The Lord of Misrule: The Autobiography of Christopher Lee

The Lord of Misrule: The Autobiography of Christoper Lee
Copyright 2005

As a child growing up in Southeastern Ohio, I spent my Friday nights with my friends watching "Double Chiller" with your host, Fritz the Night Owl, on WBNS, Channel 10 out of Columbus. Fritz was a great movie host and he got top flight movies. It was these Friday nights that introduced me to Hammer Studios, Hammer films, and Hammer's most prolific performer, Christopher Lee. For me, Lee, Peter Cushing, and Vincent Price were the Unholy Trinity of horror.

To a younger generation, Lee is best known as Saruman of Lord of the Rings and Count Dooku of Star Wars. To Generation X, he is Dracula and a host of other evil characters.

Lee's autobiography has a lyrical quality to it, as if he dictated it into a tape recorder. This would not work for most authors, but Lee's extensive vocabulary and great story telling makes it a worthwhile read for fans of Hammer horror.

Lee was born in London to a career soldier and a mother descended from Italian nobility. His father left him at a young age and his mother soon remarried. Lee recounts in great detail (perhaps too great detail) his education in private schools and the brutality of the British education system.

He would go on to serve in the British Army during World War II as Army Intelligence and learned to speak many languages in the process. He recounts many interesting stories of his war experience, but never makes himself the hero. He served in North Africa and Italy and saw frequent combat.

What is missing in Lee's account of his life is how he broke into show business. He simply moves on to working in his first movie. He talked about how he had trouble getting parts because of his height (6'4") and his deep voice.

Lee made dozens of films for the British Hammer studios and played Count Dracula in a series of Dracula films Hammer made in the late 1950s and 1960s. He was also famous for playing Fu Manchu in a series of films. His costar was often Peter Cushing who is best known for playing Governor Tarkin in Star Wars. Peter Cushing was his best friend and, for Hammer fanatics such as myself, it would have been great to learn more about Cushing and Lee's relationship with him. Lee states his affection and admiration for Cushing, but gives us little detail of their work together.

Lee was honored to play a Bond villain in The Man with the Golden Gun. He recounts a humorous story about appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Customs confiscated the movie prop, believing it could possibly be a weapon although, according to Lee, nobody could have mistaken it for anything but a prop. He was supposed to have the gun with him on the Carson set. He was embarrassed when he showed up empty handed.

We learn that Lee's favorite movie was The Wicker Man which he made in 1973. A poor remake was done in 2007. We also learn that he desperately wanted to play Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, but realized that Ian McKellen was better suited for the part. He relished his role in the movie version of his favorite books. It was great to find out that their are others who read those great books once a year, religiously. Lee did.

Lee is also a scratch golfer and relishes telling golfing stories as much as he enjoys telling tales of Hollywood and the British movie industry.

While his commentary on costars Cushing and Vincent Price is somewhat lacking, he is more detailed in describing his relationship with horror greats Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. His admiration for those pioneers of movie horror is well stated.

Lee tells his life story in anecdotes which seems to be a European style of story telling. His references to European history are often obscure and requires Wikipedia to get the context. The book is obviously a book written by a European for a European audience. Nonetheless, true fans of horror will enjoy the anecdotes and insights of this film legend.

Dragons of Spring Dawning By Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

The Dragonlance Chronicles Volume 3
Dragons of Spring Dawning
By Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman
Copyright 1985

Book three of the Dragonlance Chronicles finds the party of heroes spread out across the continent of Ansalon in the world of Krynn. Tanis is in Flotsam, in the company of his old flame Kitiara, half sister to the twins and currently serving as the Dragon Highlord in this region. Also in Flotsam are Caramon, Raistlin, Tika, Goldmoon and Riverwind who are waiting to book passage on a ship.

Flint, Tasslehoff, and Laurana are in Palanthas, which is the seat of government during the war. There, Laurana is feted for her bravery in battle, having rallied the fragmented Knights of Solomnia in the defense of Palanthas. She is appointed commander of the Knights and is given the sobriquet “Golden General.”

Tanis waits for Kitiara to leave for her ill-fated attack upon Palanthas where Sturm Brightblade will fall, and slips away to find Cameron and the others so he can get out of the city. They set sail on a ship upon the Blood Sea of Istar. At the helm of that ship is the object of Kitiara’s desire for power, the mysterious Everman, or Green Gemstone Man – a man of deep sadness and a green gem embedded in his chest who goes by the name of Berem.

Through her spies that followed Tanis, Kitiara learns the Everman is aboard the ship. She and her dragon, Skie, attack the ship. In his panic to flee the attacking dragon highlord, Berem sails the ship into the Maelstrom, a whirlpool in the center of the treacherous sea. As the ship goes down, Raistlin uses the Dragon Orb to teleport off the disintegrating ship, abandoning his brother and his friends. Raistlin has his own interests to pursue.

Tanis and his friends awaken in the underwater city of Istar – Once the capital city of Ansalon, now ruined and the domain of the sea elves. The sea elves are reluctant to allow the heroes to return to the surface until they hear of the arrival of the dragons. Feeling their need to contribute to the fate of the world, the sea elves take Tanis and the gang to the surface and deposit them in Palanthas where they soon find Tasslehoff who brings them up to speed.

Meanwhile, Raistlin, weakened from having used the Dragon Orb, finds the Great Library of Palanthas where the chronicler of history since the dawn of time, the librarian Astinus sits daily, writing down events as they transpire in the world. Raistlin, nears death, requests access to the great library, where the greatest and most powerful spells ever devised by magic users, are recorded.

Raistlin finds that he can not access the spell books without the key which is long lost lore. Frustrated and dying, Raistlin strikes a deal with some dark power, saying, “Save me and save yourself!” Raistlin now wears the black robes of an evil mage.

Galthanas and Sylvara arrive in Palanthas with the good dragons. With a fleet of dragons and the powerful dragonlances at their disposal, the Knights of Solomnia with the elven princess, Laurana at their command, set out to liberate the entire kingdom of Solomnia. Flint and Tasslehoff join the battle, mounted on a dragon and capture Kitiara’s second in command; a man named Barakas.

Kitiara, lusting revenge on Tanis for his betrayal, conceives a plan to trade Tanis, who she tells Laurana in a letter, has been gravely wounded, for Barakis. She plans to capture the Golden General, destroy the morale of the troops in Solomnia, and sweep in with a superior force.

Laurana agrees to the swap. She, Flint, and Tasslehoff sneak Barakis out of the city and are betrayed by Kitiara who takes all three prisoner. She and Barakis take the three back to Dargaard Keep where the forces of the Dark Queen are garrisoned. Barakis is determined to have his way with Laurana, but the kender makes quick work of him with a small pocket knife, saving Laurana the indignity. Just as they are about to escape, they are captured by the undead Knight of Solamnia, Lord Soth. Soth is Kitiara’s powerful servant and a thoroughly evil creature. Flint and Tasslehoff are set free, but Laurana is taken to the city of Nereka where the Dark Queen herself will preside over a meeting of the dragon highlords. Kitiara flies to Palanthas where she tells the assembled masses, including Tanis, Flint, Tasslehoff, Caramon, Riverwind and Goldmoon that the Everman is to be delivered to her within three weeks or she will kill Laurana. Her plan is to lure Tanis to the city where she can have revenge upon him.

Tanis prepares to lead Flint, Tasslehoff, Caramon, Tika, and Berem out of the city to rescue Laurana. Goldmoon and Riverwind, who are expecting a child, are left to start the rebirth of the old gods in the new world in Palanthas.

Along the way, Berem reveals his sad tale. Born before the Cataclysm, he tried to steal a jewel from an ancient, evil temple and in the process kills his beloved sister. It was the removal of that gem that embedded itself in Berem’s chest, that allowed the Dark Queen to reenter the world. The man has existed for hundreds of years, dying repeatedly, only to be reborn as a man with a green gem in his chest. Berem and the gem he carries must be returned to that temple to seal the door before the Dark Queen is powerful enough to enter the world in her corporal form and establish herself as master of the world.

As the heroes enter Nereka, the dragon highlords and their troops prepare to enter the city with great pomp and circumstance. They quickly draw suspicion from watchful guards and are taken prisoner. Spotting Kitiara entering the city, Tanis decides to divert attention from his companions and approaches her. Kitiara takes Tanis with her into the city as Cameron, Tasslehoff, and Berem are taken prisoner and placed in the dungeons.

While in the dungeons, Berem slips into insanity, hearing the voice of his dead sister beckoning him to the temple to join her. His mania and Cameron’s muscle helps the heroes effect an escape. Berem flees, following the voice of his sister. Caramon follows, hoping to catch up to the Everman and save him from certain death. Tasslehoff and Tika take off in the opposite direction, drawing troops away from Caramon and Berem. They come to a dead end sealed by a locked door.. As Tika wields her sword, fighting draconians, Tasslehoff fumbles his attempt to spring the poison needle trap and is pricked. The poison works its way through his body as Tika is struck down by Draconian swords.

Meanwhile, Kitiara implements her plan to break Tanis and increase her status with the Dark Queen. The highlords gather in the temple and the Dark Queen makes her appearance along with the Emperor Ariakas who rules by virtue of the fact that he is the wearer of the crown to which all highlords have sworn allegiance.. Kitiara presents Laurana as a gift to the Dark Queen and suggests that Tanis swear fealty to the Dark Queen and become an officer in her army.

A dark wizard stationed nearby suggests that Tanis attack Ariakas and seize the crown, promising him aid against the Emperor’s magic. Tanis makes his move and gains the crown. Insanity ensues as the highlords scramble, now held to Tanis’ command. Tanis tries to trade the crown to Kitiara for Laurana, but Laurana rejects the deal, believing Tanis to be evil and corrupt for having consorted with the likes of Kitiara. She escapes in the chaos.

Meanwhile, Caramon and Berem make their way toward the temple, but find their way blocked by Raistlin, now clad in the black robes of an evil sorcerer. Raistlin explains that the path he has chosen will lead him to great knowledge. First, he must allow Berem to replace the jewel and seal the Dark Queen in the Abyss. Berem flees into the temple and impales himself on the temple, returning the stone to is rightful place.

The Dark Queen is gone from the world and her minions are rioting. Tanis, Kitiara, Lord Soth, and Laurana are caught up in the rioting in the city. Tanis pursues Laurana and Kitiara pursues Tanis. Meanwhile, having seen Berem to his end, Caramon pleads with Raistlin to allow him to accompany him. Raistlin tells him he can’t, but promises to repay the debt he owes Caramon for taking care of him while he was weak and frail. They find Tasslehoff and Tika and Raistlin uses his magic to restore them. He sees them safely out of the city. He summons his dragon from the dragon orb and leaves his brother and his friends behind.

Tanis and Laurana are reunited as they flee through tunnels under the city. Kitiara catches them and offers Tanis one final opportunity to join her as she tries to take command of the Draconian armies, telling Tanis that Lord Soth is on his way to claim Laurana as his own. Tanis rejects the deal. Kitiara, knowing the heart of a woman, exacts her revenge on the pair by letting them go, telling Soth that her act of mercy will always exist in Tanis’ heart and Laurana’s mind. Tanis and Laurana escape the city and are reunited with Caramon, Tika, and Tasslehoff and the absent minded mage, Fizban who the heroes learn is really the god, Paladine in disguise.

In the end, the heroes go their separate ways. Tasslehoff returns to Kender to celebrate with his people who slew the Dragon Highlord, Fewmaster Toede. Caramon and Tika return to Solace to marry and start a family. Tanis and Laurana return to Kalaman to start their formal courtship.

Dragons of Spring Dawning is fast paced and moves the story to an exciting conclusion. Of the three, it is easily the strongest of the books and you can observe Weiss and Hickman maturing as writers through their first three books.

The primary weakness of the trilogy is too much is left out. As noted earlier, the fight to gain the Dragonlance should have been told in full. The adventure Gilthanis and Sylvara experienced in bringing the good dragons into the fold was dismissed as too long to tell. It could have been a great story in the trilogy. Top notch story tellers tell their tales in full. For all of the fun and excitement, the Dragonlance Chronicles is hurt by these omissions.

The problem may have been the introduction of too many characters. A strong story melds character backstories into subplots. In this trilogy, there were just two many important characters to develop as much as was needed. Too many subplots were introduced such as the doomed and short passion between Sturm and the Sylvanesti elf princess, the tragic tale of Sylvara and her sister and Gilthanas’ heartbreak upon learning the true nature of the wilder elf with whom he fell in love. Also, it seemed in the beginning that Riverwind and Goldmoon would have major roles to play, she being the bearer of the talismans of the old gods returning again. But they are minor players in the second and third books. Fewer characters needing substantial development may have allowed Weiss and Hickman more room to fully tell their tale.

Raistlin and Tasslehoff are exceptionally entertaining characters. The physically weak, but mentally powerful Raistlin is always scheming beyond winning a just war. Tasslehoff, like Tolkien’s hobbits, is a diminutive and unlikely hero who provides comic relief and humorous misadventures.

The groundwork is laid in the end of this trilogy for the trilogy that followed, Dragonlance Legends which tells the tale of Raistlin’s quest to become a god and Caramon’s efforts to save his brother with the help of Tasslehoff. It is no coincidence that these characters were selected for the next trilogy.

The Dragonlance Chronicles are not great literature and are not worthy of mention among great fantasy epics such as Lord of the Rings or Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. But they are a fun, amusing diversion when one has a desire to get away from weighty tomes and enjoy some pure, fun adventure.

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction Volume II

Boucher, Anthony
A Treasury of Great Science Fiction
Volume II
Copyright 1959
Doubleday

Contains the following stories:

Brain Wave
by Poul Anderson

The Earth passes through a mysterious energy field that dramatically increases the entire human race’s IQ. Shortly thereafter, labor is hard to find when a super-intelligent race finds themselves unable to do menial chores. There is great social and psychological upheaval across the globe. A group of scientists work together to quickly solve the problems while dealing with their own issues and those of their family members.

This is intelligent Golden Age science fiction. The events and characters are entirely believable and the story is well paced and engaging. The only drawback is the shortness of the novella prohibited more development of the story’s characters and their interpersonal relationships. Anderson gives us just barely enough to make the characters interesting.

Bullard Reflection
by Malcolm Jameson

A star ship’s crew’s athletic ability saves them when they are double-crossed on one of the moon’s of Jupiter.

Dull, uninteresting story by an author of whom I’ve never heard.

The Lost Years
by Oscar Lewis

What would have happened had Abraham Lincoln been saved by a surgeon instead of dying the morning after being shot? Lewis explores the possibilities in this alternative history short story.

Not really sci-fi, but engaging nonetheless.

Dead Center
by Judith Merril

A woman designed it and a man is piloting it to the moon. The newest rocket, the KIM III malfunctions as it lands on the moon. Its lone astronaut must be rescued. His wife, who designed the rocket, works frantically to put together the team that will save her husband before he runs out of food and oxygen. Meanwhile, their young son is left to wonder about all the frantic activity about him.

This was a tightly told story . A lot of action and character development crammed into 20 pages of text. Merril makes it work. Merril was envisioning woman engineers leading design teams back in 1953.

Lost Art
by George O. Smith

Two brothers discover a device in the Martian desert and use trial and error learning how to make it work . In a parallel story, a Martian father and son assemble and deploy the device.

Perhaps the most useless story I’ve ever read. I kept thinking “something bad is going to happen when these guys figure out what this thing does.” Nothing bad ever happened. Nothing ever happened. What a pointless waste of twenty pages.

The Other Side of the Sky
by Arthur C. Clarke

The narrator is an engineer aboard a space station that he is confident will be a stepping stone into deep space. Set in the 1990s, the narrator relates anecdotes from his space adventures that show how prescient Clarke was in judging the success of satellite-based communications. It was written in 1957. The space stations he describes would be the same ones that Stanley Kubrick would bring to celluloid in the Clarke story 2001: A Space Oddysey.


The Man Who Sold the Moon
by Robert Heinlein

Man, how I hated this story. I could not finish it. I’ve read two Heinlein stories and hated them both. I’ve always thought about reading Stranger in a Strange Land but now I will not.

This is a story about a corporate pig-dog who wants to acquire the moon and take title to it so he can subdivide it and sell the parcels. In a real story, he would have taken it by force through war or something exciting like that. Instead, in Heinlein’s painfully boring story, he takes it through the drawing up of contracts and the structuring of corporations --- all described in painstaking detail in Heinlein’s narrative and the dialogue.

Imagine reading a low-level corporate attorney’s journal entries. It’s not that exciting.

Heinlein may be the most overrated writer in the history!

Magic City
by Nelson S. Bond

Set more than 1500 years in the future, after the fall of civilization, women lead society. Most societies shun men and need them for little more than breeding stock. Advanced civilizations are slowly integrating men into their society as equals.

In this setting a couple journeys from their home in Jinnia to Newyalk to slay the demon Death, who constantly claims their weak, infirm, and old. Swords and daggers are their weapons of choice as they enter the dangerous city and the temple of Slukes.

The names of the various cities and territories are very clever phonetics and plays on words. They live in a country called Tizzathee (as in my country ‘tis of thee). I usually hate such cute word play, but Bond’s are clever enough to be engaging. The battle scenes are well written and his descriptions of the post-apocalyptic east coast are riveting. This was a great story.


The Morning of the Day They Did It
by E.B. White

A television executive now located on a remote planet relates the story of Earth’s final day and how its destruction came about from the placement of the ultimate weapon in space.

I read this on the heels of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and, as in Bradbury’s classic, this story describes how television destroyed society. This story is not nearly as brilliant as Bradbury’s. The narrator uses mundane (very mundane) events from his day along with dialogue from mundane newscasts and shows to set the stage for the Earth’s discussion. This was a creative idea not well executed.

Piggy Bank
by Henry Kuttner

A greedy man has figured out how to manufacture synthetic diamonds, but keeps losing his fortune to burglars. He asks his chief scientist to develop the ultimate safe that can flee when someone attempts to rob it. But when it flees when the man wants to access his fortune contained therein, he tries every conceivable method to get access.

Letters from Laura
by Mildred Clingerman

A woman’s time travel is documented in a series of letters – first to her mother, then to the company that helped her time travel on vacation.

Dull, dull, dull!

The Stars My Destination
by Alfred Bester

A roughneck spaceman pursues vengeance against the crew of a ship that left him in space to die, marooned on a wrecked ship. Meanwhile, the government and various businessmen want to exploit his knowledge of his doomed ship to retrieve its priceless cargo for use in an interstellar war.

I am somewhat familiar with Bester, who ended his career writing radio sci-fi for the CBS Radio Mystery Theater in the 1970s. Stephen King references this work as Bester’s best in his tome On Writing. It is obvious that King used one of Bester’s ideas for one of his better short stories, The Jaunt because jaunting plays a key role in Bester’s novella. For Bester, jaunting is but part of the story. In King’s story, the science of jaunting is explored.

I think this story must have been serialized because every two or three chapters seems to be a story unto itself.

The Dark Tower Volume 3: The Waste Lands by Stephen King

The Dark Tower Book 3:
The Waste Lands
by Stephen King
Copyright 1991
Plume

As the third volume in King’s epic western/fantasy mix, Roland, Eddie and Susannah make their way from the beach into a great forest. While Odetta and Detta, cohabitating in the mind of Susannah, have become one, Roland of Gilead has developed a divided personality that is driving him insane.

One Roland insists that there was no boy who was Jake Chambers. The other Roland insists that there was a boy at the way station and that he let him drop under the mountain as he pursued the Man in Black. The two realities argue inside of Roland’s head constantly.

As Roland and Susannah forage, Eddie encounters a 30 foot tall bear roaming the woods. It is intent upon killing him. A shootout ensues and Susannah is able to drop the creature with her gun. It is a hybrid mix of machine and animal and is one of the 12 Guardians of the portals. These portals lie at either end of six beams. At the intersection of these six beams rests the Dark Tower. Roland tells the ka-tet that if they follow the beam, the will find the Dark Tower.

Meanwhile, in New York of 1977, Jake Chambers, like Roland, is going insane. His mind is tormented by a nightmare that always ends in him saying, “There are other worlds than these!” as he falls into a chasm. He turns in a seemingly nonsensical term paper on the meaning of truth where he babbles about an evil train, a dark tower, and a gunslinger. After turning the paper in, he decides to play hooky and try to sort out his discombobulated mind.

He wanders the streets of New York and finds a used bookstore operated by none other than a man named Mr. Tower. Two books draw his attention for no apparent reason. One is a children’s book about Charlie the Choo Choo whose gay days of transporting people from St. Louis to Topeka to cheering crowds are cut short by a new, more modern diesel locomotive. All ends well for Charlie and his pal Engineer Bob and they spend their final days taking children on tours of a zoo. However, Jake sees the illustrations and knows that Charlie is evil and the seemingly joyful faces of the children in Charlie’s cars are actually masking fear. He also acquires a riddle book which has the “answers in the back” section ripped out.

As he continues his afternoon wanderings, he encounters a vacant lot where, in the midst of the rubble and garbage, he finds a single rose, dazzling in its beauty, but also corrupted with a malevolence that threatens its existence. Contained within that rose growing in a dilapidated lot are the heavens, the universe, and the Dark Tower.

Jake passes out whilst staring into the rose and has a dream where he encounters two brothers playing basketball in a schoolyard. These two brothers are none other than Henry and Eddie Dean of 1977. The next day he once again skips school, convinced that these two brothers are going to lead him to wherever or whatever it is that will release him from his growing insanity.

He follows them to a deserted house in a New York neighborhood. Eddie and Henry gawk at the house, which is feared by all in the neighborhood, and finally move on. But Jake, quickly sliding toward permanent insanity, recognizes the house as his means of escape. He enters.

He knows he’s searching for a door. As he does, the house begins to reshape itself into a horrible monster – a monster whose only reason for existence is to stop Jake from reaching that door.

On the other side of that door await Roland and his nearly completed ka-tet. They must find the doorway that will allow Jake to enter their world. Roland spots an oracle and tells the others that oracles are often thin spots between worlds. They enter the circle surrounded by upright stones and begin the battle to bring Jake back to Roland’s world. Detta Walker steps forward in Susannah and uses her feminine wiles to occupy the demon within the oracle. Eddie draws the door and uses a wooden key he has fashioned. The battle is on to bring Jake back to Roland’s world so that both he and Roland can be mentally whole again.

Jake is brought into the world. Roland is overcome with emotion and promises Jake he will protect him with his life. That oath is quickly tested.

Jake tells the ka-tet that they must find a train and that train’s name is Blaine, and that train that is Blaine is insane! As the companions prepare to set off on the path of the beam, they are joined by a creature known as a Billy Bumbler. They are a semi-intelligent raccoons. The billy bumbler forms a strong relationship with Jake. It is also clear that the ka-tet was not truly complete until Oy the billy bumbler joins them.

As the ka-tet follows the beam toward a city known as Lud (which I think we can assume was once St. Louis) a lecherous, disease infested pirate gets the drop on Roland and his companions with a grenade. He promises to spare the others if they’ll hand over the boy. Having no choice, Roland surrenders Jake to the pirate with the promise to come after him.

Gasher the pirate runs Jake through the ruins of the city that was once Lud. As they run, the city is filled with the sounds of drums (which Eddie recognizes as a drum track from a ZZ Top song). The ka-tet splits. Roland instructs Eddie and Susannah to find Blaine the train and wait for them there. Roland sets out to find Jake.

Gasher delivers Jake, beaten and exhausted, to the lair of the Tick Tock Man where Jake suffers more pain and indignity as the Tick Tock Man, a powerful figure in the sub terrain Lud, interrogates him about how to operate the dipolar computers that control Lud. Roland, with the help of Oy, tracks Jake and Gasher’s path through the city and into the sewers that lie beneath the city. Roland arrives at Tick Tock’s lair and the bullets start to fly.

Eddie and Susannah make their way along the path of the beam. As they walk, they see the decaying bodies of men, women, and children hanged on utility poles. They encounter some of the surface dwellers of Lud. They are forced to slay several of their attackers before two “Pubes” as surface dwellers are known, agree to show Eddie and Susannah to the Cradle of Blaine.

When Eddie and Susannah arrive at the train station, they find a pink monorail car at rest in its berth. They find out that Blaine is not only the monorail, but the omnipotent computer that runs Lud – and Jake was right! Blaine is quite insane.

Blaine has a taste for riddles and cannot resist Eddie’s promise of a riddling contest if Blaine provides passage through the Waste Lands to Topeka.

Roland and Jake waylay the Tick Tock man and his crew and make their way out of the sewers of Lud. The omniscient Blaine guides them to his platform where Roland, Jake, and Oy join Eddie and Susannah and Eddie to board Blaine. As they leave the city, the ka-tet watches, horrified, as the pitiful masses commit suicide or try to flee from the poison gas that Blaine has set loose over the city.

Blaine the monorail takes the companions out of the city and into the Waste Lands. There, they see a blasted land inhabited by huge, mutant creatures resembling flying dinosaurs and other abominations. The book ends as Blaine and Roland prepare to square off in a riddling contest. If Roland can fool Blaine, Blaine must deliver the companions safely to Topeka. If Blaine fools Roland, Blaine will take them to their deaths as he makes a kamikaze dive. The games begin. . .

As Roland and his friends make their way out of the city, the badly wounded Tick Tock Man encounters a stranger dressed in rough work boots and a denim jacket. He is the Ageless Stranger, he is Merlin or Maerlin, he is the Magician. He is the Wizard. But, in human terms, he is Richard Fannin. He demands an oath from the Tick Tock Man: “My life for you!” The Dark Man of The Stand has returned to our story.

The pursuit of the Dark Tower is now underway.

In the first book, The Gunslinger, we are introduced to Roland and learn of his quest. In book two, the primary characters are brought into the story, In the third book, Roland resolves the inconsistency in time he created when he prevented Jack Mort from killing Jake, brings Jake into his own world to complete his ka-tet and sets out on the path of the beam, riding Blaine the Mono.

Jake and Eddie are developed more in this volume. We learn a great deal about the relationship between Eddie and his late brother, Henry which is formative in Eddie’s character. We are introduced to Jake as he was in New York 1977 and his non-existent family life and pervasive loneliness.

King really shows us his writing chops in the scene where Jake desperately tries to unlock the door in the haunted house to get to Roland’s world. The scene is frantically paced. The house is literally collapsing in on itself as it reshapes itself into the evil guardian of this door. Detta desperately hangs on to the demon upon which she is forcing copulation. Eddie scrambles to make his homemade key function as rain pounds down upon him and thunder rocks the world around him. When this scene is brought to resolution, the reader almost needs to pause for a breath before moving on. You’ll seldom read writing better than this.

I also detected a major flaw in King’s timeline regarding Eddie and Henry Dean. Perhaps it can be explained away as some anomaly of time within the Dark Tower, but I’m confident it is author error.

In The Drawing of the Three, King tells us that Henry Dean returned from Vietnam with a heroin addiction. American forces withdrew completely from Vietnam in 1975. However, when Jake of 1977 New York encounters Henry and Eddie on the playground, Henry is still a youth. Eddie recollects that his encounter with Jake occurred shortly before Henry entered the Army. Unless Henry Dean was part of some covert operation in communist Vietnam, he could not have come back from Vietnam to introduce Eddie to heroin.

In introducing the Guardians, King provides the link to It. Roland tells the legend of the Guardians to his companions. He tells them that the Guardian opposite the bear on their beam is the turtle. The turtle is the creator of our universe, having vomited it up while sick. While the bear continues to inhabit Roland’s world, his counterpart is living in the caverns under Derry, Maine.

By cheating and reading Black House out of order of publication, we already know something about the nature of the beams and the effort of the Dark Tower’s chief inhabitant to break those beams. We shall learn a little more about “The Breakers” in Hearts in Atlantis.

King provides a postscript to this book. He promises that the next in the series is to come soon, but confides that he has trouble finding his way into Roland’s world. King had no idea just how long it would be before he and the Constant Reader visited Roland’s world. It would be six years before we were able to read the account of the riddling contest between Roland and Blaine as the next book, Wizard and Glass, would not be published until 1997. That is an awfully long time to hang on a cliff. . . I recall those years of anticipation as I, and hundreds of thousands of other King fans wondered if he would ever be able to visit the Dark Tower.

Between the publication of The Waste Lands in 1991 and Wizard and Glass in 1997, King did some of his worst work. He got into social commentary on feminism with Gerald’s Game, Deloris Claiborne, and Rose Madder – all substandard works.

He also published Insomnia which is the next novel that continues the story Roland’s quest. Insomnia is a tedious, overlong novel that does not stand on its own very well. However, we readers are given substantially more insight into the place of the Dark Tower and its inhabitants in the cosmos.

The Waste Lands was an excellent book and really picks up the pace of King’s story. I’m pleased to have Wizard and Glass on my bookshelf, ready to read because that six year wait was too long! However, I know now that Wizard and Glass will do little to move our story forward. Instead, we learn of Roland’s past and the events that shaped his character.

But Wizard and Glass must wait. First, we must take in Insomnia.

Long After Midnight By Ray Bradbury

Long After Midnight
By Ray Bradbury
Copyright 1975

The Blue Bottle
Two down on their luck men hunt for a mysterious artifact on a post-apocalyptic Mars. The mythical blue bottle is said to contain exactly what the finder wishes for. Many scavengers search the Martian ruins for the elusive prize and a few find. When our hero finds the bottle, what will be inside for a man who wants nothing?

This was an intriguing, it not particularly strong story. Had it been any longer than 11 pages, it would have made for tedious reading. But it was good enough for the short time invested in reading it. It was a good story idea that perhaps Bradbury could have developed into something more significant. Would have worked well as a Twilight Zone script.

One Timeless Spring
A young adolescent is convinced that everyone around him is trying to poison him. His parents are poisoning him with the food they give him. His teachers are poisoning him with the knowledge they provide. And the girls start to poison him in a way that only girls can weave a spell over an adolescent boy’s mind. He fights hard against it because he knows what their poison will do. Its evidence is all around him.

The poison is, of course, the nourishment of body, mind, and soul that helps us grow and mature. Fear of growing up and growing old are the prevalent themes of Bradbury novels, Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Farewell Summer. These books span 50 years of Bradbury’s career and are written from three different points of view of the subject of aging.

The Parrot Who Met Papa
A journalist is hired to write a story about a parrot gone missing from a bar in Cuba. This bar was frequented by none other that Ernest Hemmingway and it was to this remarkable bird with an astounding vocabulary, that Hemmingway revealed the idea and outline for what was to be his final novel. The bird was kidnapped by an unscrupulous writer who wants all of the secrets Papa revealed to his feathered confidant.

This story is mainstream fiction. Perhaps its because I loathe Hemmingway’s work or it just wasn’t that compelling a tale that I did not enjoy this story. In any event, I would rank it near the bottom of his body of work.

The Burning Man
A woman and her young son, on their way to a day at the beach, pick up a raggedy stranger from the side of the road. During the course of a bizarre conversation, he poses the question, “Do you think there is such thing as genetic evil in this world?” They promptly dump him at the side of the road. On the way home, they encounter a well dressed young boy whom they pick up. He asks the same question.

This story could have been developed a little more. There’s nothing particularly frightening in the way the strange man is written and there is nothing disarming about the young child which is what I assume Bradbury was going for.

A Piece of Wood
A young soldier is brought before his commanding officer after demonstrating discontent with his job. His commander asks him what he wants. He wants nothing less than total world peace, and he has developed the means to achieve it, if the rest of the world wants it or not.

This is the type of story that makes Golden Age sci-fi so enjoyable. No lengthy technical explanation. Just a little magic.

The Messiah
The Martian who is all things to all people makes a return – or at least one similar to him. This time, he appears at a Catholic church before a priest who wants nothing more than to see Jesus. The priest is confronted with a moral dilemma when he encounters the Martian who appears to him as Christ. Can he set free what he loves for the greater good?

I always thought that The Martian was one of the stronger stories in The Martian Chronicles. This one is much shorter, but recaptures the tragic nature of that poor Martian species doomed to be the person who people want to see the most. Exceptionally enjoyable!

G.B.S.-Mark V
A crewman aboard a rocket bound for a destination two years beyond Mars is able to channel George Bernard Shaw and enjoy discussions of philosophy, literature, and culture with the esteemed scholar. When disaster strikes the ship, the crewman and George Bernard Shaw discover they have damn near infinity to ponder and discuss.

Simple and unremarkable sci-fi story. Based on what I’ve read online, this is one of Bradbury’s more popular works, but it did not resonate with me. Perhaps it’s because I know (and care) so little about George Bernard Shaw.

The Utterly Perfect Murder
A 46 year old man wakes up one morning with the idea of returning to his old home town and killing one of his childhood buddies to get him back for slights real and imagined. The plan is perfect. Who would suspect an old childhood chum, now living far away, for getting revenge. But when he arrives at the man’s house and prepares to do the deed, he finds that someone or something has already had its way with his childhood nemesis.

This story has charm. I like stories with killers with seemingly no rational motivation. It’s also revealing of the nature of how we remember people of our youth and imagine how they must have turned out, only to find something much different than we ever conceived. It’s a phenomena encountered by anyone who’s ever attended a class reunion.


Punishment Without Crime
This is a sequel to the famous Bradbury story, Marionettes Inc. Marionettes Inc. no longer sells replica spouses to unhappy husbands and wives. They are now rented to angry spouses for revenge fantasies. When a man finally gets around to killing a marionette of his wife, his is prosecuted for murder without having actually killed a person.

This is a little less inspired than the original, which was a masterpiece. Still, it was a worthwhile sequel. Bradbury tells a great story with few words.


Getting Through Sunday Somehow
An American writer is cruising Dublin on Sunday, looking for inspiration for a story. While walking around, he finds a woman playing harp. He praises her playing and she is so disconcerted by his praise that she can play no more. She bids him to leave so that she might resume playing as she wanted to.

I think this is an allegory for the creative process. Every writer I know writes for an audience of one: themselves. I write for my own pleasure, not to impress anyone. Seeking approval of others for what you create is a track to mediocrity.


Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds
A New Yorker, struggling against the heat of the night by taking a late night walk, is drawn to an odd shop by a cool breeze wafting from an unlit alleyway. The shop’s proprietor is a purveyor of potions magical and powerful. In exchange for wealth, power, and the love of the beautiful witch, he must part with his soul. Needing to consider the bargain, he flees from the store only to encounter his bitter rival from work. He directs him to the strange shop.

This story is one of the magical tales that have made Bradbury a legend! It’s dark, creepy, and without a happy end. Its darkness reminded me very much of Something Wicked This Way Comes. We can also surmise that Bradbury is not a fan of New York with his dark depiction of its life destroying nature.

Interval in Sunlight
A woman travels through Mexico with her domineering, petulant husband who controls her and oversees every moment of her day. She fights with him, but always ends up giving into his demands and apologizing. When she’s finally had enough, she decides to make a break. But is her desire to be free of the burdensome, tedious mental abuse stronger than her need for the man she loves?

This story contained not an iota of sci-fi, fantasy, or horror. But Bradbury is well known for weaving traditional tales as well told as his sci-fi and horror classics. This story is longer than most, but Bradbury makes use of the extra words to develop an interesting, complex heroine and strong tension between her and her husband.

A Story of Love
An 11 year old loner falls in love with his teacher, a single woman of 26. The teacher is at first touched by the ardor of her pupil. But as the boy falls more deeply in love and invites her to join him on a walk, she becomes alarmed. She meets him and lays out some hard facts of life for him.

This is purely mainstream fiction and a beautifully told tale. In just a few pages, Bradbury develops two wonderfully deep characters caught in a relationship that must end in heartbreak. There is not even a hint of prurience. It’s simply a tale of tragically unrequited love that most boys experience at some point in their lives.

The Wish
Two lonely writers spend a Christmas evening together. Inspired by the crucifixion and rebirth of Jesus Christ, one of the writers wishes that, for just one hour, his late father would live again.

This is an oft-told tale of someone wishing a dead loved one back to life. The consequences are usually tragic. However, Bradbury spins the tale just a little differently and breaks the cliché.

Forever and the Earth
Thousands of years in the future, wealthy financier who is also a failed writer decides he must bring Thomas Wolfe into the future to rejuvenate literature. Wolfe is brought forward and writes stories so splendid that he is loathe to leave them behind. Alas, Thomas Wolfe is told he must go home again.

Not a terribly engaging story, but a nice homage to Thomas Wolfe.

The Better Part of Wisdom
A grandfather drops in on his grandson and his friend. The two are struck by the strong resemblance between themselves. That perception is driven home by a painting the grandson’s friend has made of his roommate. The two have a deep discussion of the importance of close friendships.

No supernatural or sci-fi elements here. The way Bradbury describes friendship between boys and men is contains much of the same intensity as that of the Hobbits in Tolkien.

Darling Adolf
An actor playing Adolf Hitler is convinced that, to make the movie a masterpiece, the producer will have to replicate the Nuremberg rallies and comes up with an elaborate scheme to draw thousands to hear the actor play Hitler and capture the energy of the crowd just like the Fuhrer once had.

This story did not work at all. Characters were entirely undeveloped and the story lacked any clear direction. A rare Bradbury clunker.


The Miracles of Jamie
An 11 year old boy is capable of pulling off small time miracles like athletic and academic triumphs. But, can he work his magic to save that which is most important to him?


The October Game
On Halloween night, a man, trapped in a loveless marriage, father to a loveless child, ruefully contemplates the emptiness of his life. He is determined to find a way, not only to separate himself from his wife, but to make her suffer in the process.

This story is a textbook example of good, old fashioned horror. With limited words, Bradbury develops the characters and motivation. Then, he provides the action and the twist. I’m sure those who get off on trying to anticipate the twist would get it, because it’s not too well disguised. Me, I like to just go with the story and let it take me where it’s going. Trying to anticipate plot twists takes energy away from simple enjoyment. What’s the point?

The Pumpernickel
A man and his wife stop at a deli on their way home from the movies. A loaf of unsliced pumpernickel makes the man nostalgic for his youth and a long remembered picnic at a swimming hole he and his buddies took when they were teenagers. He resolves to use that pumpernickel to find and reconnect with them.

Age is so pervasive in the works of Bradbury. He waxes nostalgic about the carefree nature of the child. His adult characters long for the freedom of youth. Most of these stories were written in Bradbury’s salad days. Now, as he has reached 90 years of age, I wonder what his attitude is toward being young.

Long After Midnight
Three mortuary drivers retrieve a suicide victim from a hanging tree. On the trip back to the morgue, the youngest of them berates the other two older men for not being more distraught over the death of such a young girl. As they are debating, the young man makes a discovery about the body that changes the entire picture.

This story is years ahead of its time! To say more would be to give away the ending, but I love the rhetorical question that is the last sentence in the story!


Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You!
A grumpy priest hears the confession of a young man who is addicted to chocolate. The priests suffers the man’s tales of woe for days and weeks until the man announces himself healed and ready to see the world. Many years later, the priest receives a special thank you gift.

I think this story was supposed to juxtapose two extreme lifestyles. One lived by a glutton, and one sworn to poverty. It didn’t work for me.

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction Volume I

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction
Volume 1
edited by Anthony Boucher
Copyright 1959
Doubleday

Contains the following stories:

Rebirth
by John Wyndham
This is a powerful novella about post-apocalyptic Newfoundland and a young boy’s coming of age in a profoundly religious society

David, the son of THE local minister in a society where any physical deviation from the normal makeup of the human body, encounters a little girl with six toes. They try in vain to hide the secret, but are unsuccessful and the girl and her family are forced to flee. David, meanwhile, shares a small mental abnormality -- telepathic ability -- with several other local youths who all work hard to conceal it. When David’s new sister is born, they soon find their own abilities pale in comparison to hers. They fear their secret will get out.

This book is dripping with social commentary on religion versus intellectual progress and the role of religion in our society. The characters lack the alienation of a Kafka hero, but it is not hard to sympathize with them as their culture tells them they are abominations before God. While the bit about collectivism at the end smacks a little of socialistic superiority, the story blends just the right amount of social analysis with action to make a truly engaging story.

The Shape of Things That Came
by Richard Deming
A scientist’s nephew finds his time traveling T-shirt and uses it to travel from the year 1900 to 1950. Upon his return, he writes a short story about the experience that his editor simply finds implausible. The man explains what he saw.

Pillar of Fire
by Ray Bradbury
This was the antithesis of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. In this story, the vampire struggles against the humans who dominate society. The last existing corpse comes to life in the 25th century to fight for its existence and to exterminate humans. In a perfectly ordered society, nobody suspects any abnormalities despite the chaos around them

Bradbury gives hints at what would come in Fahrenheit 451, which he wrote later. Our vampire compares himself favorably to the anti-heroes of the works of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft in a society that has burned such disorderly books.

Waldo
by Robert Heinlein
The world’s greatest scientist is presented with an engineering problem that could threaten civilization. He is forced to appeal to a much older and arcane form of problem solving to develop the solution.

This was science fiction for engineers. WAY too much technology and not nearly enough story. I struggled to finish it.

The Father Thing
by Phillip K. Dick
Aliens have eaten Charles Watsons’ father. He must flee from the awful thing that has taken its place and take revenge on its evil master.

This story contains that theme of impostors and conspirators that was so common in the Golden Age Science Fiction of the 1950s. This is comparable to Invasion of the Body Snatchers which was also published in 1954.

The Children’s Hour
by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore
A man goes to a psychologist to be hypnotized so he can recall what happened to missing hours and days in his life. He recalls a young, beautiful girl to whom he was engaged. But fate -- or the intervention of some higher power -- always seems to get in the way.

This was a somewhat intriguing story that built the tension nicely, then veers off in a really odd direction that can't really be called a twist. Melds contemporary psycho-drama with mythology, and in the end, plain old fashioned sci-fi.

Gomez
by C.M. Kornbluth
A prominent scientist receives a letter from an immigrant dishwasher asking him to verify his theory regarding nuclear physics. When the government finds out about it, the young immigrant dishwasher finds his life dramatically altered.

An ok, if non-descript story

The Widget, the Wadget, and Boff
by Theodore Sturgeon
Aliens conduct sociological and scientific experiments on a group of boarding house residents to ascertain whether or not the human race has the necessary mental capacity and ability to survive. As they engage their science from a higher plane of existence, they behave like a typical human married couple.

I don’t normally like character studies like this, but Sturgeon’s characters were meaningful and engaging. The story’s sci-fi tie-in is really tertiary to how human beings of various backgrounds dwell in the same habitat and how they see each other and themselves within that habitat.

Sandra
by George P. Elliot
A first person narrative about a man who purchases a female slave who is obedient and dutiful (and willing to sleep with him). He falls in love with her and she becomes lazy, disobedient, and independent. So he puts her back into slavery and she reverts to her normal form.

I guess this story qualifies as some alternative reality story since the guy purchased his slave at an Oakland department store, but nothing else in the text indicates any hint of sci-fi or alternative reality. It was racy for its time, I’m sure, but today would be dismissed as highly misogynistic.

Beyond Space and Time
by Joel Townsley Rogers
A brilliant scientist teams with a brilliant engineer to design and build the first rocket-ship designed to leave the galaxy. When the engineer is launched, he learns more about what is going on on Earth and his personal life from billions of miles away than he ever did while on Earth.

Ok, if somewhat light, story.


The Martian Crown Jewels
by Poul Anderson

A locked room whodunit in space. The Martian Crown Jewels are being transferred from Earth --- where they were being studied --- to the Mars moon Phobe where they will be unloaded and returned to Mars. They are stowed in a locked cabinet aboard an unmanned freighter. When that freighter arrives, the jewels are gone. Terrified diplomats turned to a skilled Martian detective to help them solve the unsolvable case.

The Weapon Shops of Isher
by A.E. Van Vogt

A group of dissidents operate transient weapons shops that move from town to town and village to village to sell specialized self-defense weapons to help repress the tyranny of an imperial government. A young man defies his father who finds the weapon shops offensive and strikes out on his own with the help of a young woman associated with the weapon shops.

This story was superb and embodied everything that is good about Golden Age science fiction. The characters are strong and the story plot driven. The pro-2nd amendment advocacy is not even thinly veiled, but allows the reader to identify with characters confronting the same issues 5000 years in the future that we confront today.

A website I found describes Van Vogt as the third pillar of Golden Age sci-fi along with Bradbury and Asimov. It also claims that this novella was actually a series of short stories published separately.

The Dragons of Winter’s Night By Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

The Dragonlance Chronicles Volume 2
The Dragons of Winter’s Night/
By Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

The tale of the heroes of Krynn and their search for the mythical Dragonlance picks up several weeks after they freed the human prisoners at Pax Tharkas. They are traveling to the port city of Tarsis where they find the Cataclysm has altered the geography of Krynn in such a way as to landlock the former port.

As they ponder their next move, Tarsis is attacked by the dragon army. As Tarsis burns, the companions are split into two groups as they flee the city. Their first night in the wilderness, they share a dream in which each member of the group participates. They dream of the Dragon Orb, hidden in the tower of a magic user from eons before. In the dream, they watch each other die at the hands of their enemies – and friends.

Tanis, Caramon, and Raistlin travel with the Sylvanesti elf princess, Alhanna, to her homeland to find the beautiful woods corrupted by evil. Raistlin learns that Alhanna’s father has a Dragon Orb and foolishly tried to use it. Instead, the orb dominated him and Sylvanesti has been warped into a manifestation of his nightmare. Raistlin is able to get control of the orb and defeat the green dragon who has captured the elven king’s mind and manipulated it into a nightmare.

While in Tarsis, the group meets a group of Knights of Solomnia, lead by the caustic Derek Crownguard. Sturm finds that the noble order to which he aspires has become rife with political intrigue and fighting. He also finds his heart captured by the elf maiden as he aids her in her escape from the burning city. They travel to the icy northern part of the continent and retrieve a dragon orb and the handle of the famed Dragonlance from the hand of an ancient dead night and his dragon steed encased in a glacier.

Eventually, Sturm runs far afoul of Derek Crownguard and Derek has him brought up on charges of treason. Only the belated testimony of Laurana and Flint as to his heroic deeds in the flight from Tarsis allows him to become a knight.

The Qualinesti elves have fled their homeland to the north to the land of Ergoth where they force the native elves into servitude. Their contempt for humans, their estrangement from their Sylvanesti cousins, and enslavement of their cousins makes it impossible for any union between the races of Krynn to fight the dragon invasion.

Tanis and his group travel toward the city of Flotsam where they hope to book passage on a ship. They form a traveling magic and talent show using Raistlin’s skills at sleight of hand as well as the talents of others to raise money. AS they journey across the winter countryside, Raistlin masters the Dragon Orb. Their tale leaves off as Tanis is separated from his friends and finds himself in the company of a long lost love.

New dragonlances are forged by Theros the ironsmith. Theros had his arm cut off as the dragon army invaded Solace. He has constructed a silver prosthetic arm which just happens to fulfill the prophecy that the dragonlance was forged by the man with the silver arm. Sturm and his group travel with Derek – now going mad with bitter jealousy and lust for power – and a contingent of knights to the High Clerists Tower where they clerics of Solomnia worshipped. The tower has not been entered since before the Cataclysm. However, Tasslehoff finds a way and leads them to a powerful weapon.

As the battlements of the tower are under siege from the dragon army, Derek desperately leads a full frontal assault on the vastly larger army. Sturm refuses to join him, seeing the attack as suicide. The battle ensues. Friends die and ancient powers deployed in the battle at the High Clerists Tower. At its end, an enemy leader pays homage to an old friend and honorable foe.

This second in the Dragonlance trilogy is my favorite of the books. The first book, while containing some action, was primarily focused on developing the theology surrounding the blue crystal staff and the Disks of Mishakal. This second book took the characters into battle with their enemies and with those who should be their allies.

It is also better written than the first. In my review of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, I remarked that they characters speak in the stilted language of Dungeons and Dragons players. Weiss and Hickman write much stronger dialogue in their second installment, making it a better story instead of a recounting of a Dungeons and Dragons game.

The nightmare sequence is fast paced and well written. They put it to good use, parsing parts of the nightmare into later chapters of the novel. The nightmare scene and the trip through the warped land of Sylvanesti is probably the best writing in the entire series.

This book took an ill advised shortcut that leaves the reader feeling cheated. An entire journey and great battle are given but a paragraph written in the past tense. This could have been fully fleshed out and added more excitement and action to the story. None of the great writers of fantasy would have taken such a short cut.

Like the first book, Volume 2 is light reading. There is little more character development. The political intrigue, such as it is, is far from complex. The action is straightforward and entire battles are fought in mere paragraphs. But the tale is an engaging one.