Blink
{5/5} “When we leap to a decision or have a hunch, our unconscious is… sifting through the situation in front of us, throwing out all that is irrelevant while we zero in on what really matters. And the truth is that our unconscious is really good at this, to the point where thin-slicing often delivers […]
Eclectic lists of SF & fantasy books
Many of the lists of SF and fantasy books turn out to be fairly similar if people vote on them. But if you have a list made up by one person (or a small group) it can be more eclectic. Here are a couple of places to find such lists. You might not always agree […]
The Black Unicorn
{4/5} “It had been necessary to become the Paladin in order to survive, and he had therefore done what was necessary. But the transformation had been a frightening thing, a shedding of his own skin, a crawling into someone else’s — someone or something.” The Black Unicorn by Terry Brooks, published in 1987 Ben, Questor, […]
Magic Kingdom For Sale — Sold!
{4/5} “Sterling Silver, like Landover, is in need of a King. The castle fails without one. Your presence within the castle renews her life. When you make her your home, that life will be fully sustained once more.” Magic Kingdom For Sale — Sold! by Terry Brooks, published in 1986 Ben Holiday lost his wife […]
Aurora
{4.5/5} “There were always only a few people alive in the ship at any given time who had a real understanding of how the quantum computer worked, or even what it was. Now that group was smaller than ever before. In fact maybe no one had ever understand what it was.” Aurora by Kim Stanley […]
A Play of Shadow
{4/5} “The Verge didn’t have night as the girl’s world experienced it, with its darkness and damp. Instead, here was the dimming, when the quality of light went from gloriously fierce, dragon scale taking fire and rock faces bleached to bone, to soft and subtle and sly. The silver mimrol of river and lake reflected […]
Children of Time
{5/5} “It should have seemed just days before, according to his personal waking history but, as he had noticed last time, there was clearly something imperfect about suspension. Certainly, Holstein could not feel the centuries that had passed since they abandoned Earth, but something in his mind acknowledged that lost time: the sense of a […]
Hulk Visionaries: Peter David Vol. 1
{3.5/5} “If I die… now… my whole life was nothing! All the destruction I’ve caused… unatoned for. It can’t have all been a waste!” Hulk Visionaries: Peter David Vol. 1 by Peter David & Todd McFarlane, published in 2005 (comics originally published in 1987-88) Bruce Banner has finally gotten rid of his Hulk. But there’s […]
Space Opera
{4.5/5} “On her journey here she’d met cyborgs and foreigners and artificial intelligences and several sorts of alien — some familiar, at least from media coverage of the hajj, and some strange — but it was the extrañados that bothered her the most. It was hard to come to terms with the idea of humans […]
The Dragon’s Eye
{4/5} “He pointed east, where a green-tinged dot, so dazzling that a glimpse was enough to hurt one’s retina, climbed above the horizon. The Eye of the Dragon: the other star in the Epsilon Bootis binary, a blazing A2 blue-white dwarf. Within all the windows flashed a fluorescing message: DO NOT LOOK AT THE EYE […]