A Logic Named Google
A few missed updates on reading lately... I'll try to be quick.
Read through most of the 1632 series by Eric Flint, et al. Overall it's quite enjoyable, but I am reminded of why I tend to avoid anthologies. On the one hand it's great to see that a lot of different people are contributing to the project and it's lovely to see new books coming out even when the principal author is off doing other things --
No, that wasn't a slam against grrm. Still waiting for that next book, though.
Anyway, it takes a while for me to settle in and become comfortable with a writer's style, get a feel for the characters, and so on. Anthologies like Ring of Fire and the Grantville Gazettes drew me in just enough to get interested, and then switched to another story by another author. It was always nice to get back to the more main-line books written or co-written by Eric Flint, but the series is so filled with references from one book or story to another and jumps back and forward so much that I was never quite sure if I was reading everything in the right order.
After finishing the 1632 series, and then checking the publication dates one more time to see if I had them wrong again, I moved on to Travis Taylor's first novel, Warp Speed. The traditional advice given to new authors is to "write about what you know" and Taylor, an Engineer from Huntsville, Alabama with degrees in Physics and Astronomy who worked for NASA on theoretical space propulsion systems and spends his spare time mountain biking, flying planes and teaching karate, sure did listen to that.
The hero of Warp Speed, Dr. Anson Taylor Clemons, is an Engineer from Huntsville, Alabama with degrees in Physics and Astronomy. In the opening chapter we see him winning a particularly challenging karate competition before returning to the lab where he works on theoretical space propulsion systems for NASA. Naturally, he is brilliant and surrounded by adoring graduate students who are able to turn his vague murmurings about the nature of space-time into a working prototype of faster-than-light warp drive coupled with a free energy machine of unlimited power in just two chapters, while he is away mountain biking with his friends.
Just about the only thing missing is the scene where Lt. Mary Sue joins the crew of the Enterprise, saves the entire crew and has a torrid romance with Spock... although, technically, Dr. Clemons does travel into space, saves everybody and has a romance with the shuttle commander. I guess the classics never go out of style.
It wasn't until I read the shockingly similar sequel, The Quantum Connection, that I was finally able to place just what was so familiar about Dr. Taylor's writing. Replace all of the turn-of-the-century theoretical physics with some 1930's style pseudo-science, tweak the names of the mysteriously-powerful-aliens-who-just-leave-amazingly-useful-things-around-for-humans-to-pick-up a little, and leave the hero-who-can-do-no-wrong and his well-endowed-heroine-counterpart-who-despite-being-just-as-tough-as-he-is-still-always-needs-rescuing alone, and you're left with a pretty good approximation of E. E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman books.
Once I figured that out it was much easier to just relax and enjoy the show.
Being reminded of the joys of Golden Age SF, I dug through the to-read pile and pulled out Murray Leinster's "A Logic Named Joe", a short story written in 1946 about a ridiculously improbable future world in which every home had at least one 'Logic', a laughable device which looked something like a TV screen with a small keyboard attached to it instead of dials. These 'Logics' were powered by some sort of crazy science which allowed them to report the news, weather and sports scores, be used as video-phones for talking to other people with Logics, allow the user to choose what movies and TV shows they wanted to watch, and even answer basic questions which people in the real world need to go to a library for.
Everything starts going wrong at the beginning of the story when one of the Logics develops a defect and starts giving out detailed answers to complicated questions like "How can I make money fast?" or "How much money does the guy across the street make?" Fortunately our hero, a hard boiled logic repairman, realizes that society could not possibly survive giving everybody that kind of access to information and does what he can to shut it all down and save mankind from the inevitable Googocalypse.
A fun read, if someone uncanny at times. I strongly recommend any of Murray Leinster's work, including the Med Ship and Planets of Adventure collections, also available through the Baen Free Library.
Read through most of the 1632 series by Eric Flint, et al. Overall it's quite enjoyable, but I am reminded of why I tend to avoid anthologies. On the one hand it's great to see that a lot of different people are contributing to the project and it's lovely to see new books coming out even when the principal author is off doing other things --
No, that wasn't a slam against grrm. Still waiting for that next book, though.
Anyway, it takes a while for me to settle in and become comfortable with a writer's style, get a feel for the characters, and so on. Anthologies like Ring of Fire and the Grantville Gazettes drew me in just enough to get interested, and then switched to another story by another author. It was always nice to get back to the more main-line books written or co-written by Eric Flint, but the series is so filled with references from one book or story to another and jumps back and forward so much that I was never quite sure if I was reading everything in the right order.
After finishing the 1632 series, and then checking the publication dates one more time to see if I had them wrong again, I moved on to Travis Taylor's first novel, Warp Speed. The traditional advice given to new authors is to "write about what you know" and Taylor, an Engineer from Huntsville, Alabama with degrees in Physics and Astronomy who worked for NASA on theoretical space propulsion systems and spends his spare time mountain biking, flying planes and teaching karate, sure did listen to that.
The hero of Warp Speed, Dr. Anson Taylor Clemons, is an Engineer from Huntsville, Alabama with degrees in Physics and Astronomy. In the opening chapter we see him winning a particularly challenging karate competition before returning to the lab where he works on theoretical space propulsion systems for NASA. Naturally, he is brilliant and surrounded by adoring graduate students who are able to turn his vague murmurings about the nature of space-time into a working prototype of faster-than-light warp drive coupled with a free energy machine of unlimited power in just two chapters, while he is away mountain biking with his friends.
Just about the only thing missing is the scene where Lt. Mary Sue joins the crew of the Enterprise, saves the entire crew and has a torrid romance with Spock... although, technically, Dr. Clemons does travel into space, saves everybody and has a romance with the shuttle commander. I guess the classics never go out of style.
It wasn't until I read the shockingly similar sequel, The Quantum Connection, that I was finally able to place just what was so familiar about Dr. Taylor's writing. Replace all of the turn-of-the-century theoretical physics with some 1930's style pseudo-science, tweak the names of the mysteriously-powerful-aliens-who-just-leave-amazingly-useful-things-around-for-humans-to-pick-up a little, and leave the hero-who-can-do-no-wrong and his well-endowed-heroine-counterpart-who-despite-being-just-as-tough-as-he-is-still-always-needs-rescuing alone, and you're left with a pretty good approximation of E. E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman books.
Once I figured that out it was much easier to just relax and enjoy the show.
Being reminded of the joys of Golden Age SF, I dug through the to-read pile and pulled out Murray Leinster's "A Logic Named Joe", a short story written in 1946 about a ridiculously improbable future world in which every home had at least one 'Logic', a laughable device which looked something like a TV screen with a small keyboard attached to it instead of dials. These 'Logics' were powered by some sort of crazy science which allowed them to report the news, weather and sports scores, be used as video-phones for talking to other people with Logics, allow the user to choose what movies and TV shows they wanted to watch, and even answer basic questions which people in the real world need to go to a library for.
Everything starts going wrong at the beginning of the story when one of the Logics develops a defect and starts giving out detailed answers to complicated questions like "How can I make money fast?" or "How much money does the guy across the street make?" Fortunately our hero, a hard boiled logic repairman, realizes that society could not possibly survive giving everybody that kind of access to information and does what he can to shut it all down and save mankind from the inevitable Googocalypse.
A fun read, if someone uncanny at times. I strongly recommend any of Murray Leinster's work, including the Med Ship and Planets of Adventure collections, also available through the Baen Free Library.