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Bionic Reviews: Cyborg #2 – Operation Nuke by Martin Caidin (1973)

Posted in Bionic Man, books, Six Million Dollar Man, TV shows with tags Bionic Review, Book Report, books, pop culture, reviews, Six Million Dollar Man, SMDM Book, TV shows on August 27, 2012 by Paxton

This is an ongoing feature where I read, watch and review books, comics and TV shows featuring The Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman. Click the Bionic Review banner to see the Bionic Review archive page. Click the smaller banner to see only those specific reviews.

One year after Cyborg, in 1973, Caidin released his followup Steve Austin novel, Operation Nuke.

Cyborg 2

The original hardcover release is on the left. At this point, the original book was being adapted into the first The Six Million Dollar Man TV movie. As you can see, the paperback cover for this book on the right follows the same design as the later cover for Cyborg with Lee Major’s face and the mention of the TV show at the top. By the time this book hit paperback, The Six Million Dollar Man had three TV movies and was beginning its regular season run.

Cyborg 2 Operation Nuke

This is a good 70s “spy novel” but it’s not a great Bionic Man (or Cyborg) novel. Literally, Steve Austin doesn’t use any of his superhuman bionic abilities until like page 135 (of 175 pages). And he doesn’t use them again after that either. Also, at the beginning of the novel, when he’s getting his assignment, he is asked how much he knows about nuclear devices. Steve says that he had to actually build a nuclear device for one of his instructional classes with the military. This is very convenient considering the plot. And for something he did so long ago, the book makes Steve out to be a nuclear physicist with intimate knowledge of the inner workings of all nuclear bombs. That got old after a while.

Steve Austin spends most of this book infiltrating a criminal military organization in order to find out who is the leader and where they are getting their nuclear weapons. A task that doesn’t require the use of any bionic limbs. He finally uses his bionics at the end of the book when he has to carry a nuclear device from one room to another and he manages to disarm that device despite not ever seeing the insides or how it was built.

So, this was a less than satisfactory story if you are coming in expecting bionic action like the first novel. Even for a regular 70s spy novel it leaves a little something to be desired. Another thing that makes it tough to read is Caidin’s writing style. Caidin tends to describe things a lot. He may start off a chapter or section of a chapter by talking about certain objects or the surrounding environment and it’ll take a page and a half before people start talking or some action pertaining to the story happens. It causes the reader to “skip ahead” a bit to get things moving. So, all in all, this was a very disappointing book. Hopefully the next book will deliver more bionic goodness.

I stand up to Stephen King’s The Stand: Uncut Edition

Posted in books, Stephen King with tags Book Report, books, pop culture, reviews, Stephen King on August 7, 2012 by Paxton

I’m a big Stephen King fan. I’ve read a lot of his work. My favorites are probably his short story collections; Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, Four Past Midnight, etc.

As for his regular novels, I’ve read several, but my favorites would probably be Eyes of the Dragon and Misery. However, I had never conquered what is considered King’s magnum opus. I had never read The Stand. I can’t tell you why I never read it. There is probably a bit of intimidation in there, but nonetheless, it remained a hole in my King reading. I think it was my reading of The Gunslinger that kept me from reading The Stand. I hated The Gunslinger, but that’s a tale for another time.

Then Trish from Love, Laughter and Insanity decided to start up The Standalong. It was a group read-a-long of King’s The Stand. I thought, if I’m ever going to read this book, then it needs to be NOW. So I signed up and started reading the book on June 3. Here are my thoughts.

First the good, because I don’t want to just bitch. The book was well written with well written characters. There are many parts I found fascinating like the spread of Captain Trips, the devolution of society as it realizes everyone is dying. The rebuilding of society in the Boulder Free Zone. Flagg’s Las Vegas community. Those all were interesting and I enjoyed reading about them. However, the main fault of the book is that it’s too damn long.

I read the uncut version. I thought if I’m going to read this book, then I’ll read the original “author’s vision”. The uncut edition paperback I have is 1138 pages long. 1138 pages. I was reading it for the entire month of June. I had to stop around page 700 to read two other books as an intermission because, like I said, this book is just too damn long. It’s exhausting to read, especially considering the type of story.

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Review of Oz Book 6: The Emerald City of Oz (1910)

Posted in books, Wizard of Oz with tags Book Report, books, Oz books readthru, reviews, Wizard of Oz on July 30, 2012 by Paxton

Moving right along in my quest to read all of the original Frank Baum Oz novels. Here we are at Book 6. To see my reviews of the first 5 books in this series, click the banner above. Otherwise, keep on reading…

Like the last book, I picked up the illustrated eBook of this from the B&N Nook Store for .99 from Eltanin Publishing. They have rendered a beautifully edited and formatted text and kept all the original Neill illustrations intact. I have been supremely happy with Eltanin’s work thus far on the Oz eBooks I’ve read (Books 4, 5 and 6). They are well worth purchasing and you can’t beat the price. Eltanin is slowly working their way through this series. I also picked up book 7 from them. Unfortunately they haven’t released anything further than book 7 but my hopes are high that the rest will come soon. Check out Eltanin Publishing for some really nice eBooks.

So, the last Oz book, The Road to Oz, was released in 1909 and this book was released the following summer in 1910. As I mentioned, John Neill would once again contribute wonderfully detailed illustrations for the book’s interiors. As a side note, John Neill would go on to write and illustrate several Oz books after Frank Baum died.

With this book, Baum had every intention of ending the Oz series. While reading the book, you can easily see that Baum was closing the door on Oz. We had seen him, in Book 5, parade around characters from his other non-Oz books to drum up interest in those with the hopes of sending his fans to his other stories.

With this being “the last Oz book” as Baum originally envisioned, Baum pulled out all the storytelling stops. Instead of telling one story where we follow a group of characters through a fairly land all the way until the end of the book, in this book Baum tells two different story threads and shifts between them. The first story thread involves the Nome King who first appeared back in Book 3. He’s extremely pissed at being defeated by a little girl and her pet chicken. Plus, they stole his magic belt. So, he gathers his army, convinces several more evil and sinister characters in Oz to take up his cause and storm the Emerald City to take it by force. While the Nome King builds this army and plans his attack, the second story thread involves Dorothy returning to Oz to ask Ozma to allow her and her Aunt and Uncle to live there permanently. The cyclone from Book 1 has destroyed their Kansas farm and the land is about to be taken over by the bank. Ozma agrees and sends Dorothy and her Aunt and Uncle on a carriage tour throughout the countryside of Oz. Along the way, Dorothy learns of the impending attack on the Emerald City and tries to return in time to warn Ozma.

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A counterpoint review of The Garbage Pail Kids retrospective book

Posted in 80s, books, Garbage Pail Kids, pop culture, reviews with tags Book Report, books, Garbage Pail Kids, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews on July 26, 2012 by Paxton

Back in April, over on Nerd Lunch, CT wrote an extremely honest review of that Garbage Pail Kids retrospective book that was released earlier this year. He admitted that he didn’t have the nostalgia tied in with the cards to make him really love that book.

I, on the other hand, do have that nostalgia and CT had me write a counterpoint to his book review. That review was just posted today over on Nerd Lunch.

As a previous collector of the cards when they were originally released, click on over and see what I thought of the book.

Review of Dream Team by Jack McCallum (2012)

Posted in basketball, books, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, NBA, pop culture, reviews, sports with tags Book Report, books, Dream Team, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, NBA, pop culture, review, sports on July 20, 2012 by Paxton

So this week I’ve been looking at the 1992 Dream Team as this year is their 20th anniversary. On Monday I talked about their first appearance in the Tournament of Americas. On Thursday I looked at how that team had been merchandised and marketed to the world. Today, I’m going to review a brand new book about the Dream Team that came out a week ago. It’s a behind the scenes book written by Sports Illustrated writer Jack McCallum. The book is titled simply, Dream Team.

On the surface, this book is similar to another book that was released in 1993 called The Golden Boys by Cameron Stauth.

Like Stauth, McCallum was a reporter that hung around the Dream Team at the time of the 1992 Olympics. McCallum gathered his notes and interviews with an eye towards releasing his book, like Stauth, right after the team won gold. Unlike Stauth, McCallum’s book deal fell through. McCallum kept those notes, however, and used them to write this new book. And he supplemented it with new interviews.

Unlike Stauth, however, since this new book is being released 20 years later, he can get some perspective on the 12 man circus that was known as the original Dream Team. None of these guys are still active in the NBA. Twenty years makes people a lot more comfortable about revealing what really went on. In Stauth’s book, you weren’t going to get the honest truth so close to the situation (except from, maybe, Charles Barkley). With McCallum, new interviews with the members of the team and the officials/executives that made the team happen are much more candid. People now are much more willing to talk about the behind the scenes machinations that made this team. And this is why McCallum’s book is endorsed by the NBA and Team USA and Stauth’s book was not.

Case in point, the controversy surrounding the exclusion of Detroit Pistons point guard, Isiah Thomas. McCallum covers this topic at length. It’s very interesting what everyone has to say about this. Essentially, it comes down to Thomas really keeping himself off the team, but, there were definitely people that didn’t want him there. Players and executives.

I didn’t make the team?!