Damon Knight is best known as a Science Fiction writer and a gifted editor.  Knight edited dozens of SF anthologies.  But, just by chance, I came across Westerns of the 40s: Classics From the Great Pulps published by Bobbs Merrill in 1977.

It shouldn’t surprise you that two writers, best known for their Science Fiction writing, should show up in this Western anthology: Murran Leinster and Clifford D. Simak.  Simak’s story concerns a crusading editor of a small newspaper.  Simak worked in the newspaper trade for years so this story sounded genuine all the way through.      Murray Leinster shows up with three stories full of gunplay, hijinks,  and action.  GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS;

Gun-devil of red God desert / by Tom Roan – 1

Boss of buckskin empire / by Cliff Farrell – 32

Good-by, mimbres kid / by Frank Bonham – 57

Bearhide’s moonshine war / by Roy M. O’Mara – 70

Teetotal and the six-gun spirits / by Murray Leinster – 83

Flatwheel draws the line / by Tom W. Blackburn – 94

The line camp terror / by Walt Coburn – 108

Hell trail pilgrim / by Murray Leinster – 136

The parson of owlhoot junction / by Charles W. Tyler – 148

Trail city’s hot-lead crusaders / by Clifford D. Simak – 180

Crazy springs’ write-in vote / by Roy M. O’Mara – 214

Col. Colt buys a border herd / by Bennett Foster – 236

The corpse rides at dawn / by John D. MacDonald –250

The long arm of the law / by James Shaffer – 273

By the guns forgot / by Murray Leinster – 298

Deadman’s derringers / by Tom W. Blackburn – 322

Having a 3-year-old in our house for a few days during the run-up to the Solar Eclipse completely changed our TV viewing habits. My niece from Virginia’s daughter, Madi, loves Disney+ and especially loves the animated musical movie, Wish. Wish was in the movie theaters in November 2023, Although Wish earned $254 million at the Box Office, it was considered a flop since it cost $200 million to make. Reviews were mixed.

Wish is a story of a 17-year-old girl named Asha (Ariana DeBose) who lives in the magical Kingdom of Rosas. Asha makes a passionate plea to the stars in a moment of need. This results in Asha meeting a living, magic Star which has fallen from the sky.

The ruler of Rosas is King Magnifico (Chris Pine). Magnifico, corrupted by the dark magic, intends to use Star’s magic and Rosas’ wishes to increase his own magical powers to rule Rosas without opposition. 

I don’t know how much of the plot would make sense to a 3-year-old, but the music is catchy, there are plenty of cute animated animals cavorting around on the TV screen, and of course, Asha is a nifty Disney Princess. Disney+ reported 13.2 million views of Wish the first five days on the streaming service. GRADE: B-

The seventh mystery in the Vinyl Detective series finds our narrator and his Special Forces trained lover, Nevada, hired to find Lambert Ramkin, a quirky but famous performer of 1990s techno and ambient music. Ramkin was the leader of Imperium Dart, a group of three women and himself who are now legends in the musical genre. The search leads from Ramkin’s palatial home in Kent to various vinyl sales sites across England (Ramkin collects vinyl records).

John Fowles’ 1965 novel of bending Reality, The Magus, factors into Noise Floor as strange pranks (I liked the Time Travel one best) happen to the Vinyl Detective and Nevada. Is Lambert Ramkin dead or alive? Who would want to kill a musician from the 1990s? Who would want to dose the Vinyl Detective with psychedelic drugs?

The answers to these questions show up in a surprising conclusion. Noise Floor is one of the best books in this series! GRADE: A-

THE VINYL DETECTIVE SERIES:

1 Written in Dead Wax (2016)
2 The Run-Out Groove (2017)
3 Victory Disc (2018)
4 Flip Back (2019)
5 Low Action (2020)
6 Attack and Decay (2022)
7 Noise Floor (2024)

Maeve Higgins, a comedian who grew up in Ireland but now lives in Brooklyn, delivers an entertaining series of pieces about her life and interests. “Lean on Me” shows how Higgins got through the Pandemic. “Bubbles and Planks” explores Higgins’ long struggle with depression. “New York, Fair or No Fair” starts with “One of three New Yorkers are immigrants.” (p. 177) Then Higgins goes on to celebrate the city she loves.

While Higgins includes plenty of humor in her stories, each of her essays tackles a serious topic. For example, the title of Maeve Higgins’ Tell Everyone On This Train I Love Them” comes from a tragic story:

“A man did a terrible thing on a train one: he attacked two teenage girls. This happened in Portland, Oregon, in 2017. He was a hight nationalist, and on of the girls was Black, the other in a hijab. Then there other men on th same trail did a beautiful thing: they stop up to the attacker and saved the girls. The attacker killed tow of those men with a knife and injured the third. One of men he killed was a gentle-looking twenty-three-year-old named Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche…. [A ] passenger told reporters afterward that he said, ‘Tell everyone on this train I love them.'” (p. 202)

Diane listens to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me on National Public Radio each week and Maeve Higgins is a frequent guest. Higgins may be funny at times, but she has a very Serious Side. GRADE: B+

Table of Contents:

Lean on Me 1

Bubbles and Planks 19

Good Acting 41

Misneach and Rumors of War 57

Situational Awareness 85

Death Tax 113

The Innocents 141

New York, Fair or No Fair 171

Notes and Acknowledgments 205

In 2001, the Homeless World Cup was established. Each year, 70 teams of homeless men and women from all over the planet compete for world-wide recognition and to display their skills at “The Beautiful Game” of soccer.

When I first started watching this movie, I was unsure if the Homeless World Cup was a Real Thing. At the end of the movie, the credits rolled and, yes, this yearly competition is a Real Thing. It has helped 1.2 million homeless people come out of the shadows to participate in this universal street soccer event.

How did I not know about it before this???

Bill Nighy plays the coach of the Homeless Soccer team from England. All of his team struggles with problems–gambling addiction, drug addiction, abuse, depression, anxiety issues–but Nighy manages to meld these misfits into a credible team. Nighy also reaches out to a young man who is living in his car, pretending NOT to be a homeless person. Vinny Walker (Michael Ward) has excellent soccer skills, but is not a team player. It takes all of Nighy’s persuasion to get Vinny to travel with the team to Italy for the competition.

Despite continuing problems, Nighy’s team becomes one you can root for as the reasons for each member’s homelessness is revealed. Yes, my eyes got misty a few times.

Director Thea Sharrock and Screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce capture the highs and lows of troubled people trying to excel at what might be a life-changing experience. The Beautiful Game is not your typical sports movie. I’m not a soccer fan, but I got a kick out of The Beautiful Game. GRADE: B+

I was a member of the Quality Paperback Book Club for a number of years. Back in 1995, the Quality Paperback Book Club offered this omnibus edition featuring three class Science Fiction novels: John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (1951), I Am Legend (1955) by Richard Matheson, and Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint (1959).

I read The Day of the Triffids after I was freaked out by the 1962 film version. The British SF writers of that era specialized in catastrophic novels where the Earth was imperiled and The Day of the Triffids–with the horrific situation of most people in the world blinded by an apparent meteor shower and then an aggressive species of plant begins killing people–was enough to give me nightmares for months.

Yes, I Am Legend freaked me out, too! After the outbreak of a pandemic that has killed the rest of the human population and turned infected survivors into “vampires”.  Once again, I read the novel after seeing the 1964 movie, The Last Man on Earth. More movie versions followed:  The Omega Man (1971), and I Am Legend (2007). 

I read Time Out of Joint around 1960. I’d read plenty of Philip K. Dick short stories and loved the quirkiness of his Science Fiction. The title is a reference to Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. The line is uttered by Hamlet after being visited by his father’s ghost and learning that his uncle Claudius murdered his father:
“The time is out of joint; O cursed spite!/That ever I was born to set it right!” [I.V.211-2])

Ragle Gumm lives in the year 1959 in a quiet American town. His unusual profession consists of repeatedly winning the cash prize in a national newspaper contest called “Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?”. But Gumm’s world starts to unravel as Philip K. Dick creates a world where nothing is as it seems. Paranoid, indeed!

I read all three of these novels in my teens so it was fun to revisit them. Are you familiar with these “paranoid” SF novels? GRADE: A (for all three novels)

“The series contained 15 volumes. The first five were released on 21 June 1994, and concentrated mostly on music issued between 1977 and 1981, with a few tracks from 1982. (Despite the “New Wave Hits of the ’80s” subtitle, Volume 1 actually contains no tracks from the 1980s; tracks from 1980 and later begin appearing midway through Volume 2.) Volumes 6–10 were issued on 18 October 1994, and mostly featured songs from 1982, spilling a little into 1983. The last five volumes were issued on 20 June 1995, and featured songs covering 1983 to 1985. Additional themed volumes—New Wave Dance Hits, New Wave Women,^[ New Wave Halloween, and New Wave Christmas—came out in subsequent years. Rhino Records discontinued the series, due to rights issues and with no plans to re-release them. Many of the songs in the series are mastered from the 7-inch single masters. The series includes some songs making their first CD appearance (in some rare cases, their only CD appearance).”–Wikipedia

I have several Rhino compilation CDs, but I found these two volumes and I’m now debating whether to buy the other 13 volumes. Maybe you can help me make that decision by evaluating these two CDs.

I like Volume 5 a bit better than Volume 6. Volume 5 has that ear worm “867-5309/Jenny” by Tommy Tutone and Frank & Moon Unit Zappa’s “Valley Girl.” But, I could do without Toni Basil’s “Mickey.”

Volume 6 has ABC’s “The Look of Love (Part I)” and Men at Work’s “Who Can It Be Now.” I can do without Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.” Do you remember these songs from the 1980s? And favorites here? GRADE: B (for both)

TRACK LIST:

aa

“During the year or so while this particular book was occupying my headspace, I went through several life-altering experiences. A close relative died of cancer. A good friend died of cancer. I myself nearly died of cancer….

Those omens suggest that it’s time to step away from the Cthulhu Casebooks and more broadly from Sherlock Holmes. It’s time to look elsewhere, try new things, seek new challenges…” (p. 508)

I’ve read and enjoyed James Lovegrove’s Cthulhu Casebooks (you can read my reviews here and here and here) but from Lovegrove’s Afterward above, Sherlock Holmes and the Highgate Horrors (2023) looks like the end of the series. And, although Lovegrove has written over a dozen other, more conventional, Sherlock Holmes pastiches, it looks like the end of that series, too.

It’s a pity that Lovegrove is leaving Sherlock Holmes and Watson to other writers. Sherlock Holmes and the Highgate Horrors presents a series of fascinating, interconnected stories where the aliens of Yuggoth (aka, Pluto) begin their insidious infiltration of Earth. Lovegrove brings Irene Adler into these adventure stories where she plays key roles in the action.

A crashed alien space ship, mysterious fungi, visits to Yuggoth, bizarre occurrences (including the Walking Dead), the Necronomicon, and the threat of alien invasion pervade the stories in Sherlock Holmes and the Highgate Horrors. If James Lovegrove is truly stepping away from the Cthulhu Casebooks, these are fine tales to wrap up the series. GRADE: B+

At 3:18 P.M. the temperature dropped about 10 degrees and it was like someone hit the dimmer switch. Within a few seconds the sunlight was gone, the streetlights came on, and it was eerie feeling being plunged into midnight. In the distance there was a 360 degree “sunset” surrounding the eclipse darkness.

The darkness lasted three minutes and then things started to lighten up. Clouds finally cleared and Diane and I were able to view the eclipse with our Solar Eclipse glasses on. It will be many years before another Solar Eclipse shows up in Western NY so we’re happy we experienced this rare event!

Around 3:18 Eastern Time, the moon will block the sun and Totality will be achieved. Western NY is on the Path of Totality and a million visitors are filling all the local hotels and Airbnbs. Patrick and Katie drove home to experience this event (the next Solar Eclipse is 20 years from now). We also have my niece from Virginia, her husband, and her two kids (3 and six months) staying in our Guest Room. We have our approved Solar Eclipse glasses so we are ready for the Big Moment.

Have you ever witnessed an eclipse?