April 2008

wfzimmerman's review: "A comprehensive treatment of a unique subject with beautiful paintings by the author / illustrator. I'm very proud of this title."
Nimble Books LLC (2008), Paperback, 40 pages

wfzimmerman's review: "A comprehensive treatment of a unique subject with beautiful paintings by the author / illustrator. I'm very proud of this title."
Nimble Books LLC (2008), Paperback, 40 pages

Review of: Null-A continuum by Wright, John C. (John Charles), 1961-

An eagerly anticipated “sharecropping” sequel to Van Vogt’s classic NULL-A. John C. Wright is the perfect choice.

wfzimmerman's review: "The latest in a series of consistently outstanding SF novels from Alastair Reynolds. I enjoyed this one a lot."
Gollancz (2008), Hardcover, 480 pages
tags: sf, science fiction, space opera, hard sf

wfzimmerman's review: "Essential reading for anyone interested in climate change. I remain somewhat troubled by the IPCC's pseudo-scientific assignment of numeric probabilities of confidence to their judgments."
Cambridge University Press (2007), Edition: 1, Paperback, 862 pages

wfzimmerman's review: "Essential reading for anyone interested in climate change. I remain somewhat troubled by the IPCC's pseudo-scientific assignment of numeric probabilities of confidence to their judgments."
Cambridge University Press (2007), Edition: 1, Paperback, 862 pages

wfzimmerman's review: "Absolutely the best from Barnes, who is, unfortunately, a rather inconsistent writer."
Tor Books (1994), Hardcover, 432 pages

Annoucing IOWA CLASS BATTLESHIP AND ALASKA CLASS LARGE CRUISERS CONVERSION PROJECTS: An Illustrated Technical Reference by Wayne Scarpaci. This beautifully illustrated book is the definitive and only book on its subject–a unique must-have for any battleship fan.

The book is available from Nimble Books via CreateSpace or via Amazon.com and will soon be available via Ingram (ISBN 1934840386).





Here are a few of the beautiful images included.

I am beginning a project of organizing my library and deciding what books to keep and what books I want to add.  I am working my way through things methodically, beginning with the science fiction section and authors beginning with “A”.  Here are my thoughts so far …

Adams, Douglas — there is a single-volume omnibus (is that redundant?) with his collected works.  that would be a nice readers’ copy to own.  Adams certainly had a huge influence on the history of SF … but not one of my personal favorites.  Does it need to be in my collection? I can always get it from the library.

Anderson, Poul — I have a volume of collected stories.  What I would like to have: a first of Tau Zero and (maybe) a complete run of the Flandry and van Rijn series.

Anthony, Piers — I’ll deal with his fantasy in a separate section.  In the meantime, there is an argument to be made for Macroscope.

Asimov, Isaac — the first unqualified “must” in this section.  I want the best possible editions of all the Foundation books.  The Robot books are a lower priority.  The End of Eternity might be higher than the Robot books.

Who else am I missing?   more tk …

Things I have not seen explained yet in the press, or would like to see someone ask Amazon:

• What happened to Amazon’s selection promise — how can you be “world’s greatest bookstore” if you remove tens or hundreds of thousands of titles from your catalog at a stroke because they are supposedly “too hard” to acquire for your customers (via 24-hour POD ??)
• How exactly Amazon proposes for Booksurge to handle the load of 400,000 or more new POD titles that took LSI 10? years to put in print. it is fair to say that booksurge does not have a reputation for operational excellence. not that they couldn’t fix that, but so far they have not said or done anything to indicate that they are serious about accommodating all the business they’re asking for.
• Why won’t Amazon convert books from other POD formats into Booksurge’s — after all, Amazon is a technology company — let them do the work of reformatting tens of thousands of books — much more efficient to do it at the chokepoint programmatically than for thousands of publishers to do it individually. worst case is they have to buy a few extra printing machines and learn how to work ‘em. Not hard for a company with the resources of Amazon.
• Why can’t Amazon just do a deal with LSI to put LSI printers in Amazon fulfillment centers?
• Are your BookSurge reps ever going to be able to threaten anyone with Buy Button removal again, given that there will be an immediate viral response in the blogosphere if they do? given that the Buy Button threat is effectively inoperable — thanks to the power of the InterWeb — why don’t you just withdraw it?

It looks to me as if Angela Hoy is emerging as the heroine of this story. Apart from having the courage to speak out in the first place, which was huge, she is doing the best job of covering all the developments on a rolling basis.