Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks by Terrance Dicks

 

(pb; 1974: first book in the Dr. Who series. Based on Louis Marks, Terry Nation and Sydney Newman’s screenplay.)

 

From the back cover

“Exterminate! Exterminate!

“The Daleks. Doctor Who’s oldest and most ruthless enemies, have one goal—total world power. Their prime weapon is time travel. In the late Twentieth Century, they attacked the Planet Earth. Their plan: alter the course of history. Start World Wars. Wipe out the human population. They were very effective.

“Can Doctor Who, trapped in the Twenty-Second Century, reverse history’s course in time to save our planet and every living thing on it, including himself, from the devastating and evil force of the Daleks?”

 

Review

Day is a fun, fast-moving and action-blunt adaptation of the four-episode Doctor Who storyline, which aired between January 1, 1972 and January 22, 1972 on England’s BBC channel. Jon Pertwee, father of actor Sean Pertwee, was the titular, time- and space-traveling Gallifreyan at this point in the series, and the book succinctly captures the spirit of Pertwee’s portrayal of said character, as well as the cold malevolence of one of the Doctor’s key nemeses, the Daleks.

Breezy and overall entertaining, this adaptation is worth reading, especially during this estival season. Followed by Malcolm Hulke’s adaptation of Doctor Who: The Doomsday Weapon.

Fear Today—Gone Tomorrow by Robert Bloch

 

(pb; 1971)

From the back cover

“HORROR—

“Harvey Wolf had his first taste of it when a witch doctor offered him a warm red drink from a hollowed skull—and Harvey developed cravings that nothing in this world could ever satisfy.

“HORROR—

“Crothers created it when he devised a much-too-successful solution to population control: a Madison-Avenue-launched suicide craze that swept the globe—and swept it clean.

“HORROR—

“Dave Larson looked into its eyes and read its history—as ancient as tribal sacrifice, as destructive as war, as bloody as the hands of a mass murderer. And then he become its most devoted servant.

“HORROR—

“The men of Earth invited it when they under-estimated the power of a woman—Venutian variety—and discovered, too late, that lovers can sometimes be terrifying strangers.”

 

Review

Bloch’s Fear, about aliens plotting the acceleration of mankind’s demise, is an ambitious, often darkly clever (a Blochian trademark) and piece-meal work, one advertised as a novel. It should’ve been back cover-blurbed (and advertised) as a loosely linked anthology, given how many word-sketched and loosely linked characters play their parts in Fear’s wide-ranging and blink-and-you’ll-lose-track storyline(s) before the characters permanently disappear (usually for good reason). Also, Fear jumps around a lot, a la Ray Bradbury’s theme- and location-based story collection The Martian Chronicles (1950), but where Bradbury’s iconic work succeeds, Bloch’s feels (too) abstract, dialogue-chatty, and scatter-shot in its thematic arc to be effective or reader-rewarding in its wrap-up. By the time this reader got to the end, I was just glad it was over, despite its sly wit, fast pacing, and wild genre elements (with mythic sourcing—hello, Minerva).

A hard-to-follow novel by a great writer, this is best read as a story anthology, with a loosely defined theme (humanity is likely doomed), buoyed in fleeting parts by Bloch’s black wit and (sometimes, in this case) tight set-ups and events. Worth reading, with the right expectations.

The Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simak

(hb; 1967)

From the inside flap:

"Andrew Blake is found in a space capsule on a distant planet and is brought back to an unfamiliar Earth, where antigravity devices have replaced the wheel, and house talk and even fly!

"Yet nothing is as strange as Blake's own feelings. Tormented by eerie sensations and loss of memory, he doesn't know who he really is or exactly where he has come from. His destiny only begins to grow frighteningly clear when he meets a weird, tassel-eared creature who darkly hints at the truth about Blake's origins.

"Slowly Blake becomes aware of the long hushed-up 'Werewolf Principle,' a scientific theory buried in the past, which holds the key to Blake's own fate -- and the future of the human race."


Review:

Werewolf is fun, often surprising and quirky science fiction novel, with its odd, risible mix of elements and characters (the Brownies, the A.I.-enhanced houses whose different rooms have different personalities who bicker, etc.). There are not a lot of twists in this, but there are tightly written, point-of-view shifts which eagle-eyed readers will probably, quickly make sense of, as well as an effectively foreshadowed end-of-novel twist, which further contributed to my enjoyment of Werewolf. (Some eagle-eyed readers may grumble that the nature of the end-twist feels tacked-on, but I -- who view this as the work of an excellent writer having a mainstream, good blast-of-a-time -- didn't mind it.)

Werewolf is worth owning, if you enjoy science fiction that's mildly provocative and generally thoughtful, but does not take itself too seriously.

Kar Kaballa by George H. Smith

(pb; 1969)

From the front page:

"Kar Kaballa was the new king of the Gogs and the rumor was that he would lead his barbaric cannibalistic band of Northern nomad down a mad crusade against the civilized nations of the world. Cultured people found this improbable -- but they were soon to learn better.

"Their weapons were good, about as good as you could get in a Victorian army, which was what the period was. But there was a traveler in town with a weapon he said was better, an odd chap with a thing called a Gatling Gun from a country nobody ever heard of called the United States.

"The question was could this outlander, this Major Churchwad, sell his unearthly import to the Empire soon enough -- or would Kar Kaballa become the new Tamerlane of a bloody-dawned Twentieth Century?"


Review:

Kar Kaballa an action- and battle-intense, intriguing science fiction novel, set in a Victorian-era alternate world, Annwn. Its characters and settings are a colorful mix of science and magic (and its resulting themes), from the brash explorer Dylan MacBride, to his fiery, would-be lover (Clarinda MacTague, a high priestess of the fertility goddess Keridwen) to Cythraul, the dark, devouring god of Kar Kaballa and his Gog soldiers.

Entertaining and over-the-top, Kar Kaballa is what science fiction novels of this sort should be: thrilling and addictive. This is worth owning.

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Kar Kaballa was packaged as a reverse-bound "Ace Double" novel, which means that if readers flip the book upside down and over, there was another science fiction novel, penned by another author, on the other side. (Considering that these books sold for 75 cents a pop, this seems like a great deal, even back in the Sixties.)

In this case, the flipside novel is Lin Carter's Tower of the Medusa.

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

(hb; 1968, 1999: first novel in the Space Odyssey quadrilogy)

From the inside flap:

"From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man ventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other."


Review:

2001: A Space Odyssey is a landmark novel -- not just as a science fiction work, but as a multimedia work, as it was born of a collaboration between auteur Stanley Kubrick (who lensed and co-scripted the cinematic version of 2001) and Clarke. While Clarke penned this Kubrick-prompted expansion on Clarke's tell-don't-show 1950 story "The Sentinel," Kubrick was pre-production crafting his film version: it is a shared, then-fact-extrapolated and cooperative vision between the two men (though there are differences between the two works).

With 2001 (book and film), Clarke and Kubrick successfully negotiated the tricky balance between science fiction, science fact and action, something a relative few accomplish, much less on an epic level -- and 2001 is an epic drama, not just in its cinematic story scale, but in its intent: Clarke's prose has a wry humored, warm humanity imbued within its fast-moving, bordering-on-poetic tale-telling, making this highly visual and mainstream work immersible not only for nerdy science majors but for average readers (like myself) who would usually shy away from "hard" (detailed, science-factual) science fiction.

This is one of my all-time favorite reads, one worth owning. It has three sequels, the first of which is 2010: Odyssey Two.

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The resulting film was released stateside on April 8, 1968. Stanley Kubrick, who directed the film, co-scripted it with Arthur C. Clarke (as noted in the above review).

Keir Dullea played Dr. Dave Bowman. Gary Lockwood played Dr. Frank Poole. William Sylvester played Dr. Heywood R. Floyd. Leonard Rossiter played Dr. Andrei Smyslov. Robert Beatty played Dr. Ralph Halvorsen.

Douglas Rain voiced HAL 9000. Frank Miller voiced "Mission Control".  An uncredited Vivian Kubrick played "Squirt -- Floyd's Daughter". An uncredited Ivor Powell played V.F. Kaminsky. An uncredited Kevin Scott played Miller.

Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny

(pb; 1979)

From the back cover:

"The last exit to Babylon.

"The Road runs from an unimaginable past to the far future, and those who travel it have access to the turnoffs leading to all times and places - even to the alternate timestreams of histories that never happened.

"Why the Dragons of Bel'kwinith made the Road - or who they are - nobody knows.  But the Road has always been there, for those who know how to find it, and always will be!"


Review:

Roadmarks is a witty, quirky and entertaining novel about Red Dorakeen, a backroads rogue whose rough-and-tumble interactions with men, machines and creatures of myth make for a fast-moving, tightly-told and action-punctuated tale of past, present and future, as well as their variable versions. This is one of the more original science fiction novels I have read in a long while, one worth owning.

The Chariots of Ra, by Kenneth Bulmer

(pb; 1972)

From the description page:

"The chariots came on at great speed and there was no mistaking their purpose.  Tulley wondered if they were using this place as a base. . .  Then an arrow plunked into the parapet of his chariot.  Oolou lashed the reins.  The nageres sprang forward.  With suicidal speed the two chariot groups closed in on each other.

"Tulley swallowed down, feeling the dryness in his throat, loosed a shaft at the oncoming mass.  There must be twenty chariots out there. . .

"He glanced at Oolou, shouting.  She stared back at him with a ghastly grin, the blood pouring from her neck above the corselet where an arrow stood, stark and brutal."


Review:

Chariots is a solid, exotic and action-relentless science fiction novella that recalls the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs for its blunt physical action and many of John Wayne's films for its masculine/man's gotta do. . . tone.  In it, two friends (Graham Pike and Roy Tulley) are kidnapped and shuttled (via portals) into other worlds, where they encounter strange creatures, slavers, warriors, queens and other bristling characters.  Will they be able to return to Earth, whence they came?  That question is secondary when survival is a moment-to-moment challenge.

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Chariots was packaged as a reverse-bound "Ace Double" novel, which means that if readers flip the book upside down and over, there was another science fiction novel, penned by another author, on the other side. (Considering that these books sold for 95 cents a pop, this seems like a great deal, even back in that less-expensive, Seventies economy.)

In this case, the flipside novel is John Rackham's Earthstrings.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Firestorm by Greg Keyes

(pb; 2014: book sequel to the 2011 film Rise of the Planet of the Apes and prequel to the film/movie tie-in novel Dawn of the Planet of Apes, by Alex Irvine)


From the back cover:

"Caesar and his followers have escaped the clutches of man, fighting their way across the Golden Gate Bridge and taking refuge in the vast redwood forest known as Muir Woods.  There they hope to establish a home, far from the humans who so horribly abused them.

"But mankind has far worse things to worry about.

"The 'Simian Flu' has begun to strike down unsuspecting innocents throughout San Francisco.  What began as isolated cases quickly become a full-on epidemic.  There are those who blame the apes, and would like to take revenge, while others hunt Caesar and his troop for their own insidious reasons.  Either way the result will be the same. . ."


Review:

Firestorm is a cinematically streamlined, smart, humane and entertaining novel that links Rise and Dawn.  Its pace never lags, it shares two main characters (Gary Oldman's Dreyfus and Andy Serkis's Caesar) with Dawn (as well as other supporting characters), while making plot-pertinent mentions of James Franco's Will Rodman from Rise.  Not only that, its tone is consistent with its bookending films and its ending is satisfactory.

Good summer blockbuster read, this. 

Black Magic: Shotgun Spacebabe by E.S. Wynn

(eBook; 2012, 2014)


From the back cover:

"The year is nineteen aught ninety.

"The planet: Gore Gulch.

"The shotgun: a sawed-off two gauge punt gun that specialist Black Magic calls 'The Deuce.'

"Five powerful men just pissed off the wrong woman. Five worlds are on her hit list, and even John Herbert Wilson Thomas, the President of the Republic, will find himself in her sights before her rampage is over. . ."


Review:

There's plenty of violence, gore, humor, sex and vengeance in this burn-through novel in which Black Magic tracks down and executes five politicians and scientists - as well as their weapons-wielding defenders - who are not only corrupt, but intentionally released a plague that effectively turns its victims into violent, zombie-like creatures, many of whom Black Magic must also battle to reach her targets.

Black jumps into the action from its first word and doesn't let go until its last.  It's an entertaining, bloody and fast science fiction read, one worth owning.

It Came From Hangar 18, by Scott Fulks and Will Viharo

(pb; 2011)


From the back cover:

"It Came From Hangar 18 is the most action-packed, erotic science fiction epic since The Bible - but with even more sex and violence!  It mixes hardcore sex with hard science, conspiracy theories with conspicuous satire, mythological monsters with mutated mobsters, flesh-eating feminists with voyeuristic vampires, and creates a potent literary Tiki cocktail pulsating with pulp, planets, pulchitrude, politics, and a plethora of other "p" words.  This is essential end-of-the-world desert-island flashlight-under-the-covers reading, the ultimate B movie in literary form, and the most tantalizing textbook in the annals of anarchic academia."


Review:

Hangar is an ambitious, giddy mega-riff on films (especially Fifties B-movies), vampires, tiki culture, werewolves, zombies, East Bay (Northern California) locales, politics, gory cartoonish violence, explicit (sometimes icky) sex and pretty much anything else you can probably imagine.  Its characters and its pacing are often manic, its scope and tone flirts with epical, cheesy notions, making this one of the most id-tastic, action-packed rollercoaster works I've read this year.  Did I mention that this is not a kid-friendly book?

I have one nit about this 514-page, self-referential novel, and it's relatively minor: whenever Radon and Adam Brayne have their "hard science" conversations, they run way too long, almost bring the story to a screeching halt (even Brayne complains about the down-the-rabbit-hole feel of these exchanges).  While I admire the authors' ambition of updating - providing fresh wrinkles - to this Fifties B-movie novel and I understand how cerebral Radon can be, his exchanges with Brayne ramble for pages when a relatively few, concise lines would suffice.  Yes, some of these conversations, a mixing of nerd-tastic science and smutty sex comparisons, are funny, but early on they take on a filler-not-thriller feel.

As I noted before, this is a minor nit in a work that's one of the most gleeful, imaginative, bordering-on-epic novels I've read this year.  Hangar expands the notion of a "genre blender," takes it to new, heady heights.  If you can get past the rambling sections - seventy-five pages could have easily been cut - this is the book you should be buying right now.

Earthstrings, by John Rackham

 

(pb; 1972)


From the front cover:

"Its prize space-colony had grown silent - and Earth wanted to know why."


Review:

Plot:  When the beacon signal from Beta Hydri, a human "space colony" on Mars, goes dead for forty hours - indicating almost near-certain disaster - and a notorious author (Kit Carew) goes missing there as well, reporter Jeremy White is sent there to investigate what happened.  Accompanying him is a motley crew with mixed, possibly dangerous motives: Liss Landis, a flirty fellow reporter; Abigail Crane, Carew's secret sister and head of the Triple-C Corporation, whose financial ties to  Beta Hydri are complex; Fanny Allen, a promiscuous, petulant socialite and Carew's sugar mama; and Miguel Santana, a playboy with hidden talents - and possibly another identity.

Earthstrings reads like an high-spirited Swingin' Sixties science fiction parody - there's plenty of science fictionish-sounding devices, the characters wear different colored skin suits which highlight their curves (particularly the women's), there's a strong element of mystery and lots of twists, and the women act like "Bond girls," in the sense that they fall over themselves to get with the mission-focused, sometimes taciturn Jeremy White. 

This is a fast blast, wildly entertaining pot boiler, one worth owning.

#

Earthstrings was packaged as a reverse-bound "Ace Double" novel, which means that if readers flip the book upside down and over, there was another science fiction novel, penned by another author, on the other side. (Considering that these books sold for 95 cents a pop, this seems like a great deal, even back in that less-expensive, Seventies economy.)

In this case, the flipside novel is Kenneth Bulmer's The Chariots of Ra.

Under the Skin, by Michel Faber

(pb; 2004)


From the back cover:

" Isserley, a female driver, picks up hitchhikers with big muscles. She, herself, is tiny-like a kid peering up over the steering wheel.

"Scarred and awkward, yet strangely erotic and threatening, she listens to her hitchhikers as they open up to her, revealing clues about who might miss them if they should disappear. . ."


Review:

This melancholic, analytical, darkly funny and sometimes disturbing novel is underlined with class warfare, sexual tension and discontent, shifting social mores and other elements that made his outwardly dispassionate protagonist relatable, despite her alien, bizarre-to-humanity attributes.  Faber propels the action with an appropriate, mounting sense of impending disaster, while maintaining Isserley's aforementioned melancholy and anger.

Skin is a good, distinctive read.  Check it out.

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The resulting film was released stateside on August 29, 2013.

Scarlett Johansson played Laura (cinematic stand-in for Isserley).  Paul Brannigan played Andrew.  Jessica Mance played [an] "Alien".  Krystof Hadek played "The Swimmer".  Michael Moreland played "The Quiet Man".  An uncredited Michael J. Goodwin played "Tearoom Customer".

Jonathan Glazer, who co-scripted the film with Walter Campbell, directed the film.
 

All My Sins Remembered, by Joe Haldeman

(pb; 1977)


From the back cover:

"No creature in the galaxy is deadlier than man.

"Otto McGavin, one of twelve Prime Operators in the universe, worked for the clandestine arm of the trans-space peacekeeping agency as a ruthless guardian of alien rights.  He traveled from planet to planet - his body encased in plastiflesh, his mind disguised by personality overlay - infiltrating bizarre alien cultures, surviving by raw instinct and violent assassination on exotic, bloodswept worlds.

"And always he returned to his original self - his conscience stabbed by the memory of all those he'd killed in the service of interstellar harmony."


Review:

Sins is an intriguing, episodic and full-of-action science fiction spy thriller, with a protagonist whose personal disintegration - as an individual - becomes more and more apparent as time goes by.  McGavin, as a character, is relatable and sympathetic (for this reader, anyway), making the waste-no-words Sins a good read by an excellent author.

While reading this, I kept thinking that, with the right director and writer, this would make an excellent cinematic vehicle for Jason Statham, who has enough acting range to show believable emotional shifts, while maintaining his bad-assness.

Spacial Delivery, by Gordon R. Dickson

(pb; 1961, 1979)

From the back cover:

"John Tardy didn't volunteer to do battle for maiden fair; he didn't know about the battle until he was in it. And no suit of armor either - on Dilbia, it's bare hands even when your opponent has the size, strength and temperament of a hungry Kodiak bear. John Tardy, a very competent Earth man figured all that could have been worked out, if only he could have arrived at the fight aboard a magnificent charger, or on his own two feet, or any way other than the way he was sent: as a packaged labelled Spacial Delivery."


Review:

Spacial Delivery is a light-hearted romp of a science fiction novel - the equivalent of a beach read, with more brains, imagination and exotic settings. Though it's not a landmark read, it's a well-written and engaging one: that is, it's worth checking out from the library, or purchasing for a few bucks.

Behold the Stars, by Kenneth Bulmer

(pb; 1965)

From the front page:

"Man had discovered a means for colonizing the galaxy. Through a system of instantaneous matter transmission, men, machines, anything, could be sent light years away in seconds!

"Only men were not the only beings in the galaxy who were expanding, and at 200 light years from Earth the alien Gershmi people made their claims clear, with guns!

"It would have been a fair fight between equally matched races, had not the very matter transmitter boxes which made mankind's expansion possible, suddenly began to put men back together, 200 light years from Earth, with their will to fight removed, so that Earthmen were marching with white flags of truce straight into Gershmi fire!"

Review:

This is a fun, blast-through science fiction adventure read, with some nice (though not entirely unexpected) plot wrinkles near the end. Genre-true and reader-hooking, this is, with its tight plotting and writing, and tongue-in-cheek/stock characterizations.

Behold the Stars, like its conjoined novel, Planetary Agent X (by Mack Reynolds), is a worthwhile read.

#

Behold the Stars was packaged as a reverse-bound "Ace Double" novel, which means that if readers flip(ped) the book upside down and over, there was another science fiction novel, penned by another author, on the other side. (Considering that these books sold for 45 cents a pop, this seems like a great deal, even back in that less-expensive, Sixties economy.)

The cover for the flipside novel, Planetary Agent X, by Mack Reynolds, follows this sentence.

Planetary Agent X, by Mack Reynolds

(pb; 1965: this novella originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine in two parts under the titles Ultima Thule and Pistolero)

From the front page:

"Newly accepted as a Special Agent of the star-spanning United Planets organization, Ronny Bronston found that his first assignment was one which had taken the lives of dozens of agents before him: he was to track down a man named Tommy Paine.

"'We've been trying to catch him for twenty years,' said Ronny's section chief. 'How long before that he was active, we have no way of knowing. It was some time before we became aware that half the revolts, coups d'états and assassinations that occur in the United Planets have his dirty finger stirring around in them.'

" 'But what motivates him?' Ronny asked. 'What's he get out of all the war and killing he stirs up?'

"'Nobody seems to know. But the best guess is that he's insane - a homicidal maniac on an intergalactic scale. He's dangerous, Ronny, and you've got to get him!' "

Review:

Fun, clever science fiction adventure novella with interesting, succinctly sketched characters; this novella is split into two storylines. The first: Ronny Bronston is sent out on his first mission as a United Planets agent, a mission that inspires more questions than answers; the second: Bronston's manhunt for a young, sharp assassin with impressive skills and a big vendetta takes on a whole new dimension when Bronston gets sneaky.

Planetary Agent X is an entertaining and fast-moving read that was much better than I thought it would be.

Worth owning, if you enjoy Sixties science fiction that's mildly provocative and wastes no words.

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Planetary Agent X is packaged as a reverse-bound "Ace Double" novel, which means that if readers flip the book upside down and over, there is another science fiction novel, penned by another author, on the other side. (Considering that these books sold for 45 cents a pop, this seems like a great deal, even back in that less-expensive, Sixties economy.)

The cover for the flipside novel, Behold the Stars, by Kenneth Bulmer, follows this sentence.

Image of the Beast, by Philip José Farmer

(pb; 1968, 1969. Foreword by Theodore Sturgeon)

From the back cover:

"A grisly love-murder is recorded as a home movie. It is so hellish that seasoned policemen turn from it in horror. Then a second film is discovered. It shows the startling transformation of a beautiful, sensual woman into a ravening wolf. And this is only the beginning. . ."

Review:

This multigenre novel (in actuality two conjoined, plot-bound novellas, Image of the Beast and Blown) is one of the best science fiction/horror/neo-noir novels I've ever read. It seamlessly melds elements of the above genres into an often hilarious, reader-seizing read.

The plot: Herald Childe, a P.I., is investigating the horrific, freakish murder of his slimy business partner (Matthew Colben), when his tempestuous ex-wife, the aptly-named Sybil, disappears, too, leading him deeper and deeper into a fluid-splattery cosmic struggle that he couldn't have foreseen.

The darkly-comedic, carnally-explicit, over-the-top and literature-sourced storyline will likely appeal to horror/science fiction/neo-noir readers who don't mind mixing their genres, or seeing clichés skull-blasted into something original and unforgettable.

Worth owning, this. Pick it up, already! =)

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Big thanks to Gary Russell, a great friend who recommended - and sent - Image to me almost ten years ago. (I told you I'd get around to reading it!)

Gary Russell is an accomplished author of many stories, including Morph. and Nikkatsu. He co-edits the microfiction website, Leodegraunce - check it out! - with the incomparable and talented Jolie Du Pre

The Dry Salvages, by Caitlín R. Kiernan

(hb; 2004)


From the inside flap:

“Three centuries in the future, though much of Earth has been crippled by war, pollution, and catastrophic climactic change, man has at last traveled to the stars and even found evidence of at leat one extraterrestrial civilization. In a bleak and frozen Paris, at the dawn of the 24th Century, an old woman is forced to confront the consequences of her part in these discoveries and the ghosts that have haunted her for almost fifty years. The last surviving member of the crew of the starship Montelius, exopaleontologist Dr. Audrey Cather struggles to remember what she's spent so long trying to forget – the nightmare she once faced almost ninety trillion miles from Earth.”


Review:

The set-up's familiar, but author Kiernan deftly avoids clichés by using sublime, sometimes poetic language, while utilizing a “hard” (fact-based) science fiction feel. It also helps that while she uses those set-ups, she doesn't belabor them. An element of 1950s-ish/Lovecraftian horror - understated and fleeting - also flavors this interesting read.

Worthwhile read, structured and toned with Kiernan's distinctive writing style (which blends classic literature, art-based elements, an edgy directness while playing with - then creatively gutting - clichés).

Check it out.