Two by Bloch. Shooting Star & Terror in the Night and Other Stories (1958)

     Robert Bloch. Shooting Star (1958) Half of a Double Ace book. Mark Clayburn is hired to reinvestigate the murder of Dick Ryan in order to clear his name of drug-related rumours. He succeeds of course, but not before triggering two more murders and a beating. The perp turns out to be a woman (this is the era of femmes fatales, who destroy men more or less for the fun of it). Mark is rescued from imminent death by the cop who investigated the murder and has been saddled with the new crimes. The plotting is typically private-eye pulp-fiction, but Bloch at least plays fair, with all clues provided before the denouement. The style is pretty good; Bloch is right up there with Dashiell Hammett, but IMO his avoidance of the outre similes that Hammett indulged in makes him a better writer. I picked up this book at a flea market east of the Ukrainian Village, one of a dozen or so Double Aces. I bought it because I recognised Bloch’s name: he made his living as a pulp writer, specialising in horror fantasy and science fiction. Good of its kind, with vintage cover art, the kind that bears at best an oblique connection to the story. **½ (2008)

     Robert Bloch. Terror in the Night and Other Stories (1958) The other half of the Ace Double. A sampling of Bloch’s skills as inventor of horror. Not bad. The tales all have twists, and most of them rely on psychology, not the supernatural. ** (2008)

Anne Lindgren. Classroom Classics (1990)

     Anne Lindgren. Classroom Classics (1990) A collection of retired teachers’ anecdotes and reminiscences. What comes through most strongly is that schooling was considered worth almost any sacrifice to get. Not only the teachers had to put up with inadequate facilities. The courage and determination of these young women and men appears despite their modest self-deprecation: most of the stories are told on themselves. A good read, not only for teachers, but for anyone who ever went to a country school. And worth reading for all those who didn’t. **½ (2008)

Simon Winchester. The Professor and the Madman (1999)

     Simon Winchester. The Professor and the Madman (1999; p/b reissue 2005) Winchester’s Krakatoa prompted the reissue of this book, which promptly made the best sellers lists too. A Dr Minor committed a murder, was confined to Broadmoor, and spent a large part of his life there assisting in the production of the OED. James Murray eventually went to visit him, and a friendship ensued. Minor’s contribution to the OED consisted of several tens of thousands of quotations. This work certainly mitigated the effects of his mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia, which nowadays would be treated with drugs and behavioural therapy, a treatment that would probably prevent Minor from doing the work which helped him survive for so many years. His last years were marked by increasing severity of his symptoms, and physical decay. He was a medical doctor, which means that he would be (at least intermittently) fully aware of what was wrong with him. Good book. **½ (2008)

Wendy Northcutt & Christopher M. Kelly. Darwin Awards : Intelligent Design (2007)

    Wendy Northcutt & Christopher M. Kelly. Darwin Awards : Intelligent Design (2007) A compilation of stories illustrating how human stupidity (mostly male) can lead to death, thus removing stupid genes from the gene pool. Unfortunately, there seems to be a very large supply of stupid genes. A fun read, but in its cumulative effect rather depressing. **½ (2008)

A. E van Vogt. Pendulum (1978)

     A. E van Vogt. Pendulum (1978) According to the Wikipedia article on Vogt the stories in this collection are almost all originals. Never mind. I found once again that Vogt’s writing is appallingly flat, dull, and uninvolving. I''ve tried several times to read his classic works, and gave up after the first 10 or 20 pages.
     Only his ideas attract: he has the rare ability to imagine the almost unimaginable, and thus suggest what actual alien minds might be like. Reading his accounts of alien actions and thoughts disorients: for a few moments, we are thinking thoughts we wouldn’t have been able to conjure up on our own.
     His human characters however aren’t believable, in fact they hardly resemble human beings. They are observed from the outside; they have no inner life, even though Vogt tells us what they are thinking. The effect is odd. Darrell Schweitzer, quoted in the Wiki article, says Vogt’s characters are toy soldiers in a sandbox. And acute comment I think. The sandbox is more or less bizarre, and it’s that which makes Vogt’s fiction interesting. But oh, what a slog to read these stories! Other writers have learned from Vogt how to imagine the alien, and how to imagine alien worlds, but have done a much better job of writing.
     The collection ends with an article or report about the launch of Apollo XVII. I found it as off-putting as the fiction: facts, facts, facts, and not a hint of the actual experience. Eg, Of the writers who watched the Apollo liftoff, the majority had press passes and at launch time they were a mile or so away (to our right, south) with 3400 reporters from all over the world. Theirs was a separate set of grandstands. And so on. What’s point of the compass direction? Or the number reporters (which is only approximate anyhow)? Or the grandstands? Later on, it become clear that Vogt wants to know who rates what kind of invitation. That his reader wants to know what it was like to be there, doesn’t seem to occur to Vogt.
     It was as if a robot were reporting what it had seen and heard. Vogt records “interviews” with other attendees verbatim. His questions and comments are weird: it’s as if there no person there. He doesn’t seem able to elicit the kind of elaboration and personal detail that would give these interviewees presence. Or maybe he doesn’t recognise the comment that’s an opening to the kind of question whose answer would have that effect.
     He reports all kinds of facts (one man is described as in a suit, mature, about five foot nine), but not one sensation or feeling. For example, Sterling and I had gone to a line of catering wagons. Our principal hope as that we might be able to buy a drink. We each got a half pint of milk. After we had absorbed them...
     Reading this kind of stuff I realised that Vogt was missing something. Exactly what, it’s hard to say. Imagination. Sensory memory. Awareness of himself. Insight into himself and other people. Some or all of these. I’m wondering if he had Asperger’s syndrome.
     These stories vary in quality. Most I didn’t read through, but skipped ahead to the ending. This is a book where the journey is so much less interesting than the destination that a summary of each tale would have satisfied me as much. Maybe more. The one story that appealed was The Human Operators, in which humans were kept alive within robotic ship known as Starfighters. They performed the tasks the ship couldn't do on its own. The narrator has figured out that he may be able to take over the ship, and does so when the ship admits a female so that they can make a baby which will eventually displace the narrator. Both the humans and the robotic brains are stunted persons, and match the plot and the ambience very well. * to **

Bangladeshi garment factory victims compensaton fund

New York Times article on compensation fund for Bangladeshi garment factory victims and their families: Those who won't pay.  Read the whole article: apparently some "unauthorized contractors" were making garments in the Tazreen factory that collapsed.

Fred Hoyle & John Elliot. A is for Andromeda (1962)

     Fred Hoyle & John Elliot. A is for Andromeda (1962) Radiotelescopy was brand new in the 60s. People immediately assumed that signals from other civilisations would be received. Since then, cooler logic has shown that the odds of intercepting such signals are vanishingly small. This story feeds the continuing fascination with extra-terrestrial beings. Signals are received, and John Fleming, a brooding, intense, and obsessive computer scientist, figures out a way to decode them. They turn out to be instructions for building and programming a computer. That machine in turn provides instructions for synthesising proteins, and eventually a complete human being, Andromeda. But its method of acquiring the information causes the death of a human. The artificial human is apparently a copy of the dead woman. It becomes clear that the intelligence embodied in the computer does not intend the furtherance of human objectives. Eventually, John Fleming destroys the machine, and the code used to build it. Some time before that, the transmissions have ceased, so there is no possibility of replicating the machine.
     It seems fairly obvious that a society that invests in technology to transmit messages to the rest of the universe is as likely to use that message to reproduce itself in some form as to merely announce its presence. Hoyle’s idea, that instructions to build a computer could further the aim of reproduction is plausible, but it seemed far more plausible in the 1960s when the limitations of computers were not as well understood as they are now. In particular, the technology of the time (faithfully described by Hoyle) was simply not up to the task imagined for it. Nevertheless, as a riff on the bug-eyed monster invading Earth the book is interesting.
     Elliot (who has had a long and successful career dramatising fiction for TV, among other things) supplied the human interest and narrative skill, but like most hard SF, this book’s characters are barely believable. The twist, that in copying the dead woman, the machine also imbued its slave with human feelings and attitudes, is a good one, for it is those feelings that enable Andromeda to disobey her master and help Fleming destroy the machine. A number of subplots involving attempts by outsiders to gain control of the machine, are underdeveloped. Proper treatment of these and the tensions within the working group would have doubled the length of the book, which most readers of SF wouldn’t tolerate. ** (2008)