Category Archives: books

Hugo Nominee, Short Story : “The Moment” by Lawrence M. Schoen

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Schoen was a complete unknown to me, so I do not know if this is his usual style.

As stories go this one does not, to me, have a real plot. The closest to a story line is the search for archeological evidence.

The story feels like a series of disjointed images with an extremely loose connection. there is the search (see above), then an image of a generation ship (crash) landing on a moon, and finally a connection to a great machine, apparently near the center of the galaxy.

I found the conclusion a bit anticlimactic, oh, yes, this seems to be about a species (probably humanity) leaving a planet (probably Earth).

While I do not particularly like the story, I respect the author going where few have gone before, even if this did not work out for me. It must have worked for other people, since it was nominated for the Award.

3/10 from me.

Hugo award voting and material, an overview

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As a preparation for the voting for the Hugo Awards 2009 I downloaded the package of material from their website, and listened to some the short stories on a variety of podcasts, and watched what I could easily get hold of.

There was not enough time to read the rest of the material.

This is what I got to see or read before voting :

Dramatic presentations, short form :

Doctor Who : ‘Turn Left’
Doctor Who : ‘Silence in the Library’/’Forest of the Dead’
Battlestar Galactica : ‘Revelations’
I would have liked to see more, especially ‘Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog’ . I was not aware that the DVD version from the US was Region Free, so missed out on that one. I will have to get it some time

Dramatic presentations, long form :

‘The Dark Knight’
‘Iron Man’

Novels :

Charles Stross : Saturns Children
Neil Gaiman : Graveyard Book
Cory Doctorow : Little Brother
John Scalzi : Zoe’s Tale

Short stories (audio podcast format) :

Ted Chiang : ‘Exhalation’
Michael Swanwick : ‘From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled’
Mike Resnick : ‘Article of Faith’
Kij Johnson : ’26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss’

A bit of info on my preferences will follow when I get to the different categories.

I still have some novellettes and novellas on my reader that I will want to read, but at the moment I am busy reading a much older Science Fiction story, EE ‘Doc’ Smith’s ‘Lensman’ Series

More details when I get to watch/read more of the stuff, and a few more thoughts on the stuff I am reading/watching

Long time no see

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It has been a while since I last had an entry here, things have been a bit hectic.

I became a supporting membert of the Anticipation Worldcon 2009, and with that came the right to vote on the Hugo Awards.

So for a month I was – among other things – busy reading 4 of the nominated novels, listening to the short stories, and a few other things.

Also, I have been more active building some radio equipment, and have had a successful attempt of receiving the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

I went to see the new Star Trek movie with a friend in Denmark, and finally I have been active learning more Tai Chi and Qigong.

Some of those activities will result in some new entries in the near future. Right now I am taking it a bit easy – and watching the new “Torchwood” series : “Children of Earth”. The first episode looks very promising, so let us hope that carries through the whole story.

Majel Barrett Roddenberry has passed beyond “The Rim”

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I have been off the net for a few days, so here is my entry on this : Majel Barrett was the widow of Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame, and passed away on December 18 at the age of 76. Her family was there with her. More details at the official homepage.

For me Star Trek was a breakthrough in Science Fiction on TV and gave rise to a new trend – stating social issues in SF on TV. Actually, it was, at the time, the only way of tackling issues as racism, discrimination etc in TV series, by disguising it as “alien versus human” encounters. Majel is best known by SF fans from a multitude of roles in the Star Trek universe, and a single beautiful role in Babylon 5.

While it is sad to see someone pass beyond the Rim we should also remember the things she gave to us , in Star Trek : “Number One” from the original pilot, Nurse Chapel from the original series, Lwaxana Troi in The Next Generation, and the computer voice in all the “new” series, and from Babylon 5 the Lady Morella, seer and a wife of the deceased Emperor of the Centauri Republic.

With Starstuff I will quote the wonderful line she was given by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski : “There is always choice. We say there is no choice only to comfort ourselves with the decision we have already made. If you understand that, there’s hope. If not ..” – Lady Morella, Babylon 5, »Point of no return«

Rest in peace Majel Barrett, and may you meet your Gene in a place where no shadows fall.

eBook reading on the iPod Touch

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Yes – the 2.0 software for the iPod Touch allows (finally !) 3rd party software to be installed, making the Touch a more versatile piece of equipment than just a browser and audio/video player. Suddenly it becomes more of a PDA.

I downloaded the Stanza ebook reader to the Touch. It allows downloads of free ebooks from project Gutenberg. I downloaded a few, and got to read one for now. Having watched the “Jekyll” miniseries on DVD I got curious and wanted to (re)read the story giving the inspiration for the series – the short story “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Also I downloaded a few ebooks that come as applications for the Touch. Mike Stackpole has a few there, mostly short stories, but his novel “One a Hero” is there as well.

I have read a bit of those as well.

The small screen of the Touch is not really ideal for the purpose, but if you go travelling and want to travel “light” it is an option for having a set of books with you. It is easy to adjust the font size for relatively comfortable reading. Just don’t expect to read a novel in one go on the iPod Touch.

Podcast : Dragonpage Cover to Cover

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A weekly podcast all about the written word in SciFi, Fantasy etc.

Most of the weeks this show is hosted by Mike Mennenga and Mike Stackpole. Both have written books, Stackpole just “a few” more, including some New York Times bestsellers.

For now I have read just one of his books (Star Wars: “I, Jedi”) and two short stories. I like them, but more about that later.

General discussions about books and publishing can often, to me at least, be quite interesting. It looks like we are going to see a shift in publishing the written word similar to what we have seen in the music industry. Actually it has already started. Ebooks are becoming common, and ebook readers are seriously coming now. Amazon has the Kindle, Sony has a reader, and the iPod Touch has a set of ebook reader packages available, some are free, some not. On the other hand, paper books are not going to disappear overnight, there is something about having a *real paper* book in your hands.

I do have an iPod Touch, more about that at a later stage

Every week has an interview with an author, publisher etc.

Finally, the library segment, where they talk briefly about books that have been sent to the studio, and an occasional book review.

In the last episode I listened to there was an invitation to submit content about book publishing, more reviews etc, so I expect to listen to a more varied podcast in the future.

This is one podcast I expect to stay in my iTunes subscription, I particular like that Mike and Mike sound like they are really enjoying doing the show, apart from it being informative and entertaining.

Project Gutenberg.

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If you are looking for legal and free eBooks with the copyright expired, take a look at Project Gutenberg.

The Gutenberg is working on collecting all texts out of copyright, they have more than 25.000 ebooks in the library. They can be downloaded individually, or in collections as DVD or CD-ROM images.They can be found here.

The DVD from July 2007 has about 17.000 titles, most of what was completed at the time.

For SciFi fans there is a CD-ROM for download. Look at the link above.As far as I know there is *some* modern SciFi stories from people like Cory Doctorow who have released them under a Creative Commons License.Most of the titles, however, are more than 70 years old. One story that I actually downloaded and read on my iPod Touch was Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. Having seen the BBC series by Steven Moffat I wanted to read the original story and downloaded and read it.

So, if you are looking for classic old stories, go there. You can most likely find it.

Escape Pod : “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”

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One of the fiction podcasts I listen to is Steve Eley’s “Escape Pod”. Every week a new short story reading in the Science Fiction genre. previously they had a mixture of Scifi, Fantasy and Horror, but Horror is now done by the sister podcast “Pseudo Pod” and Fantasy by “Podcastle”. If you go back into the archives you will find all three genres represented.

With so many stories it is impossible to find a story I like every week, occasionally I drop the listening after beginning listening to an episode, but mostly I listen through the story.

Some highlights for me would be Mur Lafferty’s “I Look Forward to Remember You” and the Escape Pod 100th episode was a good reading of Isaac Asimov’s classic short story “Nightfall”, first published in 1941

Episode 182 brought H.G. Wells’ “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”, the first time the podcast has brought a story from the public domain.

Mr Elvesham, an old and frail philosopher, takes up contact with a young student and offers him to become his heir. The youn man is, of course, cautious but is slowly drawn to the belief that this could be something.

Let’s just say, the intention of the older man is not quite what it appears, there is no happy end, but simply a cautionary tale – “no one is exactly what he or she appears to be”.

In some ways a similar story could be told today (and has been), it is interesting to note that this story is more than 100 years old. For a story publishes in 1896 it feels surprisingly modern. It makes me want to read more og H.G. Wells’ stories.

On another note : The podcast has been coming out every week since May 2005, but due to family (and other) circumstances there will be a hiatus for the rest of the month of November. Steve has a rather long entry in his blog telling the story. The main point, I think is that he may have been pushing too hard to get this going, and needs a breather to regain the fun of doing the podcast. “Pesudo Pod” and “Podcastle” are not affected.

Link :

Escape Pod

To read or not to read …

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That is the question.

Since the job requires a lot of reading, mainly technical, I have been reading less than I did when I was growing up. At thet time I was considered a “book worm” – eating stories by the page …. most of it science fiction. The first major fantasy work I read was the classic “Lord of the Rings” (no introduction necessary).

After moving to The Netherlands and having my present job I got to read less, but found more science fiction on video/TV, in the beginning Star Trek TNG, later much more.

I did read the occasional Star Trek and Star Wars book, but not much more, and sometimes had a series of books.

The first series I “discovered” was Raymond E. Feist’s “Riftwar Saga” which I loved. After one or two more sequel series the interest waned, and I have not read the later ones.

About 5 years ago a friend in Denmark introduced me to Anne McCaffrey’s writing. As a birthday present I received “Dragonflight”, “Dragonquest” of the “Dragonriders of Pern” series and the first of the “Acorna” series. Out of those I like the “Pern” series the best, but the other one is not bad at all. This lead to another bout of reading for me, then another hiatus.

In between all this came the “Harry Potter” series and I found that it appeals to the child in me as well as the more grown-up.

About a year ago I was talking to a friend I had not seen for a while. When I mentioned the blog and he heard the keyword “science fiction” he interrupted me and asked “You interested in books ?” well – yes, a few days later he arrived with 5 shopping bags full of books in the scifi and fantasy genre. I ended up with about 70 new titles – a considerable increase of my sf/fantasy book collection, some of which I may never get to read.

It looks like I am going to take a bit more time to do some reading, probably some short stories and an occasional novel. (Remember what I said the other day – time is a limited resource). Actually I have started this, having read a few novels lately. Some of the podcasts I am listening to are scifi/fantasy stories/plays, so I do get some fiction “reading” done. Listening to a podcast while walking to and from work sure beats trying to read a book in the traffic 😉 .