Book Review: Artemis – by Andy Weir

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Science, Science Fiction, Three StarsLeave a comment

I just read Artemis, by Andy Weir, now, a few days after the NASA mission to the moon, Artemis II, safely returned to earth. Andy Weir catapulted to fame with his first book, The Martian, in 2011,  which I reviewed here. Artemis is his second book, released in 2017, before NASA officially named its new lunar program Artemis in 2019. So Weir didn’t copy the mission name. Both drew the name from Greek mythology. Artemis is the goddess of the moon and the twin system of Apollo.

Jasmine Bashara goes by the name of Jazz. She is a very smart young woman, the daughter of a Saudi welder who raised her as a single father. She lived her childhood and adult life in Artemis, the only city on the moon.

She is poor and works as a porter. Think of it as a DoorDash person, picking up and delivering packages. She lives in a coffin-sized apartment and subsists on what all poor Artemisians live on, gunk, which is flavored algae. She wants to get wealthy enough to afford her own apartment, with a private bathroom and enough room to stand up and stretch.

Through her connections, a score comes her way that could make her rich and end her worries. She goes for it. Little does she know that the heist quickly draws her into a global conspiracy and a war between the mob, billionaires, and the city’s elite. At the end, she not just fighting for her own life, but the survival of the city of Artemis itself.

There is a lot of science in this book, particular chemistry. I happen to be a scientific person, I know my math, biology and physics, but somehow I was able to escape chemistry all my life. It’s the big educational gap is my background. In this book I learned a lot about chemistry.

True to his style, just like in The Martian, Weir stays very close to the science. We get to know how pressure equalization and airlocks work. We learn about smelters, and how to turn lunar regolith into aluminum and oxygen, two of the essential elements needed if you want to build a city on the moon and survive in it.

It only took me a few days to finish this book. I kept turning the pages. I now have read all three of Weir’s books,  and I am sure I will read the fourth – whenever that comes out.

Movie Review: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Time Travel, Two and a Half StarsLeave a comment

Aliens have attacked the earth. Their military superiority is unmatched by anything humanity can come up with.

Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) is a public relations officer who is, against his own will, thrown into front-line combat in a suicide mission. Once in battle, he dies within minutes. But without explanation, he wakes up a day before the battle, and has to relive that day. He dies again, the wakes up again. He is basically a time traveler, reliving the same day, sort of like Groundhog Day, the famous 1993 movie with Bill Murray. Each time he learns from the previous death experience and lives a little longer, adjusting his strategy as he goes. He teams up with another fellow time traveler and warrior, Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) and the two team up, looping in time, for their and mankind’s survival.

As the plot develops, we learn that it’s the aliens who actually are able to control time, causing the time loops Cage and Vrataski have to grapple with.

The application of time travel concepts in this movie is definitely unique, except for the fact that it’s basically the same concept as applied in Groundhog Day, where the protagonist, without explanation, has to relive the same day over and over again.

Edge of Tomorrow is definitely a time travel movie worth watching.

Simple Cars – from Blue Highways

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad Product11 Comments

Here is an excerpt out of the book Blue Highways:

Even then, Vern was an anachronism. We boys who collected at his station didn’t call him that, of course. We called him, as I remember, “an old fart.” Vern, in his antique ways, believed that anyone who got behind a steering wheel could rightly be expected to operate the car rather than just steer it; that’s why you were issued an Operator’s Permit. He believed the more work a driver did, the less the car had to do; the less it had to do, the simpler and more reliable and cheaper to repair it would be. He cursed the increasing complexity of automobile mechanics. But, as I say, he was a man of the old ways. He even believed in narrow tires (cheaper and less friction), spoked wheels (less weight), and the streamlined “Airflow” designs of Chrysler Corporation cars of the mid-thirties—designs Chrysler almost immediately gave up on before proceeding to build the biggest finned hogs of all. We boys of the fifties loved their brontosaurean bulk.

— From William Least Heat-Moon – Blue Highways: A Journey into America (p. 404). Little, Brown and Company

Reading that paragraph gave me pause.

My first car in America was a 1973 Ford LTD.

Mine looked exactly like this, same color, four doors, green vinyl top. Huge engine.  In 1977, when I bought it from another soldier in Luke Air Force Base in Arizona for $1,800, it had about 54,000 miles on it. I loved that car and the power it had. It got just 10 miles to the gallon. Gas cost 57 cents per gallon then.

But let me get to my point – simple cars. This is what it looks like inside of this listing of a car over 50 years old. Mine looked pristine at the time.

There was nothing automatic.

The doors had cranks. You turned them to lower the windows. The air conditioner was turned on with one button, in or out. When you wanted cold air, you pushed a slider switch one way, when you wanted warm air, you pushed it the other way. If you wanted the fan off, you pushed a slider switch to the left, to turn it on, you pushed it to the right, the farther to the right, the higher the fan speed. You turned on the lights by pulling that big knob on the left of the dash.

There were no screens, no setup, no menus to touch or to drill down. Other than looking out on the street, you didn’t need to see anything. You could drive this car with your hands without having to look at any controls. They were all where  they should be, and they worked intuitively. You never needed to look at a manual.

In contrast, every time I get into a rental car today, I have to deal with trying to figure out how to control the climate, how to turn the thing on or off, how to make the radio not blare a channel I am not interested in, heck, how to turn the radio off altogether. I don’t use the parking brake because I can’t figure out how to use it. I am scared of the gear selector, since it’s often just a knob and to select a gear, you have to take your eyes off the road and look down, first find the little knob, and then select the right gear, Drive or Reverse.

Once I rested my arm on the middle console while driving down the freeway in a rental car and – don’t ask me how it did it – I put the car into the parking brake – and it actually let me do it. Imagine the moments of panic I went through before I got myself back out of that impossible situation!

Another time, in a different rental car in the winter, I managed to let the car run in the parking lot of a hotel, from 4:00pm in the evening to 8:00am the next morning. It burned a full half of a tank of gas idling all night. It had one of these remote control buttons that turned the car off or on. I am not sure how I did it, but the fact that I managed to do it, shows how wrong that feature is designed.

My point: I want simple cars back, with knobs and buttons and sliders that I can touch. Abolish all screens in cars. I want to drive my car with arms and legs without having to look at anything inside. And I want the controls to be intuitive.

I can wish, can’t I?

Movie Review: Breakdown: 1975 (2025)

On By Norbert HauptIn Four Stars, MoviesLeave a comment

Breakdown: 1975 is a documentary about 1975 based on the movies that came out that year.

The year 1975 is dear to my heart. It was my coming of age year. I was 18. I had just arrived in the United States and I was a senior in high school. I was new to this country, so I didn’t know it was a year of turmoil. It was just – well – America. It was the America I came to love and make my home for the rest of my life.

The movie is a visual essay on the year 1975, looking at the classic movies all released in that year. It shows 1975 as a pivotal year in American society. The country was going through intense political and cultural turmoil, especially coming out of the dark times of Watergate and the Vietnam War. The unrest that followed is chronicled in movies like these:

  • Jaws – The first modern blockbuster; changed how movies were marketed and released
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Anti-authority drama; swept the Oscars
  • Dog Day Afternoon – Crime story rooted in real events, reflecting social tension
  • Nashville – A sprawling portrait of American culture and politics
  • Barry Lyndon – Stanley Kubrick’s visually meticulous period film
  • Shampoo – Satirical look at sex, politics, and the elite
  • The Day of the Locust – Dark take on Hollywood dreams and disillusionment
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show – Became a midnight-movie phenomenon
  • Rollerball – Dystopian sci-fi about corporate control
  • Death Race 2000 – Violent, satirical cult favorite
  • Race with the Devil – Horror-road thriller mixing paranoia and Americana
  • Picnic at Hanging Rock – Haunting Australian mystery
  • Dersu Uzala – Akira Kurosawa’s Oscar-winning Soviet co-production
  • Seven Beauties – Italian film blending dark comedy and tragedy

The movie shows archival clips and interviews with filmmakers and cultural figures. The films often dealt with distrust of institutions and hints of a national nervous breakdown.

I didn’t know any of this myself in the America of 1975, but watching Breakdown: 1975, that year came to life again for me, and it was an experience of intense nostalgia.

Movie Review – The Rip (2026)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two and a Half StarsLeave a comment

A drug enforcement unit of the Miami police conducts a raid on what they expect to be a routine drug stash house. The two leaders are Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon) and Detective Sergeant J.D. Bryne (Ben Affleck). The two are good friends and have relied on each other for many years in the force. During the raid, they discover not just a stash of drugs and some cash, they uncover a hidden cache of millions of dollars of cartel money.

With so much money in play, greed, paranoia and conflicting loyalties quickly permeate the team, and spill over to other units. Everyone start mistrusting everyone else and the group quickly fractures. Even the two friends start losing trust in each other.

The Rip is a movie about cops, all kinds of cops. Local Miami police, drug enforcement cops, FBI, the federal DEA, you name it, they are in this movie. The cops are the good guys, and the bad guys, all at the same time. This is a gritty crime thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

The story has holes in it, the script is somewhat confusing at times, but the action is riveting and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck definitely carry the movie – from the first minute to the last.

Movie Review: Sarah’s Oil

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two and a Half StarsLeave a comment

Sarah Rector is an 11-year-old black girl born in the Oklahoma Indian Territory in the early 1900, when the oil barons ruled. Due to her heritage, she gets a land grant. While most such land grants are useless to the recipients, Sarah has a hunch that there is oil on her land.

She is smart, educated and courageous. First she has to convince her parents that she wants to find oil. Then she has to find partners who help her drill for it. It’s not an easy undertaking for a young girl, and many wolves and sharks try to swindle her out of her property. Eventually, when they are not successful, they start to threaten crimes. But she prevails, and at age 11 she becomes a millionaire and gets fame as “the richest colored girl in the world.”

Supposedly this movie is based on a true story. Much of the way her life is portrayed in the movie is dramatization, but the core elements are true. The real Sarah did move to Kansas City and lived a wealthy life. But this is not told in the movie: she lost much of her wealth again in the Great Depression.

This is a feel-good movie where we see the underdog prevail, and deservedly so.

 

Book Review: Future Proof – by David Atkinson

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Three Stars, Time TravelLeave a comment

Sam Harris is a washed-up loser. He is unhealthy and grossly overweight, living in a trashed apartment, from which he is getting evicted. His assigned social worker transfers him to an experimental counseling program. All he has to do is to agree with the treatments, and in exchange he get a clean bed, three meals a day and – counseling. Since he does not have any other options, he agrees.

We learn that is childhood was not a happy one. He was severely bullied in school and never really recovered. None of his relationships worked out for him.

During the first medical treatment, he gets an injection which puts him to sleep. He has an ultra-vivid dream, placing him back into the elementary school, right into a situation where we was abused by several bullies. With his adult brain, memories and experiences in place, his 6-year-old self defends himself against the bullies. Eventually, when that fateful day is over and he goes to sleep, he wakes up again on the treatment bed in the facility.

He quickly discovers that things are different. First and foremost, he is no longer fat. He has a trim and fit body, and the memories of being bullied are gone. Everyone else, however, does not notice any changes. The therapists never knew him as overweight. They don’t recognize the changes. Over the next few days he realizes that he actually time-traveled into his childhood for a day and the changes he made at that pivotal time, like standing up to the bullies, made him a different person and changed the timeline of the rest of the world around him.

Figuring  that nobody will believe him, he keeps the secret to himself, with further plans for more changes during his next therapy trip.

But how much can he change without severely affecting world history?

Future Proof is a unique time travel story where time travel occurs in an unusual way. That gives it a unique spice. The author’s writing is easy to read and cleverly narrated. It’s overall a well-crafted novel and one of the better time travel stories I have read.

Movie Review: Sinners (2025)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, One StarLeave a comment

It’s 1932 in Mississippi. The black twin brothers Smoke and Stack come back to their home town in Mississippi from Chicago, where they worked for the mafia and made some money. They want to start a blues bar. In one day, they buy an old sawmill, hire musicians, cooks, bartenders, bouncers, advertise the event, and start the party.

At night, as things get rolling with the music, vampires start showing up, taking out one after the other partiers.

With a running time of 137 minutes, I think it was 137 minutes too long. I was mostly bored and grossed out.

Sinners, directed by Ryan Coogler, won a shocking four Oscars and a record-breaking 16 nominations. Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor for playing both twins, Smoke and Stack. The movie also won Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Original Score.

The cinematography and soundtrack were good, the acting ok, but that’s where it stops for me. It tried to deal with historical trauma and the issue of racism in the south, including the KKK.

They could have made a movie out of that without the vampires.

Why were there vampires?

I do not recommend.

Book Review: Lost Lambs- by Madeline Cash

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Three StarsLeave a comment

Lost Lambs is the story of the dysfunctional Flynn family. The father Bud is an accountant who thinks of his job as boring and dead-end. But he is dedicated to his family. The mother Catherine is an artist at heart, but an artist who has not created anything in years. She was consumed raising her three daughters, but even that she did not do very well. Abigail is the oldest daughter, a senior in high school and stunningly beautiful. She is the most sought-after girl in school. Louise is 15, quiet and somewhat mousy. She has an online boyfriend named yourstruly whom she has never met. Finally, Harper, at 12 years old the youngest, is a child prodigy. She can learn a new language in a few weeks, if she decides she wants to. She outsmarts everyone in her family.

Catherine one day gets enamored with their neighbor, Jim Doherty. They hang out, talk art, and eventually develop romantic feelings for each other. Catherine suggests to Bud that they open up their marriage to freshen up their lives and relationship. Bud objects, saying that fucking the neighbor isn’t going to make their marriage work, but he does not get much say in the matter. This sets of a chain of events that involves everyone in the family, and their circle of friends, as well as their church.

When Harper uncovers a vast and possibly criminal conspiracy involving the tech billionaire shipping magnate who lives in their town, things quickly spiral out of control and threaten to tear the family apart.

Lost Lambs is Madeline Cash’s debut novel. She has a witty writing style, accentuated with a lot of humor, some satire, and an unusual angle from which to look at the world.

She is about 29 years old. Her actual birthdate is not published. She is one of the most talked-about debut authors of 2026. I came across the book because my wife’s book club is currently reading it. Sometimes I pick up their recommendations. I did this one, and it just kept me turning the pages with delight.

Movie Review: Alexander (2004)

On By Norbert HauptIn History, Movies, Two StarsLeave a comment

Alexander is a historical epic that chronicles the life of Alexander the Great, one of history’s most famous conquerors. The story is told by Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) when he was an old man, recalling his time as a youth, serving Alexander as a general. He later went on to become the king of Egypt after Alexander’s death. He founded the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years.

The story starts when Alexander is a child in Macedonia. His mother is Olympias (Angelina Jolie) and his father is King Philip II of Macedonia (Val Kilmer). His overpowering and brutal father, and his cunning and manipulative mother, shape Alexander’s childhood and youth. After his father’s assassination, Alexander (Colin Farrell) ascends to the throne and starts to fulfil his dream of conquering the world.

He is a brilliant warlord and conquers one nation after the other. His troops follow him with admiration and devotion. But eventually, being away from their country and families for years and years, they become weary and question the endless campaign.

In Babylon he starts having health problems and eventually he dies young under mysterious circumstances.

I enjoyed the film, as it shows life in ancient Macedonia, including with appearances of Aristotle. There are endless, brutal and graphic battle scenes that made me wonder how anyone could ever survive one of those battles.

As old as the ages, humans have found ways to slaughter one another, and we are still doing it today – for seemingly no reason at all.

Book Review: Stranded – by A. K. DuBoff

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, One and a Half Stars, Science FictionLeave a comment

Stranded is Book 1 of five books in the Starship of the Ancients series.

In the distant future, humanity has spread to many different planets in many different star systems, and it continues to spread out by sending colony ships with thousands of people to new stars and planets. Those journeys are hugely expensive  and are undertaken by massive corporations. Humanity is controlled by an elected government, headed by a chancellor.

When the ship arrives at its destinations, an accident occurs, the ship explodes, with most settlers getting killed. Only a few dozen manage to escape in landing pods. They find themselves on an alien planet, full of dangerous predators.

Evan is a former soldier who was assigned to an undercover investigation of a criminal cartel. When his cover was broken, he was sent away in this ship on short notice in a witness-protection situation. When he lands on the planet, he meets Anya, a xenobiologist who was involved in the planning of the mission. The two now work together to solve the puzzle of what happened to the ship, and to try to create a stronghold where the few dozen survivors can eek out a living on an alien world without any supply line.

They quickly discover that the accident may not have been an accident at all, and somebody tried to kill them all. There seems to be a criminal conspiracy that permeates the government and all of humanity.

Stranded is well written and I found myself turning the pages. It’s obviously a space opera, with a lot of politics. There is a government covering many planets over many star systems, obviously many light years apart. The ships can travel between the stars through gates instantaneously. And somehow they can also communicate over those distances, presumably through relays through the gates, instantaneously. There is no time-dilation. There seem to be no fuel or resource problems for that kind of travel. The story  plays in a world “in the stars” but it’s no different than countries on earth, now that we have instantaneous communication methods. It’s not really science fiction, it’s political fiction.

The characters, even the protagonists, are pretty shallow and superficial. There is a lot of exposition and not much dialog. Often the interactions and emotions are inconsistent. At one point they make a decision they have to go on an overland expedition to find the wreckage of a ship so they can obtain its communications gear, and then later they express that they wish they had never left. This kind of behavior keeps happening and makes the story unrealistic.

Of course, from the subtitle “starship of the ancients” we know that there is some alien technology involved. The main plot is about the race to find an ancient alien starship with technology that all humanity wants. This is kind of trite and has been done many times over, with the Starship in the Stone just being the most recent one I have come across.

Now What? – New Appreciation for Handicapped People

On By Norbert HauptIn Feelings, Wisdom3 Comments

Here I am in a wheelchair in Flores, Guatemala, looking at a daunting set of stairs.

I injured my knee severely during a vacation trip in a remote city in northern Guatemala. The trip home was daunting. Airline staff wheeled me to the plane. Now I had to make it up those stairs with only one good leg and a set of rickety crutches.

Within 24 hours of the accident, I had to travel by helicopter, boat, car and airline and enter a hotel room in the jungle accessible only by stairs up and down. Then the trip home to the United States, with a layover in Dallas, getting through customs at the DFW airport, with its endlessly long hallways, luggage areas, immigration queues and security lines, let alone the train between terminals, gave me a new appreciation of the challenges handicapped people have to deal with just to get around.

I destroyed my knee, but I gained invaluable insight into the hardships less able-bodied people than I have to face every day of their lives.

Of course, to get me home, it took a whole pit crew. My wife pushing the wheelchair and propping me up when navigating stairs on crutches. Our Guatemalan friends making appointments for emergency room visits and MRI scans. My Spanish is nowhere near good enough to make medical appointments or fill out patient information sheets. Our travel buddies propping me up under both shoulders getting me out of the boat hopping on one leg. Here is part of my pit crew in the lobby of the emergency room:

I don’t know what I would have done had I been alone. Friends are everything.

Every Man Dies Alone – Jeder Stirbt für Sich Allein

On By Norbert HauptIn WisdomLeave a comment

In 2011 I reviewed the book by Hans Fallada – Jeder Stirbt für Sich Allein. Here is the review.

Below are two paragraphs from my review:

If you have ever wondered how an entire country of 60 million plus people could have turned evil, attacked all its neighbors, killed 6 million Jews, devastated all of Europe, you should read this book. It all becomes understandable and obvious. A criminal and nefarious leadership started instituting totalitarian practices, slowly at first, and deliberately and systematically as it went. Children were brainwashed to spy on their parents. Over time, every bad apple enlisted with the dark side, where brutality, sadism, corruption and murder were completely accepted, as long as they benefited the ruling elite. Every thug got a uniform, and that uniform, without any checks and balances, authorized him to brutalize the citizenry as he saw fit. The acts were done by the military,  who controlled everything, including the police, the court system, the business establishment and the social system.

Those that didn’t agree with what was going on could not only not publish their opinion, they could not even speak it to anyone, since they never knew who was a snitch. Your own family and “friends” could have been undercover spies. Fear permeated all of society. Pretty soon, half  the country was busy arresting and locking up, and often executing, the other half.

Oh, my. Did I know what was coming to the United States in 2011? These words ring more important than ever now.

Book Review: The Last Stop Video Shop – by Keith A. Pearson

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Two and a Half StarsLeave a comment

Kevin Kershaw is a divorced man around 50 years old with a son from whom he drifted away and an ex-wife who needed to get away from him. He works joylessly in an insurance company office, accepting,  rejecting and challenging insurance claims by their policy holders. He does not have any real friends and he has lost his spunk to the point where he is considering ending it all.

One day, by pure coincidence, he finds a video shop in an out of  the way alley. Yes, in 2025, when we all stream Netflix, there is a shop full of VHS tapes. Kevin walks inside and gets to know the shopkeeper, an old and mysterious gentleman named Marty. He pulls out a VHS tape with Kevin’s name on it and gives it to him. There is a viewing room in the back of the shop with a small TV and an aging VHS player.

To his surprise, the short video is about Kevin himself when he was a child, showing him in scenes with his late mother. The shots were taken about his life where nobody was there to tape them at the time. It’s impossible, magical, but there it was. He soon finds out that there may be more tapes in future days, if he bothers to come back. And of course, he does.

The Last Stop Video Shop is a very slow moving story about a very boring life. For a while I found it hard to read, but it picked up the pace as it went along. There were eventually some uplifting experiences, as Kevin took the lessons from the videos seriously and made incremental improvements, which not only shaped his life, but those around him that the cared for.

 

 

2.5 stars

Movie Review: Project Hail Mary (2026)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two Stars1 Comment

Project Hail Mary is a perfect example of a movie made after a book where the movie does not even come close to do the story justice. I read the book about five years ago. Here is my book review. I gave the book a 4-star review and called it “one of the best and most satisfying science fiction stories I have ever read.”  I still stand by that.

The movie Project Hail Mary got great reviews from the critics and they are already talking about Oscars. I really don’t think so. It’s a fun movie, Ryan Gosling did a good job as the lead (and mostly only) actor, but most audiences will not be able to follow the story.

I think it is a solid 2-star movie. As a matter of fact, if you didn’t read the book, I don’t recommend watching the movie. It’s 2 hours and 36 minutes long, and my wife was fidgeting in her chair next to me. I knew she didn’t know what was going on. Many of plot twists didn’t really sink in. The environment of the Eridanis was just glossed over, and viewers probably didn’t even understand the last few minutes of the movie. There is a lot of science applied here, and that too did not take hold.

If you did read the book, and science fiction is your thing, you will enjoy the movie for what it is. It will put some images into your head that weren’t there before.

And you will enjoy the soundtrack. It might get some awards for that.