Content here is by Michael Still, mikal@stillhq.com.
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…
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:…
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…
Asimov published two books named Nightfall 1 and Nightfall 2 which are collections of short stories. I have both of these books in a single volume named “Nightfall’, which is not to be confused with the novel of the same name by Asimov and Silverberg. I was getting quite confused about which robot short stories…
This is an Asimov short story collection about robots, where the stories are entirely contained in The Complete Robot, although in a different order. These stories are similar in vein to those in I, Robot, although it is odd that not all of the hyperspace development stories are present (perhaps some weren’t written yet?). This…
I was curious about how SSL certificates store validity information (for example when a certificate expires), so I ended up reading the X509 specification (excitingly called “Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and CRL Profile”), as well as the ASN.1 information for UTCTimes. This is all new to me, but I am sure lots of…
A collection of Harry Harrison short stories that I read on the flight back from Australia to the US. Includes a Stainless Steel Rat story, as well as a story using the Deathworld characters (I haven’t read any of the Deathworld books yet). Excellent read. [isbn: 0099925605]
Utopia The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted The Stainless Steel Rat Sings The Blues The Stars, Like Dust The Currents of Space Pebble in the Sky The Stainless Steel Rat Prelude to Foundation The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World
I thought this was quite weak — certainly the weakest Stainless Steel Rat book. It was ok, but I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who hasn’t read any of the others first. Frankly the time travel premise is hard to believe, and the resolution at the end of the story is a total non-resolution. [isbn:…
I’m frantically trying to reduce the size of the mound of books I need to take back to the US at the end of our annual trip back to Australia. As part of this I read the Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge last night and on a flight to Sydney this morning. That’s not in any…