I’m troubled trying to assign a rating. I read this book out of interest in Tycho Brahe and found a meandering nightmare. It was very successful at suI’m troubled trying to assign a rating. I read this book out of interest in Tycho Brahe and found a meandering nightmare. It was very successful at summoning a mood from the dank pit of Earth but tarried too long in the outright abject for me. Some truly wonderful sentences though and commentary on the genesis of a different cosmology....more
Some real lunacy in this tome. I may have gotten through my life never reading any Mailer if I wasn't working on a moon project of my own. I came to tSome real lunacy in this tome. I may have gotten through my life never reading any Mailer if I wasn't working on a moon project of my own. I came to this to get a better understanding of critical or ambivalent attitudes toward the Apollo missions by American writers. I got a wallop of that and a whole lot more on the obsessions of Mailer, his fear of technocracy, his covetous hate for WASPS, his obsession with Black difference, his visions of American Indians, and in the final section, his disastrous history of marriage. While there are some rip-roaring passages throughout, it ends like a parody with him beholding a moon rock as his new mistress looking back at him with love. ...more
Well I learned a lot about the origins of the Apollo program and the larger context of the Space Race within the cold war, which is what I came for. TWell I learned a lot about the origins of the Apollo program and the larger context of the Space Race within the cold war, which is what I came for. The book increasingly becomes an overwrought libertarain lamentation of America's fall into technocracy which is definitely not what I came for especially when delivered with snide derision for any other form of critique or challenge to US space policy. ...more
I thought I should read this for research purposes and I just can’t. Within the first few pages the amount of cliches to describe Chinese people and pI thought I should read this for research purposes and I just can’t. Within the first few pages the amount of cliches to describe Chinese people and politics, whew. A somewhat interesting premise completely overridden by terrible writing. How anyone thinks this second-rate social democrat version of Heinlein is some kind of visionary is beyond me. ...more
Delightful but cursory and limited at times. I appreciated the ending ruminations. “It is a dream from which we will never wake. Our first and nearestDelightful but cursory and limited at times. I appreciated the ending ruminations. “It is a dream from which we will never wake. Our first and nearest vision in the heavens shall always be our closest companion.” And yet! “This world was a wholly alien, distant place, unlike anything found in the terrestrial domain.”...more
I assigned this book and my students ended up enjoying it more than I did! John Joseph Mathews is an interesting character study in himself of post coI assigned this book and my students ended up enjoying it more than I did! John Joseph Mathews is an interesting character study in himself of post colonial exile and return when the post has not actually arrived but the colonial situation has transformed. The most enduring image for me besides the coyotes and the frozen chicken is of Mathews cooking spaghetti in shorts and cowboy boots for his city friends who ply him with cold beers. That was charming. ...more
Marjorie Hope Nicolson is a charming author whose penchant for teaching old texts comes through here though there's too much time spent on the historyMarjorie Hope Nicolson is a charming author whose penchant for teaching old texts comes through here though there's too much time spent on the history of aviation (not lunar-directed) for me. The bibliography is a romp too. ...more
I had a good time with these stories. Had to leave the book behind halfway through for months, but when I came back to my house and saw it there, I noI had a good time with these stories. Had to leave the book behind halfway through for months, but when I came back to my house and saw it there, I noticed I was eager to be with that voice again. There are in fact many different “voices” performed in different stories but there is an overall unifying winking narrativization that is not the wink of a weird uncle/car salesman but the inviting and slightly teasing but with true warmth kind. Even when I couldn’t really go there with a character, I went along with the author.
It also made me think about authors like Le Guin and Delany (and surely others) who work the edge of SF/fantasy to disrupt the techno-optimism/nostalgia bind, among other things. Jarboe does something Le Guin is also fond of and I haven’t quite devised a precise way of talking about. It’s basically when spec-fic authors build a tribal peoples world with reference to land-based ritual and oral traditions (in this collection, thinking mostly of The Seed and the Stone). But whereas Le Guin does this as an anthropologist’s daughter, I get a different sense of Jarboe’s interests, who is not seeking some authentic forlorn people to stand in contrast to evils of high-tech modernity. Thats a tendency my antennas is tuned to. This was something else and brought up to me the question many would like to avoid: don’t we (speaking as an “American Indian”) want those “not from here” to also be connected to this land, to care for it, isn’t that we should be teaching each other? Anyway logging off before I go full we are the love or something....more
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