In Which I Recommend

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

First I want to make very clear I have no clue what the author’s political orientation is. I say this for HIS protection. Because there are people so crazy they’ll gang up on you if you are recommended by people whose politics they don’t like.

THIS GUY HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH ME OR ANY OF US. HE DID NOT ASK FOR A RECOMMENDATION. HE DID NOTHING OTHER THAN WRITE GREAT BOOKS AND KEEP ME ENORMOUSLY ENTERTAINED EVEN THROUGH VERY DISRUPTIVE TIMES.

“But Sarah,” you said. “Why can’t you read the books we recommend? Or our books? Or? We’ll give them for free.”

Look, I read what I read. As with what I eat, it’s often not particularly good for me, and it’s “what catches me at the time.” Often even authors I love fail to catch me at a different time.

And I refuse to have my reading become homework, unless I’m researching for something.

Anyway, so let’s talk about this book that grabbed me. (Commission earned from the link below.)

Space Station Noir: Book 1

As the Galactic Empire crumbles, Station Noir is not a safe place for humans, it’s just the safest place left.

Gunny has done better than most on The Station. He commits enough crime to keep credits in his pocket, he’s not a slave anymore, and his alien partner has his back.

Then a simple job goes wrong, and Gunny is given an “opportunity” he can’t refuse. But it’s worse than it seems, and thrusts him into the deadly world of interstellar politics.

Now Gunny doesn’t know what to trust except his partner and the fact that humans always lose.

But losing this time might mean the end of Station Noir, death… or a return to slavery.

If you enjoy non-stop action, interstellar intrigue, and galactic crime you will love Gunny’’s thrilling adventures in Space Station Noir, the 1st book of Space Station Noir. Get your copy today!

So, come listen to the adventures of Gunny and Clive. Do you know it took me till book five to figure out what it was hitting off of?

Gunny is human and the stuff heroes are made of. Clive is one of the aliens who invaded us and destroyed the Earth, just not that faction.

The author might never have read Heinlein (I don’t know) but he Heinleins things amazingly and brilliantly. He never describes anything and we learn everything, step by step. He never describes the aliens except as a cockatiel who got drunk and got his freak on with an iguana. Some form of feathered dino, I assume.

So, anyway, this is what happened: I was looking at a book I was waiting to drop. And here we’ll take a moment and talk about Amazon again. First, they have my associates account back on probation, after three days without, and honestly? I still have no clue why. They’re saying I’m putting my code in a bunch of websites, which I obviously am not. The only people who had their code removed for this was Legal Insurrection that I know, and also completely unjustified, so you know, I smell political bullshit.

Anyway, on top of this, Amazon — and we really can’t do much about it. Everyone does business with Amazon for the same reason that everyone does business with Authority, though at the level they’re breaking things, it might maybe change in time — has made it much harder to find things. Particularly in book, your search might have absolutely nothing to do with what you were searching for.

Now this might be because they don’t discipline Chinese scammers who run around listing things in weird categories. But I’m certain sure I shouldn’t get t-shirts under kindle books. And then there’s the fact the sort by date or even by kindle unlimited doesn’t work any too well.

So I’ve resorted to finding a book I liked and then looking at the “We recommend” as a better way to find my next read. Problem is, you never know if they’re latching onto it for the reason I liked.

The reason I liked the last book was science fiction mystery, but then the recommends were all for “space opera with aliens” which is apparently what Amazon thinks that book is.

Space Station Noir came up in the recommends, and I thought just from the title on, it was utter schlock. Plus it had aliens, which are not my fave thing. So, I tried to swipe left. The d*mn kindle downloaded it, instead. (it is KU)

And then, promptly (our house acts like we have a slow rotating faraday cage around the outside, so periodically access goes away, inexplicably) I lost internet. I was in the uh…. what my grandfather called the Necessary, so I couldn’t just rush out for better reception in another room.

So I started reading it. And Lord, it grabbed me from page one.

It moves fast, it’s engaging, the characters are fun and interesting, the action is non-stop.

I got so mad — did I say I was rational? No — that I was reading it even though I hadn’t meant to download it, that as soon as I had access I tried to force myself to read something else. Only I couldn’t. And then I realized I was doing it out of spite, and that was stupid, and….

So, I’ve read all 5 books. Took me a very long time, because I’m trying to catch up on a hundred things, but–

Look, this is schlock. Maybe. What is the difference between schlock and really good writing?

It’s mostly action, really fast moving — didn’t grab Dan, not enough romance — but in the same way he never explains anything, he slides a lot of worthy moral and philosophical questions into the crazy action.

Sure, his titles are a crime against literature. A fistful of credits! Thing of beauty, ten out of ten, I approve.

And he has a lot of nods at pulp. But I approve of that too. And at this point that should be considered a basic of the culture.

So, if it is schlock, it’s the schlock I dream of writing, in my dreams of glory.

I’m just upset that having finished book 5, I don’t have book six waiting.

So, can you guys buy them and leave him raving reviews so he’ll write more quickly? If we can manage to let him quit his job so he can write more, it would be even better.

Please, I’m asking for a friend for me. Because I want to read more. And I’m hoping he doesn’t end them like Bonnie and Clide, because no. If he does that, we will have words. My words will be mostly AWWWWGH.

Anyway, buy the book. Read the book. If you’re using SF/F for romance this might not hit the spot, but for everything else, I stand by it.

It’s a gonzo cross of adventure and Space Opera, Noir Caper and interplanetary intrigue. It’s ice cream with chocolate topping. It’s being 13 again and reading just-one-more-page at three am.

I want more.

115 thoughts on “In Which I Recommend”

  1. Sigh

    (Looks at existing pile of backlog of “to read”)

    Once more unto the recommend….

  2. What the heck. I’ve got a long flight tomorrow, and tired of reading manuals without being able to use them, and not likely to write anything on the trip either.

  3. Sarah, I wish you could make a living writing book reviews. This was fun to read – and yes, I’m downloading the book.

  5. I hope you don’t think this gets you off the hook, missy.

    *Looks sternly over her librarian glasses.

    Since you KNOW what it is like to be waiting for the next installment.

    *Crosses arms and taps foot. Then resignedly adds to her Amazon shopping list.

    Fine. I suppose this MIGHT tide me over.

  6. On Amazon going weird, I’m not sure if I saw it here, or somewhere else, but apparently they managed to nuke the online comic book market recently.

    Sounds like a few years back they bought up the biggest distributor for online comic books. For a while they left things be, but about a year or so ago they decided to merge the functionality into their Kindle app and managed a lot of the ability to find and buy comics. Then recently, they laid off the entire tech staff that was supposed to fix it.

    I think we may be seeing the first wave of institutional senility setting in with the company.

        1. Yes, this. More than 2 years. 2004 started at current job in company owned by one guy in Texas, who started mixing stuff (dry chemicals) in a horse trough . . . a few years later, expanded into liquid chemicals, then a few year after that, bought one of his suppliers (this was to become my job), lawsuits later occurred, causing some headache, then going for a contract, bought the company instead, then became big enough the EPA came calling every week or so, and under the benevolence of 0bama, regs went stupid (“you will no longer make X that way, you must make it as X6 and we are going to charge you $1million to relist it with us. Oh by the by, no selling W, X, Y, and Z for any use but the biggest one, all the other uses s are not allowed any longer in the USA {but they allowed our competitor to do so}” for 20+ products, and the restricted use ones some of those customers had out of US plants who could buy it, but to add to the schitzo, I could go off on another rant). Then he got an offer to buy my job and said “Buy it all or don’t buy a damned thing” and we got bought by “LARGE Multinational” and things got very stupid and schizo. In large part due to the buyout, LARGE had issues (former owner bought his winery and laughed all the way to the bank, he saw this crap coming), but being honest LARGE has always had issues, buying us just added more for them to mishandle. So, LARGE shopped about for a “Merger” (translation “Save us from our stupidity!”) and we found a LARGER Multinational based in Wisconsin who figured buying the LARGE with a lower tax area based HQ was a quick and fast way to tell WI and USA “Eff your high tax rates, we moving HQ to Ireland” and we got even more schitzo. Now I hear my job is likely to go away a bit ahead of schedule, and what I’ll likely be moving to they are trying to make in the stupidest possible way. Spend the budget the wrong way, then not allow the budget to fix it but then allow budget to do more in the wrong way.
          I’ve turned into Bill Murray in Meatballs “It Just Doesn’t Matter Anymore!”
          Can I make the payback on my self loan? We shall see. Doubt I will feel like making retirement age. really do.

    2. That was me. Any time you see news of a major acquisition, there’s someone who has to make those systems talk to each other.

    3. I was looking at reviews of a heavy metal CD. All the reviews were for Fruit of the Loom™ products. Um . . . Yes, I do believe that there’s a problem.

      1. That’s…
        Even better than the banana slicer, or the three wolves shirt!

        If they have any sense, they’ll include blurbs riffing in the experience on their next album.
        “This {album} cradles my {male genitalia}. 10 of 10, would buy again.”

  7. …I smell political bullshit.

    –
    …and political bullshit smells a hundred times worse than literal bullshit.

    I used to live on a farm. I know a thing or two about bullshit. 😛

      1. Ok… and I raise you one – Mink shit. Dad had a mink ranch back in the day and it was a very unique smell on all levels.

        1. Oh, you sweet summer children.
          The farmer across the street from mom got …. rotten fish from the fish markets. By the dumptruck load. End of the week. Five inches of rotten fish over a wheat field. AND he’d leave them there for a week before plowing.
          Oh, gods of noses and outhouses! That was unspeakable.

              1. I do recall there being a major bald eagle pileup when the tailings truck from a fish plant lost its cover.

                As I recall people had to fish the birds out of the freezing fish slurry and clean them before the idiot birds drowned and/or froze to death. Bald eagles are about the size of turkeys, just with the cutlery to carve you up instead, and they do not like being washed…

                  2. I worked for mumble years on the 8th floor of a building in downtown Portland, a few blocks from the Willamette River. There were at least two Great Blue Herons who would fly east in the morning to spend their days on the river, then fly west in the afternoons to wherever they spent the night. Their usual flight path crossed right in front of my window, slowly enough that I could spot them coming and just marvel at how beautiful they were! Definitely one of the (very few) perks of that job.

                    1. Eugene has Great Blue Herons, Osprey, and Eagles. Between the Willamette Greenway, and nearby Fernridge, there are a lot of them. Autsen can’t use the night lights for football games until whichever, Osprey and/or Eagle, nest the fledglings have flown, so the nest can be removed. PTB keep hoping with the nests removed/destroyed, the pairs won’t return to rebuild (normally true). Nope, they rebuild every year, so far.

                      Also. Don’t know why. Haven’t unsubscribed. Nothing went to spam (I checked). But stopped getting the new posts, this one and Sunday Promo, Saturday and Sunday. WP acting up? IDK.

          2. I grew up near a hog farm. Not sure fish would have been worse. I had friends in school who raised hogs. Nothing else smelled like that place. Utterly vile and nauseating. I think they fed the things radioactive zombies.

            I became a champ at hyperventilating then holding my breath as the schoolbus drove past The Hogs of Despair. When swimming, no one could believe how long I could stay submerged, or how far I could get.

            Oh, I have an almost superhuman sense of smell.

          4. I guess you didn’t live near the coast; else the entire neighborhood would have been swarming with seagulls. ‘Round these parts, the dumps — err, landfills, that is — are absolutely lousy with seagulls. “Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!”

            2. About 20 miles inland and still see the stupid critters swarming about local parking lots (especially near fast food joints, seagulls love them some french fries). Where I grew up the house was maybe 1.5-2 miles from Long Island sound. You’d be sitting in the house and all of a sudden you’d hear Thunk! The seagulls would grab large mussels (bigger than a mans fist) from a nearby estuary and fly and drop them on things, usually rocks to bust them open. However our roof seemed to work and once one broke a mussel open three or four other seagulls would come and tussle with them. Drove our semi feral cats insane trying to figure out how to get up on the roof of the house to get at those tasty looking birds…

                1. Every so often, we’ll see a gaggle in the Walmart parking lot near our house squabbling over trash from the several fast food shops in there. This is DFW, so who knows…

  8. Here’s some more absolute government stupidity:

    I ordered some anime videos from Right Stuf back in November. One of them was out of stock, and was still out of stock two months later, so they gave up on waiting and shipped what they could on January 24. The U.S. Post Orifice picked it up in Grimes Iowa, it was received in the Des Moines regional center on January 25 and sent on to the Los Angeles regional center on January 26. I thought, great, it will get to San Diego in another day or two.

    Today I checked again and it’s in ATLANTA! WHAT THE EVERLASTING F*****K IS IT DOING IN F********G ATLANTA?!

    This makes no sense whatsoever. It’s even stupider than when Southwest flew me from Detroit to San Diego by way of Philadelphia. AND got delayed 3 hours by weather, which wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t gone east to go west.

    1. Oh man yours fell into the same Black Hole some of my packages have. Long story very short something in Indiana appears to eat some of my shipments, and one shipment of beads from OR ended up in my state, then bounced out to Georgia and took two weeks to get back to me….

    2. The USPS has been truly dysfunctional for a while. For Christmas of 2021 I baked 2 cranberry nut breads to go to my Mother and Law and Sister in Law as part of their Christmas gifts. My wife packaged them up with the rest of the gifts and shipped them off 1st class package to the relations about December 12th or so. Sometime after Christmas we began to wonder where the heck they had gone as they had not yet arrived. Having paid for tracking we tracked them. One was in Cincinnati, one was in Tampa Fl. Ultimately both arrived at their destination about Epiphany (Jan 6). That destination was Quechee Vermont. That two packages mailed the same day at the same post office to essentially the same final post office went two places so far from their final destination shows how FUBAR the USPS is. And they wonder why it doesn’t make money.

      1. Once upon a time worked for USPS (I am feeling much better now….) and from time to time there would be a bundle of letters all with the barcodes crossed out – because they were wrong and things would cycle. When finally caught, the barcodes were crossed out and there was bundle marked LOOP MAIL to be hand-sorted only so it had a chance going right.

    3. airlines. a LOT of mail flies around, even regular mail, and parcel post. When I worked in NOLA, the morning flights ALL had crabs going to Baltimore on them. including the Phoenix flights but the HOU, DAL, flights were packed full of live crabs.

    4. Today I called the Post Orifice and after a long struggle finally managed to get through to an actual person. She agreed that — Yes, my package is in Atlanta; No, that’s not where it should be; No, she doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing in Atlanta. She initiated an ‘action ticket’ and took my phone number and E-mail address, and said they’d get back to me.

      The tracking site still says the package will be delivered to me today. How can that be, when it’s off touring the country?

    5. Final update: my box was delivered this morning, after its detour through historic Atlanta. And there was much rejoicing (yay).

      I now have my very own copies of Spice And Wolf, Patema Inverted and The Saga Of Tanya The Evil. Good thing, too; I think Spice And Wolf has gone out of print.

  10. “The Greatest Adventure”

    The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
    Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.
    The chances, the changes are all yours to make.
    The mold of your life is in your hands to break.

    The greatest adventure is there if you’re bold.
    Let go of the moment that life makes you hold.
    To measure the meaning can make you delay;
    It’s time you stop thinkin’ and wasting the day.

    The man who’s a dreamer and never takes leave
    Who thinks of a world that is just make-believe
    Will never know passion, will never know pain.
    Who sits by the window will one day see rain.

    The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
    Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.
    The chances, the changes are all yours to make.
    The mold of your life is in your hands to break.

    The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.

    1. Which prospect scares the whey out of me. I’m not scheduled for any adventures this year, aside from Day Job and LibertyCon.

      1. I had cancer in my right cheek, lost jawbone, teeth, a bit of mobility from the “flaps” they took from my thighs,, and kidney function from the chemo.

        I never killed a dragon nor found a magick ring; but it was quite a glorious adventure.

    2. My family HATES that song.

      Which obviously has nothing to do with me grabbing the loose skin over my voicebox, and jiggling to get the proper warble.

    3. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. At heart I’m a hobbit. I hate frickin’ adventures. I want my nice warm bed, my nice hot coffee, second breakfast, elevensies, two friendly kitties and all the comforts of home thank you very much.

    4. I’ll say it here and now: the animated one captures the spirit of the book far, far better than the trilogy*

      Even the depiction of Smaug. Trilogy Smaug was ironically more of a cartoon character: Bilbo and the Dwarves were dodging and running circles around him all through the mountain. Animated Smaug? I got the sense he could crush them all if he just rolled over.

      *(and I LIKE the trilogy, flaws and all. I view it as Tolkien fan fiction, but fanfic by people who loved the source material. Sure, it had a lot of bad moments, but It had scenes with Elrond, Galadrial, Gandalf and Saruman. I can forgive a lot for that.)

      (Heck, I even liked the Elf-Dwarf romance! Not cannon by any stretch, but fun, and I thought it had heart.)

        2. I don’t want the new posts e-mail (overfull box, nothing personal) and I get them. Along with the notices of comments that I didn’t sign up for either. WPDE.

  13. Sad that things have gotten to the point that one needs to cover one’s backside just to recommend another author, isn’t it?

  14. Two “Off-Topic” thoughts.

    One, Amazon has made it impossible (or nearly so) to convert Kindle books to ePub books. Which means that if I can find a book I want to read, I’m checking other places rather than Amazon. 😦

    Second, my main computer is “acting up”: so I’m going to have to use my laptop. 😦

    2. I broke down and got ePubor Unlimited. I don’t have a lot of Amazon eBooks, but a few. But the Nook Calibre DRM remover quit working. Everything working great with the downloaded older Kindle version 1.29.0, and current Nook version. Then forced upgrade to even download an Amazon book. Sigh. Epubor had an upgrade. Downloaded it. They can now decrypt 1.32 Amazon DRM, but not the current 1.39 version. Naturally I can’t download the book in question with the 1.32 app. Reported to Epubor. They are “working on it”. Sigh. So no new Amazon books for awhile (and I have a $3 credit available, Sigh, again).

      I don’t remove the DRM so I can convert or give to anyone. I remove the DRM so I have a copy that Amazon can’t just “remove”. I can still read them under Calebre, or a generic Android Reader App. Don’t get me wrong. Some books I do share with mom, but I do so under the restrictions of Amazon and Nook (besides giving her a book not under the cover of either in a different app, doesn’t mean she can remember how to use said app).

  15. Look, this is schlock. Maybe. What is the difference between schlock and really good writing?

    At this point, I trust nobody’s definitions of “schlock” or “high culture” or any other hierarchical rankings. I don’t think those things can be judged by anything but generations of readers. The drooling academics always want to put their thumbs on the scales, and they virtually always, at least when judging writers of their own time, are hilariously wrong.

    Mark Twain was alternately despised and just barely tolerated by the Academy, while William Dean Howells was the Greatest American Author EVAR according to the same credentialed popinjays. Twain is still read today.

    How many writers who debut with Very Important Novels of Litrachoor in the past thirty years ever wrote a second worthwhile book? (Or even a first?)

    In the 1990s, Donna Tartt published The Secret History, and was dubbed by the chattering credentials as the New Voice Of Her Generation. Then… nothing for twenty years. And the book was well-written, but ultimately as hollow and pretentious as the characters it was critiquing.

    In the 2000s, Alice Sebold wowed the NPR set with The Lovely Bones, a book narrated from beyond the grave (not exactly a new trick) by a rape-murder victim. It was in fact a decent read, but then she published her second book, and it became clear that she had only one story to tell, the fact that she was a rape survivor, and nothing else.

    Spare me the litrachoor and give me schlock, schlock, and more schlock, thanks.

    (I can’t find the specific post I was trying to recall, but the late, lamented 2 Blowhards blog often had posts about “literary fiction” as opposed to genre fiction. The post I was trying to recall was the difference between the authors of each type, as related by an unnamed editor at a tradpub publisher. Genre writers were professional, competent, cared about their craft, and hit their deadlines or close enough to count for government work. Literary writers were spoiled brats, primadonnas, and just about everything else you imagine people who idolize Thomas Wolfe to be. Though I can’t find that post, I did find this one, which will serve, and which further links to a piece by the late, great Richard S. Wheeler, author of westerns.)

    1. Pa had a simple rule, though for TV shows based on their promotion. Simply, if it was pushed with the words “critically acclaimed” it was unwatchable garbage.

      1. I avoided watching The Godfather until I was 30 because it had been so overhyped by every film student I knew in university. When I finally did watch it, it was almost as good as advertised. So acclaim hasn’t always been a bum steer.

        Just usually.

        1. Not sure if it’s that or just that the whole gangster/mob thing utterly fails to appeal, but I have to watch it and have no plans to change that.

          1. Totally understand. I was with William Goldman on why he turned it down as a writing assignment (Goldman was possibly the most legendary screenwriter of all time): “I don’t want to spend a year writing about these horrible people.”

            But it really is a good story about how one good man becomes utterly corrupt, and thus is a modern tragedy. (This is why I don’t agree that the sequel is superior — though perhaps even better made in a technical sense, the story amounts to “yep, he’s corrupt, and even more corrupt now”. It’s essentially a long dramatization of what the final scene of the first movie made completely clear.)

            1. I thought the scenes of Vito growing up were interesting, and I have to admit to some fascination with seeing Michael take on and outwit so many enemies and come out on top. It’s a kind of ‘competence porn.’

              I just love the attempted hit scene. He’s at his most relaxed and vulnerable, in a setting where he feels the most safe, then there’s that offhand comment about the drapes and in less than a second he apprehends the danger.

              Then he does that Marine crawl (great nod to continuity with his military service) and goes right to Kay to protect her. You can’t tell me he didn’t love her. It makes the tragedy of losing is family all the more poignant.

              1. To be clear, I did not say that it was bad, only that it was redundant. Yes, the flashback scenes with DeNiro are great, I’d watch a whole movie of just that story and probably be happy. But it tries to be “important” by intercutting the two stories and “contrasting” them, and… meh.

                Michael’s arc in the first movie is he goes from the good son who’s going to save the family by making it totally legitimate, to the new godfather who swears to renounce Satan and all his works at the very moment five assassinations he ordered are being carried out, has his brother in law killed after taunting him with “you’re out of the family business, that’s your punishment”, and lies to his wife for “the good of the family”.

                His arc in the second movie is he did all that, he now is canny enough to smell out all conspiracies against him, has his own brother killed, and ends up isolated and alone. There’s just not as much there. All the stuff with the Cuban revolution and Hyman Roth is spackle, stuff stuck on to the script to give Michael something to do, rather than any kind of internal conflict he has to deal with. It’s all very well done, and there are scenes that are arguably better than anything in the first movie — Duvall visiting visiting the traitor in prison and subtly telling him the path to forgiveness from the family is brilliant — but in the end, the movies are Michael’s story, and his story was concluded in the first one.

  16. [Looks at TBR stack, and winces.] Still, it sounds like a fun read, so I’ll go with the first book. I notice Amazon sells the package of 1-5 without any discount, so there’s no advantage to go that way. Not in the mood for binge reading a series right now. (Rereading Familiars in binge mode was fun, but…)

  17. I bought the first and I’m reading it to my husband. It’s really good for reading aloud and Clive is so funny. I think we’re up to chapter 10.

  18. Just ordered based on your suggestion AND the fact that the word :noir: flips some kind of switch in my brain which almost demands immediate ordering of product.

            2. (Perks up) There’s another Rhodes story in the offing? I shall wait patiently… All right I lied, but I will wait.

              1. She’s been promising me the second installment “to edit” in “less than a week” for a month or two. So, it’s coming, but don’t start holding your breath just yet.

                (I read the first one before publication and talked with her about it, and she declared that I had edited it. It was mostly good to go as I read it, and I think the most she got from my yammering was smoothing out a passage or two, and clarifying a few details for readers who weren’t steeped in SF and Nero Wolfe. So I’m guessing this one won’t need much structural editing either, but that’s not gonna stop me from devouring it. 😀 )

                  1. $SPOUSE cares not a fig about shifters nor other SFictional stories (though she liked Person of Interest, go figure), but she’s been waiting with bated breath for another book featuring Dyce.

  19. Best I can do right now is review Book 1 on the basis of the first chapter, with a promise to read the rest later.

    I’ve got two ARCs from friends I’m committed to, plus I really, really want to re-read Kathy Tyers’ Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura as part of my kick of reading old Star Wars novels (I just want to revisit that universe before all the nonsense, including the prequels were everybody was just delighted in exploring the Galaxy Far Far Away).

    Then Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater series has just catapulted itself to the top of my to-read list because of the comparisons to Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun and Herbert’s Dune, and what I’d read of the sample.

    Well, Space Station Noir is at least on Kindle Unlimited, so that should keep it fresh in my mind.

  20. Downloading the free sample

    In related news, if you ever plan to fly or road trip to So Cal, please let me set you up with an intro to my mom.

    I really hope I can get you two together this side of heaven.

  22. > “And I’m hoping he doesn’t end them like Bonnie and Clide, because no. If he does that, we will have words. My words will be mostly AWWWWGH.”

    Heh. I finally watched Inception last night and had exactly that reaction to the ending (albeit for a very different reason).

    P.S. – If any of you haven’t seen Inception but like movies like Dark City and 12 Monkeys, I recommend it. Like them, it’s one of those movies that demands you pay attention and think about what’s happening (or watch it more than once, I guess).

  23. I read the first Space Station Noir and immediately bought the rest. I’m on book 3 now and think it is hilarious. Highly recommend.
    And I was in my late 40’s before I finally watched the Godfather. Audible had the book as one of their daily specials, so I got it and enjoyed it enough to watch the movies (first two, but not the third) and enjoyed them.

  24. On your recommendation, I bought the first book. I suspect I’ll be buying the rest. But really, I don’t feel much Heinlein there. It’s more like the Stainless Steel Rat as a buddy novel.

      1. We may be looking at different aspects of the book. You look at the world-building, I was reading a cracktastic whipsaw caper. For world-building I’ll take “Snow Crash”, or perhaps Eleanor Arnasen’s “Big Mama” stories.

        2. Oh, I see the point of confusion. Note I said I don’t know if he ever read Heinlein. I was not implying he was LIKE Heinlein. I said he “Heinleins” the world and description. Sorry. I didn’t even remember I’d said that without explanation.
          Heinleining is a term of art or rather of craft. It means introducing the world without stopping to explain, and yet making things perfectly clear as you go.
          I beg your pardon. I suffer from that disease, similar to other professions, of forgetting not everyone speaks the lingo.
          No, I don’t think he’s like Heinlein. He just “HEINLEINS” well in communicating his world building, which is all I was talking about.
          OTOH I understand the INTENT of The Stainless Steel Rat (which I always found more bitter than enjoyable, sorry) was to parody Heinlein and show what terrible worlds he built or what a bad person he was or something. (Shrugs.) I frankly, not liking it, could not be arsed to pay attention to the opinions of its author.

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