Posted inFiction Movies

“Our Man Flint” (1966)

His­to­ry: The year is 1966. Amer­i­ca is under­go­ing the throes of the British spy inva­sion. James Bond 007 leads the assault from the movie screen and book racks every­where, sup­port­ed ably on the small screen by “The Avengers”. Amer­i­ca coun­ters with its own home-grown tele­vi­sion spy series. “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and “Get Smart”, but who shall chal­lenge the fore­run­ner, the invin­ci­ble 007 him­self, on the big screen?

In answer to Amer­i­ca’s call comes Derek Flint, super­spy, mar­tial artist, bal­let mas­ter, speak­er to por­pois­es, mil­lion­aire, gour­mand, man-about-town, ladies man, etc. In effect, every­thing James Bond is, and more. Armed with his trick lighter, which can per­form 82 dif­fer­ent func­tions (83 if you include light­ing a cig­ar,) his quick wits and flash­ing grin, Flint saves the world from poten­tial con­querors and nuclear dis­as­ter in “Our Man Flint” (1966) and “In Like Flint” (1967).

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Posted inFiction

“The God Machine” by Martin Caidin

[amtap amazon:asin=B001YU5XZC]

[amtap book:isbn=0671698273]

His­to­ry: When I was in junior high school, I worked as a vol­un­teer in the library, because I was an avid read­er and loved the access to books this posi­tion gave me. I was also becom­ing a fan of sci­ence fic­tion, tran­si­tion­ing from my ear­li­er love of mys­ter­ies. And, most impor­tant­ly, even in my ear­ly teens I had a deep inter­est in the sub­ject of hyp­no­sis, so I was hunt­ing for books on the sub­ject: I was already read­ing the books on hyp­no­sis I could find in the local library, pri­mar­i­ly the Melvin Pow­ers books but a few sim­i­lar ones. I used the local library because, as might be expect­ed, books on hyp­no­sis were not to be found in the school library.

How­ev­er, I was mis­tak­en, at least in think­ing hyp­no­sis-relat­ed books were only to be found in the non-fic­tion sec­tion: one of the SF nov­els I dis­cov­ered there in the school library was “The God Machine” (1968) by Mar­tin Caidin. Caidin is best remem­bered for one nov­el, which not only became a tele­vi­sion series (which in turn spawned a spin-off series) but it was one of the few pro­grams to immor­tal­ize a sound effect in the pub­lic con­scious­ness. That nov­el, “Cyborg”, became the TV pro­gram “The Six Mil­lion Dol­lar Man”. How­ev­er, Caidin was a very pro­lif­ic author, with over 50 nov­els to his cred­it, includ­ing “Marooned” which became the basis for the movie of the same name, as well as being an avid avi­a­tor, air­plane restor­er and non-fic­tion author.

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