One Jump Ahead; Mark L. Van Name (Baen Books, ISBN 978-1-4165-2085-6, June 2007. Cover art by Stephen Hickman.)

Sample chapters found here.

The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 33 words, total size 1 kb.

Boundary; Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor (Baen Books, ISBN 1-4165-0932-1, March 2006. Cover art by Kurt Miller).

Sample chapters here.

The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 34 words, total size 1 kb.

Russian Amerika; Stoney Compton (Baen Books, ISBN 1-4165-2116, April 2007. Cover art by Kurt Miller).

Sample chapters (24!!!) here.

Review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 29 words, total size 1 kb.

The list can now be viewed here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 19 words, total size 1 kb.

What happens when you mix the reality of physics with fantasy (science fantasy, heroic fantasy, comic fantasy, take your pick!).

Priceless.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 01:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 27 words, total size 1 kb.

Science fiction author's Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are featured in this article that recently appeared in The Washington Post. Fans of The Mote in God's Eye might want to note that they are correcting the book, one copy at a time. Fans of Robert A. Heinlein might want to look to their book Footfall for an appearance by that author as a character in the book! more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 05:29 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 118 words, total size 1 kb.

(Reposted from 2006...)

Mind mapping. More mind mapping. The connection between prime numbers and quantum physics. Taking notes. I'll need a bigger memory card. The Moleskine notebook. Is this the world's best pencil? The what? How about perpetual notebooks instead? Books, books, books, how to store all my books. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 127 words, total size 3 kb.

(Reposted from 2005...so book counts, etc., are out of date!)

Via Zoe Brain...

Number of books that I own: 4,719 paper books, plus another 1,671 eBooks of various sizes and formats (there's about a 10 to 15% overlap in titles between paper and electronic). Plus a collection of astronomy-related magazines that stretches back to before I was born by a couple of decades.

Last book I bought: Several volumes of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, the volumes by Lord Dunsany.

Last book I read:

A Heritage of Stars by Clifford D. Simak. To get a YTD listing, you can always take a look here (for whatever year we are in).

more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 284 words, total size 3 kb.

The list can now be viewed here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 17 words, total size 1 kb.

The list can now be viewed here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:25 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 17 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm not sure which interested me the most about this item. It came to my attention as it mentioned Sir Arthur C. Clarke, one of my favorite writers. But the subject of polymaths also interested me. Then there's the name of the blog. I mean, can you go wrong with a name like Keeper of the Snails?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.

(2005 repost...)

Jack Williamson's classic Legion of Space novel features Barnard's Runaway Star and the evil Medusae who inhabit that system invading Earth. John W. Campbell Jr.'s The Black Star Passes also features a invading star. E.E. "Doc" Smith did both one better and had the planets in two galaxies form when those two galaxies "collided".

Here's a star (for real) that's being flung from our galaxy at over 1.5 million miles per hour.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 78 words, total size 1 kb.

(2005 repost...)

The problem with a lot of military-oriented fiction (science fiction, technothrillers, mystery novels, etc.) is that it is written by people who have no experience in the military and are too lazy to do the basic research. (This is especially true of television!)

Luckily, there are some ways of correcting this!

(With thanks to Winchell Chung for passing this and many other interesting odds and ends along!)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 73 words, total size 1 kb.

(2005 repost...)

The review can now be viewed here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:21 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 21 words, total size 1 kb.

(2005 repost...)

Re-read this one because I was trying to do an essay on Delany (still trying!). As good the second time around as it was the first.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:15 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 40 words, total size 1 kb.

(2005 repost...)

Review can be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 13 words, total size 1 kb.

(2005 repost)

The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 15 words, total size 1 kb.

The list can now be viewed here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 17 words, total size 1 kb.

The list can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 17 words, total size 1 kb.

I missed the Star Wars hoopla due to family and work commitments. However, I did run across a site where you can download a 400-page eBook looking at the making of the films (with updates not included in the book on the main site). Everything you wanted to know about the inner George Lucas but were afraid to ask!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 73 words, total size 1 kb.