Last night I finished reading George R. R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings, the second book in the Song of Ice and Fire series.  I gave Game of Thrones a 5-star rating. Five stars is a hard rating to come by and a hard rating to match and while I didn’t give A Clash of…
I finished reading Game of Thrones this morning and I thought a review of the book was in order, despite having mentioned it already on several occasions. Be warned there are spoilers present! So without further delay, here is how George R. R. Martin made me into a fan of epic fantasy: He altered my…
I’ve been using Evernote for closed to 2 months now and I have been very impressed with it. I originally started to use it as part of my desire to go paperless at home (I’d already done so, more or less, in the day job). What I have found is that it is not only…
(This is a continuation of my re-read of Science Fiction Age. Here is the index of issues I’ve already covered.) This issue begins with Scott Edelman’s allowing the “readers to write the editorial.” In his piece, he sums up the top 10 stories as voted on by the readers. I listed the tabulation in my…
All Clear is the second part of the book that began with Connie Willis’ Blackout (see my review here) which came out early in 2010. Blackout/All Clear are a single book that was broken into two parts; they are not part of a series and it is impossible to read All Clear without first having…
I finished reading Echo by Jack McDevitt on Saturday and like the previous books in the series, I totally enjoyed it. I am a science fiction fan at heart, but even within science fiction, there are certain types of stories that I find immensely enjoyable. Science fiction mysteries are among those stories, and Jack McDevitt…
I haven’t finished a book since mid-August, my longest drought on record, and there was no better book to break that drought than Jack McDevitt’s The Devil’s Eye. This is the fourth installment in Jack’s series of science fiction mysteries involving Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath. Benedict is a trader of antiquities and Kolpath is…
Beginning with the October 2010 issue, Scientific American has gotten yet another face lift. I’ve been a subscriber to SCIAM for 15 years and I read each issue cover-to-cover, and in doing so, I’ve become very comfortable with the look and feel, and where things fall in the magazine. So I was ready to complain…
Each issue of Science Fiction Age presented a good mix of fiction, not just genre (fantasy, science fiction), but types too (humor, horror). This issue is no exception, but the most remarkable thing to me containted in the March 1994 issue is the precience of Scott Edelman’s editorial. Titled, “We must leave our children the…
This is one of the most remarkable novels of any kind that I have ever read, and a truly stunning piece of time-travel/historical/science fiction. I started reading Doomsday Book because I’d read Connie Willis’s Blackout earlier in this year and was anxiously awaiting All Clear. I knew that DOOMSDAY BOOK was a Hugo and Nebula winning and I knew…
Today’s announcement of the upcoming release of Scrivener 2.0 gives me a good excuse to write about my experiences with this invaluable tool for writers. There are literally scores of positive reviews of Scrivener available online, and for good reason: Â it is an outstanding piece of software that allows a writer to focus on his…
Wow! Â I just checked my list and discovered that I have never, in 15 years of record-keeping, have I rated 2-consecutive books at 5-stars. Â Until today. Â On the heels of completing Connie Willis’ stunning Blackout, I just zipped my way through Robert Silverberg’s wonderful collection of autobiographical writings, Other Spaces, Other Times. Â It was an…