No resolutions. Especially about blogging frequency.

Hope you and yours all have a happy and prosperous 2009.

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Ghost in the Shell; Shirow Masamune (Dark Horse Manga; 2004; ISBN 978-1-59307-228-5; cover by Shirow Masamune).

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: The Lost Memory; Junichi Fujisaku (DH Press; 2006; ISBN 978-1-59582-072-3; cover by Kazuto Nakazawa).

So after coming across the anime movie version of Ghost in the Shell and acquiring (and partly watching) the anime television series of the same name, I picked up three novels based on the television series as well as the original manga that inspired the movies, the television series and now the novels.

Masamune's GITS (to be fanboi-ish about it) parallels the stories that were developed into the movie as well as episodes of the show, but goes in directions that neither followed. It is also, quite frankly, a lot more adult in nature than any of the other versions. I'll have to look up other works by the artist/author.

Fujisaku wrote (according to material in the book) some of the episodes for the GITS: SAC show. Whether it is a problem with translation or the sparse nature of a story originally intended for the screen, this was a sketchy, scattered read. It might have worked better on the small screen, as a book it was a disappointment.

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Travels With Herodotus; Ryszard Kapuscinski (Vintage; 2007; ISBN 978-1-4000-7878-3; cover by Raghu Rai).

Ryszard Kapuscinski was a Polish journalist who fell in love with one of the world's first history books, The Histories by Herodotus (good overview of the book here; electronic versions here, here and here). This collection (sometimes this feels like a group of essays strung together, sometimes it feels like an integrated work...I'm treating it as a collection, hey, it's my reading project...)

The book alternates between Kapuscinski's sometime bizarre travels to China, India, Iran, Egypt and other points around the globe and his examinations of the one book that traveled most with him: The Histories. Sometimes the book illuminates his travels or vice versa; often he finds more drama and interest in the book than the places he visits. Some amusing stuff, some moving stuff, and a lot of very good stuff.

Made up of: Crossing the Border; Condemned to India; The Train Station and the Palace; Rabi Sings the Upanishads; Chairman Mao's One Hundred Flowers; Chinese Thought; Memory Along the Roadways of the World; The Happiness and Unhappiness of Croesus; The Battle's End; On the Origin of the Gods; The View from the Minaret; Armstrong's Concert; The Face of Zopyrus; The Hare; Among Dead Kings and Forgotten Gods; Honors for the Head of Histieus; At Doctor Ranke's; The Greek's Technique; Before He Is Torn Apart by Dogs and Birds; Xerxes; The Oath of Athens; Time Vanishes; The Desert and the Sea; The Anchor; Black Is Beautiful; Scenes of Passion and Prudence; Herodotus's Discovery; We Stand in Darkness Surrounded by Light.

Part of the 2008 Year in Shorts.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:16 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Do Your Ears Pop in Space?; R. Mike Mullane (Wiley Books; 1997; ISBN 0-471-15404-0; cover by James Carr).

Mile Mullane was a shuttle astronaut who produced the uproariously funny autobiography, Riding Rockets. In this volume (very similar to a book produced by Skylab astronaut William Pogue), he answers a series of questions about how to train to be an astronaut, what it is like to fly the shuttle, how to eat in space, and more.

The book is somewhat dated, having been written before the Shuttle-Mir missions and the increasingly long stays on the International Space Station. And, it is somewhat more "G rated" than his autobiography (more detail can be found, for example, in that book on the testing that the space shuttle's toilets system underwent...). I bought the book as part of a vague plan to write a story or series of short stories about the relatively near future in space (still working on them!), and it gave me a lot of general information (still looking for a bunch of specific answers!).

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In addition to re-reading Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization tales, I've also started reading and re-reading the Known Space stories by Larry Niven and others. First appearing in the 1960's in a series of short stories, plus such novels as A Gift from Earth and Ringworld, Niven eventually opened up the era known as the Man-Kzin Wars to other authors. more...

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Star Trails: 50 Favorite Columns from Sky & Telescope; David Levy (Sky Publishing; 2007; ISBN 978-1-931559-46-1; cover by Shaun Lowe).

A collection of columns by comet-hunter (and popular science writer) David Levy. A Starlight Light put me on the trail for the work by variable star observer Leslie C. Peltier, which has become my favorite work on astronomy (and the life of the observer). The Last Hour and A Sunrise Total Eclipse are two nice columns on the joy of observing. Tsutomu Seki and the Great Comet of 1965 recalled memories of seeing that comet myself.

Since these are columns as they appeared in the magazine, there is a certain amount of repetition that could have been taken out if they had been changed for the book. However, Levy is a good writer (I especially recommend some of his observing guides and his biographies, especially the one for Clyde Tombaugh).

Made up of: Preface; Starting Over; Accidents at the Telescope; The Third Star; Cole of Spyglass Mountain; A Starlight Night; Telescopes for Telethon; A Marriage of Science and Art; The Last Hour; The New Age of CCD Observing; In the Footsteps of Giants; Don't Let It Get to You; Earth Strikes Back; Uncaged Spirit; A Toast to Friends, Present and Absent; Something Old, Something New; Four Decades of Stellafane; The Man on the Moon; An Observer for All Seasons; Letter to My Granddaughter; Skyward Bound; Arthur C. Clarke's Vision of the Cosmos; The Street-Corner Astronomer; The Comet Master; Tsutomu Seki and the Great Comet of 1965; The Real Unified Theory; A Central American Heaven; Crescent City Astronomers; A Peak Experience; Miracle at Birr Castle; Observing Earth; A Voyage to Remember; Two on a Tower; Tombaugh's Star; Tombaugh's Telescopes; My First Telescope; A Sonnet for Columbia's Seven; Adventures with Mr. Schmidt's Telescopes; Further Adventures with Mr. Schmidt's Telescopes; A Sunrise Total Eclipse; Meteor Nights; A Perfect Storm; Red Lights in the Sky; A Tale of Two Eclipses; A Not-So-Transitory Success; Seeing Einstein's Gravity Lens; In Praise of Penumbral Eclipses; A Ringside Seat; My First Meteor; What is a Planet?

Counts as fifty-one entries in the 2008 Year in Shorts.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:10 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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You've heard of Moore's Law? Murphy's Law? Clarke's Laws?

How about Ripley's Law?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:09 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Wil McCarthy produced a bunch of really neat science fiction books...but then seemed to vanish. Well, not quite totally. Seems he has a day job that is taking up all his time, working on changing some of his ideas into reality.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:07 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Psion, which owns the trademark word Netbook suddenly finds it has lost control of its "intellectual property". Or something. Now, if they actually produced a product with that name...

Somebody give them a box of kleenex.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:06 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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One more bit of proof that there's a blog out there covering every subject. Even furniture stores.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:00 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The publishing industry is dying. Blame second-hand stores! Blame the internet! Blame the chains!

Blame everybody but yourselves.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:59 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Star Wars. Steampunk. Mix well.

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Two items of note from the current issue of The Space Review. A review (sorry) of Robert Zubrin's latest book (on Mount Toberead). And, wither (whither) Constellation?

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A papercraft model of one of my favorite spacecraft.

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Sci-Fi-O-Rama points us towards the Aliens Archive, home of lots of xenomorph goodness.

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More suggestions on why the ill-fated Beagle-2 never made it to Mars. Colin Pillinger remains unconvinced.

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Frodo Got Run Over By A Ringwraith
Coming home from Gondor, Christmas Eve
You can say there's no such thing as Sauron
But as for me and Gandalf, we believe

He'd been given Sauron's One Ring
And he had his friends a wizard and elf
He had led them into danger
So he went on to Mordor by himself

When we found him Christmas morning
At the scene of the attack
We found the Ruling Ring was missing
And Morgul blade stab wounds on his back

Frodo got run over by a Ringwraith
Coming home from Gondor, Christmas Eve
You can say there's no such thing as Sauron
But as for me and Gandalf, we believe

Now we're all so proud of Gandalf
He's been fighting the good fight
Killing Orcs and Trolls and Balrogs
But he's smoking too much pipe weed late at night

The days are getting darker
Sauron's troops are coming strong
We're all trying to overcome them
But we know that we can't keep fighting for long

Frodo got run over by a Ringwraith
Coming home from Gondor, Christmas Eve
You can say there's no such thing as Sauron
But as for me and Gandalf, we believe
Now the Dark Lord's power's growing

And we see the darkness rise
We're gonna miss seeing the blue sky
Cause it reminds us all of Frodo's eyes
All Middle Earth is running

Gandalf shouted "Save yourselves!
"We can escape Sauron's power
"If we sail to Valinor with all the Elves!"

Frodo got run over by a Ringwraith
Coming home from Gondor, Christmas Eve
You can say there's no such thing as Sauron
But as for me and Gandalf, we believe

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Images of orbiting exoplanets. Images, mind you. MESSENGER visits Mercury (still a bit before it orbits). Images of Venus. Jets on Enceladus.

Just a few of the nifty things we did in space this past year.

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...Santa Claus Conquers the Martians! A look at a Rankin-Bass/L. Frank Baum collision.

More on the original. More on the movie.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:54 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Evolving from the Hipster PDA...a "hacked" notebook becomes the mind.Depositor customer productivity notebook!

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