Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Media


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Tomorrowland (2015)

As part of my birthday celebrations1 I finally watched Tomorrowland, a Disney movie from 2015 that was such a disaster it made about 9% of what they had spent making it2.
Anyway, I watched it, and I liked it.
Maybe not liked-liked-liked it, but liked it, yes.

The story in a nutshell: a girl is given a pin that transports her for a few minutes in a utopian world. When she decides to learn more, androids that look like nerds try to kill her. She hooks up with a disillusioned scientist and together they … OK, together they try and get the world back on track, re-capturing the spirit of wonder and the craving for progress of the first half of the 20th century. Continue reading →


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Mitchell Hooks – a gallery

If the art of Robert McGinnis was one of the reasons why I decided I’d like to write pulp fiction, there was another artist, whose style was an inspiration, and whose designs were frequently imitated in Italian crime paperbacks when I was a kid.
Detroit-born Mitchell Hooks was a prolific artist in the world of paperback originals, and is today recognized as a master of the art of illustrating pulp stories paperback covers.
His designs are darker and “dirtier” than McGinnis’, but are equally suggestive.

Here is a small cover gallery.

Gold Medal S-1161 Paperback Original (Oct., 1961). Cover by Mitchell Hooks


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Philip Marlowe, Private Eye

These last two nights I took some time to watch a few episodes – that you can find on Youtube – of Philip Marlowe Private Eye, a mid-80s TV series by HBO starring the late Powers Boothe in the titular role.
Back when this aired in my country for the first time I watched maybe two episodes and let it go: it was late at night, it was dubbed awfully, and Boothe was nothing like Bogart or Mitchum.

But later, when I caught it in original, I was much more positively impressed.
Boothe’s deadpan voiceover fits nicely the Chandler style, and Boothe is a good Marlowe all things considered, nicely physical and at the same time both classy but cheap. Continue reading →


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Karavansara Free Library: 5 by Sir Aurel Stein

Aurel Stein was a man who obsessed about Alexander’s expedition in India, and as a consequence became the trailblazer in the rediscovery of the Silk Road at the turn of the 19th and 20th century.
Explorer, archaeologist, ethnographer, geographer, linguist, map-maker, Stein was born in Budapest in 1862 but later moved to England and became a citizen in 1904.
He was Sven Hedin‘s major competitor in the exploration of Central Asia and the Silk Route, and was probably also a spy in those areas in which British and Russians played the Great Game.
He discovered an unprecedented wealth of documents in Dunhuang (including the world’s oldest printed text), and also the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas.
He died in 1942, at the age of 80, and is buried in Kabul, Afghanistan.

His production of works was enormous – maps, photos, articles and books, the latter often aimed at the general public.

What follows is a very small selection found in the Internet Archive.

1904 – Sand-buried Ruins of Khotan

1912 – Ruins Of Desert Cathay

1929 – On Alexander Track To The Indus

1933 – On Ancient Central Asian Tracks

1949 – Old Routes Of Western Iran


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I’m writing a planetary romance (so there!)

brackettI think I mentioned in the past how much I like Leigh Brackett’s stories.
I loved the Skaith books, and I actually read Bracket’s The Sword of Rhiannon well before I discovered Edgar Rice Burrough’s Marian novels.
You can find a few of Brackett’s stories for free download out there, and I’ll provide links at the end of this post, but the reason I’m writing this is because I’m putting together a 5000-words story I plan to submit to a magazine next month. It’s going to be a planetary romance sort of thing, and it will be set on Mars, and so last night I went to the shelf and took down Sea Kings of Mars1 for a quick recap.
To soak-up Bracket’s language, if you will, to see if I can learn her secrets (wishful thinking). Continue reading →


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Karavansara Free Library: 2+1 by Richard Halliburton

Something for the weekend.

Adventurer, world-traveler, daredevil, there was a time when Richard Halliburton was a household name, and families would sit around their radio to hear his tales of far-off lands and wild adventures.

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His books were popular too, and are now almost completely forgotten.
Which is a pity, because Richard Halliburton was good at telling a story.
In 1939, Halliburton – the man that had crossed the Alps riding an elephant – disappeared at sea while trying to cross the Pacific ocean in a Chinese junk.

Now, the Karavansara Free Library, as usual with the help of the Internet Archive, is here to offer a small selection of Halliburton’s intelligent, highly entertaining books.
A look into that strange world that was, not even one hundred years ago, in which the world was larger, and there was a lot to be seen (and told) for the first time.

1925 – The Royal Road To Romance

1927 – The Glorious Advanture

1940 – Richard Halliburton His Story Of His Life’s Adventure As Told In Letters To His Mother And Father 

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