u/DanEosen

Had Jakes ever given a reason why he didn’t bring the family at least to the 1970s? It always felt weird that given its popularity it just stopped at WW1. Actually I can’t recall any Jakes novels delving into WW2 era or beyond. For the Kent’s in my mind I just connected it with the story continuing with Jonathon and Martha Kent adopting Clark who married Lois Lane. Yes it’s a very silly take but given he started as a SF writer I always wondered if chosing Kent he was making a link.

I read his Bigfoot War series a few years ago and Kaiju Apocalyspe right now I am reading his 2024 Cryptid War. He reminds me a lot of Bert I Gordon who believed big was ok but Colossal is better. Some movies he made was 1950s Colossal Man duology, Empire of Ants and Food of The Gods both from the 1970s. I would call Brown and Gordon Saturday afternoon SF mixed with horror.

I am defining Saturday Afternoon SF and Horror as being stories in which they are meant to be entertaining with science just as a backdrop and accuracy is not important.

I grew up loving Saturday Afternoon movies. As a writer his books reminds me of that era.

I don’t believe Brown has written serious SF like Peter Hamilton or Ian Banks. He has though written for the Ring of Fire series created by late Eric Flint.

I also like how Brown knows how to get to the point and knows when to end a story his novels from what I read range from 100 to 150 pages.

Any SF writers similar to Brown? Sometimes you need a SF story where you just want to be entertained and your analytical part of your brain on pause.

I recently read 1970’s Hell House by Richard Matheson and you can see Jackson had some influence on this.

Hell House was obviously haunted by Belasco.

This novel. I lean towards it was not. What do we know about Eleanor. She is prone to retreating into imagination, she was a caregiver so she knows how to walk and move by making almost no sound, she is melodramatic, she is distrustful yet wants to belong, she wants Luke and Theodora’s friendship badly but at same time repels them and considers them like children. She also has physical psychic ability as displayed as a child which indicated brought on by stress.

Hill House. Owned originally by Crain, he has two daughters that became adults and he had three wives. Crain’s first wife died outside the house, second died from a fall and third in Europe. Yet Crain himself died in Europe shortly after his third wife.and there is no indication of children dying in the house. The house is huge with interior rooms, corners that are made imperfectly, stairs in which the degree is off. A house that could give anyone a feeling of disorientation and impact their emotions.

When the professor was giving the story of the Crain family Eleanor kept turning it into a melodrama.

At first night Theodora and Eleanor heard a lot of knocking on doors. We know as a child Eleanor threw rocks mentally. The knocking only stopped when Eleanor told it to stop, First night I can imagine can bring great deal of stress. Could she have subconsciously do the knocking. Is knocking truly harder then moving rocks.

A large old house set in hills it’s quite possible for a wild animal to slip inside.

The writing on the wall. Eleanor was a caregiver and she would have a history of knowing how to walk silently. She also has a strong need to belong. She moved rocks as a child and doesn’t recall it’s quite possible she wrote the messages and either cannot recall or won’t. She is not a reliable narrator. Theodora also blamed Eleanor for doing this. Later on in the day Theo found her clothes ruined. Eleanor’s work? Theo’s first instinct was to blame Eleanor for the writing. We don’t know why she thought that we only saw this scene from Eleanor’s pov.

Was the nursery really cold? The professor’s reading showed it unchanged. The occupants of the nursery became adults. The sister who lived there as an adult there is no indication she nor her companion had kids. So an unused nursery kept for sentimental reasons by the sister? It wouldn’t be haunted. We do know Eleanor lived with her sister who she resented and slept by the sister’s nursery. Was it really cold or was it power of suggestion after Eleanor commenting about it.

The haunted picnic scene. We see this from Eleanor’s point of view. We know with the car ride to Hill House Eleanor saw property and woods created whole stories about what she saw. Was she actually seeing a picnic or did she lose her ability in not telling the difference between reality and stories in her mind. Also who would be at the picnic? Father Crain died in Europe so unless he ghost traveled from Europe to US it wouldn’t be him. No children died so it wouldn’t be Crain’s daughters. Eleanor was also obsessed with having a picnic. I would argue her ability to differentiate imagination from reality is shattering and Theo reacted not to the haunted picnic but to the change in behavior from Eleanor.

This wasn’t about the house wanting Eleanor but she wanting the house.

I will in a few days read Elizabeth Hand’s sequel. Note I love Hell House. I do think Flo and Eleanor are a lot alike. I did find the novel’s Flo more than the movie version. Flo in the novel was middle aged, was a minister yet very naive. I found the movie Flo as more believable. I could believe a 20 year old so naive

I enjoyed the first two movies and enjoyed Elizabeth Chamberlain. She obviously had a lot of fun as Mildred.

This movie was soooo tedious. I don’t know how we went from the ending of last movie to this one. Mildred is hiding out and illegally made keys from this family going on vacation. Don’t worry she didn’t harm them. She also was going to pay for the food she used and for staying there.

She used a camera to record everything and in her hideout she got bored and decided to kill bad people in Edmonton. Yes that’s the plot of the movie Mildred kills bad folks of Edmonton. The next forty odd minutes is her telling the audience who she was killing and why. One was a man on bail for killing another at a party. Another was a stalker, a professor who gave grades based on “favors”, a dog abuser etc. Each intro to kill to kill took about three minutes and that’s all it was - rinse and repeat.

The last movie the storyline was very dumb with the fake church and camp retreat. I loved the first movie about revenge.

What I loved about first two films was yes she was a slasher but also had a sense of humanity. First movie she befriended a man taking her to a business retreat. The second film she avenged her friend and got other victims to help her.

This movie forgot that. She just killed. Sure she killed bad folks and maimed one. If they stuck with her going after the car thief it would have been better. The kills themselves were really bad.

It is right now just on the Higher Universe YouTube channel so I am unsure when it will be on FoundTV or Tubi. It’s only 48 minutes long but seemed far longer.

Brandon Rhiness has proven capable of telling fun stories like the previous Grotesque and I’m Haunted series, this movie seemed like an afterthought. Yes many cast members were shown before in his various films but they were essentially walks on with a few lines of dialogue before being killed or maimed. It was just so repetitive and the jokes were not funny.

The worse part it came across as just lazy filmmaking.

Nuclear War by Sam Nyxon

I am reading this novel series about the near future and a slow moving nuclear war. I am on book 3. Something about this series is troubling me. The author Sam Nyxon was a journalist. A former journalist who went into conflict zones. In this day and age his articles or references would be online. On Amazon he has a picture and a bio but that can be faked. He written two trilogies and this series on is about AI and the other a war dealing with the Baltics. His descriptions of nuclear blasts seem repetitive.

Also would any nation really be stupid enough to use a nuke to destroy their own nonoperative satellites? Also would Russia really nuke the Baltic Sea? A sea they use for shipping. Oh they did it just to show they can.

Are folks creating fake bios for AI written books? Sam Nyxon could be a pseudonym.

These are kindle books. There are just red flags here with an author who is a journalist with nothing online, near repetitive descriptions, and ten 10 books in a little over a year.

I am reading this novel series about the near future and a slow moving nuclear war. I am on book 3. Something about this series is troubling me. The author Sam Nyxon was a journalist. A former journalist who went into conflict zones. In this day and age his articles or references would be online. On Amazon he has a picture and a bio but that can be faked. He written two trilogies and this series on is about AI and the other a war dealing with the Baltics. His descriptions of nuclear blasts seem repetitive.

Also would any nation really be stupid enough to use a nuke to destroy their own nonoperative satellites? Also would Russia really nuke the Baltic Sea? A sea they use for shipping. Oh they did it just to show they can.

Are folks creating fake bios for AI written books? Sam Nyxon could be a pseudonym.

These are kindle books

I recall in the 80s through early 2000s new Star Trek novels were always displayed in the front section of store. Watching this YouTube episode the latest which is post Picard season three appeared to have flopped. You would think book sales would be booming considering the number of shows in last few years. I recall sales were good when we just had TNG and later Voyager.

I do think $14.99 is way too much for a kindle novel. When this video was made sales was in the 3000 ranking now it’s at 10k. So just a handful of kindle sales? Or do most just buy physical copies?

If this book is a flop as video suggests I wonder how much longer new books will be made.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=\_hiY5raS-A0&t=600s

I love 1973 movie Legend of Hell House. I read the book circa 15 years ago and recently I reread it. The novel and screenplay was written by Richard Matheson. I have to say from the novel to the movie the movie improved in one major way. In the novel Florence was circa 40 years old and like the movie she was utterly naive about Belasco’s son. It pushed believability that a woman of her age could be so incredibly naive. In the movie they deaged Florence and made her to be circa 20 and her naiveness made much more sense.

Now they need to make Nancy A Collin’s authorized prequel Return to Hell House as a movie or miniseries, it focuses on the 1940 investigation featuring a young teen Ben who was played by Roddy McDowell as the adult middle aged Ben in the movie.

Which horror movie made improvements from the novel.

Are they in the process of making Questlines for them or they decided not too. Peanuts and Star Trek should at least have them.

Sure pre1950s Christmas music is popular still and Over The Rainbow but that’s about it. I grew up in the 70s watching with my late grandmom old Abbott and Costello movies and they almost always included Andrew Sisters performing. They were good singers and vocally held up well except that era especially WW2 music seems utterly forgotten. Vocally Bing Crosby and Andrew Sisters are as good as singers from the last 40 odd years.

Sometimes I feel like folks believe music started with Elvis or Beatles.

I would have thought with streaming and folks not being dependent on radio there would have been a resurgent of that era music becoming listened to more. Streaming it has it seems brought 1960s and 70s music to a wider audience.

I am reading Out of The Dark by Weber and have read in the past a few books about Honor Harrington (first three) and his two Rings of Fire novels with Eric Flint.

He has a tendency of over explaining. I grew up reading Asimov, AC Clarke and Heinlein folks that explained the science but also knew how to keep the story going.

In two chapters for Out of The Dark:

First chapter explained how the aliens put a device on a roof of an Iranian coffee shop which hacked into the global Internet. Weber explained it in detail. The next chapter the Americans found out and it was explained to the President what the aliens did and how the hack came from an Iranian coffee shop. As the reader I knew what the aliens did and it was just repeating in a different way what they did. I kept thinking “pick a chapter to tell the story not both”. It just stalled the story.

Looking back I recall how you could tell in Rings of Fire what Flint wrote and what Weber wrote. Flint’s first novel 1632 the story moved at a good pace. Weber’s 1633 explained too much about plane and ship building merging modern technology to yesterdays. In Honor novels I felt his stories stalled with over explaining.

I feel he is closer to Tom Clancy than Asimov, Clarke or Heinlein where explaining about technology supplants moving a story forward. Yes explain about technology and future tech should be explained but not sacrifice pace of story. In the past writers knew how to balance it.

I recently got a Kindle and discovered lots of alternate history books. I loved reading in the past Harry Turtledove’s Southern Victory series and enjoyed John Birmingham’s first Axis of Time novel. I also liked Phil Roth’s Plot Against America.

Turtledove is a historian and even though he has a horrible habit of creating what seems like cast of a thousand he has a grasp of history. While reading Birmingham I just wasn’t sure if his knowledge was as in depth.

I am not expecting writers with knowledge of history like Turtledove, Wouk or Michener doing alternate history but with more than high school history.