Pournelle is one of my personal heroes. While I might argue that Dan Simmons or Gene Wolfe are better prose stylists, that Larry or Ringo can capture me with the chaotic rush of their stories and their wonderful characters, or that Wright can floor me with the scope of his vision and the direct poetry of his words, I keep coming back to Pournelle. His editorship of There Will be War [https://infogalactic.com/info/There_Will_be_War_(series)]that I stumbled into while in middle school, was a turni…
All posts in review
Since I was covering “well crafted crap [https://thelastredoubt.com/2017/01/sjws-produce-terrible-work.html]” yesterday, I forgot one book that stands out as a rare work I haven’t finished, no matter how fine the prose, briefly mentioned in my gushing [https://thelastredoubt.com/2016/08/monster-hunter-memoirs-grunge-or-las.html] over John Ringo’s Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge. Holy shit did I get sick of Kvothe – to the point I had to look up his name because I have him tagged mentally as “whi…
It’s pretty easy to make fun of Tom Cruise – especially with the whole couch -jumping incident and his Scientology issues, but he actually can act. He’s also in two of the better recent science fiction films I’d seen: Oblivion, and* Edge of Tomorrow*. Edge of Tomorrowsuffered from a lot of issues at the studio level. No-one seemed to have any idea how to market it, and the Japanese short-novel the concept was borrowed from had an even less descriptive title (All You Need is Kill). It almost se…
There are only so many movies that I consider effectively “perfect.” Movies so tightly done, with good acting, good editing, every piece has its place, and even knowing the twists you can watch them over and over again. One for me is “The Usual Suspects”. Another is John Wick. OK, it’s not flawless. It’s certainly not terribly “original”. But, and this is a huge but, it delivers exactly what it promises, with excellent pacing, interesting characters that behave exactly how you’d expect peopl…
Loki’s Child reads like the unholy offspring of Robert Anton Wilson’s *Shroedinger’s Cat *trilogy, and This is Spinal Tap. Some of you – especially those who’ve delved into the surreal alternate history / worlds next door of the Illuminatus and Shroedinger books, will justifiably see that as high praise. Those familiar with Spinal Tap will wonder if anyone can capture the insider knowledge and sheer ludicrousness of the music biz. It does. If anything, Spinal Tap demonstrated that there are…