AT THE AGE of 22, my life path was given a shake when a roommate spontaneously recited a few poignant passages of a book he was reading. The title was The Day on Fire and the author, James Ramsey Ullman, had fictionalized the life of a great poet. Arthur Rimbaud was the enfant terrible of French Poetry; he was only 17 when he arrived in Paris, and by the time he turned 21 he had shocked the literary world.  He shocked my world, too. He wrote things powered by vision and imagination–and their impact was not overly weakened by filter of translation: As soon as the idea of the Deluge had subsided, a hare stopped in the clover amid the swaying bluebells, and said

  THE IDEA of a more romantic Bond has been building. In Casino Royale, Bond had told Vesper Lynd that she could have all that was left of him. By the end of Spectre, Bond had chosen Madeline Swann, whom he meets again in No Time to Die. That relationship gets more complex as the movie progresses. The plot is more “nanotech” than ever before. The threat to humankind is terrifying for being more deadly and more purposeful than a mere bomb. The plot was complex and, as you would expect, moved through exotic scenes and otherworldly scenarios. The acting was compelling.  Bond veteran characters had a more dramatic  script. The likes of Daniel Craig and Ray Fiennes, but also returning characters played by Lea

When John LeCarre died, I assumed I’d read his last book.  A friend texted me that a new LeCarre book was coming out. I investigated and ordered it immediately. The title was Silverview. I wasn’t through the first two chapters before I sensed a younger, more daring author. The author had died at 90 years of age.  He had begun the Silverview manuscript over a decade ago but paused time and time again, in search of a missing element. His son–also a writer– fulfilled a promise and saw the project through. It’s a shorter novel, but has the watermark of his best work: two ideals compete for devotion, be they patriotism and love, the individual and the institution, or conscience and expedience. It’s typically a somber

[Note: this material is for educational and entertainment purposes only]   STOCK MARKET MANIAS are like champions in their fields: they do not go down without a fight. In August of 2020, I posted how the current  extended mania or “super bubble” represents decades of Federal Reserve Bank policies that led to a stock market seemingly incapable of falling for any stretch of time (https://www.moviesmarketsandmore.com/a-mania-to-rule-them-all/). The explanations for its longevity range from conspiracy theories to mass psychology to economic science: It is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a vicious cycle; no one sells because they are continually rewarded for buying and holding shares It is “propped up” by $1.4 trillion in QE per year (12 times $120 billion/month) and ZIRP or “zero-interest rate policy” at the

The iconic TV show, Star Trek, flung wide open the door to science fiction literature for me. In fact some of the great early science fiction writers–like Asimov and Ellison–contributed to episodes for that show. I don’t remember when I first read Frank Herbert’s Dune, but it changed me. Three books from the 50s and 60s:  I Robot, Dune, and  A Canticle for Liebowitz stood out as a kind a Trinity in my Sci-Fi canon. It wasn’t long until film technology caught up with the imaginations of these writers: the refined special effects and later CGI in the ’70s and ’80s allowed access to countless tales of realms that could not practically exist outside of the mind. With the somber hues, the art shots and