The omnibus review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:32 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Locus Online has posted retro-reviews of several of Heinlein's works. This ties in nicely with my completed review of Beyond This Horizon.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You can build anything with Lego! Feeling some pain in your chest?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A medly of Pooh-ish whimsy in multiple literary genres. My favorite?

Pooh paced the deck, hands clasped behind his back. "Rabbit! Where's that blasted honey?"

Rabbit's whiskered face appeared in an instant, delivered the unwelcome verdict "Which it's already gone!" and disappeared again, leaving behind only muttering concerning something of a very little brain—fortunately at a low enough volume that Pooh could pretend to not have heard. Indeed, Pooh looked down and saw the honey pot was indeed there and empty. "Bother."

A sudden decision, and he swung his rather round and soft body into the shrouds and climbed to the crow's nest. There, he took out his glass and surveyed the horizon. Was that a sail? A sail that might be attached to a French merchant vessel, its hold stuffed full of honey? The crew hadn't had a real prize in months and Pooh's fortune at home could desperately use such a stroke of good fortune.

"Tigger!" he bellowed to the deck far below. "Fetch me Dr. Robin!" For he instinctively knew that he would need his friend's advice before proceeding.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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When you look at something like this (a 1965 miniature library), you get a sense of how far technology has gone (and might still go). I routinely carry around several hundred books and stories with me on a storage card the fraction of the size of this gadet.

Why stop at some books? Why not the universe in a library? more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You can build anything with Lego! Even interstellar probes! Presenting a Lego version of the British Interplanetary Society's Daedalus probe to Barnard's Star.

Barnard's Runaway Star? You know the Medusae would never have stood for us poking around in their neighborhood!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:33 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Robert A Heinlein: Beyond This Horizon (Baen Books, 2001; ISBN 0-671-31836-5)

The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:19 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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David Weber: In Enemy Hands (Baen Books, 1997; ISBN 0-671-87793-3). Echoes of Honor (Baen Books, 1998; ISBN 0-671-87892-1). Ashes of Victory (Baen Books, 2000; ISBN 0-671-57854-5).

The review can now be found here.

Free copies of all three of these books can be found here and here, but I would encourage you to purchase them from here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Tell me this image doesn't remind you of the classic illustrations by Clifford Geary from the original hardcover of Starman Jones by Robert A. Heinlein!

(With thanks to Winchell Chung for sending me the link. Great illustrations!)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 12:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The best thing in a bad movie. Not sure of the mileage, but the rockets on the roof would sure be a good thing in morning traffic around here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:14 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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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.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A site dedicated to various events in science fiction. How long before the Nostromo finds that xenomorph? We have less time than you think!!!

(With a click of the analog clock to BoingBoing.)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 02:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hot in from the e-waves and the inter-tubes. Issue #241 of Dave Langford's Ansible!

David A. Hardy is wary of political spin: 'I've just been watching Al Gore on TV kicking off Live Earth in the USA. All very stirring and worthy stuff, and I fully approve of the sentiments; so it's probably churlish of me to mention that that lovely Earth on the big screen behind him was spinning clockwise. What would that do to the climate?!'

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Furthermore! Why bring out a new DVD standard (or two) when not every film is available on DVD yet? There's still more gold in them hills! I'd buy DVD's of Moonbase 3 or Star Cops or Moon Zero Two.

Heck, a DVD of this might even spark my interest!

(I realize that some of these have been available on DVD...but not in the US. Let's hear it for "country codes" and other artificial barriers to commerce!)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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While perusing the website dedicated to Brian Daley (following up on news that his first novel had been republished), I came across this note by James Luceno, the other half of the writing team known as "Jack McKinney":

I recall one we had in my Chevy van just before the premiere matinee of some movie called Star Wars, which neither of us knew much about...So we sat in the parking lot of some cineplex on Route 4 in Northern New Jersey, priming ourselves for outer space, and when we left the theater two hours later we felt as if we'd been there. I mean, 2001 was solid intellectual stuff, but Star Wars—here, at last, was rousing sci-fi adventure.

Good God in Heaven. I was at that theatre. At that showing. In that parking lot, on that day.

No wonder I felt a disturbance in the Force.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Complete Starfleet Library. Come on, admit how many of these items you once owned...

I'm amazed at the number of titles I owned and read or just read. For example, I read this one in a local drugstore (once the main source, along with soda shops, of books for me). Our school used to have a twice-yearly visit from some sort of bookseller who would set up a trailer, I recall buying this, this, this and others. After I started reading Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth novels from Ballantine, they started publishing his novelizations of the short-lived animated series.

I am such a geek. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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2006 continued...

Two of my favorite (currently practicing) artists who deal with a lot of science fiction subjects are Bob Eggleton and Stephen Martiniere. Eggleton now has a blog. Martiniere has a new book out and is interviewed here by The Art Department.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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2006 continued...

The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:43 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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2006 continued...

The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Having your back scratched is not the only reason to be married, but it is a good one, especially for those spots that are so hard to reach by yourself."

—Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

Posted by: JohnL at 08:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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