Danger in the Fourth Dimension

[MacGyver]

How many sentences should a gunfight be settled in? I enjoy action in the Hardy Boys books too, but it doesn't have to be a nonstop Michael Bay action movie.

[Bigfootman]

How many sentences should a gunfight be settled in? I enjoy action in the Hardy Boys books too, but it doesn't have to be a nonstop Michael Bay action movie.

If there's a gunfight it should last at least 3 paragraphs. I agree that the book does not have to be "a nonstop Michael Bay action movie" but it has to be better then a "a nonstop snooze fest".

[MacGyver]

Okay- fair enough. I can see your point.

[tomswift2002]

I'm just starting to re-read this book for my second time now (remember, the only time that I read this book was about 15 years ago) and its getting interesting with Fenton Hardy checking out of the hotel unexpectedly.

Of course, you can also tell that this book is pretty dated by the fact that the hotel manager gives Joe a bag containing tourist information about the park and that part of South Carolina, and then mentions that there is a video in the bag on the part as well, and as soon as Frank and Joe get in their room, Joe "pops" the VHS tape into the VCR.  If the book was every reissued in the future, I think the publisher could easily just change that line that mentions the VHS tape and VCR into a DVD or Blu-Ray or whatever physical home video format is out then.

[MacGyver]

There are always those technological comparisons- in some ways, you can look at The Hardy Boys as historical fiction- for instance, in reading Trapped at Sea (published in 1982)- I noticed a scene where Joe states that there's an emergency calls public phone about three miles back that they can use if needs be. In today's world, he would just pull out a cell phone and dial 911. But of course, you can't always get a signal with a cell phone and sometimes the battery might be dead. So there are still times when the Hardys might be forced to use a landline phone somewhere. I think I would like any reissues of older Hardy Boys books to stay as written just for historical value. Kids today can be reminded that some of the things they've grown up with and are commonplace now were not always around and some things were different in the past. Though I'm not a Luddite by any means, sometimes I do enjoy that world where cell phones and the Internet and other technology were not quite as readily prevalent.

[hardygirl847]

I was in a 4th grade class a few weeks ago, and almost all of them had cellphones. We had a whole discussion about the Internet and cellphones etc. I don't think kids today could even fathom life without them. The few kids who don't have them or don't use the Internet still know of them and use them from time to time.

I think the Hardy Boys give a sense of a certain time period. While sometimes I wish they would just pull out a cellphone and solve the problem, I really enjoy the challenges they have to go through because they don't have certain things.

There's no guarantee that it would make kids more grateful, but at least they would be more aware. There WAS a time before videogames, computers, and cellphones.

People used to talk to each other face to face. Words used to come out of our mouths and not from our fingertips.