Author: mikal

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Bill the Galactic Hero Series

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This series is a set of parodies of militaristic science fiction, and is excellently bad. 1965: Bill The Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison 1989: Bill, the Galactic Hero On the Planet of Robot Slavesby Harry Harrison 1990: Bill the Galactic Hero On the Planet of Bottled Brains by Robert Sheckley and Harry Harrison 1991: Bill the Galactic Hero On the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure by David Bischoff and Harry Harrison 1991: Bill the Galactic Hero On the Planet of Zombie Vampires by Jack C. Haldeman and Harry Harrison 1991: Bill the Galactic Hero On the Planet of Ten Thousand Bars by David Bischoff and Harry Harrison (was also published under the title: "Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of the Hippies from Hell") 1991: Bill the Galactic Hero: The Final Incoherent Adventure by David Harris and Harry Harrison

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Robots of Dawn

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This book is the third in the third in the Robot mystery series, and is once again set on a Spacer world. This one was written 30 years after the first two, and Asimov's style has noticeably changed between the 1950s and 1980s. The book starts off slowly, with a lecturing tone which I found quite annoying. For example, devoting an entire page to a discussion of whether the deliberate death of a a robot (even a human shaped on) is murder. Often the first part of the book feels like it is going excessively slowly. However, its only the first third of so of the book which suffers this flaw. Its as if Asimov realized after a while that he also had a story to tell, and got on with it. The book then improves massively and has a good story. So, overall I liked this book, although the first part of the book wasn't as good as the rest of the Asimov I've read. [isbn: 0553299492;0345315715] [award: nominee hugo 1984]

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Shibuya, Tokyo

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Panos (a dude I work with) and I got to Tokyo ok last night. The flight left SFO at about 1pm and got into Narita airport at about 4pm. By the time we'd done immigration and collected our bags we only had about a ten minute wait for the limousine bus to the hotel. We're staying in Shibuya, which seems to be a bit of a shopping district. We managed to do the pointing a menu food ordering thing for dinner last night, and then I went to bed. Initial impressions of Tokyo: Its very clean and amazingly well organised. People naturally line up, and customer service is much better than it is in the US. Its not as crowded as I expected. English is very common, but don't expect people on the streets to actually speak it.

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Tokyo tomorrow

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Tomorrow I'm jumping on a JAL flight to Tokyo. I will be in Tokyo for a week, mostly for work meetings. I'm hoping to fit some sightseeing in on the weekend. Let me know if you have any recommendations.

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Naked Sun

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Bill Clarke was kind enough to lend me a compendium of Asimov that contained the next book in the series I'm reading at the moment. I've had to skip over some of the earlier collections of robot short stories, because they're quite hard to find. Specifically, I haven't been able to find anyone with a copy of The Complete Robot for sale, even new. This book is the next in the Robot series, and the second which features Detective Baley. Again Baley is solving a murder, although this time its occurred on a Spacer world instead of his own Earth. Along the way he has to confront his own fear of open spaces, as well as other's fear of proximity to other humans. This was again another excellent book. I enjoyed it a lot. [isbn: 0553293397]

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Caves of Steel

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Caves of Steel is interesting because it is a murder mystery set in the future, which at the time this book was written was a novel concept. It also presents an interesting almost-communist view of the future, where individual liberties are surrendered one by one in order to improve economic efficiency in order to support Earth's ever growing population. Implicit in that is the assertion that capitalism is inherently inefficient, but I'll leave that discussion alone. This book is a really quick read. It took me a day (including actually going to work) to knock it over, which was fun. The book is a good, light read. [isbn: 0553293400] [award: nominee hugo 1954]

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I, Robot

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The 1950s must have been a great time to be a science fiction author. WW2 was finally over, and seemingly massively stupid ideas like mutually assured destruction, nuclear rifles so powerful that they were as much a danger to those firing them as those who were on the receiving end, and Brylcreem were all the rage. Into this atmosphere of run away idiocy comes Asimov's I, Robot, the book which defined the three laws of robotics, and some how managed to not suggest that humanity should nuke each other all into submission. This book is still an excellent read almost 60 years later, and I think still shows us some of the future. Its a little depressing to think how little we've achieved towards Asimov's proposed future world, given the time line laid out in this book. One of the interesting aspects of this book is Asimov's failure to predict things which seem so mundane now, but must have not been obvious to an observer in 1950. For example: The commonness of computers now. One of the short stories revolves around a secret batch of robots, and the need to debug them. The protagonists can't use a computer though, because…

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Bill The Galactic Hero

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This book is an interesting read, but for unusual reasons. Its as if Harrison sets out to write a terrible book, and learns new techniques to achieve this terrible along the way. An example of his mastery of the art: A hundred bucks a month was good money, though, and Bill saved every bit of it. Easy, lazy months rolled by, and he regularly went to meetings and reported regularly to the G.B.I., and on the first of every month he would find his money baked into the egg roll he invariably had for lunch. He kept the greasy bills in a toy rubber cat he found on the rubbish heap, and bit by bit the kitty grew. It seems to me that this book is so terrible it has to be deliberate, and its good to see that Wikipedia agrees: Bill, the Galactic Hero is a satirical science fiction novel by Harry Harrison, first published in 1965. It is a response to Heinlein's controversially militaristic Starship Troopers. The overall plot is similar, the details rather less so; and Harrison makes the most of an opportunity to spoof the work of other authors including Isaac Asimov, "Doc" Smith, and Joseph…

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