With The Avengers: Endgame just a couple of weeks away (we have our tickets!), I decided to get into the mood with this animated version of the group from 2011. MARVEL provides 90 minutes of action and thrills as The Avengers battle super villains, time traveling conquerors, alien invaders, mythical beasts, and robots bent on world domination. No single superhero could handle these threats so Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and the Hulk band together to face these powerful opponents. Yes, these animated adventures are aimed at 12-year-olds, but the sense of wonder of the comic books and movies find their way into these animated tales. Fun! Do you have a favorite Avenger? GRADE: B+

The second week in April is traditionally National Library Week–although in some places April has become National Library Month. No matter. I want to honor all the libraries I use by reviewing a book that celebrates libraries: Simon Brett’s The Liar in the Library (2017). Burton St. Clair, author of the best selling Stray Leaves in Autumn, visits the little Fethering library to do a presentation and sign some books. Jude, a former model, is now a healer living in Fethering. Jude knew Burton St. Clair when he was simply Al Sinclair, husband of an actress named Megan Georgeson. But that was 15 years ago. Megan and Al divorced years ago and Jude fell out of touch with both of them.

After the library event, Burton S. Clair offers to give Jude a ride home since it’s raining. Jude reluctantly accepts the offer and as soon as Jude straps on her seat belt, Burton starts groping Jude. Jude leaves the car in a huff. But, the next morning Burton St. Clair is found dead in his car. Jude was the last person to see him alive–except for the killer. But, the police decide Jude is their prime suspect since she knew the victim 15 years ago. Jude and her friend Carole Seddon start their own investigations to clear Jude of suspicion in Burton St. Clair’s death. Yes, this is a traditional, old fashioned mystery with interesting suspects and cunning red herrings. What better way to celebrate National Library Week (or Month) than by reading a good book with a library connection! Do you have a favorite book that involves a library? GRADE: B+

My daughter Katie recommended Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie so I read it. I had read some reviews of Home Fire where I found out it tells an updated story of Sophocles’s play Antigone.

For those of you who have forgotten your Greek plays, King Creon insists the traitorous Polynices cannot be buried within the walls of Thebes. Antigone fights that decision.

In Home Fire Polynices is renamed Parvaiz. Parvaiz is a British Muslim boy who becomes radicalized and heeds the call of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Although Parvaiz and his two sisters, Aneeka and Isma, grew up in Wembley, West London, they have not assimilated. Also, their father was a jihadist who died being transferred to Guantánamo.

An Isil recruiter tells Parvaiz that his father was tortured by the Americans in Bagram, Afghanistan. To avenge his father’s death, Parvaiz must join Isil and join the jihad against the West.

Antigone is renamed Aneeka in Home Fires. Aneeka freaks out when she finds that her brother has left for Syria to join the Jihadists. By chance, Aneeka meets Eamonn, the son of the Home Secretary. Eamonn comes from a very different Muslim background than Aneeka. Karamat (who serves as the Creon character) is Eamonn’s wealthy, politically powerful father.

Eamonn is a trust-fund baby. Aneeka seduces him. This seems to be cunning tactic by Aneeka to get Eamonn’s powerful family to help her rescue her brother. Meanwhile, Parvaiz is shocked and dismayed by what he discovers in the murderous caliphate. Parvaiz wants to return home to England.

Home Fire explores the political dimensions of terrorism using the power of Sophoceles’s play to highlight the tensions of class, wealth, and religion.

Happy Birthday, Katie! Thanks for the recommendation! GRADE: A

The superhero now called Shazam appeared in a comic book 80 years ago. As you might suspect, there have been changes over the years. In the original version, a young boy named Billy Batson would say “Shazam!” and turn into an adult superhero very much like Superman called…Captain Marvel. Later, in a lawsuit with MARVEL Comics, DC Comics agreed that MARVEL owned the Captain Marvel name and the Shazam character morphed.

Now, this movie version introduces us to a trouble teenager, Billy Batson (played by Asher Angel), who is searching for his mother. Billy was at a carnival as a toddler and got lost in the crowd. For the past decade, Billy has been going from foster home to foster home while trying to find his mother. In this latest foster home, Billy rooms with a disabled boy named Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) who idolizes Superman and other DC superheroes. Through some magic, Bill Batson gets transformed into Shazam (played by Zachery Levi). Of course, the comedy occurs immediately as Billy finds himself inside an adult’s body…with superpowers!

And of course, there’s a Bad Guy. He’s Thaddeus Sivana (played by Mark Strong), a guy with serious Daddy issues. A half-dozen ghoulish creatures have taken up residence in Sivana’s body and motivate him to take the powers in Shazam. Many action/fighting sequences follow. I enjoyed this spoof of superhero movies. I think Director David F. Sandberg could have cut 15 minutes or so from the film to make it tighter. Action, adventure, and humor…what more do you need from a superhero movie? GRADE: B+

You can see subtle changes in Science Fiction in 1946. Sure, ASTOUNDING still dominated the genre, but SF was becoming more international. Asimov and Greenberg included THREE stories by Arthur C. Clarke! Will F. Jenkins (aka, “Murray Leinster”) captured the essence of computers in “A Logic Named Joe.” My two favorite stories in The Great SF Stories #8 are Ray Bradbury and Leigh Brackett’s dreamy “Lorelei of the Red Mist” and Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore’s classic “Vintage Season.” With World War II over, big changes to the Science Fiction world were right around the corner. But this anthology does a great job in capturing the essence of the SF genre in the mid-1940s. GRADE: A-
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION By Martin H. Greenberg & Isaac Asimov 9
“A Logic Named Joe” by Will F. Jenkins (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, March 1946) 13
“Memorial” by Theodore Sturgeon (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, April 1946) 30
Loophole” by Arthur C. Clarke (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, April 1946) 45
The Nightmare” by Chan Davis (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, May 1946) 53
Rescue Party” by Arthur C. Clarke (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, May 1946) 74
Placet is a Crazy Place” by Fredric Brown (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, May 1946) 101
Conqueror’s Isle” by Nelson S. Bond (BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE, June 1946) 116
“Lorelei of the Red Mist” by Ray Bradbury and Leigh Brackett (Planet Stories, Summer 1946) 131
The Million Year Picnic” by Ray Bradbury (PLANET STORIES, Summer 1946) 189
“The Last Objective” by Paul A. Carter (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, August 1946) 199
Meihem in ce Klasrum” by Dolton Edwards (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, September 1946) 228
Vintage Season” by Lawrence O’Donnell (aka, Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore) (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, September 1946) 232
Evidence” by Isaac Asimov (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, September 1946) 276
Absalom” by Henry Kuttner (STARTLING STORIES, Fall 1946) 299
“Mewhu’s Jet” by Theodore Sturgeon (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, November 1946) 316
Technical Error” by Arthur C. Clarke (FANTASY [Great Britain], December 1946) 351

Alastair Reynolds’s new Time Travel short novel, Permafrost, presents us with a dying world in 2080. An environmental disaster has killed all insects and now the plants are dying. Humanity is slowly starving to death. Dr. Cho of the World Health Organization assembles a small team to try a desperate experiment: send the consciousnesses of the team members back to 2029 and try to avert the environmental catastrophe. As usual in these kind of Time Travel stories, Something Goes Wrong.

Alastair Reynolds packs a lot of excitement in his slim 176-page novel. This is a quick and thrilling read! Do you like Time Travel stories? GRADE: B+

David Thomson, in his new book on movies, Sleeping With Strangers (you can read my review here), says he thinks the best movie ever made was His Girl Friday (1940). It had been decades since I last saw His Girl Friday so I ordered a copy and watched it again. Immediately, I was struck by the Star Power of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell the moment they appeared on the screen.

Cary Grant plays the editor of a newspaper.  Rosalind Russell plays his best reporter and writer.  Grant and Russell’s characters were married, but work got in the way so they divorced.  Of course, there’s still volcanic chemistry between them.  Now, Russell is engaged to be married to an insurance salesman (Ralph Bellamy) and Grant is determined not to lose Russell again!

I enjoyed the clever dialogue and biting humor.  Director Howard Hawks stressed the speed of the dialogue during filming.  The movie is based on a play, The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.  Howard Hawks insisted that the male character from the play, Hildy Johnson, be a woman (played by Rosalind Russell) in the movie.

If you’re in the mood for a screwball comedy with some romantic comedy flashes, I highly recommend His Girl Friday.  Are you a fan of Cary Grand and Rosalind Russell?  GRADE: A

Alex Gibney, who impressed me with his Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2004) and Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (2014), scores with another “must-see” documentary: The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019). The Inventor shows how Stanford University drop-out, Elizabeth Holmes, managed to fool Henry Kissinger, James “Mad Dog” Maddis, George Shultz, and Rupert Murdock and dozens of other wealthy men into investing millions into her company, Theranos. Elizabeth Holmes’s dream was to take a small sample of blood and having her machine, The Edison, run hundreds of blood tests on it. If The Edison had worked, it would have revolutionized medical testing.

But, The Edison never worked and Alex Gibney shows why it failed. Gibney also shows how Elizabeth Holmes built a company–at one time valued at $9 billion dollars (and she owned 50% of the stock!)–based on lies and fakery and phony science. Elizabeth Holmes conned savvy investors, politicians (Presidents Clinton and Obama are shown praising her), and the media (Holmes was on the cover of Fortune). People wanted to believe in her dream and bought into her vague promises. Gibney then exposes how the entire scheme started to unravel. Theranos went bankrupt. Holmes was indicted for fraud and is awaiting trial.

Last year, I chose John Carryrou’s book about Elizabeth Holmes, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, as one of my Favorite Books of 2018. The Inventor is sure to be one of my Favorite Films of 2019. Highly recommended! GRADE: A

Spring is supposed to be here in Western New York, but instead Mother Nature dropped a couple of inches of fresh, heavy wet snow on us. Here’s a picture of what it looks like outside my front door. This is a cold and slushy April Fool’s Day joke that everyone here will have do deal with today. How’s the Spring weather where you are? Any snow?