SF

Yang accuses Microsoft of ‘trying to destabilize’ Yahoo

Yahoo founder and chief executive Jerry Yang accused Microsoft of trying to destabilize Yahoo with no genuine intent to buy the company, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Awww. That’s terrible. Those naughty boys!

Robert Asprin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[Ann Arbor's own] Robert Asprin passed away [at 62] 22 May 2008, dying quietly in bed where he had been reading a Terry Pratchett novel.

Asprin was important to me because he was a very successful SF writer from my home town.  I enjoyed the first few books in the THIEVES WORLD and MYTH series. Too bad his life and career was cut short.

Review of: Godspeed by Sheffield, Charles

I thoroughly enjoyed this YA hard-sf novel by the late Charles Sheffield, who was then chief scientist of the EarthSat corporation. He was a terrific writer, with the knack for combining realistic human motivation with fascinating science.

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

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 …

Patrick Swayze Diagnosed With Cancer, Five Weeks Left to

Patrick Swayze, best known for his role in Dirty Dancing, has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and told that he has just five weeks to live.

Swayze, 55, has been sick with the disease since he was diagnosed in late January with pancreatic cancer. The cancer has since spread to other organs and now the actor/dancer is dying.

For the past month, Swayze has been traveling to Stanford University’s prestigious cancer center in Palo Alto for radical chemotherapy, but his doctors are no longer optimistic that the treatments will be successful, according to the National Enquirer.

Swayze received three treatments of chemotherapy, causing the tumor to shrink, but less than his doctors had hoped for. He was then told that he should prepare for the end.

Way too many people have died recently. Patrick Swayze made some indelible contributions to people of my generation with DIRTY DANCING and GHOST.

This is one of the better days in the history of Nimble Books. Today we have reached a final agreement with Hugo and Nebula-award winning science fiction author, futurist, and commentator David Brin, and we will be publishing his THROUGH STRANGER EYES, a collection of “Reviews, Introductions, Tributes & Iconoclastic Essays” in the U.S. and U.K. We will be working in partnership with Robert Stephenson of the fine SF publisher Altair Australia who be publishing a simultaneous edition for his markets. THROUGH STRANGER EYES will include essays on figures as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien, John Brunner, George Orwell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Charles Sheffield, Richard Feynman, and Ayn Rand.

More to come …

Review of: Star dragon by Brotherton, Mike

I started reading this once and stopped part way through because I thought the idea of a dragon living inside a star was too silly for belief. I came back to this book after reading the author’s second book, SPIDER STAR, and made it all the way through this time. It was worth it. There was a satisfying science fictional explanation for everything.

The one weak spot that still remains is the premise that a corporation would send a hunting party to capture a “star dragon” and start casting nets and firing off photon torpedoes right away. It seems a lot more likely that super smart people in the 26th Century would start the same way we would start today, i.e. with a couple of years of careful, passive observation. After all, they flew 250 light years to find this thing, what’s the hurry?

wfzimmerman's review: "I'm a few chapters into this and it is terrific so far. Big Smart Objects, astroarchaeology, credible science -- this is what SF is all about. I immediately rushed off to order his other book, [[Star Dragon]]]."
Tor Books (2008), Hardcover, 448 pages
tags: science fiction, sf

wfzimmerman's review: "An impressive debut novel. The multiplexing clones who are the protagonists are creepy at first, but at the end of the book there is a convincing explanation for their existence. One minor nit is that practically every character has a self-descriptive name (is there a word for that? autonym?) Ultimately, a tough-minded meditation on what might lead us to a Singularity and what might happen after it."
Tor Books (2008), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 320 pages
tags: science fiction, sf