Book Retorts

This week Sam brings the penultimate episode of the 1990 Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion. Picking up where we left off last time, Severn takes a little meditation time to have visions of Meina Gladstone’s war room where the TechnoCore has just the best idea to defeat the ousters: Herd all the Hegemony people to safety in the labyrinths then use a novel WMD they just happen to have to wipe out the ousters. While many of the FORCE leaders love this idea, Meina, and also Danielle, are not on board. Severn also sees the consul being rescued from brigands by his friend Theo Lane, which is the most interesting Danielle has found the Consul to be in quite some time. Severn comes too and is joined by Leigh Hunt who has come to take him to talk to Gladstone while Father Duré goes to God’s Grove to talk to the Templars. Unfortunately, as Severn and Hunt step through the farcaster, they end up not in Government House, but in what Severn identifies as Earth, or its recreation, far from the web. Severn recognizes the area as Italy and he and Hunt are pushed towards Rome on the abandoned planet. Also, Severn develops an instant case of tuberculosis, because Keats. While Severn and Hunt conduct their slow trek to Rome, Meina and her generals observe the first invasion of Heaven’s Gate, which ends in the planet being destroyed from orbit, so not a great start. Meanwhile, the Consul makes it back to his ship with the help of Melio Arundez, but instead of returning to Sol and Rachel, he is requested by Meina to liaise with the Ouster swarm in the Hyperion system to negotiate a ceasefire. Also, Kassad is fighting the Shrike and while not doing too badly, is definitely not winning. Back on God’s Grove, Father Duré has a tête-à-tête with the True Voice of the Worldtree and the Bishop of the Church of Final Atonement. A lot of things are revealed in this conversation, and this is about the time where Danielle’s brain just gives up trying to understand everything. While this section is definitely jam-packed with intrigue and complications, we do at least get a new pope. Unfortunately, said pope is not our two hosts, but maybe next time.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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This week Danielle brings Sam back to the 90s with the 1990 Caroline B. Cooney novel The Face on the Milk Carton. Fifteen-year-old Janie Johnson is your average lactose-intolerant teen who just wants to fit in and kiss the cute boy next door. However, one day at school she sees a picture of a missing three-year-old child on a milk carton and is immediately convinced it’s probably her from twelve years ago. This immediately sends Janie spiraling into an existential crisis. Amazingly, Janie starts to have flashbacks to memories of her three-year-old life, improbable as it sounds for her to have one, much less just so freaking many memories from when she was three or younger. Janie begins to question if her parents are really her parents, but instead of asking them outright anything about it, or contacting the hotline from the milk carton for clarification, Janie stalks the family of the missing girl by coercing her kinda-boyfriend into driving her to New Jersey only to chicken out before actually knocking on the door. Finally, Janie confronts her parents who tell her a story about how her mother, their daughter, ran off to join a cult and then showed up one day to dump baby Janie on them, which they raised as their own. Amazingly, the story doesn’t just end there with everyone getting a lot of therapy. No spoilers, but Sam is very upset by the “twist” that everyone just accepts and is downright angry by the end book, so you know this is going to be a good one!

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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This week Sam returns to his comfort zone with the 1990 Dan Simmons novel The Fall of Hyperion. The Time Tombs have opened and the Ousters are invading the WorldWeb, so things could be going better for the Hegemony. Severn is woken up just in time to take a little walk through the first-wave invasion worlds after filling in Meina Gladstone on the current goings-on of the pilgrims. Meina clues in Severn that his “dreams” of the pilgrims are extending beyond his supposed connection to the other Keats persona cybrid, and somehow this never occurred to Severn. Severn decides to meditate into a vision, and sees Martin Silenus stuck on the Tree of Pain, but through the power of reciting poetry he’s able to ease his pain, and that of those around him, enough to apologize to Sad King Billy who just happens to be impaled right near by. Convenient! Anyway, Severn then goes to Renaissance Vector and meditates again, this time getting a vision of Meina in her war room deciding on a plan to abandon the first-wave worlds so they can take the fight to the Ouster swarms to save the rest of the Web. Severn wakes up and is suddenly chased by a mob of Shrike Cult zealots before escaping into a library with a dedicated room full of Keats poems. Super convenient! Severn takes yet another nap and sees Brawne and Johnny traversing the Megaspehere to find Ummon, Johnny’s “father”, a megalith that loves to speak in koans, so that’s fun. It informs them about a war between a machine-created Ultimate Intelligence and a human-derived Ultimate Intelligence from far in the future, where part of the triune human Ultimate Intelligence fled back in time to the “present” to hide and keep from losing the war. Thus, the Shrike was sent back in time to track it down and finish the battle. That’s just such a brief summation of the lunacy contained in Ummon’s story. Also, Paul Duré is back in the web on Pacem. How did he get there? Two words: Corpse tunnels.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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This week Danielle thrills Sam by bringing the crabs back with the 1988 Guy N. Smith book Crabs’ Moon. In this companion novel to Night of the Crabs the cow-sized crabs are back! Kinda! This novel briefly mentions Cliff Davenport but instead focuses on a new set of characters that are entirely irrelevant to the overall story, so it’s thrilling stuff. Irey, young mother looking for a good man to bring excitement to her loveless marriage has her would-be lover killed by giant crabs, which is a real bummer as a start to her vacation. It gets worse as the resort she’s staying in is put into lock-down by the evil owner to prevent people from ruining the resort’s reputation or something. If you think this villainous billionaire will get his crabby comeuppance, boy, are you going to be disappointed. Anyway, they decide to build a wall of sandbags to keep the crabs out which is exactly as ineffective as you’d expect since Irey’s young children manage to escape and almost get murdered by crabs. Also, there was a crab living in a lake at the resort that just wanders off at some point, and Sam has many questions about this book, mostly focused on why it exists. There are more characters that get killed, some in hilarious ways, and not one of them matters to the story. The good news is that the crabs don’t disappoint being as weird as ever and, even better, Danielle returns with a fresh, steaming basket of Crab Facts!

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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Elevator music courtesy of Stonefree.

We kick off the new year with a short! It’s Danielle’s turn to recall any details about the 2007 direct to video Disney threequel Cinderella III: A Twist in Time. Danielle does a decent job, but her holiday-addled brains are no match for the insanity that is Cinderella III. So enjoy as we reminisce about this fairy tale story and then become upset with it all over again.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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This week, Sam stares into the void as he shares the 2013 Hallmark movie Fir Crazy. Elise is your average high-powered business woman who hates Christmas. Not because Christmas did anything to her, but because she was forced to, gasp, work on her family’s tree lot during the holiday. Of course, Elise promptly loses her job and her loser boyfriend and finds herself with no choice but to return to the lot to shill trees where a hunky man looking to buy a Christmas tree (or four) shows up in pursuit of Elise. This is when Sam begins to unravel as he is clearly not strong enough to handle the insanity of Hallmark. This handsome white man quickly reveals himself to be an absolute serial killer which Elise seems totally fine with. However, she is reluctant to commit to dating the handsome man at first, given that she’s on the rebound dealing with being recently unemployed during the holiday season, which is all totally reasonable. Unless, of course, you’re in a Hallmark movie, in which case that’s you just being a Grinch who needs to lighten up. Sam descends into madness as the insanity well just gets deeper and deeper, and yet somehow the movie also has no plot. To compensate for the lack of plot, Danielle leads Sam down numerous cul de sacs which are all more interesting than the movie itself. The one bright spot is the villain of the movie played by Colin Mochrie, who is trying to shut down the tree lot as the new landlord of the store which the lot fronts. Why does he hate Christmas? We can’t tell you that here, but we can tell you it’s very stupid, as all character motivations are here. Will Elise hook up with the handsome man and learn the true meaning of Christmas? Will the grumpy businessman learn to accept the tree lot and learn the true meaning of Christmas? Does Hallmark absolutely not care about any other cultural or religious perspectives? If you think the answer to any of those questions is “no” you might be surprised by this episode. So join us for this jumbo episode which is Sam’s gift to the world. You’re welcome.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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In this week’s (not so) short, Partial Recall is back as Danielle challenges Sam to remember what she told him about the 2011 movie Red Riding Hood. Sam begins his recollection by promptly falling flat on his face, and it only goes downhill from there. Danielle relishes her sweet revenge as Sam struggles to recall the most basic plot details, but does somehow remember a werewolf contract was involved. So join us as Sam becomes outraged at this movie all over again.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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To kick off the Winter Bizarre, Danielle brings the 2002 movie It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie. Despite the absolute clunker of a title, this Muppet Christmas Movie does, indeed, contain many Muppets and their delightful antics. We open on a distraught Kermit killing the vibe at the Muppet Christmas party by lamenting that he’s lost the theater; it’s been repossessed by the bank. A celestial being of some kind named Daniel, or Danny El, (David Arquette) is watching Kermit’s misery from heaven (or something) and at first tries to convince his coworker (William H. Macy) that they need to intervene with a miracle. Ol’ Willy H. disagrees, and so Daniel goes straight to the person in charge: Whoopie Goldberg. Daniel explains what happened to Kermit in a flashback. Apparently, the previous owner of the bank died, leaving the evil Rachel (Joan Cusack) in charge. Rachel has decided to renege on the handshake agreement Kermit had with the previous bank owner to wait to collect on Kermit’s bank loan for the Muppet Theater until after their first week of performances. Rachel is deciding to stick to the letter of the contract which requires payment by midnight Christmas Eve. At this point, Sam thinks he’s identified the actual villain of the film: Kermit. The irresponsible frog somehow signed a contract on a bank loan with a term due before they could stage any shows at the theater, and which comes due at midnight (what?) on Christmas Eve (WHAT?!), and Sam cannot believe he then asks all his employees to forgo their salaries for a whole freaking year to cover his irresponsibility. Anyway, what follows is a smörgåsbord of guest stars and parodies of other Christmas movies and, for some reason, The Crocodile Hunter. So join us for this hilarious Muppet adventure that is most definitely bizarre and has Sam mumbling “Humbug” at Kermit.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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Our holiday schedule has arrived, which means it’s time for more games! This time Danielle has come up with a game where Sam and Danielle try to guess which of the three possible titles from another work in a franchise they’ve shared is real, and which the other person just made up. Are they good at it? Not really, but it does give them some great ideas for future episodes.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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The Fall of Hyperion is back as Sam finishes up part two of the 1990 Dan Simmons novel. The Consul, Sol, and Paul Duré have been hiding out with the inconsistently conscious Het Masteen hiding from a storm of the Time Tides. Masteen informs them of his original plan: to use the erg he brought to turn the Shrike’s tree of pain into a spaceship and sail it through the stars possibly causing misery wherever he goes. The Shrike, apparently, is not on board with this plan, and after briefly abducting Masteen, he leaves Masteen to die, which he promptly and unceremoniously does, much to Danielle’s complete bafflement. They find Brawne, meanwhile, has had a weird metal tentacle plugged into her neural shunt, and though physically alive, appears completely brain dead. We soon learn that sysadmin Shrike has managed to plug Brawne, and also the persona of Johnny Keats she was carrying, directly into the datumplane, and the digital avatars of Brawne and Johnny decide to go on an adventure through the TechnoCore looking for information. Meanwhile, Kassad emerges from a portal with Moneta in what appears to be the distant future when the time tombs were first created. He sees the Shrike’s tree of pain with Martin stuck to it,and as he approaches to help, the Shrikes emerges. Soon, Kassad is surrounded by hundreds of Shrikes, but that doesn’t stop him from charging in head long to fight them. Back in the valley, the others decide to send the Consul off on the Hawking mat he brought to try and retrieve his ship. Not much happens on the several days he flies back, but he does end up falling into a river, so that’s fun. Meanwhile, Duré wanders off for some reason and is almost certainly taken by the Shrike. Now alone, Sol is approaching the moment of Rachel’s birth. He dreams again of the voice demanding the sacrifice, and in an extra dirty trick, a manifestation of his daughter appears in his dream, begging him to sacrifice her. As the time tombs pulse and glow preparing to open there are only two questions remaining: Will Sol sacrifice his daughter? And will DJ Shrike stick around for the encore? Find the answer to at least one of those questions in this week’s episode!

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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