I am looooong since being willing to eat Pizza Hut, but I love this.
Granted, it’s not a Deliverator, but it’s a damn cool concept. If that last sentence confused you, you really, really need to read Snow Crash.
I love maps. Road maps, aerial photos, Google Earth overlays, I don’t care.
You can’t love travel without knowing how to consult a good map. So, I read this review and realized that I should probably set some cash aside and get the latest copy of this.
I’ve been having a lot of fun skimming through the new Star Wars: The Essential Atlas. The link here takes you to some background info, author chats, and an online planetary directory that will be updated as new systems and such get written/created.
As a fan, it’s been more than a little discouraging to pour through dozens of fan-made maps, hoping for a system that works. A guy named Cartographer had taken the maps created for the New Jedi Order and had spent a lot of work organizing those into something usable. Up until this book’s release, the best current map was a mash-up of Cartographer’s and Modi’s map, found here.
I burned through this book pretty quickly and enjoyed the hell out of it. It’s a horror flick set in a Star Wars environment. Not a bad read.
Here is some more info on the book, an excerpt, plus some notes from the passengers and crew of the damned ship.
Also big version of the cover plus the main site hosts a Zombie Week.
I’ve been pretty sedentary in my fiction reading, I’ll admit. But I really need some new writers. Turtledove’s latest series haven’t quite grabbed me. Ferrigno ended his Assassin series more than a bit predictably. King finished the Dark Tower books and nothing since has satisfies. Clancy wrote himself into a corner with the Jack Ryan books years ago.
Gibson is into modern mysteries and hasn’t found his old touch. Stephenson is getting more and more involved with his created worlds that he’s frankly getting hard to follow. Stirling’s Emberverse is about all I can follow, though I still have my Star Wars books and the latest is – literally – a scream.
So, along with my GeekDad recommendations and Stacy’s work (hi!) I picked up Boneshaker and boy am I glad I did. Here’s the review from GeekDad.
A fun take on alternate history and a well written book to boot. Hell, the ivory pages and brown text just screams “Read me! I’m different!”. Pick it up and thank me later.
For a free sneak peek into the steampunk world by the same author, check out Tanglefoot.
A nice starter list for discussion on the various types of literary geekness.
GeekDad has a nice article concerning Banned Book Week, which runs from September 26−October 3 this year.
It galls me that we live in a society where people go out of their way to stop people from reading things that may be controversial. I personally can’t see me reading a Glenn Beck book, but I’m not going to stop anyone from reading one. Oh sure, I’ll probably consider them an idiot for doing so, but no more than I’d judge someone a douchebag for wearing a Yankees ballcap.
Instead we have these flag-waving (and -wearing) pseudo-patriot Talibangelical types who can’t stand kids reading about non-whites, or happy homosexual families, or, well, anything that isn’t the Bible apparently. If you follow this link and see how the list of books most banned have trended over the years, you’ll see an increasing amount of those books have themes that don’t fit into the narrow world view of most conservatives.
Look, everything these idiots do is wrong. Their attitudes towards women, race, sex ed, civil rights, war and peace, all have been proven wrong-headed, dangerous, and oftentimes lethal to those they purport to protect.
Ask any girl who escaped from an FLDS “marriage” or the average Iraqi, or one of the many “abstinence only” educated kid who either got knocked up or caught a STD because they weren’t properly educated. As a battered wife who can’t get help, or the family of some guy drug across East Texas because of the color of his skin.
Conservatives live in fear. They bask in it and want you in the pot with them. When you censor what people can read or watch or hear, you shut them off from free thinking. If people can’t think, they can’t create a challenge to the things that are wrong in a society. And whether they mean to or not, pro-censorship fools create conditions where Enron can rip off consumers, and Halliburton and pals can give our troops water that is ice melt from a truck hauling cadavers. A world where George Bush can con five Supreme Court justices and be president and to hell with how the people voted.
Censorship equals stupidity and stupidity leads directly towards a whole world of abuse.
We’re supposed to be better than this.
Max Brooks. On Olbermann. Talking about Republicans and Zombies.
Incidentally, I found this when trying to find something on Brook’s visit to Las Vegas next month. And, yes, I’m going.
This sucks.
Reading Rainbow is getting cancelled. We have a country addicted to TV and internet, watching reality bullcrap or chatting online in text-speak with little ability to think or write coherently, and the powers that be at PBS – using Bush Administration “logic” no less – decides to cancel the show.
Granted, I was a bit old of a kid already when the show came on the scene, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t interesting, useful, and – more importantly – fun to it’s target audience.
And now it’s gone. I can’t even share it with my kid in a few years.
Thanks for nothing.
I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
I have, however, heard this Fresh Air interview, as well as an interview with The Word and the subject seems done with much open-mindedness and real perspective.
In addition, read “5 Myths About Health Care Around the World” by the same author in the The Washington Post.