The Sword and Laser is a book club for fantasy and science fiction books. I think I first heat about it on CNET’s Buzz Out Loud podcast. The Sword and Laser was started by one former host and one current host of Buzz Out Loud.
When I first started listening to the Sword and Laser podcast, they were just starting on Neuromancer by William Gibson. I had no desire to tackle that book, so I passed on it. With the recent passing of Arthur C. Clarke, they decided to make the next book one of his. The book that readers chose was Childhood’s End.
It’s about a race of aliens that suddenly show up in ships over the majors cities on Earth. People call them the Overlords. The Overlords rule over Earth and end wars, disease, etc. Most of the things that people need to live are free. Although there was some resistance, the Overlords were able to handle that using psychological methods instead of force. The tradeoff is that man’s creativeness and innovation comes to stop, which many are unhappy with. And what are the true motives for the Overlord appearance on Earth?
If it hadn’t been for The Sword and Laser, I don’t know that I would have ever read this book. I’m so glad that I did. I’ll probably try to read more books by Arthur C. Clarke in the future.
I’ve read the latest 2 parts of the Temeraire series: Black Powder War and Empire of Ivory. I’m really glad I started reading this series. I don’t have 30,000 characters to keep up with in any given scene. I don’t have to read two-page descriptions about somebody’s dress. I don’t have to wait hundreds of pages for something good to happen. And I don’t have to wait 5 years for the next book in the series. The next book in the series, Victory of Eagles, comes out this summer and it’ll actually be out in hardback.
I’ve been itching to get into another MMORPG and last week I started playing The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. I had heard some good things about it, so I wanted to try it. It’s The Lord of the Rings, so it had to be good, right? I don’t usually do this, but I bought it from their website and downloaded it instead of going to a store to buy it. I haven’t gotten very far into it, but I’m having a blast so far. I always have fun in the beginning of these games. Except for maybe Dungeons & Dragons Online. In hindsight, I don’t think I really enjoyed that one as much as some of the others I’ve played. Anyway, I’m on the Landroval server. I’m a human male guardian from Bree-land and my name is Longklaw (of course).
I had heard about Lost Odyssey before it was released and knew that I would get around to playing it sooner or later. Around the time it came out I saw an advertisement for it on TV. I knew right then that I would want to play it sooner than later and that I wanted to download the song that was playing. I now know that the song is “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane. I downloaded the advertisement on Xbox Live and I’ve already watched in several times. I’ll probably watch it many more times until I get the game. It’s one of the best video game advertisements that I’ve ever seen. Lost Odyssey will definitely be the next game that I play.
So, it was a very light snack. I wanted to read Lyra’s Oxford because I’m a big fan of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series and this takes place in the same world. Actually, it takes place 2 years after the end of the series. Other than the fact that Lyra and Pan are in it and the book has a neat little fold out map, I can’t really say a lot of good about. I don’t want to say it was a waste of time, because it was only around 50 pages, but it didn’t really do much for me. Maybe the events in this book are setting up things that will happen in Pullman’s future books.
I have a rule against starting a fantasy series that hasn’t already been completed and now I’ve broken it. With Harry Potter and The Sword of Truth being over and The Wheel of Time being close to complete, I guess I need another ongoing series to take their places. There’s something nice about reading an ongoing series and getting new material to read every so often. Besides, the author of this new series is 35ish (young), so I think there’s a good chance that she’ll get to finish it. And she’s spitting books out like crazy, so hopefully we won’t have long gaps between books and maybe that also means she’ll finish the story sooner.
The new series that I started is the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. Temeraire is an alternate history in which the Napoleonic Wars are fought with dragons. Neat, huh? Peter Jackson has already scooped up the movie rights. Novik’s website says that she did graduate work in Computer Science before she left to work on Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Unrentide. Awesome! Then she went into writing and I guess the rest is history.
I’ve read the first two books: His Majesty’s Dragon and Throne of Jade. Both books are under 400 pages. Yes, it is possible to tell a good story in under 400 pages. Yes, you can have self-contained stories in each novel of a series. It seemed hard to find time to read, but whenever I picked them up, they were hard to put down. I’m eager to read more, but I don’t want to get burnt out, so I’ll probably snack on some Philip Pullman before coming back to Temeraire.
I was cleaning out my old bookmarks and found one to a Which Serenity Character Are You? quiz that I had planned to take. I think they should’ve used Firefly instead of Serenity in the title, but oh well. It looks like I’m Kaylee. She was my favorite character. I think I related to her the most. It may be time to get those DVDs out again.
Your results:
You are Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)
Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)
80%
Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)
60%
Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command)
45%
Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic)
45%
Wash (Ship Pilot)
35%
River (Stowaway)
30%
Derrial Book (Shepherd)
25%
Inara Serra (Companion)
20%
A Reaver (Cannibal)
10%
Alliance
10%
Jayne Cobb (Mercenary)
5%
You are good at fixing things.
You are usually cheerful.
You appreciate being treated
with delicacy and specialness.
I finally managed to finish another book. I don’t know why that seems so hard to do lately. This time it was Timeline by Michael Crichton. I’ve never read one of his books before, but I vaguely remember hearing about this one when it came out.
Timeline book is about time travel, which can be an interesting but headache–inducing topic in science fiction. There are some academics involved in an archaeological dig. One member of the team gets trapped in the past and sends a message for help. It’s up to the remaining members of the team to go back and help him. I enjoyed the first part of this book more than the rest. Once they went back in time was when I started to not like it as much. It seems like that should have been the most enjoyable part of the book for me. There were times where I didn’t realize what I had just read and didn’t care enough to go back and re-read it. What I do remember was good. I think I’ll watch the movie too.
The Sword and Laser is a book club for fantasy and science fiction books. I think I first heat about it on CNET’s Buzz Out Loud podcast. The Sword and Laser was started by one former host and one current host of Buzz Out Loud.
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