This book is pretty light weight. The font is big, and there is lots of “chrome” on the pages, which conspire to make a book which would probably be only 100 pages in a normal font more like 200 pages. The book also suffers from trying a little too hard to be funny, with numerous…
Category: Book
Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Alliance
Given how disappointed I have been in other books in this series, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. The style is very readable, and the content is interesting. The plot seems more nuanced than some of the others in the series, and the characters aren’t as one dimensional either. This isn’t the best book…
Why don’t penguin’s feet freeze? (and 114 other questions)
This book was really fun. Its a collection of 115 questions sent into New Scientist magazine, and the answers provided by other readers. Sometimes the answers and sarcastic or funny, and sometimes they are incredibly detailed. I found this book really interesting to read, and I certainly picked up some trivial to annoy my wife…
Bolos 2: The Unconquerable
This is another collection of short stories involving Laumer’s Bolo artificially intelligent super tanks. None of these stories are written by Laumer, but they are written by some very good SF authors. I enjoyed the collection, although I do think Honor of the Regiment was marginally better. Title: The Unconquerable Author: Keith Laumer Genre: Fiction…
Books read in May 2009
Friday Logan’s Run Deathworld One Deathworld Two Dragonflight Dragonquest Deathworld Three Galactic Dreams A Time of Omens Bolos 1: Honor of the Regiment
Bolos 1: Honor of the Regiment
I’m quite partial to the idea of artificially intelligent super tanks. I think they’d simplify my social life quite a lot, for example. I’m also partial to short story collections, and this book is both of those. The short stories are written by some excellent authors as well, which certainly helps. This book continues on…
A Time of Omens
This is the sixth book in the not-very-finished Deverry celtic fantasy series. This one is pretty good, especially because it has several subplots, which makes it feel more like a few shorter books in one volume. That means you don’t lose your place in a 400 page story line as you go along. I’m a…
Galactic Dreams
This is a relatively short collection of Harry Harrison short stories. They are: I always do what Teddy says: what happens when we abdicate teaching our youngsters moral values to machine, and then don’t test that the machine is working correctly? A short story about unit testing? Space rats of the CCC: this story is…
Deathworld Three
I thought this one didn’t sound as good as the others, but I was wrong. Its quite different from the other two in its setting, but its still the same romping Harrison style that I like. A little bit unlikely, quite sweeping in scope, and interesting. I liked it. [isbn: 0722144180;B000OFKKP6]
Dragonquest
This is the sequel to Dragonflight. To be honest, I think Dragonflight is a better book, although this one is by no means bad. I suspect part of my problem with this book is that I found Kylara insanely annoying (which I was meant to). Every time her character popped up it made the book…