Via BoingBoing and several e-mails, The Oak Ridge Associated Universities Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Collection presents the Nuclear Slide Rule collection! Just in time for your contribution to any of the forthcoming "atompunk" anthologies...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:47 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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He gave in. 'What books, Chiara?'

'The ones Mamma gave me, in English, about the English sea captain and his friend and the war against Napoleon.'

Ah, those books. He took another sip of his wine. 'And do you like them as much as Mamma does?'

'Oh,' Chiara said, looking up at him with a serious expression, 'I don't think anyone could like them as much as she does.'

Four years ago, Brunetti had been abandoned by his wife of almost twenty years for a period of more than a month while she systematically read her way through, at his count, eighteen sea novels dealing with the unending years of war between the British and the French. The time had seemed no less long to him, for it was a time when he, too, ate hasty meals, half-cooked meat, dry bread, and was often driven to seek relief in excessive quantities of grog. Because she seemed to have no other interest, he had taken a look at one of the books, if only to have something to talk about at their thrown-together meals. But he had found it discursive, filled with strange facts and stranger animals, and had abandoned the attempt after only a few pages and before making the acquaintance of Captain Aubrey. Fortunately, Paola was a fast reader, and she had returned to the twentieth century after finishing the last one, apparently none the worse for the shipwreck, battle, and scurvy that had menaced her during those weeks.

(Donna Leon, Friends in High Places)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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One of the projects that I'm tackling during my time off is...the basement. It's been a mess for a while. Between the Great Flood of 2003, storing my in-laws stuff there, storing my parent's stuff there, moving things back and forth...it has gotten out of hand.

So it is time to sweep, sort and toss. Among the potential tossing will be a lot of books and games and such.

Let's face it: my book collection is somewhere around 8,000 (I kid you not) volumes. Am I ever going to re-read them? As my daughter says lately, "No way, Jose!" It's time to weed out books that do not make the cut in terms of quality, books that I'm no longer interested in, books that are duplicated (either as other paperbacks or as hardcovers), etc. Most will be given away to friends and family...only the real stinkers will go to the recycling pile.

Games? I've got the very earliest incarnations of RuneQuest, early editions of Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Empire of the Petal Throne and piles upon piles of wargames. If I retired tomorrow, I might keep them all, but, again if I look at it realistically...something has to give. Maybe I can sell them on eBay (advice sought!).

Time to bring order out of chaos. If I clean up and sort and toss, I'll be more likely to enjoy the remainders. And maybe (if my hands can take it), I can start to get involved in some figure painting or model building and painting again. Heck, figure painting might be something my daughter and I can do. Hmmmm...father and daughter Warhammer 40,000?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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One thing I haven't decided on in the big read...how to count the "slush" I've read this year? I volunteer as a slush reader for a publisher of fantasy and science fiction. There are a number of us, and we make a generally futile attempt to beat the slush pile into submission.

Let me tell you folks...you think you've read a stinker of a published book? You ain't seen nothing yet! You can't imagine some of the prose I've tried working my way through this year.

There have been some good ones; I haven't recommended that every book in the pile be rejected. But, my oh my, oh dinosaurs. What the bard has spewed...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So where does the reading stand? I'm at 89 books and 681 short works, here at the "halfway point".

Not halfway through the year. Halfway through the month.

As it turns out, I'm off for the rest of the month. I have a lot of projects lined up, but I expect to be able to do some solid reading as well. Will I beat my previous personal best in these two categories? That would be 122 books in 2004 and 543 short works in the same year.

Short works...check. Long works...going to be tougher! Stay tuned!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The prodigal blogger checks in.

Via the Llamabutchers, enjoy this funny video, courtesy of JC Penney:

I have only had one real "doghouse" moment in my 17.5-year-marriage. On the first Mother's Day after the birth of my firstborn, when my wife was hinting about when she might get her present, I answered, "but you're not MY mother..." I learned my lesson, and getting out of the dog house didn't even involve any diamond necklaces.

Posted by: JohnL at 08:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Is there no original thought in Hollywood? Just what we need (after what I've been hearing on the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still) a whole bunch of remakes!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:13 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Reports are coming that Mr. Science Fiction has passed away. The fan's fan. more...

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Via Walter Hunt's weblog, here's a new Federal program to help save the economy. Let's all apply!

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Via BoingBoing, a beautifully-crafted and well-packed toolchest.

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Fred's Reading Report (December 200

What? December already? Things got a little hectic there, between working on Odyssey of the Mind, my mother-in-law being in the hospital, my daughter having her birthday...so making the monthly report slipped my mind!

So where do I stand? With short works, 607. Can I make it to 730, the equivalent of two short works a day for the year? Doubtful, but what the heck!

In the longer form, 82 books completed. Probably another 82 being read. Do I suffer from short-attention span theatre or what (I prefer to think of myself as being able to massively multi-task!)?

I continue to expand ways and means of reading. I've continued, as I talked about last month, to read books on a electronic reader. And, I continue to listen to audiobooks during my commute. This past month I used this to finish up The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian. I then started listening to The Ionian Mission by Patrick O'Brian and have added the audbiobook versions of the Lt. Leary series by David Drake to my iPod. Currently, I'm more than halfway through With the Lightnings.

Four more weeks, more or less. Almost two will be vacation (in theory). Where will I end up?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:09 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 Maniac.

Posted by: John D. at December 03, 2008 09:26 AM (twiRb)

2 You know, I think you've used that comment a couple of times. I don't think of myself as a maniac, just spending a heck of a lot less time watching television and the like!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at December 03, 2008 09:27 AM (jc70B)

3 Does "automaton" fit better? It all stems from envy, of course. I wish I read as much as you do.

Posted by: John D. at December 03, 2008 01:33 PM (twiRb)

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Ansible Issue 257 is now available!

Lisa Shaw of Century Radio Northeast: "In which book is Room 101 a place to be feared?" Caller: "101 Dalmatians." [PE]

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So there's another attempt to make Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy into a movie afoot? As well as his The End of Eternity?

I don't think it will work. Last time I read them, I really noticed how much of the "action" is just two character's talking.

And...previous attempts have been bad from the get-go. For example, an attempt to turn the trilogy into two films (similar to what the initial attempt by Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings was). And the attempt to use the "creative team" behind that horrific version of Asimov's I, Robot. Blech!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Straight-up chess, or chess played on a wall! I wonder how the match is going between the crew of the International Space Station and ground control and others?

And...has the internet killed "postal chess" or has it just all gone online?

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The Bad Astronomer talks about the bow shock around Betelgeuse (I have to pick up his new book, Death from the Skies!. Any book that uses an exclamation point in the title...)

To give this a SF twist, look up Gregory Benford's short story Bow Shock, which appeared in the first issue of Jim Baen's Universe. Why this story did not win a Hugo or a Nebula, I'll never know.

From direct images of exo-planets to stuff like this, it's amazing how astronomy keeps coming up with stuff that...well, amazes! "What a fascinating modern age we live in", as Captain J. Aubrey put it.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Tobias Buckell is in the hospital. Again. For a heart-related condition. Again. Good gravy!

John Scalzi has a brilliant suggestion. Let's all make him feel better by buying his new novel. Heck, it's apparently already #1 in SF at Amazon, let's see if we can blip it up to the main list!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:34 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The New York Times has published a list of what they consider the 100 Notable Books of 2008. Despite having read 82 books (to date) and 602 short works (to date), I've managed only to purchase (and not yet read!) one book out of their 100.

Am I disconnected...or are they?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I wonder if the International Space Station has one of these posted onboard.

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At the urging of some friends, I went (with great trepidition) to the store to purchase some...anime.

O.K., O.K., so I've had RoboTech for years. I own Planetes. But the first was something that hooked me years ago, when it was shown locally (WPIX, Channel 11, out of New York), one episode a day, five days a week. I worked a few miles away from our then apartment and was able to get home and watch it while cooking supper. Along with Star Blazers, they were a lot of fun, but...

Primitive. Limited animation, limited story, limited characters.

A friend recommended Planetes, and I picked it up as I was interested in the subject matter: near-future space exploitation (not exploration, actually using space). Characters had pasts, "issues', were gritty, smoked cigarettes, drank and got drunk, bitched and moaned, fell in and out of love, died...Interesting stuff.

Beyond that, it was a confusing morass. What anime was good? What was bad? Which version to buy (each seems to exist in multiple "complete", "remastered", "expanded", "super deluxe", etc.)? How to proceed?

Man, there are so many titles. And if you look at online reviews, proceed with caution. As a "noob", most of the "fanboi" will treat you as pond scum when you inquire.

O.K., back to the jaw dropping. One title that was recommended was Ghost in the Shell. However...confusion abounds, as there is a movie, a sequel, a third movie which is not related to the two movies, but is a sequel to the two seasons of the television show which takes up some of the elements of the manga, expands upon some, parallels others, and...

You see what I mean? Oh, my, aching, head. Several versions of the movie on DVD. Sequels that do and don't relate. Releases of the television series in boxed sets, non-boxed sets, with extras, without extras...

Somebody needs to write a comprehensive guide for noobs.

I went to the store and picked up a two-disc version of Ghost in the Shell as well as a boxed set of the television series (first season). Last night, after a multi-hour Odyssey of the Mind meeting (don't ask, long story), I put the first disc of the movie into the computer and...

The jaw dropped.

I only watched about 15 or so minutes, but what a 15 minutes. Remember that story that William Gibson relates about how he was working on Neuromancer, went to see Bladerunner and staggered out of the movie theatre, realizing that he was seeing echoes of his creation on the screen...Ever hear about how the folks behind Matrix (great first movie, should have stopped there!) pitched their product and one of the pitch items was a showing of Ghost in the Shell (GITS, from now on)? Maybe they should have just skipped making those other two Matrix flicks and done what the folks at Pixar did with movies like Spirited Away (helped to distribute it to a wider audience).

This is a cyberpunk movie, a heck of a lot closer than anything else I've seen for the genre. Obviously inspired by Bladerunner, it does what Bladerunner set out to do several levels better. It is cyberpunk on the screen, a lot "rawer" and closer to the source than anything out of Hollywood.

So I go back to the store today and look for similar stuff. Still a morass of titles and versions, not any clearer where to go next. But I did pick up a novel of the movie and a CD of music (the music is pretty dang astounding on its own).

My jaw has dropped.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:49 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt, the only geologist to walk on the Moon, has resigned from The Planetary Society.

Finally, becoming a deep space-faring nation again constitutes a mult-generational endeavor, particularly if Mars is in the mix. Unfortunately, the government-run, politicized K-12 school system will not currently support such an endeavor. It has totally failed several generations of young people, not just in STEM subjects but in history, language and economics. This problem has to be solved first. The people requirements for a return to the Moon should help jump start that process, although it will take a much more grassroots effort to be successful.

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