●●●◐○ The Second Artifact - David Collins {Artifact 2} (nov) 2024
In the first book, the ancient alien spaceship that a human had linked up with voyaged outside the regular travel routes, encountered a damaged ship, and rescued a powerful figure. This book, they stumble upon an experimental ship from an unknown race with a hyperdrive vastly better than the galactic standard. This finding a new artifact each time is going to seem increasingly silly, but the series is light, fast-paced adventure, and I need that right now.
●●●○○ Beyond Death's Gateway - Paul Ernst {Doctor Satan 6} (nvt) 1936
The antepenultimate Doctor Satan tale sees him acquire a drug that kills the taker – but it wears off after twelve hours. After the de rigueur death of some magnates, Ashton Keane figures out the archvillain's plot, and manages to get his hands on some of the potion as well.
This lets Keane meet his dead father, and fight Doctor Satan in the afterlife. The series is going off the rails, but there's only one more story to read before the final story, which I by chance read first and liked, causing me to seek out the whole set.
●●●○○ The Lost Kafoozalum - Pauline Ashwell {Lizzie Lee 2} (nvt) 1960
The second-written (but fourth by internal chronology) story about the Cultural Engineering sees Lizzie and her classmates about to graduate. They're shanghaied into a final project, trying to stop a planet that was settled by two separate ships (each of which only learned of the other decades later) from starting a civil war.
While I still enjoy Lizzie Lee's personality, this tale was nothing special, and ends on a sour note (which might have been less so in 1960), when the 37-year-old Doctor M’Clare, Lizzie's teacher, confesses his love for his 24-year-old student, and the she reciprocates, with the implication being they'll soon marry. That's just icky.
●●●○○ MacHinery - Eric Frank Russell (ss) 1950
A robot salesman is saddled with a new model to take on his sales calls. The FRM-1 looks like a portly uncle, and goes by the name Efrem MacHinery. Efrem gains an imagination, and produces a comedy of errors when his daydreams become visible to others.
●●●◐○ Ararat - Zenna Henderson (ss) 1952
Zenna Henderson's first story about the People, fugitives from another world who ended up on Earth. They look human, but have various psychic and telekinetic powers. Here there small valley needs a new teacher to come in and deal with a new crop of students.
This usually ends badly, when students can't refrain from accidentally levitating or using telekinesis, and the (usually elderly) teacher flees in terror. This time the valley is assigned a young teacher. Perhaps things will go better.
●●○○○ Heel - Philip José Farmer (ss) 1960
Zeus is an alien movie director, working in his looks-like-a-cloud studio parked above Troy, where his writers and techs are guiding the war with Achilles and Patroclus and the rest to a thrilling conclusion. But the studio has been there months longer than planned, so some crew, like writer Apollo, are scheming to cut the production short.
●●●●○ The Thing in the Attic - James Blish (ss) 1954
For doubting that Giants gave them civilization, Honath and four other unbelievers were exiled from the treetops and sent to Hell at the floor of the forest. Within a day, two of their party were dead, victims of huge beasts. Yet the surviving trio went on, enduring dangers like dinosaurs and giant sloths, and finding mysteries like blue lava (only an accident showed Honath it was a stream, since in the Attic, only rain and still pools in large plants exist).
The monkey-like folk made their way through unknown territory, eventually climbing to the top of a mesa, where they made a discovery proving they were both totally wrong and completely correct. It would change their people forever. #pantropy
●●●○○ Meeting of the Board - Alan E. Nourse (ss) 1955
In the old days, the Vice President of Production would have a nice office at the factory. But Robling Titanium, like other companies, had been taken over by the unions, and management was kept on a short leash. What mattered to union leaders was producing a solid – and growing – dividend for shareholding union members every quarter.
Research and Development and other departments had been cut to the bone. After years of this, the business was flagging, and management only had bad news for the controlling union, which it certainly didn't take well. Management was forced into taking drastic action: locking the controlling computers and going on strike. Heavy-handed.
●●●○○ The Third Artifact - David Collins {Artifact 3} (nov) 2024
Yet another found object, this one a half-million-year-old transport ship in which a human-like species (nearly as genetically close to Earth folk as chimps) had been marooned in without gravity. Our crew naturally rescues the Munchkins and made some crew.
They also rescue some stranded semi-merfolk aliens, and take them home. And rescue a Kipitz ship which blew its warpdrive, incorporating them into their crew. And, where last book our humans found a jumpdrive twenty times faster then the warpdrive other races use, this time they find a gravity generator. This seems to be the pattern. Find artifacts, rescue people, contact new species, more. An upbeat, kind-hearted adventure series.
●●●◐○ The Margenes - Miriam Allen deFord (ss) 1956
Marge and Gene were participating in a grunion run – scooping up small fish that had come ashore on a California beach – one April night in 1960, when they and others found another lifeform like a small donut also swarming the shore. The 1960s were a time of worrying about overpopulation and famine, so imagine how people felt when scientists discovered this lifeform had all the vitamins and proteins and so on a person needed, and they tasted great, too.
An industry was quickly set up to gather the margenes (named after the couple who brought them to scientific notice), process them into one-inch cubes, and sell them for very little. In their inexplicably vast numbers, they became a basic food for the world, and regular food became luxury additions. Now imagine what happened when, just as suddenly as things had started, the margene runs ceased in May 1969: Worldwide economic collapse, food riots, the Short War of 1970.
Science fiction writers had long wondered what would happen if aliens from other planets should come to Earth. “The margenes gave us the answer. […] We ate them.”
●●●◐○ The Fourth Artifact - David Collins {Artifact 4} (nov) 2024
A reflected radio signal detected by our young heroes' ship has the Stardust II¹ heading significantly beyond known space, where they contacted a race of dinosaur-like aliens without FTL, who had two colony worlds settled via generation ship. Ben, Chloe, and company also arrive in time to see the dino homeworld under attack by aliens with compound eyes who speak via light pulses from their antennas.
Since they're travelling with Meera (the human body a copy of the current War-Ender is in), several variant avatars, and her huge weapon ships, ending that war is no huge effort. So our do-gooders continue.
At this point Benjamin nominally owns all the Kipitz worlds (they felt they'd be safer that way, since it was their leaders who has almost started the most recent war) as well as many spaceships and space stations. He's the richest human to ever exist, by far. And he's a nice guy.
Yeah, we're not going for deep or realistic fiction here, but I like the series, and unlike the other fast series I read, there's no misogyny or racism. Two more books, and then I've read all released to date.
●●●◐○ Ballroom of the Skies - John D. MacDonald (nov) 1952
Reporter Dake Lorin was working with a distinguished American to try to come up with a political solution that would prevent the Great Powers – Irania, Pak-India, and Greater Brazil – from starting World War Four.² At the last minute, his boss did something completely out of character, and tanked the agreement.
Looking into this puzzle, Dake discovered that there were aliens using psychic powers to keep Earth in a state of constant chaos and destruction. His investigation resulted in various people dying, and put his girlfriend in a mental asylum. But at the end Dake found his answer, and it wasn't at all what he expected.
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[1] Benjamin and crew upgraded their original ship last book, moving crew and AI Jessie to a bigger ship. They arrange for a further upgrade this time.
[2] World War Three saw Europe heavily bombed, and the Soviet Union and United States lightly nuked. They survived, but economic and societal collapse left them politically powerless.
Cumulative 2025 totals as of Week Eighteen:
118 ss | 16 nvt | 02 nva | 41 nov | #AmReading #books
Tag to block if these reading posts annoy you: #BokBooks
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