This one is slightly out of date. I think they may be on “Best SF 11″, or something close to that by now. Anyway, this book contains the best Science Fiction short stories published in the year 2000. The editor, David G. Hartwell, selects them all, puts a little blurb about each author before their story, and wrote the introduction.

The introduction is rather interesting. Hartwell comments on how the year 2000 is a BIG year for science fiction, and makes references to many of the famous stories that take place on or around that year. (Such as Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001, and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward). Hartwell also emphasizes, emphatically, and repeatedly, that these stories are all examples of “hard Science Fiction”. I have never heard that term before I picked up this book.

Anyway, these were the best Science Fiction short stories published in 2000, (at least, according to Hartwell, and whoever he confers with, if anyone). I found that I was not really interested in many of them, which was a disapointment. Maybe I’m just not that into “Hard Science Fiction”? I don’t really know. Some stories were just too technical, and didn’t seem to really go anywhere. Others presented a very interesting concept, but, then abruptly ended, sometimes after just a page or two. It would have been nice to have some of those stories expanded upon.
(more…)

The rest of the title goes “Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion”. Hysterical book! Also very informative. The book describes the various types of robots that exist today, along with ones that may soon exist everywhere. Then it teaches you how to defend yourself against them and advises when to run away as fast as you can. The book is small and shiny, and the graphics alone are worth a look! Its a fun read!

Some examples:

When trying to escape from your rebelling “smart house”: “If you choose to drive, be aware that your robot car may be in cahoots with your house”.

Some things to look for when trying to decide if your servant robot is about to turn against you:
“Constant talk of human killings”
“Repetitive “Stabbing” motions”

My favorite quote is in the front of the book:
“You probally found How to Survive a Robot Uprising in the humor section. Let’s just hope that is where it belongs.”

I wanted to like this book. All I knew about it was that it had something to do with a woman who worked in the Hermitage Museum in Russia, and that the book described much of the artwork. Something about the woman menorizing the paintings. Art museums are very interesting to me, and I thought this book would be too.

I didn’t like this book much at all, however. It was just too sad! It is fiction, but is about the Siege of Leningrad, something that actually took place. German planes continuously bombed the city, and the people slowly either starved or froze to death. Marina was a young woman who worked for the museum at that time. She becomes part of a crew of workers who are desperately trying to remove the artwork from the museum, and hide it in the basement, so it won’t get destroyed in the war. Her lover is sent off to be a soldier, and she hardly hears from him until years after the war is over. She lives in the cold, damp basement of the museum with her uncle, aunt, and all the rest of the workers and their families.

Her suffering is described in bits and pieces. The story jumps between the war in the past to the present, where Marina is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Sometimes she doesn’t recognise her family, which makes them sad and confused, and most of the time she doesn’t know where in time she is. Its awful! My grandmother had Alzheimers before she died, and this book describes what its like to watch a family member go through that all too clearly. All Marina has left to her by the end is her memory of the paintings she suffered to save.

I find that I can get depressed just fine on my own, without needing sad stories to help that along. Therefore, this isn’t a book I intend to ever read again. If you like sad stories, maybe this one will interest you. The artwork is described rather well, but, that, too, is sad. How depressing to watch a character see these paintings in her head, knowing that they are all packed up for no one to see! How sad to hear her think about the paintings of still lifes filled with fruits, nuts, and meats that are real enough to smell, while she and everyone around her is starving to death! This book is more than I can take.

I have been meaning to check out this book for months and months now, and finally got my hands on it. Its wonderful! (Thanks, C.!) Its an art book, showing pictures taken by Mrs. Ballard. She had all these birds, mostly parrots of different kinds. Sometime in the 1970’s she made costumes for them, dressed them up, and took pictures.

It gets better! She made entire scenes for these dressed birdies, including props and backdrops, many of which are quite elaborate. Most of her work is a recreation of popular 70’s pop culture. Birds dressed up as Sonny and Cher, birds dressed up in a scene from the movie “Patton”, birds on little motorcycles dressed up like a scene from the movie “Easy Rider”. Birds recreating popular tv commericals of the time. On and on and on.

Whats even more amazing to me is that the birds actually seem to be at least somewhat amused by participating in all these photos. They seem happy! I have birds, and can tell when they look happy, and these birds of Mrs. Ballard’s really seem to be happy and interested in what’s going on around them. Maybe they figured it was some new game. She somehow got them to not only wear little costumes that would cover over their wings, (something I know my birds would never allow), but also to pose for her camera. Some photos have the birds lying down on their backs, something completely unnatural for a bird, and yet they seem very willing to play along.

The first part of the book is a little biographical information about Mrs. Ballard and her life, which, when paired up with the photography becomes even more eccentric and interesting. From what I understand, this book isn’t super easy to get a hold of. I have never seen a copy in the bookstores I have worked in even once. Its definately worth the effort to track it down and check it out!

This is the first Manga that I have ever read. It took a remarkably short time to get used to the “back-page-to-front-page” format, and also the way you have to read it sorta right to left. Once that became easy, I really got into the story and the artwork.

This series is about a few main characters, who seem to have been pulled from another series, and changed in different ways. It doesn’t seem that you need to read the other series to like this Tsubasa series. The artwork is wonderful! It also gives instrustions about how to actually read this manga, and a little about some of the Japanese words used, and their social meaning. Very interesting! It also says its written by four Japanese women, which, to me, makes it more fun.

Sakura is the princess of Clow, and shes in love with Syaoran, a childhood friend. Both are vaguely teenage. Sakura’s brother is now the King, and wants to keep the two of them apart, partly because he’s the big brother, and partly because the two of them are destined to have some sort of superpower things that… its unclear the results of. Anyhow, Sakura is about to tell Syaoran her feelings. She runs to the archeological site he is working on, finds a wierd symbol, and passes out. Actually, she’s almost dead, and her memories are scattered through several dimensions.

Syaoran vows to save her, no matter what the price, (and the price is a high one!) He gets sent, with Sakura’s unconscious body, to see a witch, who sends him to different places to find the pieces of memory, and save his love. Along for the ride are two other characters, both from different worlds, who have their own reasons for going along. I’m leaving a lot out, so as not to spoil things.

Things are just getting started when the book ends, leaving me waiting to read Tsubasa 2 really soon!

I was a little surprized when this book appeared on the shelves at my bookstore. I mean, I’m a big Stephen King fan, and I hadn’t heard much about this book. Besides, I kind of thought he was done after the Dark Tower Series. I did remember hearing something a few weeks before about some book King was working on, and a contest that would allow the winner to name a character in the book, or something like that, but I didn’t hear anything beyond that.

And here was this little book. It has a pulp fiction like cover, with a girl in a red dress. It was small. Downright tiny compared to most of the rest of King’s work. It was even over in the Mystery Section! Could this really be the same Stephen King?

I started reading the book, and was pleasantly surprized to find that I liked it! Its definitely a mystery. In fact, it seems to be part of a series of “Hard Case Crime” with each story by different authors. I was certain it was the same Stephen King right away. It takes place in Maine, as did so many of his other stories, and there is just something about the characters and the writing style that had King all over it.

The story is basically one converstation between two old friends who run a small newspaper and a much younger intern who has worked with them for a while and wants to stay in town. The two older guys are teaching her the trade, and also teaching her about the instincts that a good writer needs when following a story. They bring up an unsolved case that happened in town many years ago. A man is found sitting on the beach, already dead, with nothing more known about him.

From there, it gets stranger as the plot twists and turns. I liked it because I like Stephen King’s work, and because the story keeps moving along. If you like to watch tv shows like CSI, you will like this book.

The full title of this book is Space Tourism Adventures in Earth Orbit and Beyond. The book takes a realistic look at what spending your vacation in Space might be like, how close we are to having Space Tourism happen as a regular thing, and what has already been done toward that goal. It seems more possible than I realized it was when I picked up this book.

It goes back and forth between describing a fictional Space Flight the reader could theoretically take someday, using all the facts available to make it seem as realistic as possible, to detailing many of the space flights that have already actually happened, (both from the United States and The Soviet Union). Facts are also given about how far different groups have gotten trying to win an X prize by sending a reusable ship into space more than once within a certain period of time. Its a whole lot more interesting than I am probally describing it here.

I think that a person who is a huge Space buff most likely already knows most, if not all, of the information in this book. For me, it was informative. There were parts that were a bit more technical than I usually like to read, but thats just me. The fictional space flight, which reads like a narrative story, (broken up into parts), held my interest the most.

This is one of those books that gives you little “Breadcrumbs” as you read. A hint here, a clue there, leading up to a tense, and also somewhat unexpected ending. Its not a mystery though, more like a Horror book. There is some mystery in it, however.

A woman learns her husband has been murdered. Then, stranger things start happening. She has all these wierd dreams about him, that seem too real. Bizarre, perverse, sexual dreams, that she never had before his death. Her daughter thinks she is seeing Daddy come visit her as a ghost. Her son sets up video cameras to catch the ghost, and actually catches something on tape. Her husbands ex wife manages to somehow kill herself, even while shes in a mental hospital, and sends her a note she wrote right before she offed herself. What is happening here?

She talks to her family, her therapist, and old friends. Then, she meets this psychic, who tells her about his concept of the afterlife. There is also information about a school, that was closed down after a fire. This school was run by the Government, and was trying to look for children who had potential, or actual talent, as “Psychics”. It just gets wierder and wierder!

The ending is…. odd. Not quite what I expected. Some of the loose ends get resolved well, others made me go “What?”. An example of that would be the link between the Psychic and the murdered husband.

What this book does well is question what the Afterlife really is, but not in a religious way at all. The author also captured perfectly the silence that surrounds a person right after a loved one dies. That “funk” that you go into where time seems to sorta not work anymore, and you aren’t really focused on things like doing laundry, or getting out of bed in the morning, is very realistically portrayed in this book. What didn’t work so well, other than parts of the ending, were the errors. I was reading an unedited proof, which I got because I work at a bookstore, and there were enough spelling errors to actually be distracting! The book is due out sometime in December, and should be all corrected by then. It’s a good read.