Books: Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic by Terry Jones (1997)

Originally, Starship Titanic was an adventure game written and designed by Douglas Adams, which was started in 1996 and released in 1998. The game takes place on the eponymous starship, which the player is tasked with repairing by locating the missing parts of its control system. The gameplay involves solving puzzles and speaking with the bots inside the ship. The game features a text parser similar to those of text adventure games with which the player can talk with characters. The game scored mixed reviews and was a financial disappointment, but it was re-released for modern PCs in 2015.

Back in late 1997, Terry Jones of Monty Python fame –by request of Adam’s himself- was given the task of adapting the background outline the late author created for the game (and which started life as a footnote in the third Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novel Life, the Universe and Everything) in novel form and thus we have Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic.

"On the planet Blérontin, we are preparing to inaugurate with great pomp the Starship Titanic, a formidable spaceship, the last creation of Leovinus, the greatest inventor of the universe and of all times. However, of course, the craft was sabotaged - a smart bomb was placed on board - and all the conditions are thus gathered for this first experimental flight to be an unprecedented disaster, putting in particular the grave passengers: Leovinus, a parrot of the planet Yassacan, a journalist named The Journalist and a trio of innocent humans"

Now I know why I waited twenty years to read it, mostly because I'm was not completely sure what I was expecting. I knew –or sensed- that the book would not really read like a Douglas Adams book, and I was right. It does have its moments, and there are a few inspired bits, but it’s clear that Monty Python actor/writer/director Terry Jones brought more his sensibilities to the tale than Douglas Adams. The characters were fairly broad and all unmemorable –including the humans. Much like the a few Doctor Who novels adapted from Adams scripts, this book reminds me again what we lost when Adams died in 2001 at the age of 49. He was a remarkably unique and brilliant man, one of kind in many ways.

The adaptations of his works are fine in many ways, but I still wish he walked the good Earth, amusing us and making us think.

Books: The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2018)

"Nine-year-old Alicia lost her parents during the Spanish Civil War when the Nacionales (the fascists) savagely bombed Barcelona in 1938. Twenty years later, she still carries the emotional and physical scars of that violent and terrifying time. Weary of her work as an investigator for Spain’s secret police in Madrid, a job she has held for more than a decade, the twenty-nine-year old plans to move on. At the insistence of her boss, Leandro Montalvo, she remains to solve one last case: the mysterious disappearance of Spain’s Minister of Culture, Mauricio Valls. With her partner, the intimidating policeman Juan Manuel Vargas, Alicia discovers a possible clue—a rare book by the author Victor Mataix hidden in Valls’ office in his Madrid mansion. Valls was the director of the notorious Montjuic Prison in Barcelona during World War II where several writers were imprisoned, including David Martín and Victor Mataix. Traveling to Barcelona on the trail of these writers, Alicia and Vargas meet with several booksellers, including Juan Sempere, who knew her parents. As Alicia and Vargas come closer to finding Valls, they uncover a tangled web of kidnappings and murders tied to the Franco regime, whose corruption is more widespread and horrifying than anyone imagined. Alicia’s courageous and uncompromising search for the truth puts her life in peril. Only with the help of a circle of devoted friends will she emerge from the dark labyrinths of Barcelona and its history into the light of the future."

While a satisfying, if over-long, finale to a quartet of books, The Labyrinth of the Spirits may be the weakest entry in Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. While the prose remains strong, gorgeous even, the tale takes forever to get moving –to the point where I thought of giving up. The plot is complex, but not overtly intimidating, though out of the four books, this one should be read last (it was said that the books can be read in any order), as characters from the three previous books are all here. 

Much like other books, as well, we get a mystery, literary references, some bright and high humor, and a large body count. Alicia proves to be both a formidable creation, but can be irritating as well. She is clever, and sometimes that’s just because the plot requires her to be –same as the pain in her side happens when needed. But she is the anti-hero we’ve seen over the last few decades in TV and movies. 

These books, really, cling to the old-style way of telling a story, with much attention being paid to Spain itself as to the humans that occupy the country. A modern book, with old time charm.

Books: Elevation By Stephen King (2018)

“Although Scott Carey doesn’t look any different, he’s been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are. Scott doesn’t want to be poked and prodded. He mostly just wants someone else to know, and he trusts Doctor Bob Ellis. In the small town of Castle Rock, Scott is engaged in a low grade—but escalating—battle with the lesbians next door whose dog regularly drops his business on Scott’s lawn. One of the women is friendly; the other, cold as ice. Both are trying to launch a new restaurant, but the people of Castle Rock want no part of a gay married couple, and the place is in trouble. When Scott finally understands the prejudices they face–including his own—he tries to help. Unlikely alliances, the annual foot race, and the mystery of Scott’s affliction bring out the best in people who have indulged the worst in themselves and others.”

There is a lot of irony of setting this uplifting short novel in Castle Rock, a town King has used as the setting for many iconic tales of terror (and revisited for the first time in many years, with a 2017's short novel he penned with Richard Chizmar, Gwendy’s Button Box). This town, much like neighboring Derry, has suffered many horrors, with many folks who live there existing in a world of indifference to its horribleness –hence the dislike for Deirdre and Missy (though that may just be more homophobia than evilness) and their restaurant get, the vegetarian Holy Frijole.

So yes, the only evil that exists in Elevation is the closed-mindedness of its people to a lesbian couple trying to live the American dream. Scott Carey, like a lot of men, is not one to go to doctors to find out what is happening to him, but he does realizes his own thoughtlessness of Missy and Deirdre and decides –like accepting his fate- he will do something about it.

It’s always surprising (though it shouldn’t be) what King can do. Even as one of his “constant readers”, he can still astound me with his prose and originality of his stories. And while he still has a huge fan base of readers, there are still many who just see him as a popular horror novelist. I think after four decades of publishing novels, some would see he is more than the sum of a certain genre.

Elevation is a entertaining read, fun and moving.

Books: Groucho Marx, Master Dectective By Ron Goulart (1998)

“Set in 1937 after the Marx Brothers' career in films had peaked. Groucho is in his late forties. The Dr. Watson to his Sherlock Holmes is young Frank Denby, a Hollywood screenwriter who is working with him on a new radio show named like the title of the novel. When a starlet dies at her home, allegedly a suicide, Groucho resolves to learn what really happened. The young woman had been one of Groucho's many extracurricular affairs, and he's certain she would not have killed herself. So is everyone else except the cops and the executives at the studio where she was angling for a major role in an upcoming movie. Groucho and Frank set out on a madcap investigation that causes them to be kidnapped, shot at, and clubbed on the head more than once.”

Groucho Marx, Master Detective is a pretty funny book, and prolific author Ron Goulart shows off -with a great dexterity- to have an innate ability to mimic the legendary comedian. Sometimes the mystery –which covers some of the darker aspects of Hollywood- takes a backseat to Groucho’s monologues, but the book is often a hoot and yields many surprises.

This was one of six novels the writer produced between 1998 and 2005 featuring Groucho, however, I mostly knew Goulart for his work in fantasy and science fiction and only recently stumbled upon this book series when I was looking for other works by him. I have been reading his short novels on and off since the 1980s, though he’s been producing a wide body of work in many genres since 1952 (he would also publish a great deal of works under a variety of pen names). Goulart is mostly known for his satire on science fiction genre, but he’s also penned comics for Marvel, wrote several novels based on Lee Falk’s The Phantom (using the pseudonym "Frank Shawn") in the 1970s –and where he continues to this day to produce stories for The Phantom comic book. He also ghost wrote all nine of the TekWar novels that were released under William Shatner’s name between 1989 and 1997.

Books: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer By Rick Riordan (2015)

“On his 16th birthday, homeless Boston orphan Magnus Chase (daughter-of-Athena Annabeth’s cousin) magically summon an ancient Norse sword, uses it against a fireball-throwing monster, drops the sword, and dies—but a girl in hijab on a flying horse grabs him and deposits him at the Hotel Valhalla for a new afterlife of perpetual preparation for Ragnarok. Turns out Ragnarok will come pretty soon unless he can retrieve the sword and somehow use it to rebind Fenris Wolf, who is about to slip the magical rope that’s kept him bound for millennia. This will take some doing.”

After the huge success of his Percy Jackson & The Olympians and its sequel series Heroes of Olympus (which I did not bother to read) Rick Riordan released the trilogy called the Kane Chronicles, which tackled Egyptian Mythology. I only read the first book in that series, The Red Pyramid and for one reason or another, never went on to read the others. Pyramid was not bad, but I saw Riordan sort of just doing a variation on a theme here. Plus, he still had difficulty creating three dimensional women characters that did not sound like guys.

But for reasons I can’t explain, I picked up his Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series, which takes on Norse Mythology. Riordan does not stray too far from what’s come before, although this first book, The Sword of Summer, plays out more like an absurdist comedy than the mostly serious Percy Jackson books were.  And Magnus is a fairly likable character, smart and solves his problems rather cleverly. To balance out the blond, blue-eyed, skinny twink that is Chase, Riordan gives us a diverse supporting cast that includes a Muslim girl (who does not appear devote here, but seems happy with her future arranged marriage, which also means she and Magnus can be friends, which helps narrative because we don’t have any romantic tension between them) and a deaf elf and dark skinned dwarf.

The book is overlong by about 50 or 60 pages and that’s too bad. By the last 150 or so of this nearly 500 page book, I was ready for the story to end. And while Riordan clearly knows his mythology and expertly crafts them into his narrative, he also needs to know when to stop, because I actually felt the last third of the book was boring (if only because you already knew the ending). Much like the Kane Chronicles, I’m unsure if I want to continue onto books two and three. Maybe if I come across them in a used bookstore, I’ll grab them. But for now, I must move on.