Truth is stranger than fiction, but nothing is stranger than science fiction.
Nonfiction Book Review There's a little bit about libertarianism, but this is mostly about the Libertarian Party. I learned more about Wes Benedict and how one talented and motivated activist can turn around a defunct and ineffective party. I wish we'd elected Wes Benedict the LNC Chair in 2026. But I'm sure Evan McMahon will do a fine job.
Science Fiction Book Review ★★☆☆☆ Started strong, ended weak.
Sword and Planet Book Review ★☆☆☆☆ This is the worst book I've read all year. It's an Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiche, except instead of placing the story in Africa or on the planet Mars, Lin Carter chooses the entire galaxy and the whole of Time as the settings. Thane of the Two Swords Our hero is Thane of the Two Swords, who we meet as he's approached by Prince Chan of Shimar and his dwarf servant…
Fantasy Book Review ★★★☆☆ I'm not usually fond of fantasy but this is a clever little story. In an alternate Earth, the universe is an egg and the sky is cracking. In a desperate attempt to save their world, the local magicians snatch someone from our Earth: the greatest builder in history, Dave Hanson. Unfortunately there has been a miscalculation. Instead of Dave Hanson, genious engineer and…
Science Fiction Book Review ★★☆☆☆ An interesting premise but the execution and the final resolution were disappointing. Daniel Feldman, disgraced doctor, flees from the Medical Lobby and ends up on Mars. Why is he disgraced? Because he dared to defy the Medical Lobby by treating a patient outside of an official hospital. He saved the patient's life, by the way, but violations of Medical Lobby…
Science Fiction Book Review ★☆☆☆☆ Only slightly improved from the previous book in the series. There is a third book, but I won't be reading it.
Science Fiction Book Review ★☆☆☆☆ This is Bova's first book and it shows. Wow this is bad.
Science Fiction Book Review ★★★★☆ I am giving The Sword of Rhiannon the inaugural Stranger than SF Book of the Month award. This is a best book I've read all month.
Science Fiction Book Review ★☆☆☆☆ I enjoyed it. It's not a great book, but I enjoyed it. Brad Stevens takes the Long Sleep, expecting to wake up in a few years when his cancer can be healed. Instead, it's hundreds of years later and he awakens to find a world completely changed after a nuclear catastrophe. The new world he finds himself thrust into is brutally transactional. Those who cannot pay…
Science Fiction Book Review ★★☆☆☆ Nope. The nation of Alphaland is run entirely based on models and predictions given by their advanced computers. When their computers tell them that they can start a war with neighboring Betastan and win it within two months, the result is predictable: Betastan doesn't play by the computer's rules. Their sabotage, guerilla warfare, and their clever ways of…
Science Fiction Book Review As it turns out, I don't like Tiptree's writing. She's talented, but she turns her talents in the wrong direction. The only decent story in this collection is Birth of a Salesman , and that only marginally so. And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side Humans are genetically programmed to want to have sex with aliens, and that’s going to lead to the downfall…
Nonfiction Book Review It's refreshing to hear an approach to poverty that centers the gospel of Jesus Christ. Also, it seems that giving people stuff, except in the case of basic relief in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, never works out well. Poverty is a mindset or a worldview, and it's not something that can be solved merely by giving money and materials things to people who lack money…
Science Fiction Book Review ★★☆☆☆ Dr. Jay Allison's other personality, Jason, undertakes a trek into the mountains of Darkover to ask the Trailmen (the Sky People) to leave their arboreal homes and come to the Terran outpost to help stop a plague.
Fantasy Story Review A young woman finds her psi talent, and it's evil. Also, it's worth mentioning that the young girl, Sybil, is "fifteen years old and as frail as a branch of willow," which is disturbing considering that author Marion Zimmer Bradley describes her using sex to entice and ultimately murder someone, and also considering the claims of child sexual abuse made against Marion Zimmer…
Science Fiction Book Review ★★☆☆☆ Starts well, finishes weakly. Hubbard writes good fiction. He should have stuck to that. Alan Corday is shanghaied and forced to join the crew of the Hound of Heaven . Alan has a fiancee waiting for him back on Earth, but because Hound of Heaven is an interstellar starship, it's on the Long Passage. The time dilation effect mean that when Alan gets back home a few…
Fantasy Book Review A typical Thompson book, not bad. Yankee is the dog.
Fantasy Book Review I did it. I finished the Famous Forty. Also, it turns out that Merry Go Round is the name of a wooden horse from a merry-go-round.
Science Fiction Book Review It's a collaboration between husband-and-wife team of Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett. Hamilton's name is first on the cover, but I dare say there is more Brackett in the story than Hamilton. John Eric Stark (who I'm told has his own series of stories) is sent into the future to the universe of the Star Kings to battle a great destructive entity that threatens to…
Fantasy Book Review Delightful. Thumbs up. This is one of the few non-Baum Oz books that's worth reading. A boy named Jam from Ohio finds his way to Oz via a large kite. He lands in Gillikin Country. The supporting characters are memorable: his guinea pigs named Pinny and Gig, and his pet rat Pervical, aka Percy the Personality Kid. Percy is a lot of fun. They end up in in a valley where the…
Fantasy Book Review Snow is improving. Twins from Buffalo, New York named Twink and Tom are pulled through their television set into the fairyland. They've been summoned by the sorcerer Conjo to his island in the Nonestic Ocean. Conjo, as it turns out, is the sorcerer who created the Shaggy Man's Love Magnet, that totem that causes everyone to love whoever holds it. Unfortunately the Love Magnet…
Fantasy Book Review Tightly plotted, but every challenge is resolved by a fairy showing up and metaphorically waving her wand or literally waving her wand.
Fantasy Book Review I've been waiting for ages to read this Oz book. Ozoplanes? Sign me up! My main question is whether the "Oz" in Ozoplane should be pronounced as in "ozone" or like "Oz." Probably Oz. Basic plot: the Wizard designs and builds two ozoplanes--the Ozpril and the Oztober--with which to explore the skies. As he's giving a tour, the Tin Woodman, Jellia Jamb, and the Soldier with the…
Fantasy Book Review Return of Kabumpo. This story was...OK. Thompson seems to really like the character of Jinnicky the Red Jinn, as she brings him back in this book once again. I'm not as convinced that Jinnicky is interesting enough to justify his continued appearances.
Fantasy Book Review Better. An geyser accidentally blasts a seven-armed goat-herder named Mandy into Munchkinland in Oz. All right then. She immediately falls in with Nox the Royal Ox, who has a magic horn. It turns out that the rightful king of Keretaria (the little kingdom within Munchkinland where Handy Mandy has landed) is missing, so Mandy and Nox go on a quest to find him. I found the uses…
Fantasy Book Review Thumbs down. Captain Salt, first seen in book 25, Pirates in Oz , is back. He's been commissioned to explore the seas and claim new lands for Oz. He takes King Ato along (as his cook) as well as Roger the Read Bird. The story format is perfect for introducing little islands with strange and marvelous little societies. Unfortunately I found it tedious. Volcano island: They visit…
Science Fiction Book Review ★★★☆☆ The Sirians have colonized Titan, saying that the Saturn system was empty so it's theirs now. Earth won't stand for having an enemy base in their solar system, but to force the Sirians out will mean starting a war. Lucky Starr calls an interstellar council and persuades the rest of the solar systems to back Earth. Sirius is forced to withdraw. I do so love when a…
Science Fiction Book Review ★★★☆☆ Lucky Starr roots out a Sirian spy.
Science Fiction Book Review ★★☆☆☆ There's a saboteur on Mercury who is stalling progress on an important scientific research project. Lucky Starr solves the case. I found this installment in the Lucky Starr series to be below par, mainly because I didn't believe the motivations of the guilty party. Also, the title is misspelled on the cover.
Science Fiction Book Review ★★★☆☆ Lucky Starr solves a mysterious spate of accidents in an underwater dome city on Venus.
Science Fiction Book Review ★★★☆☆ Lucky Starr fights space pirates and foils a Sirian plot to invade the solar system.
Science Fiction Book Review ★★★☆☆ Poisoners and interplanetary politics This is clearly a juvenile, but Asimov sure can write. David Starr, a newly minted agent of the Council of Science, cracks an interplanetary food poisoning plot that threatens the stability of the entire solar system. Someone has been poisoning food imports from Mars. This is a geopolitical crisis because Earth is unable to…
Dissertation Review I always say, if you discover that someone you know has written a thesis or a dissertation, you should read it. Well, I read it. The math was beyond me. I have a Bachelor's degree in math (technically, Computer Science and Mathematics) but either I never learned this math, or I forgot it all because I haven't used it since graduation. 800,000 miles of pipes I learned that there…
Nonfiction Book Review A lot of it is common sense, but it's surprisingly helpful to have the common sense explained in concrete terms. My two favorite parts were the suggestion to appeal to an independent objective standard, and the advice to always understand your BATNA—Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. Knowing your BATNA and (if possible) the other party's BATNA can be a real help.…
Adventure Fiction Book Review ★★★☆☆ This is a fantastic story. Kioga winds up in a hidden kingdom of mammoth people. He and his friends must survive in a kingdom built on mass slavery. Kioga ends up a slave while the rest of the party gets caught up in the political machinations of the ruling class. Kioga escapes and falls in with a band of professional thieves and pickpockets. There is a…
Christian Book Review The subtitle The subtitle is a bit much. What has everyone else been doing all this time? Dishonest searching? Thoughts Preston Sprinkle takes us through the Bible and looks at various passages that talk about women's roles. When he goes through the New Testament passages about women in the church, he ends up concluding that the egalitarian interpretations are more likely. I…
Adventure Fiction Book Review One Against a Wilderness is the third entry in the Kioga series, and it's a collection of short stories about Kioga's childhood. These are boring stories. I - The Eyes of Mialoka Will Burn Tonight In far Nato'wa — that new-found land within the Arctic Circle — deep in the still, primeval forest called by the red-skinned natives Indegara, there stands a great rock…
Science Fiction Book Review ★★☆☆☆ Time travel Grant Ryals has a natural ability to travel back in time to the age of dinosaurs. He uses this ability to film and produce a dinosaur documentary called The Shores of Kansas which makes him famous and wealthy besides. It's a fantastic story conceit: Grant can only travel by himself, and he can only take along whatever he can carry. To the past he takes…
Science Fiction Book Review ★☆☆☆☆ I've read this one before, because I vividly remember that the Pinkness made Shepherd Blaine's mind reflective and shiny. That was meant to protect him, but in reality marked him as a big shiny target for anybody with mental powers. The book is dull and meandering. The characters' motivations rarely made sense, and the ending was not satisfactory.
Christian Book Review OK.
Christian Book Review I skimmed this one. It seems like a pretty basic introduction to narcissism. The unique thing that it offers is that it describes how narcissistic traits manifest in each of the Enneagram personality types. Given that the Enneagram is pseudoscientific nonsense with no grounding in research, I'm not sure how valuable that is. But I guess it can help by showing different ways…
Master's Thesis Review This was a lot of fun. I got to read this 1984 thesis about El Niño Fidencio, a curandero (traditional healer) in Mexico, and the movement that grew up around him. I say, if you meet someone and discover that he's written a thesis or a dissertation, you should read it. (Next up for me: a doctoral dissertation entitled Position and orientation correction for pipe profiling…
Science Fiction Book Review ★★☆☆☆ A middling science fiction novel. I read it because I know another, unrelated, Donald Barr and I found the coincidence of names amusing.
Science Fiction Book Review ★★☆☆☆ This one was OK.
Science Fiction Book Review ★★★☆☆ It was fine. I didn't write a detailed review, but I noted some key words as I was reading. Iroedh Antis Vardh Dr. Bloch Daktablak Rhodh Queen Intar Avtiny Princess Estir of Elham duel machete
Science Fiction Book Review ★☆☆☆☆ A fixup. Schmitz's writing is infuriating as always. He leaves out important bits of information to ratchet up the suspense, but the result is in three out of the four stories I never could satisfactorily figure out the plot. Big thumbs down from me.
Science Fiction Book Review ★★★☆☆ Leif Svensen is kidnapped by Loki and taken to Asgard where he's put to work designing weapons for the Aesir to use against the giants when Ragnarok comes. With the help of clever dwarfs, Leif produces gunpowder grenades, explosive-tipped arrows, and fission bombs. Oh yeah, the dwarfs can refine U-235, don'tcha know? It's books like these that reveal my…
Science Fiction Book Review Starswarm is a collection of stories set in the same universe. The stories vary in style and do not fit into an overall narrative. Therefore I'm categorizing this as a collection rather than a fix-up novel. My enjoyment of the stories varied widely. A Moon of My Delight is heartbreaking and may be the best story I've read all year. Shards is drivel. The rest are…
Science Fiction Book Review ★★☆☆☆ All but a few hundred humans vanish from the face of the Earth. The remaining few are now almost immortal, and they do well with their robot servants, but without sufficient population they must live without technology. As a result, they develop their latent mental skills, which includes telepathy and interstellar teleportation. Most of the remaining humans go…
Science Fiction Book Review ★★★☆☆ Ronnie Bronston is a newly-minted agent of Section G of the United Planets (UP) Bureau of Investigations. As a member of Section G, it's his duty to enforce articles 1 and 2 of the UP charter: Article One: The United Planets organization shall take no steps to interfere with the internal political, socio-economic, or religious institutions of its member planets.…
Science Fiction Book Review ★★☆☆☆ A group sets out from Earth to Rigel, where they will secretly influence events on two lost colony worlds to bring their civilizations up to the point where they can join the Galactic Commonwealth. A disagreement on how to proceed sharply divides the group, so they agree to split their forces: one group will work on the planet Genoa and use capitalistic means; the…