(2005 continued...)

The review can now be read here.

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(2005 continued...)

In Robert A. Heinlein's 1949 novel Red Planet depicts a struggle of colonists on Mars trying to fight back against an Earth-imposed government that does not understand what it takes to live on Mars. The books depicts that Mars of Percivel Lowell: canals, ruined cities and Martians (reused by Heinlein in other books such as The Rolling Stones and Stranger in a Strange Land). more...

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(2005 continued...)

The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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(2005 continued...)

The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:18 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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(2005 continued...)

The review can now be found here.

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(2005 continued...)

The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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(Back to posting 2005 book entries!)

The review can now be found here.

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"...Attack of the Clones is an intelligent, well-considered, complex, and artful piece of work that keeps being mysteriously interrupted by actual human actors wandering into the screen and speaking terrible lines of dialogue."

(Patricia Nielsen Hayden)

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"Who am I? I am Susan Ivanova, Commander. Daughter of Andre and Sophie Ivanova. I am the Right Hand of Vengence and the boot that is going to kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart. I am Death Incarnate, and the last living thing you are ever going to see. God sent me."

(Babylon 5)

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"You fertility deities are worse than Marxists," he said. "You think that's all that goes on between people."

(Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light, 1971.)

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Zoe: "Isn't the Bible kinda specific about killin'?"

Book: "Yes, but it is somewhat fuzzy in the area of kneecaps."

(Firefly)

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Ratz: Now, some night, you get maybe too artistic, you wind up in the clinic tanks, spare parts.

(William Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984)

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"It has spaceships, a bank heist, Interplanetary cannibal zombies, geishas, ruthless government operatives, and a hot psychic kung fu fighting chick, how could you possibly have been bored!"

(A fan's reaction to a non-fan's dislike of Serenity.) more...

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Doctors don't seem to realize that most of us are perfectly content not having to visualize ourselves as animated bags of skin filled with obscene glop.

(Joe Haldeman, The Forever War)

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Seen on a mailing list I'm on...

Ken Burnside:

Agreed 100% on the Whiney Doomed Angstman aspect.

The other thing that boggled my mind when reading it was that the enemy ships (which were presented as Overwhelming and Unbeatable) were spacegoing fish that spat acid.

Which utterly and completely blew my suspension of disbelief out the airlock.

Rick Robinson:

Only out the airlock? Mine would fly off at relativistic velocities. Does suspension of disbelief have a mass? If so, there's the ultimate operatic space drive for you.

Heh.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:26 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Can we travel to other planets? Will the expense (or the transit times or the awful aching black) overwhelm us? Charles Stross considers the concept of interplanetary and interstellar travel and colonization.

This has (naturally!) generated a lot of talk among fans of space travel, science fiction, etc. Here's an excellent entry from Centauri Dreams, Paul Glister's site. Check out his book!

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Space Shuttle Atlantis and the ISS attacked by forces of the Empire? Say it ain't so!

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One of my favorite authors, a proponent of the "new space opera", is blogging.

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A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I discovered a science fiction roleplaying game called Traveller. A little black box, three booklets. You provided pen, paper, dice and imagination. What fun we had during college with that! Traveller evolved into various editions, died, was brought back, died again, was brought back again. I drifted in and out.

Some time later another company brought out a science fiction roleplaying game based on Star Wars. I bought some of the modules, but never really used it. That game eventually faded, but that franchise went out to be run by the uber-gaming company...which also et the franchise fail.

They've now brought out The Saga Edition of the Star Wars roleplaying game. Is there still room for pencil and paper games in a world of many flavors of computer games? Here's a review that looks at the current edition.

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Ladies and gentlemen, rest easy. The newest issue of Dave Langford's Ansible has been posted.

Charles McGrath calls Philip K. Dick `A Prince of Pulp, Legit at Last' and adds a little whitewash: `... "The Man in the High Castle," his most sustained and most assured attempt at mainstream respectability, and it's barely a sci-fi book at all but, rather, what we would now call a "counterfactual" ...' (New York Times, 6 May) [PB]

...and many other gems...

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