When I was asked to become the regular science fiction book reviewer for InterGalactic Medicine Show, I was also asked to come up with a title for the column. Alethea Kontis, who does the fantasy book reviews has a clever column title, “Princess Alethea’s Magic Elixer.” What we ultimately settled on for my column title is…
Since I became the science fiction book reviewer for InterGalactic Medicine Show, publishers have been kind enough to send me books to review. So far, I haven’t been able to review the books I’ve been sent, mostly because they are either (a) not science fiction; or (b) they are science fiction, but are Book n in a…
Remember: I pinch-hit the book review column for 2 months while Alethea Kontis was on her book tour. My second review column is now up. If you want to know what I thought of Redshirts by John Scalzi or Taft 2012 by Jason Heller, head on over to IGMS to find out. And, as is sometimes…
We just returned from a vacation up in Castine, Maine. I’ll have more to say about the wonderful time we had on vacation, but before I do, I just had to write a review of the place at which we stayed because it was remarkable and the rest of the world needs to know about…
Remember, I am pinch hitting the book review column in June and July for Alethea Kontis, who has been on her book tour to promote her new novel, Enchanted. My first guest book review column is now online. In it, I take a look at the Million Writer Awards anthology by Jason Sanford, and 2312 by Kim Stanley…
My novelette, “If By Reason of Strength…” is reviewed by Don Sakers in the April 2012 Analog, which I just received in the mail today. Sakers describes the story as: A thoughtful, engaging SF story at an attractive price… what more could one ask? The story is published through 40K Books in Italy. 40K publishes…
Stephen King’s most recent book, 11/22/63, is a time-travel adventure about a man from 2011 who uses a time “bubble” to attempt to prevent the Kennedy assassination. Writing a book  like this is a bold move on the part of Mr. King. In the science fiction realm, time-travel stories are rampant and can easily become…
Jack McDevitt’s latest novel, Firebird (Ace, 2011), is the sixth adventure following Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath. Alex is a well-known antiquities dealer and Chase is his pilot and assistant. After agreeing to look into the value of some objects that once belonged to the famous physicist Christopher Robin (who allegedly disappeared near his home and…
Over at RT Book Reviews, Elisa Verna has written a nice post about my Vacation in the Golden Age. This is so cool! I’ve been taking this Vacation primarily for the enjoyment, and blogging about it allows me to share that enjoyment with others. So I’m delighted whenever I discover there are others out there…
Last fall, I went paperless at work. One of my goals for 2011 was to go paperless at home. As I have discovered, this is not as easy as just dumping all paper. It takes a concerted effort, but one that I think has already started to pay dividends. Going paperless requires replacing paper with…
I finished reading A Storm of Swords at 12:05am this morning and thought that the intervening sleep would help me write a cogent and sensible review of the book, but as of this morning, I’m still left feeling rather breathless by everything that happened, especially towards the end. The book is so long, with so many…
I have been using IDrive since the fall of 2009 as a means for securely backing up all of my data, and while I’ve posted about it before, I’ve never really done so in detail. But it is worth blogging about because it is, in my mind, the perfect solution for data backups*. When people…