Blogroll

Book Review: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2005)

Umberto Eco is one of those authors who frustrates me. I truly enjoyed The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum as much, if not more. On the other hand, I gave up on Baudolino after about 100 pages. I did not give up on Eco’s new work, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, but […]

Book Review: The God Particle (2005)

Advanced particle physics may not seem the vehicle for a novelist to address the conflict between science and religion. Yet that is exactly the approach Richard Cox uses successfully in The God Particle.

On the surface, The God Particle tells the stories of two men. Steve Keely is a California businessman who suffers a severe […]

The “new” sf debate

It seems to have started with The Mundane Manifesto, which arose from a discussion between Geoff Ryman and a class at Clarion East, a science fiction and fantasy writers’ workshop at Michigan State. Simply summarized (at least from my standpoint), the manifesto asserts that sf should abandon such topics as interstellar travel, time travel, alternative […]

Bookmarks

The Blogcritics version of my review of The Great Mortality was picked as that site’s book-related post of the week. I suppose mentioning that selections are based on “quality writing” might be a bit too much. Here’s an interesting approach for a web guide. BUBL Information Service is a UK web site that is […]

Book Review: Nam-A-Rama (2005)

World War II has Catch-22. The Korean War has MASH. I’m not sure what book will ultimately serve as the satirical insight to the Vietnam War. I do know it isn’t Nam-A-Rama.

Nam-A-Rama is a farce about “Almost Captains” Armstrong (first name Jack, of course) and Gearheardt, two Marine helicopter pilots in Vietnam. But Armstrong […]