Clarke rambles nostalgically through the odd early days of the influential pulp science-fiction magazine, Astounding Tales of Super-Science, in a warmly appreciative yet far from uncritical tribute to sf's beginnings-cum-personal memoir. Astounding (now Analog, still alive and kicking) first appeared in 1930, and mutated several times before passing in 1937 into the hands of legendary editor John W. Campbell. Clarke compares the styles of the various editors by scrutinizing the stories they published and, sometimes, wrote. Occasionally, fiction outpaced fact, as in Clive Cartmill's pre-WW II description of an atomic bomb, Ray Cummings' early proposal for gravity-slingshot maneuvers (recently employed by NASA to boost Voyager to Neptune), and Clarke's own foretelling of the nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine—in 1946. Other stories were less successful, and these Clarke uses to explore ideas and scientific concepts, essay-style, adding intriguing autobiographical details: Clarke as a young English schoolboy fascinated with rockets and space, as an RAF researcher inventing landing systems (Ascent to Orbit is his "scientific autobiography"), or as an increasingly assured contributor (of both fiction and nonfiction) to the selfsame magazine. Charming—Clarke loves his subject, and it shows—and effortlessly informative while maintaining a perfect balance between affection and skepticism.
Pub Date: March 1, 1990
ISBN: 0553348221
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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