Since the Buffalo Bills are no longer in contention for the AFC Championship this season, my interest in these games have fallen precipitously. With Bo Nix’s elimination from the Championship game because of his ankle injury, the New England Patriots are favorited by 5 1/2 points. Drake Maye is way better than Jarrett Stidham so my guess is that the Patriots will be headed to the Super Bowl…again.

I like the LA Rams but I’m going to have to go with Cap’n Bob’s mighty Seattle Seahawks–favored by 2 1/2 points–who will be headed for another Super Bowl…again. Who do you think will win these games?

There’s occasion humor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Wonder Man–debuting on January 27–looks like fun. The series follows Simon Williams, who is trying to earn the lead role in a remake film of Wonder Man along with Trevor Slattery.

All eight episodes will be available next week. Given the Grim Times we’re living in, a little humor would be a bit of relief.

As Deuce Richardson points out in his informative “H. Rider Haggard: Imagination, Death, and Immortality,” H. Rider Haggard was one of the most influential writers of the 19th Century. His tales of High Adventure like King Solomon’s Mines and She impacted writers in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Take Smith and the Pharaohs as an example. Smith becomes interested in the history of Egypt and finally travels there. In his tour of a museum, Smith becomes obsessed with the image of a beautiful Egyptian queen. When Smith is accidentally locked up one night in the Cairo Museum, he falls asleep and dreams that he is put on trial by the ghosts of Egypt’s pharaohs and queens. His crime: robbing their graves. The reader is left with the possibility that what Smith experience wasn’t just a dream.

 “Magepa the Buck” is the ninth story in the Quatermain series and features Haggard’s blend of history and adventure. The story centers around heroic Zulu figure Magepa, detailing his incredible endurance to save a child, showing Haggard’s respect for Zulu bravery.

Haggard brings Africa to life in stories like “Long Odds (The Spring of the Lion),” “Hunter Quatermain’s Story,” and “A Tale of Three Lions.” If you’re looking for classic story-telling with exotic settings and occasional supernatural/ paranormal aspects blended in, give Smith and the Pharaohs and Other Stories a try. GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

H. Rider Haggard: Imagination, Death, and Immortality By Deuce Richardson — 7

Smith and the Pharaohs and Other Stories:

Smith and the Pharaohs –14

The Blue Curtains — 51

Little Flower — 75

Only a Dream — 127

Barbara Who Came Back — 133

Allan Quatrain Stories:

Magepa the Buck –179

Long Odds (The Spring of the Lion) — 190

Hunter Quatermain’s Story — 202

A Tale of Three Lions — 216

The Mahatma and the Hare — 239

Bibliography –285

Every so often I get into a Motown Mood. This 3-CD set from 2008 was perfect for presenting a wide range of Motown songs. Motown’s biggest groups are represented: The Temptations, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, The Four Tops, and more.

In addition to the great music on these three CDs, Motown Classics: Collector’s Edition includes a booklet that provides additional information on each of the songs. For example, here’s what the booklet presents on “My Girl”:

The Temptations: My Girl (#1 1965) Largely hailed as the most successful and best known R&B act of all time, The Temptations have had an illustrious career both on the charts and on tour for a period of more than 45 years. Beginning with their first hit in 1964, “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” the group has charted more than 50 Billboard singles and earned more than 17 gold and platinum hits. “My Girl” became The Temptations first #1 hit, topping both the pop and R&B charts when it hit the airwaves in 1965.

I do not have the superlative ears of someone like Art Scott, but these songs sound better than they do on older CDs I own. I can only speculate that this set has been tweaked and remastered to enhance the sound. If you’re a Motown fan, Motown Classics: Collector’s Edition would be a delightful New Year’s present…to yourself! Do you remember these songs? Any favorites here? GRADE: A

TRACK LIST:

“This is the fifth summary collection of my short fiction as it came out: Gravity Angels (1991), Tales of Old Earth (2000) , The Dog Said Bow Wow (2007), Not So Much Said the Cat (2016), and the volume you hold in your hands.”

It probably won’t surprise you to learn I have purchased and read all the above Swanwick short story collections over the years. This latest one, The Universe Box, features a wide array of short stories. Take the title story for instance: a dull, boring man seeks the affection of a woman who is about to drop him and together they encounter a box that contains the Universe. And various entities want it.

I liked “The Last Days of the Old Night” where three giants with incredible powers impact a world where the light of the Sun will soon turn everyone into stone.

“Starlight Express” explores the relationship of a woman from the Stars who accidentally transports herself to Earth and the man who falls in love with her. “The Year of the Three Monarchs” shows what happens when treachery rules.

If you’re a fan of Michael Swanwick’s work–like his Nebula Award winning Stations of the Tide (1991)–then The Universe Box is a must-buy. If you’re interested in sampling Swanwick’s work, The Universe Box Is the perfect place to start. GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction: The House of Skulls and Masks By Michael Swanwick — 1
“Starlight Express” — 8
“The Last Days of Old Night” — 20
“The Year of the Three Monarchs” — 41
“Ghost Ships” — 46
“The White Leopard” — 54
“Dragon Slayer” — 66
“The Warm Equations” — 85
“Requiem for a White Rabbit” — 93
“Dreadnaught” — 113
“Grandmother Dimetrodon” — 132
“The Star-Bear” — 158
“Nirvana or Bust” — 168
“Reservoir Ice” — 178
“Artificial People” — 191
“Huginn and Muninn—and What Came After” — 204
“Cloud” — 222
“Timothy: An Oral History” — 233
“Annie Without Crow” — 247
“Universe Box” — 264

I’m thrilled to have Holly Hunter back on the TV screen. Hunter plays, Nahla Ake, the Chancellor of Starfleet Academy and has her hands full with the various cadets who she’s responsible for. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is an eight-episode series on Paramount+. Two episodes are available and one episode will be dropped every Thursday for the next couple of months.

The target audience for this series doesn’t really include me. It’s aimed at teenagers. The first year students are teenagers with typical teenage problems. Starfleet Academy unfolds sometime in the 32nd century, roughly concurrent with the later seasons of Paramount+’s Star Trek: Discovery but centuries after most of the rest of the Star Trek canon. The starships look very different from what previous Star Trek ships looked like. If you’re a long-time Star Trek fan, you will surely be pleased to see some familiar faces here, including Tig Notaro’s Jett Reno, Oded Fehr’s Charles Vance, and Robert Picardo’s hologram Doctor.

Even though the target audience is teenagers, I’m young at heart so I’ll watch this new series with nostalgia. How about you? Are you a Trekkie? GRADE: Incomplete but trending towards a B

“November 19, 2007 was the birth date of the Kindle, a day I had dreamed of with messianic anticipation since that movement, some twenty-two years earlier, when I flashed on the notion of a portable e-book reader.” (p. 113)

Richard Curtis, famed literary agent, tells the story of the development of e-books (and e-book readers) from the 1980s to today. Plenty of obstacles needed to be overcome. New technologies needed to be invented. And resistance to e-books–from authors to readers–needed to be dealt with.

“Harlan Ellison was not just skeptical about ebooks but downright hostile to them… But one day in 2008, he called. ‘I’m up the creek, We’re broke, and I’m gonna lose my house.’ ” (p. 124). Curtis convinced Ellison to have his books converted to e-books with advances of $1000 per 32 titles. That $32,000 saved Ellison’s house. Sales of the e-books stabilized Ellison’s finances for years.

Curtis shares stories about many of his clients: Dan Simmons, John Norman (of GOR fame), Elizabeth Lynn, Greg Bear, and Richard S. Prather.

“According to Tidbits.com, ‘In 2009 AMAZON controlled 90% of the e-book market.’ Within three years, Forrester Research’s James McQuivery reported, AMAZON had sold 4 million Kindles in its various versions. In 2014 alone, $5 billion worth of Kindles were sold.” (p. 116)

“The digital transformation of the past fifty years has been widely chronicled, but the story of how the book industry went from print to digital has never been adequately told. As a widely admired literary agent and the founder of one of the very first e-book publishers, Richard Curtis was present at the creation. He knows the whole story as only an insider can. Digital Inc. is the first book to recount in detail the conversion of printed books to digital and the struggles of publishers to embrace a new business and creative paradigm after five hundred years of dedication to print on paper. The upheaval changed not just books but the people who write, read, and publish them. Digital Inc. blends a thoroughly researched history with an account of how Curtis and a team of hotshots built their electronic book company from scratch and turned it into a multimillion-dollar company in the vanguard of digital transformation, pioneering innovations that still shape the book business today.

The story of how the e-book morphed from an idle fantasy into an industry-shaping powerhouse is told against the backdrop of decades of tumult in publishing, from the birth of international media conglomerates and the explosion of social media to the rise of Amazon and the emergence of new business models unimaginable a generation ago. In the tradition of Hackers, Fire in the Valley, and Soul of a New Machine, Digital Inc. explores the personal, social, and creative complexities-as well as the daunting technical and economic hurdles-that the progenitors of the e-book revolution had to overcome. Curtis’s wise and witty voice brings to life the colorful characters who revolutionized publishing and continue to transform it in the rapidly-dawning age of AI. For everyone who cares about books and their continuing impact on our culture-from writers and publishing professionals to countless avid readers-Digital Inc. is an absorbing, eye-opening guide to today’s new world of books and how it came to be.” Digital Inc. tells a fascinating story and Curtis’s insights on the state of publishing today are impressive! GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction — 1

PRELUDE: Appointment in Gaithersburg — 3

1. Analog Agent — 13
2. The Dream of Portability — 23
3. Content and Discontent — 33
4. The Age of Miracles — 39
5. Turning Point — 48
6. Consolidation — 53
7. “Puh…” — 69
8. The Big Sleep — 85
9. Shifting Sands — 93
10. Slouching Towards Kindle — 99
11. The Road to E-Day — 107
12. Game On — 113
13. What Were They Thinking? — 131
14. Displaced Persons — 143
15. The Dark Side — 162
16. Indelible Ink — 171
17. For Sale — 179
18. Rescued — 184
19. The End — 196
20. Back From the Future — 199

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS — 208

APPENDIX A: STANDARD E-READS PUBLISHING CONTRACT — 209

APPENDIX B: SAMPLE E-READS NEWSLETTER — 220

SOURCE NOTES — 223

INDEX — 244

ABOUT THE AUTHORS — 259

Most Buffalo Bills fans will be rooting for the Houston Texans to beat the New England Patriots. The Patriots are 3 point favorites over the Texans. In the late game, the LA RAMS are 3 1/2 point favorites at snowy Chicago. I’m mildly hoping the Rams win…but I admire what the Bears have done this season. Plenty of late game comebacks!

Who do you think will win these games?

If you’re a fan of Pulp Fiction from the 1920s and 1930s, you’re familiar with Spicy Detective Stories, Spicy Adventure Stories, Spicy Mystery Stories, and Spicy Western Stories.

But, what about Spicy Zeppelin Stories?

In his clever and informative INTRODUCTION, Will Murray traces the genesis of this fictitous pulp magazine back to the 1970s. Years went by and the myth of Spicy Zeppelin Stories grew. Finally, Murray admits there came a point when he had to create an issue Spicy Zeppelin Stories before someone else did.

And here it is! Spicy Zeppelin Stories, Volume 1, Number 1, October 1936 appears just as it would have…if it really existed back then.

The prolific Will Murray, known for his many Pulp Fiction inspired novels and author of 40 books in The Destroyer series, decided he would write all the stories in Spicy Zeppelin Stories using a number of pseudonyms. Murray took the approach that the stories would be written in Depression fiction style and feature a Doc Savage-like story–Gondola Girl”–a Western story, a Science Fiction story in the Captain Future and C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith mode, a typical weird menace story, a G-man story, and an air-war yarn. The common element to Murray’s Spicy Zeppelin Stories is every story features an airship of some type.

My favorite story in Spicy Zeppelin Stories is “Zeps of the Void” by “Jason Rainbow.” Solar Smith’s vengeance on Space Pirates is focused and cunning. I also enjoyed “Catwalk Creeper” by “D. E. Need” where beautiful women are attacked by “Medusa the Destroyer”–turned to stone–and shattered into pieces aboard a Zeppelin. Neat mystery!

If you’re looking for something different and exciting, Spicy Zeppelin Stories might be exactly what you’re in the mood to read! GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION By Will Murray — 1

Gondola girl By Wray Murill — 9

Gasbag buckaroo By Noah Count — 71

Hydrogen horror By Page Turner — 101

Zeps of the void By Jason Rainbow — 135

Rail lair By Philip Space –165

Catwalk creeper By D. E. Need — 191

The Celestial Airship By Anonymous — 219

Chane By Ray W. Murrill –221