Archive for category Books
Annoying: Turning off kindle at takeoff and landing
I am going on a trip on Friday and i just remembered I’ll have to turn off my kindle for takeoff and landing. That is such an antiquated rule! Pacemakers use more power than the kindle and they get to stay on… argh irritating..
Geekasm Recommends: Ender’s Game
I have just finished reading Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.
This book mixes Harry Potter like environment of a school for gifted people with the allure of a science fiction book and a little bit of lord of the flies. I highly recommend it but you should be warned some of it is quite grueling. Definitely worth it if you have the stomach for child soldiers.
It is however a very interesting look at what a society would do to defend itself from threats, real or imaginary.
Asimov’s Foundation
I have just finished reading the first Foundation book by Isaac and I highly recommend it if you haven’t read it. Foundation follows the last Island of civilization and culture as it tries to pull the rest of the galaxy out of barbarism left in the wake of a crumbling empire. The parallelisms with the fall of the roman empire is evident and very interesting.
The characters are well developed and the pace is fast and fluid. Asimov is a great writer. Some of the subjects have a flair of 60′s culture, which make this book feel a bit old fashioned, but you can’t really blame Asimov for living in another time. Go try it, you will be hooked in 10 pages or less.
I leave you with his biographical note, you can tell a lot about a man from the way he writes it:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Isaac Asimov was born in the Soviet Union to his great surprise. He moved quickly to correct the
situation. When his parents emigrated to the United States, Isaac (three years old at the time) stowed
away in their baggage. He has been an American citizen since the age of eight.
Brought up in Brooklyn, and educated in its public schools, he eventually found his way to Columbia
University and, over the protests of the school administration, managed to annex a series of degrees in
chemistry, up to and including a Ph.D. He then infiltrated Boston University and climbed the academic
ladder, ignoring all cries of outrage, until he found himself Professor of Biochemistry.
Meanwhile, at the age of nine, he found the love of his life (in the inanimate sense) when he discovered
his first science-fiction magazine. By the time he was eleven, he began to write stories, and at eighteen,
he actually worked up the nerve to submit one. It was rejected. After four long months of tribulation and
suffering, he sold his first story and, thereafter, he never looked back.
In 1941, when he was twenty-one years old, he wrote the classic short story “Nightfall” and his future
was assured. Shortly before that he had begun writing his robot stories, and shortly after that he had
begun his Foundation series.
What was left except quantity? At the present time, he has published over 260 books, distributed through
every major division of the Dewey system of library classification, and shows no signs of slowing up. He
remains as youthful, as lively, and as lovable as ever, and grows more handsome with each year. You can
be sure that this is so since he has written this little essay himself and his devotion to absolute objectivity
is notorious.
He is married to Janet Jeppson, psychiatrist and writer, has two children by a previous marriage, and
lives in New York City.
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