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Wiffle Lever to Full!: Daleks, Death Stars and Dreamy-eyed Nostalgia at the Strangest Sci-fi Conventions

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Author: Bob Fischer
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Category: Book

List Price: ~~Ł12.99~~
Buy New: Ł5.70
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Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

9 reviews
Sales Rank: 8705

Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.3 x 1.1

ISBN: 0340962011
EAN: 9780340962015
ASIN: 0340962011

Publication Date: July 24, 2008 (New: This Week)
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: new book

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Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

A Must For Sci-Fi Children of the 70's and 80's July 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

If you were born in the early 70's and are a sci-fi fan, then this book will bring back memories. As the author trails around science fiction conventions for all of the shows and films popular in the UK during that time, he recounts tales of both the conventions and his childhood. Written in a funny and easy going style this is a great book, and worth the read

5 out of 5 stars

Certainaly Worth a Wiffle July 23, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

A fun read that will appeal both to convention going fans and to those who simply see such fans as rather curious creatures. I picked up my copy at the book's launch at the Unmutual PM2008 Prisoner event in Portmeirion. The author had bravely returned to Portmeirion in North Wales, where much of the TV series The Prisoner was filmed, to launch and talk about his book which includes an amusing, but mostly affectionate, piece on an earlier Unmutual PM Prisoner event in Portmeirion.

Peter Dunn

1 out of 5 stars

Oh dear.... July 23, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful

Well, I hate to be the odd one out, but...
I'm not annoyed about the fact that this book seems to have more to do with the author trying to copy the Dave Gorman / Danny Wallace strategy of 'do something ridiculous to death and then write an amusing book about it' than his childhood love of cheesy Sci-Fi. People are entitled to flog their obsessions to death in the pursuit of money...
It only mildy irritates me that this isn't about Sci-Fi, unless you very generously include Robin Hood, James Bond and Monty Python in your definition of Sci-Fi... He actually means Cult TV, I guess, but then you have a hard time expaining Terry Pratchett, who is neither Sci-fi or Cult TV.
The twee inclusion of some of his childhood writing and drawing (although the cynic in me is a little suspicious of its authenticity) may amuse some, I guess, and just slightly irritates me.
What really annoys me is that he's made his 'return to childhood obsessions'/'great money-making idea' (choose one) so dull: this is without a doubt the most boring book I have read in many years. So boring that I haven't actually finished it. So boring that it's actually more boring than ATTENDING the average Sci-fi/Cult TV/Comic Book convention. It may get better at the end. I don't know, and I suspect I never will. Unless you are as gullible as the author (who apparently believed Caroline Munro's assertion that no-one had ever offered her a bottle of Lamb's Navy Rum to sign - I'd like odds on that), and any of the above is likely to irritate you I'd avoid. Oh that I could travel back in time and give myself such sage advice.

5 out of 5 stars

compulsive and compelling July 21, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

From the minute this book landed on my doorstep I was hooked. Bob brings a warm and gentle treatment of those I previously considered in need of treatment for their obsession with cult TV shows. Above all, Bob managed to make me yearn once more for the simple excitment of a saturday night in front of the telly with Gran and a few blue riband biscuits.

Having eventually accepted my own sci-fi geekishness on finishing the book, I immediately embarked on a Doctor Who marathon. This book was a joy to read and will be for anyone who has ever longed for just 5 more minutes back in those simpler times.

5 out of 5 stars

Hilarious...Touching...Sublime. July 20, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Having spent his youth being transported to other worlds, Bob Fischer takes the opportunity to transport us to his and it turns out to be a very amusing and heartwarming world indeed. It also turns out to be worryingly full of Flamin' Hot Monster Munch, but surely nobody was ever put off reading a book because of a corn-based snack food?

I confess that I bought this book purely as a result of enjoying the author's way with words in the course of his now nightly shows on BBC Radio Tees rather than out of any affinity with the subject matter. I had little or no interest in any of the featured "fandoms", but felt sure it would be a highly entertaining read. This, it transpires, was something of an under-estimation. My lack of in-depth knowledge of most of the subjects covered was not the hindrance I'd feared, because Bob has a real gift for weaving the right amount of 'beginner's info' into each uproarious chapter, and in any case the book is less about the individual "cults" and more an exploration of what it means to be a child of the 1970s and 1980s in a 21st Century world where evil can lurk inside a knitted Ray Winstone doll and Johnny Depp never quite makes it to your pub quiz.

Rites of passage from childhood, adolescence and adulthood punctuate the more literal journey of a year spent attending conventions and other fan events, and while some of these are touchingly personal, they all have a surprisingly universal resonance for anyone of roughly the same generation as the author. There are many pleasing examples of a thought or incident that seemed irrelevant at the time coming back, sometimes years later, to throw a new light on a current situation; as good a demonstration as any of how the seemingly effortless lightness and wit of the prose style mask a real ingenuity at work. In this, and in the way that a knowingly portentous comment will almost always immediately be punctured by some wryly hilarious vulgarity, "Wiffle Lever To Full" brings to mind the autobiographical writings of Clive James, which is no small achievement. A genuine pleasure to read and re-read.