Since the earliest days of science fiction as an established genre, writers in the field have imagined what has come to be called First Contact with a capital F and a capital C. Most of the early speculation in the so-called Golden Era of Science Fiction (the 1930s and 40s) was laughable. But in more […]
Continue Reading...Even today, anyone over the age of fifty or so is likely to think of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke when the subject of science fiction comes up. Yet all three have been dead for a long time (Heinlein in 1988, Asimov in 1992, Clarke in 2008), and the field has moved […]
Continue Reading...A casual look at this blog might give you the impression that my reading runs all over the map. There’s considerable variety, of course. But in fact I’m aggressively selective in choosing books to read. For starters, you’ll find a slew of topics I never read about at What I read (and what I don’t). […]
Continue Reading...Here you’ll find my lists of the decade’s top 10 historical novels as well as the top 10 mysteries & thrillers and top 10 science fiction novels. I’ve reviewed them all here. The books are listed alphabetically by the authors’ last names within each category, and each title is linked to my review. Over the […]
Continue Reading...Ex-spooks with a modicum of writing ability sometimes turn to writing spy thrillers once they’ve left the world of espionage. Rarely, though, do we see fictional treatments of the game come from anyone who retired at the very top of the game. Dame Stella Rimington is one of what must be only a handful of […]
Continue Reading...Type in the phrase “French Resistance books” in Amazon, and you’ll learn that more than 4,000 titles have been published. Naturally, some of these are translations into languages other than English. Many are memoirs, often blatantly self-serving. (There was a lot of that in the years after World War II.) And many are, simply, not […]
Continue Reading...Today innovation is customarily associated with the digital revolution and Silicon Valley. Up to a point, that’s fitting, since how most of us in the world’s wealthy nations now live our lives has changed in major ways as a result of work done in what is generally called the tech industry. But innovation involves far […]
Continue Reading...It’s difficult not to be alive and aware anywhere in the world today without recognizing the impact of Silicon Valley on the way we live our lives. Half a century ago the Santa Clara Valley that is the heart of what we know today as Silicon Valley was purely agricultural. Orchards of apricots, cherries, prunes, […]
Continue Reading...In its earliest days, science fiction was almost always about space travel. Back in the bad old days of the 1920s and 30s, when the genre was gathering steam in the American pulps, heavily muscled spacemen and bug-eyed alien monsters predominated. It was only when John W. Campbell Jr. took on the editorship of Astounding […]
Continue Reading...Once I’ve read and reviewed a number of books that cluster around a particular topic or author, I write what I call a grouped review. Usually, I list each book by title and author, with a link to my review. In many cases, I attach a capsule review, often one paragraph from the full review. […]
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