Sad news in that the worldwide distributor of comics is in financial trouble.
The slightly better news is that I think our friends in the UK are OK in that their jobs seem to be safe. Let's hope that's the case as times are hard enough for everyone at the moment as it is.
Diamond have seen the likes of Marvel and DC move away in recent months and this no doubt contributed to their problems.
Not sure what it means to comic publishers in the UK as yet, time will tell I guess.
This has been a really tough year for me and the West family.
In late November we lost my younger sister, Jacqui, to cancer.
Something like that overshadows everything and also makes you sit and take a hard look at your life and the decisions you are making.
When the person is younger than yourself it also causes you to consider your own mortality.
I'll just leave the year with this photo taken of the two of us many years ago.
The plot is quite a challenging one, where effectively actors appear to be sent to worlds to recreate historical and fictional dramas as a means to give the populace something else to think about rather than how bad their lives were. This predates streaming services and I doubt it would be written in today's world. Back in the 1970s though there were only a few channels and programmes ended at midnight and started again around 8am, so I guess with that context this plot makes some kind of sense.
I didn't really connect with the lead character, Spingarn, which resulted in my not really connecting with the book.
Not sure what else Brian N Ball has written but I think there's where he failed here.
This has got to be one of the strangest Science Fiction books that I've ever read.
The Earth is being invaded by giant beings from a distant planet. During hostilities one of these giants is brought down and killed. Kept in a very large refrigerator the alien is then converted into a vehicle for a couple of very clever and gifted scientists to take the fight back to the alien home world.
Yep. the scientists sit in the creature's head and drive its body, operate its speech and effectively try to come across as one of them.
Oh, they have to learn the language too.
I've read a fair number of books in my time and thought, 'Yes, I could have come up with something a bit like that, just not as well written.' This is not one of those books. I wouldn't have come up with this in a million years.
I'll look out for any other books by Joseph Green in the DAW back catalogue. I'm not sure how he could follow this one tough.
Well, I'm looking after my mother last the moment as she traverses a course of chemo therapy.
I've been subjected to all of those soaps, you know the ones, EastEnders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale Farm... errr.. sorry Emmerdale, that I grew up with, and left behind as quickly as I could
My Mum also loves her musicals and growing up I got to enjoy all and any film with Howard Keel and Mario Lanza in them.
So, imagine my joy at seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show come up on the TV listings 😏
Centred on twins, warrior brother and witch sister the story ambles along nicely but the problem I found is that since reading books like this I've read books by the likes of Steven Erikson and Joe Abercombie and I'm afraid this felt very light weight in comparison. The central characters were never as fleshed out or engaging as books written today, I guess there was more novelty in fantasy stories and the book gathered fans based on the story and concepts rather then the writing style or characterisation.
All in all, it was readable and moved along nicely. It didn't however make me want to track down the other six and immerse myself in more of Andre Norton's stories.
When I was growing up I started my reading of fantasy with R E Howard's Conan books and science fiction books by A E Van Vogt and Isaac Asimov.
I still remember picking up my first R E Howard Conan book, the Sphere edition of Conan, when I was 10 years old at a charity event run for the local children's hospital (which was to take out my appendix a few years later)
Every now and then over the coming years I would pick up a book by the DAW publisher.
It allowed me to sample the works of new writers and I loved the yellow spine which made them all look so neat on my shelf.
A few years ago I started coming across DAW books in Charity shops and decided to pick them up with a view to re-reading, or reading them for the first time.
A year or so later it became more about the collecting than the reading but I am working my way, slowly, through them.
