Hard Science Fiction Books

Was very pleased with the way this package of books arrived. All sealed in plastic and protected by a thick carboard slipcover.
Seller said these books were new and that is what I received.
Would buy from them again.

We purchased this set of Harry Potter books for my nephews to read while on summer vacation. They absolutely loved it!

If you're in the market for the Potter Books, you definitely want to get either this 6-book set or the 7-book set that's available. It's a great value and works-out to about $17 per book shipped (for the 6-book set). I saw the same set at Barnes & Noble for $170 so this is a steal.

The box that it comes in isn't anything special, and you can throw it out if you'd like, but it does do a nice job of keeping the books protected if you don't feel like putting them on your shelf.

What better gift for a Harry Potter fan than a set of six hardback books in a nice container? I don't know, maybe all seven! The box in which they come is well crafted, but it seems like they should have waited a bit longer and included all seven books. We bought this as a gift and had to give book 7 separately, which in the big picture of life isn't a big deal. But it would have been nicer if they had a seven book collection for sale. Hold out for that if you are not in a hurry to get the books.

The books were perfect, the price the best available and the books arrived 5 days after ordered. Even better, no shipping expense.

Spin is one of the best Sci Fi novels I have read in a long time. It is not only a unique and throught provoking story, but it is also full of great characters that are developed throughout the book. I really enjoyed it and it was a great look at humanity as well. Great read.

Novels that shove an agenda in your face annoy me. SPIN tries to get you to think about environmental issues, relationships, and scientific oddities, but I never felt *manipulated* into thinking about them, if that makes sense.

The only other book I've read by this author is The Chronoliths, and I enjoyed SPIN more. They are both novels about "impending doom", and so I found them both fairly depressing (Chronoliths moreso), but there is so much mystery and excitement in Spin, that it didn't phase me much.

Tyler Dupree, the main character, never really comes to life for me. The book is narrated in first person, and all of the other characters seem deep and interesting, but Tyler seems like a 3rd party narrator who you wish would stop talking about himself and get back to the science-y stuff. The book starts out in the "present" and delivers the main storyline through flashbacks; he's writing a diary. Fortunately, we don't have to deal with the "present" very often: the scene is not well developed (what year is it in earth time?), and the challenges and mystery are uninteresting compared to the flashbacks (which are the meat of the book, and riveting).

Regardless of my few nitpicks, I found the book very compelling, and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of the scientific concepts that the author presents. Overall, a good book.

Magnificent. SPIN is one of those books that once started, one simply can't put down. It is filled with human drama, epic not in its timescale, but in its depth. I should say it is not a light read; you will experience each loss, heartache, love, and hope. One will learn what it means to truly cope in a world both familiar and awfully strange. SPIN is one of my most recommended books - at the same level as Hyperion, Vacuum Diagrams, and Beggars in Spain. It definitely deserves the Hugo Award it received.

I really enjoyed this book. Had I purchased a physical copy, I might have stayed up very late reading it. Instead, I listened to the audio version to and from work.

The idea is intriguing, and the information on why the Spin membrane was imposed on Earth, and by whom, is doled out very slowly.

The book also explores a few concepts that are difficult to explore realistically: stuff like sending slow spacecraft way out into the galaxy. Saying why these can be explored would be a spoiler, of course.

The reactions of individuals, governments, religious groups and societies at large to the Spin are also interesting.

The ending is sort of flat, and I'd imagine we won't know the answers to a lot of questions until his book 3.

Interesting characters, stunning plot developments, and a very original idea to start with. What more could you want from an SF novel?!

The story seems wonderful, and there are many other reviews about that, so this is just a comment on the two Kindle versions currently available. The one that says "Special Edition eBook" in the title contains links to notes all through the text. The links are somewhat distracting (although you eventually learn to ignore them), and the notes don't really add any value, at least not to me. However, this is still the version I recommend because the other one (not the Special Edition) does not honor your font size preferences and it seems to be completely pre-formatted, with unnecessarily large margins and some sections of text (written messages, etc.) that are too small to see. Hopefully this review will keep you from purchasing both versions just to decide which one you want. Go with the Special Edition and learn to mentally filter out the links to the notes.

WOW, what a great find!! This is a wonderful "old school" space opera that contains all the necessary elements, i.e. space battles, alien races, great characterization and ancient civilizations with a little medieval action thrown in for good measure.

Usually, reading about alien, animal cultures is something that I try to avoid, but I was amazed by the complexity, depth and integration that Mr. Vinge has achieved with this subject. I had a little difficultly with the first fifth of the book due to the concepts of the "Tines' mind speak" and the "galactic zone", but the understanding is well worth the effort.

This is a stand-alone book, so few out there now, but it was so well written and entertaining I have ordered "A Deepness in the Sky".

This book was truly excellent. Especially during the early chapters, the suspense and ominous nature of the antagonist is fully explored. The English is very strong, although some of the characters don't get adequate treatment. This book kept me on the edge right through to the end.

The driving force in the narrative for this reader was the original creation of the dog-like, multi-bodied species called the "Tines" by one character. I was quite interested in what Vinge would do with them and how they would respond to the arrival of a few sample "two-legs". One might argue that the author made them a bit too human in personality, given that some aggregate instances of the multi-bodied packs exhibited traditional human behavior as schemers, loyalists, visionaries, etc. I consider that a relatively minor matter, given the overall premise.

The Tines were far more interesting than the human Ravna, who was underdeveloped, and the mostly-human Pham. Vinge was a little thin in character development, as even the plant-like Riders were largely traditional human patterns when they weren't chilling in the water.

Science Fiction ideas that violate laws of physics are ok with me, within reason. The "zones" idea was pretty cool, if confusing at times, as I also wondered exactly what might happen at transition points. Vinge might have developed the concept more, which is not really feasible in a book that is already 600 pages. It and the Tines make reasonable setups for additional work, based on this novel alone.

I'm amused when people complain about violations of laws of physics, without comment on faster than light travel and communication.

4 to 4.5 stars, deserving of solid fame.

Simply wonderful! Vinge is a master of his craft and his flawless and imaginative prose will grab you from start to finish. I was particularly impressed with the author's ability to handle the meeting of races at different stages of scientific development. Interweaving a medieval society into a sci-fi novel is perilous work. Witness Ursula LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness": A book wrecked by overexposure to a backwards society which quickly mutated it into a fictional novel posing as a sci-fi book.

Not with Vinge. Not only can he transition skillfully from space battles to medieval warlords, but he manages to make both streams equally exciting and interdependent. In fact, this is the first such attempt that has made me want to read more about the medieval characters.

If you are looking for an exciting sci-fi novel with plenty of innovative/futuristic concepts, this book is for you.

Banks is unique - his use of language is extra-ordinary -
of course his plots are thin - usually just a peg to hang his ideas on -
and he is often guilty of overwordiness -
but reading his best books is an unique experience for the most
blasé science fictionnado

I'm a big fan of Ian Banks and the Culture series and this latest chapter
is a great read and addition to the series.
While not as stunning as earlier Culture books (Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons, Player of Games), Matter continues Ian Banks mixed dark and hopeful themes, examining human nature, economics and technology.

Bank's latest Culture novel, Matter, is one of the strongest in the series, together with Player of Games and Excession. The plot involves several perspectives on the Culture universe as Banks presents a whole hierarchy of civilisations, from a medieval society placed within an artificial world, to the different caretakers of the same world (and their conflicts with one another), to the supremes like Culture and the Morganwelt. We meet a lot of characters: a medieval prince fighting for his right to the throne, a SC agent on her way home, an ancient ship mind, a renegade from the culture and some really weird and dangerous aliens, to mention a few. Highly recommended.

It seems that everything that reviewers have complained about here are things that I actually liked about "Matter."

(1) Length. I had no problem reading the nearly six hundred pages, and gladly would have read more. Those who found much of the material irrelevant should wait for the Cliff's Notes. The question of what is and is not important is, after all, one of the book's main themes.

(2) The fact that it's not "Consider Phlebas" or "Use of Weapons." Good. I'm sure that Banks would be bored with writing the same book over and over again, and I'd be bored reading it.

(3) The ending. Most books can't manage even one terrific ending. This one provides TWO. Granted, it may not be what most readers might have expected. But that's the point. Those who become too invested in the petty doings of a barbarian culture deserve to be reminded that they really DON'T amount to a hill of beans in the pan-galactic scheme of things--and rather sharply.

And on the purely positive side, the book contains things that every reader should like. Culture. Cheeky AI's. Neat weapons. An endless supply of REALLY alien civilizations. Moral ambiguity and inscrutability.

If Banks' next Culture book is completely different that this one, and is at least six hundred pages long, I bet I'll be completely satisfied as I was with this one.

First of all I love the entire Culture series...aside from Frank Herbert's Dune series, this is the best sci-fi series of all time. The philosophy and sociology in these books offers a fascinating lesson for modern times. Alot of the professional reviews said this book was too long, I thought there was a sense of adventure throughout the book and I thought it ended all too soon. The ending was abrupt, and typically Banksian i.e. lots of people die. I would have liked to learn more about the Aultridia and the Morthanveld, but maybe they'll turn up in later novels...

Somewhere in Ms. Traviss' background there was a lot of time spent talking to and with operators on the front lines and the bonds they develop. I don't know where or who she got it from, but I thank them that they gave a talented author an insight into what it is we do and thereby gave us a voice.

Traviss' Hard Contact is a true Clone War novel, viewed through the Clone warrior's eyes. It deals with the bonds that such men form through training and experience. It deals with what operators feel when sent into situations with less than full disclosure about what's happening. It deals with how society needs people who can engage in violence but also how society views them as disposable.

The plot of Hard Contact is simple - the Republic is investigating a world called Qiilura using a couple of Jedi as infiltrators. When contact with them is broken, a small group of Clone Commandos is sent in to establish contact and finish the investigation. Meanwhile, the Separatists are cooking up something on Qiilura, something that may turn the tide of war and shift the balance of power in the galaxy.

Please don't be turned off that the book was based on a video game. In fact, it's completely irrelevant that a video game is involved at all. This is top-notch writing in every way. Of all the books I have read in my life, I place Hard Contact second only behind Gates of Fire in explaining the bonds that men in combat form and what drives them to push on and do what they do.

The characters are well-fleshed out, including the "bad" guys. Motivations are complex, as they are in real life, and the dilemmas that people out on the edge of life and death face are well-portrayed. There are no cookie cutter characterizations and motivations here. I think this is a brilliant piece of fiction and I will follow Ms. Traviss' career and body of work with interest.

I have personally been a Star Wars fan for a long time (for a teenager), I have read many novels, I have explored the Star Wars universe to a great level. Now, even though I am a fan, I have been critical of some of the movies (specifically Episode II), and I've also been critical of the atmosphere of the story, all clean little zap-zap and stuff, but nothing really gritty or human. There are only two books that I think have really captured a good bit of reality in the Star Wars universe, one is 'Shatterpoint' by Matthew Stover and the other one is the book I'm reviewing, 'Republic Commando: Hard Contact'.

'Hard Contact' captures the gritty reality of war situations in an interesting way, creating an interesting atmosphere for itself. There is lots of blood, and people crawling in mud, people slowly slicing each other's throats open, and even more blood. I captures inhumanity in a setting that you're least probable t find it, in a zap-zap Star Wars movie.

The story itself drags the reader in, four Commandos land on a planet, their ship is blown off, and they can't go back until they complete their mission. At the same time, a Jedi is stuck on the same planet, after having her mentor killed. There are many twists, ugly sequences, and fighting, turning the entire story into a thoughtful bloodbath (sounds near impossible, right.

The book's only flaw is that it sometimes confuses the reader, using army terms, and other things that the reader can't understand. The entire book is filled with things like "We'll reorganize back at sector 7 at 54 kliks, Blue Leader 469 out". Okay, what is sector 7, what's a klik and who the heck is this Blue Leader 70865354%$^^&^$ whatsit? Though this does confuse the reader, rarely does this affect the important parts of the book, s the reader shuld get along fine most of the time.

If you like Halo, Star Wars or things about 'Going behind enemy lines' you are most deifintely going to like this book.

This book offers some interesting descriptions of the personalities of the clones. While we may assume that, being clones, they are all the same that is not the truth. They are all different, and while they were trained only to obey and excel on the battlefield and deprived of feelings like love they are actually very human. You are moved in some cases reading that these men are not considered men ,but expendable machines. A great action novel that provide a new camera angle of perspective on the Clone wars. A great book I really devoured.

I am only 16 so this was a bit of an advanced book for me. Although it took me a little while to get used to the author's style i thoroghly enjoyed the book. Once i adjusted to the author's style it was fanstastic and i couldn't put it down. The book gives a great insight into the lives of the clones and their weapons,tactics, training, etc.

I picked up this book because I was so damned excited for the Republic Commando game and I had a job where I had literally nothing to do for four hours. I needed a book, win/win, right?

I wish it were so.

I will open with my favorite part of the book, or at least the gyst of it. It is right after the operation on Geonosis when Darman sits down in an extracation vehicle next to a standard clone trooper, not a Commando like him. The Clone asks him about his weapon and they make some small talk. Darman looks around the ship and everywhere he looks he sees himself. He sees himself in every possible situation, wondering what it was that made him so different from all of them and considering what he'd be like if he weren't an RC, etc.

After that I get irritated. Maybe I'm just nit-picky. First of all, my pet peeve was that she was going the whole book calling her characters Delta Squad and implying that the characters she was writing about were the characters you play in the game. In Triple Zero this problem is basicly swept under the rug as if it never happened, but what it comes off as is someone was commissioned for a book based off a game and didn't communicate with the people writing the story on which her novel was based. Because of this all the characters were given incorrect names and the personalities did not mesh with the jobs of the in-game counterparts.

So if I brush that aside we now get to my other big complaint.

For a squad of men who have done nothing but train for 9 years with the best military men that money can by they sure are incompitant. I was expecting something more along the lines of characters as portrayed in Eric Nylund's HALO series (which I reccomend) but here all I have is a bunch of "elite" soldiers who barely can keep their heads down in a firefight.

And this mediocraty was not just confined to the "Elite" troopers, but just about everyone involved in the story. Etain was just about as incompitent as they come, the Jedi Padawan who is left in charge because she was separated from her master and Clones answer to Jedi.

Basicly, everyone in this book only has a goal and no idea how to accomplish it. They're too conscerned about their feelings and how they wish they didn't have to eat protien cubes their whole life, "and gee, I sure do miss the Sarge." I mean, honestly, it's 4 men and a feeble Jedi in the middle of an enemy-controlled world with an entire population looking for them in their rather garish white uniforms and they're wishing they got to try sweets more often?

Yes, these things do happen and these are very important, very interesting insights into Clone life, but this is seriously not the time or the place for musings, go blow up the damned chemical plant already, would you!?

All in all, I just don't think Karen Traviss is cut out to write Military novels.

On an enclosed alien world, gravity works very differently than we are used to. As the story begins, the world's previously dormant culture embarks on a journey of scientific discovery to understand their world and its environment.

In a different story arch, the entire Milky Way has been thoroughly inhabited and explored by a peaceful amalgam of races. When given the opportunity to investigate the enclosed alien world in the Milky Way's core, one of the Amalgam's citizens take off, mostly motivated by the boredom stemming from the prospect that exploration is nigh-impossible.

In the center of the story is a scientific riddle. The idea is nice, but if you have read Larry Niven and know a bit of Newtonian physics and relativity theory, you can figure most of it out fairly early in the story.

As the story unfolds, we follow the aliens' scientific struggle to understand their world. Unfortunately, this is written in a rather abstract manner, so it quickly becomes quite repetitive to read.

Egan should be commented for writing a complete novel without having to resort to action writing. In fact, there's no conflict in the novel at all, and only a vaguely felt danger. As such, the scientific puzzle becomes the only real driving force in the story. If Egan had been able to pull this off, this could have been a really noteworthy piece of science fiction, but unfortunately, the book is just boring.

In these days of mammoth science fiction 'epics' bursting with filler, the book's short length is a redeeming feature.

This is an ambitious attempt at a serious science fiction novel for the discerning reader. Alas, it doesn't succeed.

I just wanted to point out that Egan's story "Riding the Crocodile" is set in the same universe as Incandescence. You can find that story in the anthology One Million A.D. edited by Gardner Dozois.

This book is very much in the tradition of Hal Clement's hard science fiction, where the investigation of what happens under various extreme physical conditions is the prime focus of the work. For this work, it will definitely help if you are at least somewhat familiar with orbital mechanics as detailed by Newton and Kepler, Einstein's general theory of relativity, and the work of Schwarzschild and Kerr dealing with black hole properties.

The extreme conditions of this book imagine a small, rocky body inhabited by some quite small six-legged insectoid beings that is in orbit around a black hole, and embedded in the black hole's accretion ring. Given the energies and radiation levels associated with such a ring, the inhabitants are by necessity confined to the inside of their little habitat, which provides the necessary shielding from the worst of the radiation, while at the same time the ring provides the necessary energy input to their world to form a functioning biosphere. Clearly, these inhabitants would be at a severe disadvantage in trying to figure out just how their world works, as they cannot just go `outside' and see everything in their heavens. Much of the story of this book revolves around just how they do determine just what is happening, and how they determine both that their world is in danger of having its orbit deteriorate to where it will fall into the black hole and what they can do to avoid such a fate.

This story thread is placed in-between a different story line, where a far-future `human' ("child of DNA") is recruited by the Aloof, a very nebulous group of beings who inhabit the central bulge of stars in our galaxy, to find the origin and current status of an anomalous asteroid found within this bulge with microbiological remnants of DNA based life. As the story progresses, it's clear that the two stories are related, though not directly, and separated in time by perhaps many millennia.

Both story lines are prime examples of the methods of scientific discovery. Most of the charm of this book is in just how the characters connect the observable facts with deductions about the universe around them. The described world of the insectoid race will definitely challenge your sense of `normal', with weird gravitational effects that your first instinct is say `that's impossible' - but as you delve deeper, you begin to see just how such effects would occur, and the fun is watching the major characters determine what is going on. There is a lot of explanation of some fairly esoteric concepts detailed here, somewhat to the detriment of the story line, and this is dense material, as Egan tries to describe in English some rather complicated mathematics. I highly recommend that while reading this, the reader also look at Egan's website at gregegan.net for some nice diagrams and animations that will help with understanding this material (and for those with the necessary background, the actual equations are detailed here also).

However, all this concentration on the pursuit of science means that characterization is fairly slim, and some of the ethical and moral problems faced by the `human' of the second story line don't seem to have any solid grounding in what little background we are given about him. The two story lines do not have a nice, tied-up-with-a-string intersection, but rather the ending is left somewhat open, inviting the reader to do the final connect-the-dots operation.

The net is, if you liked things like Clement's Mission of Gravity and like seeing real science driving a truly odd and different physical scenario that can invoke that `sense of wonder', then this book is for you. If instead, you'd rather have something more character driven, and can't stand math (or had difficulty with algebra and geometry), then this one will leave you cold and unhappy.

---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

You will find Greg Egans "Incandescence" very helpful.

Of course you need to be inside a physical body again.
Being software linked into a scape is no good.
Like the heroes of Incandescence you must transfer to
a body. A body that must be left to engage
with the physical world.
- "It felt odd to be
on such intimate terms with the physical world again,
without a layer of simulation. It
was like being naked for the first time in a century".

And a very dangerous thing this thing about having a body.
- "To travel is to die".
Certainly true if you are in
the wilderness of stars near the black hole in
the center of our galaxy.

But you will experience many wonders with a body:
- "Out in the disc people usually waited
for cultures to develop interstellar travel
for themselves before making contact with them;
the exceptions had often been messy".

However, Using an avatar, a tiny thing some 1 centimeter high,
you can explore other civilizations.

An so it goes - Our heroes make contact with some locals
on an ark, survivors from some ancient, 50 million years +, civilisation.
The ark itself is circling a neutron star near the
core of our Galaxy,
So here we go: Our heroes is now inside a body that looks somewhat
the same as the arkdwellers.

-"My name is Ra", Rakesh said.
-"I am Neb", the farmer replied.
-"I've come from the outside world", Rakesk announced boldly.
-"We have enough workers" - Neb explained.

Hilarious stuff from the core of the Galaxy....

Egan explains it to us:
"To the arkdwellers it was frivolous diversion
to talk about anything but their sleepwalking existence.
Inconsequentiel chatter is what the arkdwellers
wants - about food, sex and sleep".

Yet the arkdwellers have general intelligence.
And their makers have given them a mechanism,
where extreme stress triggers a genetic mechanisms
that brings about curiousity. Enlightement on overdrive so to speak.
It is just a question on when to throw the
switch to enlightement.

So of we go to throw the switch on enlightement.

All brilliant stuff - and on the way Egan wants
to teach his readers some general relativity.
Unfortunately I dont think that part of the
book reaches the heights it could have gone to.

In Egans own words:
"Incandescence grew out of the notion that the theory of general relativity --
widely regarded as one of the pinnacles of human intellectual achievement --
could be discovered by a pre-industrial civilization with no steam engines,
no electric lights, no radio transmitters, and absolutely no tradition of astronomy".

"How, then, could my alien civilization possibly reach the same conceptual heights,
when they were armed with none of these apparent prerequisites?
The short answer is that they would need to be living in
just the right environment: the accretion disk of a large black hole".

"How? Put on your space suit, and pump out all the station's air.
Then fill the station with small objects --
paper clips, pens, whatever -- being careful to place them initially
at rest with respect to the walls.
Wait, and see what happens".

Yes. Ok. Next time I find myself stranded inside a rocky world
near a black hole I will find that part of the book very helpful ...
But come on. There should be a new revision of Incandescence
where you actually get the math and the theory of
general relativity that goes along with each chapter in the book.
Otherwise it is just to hard to be a reader....
You will have to read all the extra material
on gregegan.net to make all the right connections -
Certainly this stuff should have been included in the book?
Along with some easy to understand additional cartoon
like explanations ?-
To understand is to have it explained in many different ways?

-Simon

Greg Egan writes about the intimate perception of scale.
In Diaspora, he induced vertigo in his readers describing the search for consciousness through boundless dimensions. In Schild's Ladder, a personal quest for purpose was echoed by universe-changing wave that spanned hundreds of light-years. In Incandescence, Greg Egan tackles time and what lies beyond purpose. But how can you write an intimate story that covers 50 million years?

With a skill that he has honed since Permutation City, Egan let us slip effortlessly in the mindset of the long descendants of his "copies", consciousnesses in digital form, to set up the protagonist's plight: what is there left to do in such an age of technological marvels? Explore the last remaining mystery when the opportunity is offered? But why?

Taking a page from Vernor Vinge's book (namely, A Deepness in the Sky), the answer comes from a second storyline seen from the viewpoint of an alien. I don't know if Egan was inspired by Vinge, but his bug-like "arkdwellers" and the changes they go through were as alien and as convincing to me as Vinge's spiders, even more so when you consider their level of animality and their non-industrial society. I particularly liked Roi's dialog and behavior in the first few chapters and I was surprised to go through the same culture shock she experienced when her society began to change.

Yes, the book could have skipped some of the scientific details - I would have trusted Egan to be true to the science even if he had taken more shortcuts like the "template frames" - but some moments of insight and discovery make the detailed explanations worth it (the first experiments in the Null Chamber, the adoption of "parallel computing", etc.).

As for the reviewers who complain about the apparent lack of resolution or correspondence between the two story threads, Egan does go against expectations, but there *is* a big reveal in the end that ties everything together, even though it's disguised as an innocuous dialog line (reread Haf's last words if you don't believe me).

As always with Greg Egan's writing, this book leaves me with a great feeling of hope for humanity and with new ideas almost too big for my head to contain.

John D. MacDonald: Five Complete Travis McGee Novels

I don't really understand the complaints about the complexity or length of this book. All of the previous books are derivative of John D MacDonald's excellent Travis McGee series with a little fantasy thrown in right down to the naming convention. Macdonald uses colors instead of metals in every title.
Both are great reads but this is the first time the series stands on it's own feet and diverges from the MacDonald formula. Many of the tale's old friends come back for a rousing romp in a more convoluted plot. I hope there are more coming even if it is co-authored or even ghost written! If you want simple go back to the beginning or read Travis McGee. I find many of the characters laugh out loud funny and each one has similar depth. Kudos to Glen Cook

Fantasy Noir. That's the best way to describe this series. If you liked the others you'll like this one and if you haven't read the others don't worry, it's also a stand alone novel. Great read.

Another winner. Cook surely knows how to keep a high quality series going.

It was good to see this book after a bit of a gap since the last. In this Garret is hired by Max to eliminate problems in a theater he is building - for his daughter and a bevy of beauties of course. Doing this turns into quite a feat - as usual - with several plot twists along the way.

There are all the usual characters, even some nostalgia for the gone but unlamented parrot. And, of course, Eleanor is there. But I thought the Dead Man was a bit out of character for this book.

A couple of things stand out in this novel. First, there is less action for Garrett and he is not beaten up like the usual fare. He is more of a manager. His cast of helpers know him and do their things despite him. His relationship with Tinnie is maturing also. He almost bites the big one here. It is close.

With all of this expect the usual humorous well written book and characterizations. Not quite a sharp as past books but still quite good.

The characters are maturing. The author does a good job with that. This is a sort of coming out book for Garrett. I hope that the author is not wrapping this series up but we will see what we see in that regard.

If you are a Garrett and Cook fan, buy this book. It is up to the standards of past books in this series.

It seemed to me that the last few books in the series had lost some of their sparkle; I'm happy to see that this one returns to the earlier, livelier mode.

Enjoyed the book immensely. If you have followed the Garrett series this book represents both a return to some themes and a growth and advancement of the characters in the series. A worthy addition to the set.

I believe Cory Doctorow said it best when he said something like 'makes hallucinogens obsolete' This book is brain meltingly lovely. Instead of being sci fi to inspire the dreams of yesterday (which seems to be so much of what's out there), Stross creates sci fi that is truly future speculative (not predictive, just mentally inflammatory in the best possible way). Don't get me wrong, this book has it's flaws, and there are bumps in the narrative. However, they're totally forgivable, as Accelerando takes you along for a ride that is both outlandish beyond belief, and all too believable.

I've read most of Stross' work, and enjoyed it all. This book was a roller coaster of ideas, using the history of a key family to pull the reader along. Was it complicated? Yes. Was it very technical? Yes. But that's all part of the fun. I really enjoyed this book, and found the future history it proposes frighteningly believable and just around the corner.

As for it becoming dated and irrelevent too soon - I just re-read the E.E.Doc Smith Lensmen series, where space ships were controlled by teams of people doing calculations (no computers), but that dated content didn't make the series any less enjoyable.

Having read some of the author's short stories and loved them, and being a fan of all forms of science-fiction, I snatched up "Accelerando" when I saw it in a store. I took it on holiday with me, where in two weeks I read seven books. At the start of the holiday, I read the first 100 pages of "Accelerando". On the plane trip home, with nothing to read, but I left the book unfinished.

Despite the enthusiasm with which the author writes, and the great dialogue and narrative, the story just doesn't go anywhere. For two hundred pages the main character spoke to other characters and had his external memory stolen, leaving him semi-amnesiac. But that was all. He found his memory, which was stored in his intelligent glasses. I didn't find any motivation to read on.

The book's full of awesome ideas. There are a lot of ideas for tech, for how the world might be, how it might look, what its people will be like - there are philosophical questions, emotional tangles, relationship difficulties. But there are so many of these that the story goes nowhere. It's interesting to read, but there's no drive to continue the story, because the first half of the book has little story indeed. In fact it seems to be structured in smallers stories lumped together to form a disjointed novel, with gaps of years in places and few stories threads picked up from the last chunk. Really, it's too much of a good thing - far too much. Why the author didn't incorporate these ideas into a focused series of short stories, for example, and take advantage of them, I have no idea. He instead wastes them in a novel that passes them by immediately, while at the same time managing to slow the actual story to a crawl.

It's a shame I never finished this book. I tried. I've only ever failed to finish one other book in all my life, and I'd hoped it would be the only one. I'd only recommend "Accelerando" if you have a lot of time and a lot of patience. The ideas are truly wonderful, as is the snappy style. It's just a shame it gets in the way of the actual plot.

I've never read Stross but I had high hopes going in to this one. I couldn't have been more let down.

His writing is so complexly written that it is barely readable. And I don't mean he needed to dumb it down. I mean his sentence structures were convoluted enough to make Accelerando seem worse than it was. A few examples:

"A standard network of independent companies, instantiated as cellular automata within the Ring Imperium switched legal service environment." (Pg. 206)

"Economics 2.0 apparently replaces the single-direction layer of conventional money, and the multiple-inderection mappings of options trades, with some kind of insanely baroque object-relational framework based on paramatized desires and subjective experiential values of the players, and as far as the cat is concerned, this makes all the transactions intrinsically untrustworthy. (Pg. 341)"

"...and in this reincarnation-intermediated traditionalist polity for the hopelessly orthohuman, you can score credit for formality. (Pg. 382)"

Add to that a dizzying amount of "ideas" for virtually everything, such as suitcases and handbags that have emotions, lobsters that talk, ghosts of yourself everywhere collecting information, spaceships the size of a coke can, or duplicating yourself and having different lives and consciousness. It is all too much and drowns out any possible storyline that is hiding behind all the superfluous ideas.

A quote on the back of the book says "Stross sizzles with ideas...", unfortunately that is all there is to this book. I might try another book of his but it may be a long time coming because of how boring and slow this one was, and if I do it will be with trepidation, knowing that I will probably find the same style of writing. Not a recommend.

2.5 stars.

At least, 160. Perhaps verging on 170 or 180. And this is evident in every sentence. I have never ever read anybody who tries so hard to show his intellect in every sentence, in every word. If Stross could show how intelligent he is in spaces between words, he would do it. Reading Accelerando demands a portable wikipedia (I think I even spotted an all your base are belong to us reference) a great deal of Egan (who he shamelessly rips, even though he credits Vinge)and a lot of time. Read it at a pace of ten or fifteen pages per day and it will start making sense. Nice way out for the Fermi paradox, would like to see the Matrioshka brains fleshed out some more. Overall, nice Singularity effort.

I love Miller's work and this is no expection. This comic is to graphic novels what short stories are to novels. You're thrown right in the middle of a story, given no backplot, and then the story ends still somewhat in the middle.

Nothing wrong with that, just leaves you wanting more!

In addition to a great comic, the book is just great art in general. If I had my way, I would press a limited wordless edition, in the same fashion as House. Sadly, I'm not the publisher.

Buy it, its a fun quick read.

Frank Miller's Hard Boiled is lots of fun. It's a really short story, but it's a very good one at that. Hard Boiled takes place in a bizarre future, very bizarre. The art is breathtaking, it makes what to scan over each page to make sure you're not missing a little joke. Fulled with hardcore violence that makes you laugh in wonder, Hard Boiled is a weird graphic novel but it's surely another awesome story by Frank Miller. I hope you enjoy this book!

It has be my first Frank MIller's book, so I feel strange in writing about it now.
There was no internet at home when Iì've bought it at the newsstand on the road, so I just listended my eyes :))
It's a great and sad story, really over exposed, but you have to read till the end and read it again.
Great, really great!

Haven't bought a comic in a while. Hollywood, having finally admited to running out of ideas has turned to the great and ultra-cool comics (Hellboy, Sin City, V for Vendetta, etc) in order to make some dough, has once again sparked my interest in graphic novels. I bought this one based soley on the art and was not dissapointed.

The ultra-violence can get a bit tedious (If you like tons of bloody naked people getting mauled by flaming vehicles....then prepare for your boat to float), but overall its not a bad read.

The story is ok. Not amazing but interesting never-the-less.

The cool thing about this book is the illustration. Which, is a virtual "Where's Waldo" of advertising icons, naked people, drug parephanilia, blood, and robots. Folks who say you can reread this a few times just to look at the amazing detail are telling it to you straight.

The artwork alone will blow you away.

Loosely based on the same story that inspired "Blade Runner," this book is an irreverant thrill-ride from start to finish. Every page is a masterwork of illustration, and the detail is beyond belief.

It's classic Miller, with over-the-top violence, coupled with a disenfranchized cynicism that writers often imitate but can't duplicate. In this book, he masters the use of understatement, recognizing exactly when to step aside and let the art speak for itself.

You won't be disappointed.

What can I say? Like Stephen King, I am hooked on Repairman Jack. These novels read like a weird combination of X-Files and the Rockford Files. Jack always get drawn into stories that cross over into "the otherness".

I enjoyed Harbingers and thought it was one of the better Repairman Jack stories. We get to see a little bit more of Jack and his family of characters. To see a little more of what makes Jack tick.

I chose the cheap shipping and it was still here pretty quick, exactly what I ordered and in good shape. Repairman Jack is amazing!

Repairman Jack lives on and on in another F.Paul WIlson novel that provides intrigue, suspense and fondness for the main character. A definite need for RJ collectors.

Harbingers is a '10.' Oddly enough, it's also the 10th entry in the Repairman Jack series. Coincidence? No way.

Long-time readers know that there are no coincidences in Jack's life, and in this book F. Paul Wilson reveals exactly how true that statement is. The story picks up a month after the events from 'Infernal' conclude. Jack is still mourning the loss of both his father and brother, and has retreated to his favorite bar to wile the days away. The action picks up half a paragraph later and doesn't let up until the final page. The characterizations and action sequences feature some of Wilson's strongest writing, and the revelations that are revealed will have you turning pages long after your bedtime.

Wilson will hard-pressed to top this! Highly recommended.

Repairman Jack doesn't officially exist. He has no social security number, no tax records, no legal identity of any kind. But his girlfriend Gia is pregnant with their baby and Jack can't be the husband and father he needs to be if he is a legal non-entity. With the help of his friend, Abe, he sets up an opportunity to be "resurrected" under a new identity as a man who recently died. Before he can get to that, however, Jack meets a group of "men in black" who are tied into the war between the Ally and the Otherness. They want Jack to join them, and he's half-tempted to take them up on the offer. But things are never simple for our favorite repairman and Jack faces perhaps his most harrowing challenge yet as the story unfolds.

While there are supernatural elements in Harbingers, the book primarily pits Jack against human opponents. We see the Adversary briefly, and we meet someone who has something of a direct pipeline to the Ally, but mostly Jack uses his brains and guns against good old humans who threaten his loved ones. The plot moves along at a strong pace from start to finish and the tension builds to a fevered pitch in the second half of the book. More than most in the series, this is a genuine page-turner.

Supporting characters have a minimal role in Harbingers, with the exception of the group that tries to recruit Jack. Filling classic good cop, bad cop roles are Davis and Miller. One is genuine and down-to-earth and the other is a borderline psychotic. Both are compelling in their own way and help provide conflict within Jack as to whether he wants to join up with them or not. Gia and Vicky don't have large roles in the traditional sense, but the threat they face ends up as the driving force to the story and, in some ways, the entire series to this point.

Harbingers is easily one of the very best Repairman Jack novels and a must-read for any fan of the series. I would not recommend it to newcomers as an entry point as some past stories are referred to, and it would likely confuse someone who hasn't read them. This book will also be a major spoiler to anyone who hasn't already read Infernal: A Repairman Jack Novel (Repairman Jack).