The printed page

[pacman000]

Read Servants of the Wankh by Jack Vance. Basic Plot: nA man crash lands on an alien planet. For the most part it's about people moving from place to place with one character describing the cultures of those places. It gets more interesting near the end (they try to steal a spaceship,) but still lacks something. Too much time is spent moving from place to place with nothing happening, and when something does happen Vance describes it so plainly it's dull. And there wasn't an alien dinosaur, like on the cover.


From Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servants_of_the_Wankh

[scotland]

Read Servants of the Wankh by Jack Vance.

Wow. I haven't thought about Jack Vance since the last time someone posted on this thread. That's an unfortunate title now - servants of the wankh. In my circle, Jack Vance is best known for a collection of stories he wrote called The Dying Earth. Its a fun fantasy setting in the far future, where things are a mix of technologies and magic, a bit like Thundarr the Barbarian. The unusual system of magic he created influenced Gygax in creating the magic system for Dungeons and Dragons (basically, a magician has to rememorize a spell after casting it, so most spells are only available to cast once a day).

dying earth.jpg (24.91 KiB) Viewed 614 times

[pacman000]

The Dying Earth has a cool cover; maybe I'll look for it.

Pulp novels and magazines usually had really nice cover art. One of my favorite's is City at World's End by Edmond Hamilton. This is not the Dr. Who novel, but an earlier book, from 1951, about a city that was thrust into the future at the start of an atomic war. The Earth is abandoned and the sun's grown cold, and the city's citizens move to an abandoned domed city to preserve heat, then...I'll stop to avoid spoiling anything.

I also like Murray Linster. He's like a B-movie novelist. Good ideas, but not to be taken seriously. He wrote an novelization of Irwin Allen's Land of the Giants. Linster tends to repeat things over and over again, but that's what you get when the writer's paid by the word.

[pacman000]

Bought a book of Bone comics for $2.

As it turns out I found the last book in the series. (Never read one before, but I'd heard that the series was good.) Now I know how everything ends, but I still want more.

[VideoGameCritic]

This thread reminds me of those fantastic old circa 1940s-1950s comics with stories of robots and invading aliens. I would kind of like to read those! Are they still available in some form??

[scotland]

Bought a book of Bone comics for $2.

As it turns out I found the last book in the series. (Never read one before, but I'd heard that the series was good.) Now I know how everything ends, but I still want more.

You can pick up Trade Paperbacks of Jeff Smiths Bone pretty cheaply. Go for it.

[Stalvern]

Bought a book of Bone comics for $2.

As it turns out I found the last book in the series. (Never read one before, but I'd heard that the series was good.) Now I know how everything ends, but I still want more.

You can pick up Trade Paperbacks of Jeff Smiths Bone pretty cheaply. Go for it.

There's a complete omnibus that's very affordable.

[VideoGameCritic]

I think this is more of what I had in mind:

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Amazing-Sto ... 8&qid=&sr=

[scotland]

I've forgotten the date, but for things that are in the public domain, you can get those dirt cheap as e-books. For instance, if you want to read Sherlock Holmes or Conan the Barbarian or Lovecraft or Tarzan or many of these Astonishing Tales