As the sun went down into the sea, a great red-golden ball, so into the eastern sky there rose the moon, a great golden-yellow ball, as full as a moon could be. It was not a rare phenomenon; indeed it was a very usual one; yet this time, for purity of sky, the particular degree of humidity and no doubt a host of less obvious, rarely coinciding factors, it had an extraordinary perfection, and all hands, even the ship's boys and the loquacious, thick-skinned Old Buggers, watched it in silence.

(Chapter 9, The Thirteen-Gun Salute, Patrick O'Brian)

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Yet another sign of the End Times. The return of John Norman's "classic" series. more...

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(2006 continued...)

The review can now be viewed here.

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Wikipedia casts its net further and further. Here is an entry about one of my favorite "Golden Age" science fiction series.

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H. Beam Piper. The Terro-Human Future History. The Fuzzies. The Paratime Police. Well, Williamsport (Pennsylvania) may have forgotten him (and the local paper has forgotten that if you put up a link, it ought to stay up!), and that's probably why this profile is so late in coming. I wish that somebody reprint these (maybe Baen in their classic SF line or one of the small houses). more...

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The reivew can now be seen here.

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Sort of. When he died in 2001, Gordon R. Dickson had been working on a continuation of his long-running Childe Cycle of novels called Antagonist. Looks like it has been finished off, but the co-author, David W. Wixon, is not a name that is familiar to me (but this brief entry at the Locus site suggests that he is well familiar with Dickson's work).

I wonder if Antagonist will be the first of a pair of novels, as some of Dickson's other later works were. From what I recall, the novel had been called Childe.

It would be wonderful if his notes could get published. The original plan for the cycle was to be several historical novels, several contemporary novels and several future history novels. The way the cycle worked out was a number of future history novels greater than the original plan. I'd like to see whatever exists for the historical and contemporary novels, to see what the grand vision would have been.

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The review can now be found here.

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Sometime last school year my daughter started getting interested in Pokemon. It was partly due to her peers, partly just due to exposure (the beforecare and aftercare programs showed videos on Friday).

She's been bugging us for a Pokemon Gameboy and we'll probably (with great trepidation) grant her wish for her birthday.

Today since I had to go into work and she was off, I brought her along. We stopped at Barnes and Nobles on the way in and I asked if they had any Pokemon books in the kid's section. One book we picked up was Let's Find Pokemon!, which seems to be a book of activities, mazes, puzzles and the like.

The other book was The Best of Pokemon Adventures. Manga. Yes, her first manga.

And so it begins...

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There's a list of science fiction and fantasy books making the rounds. Let's see how I do. Bold means I read it and liked it, italics means I read it and did not like it, plain old text means I have not read it. more...

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A new Pynchon book? Hmmm...Of course, this description could be my dorm room in college, if you remove the bong (allergies):

All of this appealed immensely to the stoners of the 1970s. It was a time of The Dancing Wu-Li Masters and Godel, Escher, Bach—books which linked quantum engineering to eastern religion, to be discussed over a well-stoked bong with a side of Tangerine Dream playing in the background. The Illuminatus trilogy was big at that time, too, with its talk of cabals and "immanentising the Eschaton" (maybe a young Dan Brown was taking notes). Literary criticism meantime was turning towards scientism. The Derrida school of deconstructionists drooled over Pynchon while semioticians sharpened their troping-shears.

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One more reason by Baen Books is not only one of the best SF publishers, but the best eBook publisher around. Bar none. Now all their books are free to disabled readers. Let's see the other distributors of eBooks match this.

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Inspired by a reading of the Neil Gaiman book, my daughter said she wouldn't trade me for two goldfish. She'd rather win them at the church picnic.

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(2006 continued...)

The review can now be found here.

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A retro-review of science fiction and fantasy from the 1980's. I still have the Bob Shaw volumes mentioned, but must admit that most of the other stuff passed me by.

Addendum: The view from the oughts. The 1990's retrospective. I'll keep watching for the 1970's retrospective.

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"Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?"

(The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.)

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A recent exchange of items on the list devoted to the works of Patrick O'Brian:

"Further, I wonder why my Gunroom messages are now being flagged as 'Bulk' by my server?"

"I resent the implication, sir. My 18+ stone are carried very trimly."

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Via the Del Rey Internet Newsletter, news of a newly packaged set of Michael Moorcock's Elric series:

Del Rey Books is proud to announce the acquisition of a portfolio of Michael Moorcock's original Elric novels plus stories, essays, a comic book script, and other material featuring Moorcock's famously tormented antihero, Elric of Melnibone. The works will be released in matching trade paperback omnibus editions, illustrated throughout by well-known fantasy artists. Included are the following titles: Elric of Melnibone, Stormbringer, The Fortress of the Pearl, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, The Weird of the White Wolf, The Vanishing Tower, The Revenge of the Rose, and The Bane of the Black Sword. The books will be published in the order in which they were written, rather than in the chronological order in which they have appeared since the 1970s. Moorcock will be writing new introductions for each volume.

The first volume, to be titled The Stealer of Souls, will be illustrated throughout and with cover artwork by award-winning artist John Picacio. Five additional omnibus volumes will follow.

So it appears that this will include most, but not all, of the recent novels in the series. Hopefully they will finish the series; I wish that they had plans to do hardcover versions as well as the trade paperbacks.

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A retro-review of Arthur C. Clarke's classic work. Hopefully you are all aware of Clarke's foreshadowing of Ron Moore's method of re-imagining an earlier work: Clarke expanded/rewrote Against as The City and the Stars. He tells an amusing tale of a psychiatrist and a patient that were convinced that the other was crazy, as each had read one of the books and was not aware of the other.

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The review can now be found here.

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