Come sail away, in my beautiful zeppelin...

Yeah, you guessed it: Tom and his obsession with zeppelins.

Today's outing is Dr. Eckener's Dream Machine by Douglas Botting. It's all about the history of commercial zeppelin service and the one man who's vision and love of zeppelings rivaled that of Count Zeppelin himself, Hugo Eckener. Dr. Eckener became passionately involved in the development and operation of Zeppelins and completed the first, round-the-world flight in an airship.

Obviously, the book loses steam when it starts talking about the Hindenburg -- mainly because up until now, he story has been so magical and optimistic that you can't bear to see Dr. Eckener's hopes come crashing down in a giant fireball at Lakehurst.

Anyway, it really makes me wish I was stupidly wealthy so I could build a toruing zep. True, they've got almost no practical use these days (although check out this baby), but that's the point of being fabulously wealthy. I mean, if I was super-stupid wealthy I'd be building a penthouse space station, and that's got to be the most useless thing every.

Anyway, the book was a very good read. The character sketches of Dr. Eckener and major collegues and passengers who accompanied him on his flights are well done. There are also deft descriptions about what it was like as a passenger or crewmemeber on a zeppelin in flight. I liked it a lot.

Next up is some space-opera followed by about 3 feet of epic fantasy (oh Steven Erikson, why do you taunt me so).

later
Tom

Come sail away, in my beautiful zeppelin...

Yeah, you guessed it: Tom and his obsession with zeppelins.

Today's outing is Dr. Eckener's Dream Machine by Douglas Botting. It's all about the history of commercial zeppelin service and the one man who's vision and love of zeppelings rivaled that of Count Zeppelin himself, Hugo Eckener. Dr. Eckener became passionately involved in the development and operation of Zeppelins and completed the first, round-the-world flight in an airship.

Obviously, the book loses steam when it starts talking about the Hindenburg -- mainly because up until now, he story has been so magical and optimistic that you can't bear to see Dr. Eckener's hopes come crashing down in a giant fireball at Lakehurst.

Anyway, it really makes me wish I was stupidly wealthy so I could build a toruing zep. True, they've got almost no practical use these days (although check out this baby), but that's the point of being fabulously wealthy. I mean, if I was super-stupid wealthy I'd be building a penthouse space station, and that's got to be the most useless thing every.

Anyway, the book was a very good read. The character sketches of Dr. Eckener and major collegues and passengers who accompanied him on his flights are well done. There are also deft descriptions about what it was like as a passenger or crewmemeber on a zeppelin in flight. I liked it a lot.

Next up is some space-opera followed by about 3 feet of epic fantasy (oh Steven Erikson, why do you taunt me so).

later
Tom