Early Space, an Overview

So you’ve decided to read the blog of a science fiction writer… then I guess you really asked for this. Every once in a while, I read stuff that would truly only be interesting to other genre writers, space buffs of members of the space industry.

This is one of those times. Impressionable readers may wish to look away now.

Rockets, Missiles and Spacecraft of the National Air and Space Museum is a book published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1976. It documents the items on exhibit at the museum opening in July 1976. It’s quite an interesting read, as essentially anything that flew vertically in the US is there, and there’s even a model of Sputnik I, which, as the height of the cold war, is a little surprising.

Though I read it for pleasure, this is more of a research tool in case I’m ever in a “what was that old space probe called” jam. The text is descriptive, dry and unexciting, which is quite the opposite of what the vehicles themselves were. These things were not just pushing the boundaries of human knowledge… they also tended to blow up quite often along the way.

It also reinforces again why the Air and Space Museum is so many people’s favorite part of the Smithsonian: from the outset, the exhibit was planned to be comprehensive, and judging by this book, it truly was.

So this one is an interesting piece of history that happened to land in my hands because I bought a bunch of utterly unrelated books. Serendipity.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose latest book is Safe and Sorry, a collection of linked short stories that reflect upon the state of the world… and the nuttiness of its people. You can check it out here.

And there it is

We all knew this moment was coming. If the magazine was in my pile, I’d eventually be showing off the issue of Road & Track in which the Ferrari Testarossa (the cover text is wrong – it’s just one word) would appear.

Here you go. December 1984.

Ugh. The 1980s, with the glorious exception of the GTO and the F40 were a bad era for Ferrari styling. Gnomes such as the Mondial and the 348 were foisted on an unsuspecting public. But worst of all was the Testarossa.

The 12-cylinder flagship of the line couldn’t be that ugly, could it? Not after the sublime BB, surely.

But it was.

And it was a pity, as the TR was always a highly capable performance car that didn’t deserve to look this way.

Ferrari, of course, was lucky. The car was launched in the 1980s which, though good for music and individuality was not necessarily a mecca of good taste. So a wildly over-the-top sports car not only worked, but was revered by those people who couldn’t get enough of Porsche Turbos with the whale tail and Lamborghini Countachs. If you recall, the 80s were the decade of the Vector, too.

So they sold a ton of these, and a ton of posters and lunchboxes featuring these. They had Miami Vice tie-ins and… well, you get the idea. Ferrari sold every one of these they could produce.

And it all started here, with this misspelled cover.

Other great features of this mag, apart from the f1 race coverage were articles on a rakish US-bodied Rolls and a comparison between Trans-Am racers from 1969 and 1970, a Camaro vs. Mustang feature (the Mustang had already been tested in it’s own era here).

But the overwhelmingly most significant and memorable vehicle is that bestraked monstrosity on the cover.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose latest novel is entitled Lost Island Ramapge. It’s a fun, action-packed thriller in an Indian Ocean paradise… with monsters. And maybe some cannibals. You can check it out here.

Not all Car Magazines are from the Northern Hemisphere

No. It isn’t Classic & Sportscar, for the very simple reason that there is no other magazine in the world quite as good as C&SC, regardless of genre. But Autos de época was, for a time, Argentina’s best classic car magazine. In fact, it was the only one I can think of that had anything resembling a good run. I’ve got a few scattered copies from different years.

The strong points here are the fact that the writers are both passionate and knowledgeable. You can tell they’re serious pedants in their chosen fields of passion.

On the debit side, editing and design are quite weak compared to contemporary magazines in the more competitive English-language market.

In my opinion, Autos de época is at its best when investigating obscure Argentine cars and automotive events on the Pampas… which is not the case in this special edition from 2004. This is a collection of the greatest GP cars from 1924 to 1977, as chosen by their editors.

Though the articles themselves break very little new ground (the best parts, again, are of cars that came to South America, which the northern experts probably don’t know about), it was an interesting refresher. I couldn’t really find anything to nitpick on the selections, either–the important stuff was there.

The one thing I didn’t enjoy was the fact that the list was built alphabetically by brand. I would have much preferred a chronological list, as you can see the progression.

But the mere fact that this mag existed and survived for some years is something to be celebrated.

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer whose latest book is a series of interconnected short stories entitled Safe and Sorry, which you can check out right here.

If Such a Thing as a Perfect Car Magazine Exists, this Issue Comes Close

I suppose perfection, like mere beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Automotive perfection even more so… hell, I once got into an argument with a guy who stated that the Ferrari F50 is NOT a stunted unlovable gnome of a car.

So, not everyone might agree with my assessment, but here are some thoughts.

First off, if a perfect automotive magazine were to exist, it would have to be an issue from either the sixties or the eighties. In the fifties, cars were not quite at the level where they could be enjoyed by everyone… and in the seventies, all the social engineering and heavy-handed regulation pretty much destroyed the enjoyment of life. And cars exist for people to enjoy (cars that are merely transportation are for soulless drones). Of course, competition cars in the seventies were amazing, but that’s only half the equation. You also had some good ones in the sixties (all decade) and in the eighties.

With this in mind, I’d argue that the November 1984 issue of Road & Track has to rank near the very top of the most wonderful mags ever. Not only were the 1980s the decade where humanity rediscovered the fact that it was okay to have fun, but this particular issue shows a couple of mid-engined cars specifically designed to be both fun and affordable, from two of the otherwise stodgiest motor manufacturers out there: Toyota and General Motors.

The MR-2 and the Fiero were eighties icons. The Fiero V-6 engine was even a credible competition powerplant in Camel Lights. So seeing both of these cars on the cover of R&T is wonderful. The Fiero was there because it was getting the bigger engine, and the MR-2, angular and so eighties in look, was being launched. There’s a photo of w pure white model with black bumpers, trim and spoiler that looks like is should have been driven by Max Headroom. Perfectly captures the Era.

But “Road” is only half of the title, and the “Track” part was equally amazing. I’ve already mentioned that the GP cars of this era are among my favorites, aesthetically (along with the 1960s pre-aero cigars), so having two separate GPs covered (and by Rob Walker!) was great.

Better still, however, was the feature on that year’s 24 hours of Le Mans, with a focus on the Jaguar XJR-5s that were beautiful but failed to finish. It marked Jaguar’s return to Le Mans after the glorious wins in the 1950s, and, though it would take TWR to win the event, the Group 44 Jags were among my favorite racecars of the 80s.

And there was more. Another, much less famous endurance race was run in the timeframe covered: The Longest Day of Nelson ledges, which is a showroom stock (plus a few non-stockers) event that, at one point was actually 25 hours (not sure if that is still done, or even if I’m right about it). There’s full coverage in this issue.

So, for someone like me, to whom econoboxes are anathema, this issue hit the spot perfectly.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest novel is a jungle-and-monsters romp in the south seas entitled Lost Island Rampage. You can check it out here.

Now THAT was Fun

The books I won from Baen thanks to being runner up in the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Competition have been varied and of different genres, but the one common thread that seems to run through them is that they are meant to be entertainment first. This isn’t to say that they don’t have deep moral and political currents running through them, but those are secondary to telling a good story.

So, literature as it’s meant to be, by good writers who know how to reach readers.

But every once in a while, one will be so fun to read it just goes over the top. A recent example was Freehold: Resistance, and another is today’s subject, Larry Correia’s Target Rich Environment – Volume 2.

Despite his NYT bestselling credentials, Correia is a relatively new writer to me. I was looking forward to this collection mainly on the strength of his story in Freehold: Resistance, but I didn’t really know what to expect. That story, which I enjoyed, could very easily have been an outlier, and the rest of his work unenjoyable.

Fortunately, that isn’t the case. Target Rich Environment is a collection of Correia’s short fiction set in several different settings. All of the ones in this book (as you can probably guess from the title) focus on combat, and they’re all high-powered weapon-focused romps. Pure energy, but well-written and with characters who are truly three-dimensional.

I went through them quickly, enjoying the ass-kicking. When I reached the final novella, I thought I had a pretty good grip on Correia’s style, and an understanding about why he sells so many books.

And that novella, “A Murder of Manatees”, was very different from the rest. Building on the action story style already expressed in the rest of the book, this one is a comic romp (with violence, lots and lots of violence). It actually reminded me a bit of Robert Asprin’s Phule series, but with over-the-top violence. It’s a great combo, and I laughed a lot.

So a very good book with a twist at the end, and one I would recommend without hesitation. Fun, fun stuff.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose latest novel is entitled Lost Island Rampage and, once you know that there are monsters and criminals in it, you’re probably smart enough to figure out what it’s like. It’s also fun, and you can check it out here.

New Book Cover: Splinter

Splinter is my new book coming from Guardbridge Books. This one will be available in December (anyone who happens to be at WorldCon can get a personalized signed copy!). Even if you don’t want a copy, come over and say “Hi”, and check out the other books at the Guardbridge table. All will be welcomed with a smile 🙂

Here’s what the publisher has to say about it:

SPLINTER is a sequel to Bondoni’s OUTSIDE (2017, Guardbridge).

In Outside, a ship from the Tau Ceti colony returned to Earth and discovered shocking secrets about what happened to Earth’s population.

In the new novel Splinter, the ship returns to Tau Ceti, and the news they bring disturbs the peaceful society of the colony, bringing violence and change.

SPLINTER will be on sale at Worldcon 2021 in December, and available for pre-order soon.

Suprecar Springboard

To be perfectly honest, in the early eighties, many people were saying that the supercar was a thing of the past, that we’d never really see another no-holds-barred insanity like the Countach, or, to a lesser extent, the Berlinetta Boxer. They cited changes wrought by regulators and aspiring social engineers as the reason for strangling fun and expensive cars.

Ha.

Fortunately for everyone who loves life and hates both regulators and social engineers, the doomsayers couldn’t have been more wrong. But it was hard to tell at that point, as the only signs that supercars would reemerge with a vengeance was not directly aimed at the general public but at a very specific group of competition regulations, called Group B.

Now, group B was made famous by the fire-breathing rally cars of the era, but it wasn’t just about rallying. The Porsche 959 and the Ferrari GTO–the August 1984 cover car–were designed with much more than just rallying in mind. The 959, of course, proved itself in the Desert by winning the old, much missed Paris-Dakar rally, but did you know it also races (in 961 form) at Le Mans, twice, with a best finish of 7th.

The GTO never raced in major events because Group B died with Toivonnen and Cresta at Corsica 1986, and you could have been forgiven for thinking these two cars were just a blip on the radar, homologation specials with no relevance to any consumer trends, especially since the Testarossa was just an uglier 512 (a capable car, but not one that screamed “I’m better than anything that’s come before”).

You’d have been wrong.

Look at a GTO Evo, and then look at the F40. The obvious descent is wonderful, and the F40 is the car that dethroned the Porsche. And then things got serious. The Diablo. The EB110. The F50 in response. The McLaren F1 which stunned everyone. All the way to today’s world in which supercar follows supercar and they’re all commercial successes while pushing the envelope. It’s a good time to be a well-heeled auto enthusiast.

And it all really started with the car on the cover of the August 1984 Road & Track.

With that as the cover story, it’s hard to say much about the rest of the magazine, although I’ll say that seeing coverage of the 1984 F1 season, part of my very favorite era of the sport, is always wonderful. Unlike the last issue I read, these were written by Rob Walker.

Anyhow, this mag is a middle finger in the face of regulators and socially conscious killjoys. As such, it needs to be celebrated.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose latest novel is a monster-filled romp through the south seas… with cannibals thrown in for good luck. If that sounds fun to you, you can check it out here.

Practical Classics – a Rare Treat

The nice thing about classic car magazines is that, twenty years after they were published, the cars within are still classics and everything written about the way they look, the way they drive and the way they are supposed to be repaired is still relevant. Of course, this being a British magazine, the prices and specialists were never really relevant to Argentina anyway, so that stuff which might have aged it out of of usefulness is not a problem.

Now I’ll be the first to shout from the rafters that Classic & Sportscar is the best classic car magazine in the world (and those of you who’ve seen a recent edition will likely agree that it’s among the best magazines of any kind, period) but I’ll guiltily admit that Practical Classics is the one I most enjoy.

The April 2001 issue pictured above (and which I bought only recently) is a good example of why. First off, the magazine is filled with stories about people just like me–regular car buffs who aren’t mechanics but have a reasonable amount of knowledge on tool use and who don’t necessarily have a few hundred grand lying around to buy a perfect old Maserati. The mag also focuses on cars I happen to find particularly interesting precisely because I don’t see many of them in over-restored fettle at Pebble Beach.

Unfortunately, not too many of these arrived on our shores, and even fewer since the country swung hard left and began to frown upon anything which might reek of fun (what is it with socialists and their hatred of fun, anyway?). It’s gotten to the point where you can’t buy an imported magazine on the newsstand, and complaining about it makes you some kind of capitalist traitor to the eyes of our local commissars.

While that’s of little interest to anyone outside the country, what is of interest is the effect: I’ll snap up old mags and review them here!

This is a classic issue of Practical Classics in the it deftly combines restoration stories with history and tales of actually using the cars, always with the budget-conscious reader in mind, and with a focus on the English scene (which, in my opinion, has to be the healthiest group of classic car nuts in existence).

Favorite article? The restoration of a sixties Ford Cortina. Great stuff.

If you like old cars, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this title. It’s not as pretentious or glossy as the very best, but it’s definitely just as enjoyable.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose latest book is Lost Island Rampage. A tropical romp through the south seas is never complete without man-eating dinosaurs, right? And cannibals. We mustn’t forget the cannibals. You can check it out here.

More enjoyable because of Egan

One thing I failed to mention when I spoke of that little jump to 1984 in my Road & Track reading is the enormously important fact that Peter Egan is now part of the experience. Simply stated, Egan is the best automotive (and probably motorcycle) writer I’ve ever read (and I read very widely in the genre). His columns in Road & Track are usually the best part of the mag and have sometimes been the only good part in bad years.

So reaching issues in which Egan is present is like arriving at a friend’s home after a long road trip. What came before was pleasurable and interesting, but this is perhaps more comfortable and relaxing.

Apart from that, the one thing that really caught my eye in this edition was an analysis of the Porsche Gruppe B, the car that eventually came to be called the 959. This, to me, represents one of the missing legs in the holy trinity of 80s poster cars. The Countach is already with us, the Testarossa around the corner, and now we see the 959 in its final form. The decade is maturing.

Other good stuff in the issue is the GP coverage where again Porsche was in the news as their engines came through to win in both the races covered, powering the massively-hateful Marlboro McLarens (man, did I despise those cars and Mr. Prost when I was a kid!).

But these articles were written by Innes Ireland, because Rob Walker was covering the CART Grand Prix of Long Beach. It was a prescient move by R&T, as CART racing was about to enter its very best era.

Finally, the weirdest article (and the longest) was the one covering the Acropolis Rally. Written in second person present tense, it covered the rally adequately and gave some interesting insight into why one team had more success than the one that should have beaten it but, in the end, it was just a little too cute and self-consciously literary to fit the style of the magazine… at least for my tastes.

A good issue, and an interesting one. (and a long one, at 220 pages!). Also, the PS photo is a classic.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose latest novel, Lost Island Rampage, is a south seas romp with monsters, criminals, hackers, a billionaire and more criminals all trying to kill each other. If that sounds like fun, you can check it out here.

Honor Harringgton – My First Exposure

I’m about to do something I HATE, which is to write an ultimately unfair review of a book. I never do that, and I’ll try to keep this one honest about why I think I’m being unfair. (also, please remember that I am just a reader who enjoys giving his opinion, not a paid reviewer!)

The book in question is David Weber’s Uncompromising Honor, a climactic book in a long-running series which has spawned its own universe, and has sold uncountable number of copies.

Now, before giving my review of this book in particular, I need to explain this “unfairness” thing. Uncompromising Honor does not appear to be a book designed to be read by someone at random unless they’ve read many of the previous volumes. By dropping in at this point, I entered at a point where the characters are well-developed and they act a certain way that will be cheered on by the readers who share their history. Also, readers of the series will be deeply invested in what their old friends are doing.

In my own case, the first three-quarters or so of this volume were a slog. The characters were doing things that felt a little long-winded (possibly because I wasn’t yet invested enough in their well-being to care about some of the details). The action scenes in that first section consist of a series of massacres in which one faction kills hundreds of thousands of members of the other in a few space battles.

The battles are well written, and I’m certain that readers who’ve been reading along would have cheered wholeheartedly to see the good guys win in decisive fashion… but I was left a little cold, and in consequence, it took me a long time to get through this one. The final quarter, I will admit, went quickly, and I really, really was rooting for the good guys to win by the end. There is nothing wrong with Weber’s writing – he obviously knows how to grip the readers once they understand what’s going on.

My conclusion on the strength of having read this one is that those readers who want very well-written space war action would be well-served to start at the beginning of the Honor Harrington series. Millions of readers enjoy it already, and I can totally see why. I probably did myself a disservice by starting where I did (I only read this one because it was in my big pile of Baen books). So if you like straight up space warfare, this series should be on your list.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose latest novel is entitled Lost Island Rampage. It’s a tropical romp with cannibals and monsters, which means that you will not be bored. If that’s you’re idea of fun, you can check it out right here.