I finished this book on the bus into work this morning (I had a pretty distracted weekend, and didn’t get much reading done). This is the second book in the Amtrak Wars series, and takes place immediately after Cloud Warrior. The book feels like it is only half a book — there is plot development…
Category: Book
The Spy Within
LibraryThing, of which I am a member runs a program where members are shipped early copies of books for free, with the preference for them writing a review when they’re done reading the book. The books are shipped by the publisher directly to the reviewers. This isn’t that uncommon in the publishing industry — both…
Pawn of Prophecy
The Belgariad is a pretty formula fantasy epic, with striking similarities to things like stories of King Arthur. The series is written in a style which is very accessible to younger readers, which might explain why I loved these books as a kid. Its also a pretty “safe” story, in that nothing truly bad is…
Cloud Warrior
I read this post-nuclear holocaust book as a kid and liked it, so I thought I’d give it a try again. Given most second hand science fiction books are $2, the barrier to entry is admittedly quite low as well. This book revolves around two groups — the Amtrak Federation (a military society formed from…
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series
I’m getting really into reading second hand science fiction from the 1950s onwards. I read a few (but nowhere near all) of the Foundation series as a child, and I remember liking them a lot. Stolen from Wikipedia as well as other online sources, here is a list of the books in The Foundation series…
Robot Dreams
Robot Dreams is another of the robot short story books from Asimov. It is a bit deceptive though and frankly quite annoying because only one of the stories in the book is a robot story, and its not very long.I am of course ignoring the robot stories that already appear in I, Robot and The…
The Complete Robot
This is another of Asimov’s robot short story collections, and many of the stories appear in earlier works. In fact, I would recommend getting I, Robot and this book, and avoiding The Rest of the Robots if you’re not interested in owning a complete collection of books, but do want to have all of the…
Isaac Asimov’s Utopia
Utopia is the third and final Asimov universe book from Allen. It centers around an attempt to accellerate the terraforming of a planet by drastic measures which drive third law robots wild… The measures are so drastic that they endanger humans, whilst protecting a large number of humans. Unfortunately three law robots have trouble seeing…
The Stainless Steel Rat Series
I am increasingly becoming obsessed with science fiction from 1950s and 1960s. Again stolen from Wikipedia, here is a list of all the Stainless Steel Rat books: 1985: A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born 1987: The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted 1994: The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues 1961: The Stainless Steel Rat 1970:…
The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You
I’m helping out with SciFoo for the third year running, which is a blast. Neal Stephenson is back again, which is fun. Anyway, there is always a bit of hurry up and wait at conferences, so I got a chance to finish off this book. Its an ok read, but suffers from the hard-to-believe time…