The Powers That Be at Seed were kind enough to send all the ScienceBlogs bloggers copies of the new book by Natalie Angier, The Canon, which is being pushed fairly hard by the publisher. I’ve been reading a lot more pop-science stuff recently, for self-interested reasons, and this was pretty attractive, so I carried it… Continue reading The Canon by Natalie Angier
Category: Books
Peter Watts, Blindsight [Library of Babel]
This is the final Best Novel Hugo nominee of this year’s field, and given James Nicoll’s immortal description of Watts’s writing (“When I feel my will to live getting too strong, I pick up a Peter Watts book” or words to that effect), I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about picking up Blindsight. I was on something… Continue reading Peter Watts, Blindsight [Library of Babel]
Charles Stross, Glasshouse [Library of Babel]
My intention of reading all of the nominees for the Hugo Awards in the fiction categories hit a bit of a snag yesterday. I finished all the short fiction (novella, novelette, short story), and most of the novels, leaving only Peter Watts’s Blindisght and Charlie Stross’s Glasshouse. James Nicoll described Peter Watts as the sort… Continue reading Charles Stross, Glasshouse [Library of Babel]
Hugo Nominees: Best Novelette
This is the last of the short fiction categories. You can read my comments on the Best Novella and Best Short Story nominees in the archives. This means the only fiction nominees I have left to read are Blindsight and Glasshouse. The nominees in the Best Novelette category (the full text of all the stories… Continue reading Hugo Nominees: Best Novelette
Hugo Nominees: Best Novella
I’ve never really understood the distinction between “Novellas” and “Novelettes”– I know it’s a length thing, but I don’t have a good feel for where the dividing line is, and I can never remember which is longer. And, as far as I can tell, the only place this ever comes up is in SF awards.… Continue reading Hugo Nominees: Best Novella
Hugo Nominees: Best Short Story
As Kate and I will be attending the Worldcon in Japan, we’re eligible to vote for the Hugos this year. In an effort to be responsible voters we downloaded the electronic version of the short fiction nominees that are available from the official nominations site, and I’ve been working my way through them. To this… Continue reading Hugo Nominees: Best Short Story
Semi-Dorky Poll: Best and Worst Required Reading
Sort of in the same spirit as yesterday’s summer reading post, another book-related question: What’s the best book you were ever forced to read for school? What’s the worst? The best, for me, is probably The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, a sort of metafictional Vietnam novel in stories. I had a loaner copy… Continue reading Semi-Dorky Poll: Best and Worst Required Reading
Semi-Dorky Poll: Summer Reading
Greetings from sopping wet Calgary, where thunderstorms and local flooding delayed my arrival until after midnight (2 am my time), which really put a damper on the 8am talks. I had meant to schedule some book-related posts to appear here while I’m gone, but I’m an idiot, and didn’t select “Scheduled” from the posting status… Continue reading Semi-Dorky Poll: Summer Reading
Semi-Dorky Poll: Airplane Books
I’m off to the 38th annual meeting of the Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics of the American Physical Society this week, which will be in Calgary, Alberta. Another province on the list of North American place I’ve visited… I’m taking the tablet PC with me, so there may be some conferecne blogging, but… Continue reading Semi-Dorky Poll: Airplane Books
The Other Einstein
Whatever you may think of his own books (and, really, don’t bother to tell me what you think of his books), this New York Review of Books article by Lee Smolin on a great whack of Einstein biographies is well worth a read. I don’t really have anything to say other than that, so here’s… Continue reading The Other Einstein