A Preliminary Assessment by Vernor Vinge

A Preliminary Assessment of the Drake Equation, Being an Excerpt from the Memoirs is Star Captain Y. T. Lee

What a wonderful story. Interstellar flight is now commonplace and the exploration and terraforming is routine.

In a nice departure from common science fiction tropes, this story plays with the notion that there is NO alien intelligent life. What would it be like to have an entire galaxy to explore and claim?

This was refreshing work and exactly what I'm looking for in science fiction.

Learn more about Vernor Vinge HERE

Learn more about his writing HERE

Book Report #45, Cop Hater by Ed McBain

First published in 1956, the first book in the 87th precinct series has finally come to eBook.

I love the detective fiction from the 50's and 60's, during the paperback hay day.

This story is a straight-up police procedural about a serial killer who's targeting cops.

It was very well paced, considering its the first in a series; I would have expected much more exposition. McBain seemed content in letting the story play out and only giving the reader the minimum amount of back story needed to tell the tale.

I was surprised at the level of sophistication forensics was at for the time. McBain went to great lengths to show police procedures as accurately as possible which makes for convincing story telling.

Ed McBain's website is HERE

If you want to buy the Kindle version, go HERE

Futures in the Memories Market by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

This was a touching and almost sad story told by a body guard of a future "movie star."

Instead of acting in front of a camera Geeta is sent to all kinds of exotic locations and has interesting adventures and experiences. When the day is done her memories are extracted to be sold to the public. Not only does the public see what she saw but they also experience her emotions and five senses.

The cost to Geeta is large; the extractions erase her own memories; the public can have the experience but she cannot; leaving her nearly child-like, to experience everything for the first time.



It was an interesting concept and one that I could see expanded to novel length with a corporate greed element to it.

Learn more about the author HERE

And HERE

Read the story online HERE

Clakesworld Magazine is HERE

Petopia by Benjamin Crowell

The story of two poor African kids struggling to help their family get by. Mina is sorting through a pile of high tech garbage when a child's toy starts speaking to her.

It's a toy dog with an AI built in. She eventually takes it home where her older brother begins to use it for his own reasons.

This has the same feel as the street scenes from Blade Runner; crushing poverty surrounded by wealth, technology, corruption and the hope of youth.

I especially liked the action packed and open-ended conclusion

Well done.

The author's website is HERE


The story can be read for free HERE

Castoff World by Kay Kenyon

Set in a world ravaged by global warming and today's civilization gone we follow the story of Child and Grandpa living on a floating island of garbage.

The refuse is being transformed my nano-bots who Child calls NORA. They are adrift in the North Pacific gyre where Grandpa tells her about her past a prepares her to survive on her own.

Grandpa is dying.

This story is quite touching and sad but is forever laced with optimism for the future. A future imagined by Child.

I enjoyed this story on my patio on a sunny afternoon while enjoying a couple beers. I was very happy to look up from the story to see the green of my back yard.

The author's website is HERE.

Read about ocean gyres HERE

Sleeping Dogs by Joe Haldeman

Year's Best SF 16

Here's a fine story about a former soldier returning to a planet where he fought in a war. His memories had been erased and through a drug therapy he tries to recover them.

What I loved about this is how it just simply reflects the wars of our recent past.

When fiction works best is when it can show us a truth about ourselves.

You can find the author's website HERE

 Buy the book HERE

Book Report #45 - The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Power of Habit

Why we do what we do

in life and business

I bought this eBook in with the hope of getting some insight into my bad habits.

It promises to reveal the three components of the habit "loop" and how to control and change these loops.

I found the subject fascinating; because habits work on a nearly subconscious level they are often difficult to observe and understand.

The format is part self-help, part sociological which gave the book a couple hard turns that took me out of it and made completing the it a chore for me.  Since I made the purchase with the expectation of a self-help my difficulties with the read in no way means the book is flawed, only that my expectations and reasons for reading it split away from the narrative.

To get the most out of the book from a purely self-help angle I'd recommend  Part One and  the Appendix which will give you a lot to work with.

The book expands on the notion of habits from the individual to organizations and finally to societies.  Each of these sections are also very interesting especially how organizations can improve performance by experimenting with habits.

This book touches on so many categories that I would find it hard to shelve, if I was running a book store; you could find it in Self-help or Biography & Memoir or Business and Finance or Social and Cultural Studies there's even a bit of Religion and Spirituality thrown into the mix.

This was a solid, well thought out and broad look at human behavior.

I recommend it.

You can purchase the book HERE

More about the author can be found HERE

Magazine giveaway.

Now that I've read and reviewed this issue of EQMM I'd like to give it to anybody who's interested.

Free.

Just email me or leave a comment and I'll mail it to you. It's in good shape, as a reading copy, but it is in no condition to be called collectible. Still, I'd like to give the issue a good home - it's yours for the asking.

Cheers.

Blood in the Water by Janice Law

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

September/October 2000

Now THIS story I liked.  It was another life insurance scam tale involving an indebted securities trader a beautiful babe and the sinking of a yacht.

The cold, cold ending made for a perfect closure to this issue of EQMM.

The author's website is HERE

Hank's Tale by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

September/October 2000

Set in the hills of Rural Whatever, USA, Hank is the local lawyer who tells the story of two strong headed and influential women in the town they live in.

God, I really wasn't paying attention to this story. I found it boring just reading about local gossip; who hates whom because of some slight done years before.

There was a killing from way before this story begins and stories about pastors, baptisms and traveling evangelicals.

This was simply not for me. I kept putting it down and should have just skipped it but I was always just a few pages from finishing, so I kept reading it.

If you like stories a bout human relationships then you'll surely like this one.

Information about the author can be found HERE

The Bones by Peter Turnbull

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

September/October 2000

A nice, straight-ahead police procedural set in the UK countryside.

I found the story a bit short, actually. But to be fair it had the feeling of being close to how investigations really happen. It's about how you approach the questioning of suspects and the timing of the interviews that really matter.

I'd be very happy to read one of Turnbull's novels.

Very believable and well told.

Information on the author can be found HERE

The Extortionately Dear Departed by David Williams

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

September/October 2000

A clever insurance scam that goes wrong, then ...

This was a well constructed story with a couple clever twists. Set in France and England a couple, in financial stress, cook up a plan to collect the Husband's life insurance benefits.

You can find out about the author HERE (Scroll to the top of the page when it loads)

Sadly, Williams died in September of 2003.  LINK

The Big Shuffle by Clark Howard - short story review

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

September/October 2000

This was a very good mystery from the point of view of an insurance claims investigator.

Jack Nash is sent to Nevada to investigate the crash of a plane on Ghost Lake. His boss smells something fishy about it and wants to deny the claim of $4 Million for the death of the passenger, an executive for an oil company.

Clark Howard has been writing short fiction for decades and has won many awards in the process. You are in very sure hands when reading his story.

Nicely done.

The author has no website of his own but you can get a list of his works HERE

The Hunters by J. F. Freedman

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

September/October 2000

This was a quiet, menacing story. True noir.

Two brothers go on a hunting trip. The hunt seems unrelated to the story that is told after they return.

I was disappointed with the ending; it turned out exactly how I thought it would. I kept hoping there would be some kind of twist.

But that was what made it so cold, so calculated. (A twist would have been nice thought.)

You can find the author's website HERE

The Authentic Rose by Terence Faherty - short story review

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

September/October 2000

Set in the 1950's. Hollywood Private Investigator Scott Elliot is sent to New Mexico to authenticate a painting purchased by a wealthy client.

Elliot walks into a complex web of emotions, passion and loyalties and in thrown in to a murder investigation along the way.

I found the story well constructed and I especially enjoyed the sense of place it created. I could smell the dust, feel the heat, see the washed out quality to the light under a burning sun and feel the relief of a cool tavern and cold beer.

The author's website is HERE

Round Trip by Rail by Gwen Davenport - short story review

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

September/October 2000

I liked this story quite a bit. It had a gentle, light touch that I found easy to read and that I wanted to come back to it each time I put it down.

It's the story of a man stuck in a bad marriage and how he chooses to escape it.

One day he just disappears.

Sadly Gwen Davenport died in 2002


As far as I can tell this story was never collected in book form.

Whatever it Takes by Benjamin M. Schutz - short story review

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

September/October 2000

The author describes it as "Hardy Boys for the nineties."

And that's a pretty apt feel to the story. Sean and Matthew are a process servers who go about town handing out subpoenas and court summons.

The are pretty good at it too; we get to see all the clever ways they " get their man."

In an effort to make some extra money, the boys are allowed to go through The Icebox; literally a shoe box filled with papers that were never successfully served.

They take on the case of a deadbeat dad who's not paid his child support in years.

It becomes a challenging moral situation for Sean and Matthew - one with a satisfying end.

Sadly the author passed away in 2008


This story was collected in the book Mary, Mary, Shut the Door.

Kim Stanley Robinson - short story review

Out Town was a creepy little story that ended with a glimmer of hope.

The art scene is very different in this particular future. Sculpting has changed completely; instead of using clay, or stone, or wood artists are now using humans, grown in vats, and then taught a skill, such as dance.

The artist then "freezes" the subject in a force field and puts it on display.

This stirs up all kinds of ethical subjects and the story is chilling because the attitudes of the characters is opposite to ours today.

I believe that if we could grow humans they would quickly have rights.

Here we meet two artists, one who represents his time and place in the narrative and the other is closer to we readers in the present.

It's a very effective story and I won't spoil it for you by telling you any more. It will stay with you as any great story will.

You can read it HERE

The author's website is HERE

The eZine this story was published in is HERE

PS - I've subscribed to this magazine.

The Collusionists by Scott Mackay - short story review

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

September/October 2000

This was a satisfying read about a woman who is wrongfully charged with the murder of her husband.  The cast of characters include; the artist through who's eyes we see the story, his brother who had an affair with the woman charged and the traumatized daughter.

The clues are there and were put together cleverly.  Loved it.

You can find the story only in this issue of EQMM

The author's website is HERE

The Merchants of Venus by Fredrik Pohl - short story review

This is a longer story (32,000 words) about a down-on-his-luck prospecting guide who lands very rich clients just when he really needs them.

The story is about Audee Walthers a man who once lived on Earth but now makes his home on Venus.  Trouble is Walthers is dying and needs a large influx of money for a liver transplant.  He is lucky enough to meet and contract with a rich couple on an adventure holiday from Earth.  The couple wants to go on a prospecting tour but, on Venus, it's not mineral wealth that people are prospecting for - it's archeology.  Venus was once populated by a race dubbed the Heechee, who once lived in under-ground tunnels, and who mysteriously left the planet.  Finding unexplored tunnels and any artifacts can make a person instantly wealthy.

There are numerous lies and double-crosses in the story.  This is what I look for in a SF story; I want to see real people struggling to make a living doing the kinds of things that people do right here on earth; like trying to out-fox each other for money.  I don't need FTL travel and I don't need aliens mucking up the story to make it work for me but I do love the hardware.  Give me space and a bucket-of-bolts space ship and I'm hooked.

I came to the story via a wonderful on-line service provided by Best Science Fiction Stories, conveniently found at:   http://bestsciencefictionstories.com/ 

If you decide to subscribe you'll get near-daily updates from them.  The emails themselves are wonderful; not only do they tell you a bit about the story and where to read it but they will also give you a bit of background on the author and the story itself, like if the story is part of a much larger series of novels, if it won any awards and if it was collected in book form along the way.  I highly recommend the service.

You can find an example of the email that brought me to this story HERE

You can find the story HERE

 Information on the Author can be found HERE

We Dragons by Tim Sevenhuysen - short story review

Nice.  Really nice.

A small team lands on a planet to survey it for possible terraforming.

The hope is to find the planet devoid of sentient beings; along the way they discover they are not alone.

The story works on lots of different levels; a strait SF tale of exploration but it's also a morality tale; what do you do when faced with a perceived failure?  How much can you trust those who surround you and you ultimately rely upon?  How do we really judge a hero?

There's quite a bit going on in this story - it could easily have been expanded to novella length and would have benefited by the extra breathing room.

And that is my only complaint - it was too short.

Keep an eye on this author.

The story can be found HERE

The author's website is HERE

For more SF goodness visit Raygun Revival

Estimated Time of Arrival by James Bambury - short story review.

Having seen most Star Trek shows I'm very familiar with the term "colonists."  Those plucky farmer types who just want to start a new life, living off the land of some far away planet.

This fun and quick story is aptly titled.  We all know how fast technology can change (anybody remember a 14.4 dial-up modem?)  In this story Moore's Law has a profound impact on their lives as a mysterious ship, from Earth, lands in the middle of the colony.  The captain of the new ship steps out and greets them by saying "Hello, bumpkins!  I just bought this planet."

From there on things happen quickly and I was reading it all with a smile on my face.  It was how Bambury handled the characters that made funny and serious at the same time.  Maybe funny is not the right word - absurd is a better choice.  You can see how the circumstances in the story happen now and have happened since the dawn of time.

I enjoyed this story.  It reminds me that there is still science fiction being written that I enjoy reading.

You can read the story on-line HERE

The author (a Canadian) can be found HERE.

You can enjoy new Space Opera at Raygun Revival HERE

Let's Get Lost by Lawrence Block - short story review

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
September/October 2000

Matthew Scudder in the early days; still on the force, still married and still drinking, hires himself out as a "fixer."

I'm always impressed at the ease Block can tell a story.

Lucky you, you can read this story for free on the Mulholland Books Website.

Part One

Part Two

The author's website is HERE

Season of the Camel by Edward D. Hoch - short story reveiw

Season of  the Camel 

by

Edward D. Hoch

Combine a retired British Intelligence agent on vacation in Egypt, Camel fights in Turkey and stolen plans for a top secret microchip and you have a rather interesting story.

As far as I can tell this story was not collected.

You can read more about Hoch HERE