

The basic plot of the novel is standard SF fare, but Shaw lifts this novel up with his characterisation and the emotional depth that he puts into the main characters. Conflict and consequences of choice are prevalent throughout the book, and indeed are the driving force of this novel.

I remember vaguely Roger Moore starred in a film with a comparable plot, released around the same time – give or take a couple of years either side. I can’t even remember the name of the film let alone when it was released. I do remember it had that late sixties early seventies feel to it and was made by Moore before he became Bond.

The novel The Two Timers starts with John Breton receiving a telephone call from someone who says Breton has been living with the other’s wife for the past nine years and he’s coming round to the house to reclaim her. Breton’s first thought is that it is a practical joke. Breton returns to his wife and house guests, who are indulging in automatic writing, the result of which is a poem that puts Breton on edge. Breton remembers the night he almost lost his wife and a mystery is introduced when it is revealed she was saved by a mystery man who disappeared. After escorting their dinner guests to their car Breton stays at the doorway to smoke a cigarette in the cool evening air, and then is surprised by the appearance of the man who called him earlier, still on a mission to get back his wife.

The second chapter takes up from that moment and is told from the perspective of the other Breton, Jack Breton. Jack proves who he is with the recounting of an early personal memory. Jack Breton tells a tale of a night when his wife was attacked; only with his tale his wife dies and is not saved by a stranger. He blames himself; so much so that he ends up in hospital. Breton continues to replay the incident in his head, and he slowly begins to think that he can travel in time.

Months pass and the idea that he can find a way to travel through time seeps into him and consumes him. Then he does go back in time and saves his wife. But on returning to his present he finds that nothing has changed, he remembers her funeral, she is not at the family home; greeting him with open arms and a smile. And so his quest to regain his wife begins again.

The appearance of Jack Breton into the lives of John and Kate Breton is a very neat, incredibly inventive twist in the eternal love triangle. The situation becomes which version of Breton will win the woman?

The novel develops further with a new twist in the story in that there appears more and more evidence for mind to mind contact, telepathy: the poem from the first chapter proves to be something that the new arrival, Jack Breton, had written in his despair, and tests in laboratories showed success for some people up to a level of one hundred per cent in psychic tests. Add to this the fact that the original police officer who investigated the case still has suspicions about Breton and the tensions in the story ratchet up a notch.

I read the novel in a couple of sittings way back in the late eighties, having bought a second hand edition of the SF book club printing of The Two Timers. I recently purchased a Gollancz hardback copy for quite a bit of cash, although I’ve still to get a paperback copy of the book. When I first read this novel it was a fun, enthralling read.

Shaw grabs you right at the start and drags you through a story of alternative timelines, alternative universes and personal turmoil. It’s a novel that is more emotive and dealing with deeply personal issues than some of his works and is all the better for it. Of course, it can’t be any less personal seeing as the protagonist is facing an antagonist who claims to be him. Even though it’s one of his earlier novels and not as well developed as some of his later and more mature work – which only comes from time – it is a well constructed, well plotted and very well executed work.

I found The Two Timers a satisfying read when I first read it and a very good and competent piece of writing when I went through it again to brush up on it before starting this review. In the later chapters of the book there are a lot of characters introduced who have little to do with the main plot, and although they may have been introduced to show the effects of the time travel, it does deter a little from what is a powerful and tantalizing story that is well told by Bob Shaw.