It’s bound to be good. Geddit? Geddit?
Yesterday I updated my little “current reading” list on my pathetic and in-desperate-need-of-improvement sidebar. Here’s a micro-blurb on each of those three and why they’re there:
“Hero in the Shadows” — I did a post a couple of weeks back about how David Gemmell rescued the fantasy genre for me. At the time, I’d just begun reading this particular entry in the non-series of Drenai tales, and having finished it quite quickly, I can wholeheartedly recommend it. As ever. Waylander the Slayer, a supernaturally gifted assassin, who found his way at least partway back to the path of good after years as a killer, makes his third appearance in this one. While all Gemmell books are designed to be read independently, “Hero” is the third in a series of books about Waylander. Reading the other two (”Waylander” and “In the Realm of the Wolf”, the latter published in the UK as “Waylander II”) will increase your enjoyment of this novel immeasurably, though it’s not a requirement. In all of Gemmell’s books, good people often do bad things, sometimes for good reasons; and bad people wind up doing good things, for reasons they sometimes cannot fathom. Gemmell writes in gray areas, exploring heroism and the costs of fighting evil in thought-provoking and sometimes disturbing ways.
There is a character in “Hero” — a ditchdigger whose sole ambition in life is to have enough coin to gorge on food, liquor, and whores — who finds himself a “chosen one”, destined to lead a band of ancient warriors against a foe, and in the process become a hero, while a disciplined, deeply religious warrior monk, who has spent his entire life in training to combat this very evil, finds himself marginalized, as a simple ditchdigger fulfills a role he himself spent his entire life training to face. Gemmell uses these kinds of surprise upsets and turns of role as a way to explore the complexity and confusion of good versus evil, and the roles individuals find themselves playing in the conflict.
“Droidmaker” — having just bought this yesterday, I am already completely engrossed. This book, by a former employee and member of Lucasfilm’s crack team of computer engineers, deftly segues from a biography of Seventies film rebels George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola (and friends) into a chronicle of the thinktank of computer pioneers who would develop revolutionary technologies such as Non-Linear Editing systems, and initiate the spark that would eventually become Pixar, THX, even Adobe. “Droidmaker” in a sense represents the ideal book to me, the ideal subject matter, and the ideal biographical approach, meshing personal biography with technical history, and company lore.
It also represents a period in film and computer history which is of huge interest to me. For whatever reason (don’t laugh), the sagas of film and computers in the late Seventies and early Eighties hold a great deal of romanticism for me. I could watch the documentaries on the Tron Special Edition DVD over and over, re-read Alan Arnold’s journal of the making of Empire Strikes Back over and over; the early years of Atari are hugely fascinating. One of my very favorite books ever is “Industrial Light and Magic: the Art of Special Effects”, which chronicles the first ten years of ILM. “Droidmaker” fits perfectly into this space, filling in dots and fleshing out shadowy areas, and it covers so much territory so seamlessly that the mind boggles.
Check out this excerpt from the dust jacket flap to see what I mean:
Droidmaker is an insider’s chronicle of Lucas’ uneasy role between business, technology and entertainment—with parts played by Francis Ford Coppola, Walt Disney, The Grateful Dead, Akira Kurosawa, Steven Spielberg, Michael Crichton, Stanley Kubrick, Ross Perot, Robert Moog, Steve Jobs, The Doors, Steven Soderbergh and many others. Their stories woven into a tapestry of backdrops: USC, Atari, Sun Microsystems, CBS, America Online, Amadeus, the Univeristy of Utah, Tron, Xerox, Twilight Zone, Pixar, Jurassic Park, and, of course, Skywalker Ranch.
If this sounds hopelessly overambitious, fuzzy in its direction, be assured that it is very focused and clear. But the involvement of individuals in Lucasfilm’s computer research, and then the scope of influence this computer research then brought to bear on the entertainment industry, is extraordinarily broad.
Magnificent stuff.
“The Britons” — I confess to being something of a history fan, especially of medieval and ancient European history. I slogged through the 1200 pages of “Europe: A History” without complaint. “Britons”, part of a series about European peoples, is about that fuzziest and elusive of all ethnic groups, the Briton, who may or may not be Celtic, may or may not be transplanted European, did not have a written language as such … in other words, mysterious and tantalizing. Loosely, Britons are the people who were living in England, Wales, and parts of Scotland when the Romans arrived. Sort of. Kinda. They were a network of tribes who shared a common language and customs. We think. Sorta. Modern Welsh is one the modern descendants of their language. Anyway, we know very little about them, and this slim and very direct book looks at the most contemporary archaeological and historical evidence to shed as much light on them as possible. And it does a damn good job of it. It then goes on to discuss what survived throughout subsequent millennia of these ethnic “Britons”, when the Isles were repeatedly conquered by Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans. It also discusses the historical/mythological figure of Arthur, most famous Briton of all.
And it begins with the following quote:
“I am Arthur, King of the Britons.”
“King of the who?”
Any book which begins with a quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail has got to be good.
So. Three current/recent books. Good stuff to be had by all.
hey. the internet is a wonderful thing, no? i spent 2 years pretty much alone in an office, writing Droidmaker. I surf around to see if anyone is talking about it. So pleased you’re enjoying the book. i hope it continues to meet up with your expectations. if you have any interesting questions, i’d be happy to field them. until then, take care.
June 8th, 2006 at 5:56 am