Copycat photoblogging returns

As usual, spinning off Chris Bertram's photograph, in this case of a bus shelter.  Here's one of a bus shelter in Paris, taken in 2000.

John Billheimer, Field of Schemes

John Billheimer, Field of Schemes
Gale Books (A Cengage Learning Company), 2007
ISBN 98=78-1-4328-2617-8

I've read 2  (so far) of Billheimer's 5 "West Virginia" books featuring Owen Alison, and thought both of them were excellent, in part because the place was perfectly realized, but also because I cared about the characters and the mysteries were actually well-constructed.  (Comments on one of theme here.) 

This book--the first of 2 (so far) featuring sports writer Lloyd Keaton--was something os a disappointment.  Keaton is a sports columnist, whose primary interest is baseball, writing for a (fictional) newspaper in a (fictional) southeastern Ohio city with a AAA team.  He had been a columnist for a Cleveland newspaper, but lost his job because of his gambling problem-a problem that surfaces in this book.  The focus, however, is on steroid use, both by professional athletes and by high schoolers (one of whom is Keaton's son). 

A slugging first baseman on his way to the majors is having a great season in AAA, when he is called up to Cleveland (and does not do well), is fingered for steroid use (and subsequently testifies before a congressional committee).  And gets murdered.

 Keaton follows the story, discovering links to a gym which also manufactures and sells a "performing-enhancing" substance which may or may not be.  Throw in an illegal gambling operation in Wheeling, Keaton's good buddy who is a bookie (perhaps not the best choice of buddies if one has a gambling problem), and the elements seem to be there for a good book. 

But the place is just a generic small city, with nothing that makes it unique or memorable.  And the people are not as fully characterized; indeed, one of them spends much of the book in a coma.  Not a bad book, and I will read the second in the series.  But not special, either.

Rules for writing a "space opera"

Charles Stross finds his publishers wanting him to write a "space opera" (think a multi-volume, thematically-connected episode of Star Trek, or a multi-volume "hobbits in space."  He has been thinking about the pitfalls to be avoided in developing the institutional and physical structure of such a work (and, it seems to me implicitly says such works can't be coherently constructed).  I decided not to read through the 500+ comments already on his blog post (he has a huge and literate following), but wanted to add this.

Any "space opera" will   have to have either (or both) of the following characteristics:

1. Much faster-than-light travel and communications.

2. Extremely robust  social/political/economic institutions.

Why?  Simple.  Planets are a long way apart; the closest likely  habitable planets to us are 4+ light-years away, the second closest more like 13 l.y.  For commercial purposes, there needs to be a way to finesse the extremely long time it would take for beings on Planet A to place an order with beings on Planet B and have that order delivered.  With out closest possible neighbors, we're talking around 10 years, even with communications and travel at (or near) the speed of light.  Transactions times in the decades are perhaps more plausible.

The alternative is, in effect, inter-planetary commerce that consists of "tramp spaceships" picking up loads of stuff on Planet X, heading off to the nearest planetary systems, and hoping to find a market (that seems to me to have been the Ferengi economic plan in Star Trek: Deep Space 9).  And hoping that your customers will pay you in something that you find useful or can sell (barter) elsewhere.  And being able to live with what you can get for sustenance.  At the speed of light, you've got maybe 10 or 12 ports of call in your lifetime, assuming (a point Stross raises) you can keep your ship from falling apart, and/or can fend off space pirates.  (Let's face it, piracy was a major problem for global commerce on this planet for hundreds of years.)

The alternative to all this is simply to hope your readers aren't paying enough attention, of just don't care.

Two Good Ones: Chris Ewan's The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam and James Benn's The First Wave

Chris Ewan, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam
 Minotaur Books; 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0312376338
Also available as an ebook

The first book in the series featuring Charlie Howard, author (of mystery novels) and thief.  He is recruited to steal two figurines (Speak No Evil and Hear No Evil), apparently worthless.  The may who recruited him is quickly murdered, and Howard comes under immediate suspicion of something by the Amsterdam police.  Charlie has to figure out (a) why the figurines are valuable; (b) who is after him; (c) who killed his "employer;" among other things.  The plot is quite nice, Ewan writes well.  Charlie is a reasonably likable character (even if he does tend to suggest another thief whose initials are B.R.).   The resolution is also well-done, if fairly obvious.  The one problem I had was that the denouement, in which Charlie gathers all those concerned (including the police) in an abandoned warehouse to explain things, takes almost the last 20% of the book.  Frankly, that was way too long.  Overall, a good start to the series.  (I earlier read, quite out of order, The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin.)

James R. Benn, The First Wave
Soho Press; 2007
ISBN-13: 978-1569474716
Also available as an ebook

The second in the series featuring Billy Boyle and set during World War II.  Billy Boyle is on his way to North Africa to assist in some undercover negotiations between the Vichy government of Algeria and the US forces about to invade North Africa.  Things don't go well, and Billy and Major Sam Harding are quickly embroiled in local politics, the theft of supplies at a quickly-established Army hospital in Algiers, the these of medical supplies--including most of the penicillin in the world,   the disappearance of a large number of French-Algerian opponents of Vichy (and of Billy's love, Diane, who is there as an OSS operative).  The plot is extraordinarily complex, and completely believable.  The situation is well-established; it's quite easy to believe both that these events could easily have occurred and that the people involved would act and react as they do in the book.  Billy's background on the Boston PD serves him well, and he displays growing skills as an investigator.  The ending is moth moving and authentic.  It's a good thing there are more books in the series.  Because I would hate to have to wait in order to read them.  The first book--Billy Boyle--is also excellent.  This is a series I suspect is best read in order.

Bob Dylan: The "S" Songs (Part 5 of the Series)

This is probably the last of this series.  Here are my favorite Dylan songs beginning with the letter "S".

Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

Sara

See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

Seven Curses

Seven Days

She Belongs To Me

Shelter From the Storm

Sign On the Window

Silvio

Simple Twist of Fate

Sitting On a Barbed Wire Fence

Someone’s Got a Hold of My Heart

Song to Woody

Spanish Harlem Incident

Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again

Subterranean Homesick Blues

 

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Bob Dylan, Starting With "I"

My pick of the best Bob Dylan, with titles starting with "I", in alphabetical order.  Only 18 of them...

I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine

I Pity the Poor Immigrant

I Shall Be Fre No. 10

I Shall Be Released

I Threw It All Away

I Want You

Idiot Wind

If Not For You

If You Gotta Go, Go Now

If You See Her, Say Hello

I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight

In My Time of Dyin’

Isis

It Ain’t Me, Babe

It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding

 

(This is a follow-up to Bob Dylan A to Z, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Bob Dylan A to Z, Part 3

Well, I couldn't help myself...

All Along the Watchtower

Ballad of a Thin Man
 --------
Death Is Not the End
 -------
From a Buick 8

Gotta Serve Somebody

Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance

I Shall Be Released
(I could pick at least a dozen…)

Just Like a Woman
 ------
Love Sick

Masters of War
(and I haven’t even gotten to Mr. Tambourine Man, which I love)

Not Dark Yet

One Too Many Mornings

Pledging My Time
 ------
 ------
Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again
(or one of about a dozen others)

Too Much of Nothing
 -----
With God On Our Side

You’re a Big Girl Now
-----

I don't think I can manage a Part 4...