Animate Wall - MTG 4th Edition

July '22 Roundup & Ramblings

Raw Data:

Novels – 12 ↓

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.17 ↓

Pages – 4271 ↑

Words – 1303.5K ↑

The Bad:

The Best of Lester Del Rey – 1/2star of the Worst!

Bethink Yourself – 1star DNF of war is bad, blah, blah, blah

The Good:

Pyrate Cthulhu Vol 1 – 4.5stars of awesome cosmic horror

Battlefield Earth – 5stars of nostalgia that has run its course

Movie:

Muppets Most Wanted was a fantastic movie and I loved it! Enough that I’ll be buying it on bluray.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• MTG: Angry Mob
• Who am I Book Tag
• American Independence Day
• An Introduction to Magic (video)
• MTG: Animate Artifact
• Currently Reading: Battlefield Earth
• Out of WordPress Jail!
• MTG: Animate Dead
• ♪Give Me a Ticket for an Aeroplane♪
• You’re My Pumpy-umpy Umpkins
• The Trip

Personal:

Got sick at the beginning of the month and missed the July 4th extended weekend. That was a real bummer. Going to California for a couple of days was a nice relaxer time though. Other than that, work, work, work. With the housing market still being wicked hot (despite the best efforts of certain people), my work is NOT slowing down like I thought it might. Maybe later this year in winter I’ll get a break? I can hope.

On the book side of things, my numbers were looking pretty good. My average rating went down but with the various stinkers I had I was expecting that. So all the other numbers going up was great. I like my numbers going up.

On the blog side, the numbers are all over the place and still make no sense to me. Of course, it feels like people are either taking breaks or flaming out. In all honesty, it just takes one person leaving blogging to make me feel that way, so it’s not hard to get to that place, sigh. It is not hard to mess with my head 😉

One of the big lotteries here in the US, Mega Millions, got up to over 1 Billion dollars. Talk about a boatload of cash! I obviously didn’t win. But even if I had, I certainly wouldn’t be telling all of you and shouting it out on my blog, now would I? I might be one of the world’s biggest egotists, but I’m not that stupid 😀 But it was really fun to think what it would be like to win that.

Plans for Next Month:

I got nothing. Just trying to pump those reviews out and not fall too far behind. I’ve still got like 8 reviews to write just to get caught up and every day that passes brings yet another to write. Oh, I might try for a Binstagramm post. I hear it’s the next big thing online. One post and I’ll become an Internet Celebrity. But don’t worry, I won’t forget all you little people.

Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 ★★★★★

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000
Series: ———-
Authors: L. Ron Hubbard
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 1243
Words: 402K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia.org

In the year 3000, Earth has been ruled by an alien race, the Psychlos, for a millennium. The Psychlos discovered a deep space probe (suggested to be Voyager 1) with directions and pictures mounted on it and the precious material, gold, that led them straight to Earth.

After one thousand years, humanity is an endangered species numbering fewer than 35,000 and reduced to a few tribes in isolated parts of the world while the Psychlos strip the planet of its mineral wealth. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, a young man in one such tribe, lives in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Depressed by the recent death of his father and both the lethargy and sickness of most of the surviving adults in his tribe, later determined to be caused by radiation-leakage from decaying nuclear land-mines, he leaves his village to explore the lowlands and to disprove the superstitions long held by his people of monsters in those areas. He is soon captured in the ruins of Denver by Terl, the Psychlo chief of planetary security.

Psychlos stand up to 9 feet (2.7 m) tall and weigh up to 1,000 pounds (450 kg). They originate from Psychlo, a planet with an atmosphere radically different from Earth, located in another universe with a different set of elements. Their “breathe-gas” explodes on contact with even trace amounts of radioactive material, such as uranium. The Psychlos have been the dominant species across multiple universes for at least 100,000 years. It becomes apparent in the later chapters that the Psychlos were originally non-violent miners but were subjugated by a ruling class called “Catrists” to become malicious, sadistic sociopaths.

Terl has been assigned to Earth, and his term has been arbitrarily extended by Numph, the planetary head of mining operations. Fearful at the thought of spending several more years on Earth, Terl decides to make himself a multi-millionaire to escape, by secretly mining a lode of gold in the Rocky Mountains that his planetary scanner drones have recently found. It is surrounded by uranium deposits that make Psychlo mining impossible, so Terl decided to capture a Man-Animal to mine the gold for him.

Terl forces Jonnie to submit to a learning machine programmed by a servile race that was exterminated centuries earlier for going on strike. It quickly teaches him numerous subjects, including the Psychlo language, by implanting the information directly into Jonnie’s brain. He befriends a Psychlo midget named Ker, who is only 7 feet tall but still possesses the impressive strength of a Psychlo, and is markedly less psychotic than the others.

Looking for leverage against Jonnie, Terl captures his childhood-love Chrissie and her sister, Pattie, who went searching for Jonnie a year after he left their clan, and holds them hostage to ensure his continued cooperation. Thereafter, Jonnie is free to move around the mining area. Terl and Jonnie travel to Scotland where Jonnie recruits eighty-three Scottish people to help with the mining, including several deliberately selected body-doubles for Jonnie, older women to perform the cooking and clothes mending, a doctor, a teacher, and a historian. Jonnie tells the Scots about the evil deeds of Terl, to include how he has imprisoned Jonnie’s love and her little sister. Led by Robert the Fox, the Scots agree to help him fight against the Psychlo rule on Earth and rescue Chrissie and Pattie. Terl does not understand English, and is instead convinced that the Scots are motivated by a promise of pay on project completion.

While Jonnie and his Scottish allies mine the gold deposit, they also secretly explore the ruins of humanity to look for uranium that can be weaponized for use against their Psychlo oppressors. This subterfuge is aided by the aforementioned body-doubles, making it appear to Terl’s surveillance that the mining operation is the sole priority of the human contingent. Meanwhile, Terl finally gains leverage on Numph, discovering that he has been stealing company funds. Terl blackmails him, effectively negating Numph’s power over him, allowing Terl to continue with his mining plans.

Terl has been busy obfuscating the purpose of the gold-mining operation and implementing his plan to ship the human-mined gold back to the Psychlo home-planet. Terl’s plan involves replacing lead coffin-lids with lead-plated facsimiles made from the gold mined by the Scots, and shipping these coffins with dead Psychlos in them, home. When he finally returned to Psychlo, he could then dig up the coffins and sell the lids to make his fortune. All dead Psychlos are to be returned to home planet for burial, but recent safety measures have reduced accidents. Terl thus has to manufacture accidents to kill Psychlos, and decides to assassinate Numph as well, to get the bodies needed.

During the semi-annual teleportation of personnel, goods, and coffins to Psychlo, Jonnie and his allies co-opt Terl’s plan by packing the coffins with “dirty nukes” and “planet busters” they have found, and replacing the golden coffin-lids with the original lead lids. After the last teleportation, the humans use the Psychlos’ own weapons against them and gain control of the planet. With humans in control of Earth, Jonnie works to discover the secret of Psychlo mathematics and teleportation. This is a difficult task, compounded by the fact that Psychlo math is based on the number eleven, and Psychlo equations appear to make no sense.

Before the teleportation, Jonnie is forced to oppose a longtime rival from his own clan, Brown Limper Staffor, who is seeking to wrest control of Earth for himself. Unwittingly used by Terl to advance his own plans, Brown Limper nearly succeeds after gaining assistance from a group of cannibalistic mercenaries from southern Africa called the Brigantes, and their leader, General Snith. But Brown Limper is killed by Terl just before the Psychlo’s teleportation, and the Brigantes are defeated.

It is discovered that all Psychlos have a deep brain-stimulation device implanted in their brains to make them controllable. Meant to make work pleasant for them, the device promotes extreme sadism in the males, causing them to attack any non-Psychlo who shows interest in Psychlo mathematics and teleportation. If the Psychlos are unsuccessful in killing their intended victims, the device compels them to commit suicide. The removal of this device frees the handful of remaining Psychlos on Earth from its affects. Curiously, Ker did not have any such device implanted in his brain.

With the Earth being threatened by other alien races looking for restitution because they had suffered under the harsh rule of the Psychlos, Jonnie opposes a race of intergalactic bankers seeking to repossess the Earth for unpaid debts. The security and independence of humanity once again threatened, Jonnie redoubles his efforts to figure out Psychlo teleportation.

It is eventually discovered that the dirty nukes sent with the intent of destroying the capital city on Psychlo instead started a chain reaction which reached into the planet’s core due to over-mining, causing the planet to explode and transform into a star. Jonnie also discovers that other Psychlo facilities scattered about the multiple universes were destroyed by their own reliance on teleportation as they performed their scheduled teleportation shipments, and instead, brought back radioactive solar matter. This holocaust killed every single Psychlo in the multiple universes except for the handful remaining on Earth. Once it is revealed that all female Psychlos who leave the homeworld are sterilized to prevent off-world births, Johnny realizes that the Psychlos on Earth will not be able to reproduce, and eventually, the Psychlo race will become extinct.

Jonnie then works out a way to prevent the repossession of Earth via contracts Terl had signed with Brown Limper Staffor. The Psychlo had thought that it would be amusing to make Staffor believe that he was the legal owner of Earth as well as all Psychlo possessions across the multiple universes, by signing a contract that stated as much before his final teleportation to Planet Psychlo. Terl had no way of knowing that he was about to die, along with almost his entire race, with the destruction of his homeworld. Once planet Psychlo was destroyed, Terl was the highest ranking member of the Intergalactic Mining Company left alive, and his signature on Staffor’s contract became legal. That meant that Jonnie, as the recognized leader of Earth with the death of Brown Limper, now owned what was left of the entire Psychlo empire. Using these contracts, the Earth Planetary Bank pays off all debts to the intergalactic bankers.

However, Jonnie is still perplexed by Psychlo mathematics. With the help of an aged Psychlo engineer, he learns about Psychlos using a cipher system and dummy equations to make their mathematics unsolvable. At the same time, he also discovers how the Psychlos protected their teleportation technology in their local equipment, and records the circuits for future use. Using the existing teleportation console, Jonnie is able to bring back breathe-gas from a planet in the Psychlo star system that was never officially recorded. With the Psychlo math and the circuits, Earth begins to manufacture teleportation equipment, sold to numerous planetary systems via the intergalactic bankers. At the same time, Jonnie uses the Earth’s newly acquired wealth to buy impenetrable force fields and automated orbiting defense platforms to protect the Earth from future threats.

With the Earth secure and the human population growing and learning about its true history, Jonnie gives ownership of the Earth back to its people. A few years later, Jonnie and Chrissie are married and they have a son and a daughter. With human civilization being rebuilt and thriving, Jonnie and Chrissie take their children and leave for an isolated part of the world to train them in the old ways of survival, and to live out the rest of their lives in peace. But, after a year, their friends find them and implore them to return to civilization, which Jonnie reluctantly agrees to.

Years later, frustrated with un-ending fame and life away from nature, a middle-aged Jonnie takes some supplies and quietly slips away to the Rocky Mountains, never to be seen again. He becomes a figure of legend.

My Thoughts:

Having read this several times in highschool and Bibleschool and then again in 2009, I am pretty familiar with the story. After my disastrous attempt at re-reading the Mission: Earth series in ’14, I’d held off any more re-reads authored by Hubbard. But the time seemed right and I’d given Battlefield Earth 5stars in ’09, so it seemed like a safe bet.

Thankfully, it was. This is still a 5star read for me.

Now, I found on this re-read that this felt more cartoony, almost space opera than in years past. In the intro Hubbard goes on for many, many pages talking about what led up to this book and I must admit, he pontificates. Given that he was a cult leader, that shouldn’t surprise anyone though. But his goal with this book was to write a “real science fiction” novel and off he goes for pages explaining what he means by that. I found it interesting but I think he missed the mark to be honest. This book is a romance. One lone warrior saving not only the Earth, but the entire 16 universes, pretty much all by himself? It’s definitely SF alright, but like any genre, proliferation has led to fragmentation and just what is “real science fiction” now? So while still enjoyed this, I don’t think I would have if I had been introduced to it for the first time right now.

This massive tome (it makes even Sanderson seem normal. The mass market paperback is almost 1500 pages!) never felt weighed down though. While Hubbard definitely introduces pet economic and social theories, and explains them, they are explained in just a paragraph or 2 without turning the book into a vessel of preaching. The story moves right along while action isn’t the main focus, it is generously sprinkled throughout so I was never bored. The story is split into 2 main sections. The first deals with Johnny and the Psychlos and the second deals with Johnny and the other space faring races. Humanity kicks butt and I felt like saying “hoo rah” at several points.

For you movie people, there is a movie based on this book. It was pushed forward by John Travolta, a scientologist himself. Don’t watch it. It is the worst thing ever and why Travolta thought it would be a good thing to link to scientology is beyond me. Many, many changes are made from the book, all for the worse and Travolta’s ego is front and center. I’ve pretty much blanked it out of my memory and simply remember it as A Bad Movie.

I am not sure that I will be re-reading this again though. I’ve gotten what I want from this book over the years and I think this is the last time I could read it and still enjoy it this much. It feels like time to shelve this for good.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

• Battlefield Earth (2009 Review)

Conan the Marauder (Conan the Barbarian) ★★★★☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Conan the Marauder
Series: Conan the Barbarian
Authors: John Maddox Roberts
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 176
Words: 80K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia.org & Me

The warlord, Bartatua, is uniting all the Hyrkanian tribes east of the Vilayet Sea into an army for world conquest, beginning with the resistant city of Sogaria. Meanwhile, an exiled Turanian wizard, Khondemir, plans on taking control over Bartatua’s soldiers in pursuit of his own agenda. Caught in the middle are Princess Ishkala of Sogaria, a seductive spy named Lakhme, and the enslaved Conan, who must prove his loyalty towards Bartatua to escape his fate. Everything comes to a thrilling climax near an ancient Hyrkanian necropolis known as the City of Mounds.

Khondemir raises an elder god and gets eaten by it. The warlord is killed by his mistress who had her own plans with the wizard. She in turn is killed as well. The princess is rescued by her lover and Conan escapes to go have another adventure somewhere.

My Thoughts:

Now this was a rousing Conan adventure. I think the biggest part is the villainess in this case. Yes, there’s a bad wizard, but she’s the driving force behind everything happening in this story. It was a joy to read about her machinations because it provided good fodder for Conan to struggle against.

I don’t know why this worked so well for me but man, it was the best Conan story by Maddox yet. Conan was shown in a variety of roles and there was everything from a siege to a sorcerous showdown with an Old One.

I am feeling much better about this series now. Knowing that there is the chance of stories this interesting makes it worth hanging around the average ones 🙂

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

• The “Essential Conan” Trilogy
• All of My “John Maddox Roberts’ Conan” Reviews

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #7 ★★★✬☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #7
Authors: Peter Laird & Kevin Eastman
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 42
Words: 2.5K

Synopsis:

The Turtles are beamed back to the TCRI building, along with the champion warriors of the Triceratons. Who promptly realize that the gizmo used on them is a working transmat device. They immediately go on the offensive and attack everyone. The brain blob robots use their stunners on them and the Turtles try to stay out of it. Master Splinter appears and tells the boys everything that has happened, from his perspective and that the brain blob aliens just want to go home now.

Outside the building, police, swat and the national guard are gathering. They assault the building, enter and begin making their way to the 3^rd floor where the brain blobs have reconfigured the transmat to take them back to their homeworld. They take the Turtles with them and the building self-destructs 5minutes later, destroying all evidence of their existence.

The issue ends with the boys and Splinter getting transported into a bathtub in April’s apartment.

My Thoughts:

This issue had the first “news” article in it that comics soon began using to inform their readers of upcoming events and what not. It was very handy to learn that this was the end of this particular story arc and that the next couple issues would be standalones.

While not as exciting as the Arena Games of the previous issue, this still had plenty of soldiers and robots blasting away at each other. Sadly, the Turtles didn’t really get in on the action and so the “ninja” side of things was pretty non-existent. Rocket launchers vs robots with stun beam guns. Definitely made for some good pictures.

Of course, this was mostly backstory and thus allowed Eastman and Laird to really pad things. We get the Turtles origin all over again, just with the bit about the brain blobs being the ones who had created the goo. Then Splinter retells how he escaped from the killer mousers and that was all filler too. I would have been VERY disappointed in this volume if I had waited over 3 months from the previous issue only to get this one. Thankfully, I have scads more ahead of me so I can just whiz on through and do the Queen Wave at this issue.

Pip pip, cheerio, crumpets and tea at 2? Righto then, onto the rocket launcher.

Nothing says “trained professional” like standing right out in the open 2 feet from the door you’re about to try to blast open. Why do comic artists draw such stupid things? Maybe I’m just being extra picky but it just stuck in my craw. And yes, I do realize I’m talking about “stupid” within the context of a comic that has brain blob aliens riding around in Terminator800 shells and warrior Space Triceratops. So upon reflection, maybe I just need to ease up.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

• All My “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” Reviews

Exigency (Galaxy's Edge: Dark Operator #4) ★★★★☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Exigency
Series: Galaxy’s Edge: Dark Operator #4
Author: Doc Spears
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mil-SF
Pages: 297
Words: 104.5K

Synopsis:

From Galaxysedge.fandom.com & Me

A legionnaire’s only failure is the failure to do what’s right.

Kel Turner is a victim of his own success. His exploits and victories as part of Kill Team Three bring the attention of forces seeking hegemony over the Republic.

These shadowy power brokers know that a man like Kel represents a threat to their plans… unless he can be persuaded to join them. And if the operator declines his hidden enemy will stop at nothing to destroy him.

At a deadly crossroads, Kel is told to choose between love and duty. But his foes are ignorant that he has a third choice.

Win.

The dark operator is the master of all the tools of lethal combat. Kel will need them all to succeed.

Experience the epic fourth installment of the Dark Operator series and join Kel on a desperate, daring mission against an evil that runs deep in the heart of the Republic. Become a Dark Operator and escape the expected.

Kel tells his buddies and superiors about the blackmail and they formulate a plan to root out the mastermind behind this corruption of the Dark Ops. They succeed and the Head of the Senate appears to be behind things. They disappear him and suddenly Kel has a real chance at living the life of a civvie with a spacefaring family. The book ends with him not sure which way he’ll go.

My Thoughts:

Yeah, THIS is what I expect from a Galaxy’s Edge book. This showed how Nether Ops, those dastardly evil spawn of hell, got their start. And it showed them getting their butts totally kicked by the good guys! Now THAT is how a story is supposed to be told.

Near the beginning I was afraid Kel was going to try do the Lone Wolf thing and go against the Legion, but I should have known better. The author isn’t an idiot and as such his characters aren’t idiots just to propel the plot. Thank goodness for good story telling (again).

There is only one more Dark Operator book left and I suspect it will end with Kel either leaving the Legion for a family, or they all die and he becomes a hardened warrior out to KTF. I hope he gets his happy ending, he deserves it after what he’s gone through in these 4 books so far!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

• All My “Galaxy’s Edge” Reviews
• Galaxy’s Edge: Season One
• Galaxy’s Edge: Tyrus Rechs
• Galaxy’s Edge: The Savage Wars
• Galaxy’s Edge: Order of the Centurion
• Galaxy’s Edge: Dark Operator

The Best of Lester Del Rey ✬☆☆☆☆ DNF@74%

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Best of Lester Del Rey
Series: ———-
Authors: Lester Del Rey
Rating: 0.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF Short Story Collection
Pages: 350 DNF / 259
Words: 130K DNF / 96K

Synopsis:

TOC

“The Magnificent” [introduction] (Frederik Pohl)

“Helen O’Loy” (from Astounding Science-Fiction, Dec. 1938)

“The Day Is Done” (from Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1939)

“The Coppersmith” (from Unknown, Sep. 1939)

“Hereafter, Inc.” (from Unknown Worlds, Dec. 1941)

“The Wings of Night” (from Astounding Science-Fiction, Mar. 1942)

“Into Thy Hands” (from Astounding Science Fiction, Aug. 1945)

“And It Comes Out Here” (from Galaxy Science Fiction, Feb. 1951)

“The Monster” (from Argosy, Jun. 1951)

“The Years Draw Nigh” (from Astounding Science Fiction, Oct. 1951)

“Instinct” (from Astounding Science Fiction, Jan. 1952)

“Superstition” (from Astounding Science Fiction, Aug. 1954)

“For I Am a Jealous People!” (from Star Short Novels, Oct. 1954)

“The Keepers of the House” (from Fantastic Universe, Jan. 1956)

“Little Jimmy” (from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Apr. 1957)

“The Seat of Judgment” (from Venture Science Fiction Magazine, Jul. 1957)

“Vengeance Is Mine” (from Galaxy Magazine, Dec, 1964)

“Author’s Afterword”

My Thoughts:

Several of these stories made quite clear what Del Rey thought about Christianity as a whole but I was able to read past them. Then I got to “For I Am a Jealous People” and it got downright blasphemous. I was teetering on dnf’ing and trying to make up my mind when another sentence hit me. A character is talking about the Bible and God and says something like “I just wish I knew where Jesus fit into all of this”. That did it. The Bible is crystal clear that Jesus is the second person of the Godhead, is not a created being AND is the only way for humanity to get to heaven. It was obvious that Del Rey knew exactly what he was doing as his deliberate misuse of Scripture by a character showed his was very familiar with it.

So dnf’d at 74% and 1/2star for blasphemy.

⭐

Rating: 0.5 out of 5.