what Dave thinks about movies, books and everything
Most of Phyllis Gotlieb’s novels are set in her Galaxy Federation (GalFed) universe. Here they are. Starcats A Judgment of Dragons 1980 -> 4.5/5 Emperor, Swords, Pentacles 1982 -> 4.5/5 The Kingdom of the Cats 1985 Sven Dahlgren O Master Caliban! 1976 Heart of Red Iron 1989 Lyhhrt Flesh and Gold 1998 -> 4.5/5 Violent […]
{4.5/5} “Sometimes he scented small animals, but they did not run in fear because none on this world recognized the smell of Predatory Cat. He ran uphill over stones and downhill through rank grass with the savage joy of the marauding Hillsman, fear for Emerald compressed to a small knot in his belly, and the […]
{4.5/5} “He dealt food supplies and gave medical attention when requested to all comers among the world’s million and a quarter inhabitants: big red cats, leopard-sized and -shaped; nearly half, mostly female, were telepathic… No one thanked the suppliers. GalFed had plenty of use for half a million telepaths, and one day payment would fall […]
{5/5} “Dani Cumali was murdered by a professional hit woman. A firm called Faircloud Associates have bought a discretion clause to close the case. Dani’s phone, the one that was registered to her, has been lost by the police. You were one of three people called from this device, which neither the killer nor the […]
{4.5/5} “It was a question of how you thought about the world — not as a plaything of the gods to be accepted without question, but as a puzzle to be solved. And Avatak was drawn to the way Pyxeas’ mind worked as he challenged this huge, baffling, complex, secretive puzzle, and to the sheer […]
{4.5/5} “Somebody far back in our history realized that we have this basic problem of getting stuck in our ways. And that every so often the world changes, something new happens, and we have to be able to cope with it. So the Crows emerged. Like the other Houses, you can only join in you’re […]
Here’s a post David Brin wrote on his blog about a concept he has about passing the love of science fiction literature on to the next generation: Reach out to teachers and give them good reasons why they should teach science fiction in their classroom. He points out that it was very successful in the […]
The American Museum of Natural History has some great videos on their channel. Here are a couple I was particularly interested in. See hominins evolve over millions of years, from bipedalism to controlling fire: Seven Million Years of Human Evolution See human population grow faster and faster over hundreds of years: Human Population Through Time […]
{4/5} “You are Sol of Isig, caught up by fear between death and a door that has been closed for thousands of years. If you have no faith in yourself, then have faith in the things you call truth. You know what must be done.” The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia A. McKillip, published in […]
{4.5/5} “What if Zesi was right? What if she had been driven mad by the horrors of the Great Sea? She was still only fifteen years old, after all. Sometimes she still had nightmares of the man with no face, her father’s corpse washed up by the sea. Who was she to shape the future? […]