The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Over my vacation I took along with me the fantastically fun and interesting "Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid" by Bill Bryson. I've always had a great love of reading people's childhood memories of comics, television and toy collecting in the fifties and sixties which are widely considered the "Golden Age" of such stuff, and as a personal memoir of Bryson chronicling his kid years growing up in 1950's Iowa, this was SUCH A BLAST to read!

Ray Garton's "Live Girls"

Here’s a Vampire Book that I really, really dig! Long out of print, it has happily recently been re-released by Leisure Books! If Holden Caufield had been bitten by a vampire after getting kicked out of College in THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, that might be as close as you could get to Ray Garton’s tale!

Live Girls is a story about Davey, a down on his luck proofreader for a pulp-style gun magazine. Davey’s life has just gotten from bad to worse-He’s been passed up for promotion, his girlfriend has left him, and he has to start looking for another job!

    He wanders into a seedy Peep Show club called Live Girls, where he meets a beautiful stripper named Anya, who enthralls and captivates Davey with her hypnotic charms. After paying for his way to her booth, she proceeds to rock his world both physically and mentally. Davey is mesmerized by her, and finds he cannot keep his mind off her. He finds himself compelled to go back again and again for her incredible sexual favors. What Davey doesn’t know is that Anya is a vampire, and every time she has performed fellatio on him, she has also been drawing blood out of him-to satiate her hunger AND to slowly turn Davey into one of her kind!

Day after day she takes a little bit more of Davey’s humanity, until there is almost nothing left. But she has not reckoned with Davey’s friends: his co-worker Casey, and a reporter for the Post, who has been trying to track down the group responsible for the outlandish murders that have been occurring.

 Together they are able to prevent Davey from going over to the dark side completely, and with their backing, he finds the strength to fight back against the creatures who have possessed him, and with his knowledge of weaponry from his Gun-Magazine job, he attempts to take down the club and all its inhabitants with it!

I love this story because its underlying message is about having people in your life that you can trust. Above all, this is the story of a weak willed person who becomes a strong-minded individual when he is faced with an almost insurmountable challenge. Together with friends who believe in him and stick by him, he is able to overcome the tragedy that has befallen him, and move on.

Mike Resnick's "Soothsayer" Trilogy

   One of my favorite Science Fiction authors is the Hugo- Award winning Mike Resnick, famous for (among other things), his Santiago Novel, the story of the most infamous of super-outlaws in Futuristic Outer Space.  One of the more interesting aspects of Santiago are the colorful characters and the detailed Planetary Systems, and he has subsequently written many other novels based in this same “world”, the blurb on the book cover usually reading “return to the world of Santiago!”

   Out of these stories came SOOTHSAYER in 1991, the first chapter of a trilogy. The book was followed in 1992 by ORACLE, and concluded in 1993 with PROPHET.

  The story is about a very young girl named Penelope Bailey. Penelope has a very unusual gift that makes her very desired by everyone concerned. She has the ability to see into the future, and by performing certain actions, can manipulate the outcome. Naturally, a talent like this is very, very useful for anybody, whether they be gambler, outlaw or politician, and when we first meet her, she is prisoner of an alien who stole her away from some other kidnappers, and she is trying to work out the variables in her head that will help her escape and be “left alone” The only problem is that sometimes her visions don’t come quickly enough, and occasionally, there is no “good” future to pick from, and she has to roll with the incident.

   Thus she crosses paths with a man named Carlos Mendoza, known to the Outer Rim as The Iceman. Unlike the various people who want her to further their own personal exploits, he sees the young girl as one thing only: A Threat. Unlike everyone else, he realizes that although she has limited control over her power, Penelope is only a scared little girl, and her skills will only increase as she gets older, growing as she does, until she becomes an entity who might be able to control the outcome of the entire Universe!

   When we first meet up with Penelope, she uses her powers like so: If, for example,  someone is chasing her, she may “see” four or five different outcomes in her mind.  She sees in one of the “futures” that if she places her doll on the steps, the pursuer will slip and break his neck. Or she may choose another “future” where they simple get away by turning a corner. It’s all a matter of orchestrating things for a favorable outcome.

  When Mendoza meets up with Penelope again in ORACLE, she  is now a young lady, and has progressed much like he’d predicted she would, but her powers are still growing, and by the time the Iceman catches up with her in PROPHET, she is a fully grown woman who  has mastered her gift to its fullest, where she need only stand in a certain way, or gesture with her hands, that hundreds of scenarios and untold futures bend to her will.

   By the last book, Carlos Mendoza is an fat  balding old man with a pot belly and a limp,  but he alone knows that Penelope is orchestrating some huge, diabolical plot that will involve the destiny of the galaxy. But when he catches up with her, will he Kill her, or join her?

An engrossing read, as are ALL of Resnick’s books: along with the Soothsayer trilogy and Santiago, I also recommend some of my other favorites, The Dark Lady and Ivory!

My Favorite Stephen King Books

1.The Stand (Original 1975 version, NOT recut edition)

The first novel I ever read from Stephen King, and what a story it was. Possible the greatest book the man has ever written, IMHO. This is the story about a virus that kills almost everyone in the world, and the ones who survive are either drawn to a kindly black woman on a farm in Nebraska, or a tyrannical dark man named Flagg in Las Vegas.

   The book is broken into three parts:

CAPTAIN TRIPS

    The telling of the systematic way the deadly virus travels from person to person across the United States, as well as introducing the main characters, all of whom are somehow immune to the plague. They begin to have dreams of a kindly old Black Woman and a sinister Dark Man.

ON THE BORDER

   After “life as they know it” has ended, the survivors begin migrating. The people who are inherently good gravitate towards the black woman, and the ones inherently evil go to The Dark Man. VERY interesting chapters as the main characters start meeting along the way and becoming bigger groups.

THE STAND

   The two camps go to war. Or rather, Randall Flagg goes to war. He plans to send a nuclear missile over to the good guys’ camp, and drastic measures must be made to prevent this! Several key members are selected to go undercvover into Flagg’s camp, and some may not make it back!

  The first time I read The Stand, I was blown away not only by the story itself, but more impressive was the people IN the book. I’d never read a story with such fully developed, wonderful characters before, and I found that when the book came to a close, I really missed them!

The 1975 Version and the Version Available Now

Stephen King says that when he originally wrote The Stand, he didn’t have the clout he had later, so his editors cut a lot of stuff out of his original book. Now that he HAD the clout, he wanted to present the book as it was originally intended. I gotta tell you, when I first heard about this, I was EXTATIC. As it was my favorite book,I couldn’t wait to see what I’d been missing. But then when I got the book, the introduction told me that:

1)    Some of the stuff that was originally edited out WAS (in King’s opinion) crappy, so he didn’t bother restoring it

2)    2) The stuff left out would be replaced by BRAND NEW STUFF HE WROTE FOR THE BOOK!!!

WTF!! They tagged the book “For The First Time Complete and Uncut”, but in opinion, it is like Paul McCartney went back to the Sgt. Peppers album and wrote some new songs and stuck them in between the other tracks!

The thing that sucks is that I don’t like a lot of the new stuff , but some of the original manuscript that has been put back in is terrific., particularly the scenes with Nick and Tom…so whenever I read the original 1975 version, there are scenes I wish were there. But I can’t ever treat the recut version as  the “real Thing”. Too many good things have been screwed with, and even little things have been tweaked, like the chapter ending “Why else was he suddenly able to do magic?” has been excised, and it was a fave line of mine. And, oh man, that epilogue in the recut version has to go. I never liked stories where they spend the whole movie trying to kill the monster, and when they finally succeed, at the very end, the monster pops up again, The End. It’s like the whole movie was for nothing .

And that’s just what happens in the recut version of The Stand.

The sad thing is of course, When a friend of mine wanted to read the Stand, I told him best to get the original version. It was then I found out Stephen King had done a George Lucas, and made the original one out of print. YOU COULD ONLY GET THE NEW VERSION!  Eventually he was able to obtain a decent copy from a used book store, but even now they are getting harder and harder to find.

If possible, please read the Original 1975 version (the one with the cover I scanned is a good one!)

02. The Dead Zone

 The Story of a boy who awakens from a coma with psychic powers. This is decades before Brian Johnson from Breakfast Club was playing him on TV. A story about regret and loss. So many good segments in this one, but the story can be broken down into five parts: One is when he’s a teacher before the accident. Two is when he has his long and painful recovery. Three is when he becomes a famous serial-killer hunter. Four is when he becomes a tutor for kids. And Five is the grand Finale when he must stop a man from becoming the president of the United States because he has seen that this man will cause World War III.

And yes, the Christopher Walken Movie version rocks!

03. Different Seasons

 I tried not to list compilation books, but this is far too good to ignore, and besides, these were NOVELLAS. Not only does it feature Apt Pupil and the story that inspired “Stand By Me”, it also had the original “Shawshank Redemption” story (Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption) and possible my favorite short story of all time from Stephen King, THE BREATHING METHOD.

It’s split into four parts, one representing each Season.

Part One is “Hope Springs Eternal”, The Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redeption story.

 This is the story of inmates in a sadistic Prison, a man who can “get” things for you, a man unjustly accused of murder, but more than anything else, it’s about how having HOPE can motive you. A terrific story. The Tim Robbins film was pretty good too!

Part Two is “Summer Of Corruption”, “Apt Pupil” This was also made into a movie with Ian McKellen. This is the story of a boy who finds out a Nazi war criminal is living incognito in his town, and blackmails him into revealing all the dark memories he has, eventually corrupting both the Nazi and the boy.

Part Three is “Fall From Innocence”, the famous Stephen King story that inspired Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me, THE BODY. Four boys growing up make a trip to see a dead body, and encounter things that will change their lives.

Part Four is simple “A Winter’s Tale”, featuring the story The Breathing Method.

  Man, The Breathing Method, what can I say. It is just fantastic.  First there’s the setting. It’s set in this old English gentlemen’s club, and King takes the time to describe it quite vividly and spookily. The members of the club tell stories, from far flung to fantastic. I can’t explain it, but King describes this so well, each tale seems so eerie. And that brings us to the second good point: the tale that the story is centered around is ALSO fantastic. A great tale within a tale, a tale about a single pregnant woman practicing to give birth to her child using the at-the-time unknown Lamaze method.

 I’m glad to say that The Breathing Method is the sole story in Different Seasons that hasn’t been made into a movie (yet), and for this we are truly grateful. I just don’t see how they could capture the wonder and eeriness of the story.

   King followed this story up with another good short story called “The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands” which dealt with the same club and characters.

04. Eyes Of The Dragon

Ahh, so what that this is supposed to be a kid’s book! The story is great! I particularly love the style of the narration here, King is talking like the book narrators of old!

Story about goodness in people, wickedness in people, and FRIENDSHIP and HONOR. And some of that stuff he wrote explaining Magic…too good! I particularly loved the way he explained invisibility. You couldn’t make yourself disappear, but you could become DIM, where no one would notice you even if you were standing right there.

Ooh..and the organic magic lock, the kleffa carrot that would scream when someone tried to open your box…Good Fun!