Archive for the ‘Reviews of books’ Category
Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
{5/5} “A goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run.” How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by […]
Star Trek: Crisis of Consciousness
{4/5} “Instinctively, the Captain knew not to ask her who she was to try, convict, and carry out a sentence for past crimes. The consciousnesses within Zhatan probably remembered the atrocities they suffered. To her — to all of them — this was not something from a school lesson. It was their personal history.” Star […]
Foreigner
{4.5/5} “And yet, whoever the ark-makers were, they, too, had failed. One of their arks had crashed, the crew killed, its cargo of lifeforms never released. If something could defeat the ark-makers, what chance did Quintaglios have against the fate that awaited them?” Foreigner by Robert J. Sawyer, published in 1994 Novato is exploring the […]
Fossil Hunter
{4.5/5} “We’re trying to save our entire race! It’s only knowledge that will let us do that. We have to shed our superstitions and fears the way a snake sheds its skin. We can’t cower in the face of what we might discover.” Fossil Hunter by Robert J. Sawyer, published in 1993 Afsan had convinced […]
Far-Seer
{4.5/5} “Some of the moons moved quickly across the sky, others took several tens of nights to cross from horizon to horizon. All went through phases, waxing and waning between the extremes of showing a fulling lit circular shape and appearing as simply a black circle covering the stars. What did it all mean?” Far-Seer […]
Some Remarks
{4.5/5} “You can write a minimalist short story that’s set in a trailer park or a Connecticut suburb that might be considered a literary masterpiece or well-regarded by literary types, but science fiction people wouldn’t find it very interesting unless it had somewhere in it a cool idea that would make them say, ‘That’s interesting. […]
David and Goliath
{5/5} “Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness.” David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell, published in 2013 The story of David and Goliath is always told in a way that […]
Accelerando
{4.5/5} “His ideas are informed by a painfully honest humanism, and everyone — even his enemies — agrees that he is one of the greatest theoreticians of the post-EU era. But his intellectual integrity prevents him from rising to the very top, and his fellow travelers are much ruder about him than his ideological enemies, […]
The Gum Thief
{4.5/5} “I think if human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn’t life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don’t they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of […]
Lady of Mazes
{4.5/5} Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder, published in 2005 Teven Coronal is divided into manifolds, where reality has been constructed according to people’s tastes. In Westerhaven manifold Livia is stunned to receive a visit from one of the founders, who asks her to investigate something that should be impossible in Raven, a next-door manifold. […]