The Nimble Books Blog

Amazon.com: Platinum Pohl : The Collected Best Stories (Tom Doherty Associates Book): Books: Frederik Pohl:

Review
“SFWA Grand Master Pohl’s latest is a pure delight, miraculously combining wry adventure and compassionate satire. Pohl believes we can learn to live with extraordinary challenges; his tempered, hard-won faith in humanity makes this book especially satisfying.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review) on The Boy Who Would Live Forever

“An astonishing eyeful, rich and absorbing . . . a feast for Gateway travelers.”
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on The Boy Who Would Live Forever

“Gateway is one of those rare gems: a deeply human story set against the wonders and beauty of the infinite starry universe. Fred Pohl, Old Master that he is, has broken new ground for the science-fiction novel.”
–Ben Bova, Editor, Analog Magazine

“Frederik Pohl, one of the old pros of the genre never takes unnecessary risks. For him, science fiction is a form of play—an excusable indulgence since he plays it better than most people. His new novel is based on a wonderfully satisfying SF premise . . . The Heechee space station—known as Gateway—is the ultimate roulette wheel. The odds are lousy, but the jackpot is so large that there are always gamblers willing to try their luck.”
–The New York Times Book Review on Gateway

“The plot combines mystery and adventure with an excellent profile of a very lucky anti-hero. An outstanding work which is highly recommended.”
–Library Journal on Gateway

“This is a great tale loaded with adventure, mystery, futuristic technology and emotion–a Grand Master at his finest.”
–Charleston, SC Post and Courier (on The Far Shore of Time)

These Amazon reviews are fair. I just read the last story in the collection, “Fermi and Frost,” a brilliant 1986 treatment of The Fermi Paradox. Wow.

Tags: What's New for Book-Lovers by wfzimmerman
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Simonsays.com > SimonSays > SimonSays Podcast:

Today’s entire podcast focuses on David McCullough, who has twice won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. We’ll hear excerpts from his newest book, 1776, the intensely human story of those who marched with George Washington in the fateful year of the Declaration of Independence. We’ll also hear portions of earlier bestsellers including Truman and John Adams, which have been praised for their exceptional narrative sweep, scholarship, and literary distinction.

I have TRUMAN It is way too long. Snoozefest.

Tags: What's New for Book-Lovers by wfzimmerman
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The 10 Best Books of 2005 - New York Times:

The 10 Best Books of 2005

Good grief. I haven’t read any of these — although YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING is ready for me to pick up at my branch of the Ann Arbor District Library.

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Judging a Book By Its Cover

For the month of November, my CPM ($ per thousand impressions) was $1.55, for a consumer title with lots of mass appeal but also lots of $0.06 cent impressions.

Tags: Tech Fun by wfzimmerman
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Google Talkabout

I’ve had my Google Talk address in all my e-mail .sigs ever since it was launched, and so far only one person has asked me to Gtalk.

It was fun, but I’m wondering about adoption rates.

Tags: Tech Fun by wfzimmerman
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Publishers Weekly reports:

It’s been seven months since white smoke rose above St. Peter’s in Rome and the world learned of the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church. In those short months a near deluge of books about Pope Benedict XVI has been published—many, unfortunately, to disappointing sales. But a few have risen above the rest, and they have one thing in common: a well-known, well-respected, media-savvy author, be it George Weigel, John Allen Jr., or the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger himself.”

this is the Vatican-like short list that you should use when you are browsing at Amazon.

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CIA Realizes It’s Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source: “LANGLEY, VA—A report released Tuesday by the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General revealed that the CIA has mistakenly obscured hundreds of thousands of pages of critical intelligence information with black highlighters.”

A can’t-miss story for Against A Dark Background.

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The Solomon Key, by Dan Brown - News, Essays and Analysis |

Greg Taylor has set up a Solomon Key website. He has a strong knowledge of arcana and many good ideas. Well worth checking out.

Tags: The Solomon Key and Beyond by wfzimmerman
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ABC News: History of an Interrogation Technique: Water Boarding:

On “Good Morning America” today, Goss told ABC News’ Charles Gibson that the CIA does not inflict pain on prisoners.

Yet, in response to Gibson’s inquiry if water boarding would come under the heading of torture, Goss simply replied, “I don’t know.”

Water boarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in Vietnam 40 years ago. A photograph that appeared in The Washington Post of a U.S. soldier involved in water boarding a North Vietnamese prisoner in 1968 led to that soldier’s severe punishment.

“The soldier who participated in water torture in January 1968 was court-martialed within one month after the photos appeared in The Washington Post, and he was drummed out of the Army,” recounted Darius Rejali, a political science professor at Reed College.

Earlier in 1901, the United States had taken a similar stand against water boarding during the Spanish-American War when an Army major was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor for water boarding an insurgent in the Philippines.

“Even when you’re fighting against belligerents who don’t respect the laws of war, we are obliged to hold the laws of war,” said Rejali. “And water torture is torture.”

Darius was one of my good friends at college. A brilliant and charismatic fellow who has devoted his life to the worthy project of understanding and delegitimizing torture.

Tags: Against A Dark Background by wfzimmerman
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The Leaky Cauldron: Harry Potter News: Updates on J.K. Rowling, book six (Half-Blood Prince, HBP), movie four (Goblet of Fire - GoF) and a lot more.

PotterCast #15 is up and available for download! In this 45-minute show:

-Mike Newell says he would like to be considered to direct the seventh film
-Newell admits he didn’t read book six - because he found it irrelevant to movie four.

I hope not. I didn’t like the tone of Goblet of Fire, and I attribute a lof of it to the directing.

Tags: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by wfzimmerman
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The Spoof - New Dead Sea Scrolls Translation Prove Da Vinci Code False:

Translators, Archaeologists, and Bible Scholars in Jerusalem have just finished work on the translation of another of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This one, known as The Gospel of Peter, also describes the time period after the crucifixion (historically covered only in The Acts of The Apostles) and proves many of the allegations of Dan Brown’s bestselling The Da Vinci Code to be false.

Ishmael Abraham of the Israeli Center for Translation of Ancient Manuscripts released the following statement: “We have finished with The Gospel of Peter and are now ready for publication. The things found in this scroll will rock Judaism and Christianity to their very cores and blow new believers in the role of Mary Magdalene out of the water.”

“This gospel is apparently written by the Apostle Simon Peter or his scribe. It relates the struggles of an infant church movement in bringing Christianity to the Roman, Jewish, and Greek world and chronicles the early missionary efforts by the early apostles and others. It also gives us a more intimate look into the family life of Jesus of Nazareth, called The Christ.”

“We must remember historically that Jesus was very close to Peter. He was one of the first disciples to be chosen, he went with Jesus to the Mount of Transfiguration, he became the Chief Apostle and man in charge after the Ascension, and he walked on the water. This find and translation is significant because it comes to us from a man in the inner circle of the early Christian movement.”

Very droll.

Tags: The Solomon Key and Beyond by wfzimmerman
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Science Fiction Weekly Interview:

Terry Pratchett on the origins of Discworld, his Order of the British Empire and everything in between

The greatest living novelist?

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