Nimble Books LLC » Intergalactic Roll of Honor

Terry Pratchett with a plot summary for Unseen Academicals #fantasy #scifi

Fred Zimmerman — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:14:55 +0000

Here is some great news about Terry Pratchett’s next (as yet unpublished novel), UNSEEN ACADEMICALS.

It is the “soccer novel” with a “realistic” Romeo and Juliet story woven through.

Pratchett on the Romeo and Juliet story:

a bit weird. Why didn’t anyone apply a bit of rudimentary first aid?

You have to watch the video interview, the text interview is not about UNSEEN ACADEMICALS.

Terry Pratchett from HarperCollins Publishers .

Title of newest #Vorkosigan #scifi novel …

Fred Zimmerman — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:38:19 +0000

Now this is what I call actual news!

From Lois McMaster Bujold, on her own mailing list:

The two least wince-worthy candidates so far are Inheritance and Cold Breath with Web of Ice trailing.

And on the cutting room floor:

We can’t call it _NewEgypt_, its file name for lo these many months,
because people will think it’s something about the contemporary Middle
East. And we can’t call it _Miles Vorkosigan and the Cryochamber of
Secrets_, sorely tho’ I am tempted.

Suggestions already rejected include:

Voicing the Dead

Voices of the Dead

Pyramid Schemes (already used by Baen)

Lost Souls

Frozen Dreams

Web of Ice

Lady Murasaki’s Web

Miles in Denial

Miles on Ice

… The Big Chill probably doesn’t work either, sigh.

Some of the key concepts include, but are not limited to, Inheritance,
proxies, the dead versus the living, cryocombs, corpsicles, frozen and
waiting,
defrosting, “burn the dead,” rebellion against the dead overlords,
corporate greed, cryogenics and politics and economics, generation gap
and generation… war is too strong a term… generation competition.
The book’s mode is mystery-thriller-character/social study.

Of Berserkers, Swords and Vampires by Fred Saberhagen – Baen Books

Fred Zimmerman — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:59:54 +0000

A must for Saberhagen completists. I had never read the Swords story (which provides the reasons why the Swords all went missing) or the second Berserker story, which is Saberhagen’s answer to Asimov’s Foundation Series.

Of Berserkers, Swords and Vampires by Fred Saberhagen – Baen Books.

Wait, what? universe expanded FTL? #scifi #astronomy

Fred Zimmerman — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:20:43 +0000

Wait, what? sounds like a great big loophole to me …

The newborn universe supposedly expanded faster than the speed of light. That bizarre, hypothetical stretching should have set off ripples in space and time called gravitational waves, which 13.7 billion years later should have left traces in the afterglow of the big bang, the cosmic microwave background. The 400 researchers working with the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite hope to spot those traces–subtle patterns in the polarization of the microwaves called “B modes”–before anyone else does.

via …While Planck Dusts the Skies For the Fingerprints of Inflation — Cho 324 (5927): 584 — Science.

#scifi Century Rain: Totally Space Opera (the actual subtitle!)

Fred Zimmerman — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:00:50 +0000

If this is the real subtitle, it’s bizarre, and, I think, uniquely meta for a serious novel as opposed to an anthology.

The book itself is, of course, excellent.

Century Rain: Totally Space Opera: Alastair Reynolds: Amazon.co.uk: Books.

Getting into David Marusek’s MIND OVER SHIP (Tor)

wfz-admin — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:50:18 +0000

Now 2/3 through. Definitely going to finish. Mind-bending array of clone families, dangerous AIs, and distributed consciousnesses. (Although Terry Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax thought of the latter twist first …)

I hate imagined futures where regular humans are vastly outnumbered by new types of clones and AIs. I don’t get the narcissistic appeal of having millions of versions of myself spanning future time and space. My genome has its good points, but I’d certainly want to take another roll of the dice to see if we can come up without a model that has the severe myopia, the short temper, the designed-to-fail knees, and the recessive alcoholism, depression and hypothyroidism, among other things …

#scifi @torbooks

All Hugo & Nebula award-winning books for $116K

wfz-admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:39:02 +0000

Challenge: are the missing books (that didn’t win Hugos and Nebulas) worth more than $116K?

The Fine Books Company in Rochester, Michigan, is offering first editions of all the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novels for a cool $116,530.

via Science Fiction and Fantasy First Editions on AbeBooks.

Homo Sapiens, the King of Adaptability?

wfz-admin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:45:17 +0000

Homo sapiens, the adaptable animal?

I grew up reading a lot of science fiction that was written in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and for a variety of reasons (among them, a key editor named John A. Campbell) a very popular “meme” in that era was a rather triumphalist view of man as the most adaptable and successful of all animals (on this planet and any others!) To be sure, this was grossly exaggerated, and I don’t think the writers of that era fully appreciated the relatively short time window in which homo sap has flourished relative to, e.g., the croocodile (250mya).

This concept of taking pride in adaptability seems to have disappeared into the cultural trashbin during the 60s and 70s, which is odd since the adaptive pressures on society in the late 60s were among the most intense in recorded histories. It’s also odd that the concept has not become more common again as we appreciate more and more that the human appropriation of net primary productivity is somewhere between 30 and 50% (Imhoff, Haberl). We are nothing if not successful at adapting the environment to our needs! Instead, our dominant reaction to climate change seems to be “change is bad.”

Not that there isn’t a lot of bad news, but it’s odd that there isn’t a more balanced perception that it is, in fact, kind of good news that the Arctic Sea is becoming navigable. Generally, navigable seas are viewed as a good thing …

My question for the group: is adaptability back? Should we be urging people once more to take pride in human adaptability?

via LinkedIn: View Discussion: °AdaptAbility – The Climate Adaptation Network.

Escape from Hell: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

wfz-admin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:14:20 +0000

Long-awaited and eagerly anticipated,a sequel to one of my favorite books of all time, but disappointing.

Confusing structure with opening scene running in parallel with a forward running flashback, I don’t see why they didn’t just start with one story or the other.

Doesn’t have the same magic as the original Niven & Pournelle INFERNO, and not nearly as good as the recent Niven/Lerner collaborations about the Puppeteers.

Nevertheless – a collector’s item that will go on my shelf in a protective cover.

Escape from Hell (Hardcover)

by Larry Niven (Author), Jerry Pournelle (Author)

via Amazon.com: Escape from Hell: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle: Books.

Robert Stone Ignores Joe Haldeman’s THE FOREVER WAR

wfz-admin — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:03:15 +0000

I hope Dexter Filkins had the decency to acknowledge Joe Haldeman’s Hugo and Nebula-award winning science fiction novel with the same theme and the same title. Robert Stone didn’t.

Up Front – Talking With Robert Stone – NYTimes.com
Robert Stone, who reviews Dexter Filkins’s book, “The Forever War,” on the cover, was himself a war correspondent in the early 1970s.