I’ve gotten a fair number of free science books in the last few years, from publishers looking for bloggy publicity, but Mark Alpert’s Final Theory is the first time that I’ve been asked to review a novel on ScienceBlogs (I’ve gotten advance copies of some other novels, but I’ve specifically requested those). Mark Alpert is […]
Category: Booklog
Tobias Buckell, Sly Mongoose [Library of Babel]
This is a review way in advance of the publication of the book– it’s not due until August, or thereabouts– but I got an advance copy of Tobias Buckell’s forthcoming Sly Mongoose, and read it at DAMOP. You might think this is an odd venue– wouldn’t the exhausting nature of the conference tend to make […]
The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow
If you’re reading this shortly after it’s posted, you may notice ads for this book popping up in the sidebar and on top of the page. This is probably not entirely a happy coincidence– I was offered a review copy in email from the author and his publisher, and I suspect that they had ScienceBlogs […]
Matthew Hughes, Template [Library of Babel]
A little while back, Matthew Hughes offered a free copy of his forthcoming novel Template to online reviewers via his web site. I wasn’t able to read it fast enough to get in on James Nicoll’s review-a-thon, but I finished it a few days ago. Template is set in the same basic world as Majestrum, […]
Heads in the Sand by Matthew Yglesias
Matthew Yglesias‘s first book arrives burdened with one of the longest subtitles in memory (“How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats”), which is a little off-putting. Of course, it also features a back-cover blurb from Ezra Klein calling it “A very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been […]
Iain M. Banks, Matter [Library of Babel]
The latest book by Iain M. Banks proudly proclaims itself to be a Culture novel– part of a loosely connected series of novels and stories about humans living in a vast and utopian galactic civilization– which makes its opening in a castles-and-kings milieu somewhat surprising. Well, all right, technically it opens with a prologue in […]
Richard K. Morgan, Broken Angels [Library of Babel]
This is the second Takeshi Kovacs novel, sequel to Altered Carbon. Kovacs is a former UN Envoy, a generally amoral individual loaded up with a bunch of sophisticated mental conditioning, and sent out into the world to troubleshoot problem spots for the world government. And he’s a guy who really puts the “shoot” in “troubleshoot”… […]
Matthew Hughes, Majestrum [Library of Babel]
Matthew Hughes’s Majestrum is part of a linked series of novels and stories set in a distant future in which the rational rules of logic and science governing our universe are beginning to weaken and give way toa new age goverened by “sympathetic association,” better known as magic. He’s been writing these for a while, […]
Paul Melko, Singularity’s Ring [Library of Babel]
I tried to get a copy of this at Boskone, but Larry Smith’s whole stock sold out on Friday, before I hit the dealer’s room at all. I’m not sure how many copies there were originally, but Melko was doing the Happy Dance at the Tor party, and deservedly so. I had to wait to […]
Matthew Jarpe, Radio Freefall [Library of Babel]
Returning to logging the books next to my computer in the order in which they were read, Matthew Jarpe’s Radio Freefall was one of the few books I picked up at Boskone (I think I got Larry Smith’s last copy). I read most of it during our trip to DC a little while back, and […]