Two articles on the Heinlein Centenary. The first reads like it came from a series of cribbed notes scribbled from various dustjacket comments. The second is a more in-depth look at how many of Heinlein's "fingerprints" can be found on today's world.

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Will The New York Times once again allow me to laugh at the ramblings of Thomas Friedman and others? For free? Time (maybe very short) will tell.

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2006 continued...

The posting can now be seen here.

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The posting can now be found here.

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2006 continued...

The reivew can be found here.

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The review can now be found here.

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2006 continued...

The review can now be found here.

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Here's what I've read since my last report:

Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution, Paul Watzlawick et al.
This one is well worth tracking down. I borrowed my therapist's copy, and wouldn't mind getting my own. Some very interesting observations on how people can get out of seemingly intractable problems that aren't responding to common-sense "solutions."

Teach Yourself Spanish Complete Course Package, Juan Kattan-Ibarra
This came in handy on our family vacation in Cozumel last week. (Pics and summary to follow).

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Daniel C. Dennett
Dennett is highly readable and persuasive, even though I can't stand the "bright" neologism for freethinkers that he uses in this book.

The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, Neal Stephenson
It took me a day or two to get into this, but then I was completely swept into the story; it kind of fell flat at the very end (it had a very abrupt finale), but I would still recommend it highly.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
Stayed up all night reading this the day after I bought it. A satisfying conclusion to the series, though I wanted to see more from Snape's point of view throughout the book, instead of in just one chapter towards the end.

In progress:

The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi
John Scalzi rocks; I am enjoying this as much so far as Old Man's War. I may have more to say about this sometime in the future. (I'm learning not to commit myself to hard timeframes or expectations here anymore).

Amateur Telescope Making Book One, Albert G. Ingalls (editor)
This is the classic reference, and I have needed it to do some figuring on the 8" Newtonian reflector that I made with my granddad about 25 years ago. My dad and I had built a somewhat bulky and shaky equatorial mounting for it, and as a consequence it never got much use. However, I recently got the mirror resurfaced, and am now building a new mount: a travel Dobsonian (somewhat like this one) in the hopes of getting out and doing some astronomy with my kids. I'll be posting pictures to chart my progress.

On Deck:

1776, David McCullough (Still...)

About seven months' worth of Analog magazine.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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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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