Archive for the ‘Reviews of books’ Category
Star Trek: The Next Generation — Vendetta
{4.5/5} “Instead of taking things at face value, you should be looking below the surface. You should see what could be, instead of what is. Anyone can fight a battle that’s easy to win. It’s fighting the battles that are impossible to win that causes humanity to take those great leaps forward.” Star Trek: The […]
Word by Word
{5/5} “Lexicographers spend a lifetime swimming through the English language in a way that no one else does; the very nature of lexicography demands it. English is a beautiful, bewildering language, and the deeper you dive into it, the more effort it takes to come up to the surface for air.” Word by Word: The […]
Ark
{4.5/5} “I’m no John Kennedy. If you want to hear the speech he gave on 15th May 1961, go find it. But the mandate I’m giving you now is similar. You have a challenge to fulfill that is immeasurably harder than flying to the moon, yet immeasurably more important. Your starship must be ready to […]
Flood
{4.5/5} “The fact was, her access to HeadSpace was the product of a complex and interconnected society, the capstone of a pyramid grounded in very old technologies, in farming and mining and manufacture and transport and energy production. It was only as that essential pyramid was crumbling that Maria became fully aware of its existence.” […]
The Invisibility of Success
{5/5} “When things work, the forces that make them work are invisible.” The Invisibility of Success and Other Investigations by Daniel Quinn, published in 2014 This is a collection of essays and talks Quinn gave over a period of several years. Here are some highlights, with direct quotations: On civilizations that disappeared, like the Maya […]
Infinity Beach
{4.5/5} “We don’t like horizons. We don’t like limits. We always want to see beyond them. We don’t stop at the water’s edge, do we? What is a beach to us but a place from which to launch ourselves at the future?” Infinity Beach by Jack McDevitt, published in 2000 Humans were creating 6 novas […]
Star Trek: TNG — A Call to Darkness
{4.5/5} “There were no benefits to being the first driver in the line… Mostly, it was a burden. But Picard had taken it up without hesitation. It gave him a measure of control over what happened to him. If he couldn’t dredge up his past, at least he could take an active part in preserving […]
Necessity
{4.5/5} “People from the Republics hold the pursuit of excellence as a goal. The other cultural goals I have encountered in my experience and researches seem much less conducive to producing happiness for individuals and societies. Additionally, we do all believe in constant examination of facts and positions; and even when this decays to pious […]
The Philosopher Kings
{4.5/5} “I had become human to learn about will and consequences and the significance of mortal life. There were things I had learned, and no doubt there was more to learn. But as for things I could do better incarnate — beyond learning that it seemed to amount to suffering, and waiting. Perhaps there was […]
The Just City
{4.5/5} “What we debated so constantly that winter was whether the Masters and Athene had been right to set up the Just City, and whether the Just City was the Just City or whether there could be one more just, and how that would be constituted.” The Just City by Jo Walton, published in 2014 […]