nebula – Page 3 – Made by Mikal

Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 13, 2009
Post category:Book

I read this anthology as a child, but when I found a copy on ebay that was cheap I couldn't resist. This is a collection of short stories focusing on what war might be like in the future. It's a good read, although a couple of the stories are out of place compared with the others. Superiority (Arthur C Clarke) Single Combat (Joe Green) Committee of the Whole (Frank Herbert) Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card): a classic, and in some ways I prefer the short story. I've read the extended series of novels a few years ago, but they're probably worth revisiting at some point. Hero (Joe E. Haldeman), later became The Forever War. The Survivor (Walter F. Moudy): I have strong memories of this story from reading this anthology as a child. This is still a good story. The Last Objective (Paul Carter) What Do You Want Me to Do to Prove Im Human Stop (Fred Saberhagen): a Berserker story, also known as "Inhuman Error". Hangman (David Drake): this one is included in Volume 1 of the Complete Hammers Slammers. The Night of the Trolls (Keith Laumer): this was a really good story about Bolos -- good enough to…

Foundation’s Edge

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 19, 2008
Post category:Book

I'm back to reading Foundation Series books actually written by Isaac Asimov. This one is the fourth in the Foundation Series if you count them in the order they were written, but is the second last in chronological terms. Its set 500 years after the failure of the first galactic empire, and follows the first Foundation's attempt to discover if the second Foundation still exists. Well, its a bit more complicated than that, but I don't want to ruin it for you. As an aside, the user interface described for the ship's computer is really cool. Its a bit like augmented reality, mixed with gesture control, mixed with a direct interface into the brain. I'm not saying I want one in my house, but its cool that a book written in 1983 still has a user interface description which isn't dated, and still seems plausible. This book has minor inconsistencies with the story presented in the second foundation trilogy (Foundation's Fear, Foundation and Chaos and Foundation's Triumph), but I see that more as a failure in those followup authors than in this book. In fact, I've already complained about how untrue to Asimov's vision some of those books are elsewhere.…

Robot Dreams

Post author:mikal
Post published:August 18, 2008
Post category:Book

Robot Dreams is another of the robot short story books from Asimov. It is a bit deceptive though and frankly quite annoying because only one of the stories in the book is a robot story, and its not very long.I am of course ignoring the robot stories that already appear in I, Robot and The Complete Robot. The rest are unrelated short stories by Asimov that aren't about robots, and aren't even consistent with the universe that the Foundation books exist in. That's what makes it so annoying for Asimov to recommend that you read the book as part of the extended Foundation series. Grumble. Don't get me wrong, the other stories are fine, its just that they're not the robot stories that I was led to believe they would be. Wikipedia is a little more clear on the situation than I was: Robot Dreams (1986) is a collection of Isaac Asimov's short stories, intended largely to show a series of Asimov robot-inspired drawings by Ralph McQuarrie. All the stories except the title one, written specifically for the volume, can be found in various other Asimov collections. The companion book, which also showcases McQuarrie's drawings (and includes Asimov essays in…