Content here is by Michael Still, mikal@stillhq.com.
I read this book on an international trip, and it was a good choice for that. Its long (around 900 pages), but very readable. This is the second time I’ve read the book, and this time its amazing how well the description of Silicon Valley startups matches my experiences there. I love this book. Update…
This is a collection of William Gibson short stories. They’re gritty and real, and make more sense now that I’ve been to both the US and Japan. I read these stories as a kid and loved them, although their vision for the future isn’t a happy one. Its good to see I still like them…
This is another book I read as a child, except in this case I didn’t really remember much of it — the only bit I remembered was the punishment of Madouc’s mother, but that might have been because I was a teenaged boy at the time. Overall this is a very good book. It took…
This is another Asimov short story collection. The following stories appear in the book, although I have already read a couple as part of either the Robot short stories or the Nightfall collection of short stories. To be honest these stories aren’t Asimov’s strongest. They entertaining, but they’re not as amazing as some of his…
This book is good science fiction, in the sense that it explores something which we are not ready to address as a society — in this case, would profoundly disabled people prefer that we could replace their disabled bodies? What if the replacement wasn’t humanoid? The book is pretty old though, and that shows in…
This a very different book to The Forever War, and not really a sequel. It covers some similar territory, but there are no characters in common, and the overall plots are unrelated (and conflicting). However, this book is as well written as The Forever War, and I enjoyed it. Title: Forever Peace Author: Joe Haldeman…
I read this book mainly because multiple sites recommended it as a response to Starship Troopers. I’d actually read the start of this book already in the form of the short story “Hero”, which is included in Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow. At the time, I would have described it as an ok short story, but not…
Moreta is a book about a pandemic, and its hard to make those fun… If you’ve bothered to find out anything about the book in advance (or read the preceding Pern books, where it is referred to), you know that its not going to be a fun ride. On the other hand, the book is…
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…
This is the first book in the Dragons of Pern series, which I read a small part of as a child. Given that they’re still being written, its not surprising that I’m pretty out of date on this series. This book is excellent for a few reasons — the idea is unique and well implemented;…