This place has been quiet, but I haven’t. I’ve been working on a couple of novels I have under contract (about 60% done on the first and will then start the second). I’ll let you know how that goes in a future post. In the meantime, I finished a drawing, which I’m delighted to share here. It’s one of GM’s dream cars from the 1950s.
As always, this was a great way to relax after a long day of day job followed by a grueling writing session!
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.
Hello, Everyone! I’ve been enjoying my little blogging break, and I hope everyone has been well. I’m back to tell you that I have a new book out. A new book is always exciting, and this one particularly so–Savage Prey is a bit of pure monster mayhem in the Amazon. If that isn’t cool, I don’t know what is.
Check out this cover:
Here’s how Amazon describes the book:
Investigative reporter Phil Carsons’ original assignment was risky: travel deep into the Amazon to locate a lab in which dinosaurs are being weaponized by rogue genetic engineers. Still, he was confident that his status as a famous journalist would protect him.
But when a helicopter crash lands him in the middle of a terrorist camp, things are suddenly more serious. And when monstrous creatures descend upon the camp, Carsons is thrust into a terrifying battle for survival.
Outnumbered and outgunned, Carsons and the terrorists form an uneasy alliance. But even together, they are nothing more than savage prey!
Whew. This has been an intense couple of years. I realize that I’ve been posting here three times a week for quite a while now… and it’s time to slow down a little.
This doesn’t mean that CE will close, but the frequency will be less and dedicated to major stuff. Perhaps a couple of times a month, perhaps even less.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the rest of my life is slowing down… I’m about to launch a monthly newsletter for anyone interested in keeping up with my adventures (just drop me a PM or a line in a comment, and I’ll add you in!). You can also look for me on Facebook, or X or Instagram.
Also, the writing is in high gear, so the time I save will be used to focus on that.
When I was a kid in the ’80s, we knew things. We knew what an MG was (the rubber-bumpered MGB). We knew what a Triumph was (the TR7), and we knew the VW Beetle was the most common item on the road. And we knew that the Corvette was the one people called the Plastic Pig.
But back in 1967, this was a new and exciting vehicle which, like every Corvette since (at least until Road & Track lost its way), merited the cover of the magazine.
Unlike the ore recent versions of the car, R&T found a lot of reasons to be critical of this particular iteration. As with most American cars of the day, they found it to be too big for its intended purpose, as well as being inefficiently packaged (the opposite of the mythical palaces bigger on the outside than on the inside, apparently). Worse, they were unimpressed with the overall handling balance.
And they said so. Clearly.
Which is interesting. My own R&T era, 1989-2014 or so was a time when criticisms of cars were definitely printed, but never as pungently as the magazine appeared to do in the 1960s. Was this just a question of cars getting better (remember that in the 1970s cars were regulated into utter worthlessness, and it took engineers a decade to get the problems under control), or did the magazine get softer as society became more thin-skinned?
I suspect a combination of both (and I shudder to imagine what would be said on social media if magazine editors today actually spoke their minds about stuff–not just cars–in the way the did in the 1960s), plus a drive for corporate profitability. The sense that you could antagonize sponsors doesn’t seem to be something 1990s corporate magazines would accept.
The rest of the mag was per usual, and It’s amazing how much more I enjoy reading these than 1970s issues, despite there being only a short gap between them.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.
I did another drawing, although, to be honest, time has cut into my drawing time recently. But every once in a while I manage to get a drawing out the door. The latest was the BMW 3.0 CSL that ran at Le Mans in 1977. Have a look.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.
I know the whole billionaires to space thing is a controversial topic, but anyone who’s actually thought about it will be convinced that, regardless of what you think of Elon, Bezos and the rest, they are doing the most important work in the world. Why? Because humanity’s only hope for long-term survival is to get out into the galaxy.
Anyone saying the contrary is wrong, but you shouldn’t hold it against them: it’s quite obvious they haven’t given the matter much thought, and are just repeating something they saw on Tiktok. Ignore the noise and move on.
But the more you learn about space exploration, the more it becomes evident that the billionaires have simply filled a void created by bumbling, slow and ineffective government-run space programs. (and it hurts me to say that, because, as you know, NASA is responsible for mankind’s greatest achievement). So let the billionaires have their fun… our descendants will reap the rewards.
All of this is a long way of saying that I recently read an issue of Ad Astra, which, as it does every time I read one of these, has me thinking about space exploration even more than I usually do (which is a lot). The second wave of space exploration, in which private companies are accepted as an important part of the landscape (and consequently so are more efficient, cheaper launches that slowly edge into accessibility by regular – or at least less-extremely-wealthy – individuals) is called Newspace, and it’s an exciting thing to read about. There are so many projects, so many options, so much excitement. It used to be that only national programs could do things, and only a handful got approved every year… now it’s a wonderful world of projects and dreams and different technologies.
Of course, a golden age like this always runs the risk of governments stepping in and overregulating. We saw that in the endless bureaucracy and delays with the Starship tests (I know you need to investigate certain things… the frustrating part is when the investigations go unnecessarily slowly).
In the face of this, I hope some less-bureaucratic countries decide that the enormous economic benefits are worth deregulating… and they become a haven for the private space industry if even the US succumbs to overregulation.
Exciting times, and kudos to the NSS for producing such a wonderful companion for those of us trying to keep it all straight.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.
I love the Hard Case Crime series. These books represent fun, quick reads in a world that asks just a little too much. By coincidence, the first two books I happened to read in this series (which features dozens of authors) were both by Lawrence Block.
As usual, the “hero” is anything but. He’s the titular grifter who, in a turn of events that every crime fiction reader could see coming a mile away, gets caught in someone else’s little scam and really descends to the depths.
The fun part of this is how he turns the scam on its head and gives us a disturbing and unexpected denouement. Surprising, and surprisingly dark. And though the end seems extremely daring today, I suppose the 1960s, when this one was published, were a different era.
Good stuff – I’ll keep buying these.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.
If there is one man in the world who, circa 1989 was authorized to speak about robots in science fiction, that man was Isaac Asimov. After all, he created the Three Laws of Robotics and he wrote dozens of robot stories and even a few novels (which, say it softly, I actually enjoyed more than his Foundation series).
So when a book with his name and input in it comes out… and it’s a book or robot short stories, I tend to sit up and take notice.
Unlike the volume about Aliens I recently wrote about, this one doesn’t limit itself to pulling stories from the pages of Asmiov’s magazine, but actually looks across the breadth and depth of the entire SF spectrum. So you have tales as old as 1940 and as new as 1985.
I know many people attack the Golden Age of Science Fiction. And although most of these criticisms are based on silly little political agendas that have nothing to do with the artistry of the work in question, there are a few criticisms that I find valid, although whether that makes the work bad or good is purely a matter of taste.
It’s definitely true that SF stories from the 40s and 50s are simpler, and the “good” and “bad” options are often extremely clear (although this is a generalization). For some people, this oversimplification of morals seems less than literary (I will ignore, of course, those critics who attack the era’s definitions of good and evil themselves; people with zero sense of context have no business criticizing literature), and that is a valid concern. I find the simplicity of the morality of the stories comforting. It’s not how I’d write today, perhaps… but it feels good to know exactly what we should be rooting for in the context of the text.
Of course, the above misses the point, because these stories weren’t as much about exploring moral ambiguities as they were about highlighting the major issues–social and moral–that we would be facing due to changing times. They weren’t as nuanced as SF is today, but that’s because we have their shoulders to stand on: these men and women created the tropes, shorthand, assumptions and rules we use today.
The stories themselves range from the iconic (“Farewell to the Master“, the story that inspired The Day the Earth Stood Still) to the annoying (“Brother Robot“) to the extremely dark (and what did you expect when you include a tale by Philip K. Dick?).
My favorite was the opening story, “The Tunnel Under the World”, by Frederick Pohl, a tale that plays with suburban and existential anxieties from the 1950s… and subverts them beautifully with a truly magnificent ending.
This series of books are really good… but for evident reasons a volume about robots in which Asimov was involved is particularly important.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.
One nice thing about the old car hobby is that it’s pretty much pandemic-proof. Other than large gatherings, most of the things that make vintage cars enjoyable can be done without affecting others. After all, spinning a wrench in a garage is essentially a lonesome pursuit, as is just staring at your beloved classic (activities which probably account for 90% of all classic car time). As long as FedEx has trucks, you can get parts delivered.
But what about more active pursuits? Well, racing old cars, it turns out, is not a high-risk activity. Hell, it’s done outdoors at enormous facilities, each competitor is packed into his own little self-contained box on wheels… and the crowds at most vintage car races–even without a pandemic–is generally small.
The happy upshot of this is that most classic car magazines survived the pandemic just fine, as did most forms of old-car racing.
So 2022 was business as usual for Vintage Motorsport, and they turned out yet another delightful mag for their May / June issue of the year. Perhaps the most notable characteristic of this particular mag is that it focuses on American cars and racing, which is a welcome complement to my Anglo-centric usual reads.
One article in particular felt wondrous and amazing: the one about the Nutley Velodrome. Now, quite apart from the fact that Nutley Velodrome is an utterly perfect name for an insane board-racing track, a place where Mad Max would race, I enjoyed the article because I was just too young to have been around when board-track racing was a thing, or even a recent memory. It truly is an exotic era of auto racing for me.
The rest of the mag was good, too… but that article was simply wonderful.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.
Terry Brooks feels like an old friend by now, which is natural, since the first book of his I read – The Elfstones of Shannara – started me on a long journey that included a huge number of sequels and prequels. Also, the Elfstones blew my 12-year-old mind, and to this day, I actually like it better than LotR.
Recently, though, I’d fallen into a bit of a Brooks slump. I finished a sequel sub-series well in the future of his world, and then had concentrated on other things for some time.
But eventually, through the magic of the much missed and lamented Bookdepository, I bought a copy of Armageddon’s Children and restarted where I’d left off.
This is another prequel, one which links the worlds of The Word and the Void and the Shannara books. The setting is a war between humans and demons–the demons of the Shannara world–and it introduces a whole set of new characters, and shows what I assume (without having read all the books that came later) is the first inkling of a meeting between humans and elves.
Like every book in this series, this one is a page-turner, combining action and character development seamlessly in a way that makes the reader want to go on and on. And, though my least favorite part of Brooks’ world is the Word and the Void series, this book still holds my attention, just because Brooks is that good of a storyteller.
And since this is the only long-running fantasy series I read that’s still running, I’m delighted to find I still enjoy it.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.
Classically Educated 