Published in 1966 as The Unteleported Man, Lies, Inc takes the short story and makes it longer and less focused. Lies, Inc has a number of odd futurisms. We have trans-galactic travel and time travel of a sort, but we also have everyone using magnet tape to record and send messages. It’s also very much a Man’s World in Lies, Inc. We have a couple of women characters, but they are mainly sex toys for the heroes, even when they are smarter than the heroes. Most amazing of all, the villains in the piece are left over Nazis. Wasn’t this…
Category: book review
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Spoilers and such. “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” Lolita tells the story of a 37 year old man who falls in love with a 12 year old girl. While such a match only happens in cults these days, it was common enough a hundred years ago that the age of consent in many states was a jaw dropping ten years old. But it was not legal, as…
The Calorie Myth
The first person I saw that had this radical idea that everyone in America is sick because of what we eat was Dr Amen with his books about Brain health. People with similar views of the Western Diet followed. People like Mark Hyman (The Ultramind Solution) and JJ Virgin (The Virgin Diet) and Gary Taubes (Good Calories, Bad Calories) and one of my personal heroes Michael Pollan whose written a ton of great books including In Defense of Food and Cooked. Now I can add The Calorie Myth by Jonathan Bailor to the chorus of books touting the idea that…
Editing Made Easy
I’ve been working on a couple of novels over the past few months. The rough drafts are easy enough. The revisions have been more of a challenge. The editing is enough to make me consider employment in either the food service or housekeeping professions. As a blogger, I have never had the luxury or burden of an Editor. With the exception of the on-board spell checker, I’m free to rattle off my thoughts in as random and scatter shot a fashion as I choose. And hence, I have a blog with a readership that must reach at least the teens.…
Sleep Doctor by Stephen King
Like writing a sequel to Casa Blanca or Moby Dick, Stephen King does the unthinkable and writes a sequel to The Shining. The Shining, of course, is one of King’s mixed blessings. Like all writers he was pretty excited that his book was going to be made into a movie, and pretty much horror stricken with what Stanley Kubrick did to his story. It doesn’t help that many people consider Kubrick’s Shining a masterpiece, an opinion not shared by King. In his Author’s Notes he tells us that this is a sequel to his book, not a sequel to Stanley…
Terminal World
In the future something has gone terribly wrong. The earth is divided into Zones and each Zone restricts the use of different technologies. The result is towns with that can only use horse power or steam power and any higher tech looses it’s ability to function once it has been to a lower level Zone. We start out in a place called Spearpoint, which seems to have more than it’s share of Zones to go around. At the bottom of Spearpoint is Horsetown and at the top are the Celestial Levels where magic like super technology still works. The people…
The Caves of Steel
In the far future, where everyone eats yeast, robots are taking jobs from humans, and the earth is massively over crowded by a population of 8 billion, someone important is murdered and our hero is called upon to investigate. A police detective Asimov clearly wanted to be played by Humphrey Bogart is forced to take on a robot as his partner while they investigate the murder of a robotics engineer. One thing leads to another as they follow clues, are fooled by red herrings, and finally reveal the identity of the murderer-all in standard murder mystery fashion. The murder mystery…
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
“They look like rabbits, but if you call them smeerps, that makes it science fiction.” The Issue at Hand, James Blish. On the one hand, Anathem is an amazing book filled with deep thoughts and a tightly crafted universe. On the other hand, it reads like Neal Stephenson sat down with a Mathematics History book and made up new names for all the great theories-and how hard would that be? Anathem is a great book to listen to, leaving the problem of dozens of unfamiliar words to the Audiobook Reader. Neal does a good job of slowly introducing all of these words…
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
We open up with six year old Andrew ‘Ender’ Wiggins having a tough day at school. He’s getting his monitor removed, he’s teased for being a Third, and he nearly beats another kid to death. Once home he is threatened with death from his older brother and seems to have a little too much affection for his sister. He’s worried that he has washed out of his military training, but it’s all good, these are just more tests for him to pass. Right off the bat I’m a bit confused by one of the core systems in place in Ender’s…
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
I read Connie Willis’s Bellwether when it came out in 1997 and was pretty impressed with it, but not impressed enough to look for any more of her books. The time limits of life make it difficult to read every book I might like. Not too long ago I found a list of the Top 100 SciFi books, Doomsday Book was on the list. Doomsday Book won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for science fiction in 1992. A few spoilers within. Connie Willis is an interesting writer with a great style and the ability to breath life into her…