If you have any chemistry or science teachers on your Christmas list, your shopping is done.
Category Archives: Books
Seiun Awards Results are in
Anime News Network has the results of this year’s Seiun Awards. For those who are unfamiliar with the awards, the Seiun Awards (Seiun being the Japanese word for Nebula) are handed out every year at the Nihon SF Taikai (or Japan Science Fiction Convention). Voting is done in a manner similar to the Hugo Awards – voting is open to attendees of the convention. Here’s a link to a Google Translated version of the results, and I’ll have my own list below the cut. The full list of Nominees can be found here. Continue reading →
Novel Review – The Lies of Locke Lamora
In a mysterious world of ancient wonders, one man struggles to steal anything that isn’t nailed down.
Audio Versions of Hugo Short Story Nominees
I’ve sung their praises before, but I’ll do it again, Escape Pod has once again scored the permission to broadcast audio versions of all five Hugo Award Short Story nominees.
Continue reading →
Textbook Review – “Introduction to Nonparametric Item Response Theory”
Yes, I’ve been on something of an education kick lately. This time around, I’ve reviewed an advanced text on item response theory, which is the theory that governs the way people respond to questions, whether they be in class questions or surveys.
Book Review – “This Is Not A Game”
Regular reader and frequent commenter Erf submitted this review. Erf says, “Many stories have studied the interaction between games and reality. Here’s a take on it by a master writer.”
Novel Review: The City and the City
The always-original China Miéville has won a number of awards and been nominated several times for the Hugo. His latest Hugo nominated-novel, a Kafkaesque fantasy/SF police procedural, takes a hardboiled cop deep into his home city of Besźel, somewhere in Eastern Europe—and into Ul Qoma, which occupies approximately the same geographical space.
He also encounters the secretive forces that maintain the separation between the city and the city.
Non-Fiction Book Review: 30 Years of Adventure – A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons
When this book came out 6 years ago, I kind of missed it. I never got around to picking it up and reading it. Now, after the 4th Edition of D&D has come out, I have finally picked it up from the library and read it. Continue reading →
Book Review: The Dragon and the Stars
I stared at her, wondering how I had come to suspect she was a shape-shifting fox demon. Was it like human rights, something that existed if enough people in the country believed in it? When I returned to America, would I still think she might be a demon?
–Urania Fung, “The Right to Eat Decent Food”
Looking to read something a little different in SF and fantasy? The Dragon and the Stars features eighteen (in Chinese lore, a lucky number) new tales written by English-speaking writers of Chinese ancestry.
Frank Frazetta dies at age of 82
ComicsBeat.com has confirmed that Frank Frazetta, classic fantasy artist has died at the age of 82 of a stroke in a hospital near his home. Continue reading →