Fail-Safe

THE ECCO PRESS

Written by Eugene Burdick + Harvey Wheeler

Copyright © 1962 by Eugene Burdick and John Harvey Wheeler, Jr.

All rights reserved



In Fail-Safe, during a routine strategic airborne incident deployment from the Strategic Air Command on an unknown airline, one group of American nuclear strike bombers accidentally gets a "go" code from their Fail-Safe box to complete their mission - to bomb Moscow.

I remember watching the 1964 movie Fail-Safe with Henry Fonda, which was based on the book, in junior high school and how suspenseful the movie was - and the awful executive decision the President was forced to make here at home. The movie was so suspenseful that all the students in my class were interested in the movie, which is hard to do to interest a rowdy junior high class. This was still during the height of the Cold War, so the relevance of the movie particulary hit home with us. I am not sure if it was the politics or the hardware that my class liked. I think the guys were interested in the planes and hardware, like I was. Watching a primitive, when compared to today, computerized tracking system as the high-speed, high-altitude planes head deeper into Russia - and the Russians response - was both cool and terrifying at the same time.

All of the above from the movie is in marked contrast to the book, which has the first half of the book dealing with all the politics. The bombers do not really get the orders to head for Moscow until halfway through the book, which I was a scene that I was waiting for. Reading through all the politics was boring when compared to the suspense of the movie. There was one entire chapter on the background of one character, but the character's background had no real bearing on the story except for the character's academic achievements. When I was reading this chapter, I was going - "Get on with the story!" Even the 2000 live-event TV movie Fail-Safe was more suspenseful than the book, of which I believe is mainly due to the quality of the acting and the compact pacing of telling a story in a two hour time-block. The cover of the book that I had read had a sticker on it, Soon to be a CBS-TV Live Movie Event Starring George Clooney.

You can see how trusting all of our military strength to such fail-safe machines like this, especially with such awesome power of the Strategic Air Command, is a precursor to such things as the Terminator movies - like Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. It is interesting that the term "fail-safe" just really means that if a failure happens, the failure should happen in the safest fashion.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

Flight of the Phoenix

HarperEntertainment
An Imprint of  HarperCollinsPublishers

Written by Elleston Trevor

Copyright © 1964 by Elleston Trevor. All rights reserved.

Search Amazon.com for the flight of the phoenix



In Elleston Tevor's The Flight of the Phoenix, a Skytruck air freighter runs into a sandstorm - and crashes in the Sahara desert,  the largest desert in the world. Now the survivors of the air freighter must struggle to stay alive in one of the hottest places on Earth as they desperately try to build a smaller new airplane from the wreckage of the Skytruck.

The development of the surviving characters are uneven - as I only recall half the characters of whom I could distinguish from the others. The struggle for leadership between the guilt-ridden pilot Towns and the obsessed engineer Stringer, as they construct the new plane to get away from their harsh landscape, is the main focus of the characters - although I was a bit put off by Stringer's inexperience with the real world. When the British soldier Captain Harris insists on traveling through the vast desert to a distant oasis to get some water, it seems almost cruel to me that the captain expects his sergeant to go marching with him into the parched, forbidding dessert. Especially since the Sahara desert gets less than three inches of rain per year. This book has been made into two movies - the 1965 film with James Stewart with a Fairchild C-82 Packet, as well as the 2004 film with Dennis Quaid with a Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar. I saw the 2004 film in the theater and the plot point towards the end of the movie was a shocker for me, but it seems to have been played down in the book.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.
Search Amazon.com for the flight of the phoenix

ATTACK OF THE SEVENTH CARRIER

ZEBRA BOOKS

Written by Peter Albano

Copyright © 1989 by Peter Albano



In ATTACK OF THE SEVENTH CARRIER written by Peter Albano, the fifth book of the Seventh Carrier series, the Imperial Japanese aircraft carrier Yonaga - which was originally supposed to be part of the Pearl Harbor attack force in 1941 - must deal with getting combat ready to go against an enemy naval fleet, while Lieutenant Brent Ross is assigned to a WWII submarine.

Because of a Chinese space orbital weapons system, modern weapons and machinery become destroyed if used. So WWII equipment is brought out of mothballs to fight the world's terrorists. As Lt. Ross, the American samurai, falls for a mature woman CIA liaison agent, Ross learns how to operate a WWII submarine to fight alongside Yonaga against a battle fleet. Considering that American submarines sank almost five million tons of shipping during WWII, this submarine is an important part of Yonaga's fleet. The loss of one of the major characters in the series is a shock and is sure to affect Ross in future novels.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

G.I. JOE - THE RISE OF COBRA

A Del Rey Mass Market Original

Written by Max Allan Collins
Based on a Story by Michael Gordon, Stuart Beattie, and Stephen Sommers

and the Screenplay by Stuart Beattie, David Elliot, and Paul Lovett
Copyright © 2009 by Hasbro Inc.
Copyright © 2009 by Paramount Pictures

All Rights Reserved.



 A convoy of nano-tech weaponry, weaponry made from molecular robots - is ambushed by aggressive super-soldiers that are called Vipers. The convoy is rescued by a top secret elite team of soldiers from all branches of the armed forces called G.I. JOE. Survivors of the convoy, Duke and Ripcord soon join the team G.I. JOE as they go after the nano-tech weaponry the Vipers stole from the convoy before the Vipers can deploy the weapons. The Vipers collaborate with a weapons dealer, who basically is in charge of a group of terrorists - that will soon become the terrorist organization called COBRA.

This is a fairly straight-forward novelization of the movie with very little additional material to add to the adaptation, which makes it a little disappointing coming from Max Allan Collins. I expected a little more bite in the style from a novelization from the usually dependable Collins - especially after watching the movie, which was more commercialized. I wanted to see more of the envitonmental impact of the nano-technology weapons of grey goo eating all of the metal it touches, like when they ate the Eiffel Tower.

See movie review:
G.I. JOE - THE RISE OF COBRA

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

Alfred HItchcock and The Three Investigators in The Mytery of Death Trap Mine

Random House

Written by M.V. Carey
Based on characters created by Robert Arthur

Copyright © 1976 by Random House, Inc.



 The 24th book in the series Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, written by M.V. Carey, teen aged boys - The Three Investigators - are invited by the uncle of their old friend Allie to spend some time at their ranch for the summer. Allie is suspicious of their neighbor who returned to his family's shut down mine and begins working the mine again. What valuable minerals could he be mining? There was a reason the mine was closed. Tensions rise when a suspect from an old armed robbery is found dead in a mine shaft and The Three Investigators search for a connection as to why the suspect came to the mine.

In this young adult book, Allie is the equal of The Three Investigators analytical abilities which is why she irritates the boys so much - because Allie is just as headstrong and competitive as they all are. It is too bad that I felt that The Three Investigators never really took to Allie. I have always felt that they needed a girl as a regular in this series as a resourceful companion to the boys, and Allie definitely fits the bill.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

The Devil Met A Lady

ibooks

DISTRIBUTED BY SIMON & SHUSTER, INC

Copyright © 1993, 2000 Stuart M. Kaminsky

Afterword copyright © 2000 Stuart M. Kaminsky

In The Devil Met A Lady, written by Stuart M. Kaminsky and set during Hollywood's Golden Age, private investigator Toby Peters must protect actress Bette Davis from being kidnapped by a spy ring trying to get top secret plans from her husband.

While reading this book, I kept picturing Bette Davis as the girl on the cover instead of how the real Bette Davis looks - which shows how important a cover can be. Davis can be seen at the servicemen-only Hollywood Canteen, which Davis managed during World War II. Toby is just as funny as always, and his police detective brother hates Toby as always. The spy ring is practically comic relief so, despite their violence and guns, it is hard to take them too seriously. The sad part is the seriousness of Toby's sister-in-law's medical condition. Toby and his brother's relationship becomes civil when relating to Toby's sister-in-law, which shows their concern for her. I hope to see Toby's sister-in-law being well in future books. Having Davis vist Toby's sister-in-law in the hospital was a rather poignant touch.

Pancho

All people smile in the same language.

Deep Current

ONYX Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Written by Benjamin E. Miller

Copyright © 2004

In Deep Current, an iceberg larger than the size of Manhattan is self-driven toward Hawaii and a group of scientists and Marines are sent to stop the "Floe." However, there is more to the iceberg's engine than it seems.

While granted, the "Floe" is twice as large as a real floe, "Floe" sounds better as moving ice than an ice field. The "Floe" on the ground appeared to be quite large - and when you consider that only one-ninth of an iceberg is under water, the "Floe" is quite large.

As the Marines and scientists get picked off on the floe one by one, it was a little annoying for me that one of the scientists keeps insisting that the aliens are the ones that are doing all of this. The deaths get rather graphic as the creatures pick off their victims. The greedy scientist trying to procure specimens for his company is such a typical crazy villain that I either wanted him to succeed in killing off the rest of the survivors or get killed himself. The fact that the baby girl survives all that has happened to her with only a cold seems so unrealistic to me, as such a defenseless little one would no way survive all the rigorous events, despite a doting big brother watching over her and protecting her. As a result, I was pulling for both the Marines, as well as for the creatures in this book - although the surviving Marine was so injured, she should not have been functioning at all by the climax.

Pancho

All people smile in the same language.