Showing posts with label Repairman Jack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Repairman Jack. Show all posts

Friday 2 July 2021

Into Nightworld


I'm surprised that I have got this quickly to the final book in "The Adversary Cycle" by F Paul Wilson, but the books are , for me , remarkably good reads. I am still surprised the the cycle is shown as six books as  "The Tomb" and "The Touch" are tangentially related in introducing characters Repairman Jack and Alan Bulmer who appear in the finale "Nightworld".

While I remember the overall plots of "The Keep" , "The Tomb" and "Nightworld" a reread is a bit like watching a TV or film prequel , there is no jeopardy , although I liked the way that "Gotham" tackled the Joker in a very unexpected twist..

I have not reread "The Touch" yet though I have started it on my Kindle fire , because I do not have a physical copy.

So into "Nightworld I go, while "The Tomb" feels a bit disconnected from "Reborn" (the real second Adversary Cycle book) , "Reborn" , "Reprisal" and "Nightworld" do flow into each other like a single entity, and I expect "Nightworld" to be as good this time round as the first time round.

In more personal news I am still suffering from a cough and cold , though it may be hay fever. As I write this before work I am listening to the soundtrack of the film "Dazed and Confused" which is packed with classic seventies rock although ironically not the Led Zeppelin song of the same name which you would expect.

It also contains the only song worth having by the abhorrent idiot Ted Nugent "Stranglehold" , which I first heard between bands when I saw The Rolling Stones at the first Knebworth concert in the mid seventies.

So I will share that with you this sunny Friday morning.

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Tuesday 29 June 2021

Encountering The Adversary

Possibly an unexpected title given that England play Germany in the Euros tonight but that is not what this is about. This is the least I've posted in a month on this blog for over ten years, it's not that I've not been not writing, but have been publishing on Vocal which has changed the way I write and also actually increased my writing in a year when I said I was going to slow it down. You can see my Vocal posts here.

The benefit of posting here is that I don't need to wait for story / article approval , which may be a good or bad thing, but I should not neglect this blog.

I have been suffering from a cough / cold possible after effects of COVID jab and since Thursday I have lost 3Kg in weight , probably because of my effective total fasting on Thursday and Friday. Yesterday my weight was 91.8Kg which is 202lb or 14 stone 6 lb , I haven't been that low since my early twenties, so I am now thinking maybe one day a week I will try fasting. Today my weight is 92.1 Kg.

So to the point of this article, I am currently rereading The Adversary Cycle by F Paul Wilson and while I know the overall picture I was surprised to find that the publishers push it as a six book series when in reality two of the books are only marginally related. I thought I was going to start what is sometimes advertised as the third book "The Touch" but looking through my collection I realised I didn't have a copy (I think I borrowed it from my mate Steve Kirby about twenty years back) so I ordered a copy on my Kindle Fire.

I am currently on book three of the four, "Reprisal" having read the excellent "Reborn" which soon became obvious was the real follow up to "The Keep" the start of the series (also a Michael Mann film).

When I reread "The Tomb" I was thinking "This has nothing to do with The Adversary" although the hero (or anti hero) Repairman Jack reappears in the Adversary Finale , "Nightworld", 

All the books are excellent trending towards eventually apocalypse mixing mystery , horror and detective genres which some excellent characterisations and given that I am normally a slow reader , this series is one that I will revisit when I am finished.

So I am going to share Mussorgsky's "Night on Bare Mountain" a scary bit from Disney's "Fantasia" which is a good soundtrack for this piece from one of my mums favourite films.

Thursday 6 May 2021

WordsWith Friends, Tom Waits , Repairman Jack and The Adversary Cycle

 My last few posts have been more focussed on single item although this is more about where I am at the moment.


I had been playing Scrabble on Facebook with a few friends but it became less stable to the point of often not being able to play , and so I went back to Words With Friends which I had left about eight years back due to the number of pop up adverts that stopped me from playing, or at least slowed it down.


Although it’s on Facebook and requires a Facebook login for the phone version, if I tried to play it on Facebook it did not link with what I was playing on the phone. Again there were the adverts which I discovered you could exit early , but the worst thing was how the app drained the phone battery especially if you did not close the app when you were finished. Also loading the app was very slow but I could live with it, but I checked the battery usage and it would drop significantly when I was playing the game. I have a Google Pixel 2XL. The other was people who wanted to chat, some were actually fine, but most were trying to sell me bitcoin and forex stuff despite me saying I wasn’t at all interested, then there were people demanding my email and hangouts address so they could chat (I pointed out they could chat in the app) , but it was a final nail in Words With Friends for me. I informed my two Facebook friends who I played with and removed it from my phone, and the performance and battery life have improved no end.


The main battery drainage is my sharing video on Instagram and converting it using the excellent YouCut but I am fine with that , processing does take power.


I am intending to share this on Vocal but at this point this article is only half the required length so now I am going on to what I am reading at the moment. Also as I am writing this I am listening to the excellent “Bastards” the third disc of the “Orphans” set by Tom Waits and that has been my listening yesterday and this morning after his surprisingly good collaboration with Crystal Gayle on the soundtrack of the Francis Ford Coppola film “One From The Heart”, although with Tom Waits the unexpected is almost always expected.


I have just gone to cast my Local Council vote and the temperature is 1 degree Centigrade , cars and roofs are iced and there is black ice on the footpaths.


So Repairman Jack. I am reading “The Tomb” , the second book in The Adversary Cycle. It bears no resemblance to “The Keep” , the first book which was based in the second World War in Romania with two supernatural opponents , Nazis and Holocaust references , and it is an excellent read although the film was less successful , but a film has a limited time span to tell the story whereas a book can last as long as you want.


This is a rereading of “The Tomb” but it’s based in the eighties , dated by Jack’s Betamax collection and the fact he can live easily off grid in New York. Jack fixes wrongs. This book flashes between the British Raj and Sepoy rebellion in 19th Century India and 1980s New York with a Religious fundamentalist and some “demons” under his control. The “demons” are trained creatures and mortal, so not necessarily supernatural.


As yet there seems to be no link with “The Keep” , in particular the Adversary Molasar/Rasalom , but I’m only 140 pages in which is just over a third through the book, so there is plenty of time yet for an appearance. This is where not having a perfect memory is a benefit, I know the books are good , I know the basic overall story but the details are missing. Also F Paul Wilson is an extremely engaging writer and knows how to reel you in, or he knows how to reel me in.


I will no doubt add more as I work through the book , but it’s just the second of six books so I have a long way to go, and I’m not sure if Jack appears in all the books. I could research but I am happy just reading and enjoying “The Tomb”.


Sunday 8 October 2017

Running Out - Power and Signals


 Was just thinking habout how reliant we are becoming on mobile devices and how companies are pushing us to become more reliant on mobile devices. We can use them to pay for things, watch things , communicate in a number of ways but they are reliant on two things, power and a decent signal. So you may have your phone phone and think you can use it as your bus ticket, pay for your overpriced coffee or whatever but if the battery runs out then that's you stuck. Similarly of the signal drops then you may be stuck again although some apps provide on device data.

I use my Sony Xperia XA for recording my walking and yesterday went out without it. Incidentally the Pacer software since I installed it has only possibly failed to record properly one, and that may have been my fault, so I am well impressed by it's reliability.  This was one of the few times I have returned to get hold of my phone , mainly because I wasn't sure if I'd left it in the house or actually lost it. I piced it up and the power was on 12% . By the time I got to my destination it was still going on 2% power but must have switched off soon after. I didn't have a back up power pack and although I have one power cable which I could have used to recharge it on the bus, it was in another jacket.

Sometimes a pen and paper is actually better, and although I have the Kindle app on my phone and an actual Kindle Fire they are still dependent on power and signals.

I'm not sure what the answers are to these first world problems, unless someone makes distributed power a reality. Imageine how cool it would be if power was as distributable as a radio , tv or mobile signal. We would truly be a wireless society then although even more vulnerable to losing the source of keeping us up and running.

This could possibly be even extended to replacement body parts, imagine a heart running on distributed power. but I am really flying off  into the outer reaches of science fiction here and I am no Brian Aldiss, and I was introduced to the concept of distributed power by another of my favourite authors F Paul Wilson. I think it was Legacies. one of the excellent Repairman Jack series.

Anyway it's Sunday and I need to relax , so it has to be "The Power" by Snap. Have a good day everybody.