Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

Child of Two Worlds

Posted on October 24, 2023 by smellincoffee

The Enterprise is a plague ship enroute to an independent world for a rare medical ingredient when it answers a distress signal and things get…complicated. As in, this couldn’t be worse, could it? complicated, because the rescue creates a no-win … Continue reading →

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In Harm’s Way

Posted on October 23, 2023 by smellincoffee

Scarcely five days after the Enterprise barely escaped an encounter with a giant machine capable of devouring entire planets, a rattled Jim Kirk has another foul assignment land on his desk. A scientist has gone missing on a planet within … Continue reading →

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Astounding

Posted on October 20, 2023 by smellincoffee

I don’t remember why I picked up “Foundation” back in 2008, but it would be the beginning of an obsession with Asimov that saw me reading collection after collection of his stories from the 1930s – 1960s, finding greater and … Continue reading →

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The Heinlein Interview

Posted on October 18, 2023 by smellincoffee

I am closing in on the end of Astounding, which bills itself as a history of golden-age SF, and so far the most interesting aspect of it was the largely-uncommented-on political history of Robert Heinlein. We meet him as an … Continue reading →

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Moriarty, Consulting Criminal and Scroogled

Posted on October 17, 2023 by smellincoffee

Short rounds! One short story by Cory Doctorow and three short stories by Andy Weir. The first, Scroogled, is a very short story, just hitting 20 pages. Written in the mid-2000s, when Google was beginning its transformation from Mew to … Continue reading →

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The Shockwave Rider

Posted on October 15, 2023 by smellincoffee

Nick Haflinger is a man of many names and identities, on the run from what passes for the government these days. With so much of the population constantly on the move, existing more in the plugged-in virtual realm than in … Continue reading →

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Facebook

Posted on October 12, 2023 by smellincoffee

“Look at us,” my buddy chuckled. It was the halfway point of a 3-hour night class, and we’d been given a fifteen minute break to hydrate, caffeinate, and evacuate. Four people immediately flowed into the student common area and occupied … Continue reading →

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True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier

Posted on October 11, 2023 by smellincoffee

How would you imagine the Internet in 1981? “What a silly question”, say you, “The Internet didn’t exist in 1981! ” Despite this, several authors in the seventies and eighties nonetheless imagined ‘cyberspace’, or as it’s known here, ‘the Other … Continue reading →

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Millenium

Posted on October 9, 2023 by smellincoffee

So there you are, dear reader, engrossed in an interesting story about two airplanes smashing into one another, and of a man named Bill Smith who’s trying to find why. And then, perhaps a half hour into your reading journey, … Continue reading →

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Murder by Other Means

Posted on October 5, 2023 by smellincoffee

Tony Valdez is a dispatcher. In a world where people who die of natural causes stay dead, but people who are killed by others magically appear back in bed, his job is to intercede when people are dying from accidents … Continue reading →

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