‘Millennium Falcon: Owner’s Workshop Manual’ – Ryder Windham, Chris Reiff and Chris Trevas (Del Rey)

Now I’m sure you’ve all been reading the blog long enough to know that I cover genre fiction here and not really anything that’s non-fiction. That’s just the way my preferences lie I guess, I want to lose myself in worlds of speculative fiction not have them stripped down and opened up for inspection. With this in mind then, why am I talking about the ‘Millennium Falcon Haynes Manual’…? A work of non-fiction arising from a fictional universe, that counts as non-fiction for me!

Star Wars and the Haynes Manual… An unlikely combination that has somehow awakened a severe bout of nostalgia in me. The ‘Star Wars’ element pretty much speaks for itself, I challenge anyone my age not to feel just a little bit nostalgic about the original trilogy (notice the important distinction there…) The Haynes Manual though… Well, that brings back memories of my very first car, a Mini that was older than I was, and the Haynes Manual that came with it. I’ve got to admit that I barely looked inside said manual (the stuff that happened to that car couldn’t be fixed by a mere manual!) but it was very much part of the whole ‘rites of passage, I don’t have to walk anywhere now that I have a car’ thing that crops up in everyone’s life. Two nostalgic things then, what happens when you put the two together? Put it this way, I wasn’t rushing to watch the films so I could see the Falcon in action. It wasn’t a bad read though, it made for a interesting hour or two.

If you’ve owned or read a Haynes Manual in your time then you’ll know the format which is basically an in depth look at where all the bits in your car are meant to go if they are to work properly. That’s what you’ve got here with the Millennium Falcon manual, a detailed guide to what is what and how it all works together to keep the ship moving. It’s not a hard format to stick to and the end result was that I felt like I was holding a proper manual instead of something based on a spaceship in a film. I couldn’t ask for a lot more than that and the authors take things a step further by going into a lot of detail, not only about the craft itself (I never realised that the Falcon had its own tractor beam projector…) but about the Corellian Engineering Corporation, the company that originally built the YT-1300 freighter. That’s a lot of information for fans, all accompanied by detailed schematics of the Falcon and its component parts.

The book definitely looks very good and there’s a lot of information inside for fans. The thing is though; it’s a tough one to get through, very tough in fact. You see, the thing about manuals is that they’re not really there to be enjoyed, a manual is there to give you information in order to get things working again. The authors succeed in adopting this tone, for the most part, although I did find myself wondering why the manual needed to include information on previous and current owners. What does that have to do with how the ship itself works? Sometimes though, the authors succeed in adopting this tone a little too well and the resulting material makes for dry reading to say the least. It’s the kind of book that a die-hard fan would love but a more casual fan might put down, after a while, because it’s so heavy going.

Having said that though, the ‘Millennium Falcon: Owner’s Workshop Manual’ did make for some nice nostalgic reading even if it ultimately wasn’t entirely for me. Before you pick this book up just ask yourself, ‘how much of a fan are you?’

Seven and a Half out of Ten

‘Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman’ – Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden & Stephen R. Bissette (St. Martin’s Griffin)

A few weeks ago, I left a post here going on about how I don’t normally read biographies and invited readers to vote on whether I read and reviewed a Stephen King or Neil Gaiman biography. Neil Gaiman’s ‘Prince of Stories’ won the vote so imagine how red my face was when I had a closer look at the book and realised it wasn’t a biography at all, not really. This means that the Stephen King biography will be read at some point in the near future. ‘Prince of Stories’ still fitted very nicely into my resolution to read books that I wouldn’t normally look at though so I went with it...

There is a biographical element to the very early stages of this work but it is really only place Gaiman in context in terms of what the book sets out to be, a reference work detailing what looks like pretty much everything Gaiman has ever written. As much as I’ve enjoyed the books by Gaiman that I’ve read, I’m only a fan of passing interest so couldn’t tell you if this is everything that he’s turned out. The list looks hefty enough though that you can easily believe that this is the lot though; it’s all handily categorised (children’s books, scripts, comics etc) so you can head straight to the section you want.

This was a good thing for me as (only being a passing fan) I found that a lot of Gaiman’s work doesn’t hold a lot of interest for me. I was keen to learn more about the ‘Sandman’ series (having only read the first book) but wasn’t too bothered about the scripts that he had written. As well written as the book is (and it is) I was hobbled by my indifference to certain aspects about Gaiman’s writing career. If I’m not interested in it then I’m not going to read about it. If you’re a hardcore Neil Gaiman fan then I’m guessing that this will obviously be different! Wagner, Golden and Bissette go all out to give their readers a fully immersive look into what lies behind each piece of writing by Gaiman and each piece certainly has a story to tell. No detail is spared and that’s got to be a good thing for anyone picking this book up.

Having said all that, it was kind of funny that I enjoyed reading ‘Prince of Stories’ as a book that you can just pick up and browse through, opening pages at random to see what was there. Although there were things that I wasn’t particularly interested in, some of the stories behind the stories were worth sticking around for. I particularly enjoyed the story of ‘A Modest Proposal’, a story that I wouldn’t have reached if I’d been reading the book in a conventional manner but one that stood out even more through the fact that I found it purely by chance. ‘Prince of Stories’ is full of little gems like this and half the fun I had with this book was diving in at random and seeing what I found.

Any book that’s this much ‘pure concentrated Gaiman’ is only really going to satisfy long term fans; if you’re anything like me then you may find this book a little too much to take in one go. Open a page at random though and have a read; this book is full of little gems for those willing to take the time to look, the odds are that you’ll find one sooner than you think.

Eight and a Quarter out of Ten

‘Wiffle Lever to Full!’ – Bob Fischer (Hodder & Stoughton)

Can you remember the moment when you just knew that you were going to be a sci-fi/ fantasy fan for the rest of your life? I can... It was way (way) back in 1979, I was four, when my folks decided to let me watch an episode of Doctor Who and see what happened. It was an episode of ‘Destiny of the Daleks’ and I got into it so much that I didn’t stop pestering my poor Dad until he’d made me a Dalek of my very own. I’ve still got it, it’s cool :o)
It turns out I’ve got something in common with Bob Fischer whose initial ‘geek experience’ was also an episode of ‘Destiny of the Daleks’. He didn’t get his own Dalek (I win there!) but a chance encounter with a sci-fi story he wrote, as a child, led him to get back into ‘geek living’ in the best way possible. Yep, I’m talking conventions...

‘Wiffle Lever to Full!’ is the story of Bob’s quest to reunite himself with all his childhood sci-fi pleasures by attending cult sci-fi conventions up and down the UK. It’s not just the conventions though; throughout the book you will find mention of sinister dolls, a maize maze and stormtroopers occupying Cardiff amongst other things...

Bob Fischer is the kind of narrator that you always hope to get in a book of this nature. Not only is he out to entertain his reader but he also has a genuine love of all things geekish and his enthusiasm really shines through. As a fellow geek I found loads to identify with, in particular those moments when you meet your childhood heroes for the very first time. You know what it’s like... That agonising moment when you just know that whatever you say is going to be really pathetic is only the start of it! I’ve never been to a convention myself (the closest I got was the entrance to a Star Wars convention in Northampton, we hadn’t banked on them not taking cheques...) but I have heard that there’s a lot of standing around in queues waiting to either get things signed or have photos taken. All credit to Fischer that he can make writing about standing in a queue something that you want to read about!

I say that but this is not always the case... This isn’t down to Fischer’s writing as it is about the subject matter itself and my own personal tastes. I’m all about science fiction/ fantasy and having grown up on ‘Blake’s 7’, ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Star Wars’ (mustn’t forget ‘Robin of Sherwood’ either!) I was very keen to read about what goes on at these conventions. I’ve never seen an episode of ‘The Prisoner’ (and have never wanted to) so found myself skimming through this part of the book... As far as ‘James Bond’ goes, I’ve never considered it to be either science fiction or fantasy at all so was surprised to see it mentioned in a book about sci-fi conventions. I guess this is another of those ‘something in it for everyone’ books, it just depends on what you’re into...

There’s also a real ‘British’ feel to ‘Wiffle Lever to Full!’ which anyone of a certain age (like me!) who has grown up in Britain will immediately get and go off on a real nostalgia trip. Fischer’s childhood was one of beans on toast, Saturday night ‘Doctor Who’ and playing out huge battles between Star Wars figures and Action Men. That’s close enough to my childhood for me to get a little warm glow when reading about Bob’s. Anyone from outside the UK may not ‘get it’, in this regard, but the abundance of ‘convention action’ will more than make up for it!

I guess the measure of success for a book like this is whether it makes you want to go out and experience what the book is talking about for yourself. It’s a ‘yes’ on both counts for me, I’ve caught ‘convention fever’ (although I’m still not interested in ‘The Prisoner’) and I will probably end up digging out my old Star Wars figures when I get home tonight...

Eight and a Half out of Ten