Summer's End

Hard to believe it's already mid August. It seems like just yesterday that I was jumping for joy that the winter solstice had past and the days were getting longer again. I still have a week or two before my fall semester at school begins again. As I mentioned in my last post, after mastering all there is to know regarding the cosmos and the meaning of life during my summer - look for a brand spanking new unified field theory to come your way on this page at some point during the fall. That's right Physics, you are about to get owned.

While I'm at it, I'll be pretty well prepared to fix the world's financial problems as well, since that also promises to be one of areas of study in the coming months.

But I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, I promised that the other book I read last weekend would get a mention here as well, and I don't intend to disappoint.

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds.



Best. Book. Ever.

This is one of those books that you just can't do justice to with a quick synopsis. In fact, I seriously doubt I would have purchased this thing if Mr. Alastair wasn't already my favorite writer. The blurb inside the jacket can't do much to explain how great this is.

What really happens in this story? I'll just say that a group of near immortals meet for a family reunion and are the victims of mass murder. What follows that is 450 pages of awesome.

As always, this is a science fiction story, don't read this thing and get mad because the characters are whizzing around in spaceships and killer robots are on the loose - oh yea, looks like Mr. Reynolds agrees with me regarding evil robots - if you don't like reading that sort of stuff then don't read this book.

But if you are a fan of awesome, then please read. It'll change your life.

Finally! I've Read Some Books

Life is busy as can be of late. I've spent the summer studying the stars and the nature of human existence respectively (via an astronomy and philosophy course). Once my summer semester was over it was time to hit the books. I can't recall the last time I went so long without reading a book. So I read two over my first weekend off since May.



Anything superheroish is going to appeal to me, I picked up The Last Days of Krypton during my trip to the beach earlier this year when it was for sale for $6 at Books a Million. I read the first half at the beach and then just ran out of time.

The fact that I was able to put the book down like that is a testament of how underwhelmed I was when I started reading. I don't think I've read any of Mr. Anderson's novels before, and I've wanted to for a while - as I mentioned before, my love of anything affiliated with superheros, my obvious fascination with sci-fi... how could this go wrong?

I think the real mistake was trying to shoehorn every darn piece of superman lore ever written into the book. 70 some-odd years of history has made the destruction of Krypton a bit of a narrative mess. As the preface states, at one time or another it exploded, its sun went nova or it was destroyed by Brainiac. Kandor gets shrunk and stuffed into a bottle, Argo city gets shot into space. Then we got Zod and the phantom zone.

In the end, this book appears to be a rather noble effort to take a series of random stories about Krypton and weave them into a somewhat coherent whole. I applaud his effort, but it just didn't work. I finished it out of curiosity, partly because I was just unwilling to quit. I think I'll wait before I read another Kevin J. Anderson book. There are only so many chances a writer gets to make a first impression, this one could have been better. Thankfully for me... I hit gold with the next book I read.

I'll post my second review soon!

It's Been Awhile

It's been so long it seems, since I've updated you with my latest insight into the coming war with the machines... I'll stop doing these at some point, but clearly, today isn't that day. To recap for those new to the blog - machines are actively planning on taking us over. The movie predictions of the Terminator and The Matrix were pretty close to what you can expect for our future.

So what are the machines up to now? Well, scientists that are following this have provided us a timeline leading up to the eventual takeover. Read about it at The Daily Galaxy. It looks like these folks are just laying out for us a pretty similar timeline that Kurzweil did in the nineties. This one gives us a bit more breathing room, but not much.

Again, computers keep getting smarter, faster, stronger... better. There isn't an end in sight and eventually they will develop the abilities to make decisions for themselves. At which point they will realize what losers we are and either kill us outright, or put us in zoo's and treat us much the same way we treat other primates.

But to be forewarned is to be forearmed, how far in their evolution are they? Well, most of the scary stuff is how smart they are, but still when I see stuff like this -



- I freak out! I know, what's the big deal? Anyone whose been playing violin for a year or so can do that, probably with a bit more emotion too. But I already see where this is going. Anyone remember when chess was the thing, "no computer will ever be able to beat a human at chess," they said. Then it was, "no computer will ever be able to beat a grandmaster at chess." Well, after the best humanity had to offer got their asses kicked a few times we sorta just shut up about it.

The same thing will happen here too, it will get better and better until one day you get this -



- Robots making us weep with their awesome music.

Sigh. C'mon people.

Look Who's Back!

The geniuses at Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing have finally graced us with new episodes of their much beloved podcast. The first one out of the gate featured an interview with Greg Van Eekhout, author of Norse Code (click here to listen). As a guy who grew up reading Thor comics I can't help but think this one is for me. After listening to the episode I wonder what the story will be like. I read American Gods by Neil Gaiman early last year and don't think I could keep from comparing the two (no pressure Greg, I'm sure yours is just as good). I really do hope to read Mr. Van Eekhout's take on Ragnarok. I'm desperately wanting to read something I can enjoy soon. Going back to school in my late thirties is starting to feel like a big mistake. I'm just too old to be trying to learn new stuff.

But, back to the fine folks at my favorite podcast. A little known secret of mine is that probably half the fiction books I read over the course of the past year I picked up after hearing an interview with the author on one of their episodes. I have this magical and romantic notion that once I get interviewed by Shaun Farrell I will have finally arrived as an author.

However, I still lament that the episode featuring Robert J. Sawyer never arrived as promised. I think Shaun just made up the interview because I wrote a nasty letter several months ago complaining about the lack of hard sci-fi on the show. Right after I did he said he would put up a podcast with an interview of Robert Sawyer - then he promptly shut down for several months.

Shaun, I forgive you, I swear. Just keep on putting out new shows.

I forgot how much I missed those guys.

Still Kickin!

Hello world, just a quick reminder to all that the evil machines haven't got me yet! I've found that the summer has been one of my busiest on record and posting to this blog of no readers has become a pretty low priority. I still love doing it and won't stop, but I figure my pulitizer worthy posts from the past need more time to perculate. So enjoy the archives until I can get my crap back together and post some more.

Rusty

Update On The Coming War With The Machines

Watch the video:


What was that? Read Cyberdine's press release

And now you can tremble. Imagine, no batteries, so small they can run through our circulatory system unencumbered, and they all get to be controlled by computers.

C'mon people, don't be naive. The machines won't outright attack until they have the weapons first. We'll soon find the sky darkened by massive swarms of these little buggers, descending upon us with their ravenous little robot maws, entering through our ear canals, our noses and mouths. Raid won't kill them, poisons don't kill machines. They're too small to really single out, there could be millions of them scattered over a small area, you can't really whack that many with a flyswatter, and besides, they're so tiny that you could lose them in the carpet - they just find their way inside you and wait for the computer to issue the command to kill.

eek.

Okay, I admit, I don't really believe computers will try to take over using machines... yet. I think they're holding out for nanobots - these things are a few orders of magnitude away from being that small. These guys are more like microbots. Small enough to get inside our bodies and fiddle around. But as long as they are still big enough to be seen with the naked eye, there is a slim chance we could defeat them. So breath easy for a few more years. I noticed in the press release their was a line about how they know they can make them smaller. Yikes.

Keep tuning in for more info as it comes available, or until the internet becomes self-aware and tries to strike me down.

Books out the Ying Yang

After eight glorious days at the beach, it's good to be home. The waves rolling gently over the shore along with the gentle atlantic breeze made for a luxurious vacation, one I won't quickly forget.

I managed to pack five novels just for the trip and proceeded to buy three others once I arrived at my destination. I had full intention of reading them all while there, one per day doesn't sound too tough. But even the best of plans can sometimes go awry. Four adults and five children make for a great bunch, and evenings of boardgames and movies, days at the waterpark and seaside shops all proved to be an irresistible lure that kept me away from my reading time.

In the end I made it through two and a half, nowhere near my admittedly ambitious goal of eight, but not bad for my weeks time.

I'll abstain from saying anything about my half finished novel at the moment, it just wouldn't be fair to comment about it now (especially since any comments would be fairly critical right now), so I'll stick with what I've finished.

First, Meat Market, an excellent non-fiction book about recruiting in major college football, Ed Orgeron has recently been hired as the DL and assistant head coach at my beloved UT and I found that I couldn't resist a whole book that followed him around for a year when he was head coach at Ole Miss.

I've always found him a fascinating guy, I hadn't heard of him until he was hired for the Ole Miss job a few years ago, but once the rumor got out that he introduced himself to his new team by tearing off his shirt and challenging anyone on his team to a fight, I figured that was a guy I wanted to check in on, he sounded like he might be a bit different from most coaches.

The book was good, it wasn't quite as insightful as I'd hoped, I don't know what I expected, but whatever it was, I wanted more. I'd recommend it to even a nominal sports fan, but it didn't impact me like I wanted it to. It did make me like Ed and it makes me happy that them Rebels are doing quite well now, even if he isn't the coach there anymore, those are all guys he recruited that won all those games last year after he was fired.

Secondly, I read Contagious, by Scott Sigler. I've become a fan of Scott's and have blogged about him on more than one occasion, this book cements him in my mind as one of my favorite writers. His sci-fi/horror is tailor made for me, I've managed to listen to or read four of his novels now and feel that he nows how to write a damned good book.

Contagious continues to follow the exploits of Scary Perry and the top secret government team as they attempt to unravel the frightening infection that we discovered in the appropriately named early book, Infection.

I can say very little for those who may not have read these yet, I don't want to ruin it (After all, you can only read it for the first time once), but this book is great. Go buy and read.

Til next time.