Last book I read was “Dune” since I was inspired to read it again after I saw the brilliant Villeneuve film adaptation.
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Yeah I mean the movie is a bit crap and it’s actually based on a short story-spin off that is nevertheless part of the Sprawl trilogy.
I watched it because it’s not 100% terrible and there’s Henry Rollins in it. 
But to be fair I’d rather re-read the story “Johnny Mnemonic”.
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Ah Dune is also great, now in part 5 of the two original trilogies. Though it gets weird at God Emperor of Dune but I do love that book.
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If I was to make a list of sci-fi books that I thought everyone should read, then Neuromancer is very close to the top of that list.
Or you can wait - they are making a series, so they don’t have to condense a fairly dense story into a 1.5 hour movie. And Apple have a better than average track record with recent sci-fi adaptations?
I remain cautiously optimistic
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Agreed. God Emeperor, Heretics and Chapterhouse are a very different animal from Dune, Messiah and Children. To be quite frank, the first 3 books are far superior to books 4-6 IMHO.
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I was intrigued by The Peripheral and was sad it was canceled after only one season. A shame.
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I am reading Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2). The Expanse, the Prime series, was among my greatest TV experiences, up there with Breaking Bad and the first 2/3s of The Game of Thrones.
The books so far are pretty good. Just now I read this passage and I laughed so hard I hope you don’t mind that I share it (instead of showing the 1st letter of the key obscenity I am omitting it entirely. You get it. It’s the big one)
Avasarala (female big-wig at the UN):
“They’re all ****ing men, she said
“Excuse me?” Soren said
“The generals. They’re all ****ing men.”
“I thought Souther was the only—“
“I don’t mean they all **** men. I mean they’re all men, the ****ers…”
Classic Avasarala!
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Avasarala is hilarious. I enjoyed the series a lot.
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Does it end in a cliffhanger? If not then I might still give it a try. It sounds intriguing.
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Same here. Why do intelligent, thought provoking shows get cancelled… especially with some of the dross that gets renewed for a 2nd and subsequent seasons!
Agree. I haven’t read the books. I think I will have to.
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Because shows get renewed or cancelled not based on quality but on how many people are watching/streaming it.
I know. But it just renforces my opinion that we need a bounty on stupid people 
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That’ll turn out just like anything else: people will breed more of them to collect the bounties on! 
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I know it was setup for a second season, so I’m not sure whether it counts as a “cliffhanger” by modern standards or not.
In the traditional sense, no. Not like on many SF shows. For example, the Quantum Leap reboot was canceled after its 2nd season finale in which not only the main character but now also a 2nd member of the team was suddenly stranded “leaping” with them. With cancelation there is no resolution of one or both getting back home.
This show was not like that, but it was perhaps more like reading to the end of chapter in a book without reaching its end. Maybe like the end of the first 2 SW prequels? More to come, story’s not over, but you’re not left on the edge of your seat.
Certainly knowing now that it won’t be coming back it’s less satisfying than watching it on release and assuming it would.
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Nanette : Her Pilot’s Love Story by Edward Parks (1977)
Pacific Wrecks: Pacific Wrecks - P-39 "Nanette" Nose Number 74 Squadron Letter N
Aircraft History
Built by Bell in Buffalo, New York. Delivered to the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF) as P-39N Airacobra serial number unknown. Disassembled and shipped overseas to the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) and reassembled.Wartime History
Assigned to the 5th Air Force (5th AF), 35th Fighter Group (35th FG), 41st Fighter Squadron (41st FS) “The Flying Buzzsaws”. Assigned to pilot Edwards Park Nickname “Nanette” with squadron letter N and nose number 74. During the middle of 1943, this Airacobra operated in New Guinea until at least early 1944. A single aircraft silhouette was painted on the left side of the nose indicating Park’s single aerial victory claim on March 4, 1944 when he claimed a Ki-61 Tony piloting a P-47D Thunderbolt.Edwards Park writes in Nanette:
"Nanette was the nickname of the author’s P-39 Airacobra, a plane that he describe the type as “She is beautiful and graceful at her best, while quirky and difficult to handle when not lovingly handled.” The metaphor of women and machine drives the author’s descriptions of his love affair with this quirky mate. “Even the planes unique vibrations, like when the P-39’s massive 37mm nose cannon is fired has a mild sexual stimulating feeling for the pilot who is nearly straddling the gun.”On November 7, 1943 while parked in a revetment at Nadzab Airfield, destroyed during a Japanese air raid by Ki-21 Sally bombers.
Nanette by Edwards Park pages 180, 182:
“On the next day 18 Japanese Betty Bombers [Ki-21 Sally] came high over Nadzab and dropped their load of antipersonnel ‘daisy cutters’ with devastating accuracy… and walked toward a thick black column of smoke fed by savage flames in one of our revetments. Nanette’s revetment. She had received a direct hit. It took her half an hour to burn… Two other planes had been damaged; the alert shack was shredded by shrapnel; six pilots discovered that they had been nicked; and one crew chief had become a soggy red bundle of clothes at the bottom of a bomb scorched slit trench. It was the crew chief for [P-39 Airacobra] number 75 - the same man who had helped me get out of it when I had been shot up in that big raid on Moresby, all those months ago.”Relatives
Lisa Park (daughter)References
Nanette page 180, 182
Angels Twenty by Edwards Park
Thanks to Lisa Park and Edward Rogers for additional informationContribute Information
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Do you have photos or additional information to add?Last Updated
March 7, 2023
Pacific Wrecks: Pacific Wrecks Review - Nanette: Her Pilot's Love Story
Nanette
Her Pilot’s Love StoryEdward Parks flew in the South Pacific with the 35th Fighter Group, 41st Fighter Squadron, known as the “Flying Buzzsaws”. Parks begins this book with an introduction and explanation. "Practically everything in this book actually happened, so it not really a novel. This book a wonderfully written with lavish visual descriptions and expression of the intangible feelings associated with being a young, impressionable inexperience, and far from home.
Nanette was the nickname of the author’s P-39 Airacobra, a plane that he describe the type as “She is beautiful and graceful at her best, while quirky and difficult to handle when not lovingly handled.” The metaphor of women and machine drives the author’s descriptions of his love affair with this quirky mate. “Even the planes unique vibrations, like when the P-39’s massive 37mm nose cannon is fired has a mild sexual stimulating feeling for the pilot who is nearly straddling the gun.”
Parks openly admits he was not the best pilot, especially because of the quirks of P-39, like its tendency to ground loop if the take off or landing are fouled. According to him, under peacetime conditions, his poor flying would have washed him out of the Air Corps, but now they need everyone in the air. He honestly describes the smell of the cockpit of a warbird: the odor of aviation fuel and a trace of vomit. When all guns are fired, the cockpit fills with smoke. Upon landing, ones flight suit is drenched with sweat. Hardly as romantic an endeavor as the outside world would imaging.
Every page of the book is full of lavish descriptions. Unlike other narratives that deal mostly with the military details of their service, Parks devotes most of his narrative to the less tangible and more emotional side of what it was like to be a disposable pilot in a war being waged in an unfamiliar land. Descriptions like Parks first impressions of New Guinea, when he stepped out of his plane at Jackson Airfield (7-Mile Drome) near Port Moresby wrote: “The heat solid and palpable, smells rich enough to grow crops, the colors so sharp and pure they make your eyes wince. The sun has an undiffused brilliance and when it touches something green, like a leaf, it isn’t your everyday humdrum leaf-green. It’s nature’s finest Goddamn green and it socks you right in the eyeball. The same with blue sky and black forest-tree trucks and red soil and white cumulus clouds and cobalt blue water and the red sun rising. The colors are so intense they make you visually drunk.”
This book is a wonderful read for anyone who wants to learn what a young pilot in New Guinea was thinking and feeling. This book reads itself, and each page turn reveals more descriptions and revelations about what it was really like fly and fight in the Air Corps in New Guinea.
Also by Edwards Park: Angels Twenty: A Young American Flier A Long Way From Home
Profile of author Edwards Park
Review by Justin Taylan
Return to Book Reviews | Add a review or submit for review
Last Updated
September 21, 2023
Wheels
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I was once an avid reader of biographies and history, these days I pretty much only read fiction for the pure escapism.
However, I have just added Nanette to my reading list.
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Just finished reading Rainbow Six again. Haven’t read it since I was a teenager.
I find the ending horrifying now … the bit where the international anti-terror team straight up murders the badguys rather than arrests them to stand trial for their crimes - because we can’t have the public worrying about what big business might be doing in the shadows!
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This strikes a note with me.
Some time I started reading all the Ryan-verse books from Tom Clancy in chronological order… that is not in the order they were written but in the order they take place- so the first is actually Patriot Games, for instance and not Hunt for Red October.
I remember loving Rainbow six to no end when I was in my late teens.
I was honestly looking forward to read it again- Several are impressive from the technical point of view but the more I went on reading Mr. Clancy’s books the more I started realizing the meta-commentary, the text between the lines.
When I finally reached Rainbow Six I had to skip a lot and just as you said it left me somewhat off.
Was this really the book I loved so much?
Funny how things change, ain’t it…
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I think we’re the ones that are changing
I’m not game to read Debt of Honor again… I loved that one too when I was a kid - and I think that’s the one where Jack Ryan ruins the US economy with his mirror trade policy isn’t it?
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