Ron MilesWebsite Owner  Commander In Chief Posts:864  
| 2/28/2010 9:09 PM |
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This is the official thread for comments on Deathlands #94 - Doom Helix
The bibliography page is located HERE
You can submit your own review HERE
Be warned, this thread may contain spoilers for the book. "Sadly then I knew the answer. All her life she was a dancer, but no one ever played the song she knew." - The Residents
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Nicodemus New Member Posts:17 
| 6/3/2010 4:18 AM |
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Finally, the return of Shadow World. I always wondered what happened to them after "Breakthrough". |
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theduplemanNew Member Posts:19 
| 6/23/2010 2:07 PM |
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i didnt-i hoped they had vanished
The other british one
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aceonthelineNew Member Posts:10 
| 6/23/2010 3:35 PM |
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I'd like to see some reviews before I buy it...although I may not wait that long.
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APPublished Author  Veteran Member Posts:346 
| 6/23/2010 8:00 PM |
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Posted By thedupleman on 23 Jun 2010 02:07 PM
i didnt-i hoped they had vanished If I had ONLY KNOWN ...  AP |
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Ron MilesWebsite Owner Commander In Chief Posts:864
| 6/23/2010 8:17 PM |
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I liked the book quite a bit. I might be a little biased, though, given that I die horribly in it.
"Sadly then I knew the answer. All her life she was a dancer, but no one ever played the song she knew." - The Residents
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| 7/9/2010 9:19 PM |
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AP: Did you know when you wrote Doom Helix, that the title would turn out to be prophetic? Perhaps you can sue for copyright infringement!
"Helix, the Houston-based owner of floating oil platforms and subsea wells, offered its Helix Producer I vessel in late April to help BP collect oil that has been gushing from the Macondo well since an April 20 rig explosion that killed 11 workers, Chief Executive Officer Owen Kratz said today in an interview. BP initially declined the offer, he said. BP notified Helix June 10 that it wanted to lease the Helix Producer I platform to augment two other vessels that are receiving oil from the Macondo well, Kratz said. The delay meant Helix had to construct a collection tube from spare parts that will be plugged into a pipe just one-sixth the diameter of the main opening atop the well, he said."
Spare parts? 
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APPublished Author Veteran Member Posts:346
| 7/10/2010 9:38 AM |
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Posted By Mneme on 09 Jul 2010 09:19 PM
AP: Did you know when you wrote Doom Helix, that the title would turn out to be prophetic? Perhaps you can sue for copyright infringement!
"Helix, the Houston-based owner of floating oil platforms and subsea wells, offered its Helix Producer I vessel in late April to help BP collect oil that has been gushing from the Macondo well since an April 20 rig explosion that killed 11 workers, Chief Executive Officer Owen Kratz said today in an interview. BP initially declined the offer, he said. BP notified Helix June 10 that it wanted to lease the Helix Producer I platform to augment two other vessels that are receiving oil from the Macondo well, Kratz said. The delay meant Helix had to construct a collection tube from spare parts that will be plugged into a pipe just one-sixth the diameter of the main opening atop the well, he said."
Spare parts?
Welcome aboard, Mneme. I figured my last-ever DL should encapsulate what I felt was the spirit of the series. Among other things, Doom Helix is about disaster (leading to extinction) written in our DNA. Taking that into account, the BP/Helix "spare parts" business isn't surprising, just disgusting. Of course, anything can LOOK true if you're cross-eyed drunk on something (booze, science, religion, politics, cooking, the NFL, cats, Jonas Bros., missing a book deadline, etc.). Just a side note. My website e-mail has been hosed for a little over a month. I started to switch out the software, then got swamped with work, yard work, fishing, shrimping, crabbing, so I haven't been able to read or reply to OAP e-mails for awhile. Going to fix it in the next few days, I hope. AP |
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Ron MilesWebsite Owner Commander In Chief Posts:864
| 7/10/2010 11:21 AM |
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You know, if you are in need of a new web guy to handle your website and email, I know a fairly competent code monkey I could recommend...
"Sadly then I knew the answer. All her life she was a dancer, but no one ever played the song she knew." - The Residents
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theduplemanNew Member Posts:19
| 7/17/2010 2:38 PM |
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i stand ready to have my mind changed.but the shadow world thing never sat well with me.....iv enjoy all your books as i remember so your probably the best one to pitch it to me
The other british one
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APPublished Author Veteran Member Posts:346
| 7/18/2010 10:27 AM |
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Posted By thedupleman on 17 Jul 2010 02:38 PM
i stand ready to have my mind changed.but the shadow world thing never sat well with me.....iv enjoy all your books as i remember so your probably the best one to pitch it to me thedupleman, First off, I have no financial interest in pitching the DL SW books to anyone. No matter how well they sell I have already been paid in full. The converse is also true: if they tank I don’t have to return a payment spent years ago. The SW trilogy (Shadow World, Breakthrough, Doom Helix) is about the earth of a parallel universe where the "calamity of calamities" (the nukecaust) never happened, where human science and civilization continued on their merry way, and in the course of a couple hundred years managed to scrape the planet so clean that by comparison DL becomes The Promised Land, the New Wild West. DL is a place for refugees to escape to, not from. This says that unchecked by global disaster, science and civilization (features of humanity dictated by our DNA and evolution) will have us all watching Gordon Ramsay while we eat rocks and pretend they’re hamburgers. That whitecoats destroyed the world and learned nothing from the experience is a central theme in LJ’s DL books; that the whitecoats would have done an even more thorough job of it if GIVEN THE CHANCE is a logical (and ironic) extrapolation of that concept. One of the reviewers of SW on this site totally nailed this idea. Unfortunately her review was lost along with many, many others (Breakthrough had 17 reviews at one point) during one of Ron's upgrades. In Doom Helix, the final book in the trilogy, Ryan's own DNA and the science of the parallel earth bring to DL the seeds of its absolute and unstoppable destruction. |
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mikeclr Basic Member Posts:197 
| 7/18/2010 10:53 AM |
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For what it's worth...Shadow World is my personal favorite entry in the series.
"Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what." - Atticus Finch
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The PhantomBasic Member Posts:219 
| 7/18/2010 7:45 PM |
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Shadow World is the next DL on my list to read, whenever I get around to getting back to reading them.
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theduplemanNew Member Posts:19
| 7/20/2010 9:02 AM |
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I never suspected you did have any financial gain from it. It's just far more interesting to hear it from an author point of view. I always read them, and it will be interesting to see it brought to a close
The other british one
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The PhantomBasic Member Posts:219
| 7/26/2010 6:15 PM |
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One of Alan's books was in my first ever GE shipment of books way back in the summer of 1984. Just now received my new shipment, containing Doom Helix, Alan's last book for GE. Has it really been 26 years??! -sees gray hairs starting to grow in temples in mirror- I guess it has!  Thanks Alan for all the great books you have written that are all still sitting on my shelf. I have quite a few to read yet, and I know I will enjoy them. |
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APPublished Author Veteran Member Posts:346
| 7/26/2010 6:58 PM |
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The Phantom, Yep, it's been that long. Thanks for the kind words. Haven't actually seen DH, yet. Don't remember it all that well (I wrote it 18 months ago). Lost my only copy when my hard drive died. What does an ex-GE writer do of a morning? Went out and fished for king salmon in the saltwater, caught two (vertical) jigging but only landed one (about 13 pounds) because the hook broke on the other at the net, and found a brandnew, five-gallon, plastic, boat gas tank and connector hose just floating around offshore. Hey, it was full of gas, too. Bizarre. No name on it so ... it's spoils of the sea.  AP P.S.: Wrong about the fish weight. Didn't actually weigh it in the boat, just guessed. My friend who cut it up said it was 18 pounds. |
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mikeclrBasic Member Posts:197
| 7/27/2010 12:44 PM |
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Summer of 1984...I'm thinking it must have been an early SOBs?
"Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what." - Atticus Finch
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The PhantomBasic Member Posts:219
| 7/27/2010 6:01 PM |
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Posted By mikeclr on 27 Jul 2010 12:44 PM
Summer of 1984...I'm thinking it must have been an early SOBs?
Yep, it must have been Butchers of Eden. I still remember all the GE books that were on the store rack at the time: Dagger - Ride of the Razorback, Track- Atrocity, Able Team- Five Rings of Fire, Phoenix Force- Return to Armageddon, Mack Bolan- Cambodia Clash, SOBs- Plains of Fire... Ah, the good ol days.  |
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The PhantomBasic Member Posts:219
| 7/27/2010 6:03 PM |
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Posted By AP on 26 Jul 2010 06:58 PM
What does an ex-GE writer do of a morning? Went out and fished for king salmon in the saltwater, caught two (vertical) jigging but only landed one (about 13 pounds) because the hook broke on the other at the net, and found a brandnew, five-gallon, plastic, boat gas tank and connector hose just floating around offshore. Hey, it was full of gas, too. Bizarre. No name on it so ... it's spoils of the sea.
AP
You can use the gas tank as bait, fishing in the Gulf, you can catch some free crude!  |
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APPublished Author Veteran Member Posts:346
| 7/28/2010 9:29 AM |
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Posted By The Phantom on 27 Jul 2010 06:01 PM
Posted By mikeclr on 27 Jul 2010 12:44 PM
Summer of 1984...I'm thinking it must have been an early SOBs?
Yep, it must have been Butchers of Eden. I still remember all the GE books that were on the store rack at the time: Dagger - Ride of the Razorback, Track- Atrocity, Able Team- Five Rings of Fire, Phoenix Force- Return to Armageddon, Mack Bolan- Cambodia Clash, SOBs- Plains of Fire...
Ah, the good ol days.
The first book I did for GE was SOBs-Plains of Fire. It was the second title in the SOBs series. I got the gig because SOBs book #1 did so poorly, sold just 17K copies--or so I was told. I really wanted to write Executioners, had sent in sample chapters which they liked, but there was no room for me in the Bolan stable. BTW, PoF sold eight times better than the initial SOBs book, as did Butchers of Eden. I know because that was back in the GE royalty statement days. |
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