Some would say “cheap” but frugal is much kinder and captures her spirit more appropriately. A young adult during the depression, Aunt Della knew how to stretch a dime and one of her favorite tricks was going to the Nilly Noo Sto. It helps to understand that Aunt Della had what I call the “royal Southern accent” which ends up sounding more British than anything else. In middle-American English you’d have pronounced that place as the “Nearly New Store”, which was essentially a Salvation Army outlet. As I grew older it was a little embarrassing to know that she liked to shop there and I never shared the enthusiasm that a lot of my college friends did when they’d talk about shopping at the discount recyclers because for them it was a lark, for me it was a part of family history.

But if at any time in my life I was ashamed of Aunt Della, it has well and truly departed me because I now realize the value of shopping there. Case in point? The paperback book “Max Smart and the Perilous Pellets”, a riveting tale of espionage, intrigue and my first introduction to the work of Mel Brooks through the pen of writer William Johnston, found in a Clearwater Nilly Noo Sto.

I recall the incredible joy I felt after escaping to the world of Agents 86 and 99 as they travelled around the world in their atomic-powered helicopter with their pilot Lance Chalfont, silent birdman…

“Bail out!” Lance Chalfont screamed. “Hit the silk!”

“Isn’t that a little loud for a silent birdman?” Max commented.

“I panic easy,” Lance Chalfont replied, regaining his calm. “But it don’t last. Once that first panic is passed, I get like a rock.”

“Strong and sturdy, you mean.”

“No, I mean I can’t swim. I sink like a rock.”

You see? Genius. To a little boy anyway.

That book was one of the cornerstones of my concept of comedy; the running gag, the pun, general wordplay, crosstalk and nonsense. Like when Max finds himself subjected to the terrifying lie detector machine created by KAOS’ infamous The Professor.

“Now, here’s your first question. If there are fourteen apples in a dozen, and you bake twelve of the apples into a cherry pie, how long is a piece of string?”

Max puzzled for a moment. “A long piece of string or a short piece of string?”

“It doesn’t make any difference,” The Professor replied. “What is your answer?”

“A peach pie,” Max replied.

I know, it’s pretty wince-inducing, but it was fantastic material for a young, bored mind and over the years I’ve re-read the book on the odd occasion. Naturally, the re-reads weren’t as entertaining as my first time through the book but every re-read has brought along a bit of nostalgia for the show, the characters, the age in which it was aired and the people who were around at that time, who are no longer with us.

All of those feelings converged one day several weeks ago when I decided to find, purchase and read an issue of every Max Smart paperback ever published. The books came flying in from every corner of America… Ohio, South Dakota, Montanna, Washington (DC), Tennessee and Hawaii.

I haven’t read them just yet, but I will… even if they’re not as scintillating now as they might’ve been some 30 odd years ago. Wouldn’t you?

Let me put it to you this way:

“If beetles are bugs, and the Beatles are boys, how many boy beetles does it take to bug a Beatle boy until he boils?”

Comedy Silver. I love it.

[tags]Max, Smart, Max Smart, Agent, 86, 99, Agent 86, Agent 99, KAOS, CONTROL, Get Smart, get, smart, perilous, pellets, lance, chalfont, silent, birdman, fling, flung[/tags]

So, it’s not really some sort of heinous fetus-zapper. It’s actually the precursor to modern tools that fertility clinics use to zero in on candidate periods of best opportunity for couple having difficulty in achieving conception. Alternately, and more intriguingly, it could be used as a monitor for women who want to avoid having sex during the times they’re most likely to conceive. Other means of contraceptives aren’t discussed in the article, so there’s no in-depth discussion as to how this might be combined with (or used as a means to avoid) condoms or spermicidal gels.

Forty years down the road from the publication of this magazine I wonder if smaller, more technologically advanced versions of this device might be used in third world countries experiencing population booms. Would there be a way to create small, safe thermometers that could record basal temperatures for days, perhaps weeks, at a time. This data could be transmitted wirelessly, via RFID, to a computer at a central clinic, where a case file for each participant could be established, allowing the women to know the range of days in which they should abstain from sexual activity to avoid pregnancy.

I see no reason why a miniaturized “travel” version of this couldn’t be sold over the counter in a means very much like the iPod Nano running system sold by Nike and Apple that allows runners to evaluate their running scores on the computer. Imagine being able to sit down with your computer and plot out the best times for sex using your own body as your guide, like scheduling orders from NetFlix.

Call it the iRhythm, you’ll sell a million of them if you can get them to play music too.

Steve Jobs, don’t think you won’t owe me royalties if you decide to make these. I know people, see?

Yet you do.

Want to pick up a history book, that is.
And a book on calculus. And biology. And cartography. And certainly the books by Newton and Liebnitz.

That’s because, at its heart, The Baroque Cycle is a great big loving look at one of those remarkable times in human history when Important Ideas Were Afoot, and there were people out there who were equal to the challenge of identifying those ideas. People who we, 300 years later, have raised to such high symbolic levels as to be unidentifiable as a living people.

Thank God that Neal Stephenson has the talent and drive to use history in such a way to stitch together the Bigger Picture of that age. Under his pen concepts collide like fleets of fiery Hindenbergs, lighting explosive mental fires to concepts that I never imagined to be linked. Stephenson manages to weave incredible structures from the waxing and waning wonders of the late 17th Century, like Natural Philosophy (Science), Alchemy (Chemistry), the instruments of fiscal trade (Stock Exchanges), royal intrigues (Politics), warfare (International Relations) and Mathematics (Calculus).

Rarely gauzy in his portrayal of historic times, people and places, Stephenson paints a picture of a world where luxury and poverty rub shoulders and the distance ‘twixt the two are far closer than than they are now. The fat old scientists in wigs who we yawned about in grade school turn out to be dangerous men with radical ideas and cruel, sometimes ghoulish addictions to solving life’s mysteries.

There were so many avenues of exploration provided by The Baroque Cycle I can’t decide whether to re-read it with a highlighter and a notebook or to go and pick up some readings of my own. Even as I find places where he played fast and loose with reality I’ll discover wonders that lesson books never taught me.

I’m now a solid fan of Stephenson’s works and am thankful that there remain a few of his books that I have yet to read.
Please don’t stop now Neal!

If I had to pick just one word to describe Stephenson’s writing style I would, besides feeling slightly gypped, select ‘dense’ because he packs so much information into a small amount of space, rather like the cryptologists of his novel. I would find myself re-reading paragraphs over and over just to squeeze understanding from the words. I had to think, something I haven’t had to do in a long time… not because I am so incredibly smart, but because I am so incredibly lazy that I prefer to read nice pulpy science fiction stories over books that make me question my reality. Partly because my reality is already fairly unreal.

Like a lot of you, I go through a standard novel like a hot knife through butter; great swaths of paragraphs ingested in blinks. I think it’s safe to say that we do this because, fundamentally, we read books for their ideas and not for their art. It’s a double pleasure when the author turns out to have both ideas and art.

I think that Stephenson is one of these rare double threats, but not because of his poetry… people like Ray Bradbury can (and always will) kick his ass all day long, coming and going. It’s not the way that he phrases his words, it’s the way that he phrases his ideas. The way that Cryptonomicon unfolds is compelling and the ideas that he teaches along the way are every bit as exciting (and perhaps more believable) than anything that John Crichton has turned out in years.

The book’s characters range from the believable to the unbelievable, mundane to mythic.

I know that I’m late to this game, ‘Cryptonomicon’ was published in the pre-9/11 world of 1999 and has the “long boom” of the dot-com age stitched into its essence. Still, I can’t wait to find people with whom I can discuss Marine Private Shaftoe, a credit to his branch of the service. And cryptography! I’d love to learn to start using crypto email, though the only thing I can think to send would be long ass book reviews like this one.

McDevitt has a gift for character sketches, making it almost impossible to anticipate whether someone will last the entire book or get eaten by a giant star goat (of which there are thankfully few in his books). The universe his “Hutchins” and “Benedict” characters occupy is comfortable reading (to me anyway) because it’s largely a projection of our modern western world with but a few changes: people live longer, interstellar travel has been achieved, friendly artificial intelligences are integrated into homes, vehicles and spacecraft. Religion exists in the background most of McDevitt’s books but whenever it comes to the fore it seems to be the one thing that he handles with wooden hands and a tin ear, unable to craft people who are both passionate and reasonable. It’s obvious that McDevitt is much more interested in interstellar collisions and alien archaeology and like many science geeks he chafes at the retarding effect that organized religion has traditionally imposed on the sciences. But that’s okay, Jack is writing to tell fun adventures. If you’re looking for powerfully written, character-driven sci-fi stories you should slide farther down the bookshelf to Stephen R. Donaldson’s “Gap Cycle”.

If you’re thinking of reading McDevitt I suggest that you begin with his “Alex Benedict” series which is set about 10,000 years in our future. Alex Benedict is an antiquities dealer with a Sherlock Holmes-like gift for tracking down long lost space stations and abandoned settlements, selling his finds to the highest bidder. His sexy assistant Chase Kolpath is a starship pilot and the main character of most of the books in this series. In fact, Jack McDevitt seems to prefer writing strong female leads.

Here’s the order to read that series:

• A Talent for War (1989)
• Polaris (2004)
• Seeker (2005)

Enjoy!

Food Court Druids is a hysterically damning indictment of contemporary early 2000′s American culture. The saying “stereotypes exist for a reason” is true so get over it and get over yourself because the first time you flip through the pages of this book you’ll stow your “everyone is unique” mantra and bust out laughing. Almost everyone you know is in this book, even though its author never met one of your friends or family members.

Robert Lanham has done a magnificent job of slicing and dicing our culture into instantly recognizable stereotypes and providing labels which accurately capture the essence of each sub-genre. For instance, here is his description of the titular “Food Court Druids”:

In Brief: Teenage Goths obsessed with fantasy role-playing games like Magic the Gathering
Gender: Male, female, or androgynous
Habitat: Food courts, Harry Potter premieres, Goth night
Favorite Music: Industrial music, The Cure, Misfits, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Wolfsheim, Alien Sex Fiend
Hobbies: Smoking cloves in the JCPenny parking lot, demon-like hissing at squirrels and younger children
Idio Rank: 6.7

But he doesn’t stop there. Lanham really delves into these classifications, making full and thoughtful anthropological observations. They’re simultaneously well-studied and hilarious. With the Food Court Druids he investigates topics like how they choose their alternative names, do their hair, pick their clothes.

Here are some of the Idio Types that I personally know (or have known):

Yoga Moms – who sip lattes and fantasize about what their lives would have been like if they’d lived in the city, while they wait for their kids to finish soccer, basketball or football practice. Yoga Moms hate Soccer Moms.

Unitards – people who walk around in normal society dressed in the full uniform of their favorite sports team.

Stretchibitionist – women with a tendency to stretch suggestively in highly visible areas of the gym. At this point in the book jeff Bechtel has provided a bunch of illustrations of the Stretchibitionist in all her many poses, including: the Feline, the Thrust, the Peacock, the Pamela and the Narcolepsy.

Cowboyees/Cowgizzles – African American men and women who are obsessed with cowboy culture.

Molly McButters – trendy twenty-something women who dress like grannies.

The Homogenator – bosses who overcompensate for their incompetence by imposing strict, homogenous standards on their subordinates. (Note: I’ve recently encountered this bit of lunacy and don’t like it a bit)

and finally, I think we’ve all met one of these….

Cherohonkees – White baby boomers who are obsessed with Native American culture.

This is the kind of book you flip through over a period of months or weeks, perpetually making discoveries and spotting people you know (or ARE). So far I’ve seen that I’m a “split-screener” and am certain that a far more devastating title (and accompanying illustration) is lurking somewhere within.

Cruise on over to your favorite bookstore to give this book a look-see – I think you’ll really enjoy it~

A Darker Geometry is a (moderately interesting) short written for the Man Kzin Wars series. This series has become a means for other authors to play in Niven’s Universe, within certain bounds. Every contributor has tried to (as authors tend to do) create characters upon whose existence the entire of creation hinges. They play with the great, deep cycle back-story to fill in any gaps. I’ve always considered this a looming potential mistake for written stories. Darker Geometry attempts to lay a foundation for many of the grander ideas associated with Known Space. It winks at you and says “see, look, I mentioned this thingy”. It tries to touch big ideas, but never really does. It tries to lay claim to revealing secrets of Known Space, but only results in annoying you (or me anyway).

Should all movies have sequels, should all secrets be revealed? Absolutely not, without secrets there is no intrigue. Are fictional universes diminished by this literary form of urban infill? Sometimes.

Fifteen years ago Star Trek was a great unknown universe. Sure we knew a lot, but there were a bajillion ways that things could happen because we only had the sketchiest idea of what they meant. We had a 40watt bulb trained on our subject. Today, the universe of Star Trek has been exposed to stadium lights. The shadows are gone away, everything you could imagine has been explained six ways to Sunday. If you tell a story incorrectly, there are legions of fans (stuck on the mechanics of a universe that they CAN explain) who are ready to pounce on you because somebody pushed the wrong button in your story.

The Man-Kzin stories are slowly removing the shadows of Niven’s universe. It is to Larry’s credit that he has been careful to police Known Space, and it is his choice to make contributions to that place. I would suggest that he leave his known characters well enough alone, and re-approach this space from a new perspective. His last few books are stale because he’s stuck inside the place.

Or else I would suggest he write some more short stories that leave Known Space alone entirely, he’s pretty good at that stuff too…….

Or he WAS (said in the Hero’s mocking, daring, three stooges, go-ahead-and-try-it tense)