What are you reading?

[captain basil]

Reading : The Haunted By Bentley Little. I have not read any of his stuff for a while and I'm really digging this one. I think this is his latest but I'm a few books behind so I could be wrong.

[MadMikeyD]

Finished off Fran Striker's "The Lone Ranger Rides," which I thought was a fascinating take on the Ranger's origin. Just started Gregg Taylor's "Black Jack Justice" novel now that it's available for the Nook.

[Michael McAfee]

I finished Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. Good start, but dies out at the 2/3 mark.

[Bill Hollweg]

Just started this one:

Friday

is a 1982 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It is the story of a female "artificial person," the titular character, genetically engineered to be stronger, faster, smarter, and generally better than normal humans. Artificial humans are widely resented, and much of the story deals with Friday's struggle both against prejudice and to conceal her enhanced attributes from other humans. The story is set in a Balkanized world, in which the nations of the North American continent have been split up into a number of smaller states.

Friday: PLOT:

The book's protagonist is Friday Baldwin, an artificial person both mentally and physically superior in many ways to an ordinary human, but she faces great prejudice and will most likely be killed if her "non-human" status is discovered. Employed as a highly self-sufficient combat courier, her various missions take her throughout the globe and also to some of the near-Earth space colonies. The novel is set in a complex, Balkanized world, and Friday is caught up in several civil disturbances during the course of her travels. She reaches her employer's home base safely but is soon displaced. Sent on a space journey as a courier, she realizes that the journey is likely to end with her death, evades the ship's authorities, and settles on a pioneer world with friends made earlier in the narrative.

[unterhund]

Just finished Against the Tide, third book in John Ringo's "Council Wars" series. Next up is East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

[artemis836]

I'm about a chapter away from finishing Doctor Who: The Masque of Mandragora by Philip Hinchcliffe. It's very entertaining. I just ordered five more of the Doctor Who episode novelizations written in the 70s off eBay.

I also just finished reading Star TreK: A Choice of Catastrophes by Michael Schuster and Steve Mollmann. This might be the best Star Trek novel Pocket Books ever published. Because (and here's the bragging bit) Mike and Steve are very good friends of mine and actually dedicated the book to me.

[Shonokin]

Nonfiction I'm rereading No Borders, No Limits: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema. Fiction I'm reading Gary Gianni's MONSTERMEN collection.

All good stuff!

[Bill Hollweg]

COOL Shon!

[Prasil]

Armageddon 2419 A.D. and The Airlords of Han, by Philip Francis Nowlan. These novellas, originally published in 1928/1929 issues of Amazing Stories, are the basis of the Buck Rogers comics, movie serial, etc.

Pretty interesting in that they display some of the racial/ethnic issues of the era: worries of Chinese take-over, the loss of American ethnic difference (e.g., what if the melting pot really melted us into being all pretty much alike), and that.

Last night, I read a chapter in which Wilma--while in the field--pulls out a pocket-sized instrument, flips open its cover, and begins holding a conversation with someone back at headquarters. Ha! As if that could ever happen!

[Prasil]

Wow. This didn't "click" until I was through with the novellas I mention above.

Nowlan creates a history of the Earth from 1928/29 on, and he "imagines" a Second World War. This one is between Europe and America, though, and it weakens these two powers enough so that China can take over the world. When Anthony--not yet "Buck"--Rogers awakens, his knowledge of World War One battle tactics helps win America back for the Americans (who have retreated to the wilderness).

Here's the thing: In 1928, Nowlan refers to "The Great War" as "World War One." But . . . but, of course, it wouldn't become called that until the real World War Two.

So I'm wondering if this might be the first use of the phrase "World War One" to mean "The Great War."