![]() ![]() The death of Mike and the Professor were both pointless and contrived.Heinlein was unaware of the uncanny valley, so this is forgivable, but Mike, powerful as he was, wouldn't be able to so easily create a believable human facsimile.Everything is still done with printouts and hardware with circuitry so large it can still be damaged by rogue insects. He describes them merely as faster versions of 1960s computers. Heinlein's description of futuristic computers is pretty uninspired.The idea that the Earth had the technology to build interplanetary spaceships, but didn't have a way to safely stop incoming bogies that can't perform evasive maneuvers was difficult to believe.Why was Mike equipped so well when he was just supposed to run the catapult and basic systems of the moon? Shouldn't the Earth computers have been far more impressive? ![]() The likelihood that Mike would become the first sentient AI without any notice from scientists or researchers seems especially slim.It's interesting to hear about the various marriage systems put in place to handle a population that's only 1/10th female. ![]()
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![]() Zeno is a shy child, orphaned after his father is killed in World War II, who goes on to serve in the Korean War. Anna is a young orphan living in Constantinople before the Ottoman siege Omeir is a Bulgarian boy born with a cleft lip who is enlisted into the Ottoman troops. The book begins by introducing the five main characters and Aethon’s story, as fictitiously discovered by the real-life Greek philosopher Diogenes. These chapters jump from character to character, switching perspectives throughout. The 24 folios of Aethon’s story introduce each chapter. ![]() All the plots are connected through the Cloud Cuckoo Land folios, a fictitious Ancient Greek story that follows Aethon as he endeavors to find a utopia known as Cloud Cuckoo Land. ![]() ![]() The characters are: Anna and Omeir in and around 15th-century Constantinople Zeno and Seymour whose plots converge in 2020 and Konstance, who lives in the future. The plot follows five main characters through three timelines. ![]() ![]() ![]() I want the heat, and the light, and I want the burn.” I want you, Kaylee, like I’ve never wanted anything. And I always knew that if I reached out-if I tried to touch you-I’d get burned. You’re this beautiful ball of fire spitting sparks out at the world, burning fiercely, holding back the dark by sheer will. You’re the brightest thing I’ve ever seen, Kaylee. I was afraid to even breathe for fear of missing a single word. Tears stood in my eyes, but I was afraid to let them fall. I tried so hard.” His voice cracked on the last word, and my heart cracked with it. With my brother-one of few people in the whole world I still gave a damn about. But by then, you were getting serious with Nash. Then you helped me with Addison, even though it nearly got you killed-I nearly got you killed-and I started to understand how special you are. All I knew was that I wanted to be near you. Then I met you, and at first I didn’t understand what had happened. I was losing myself, and I didn’t even care. And the worst part is that it wasn’t even scary. ![]() I was starting to slip into the darkness. “Only two years dead, and it was getting harder for me to feel…anything. ![]() ![]() ![]() But part of the charm of Nothing but Blackened Teeth is that it moves along at a rapid pace, giving it the feel of a TV horror anthology episode. Their backstories are well thought out and interconnected, but it feels like the main threat manifests just as we’re really digging into their conflicts. My one criticism is that I kinda wish the novella spent a little more time with the characters before everything goes to hell. ![]() It ends up being very meta, in a Scream-movie sense. Cat is very aware of horror story tropes, and she is constantly pointing out where her companions are making all the wrong choices. It is narrated from the point of view of Cat, one of the guests and a woman with a history of mental illness. Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a very fast-paced story. That bride does not rest, however, and she is looking for more companions… ![]() One of them had heard stories that a jilted bride had been buried in the basement of the house, and that every year a maiden had been sacrificed to keep her company. Those tensions are nothing, however, compared to the threat that awaits them all. Though the day starts pleasant enough, there is history between members of the group, and tensions start to build quickly. The premise will summarize why it caught my attention in the first place: a group of friends arrange to rent out a Heian-era mansion in Japan for the wedding of two of them. That makes it a quick read, and I finished it over the course of two nights. It is a very short book, really a novella, of 124 pages. ![]() ![]() The intrigues of past and present merge as Claire learns that repercussions of the war still resonate throughout the complicated city she now calls home. As their relationship develops, Claire realizes that her lover is hiding a devastating history to which her employers are linked. She soon begins an affair with the Chens' chauffeur, an embattled Will Truesdale. Ten years later, Claire Pendleton, a provincial newlywed, arrives in Hong Kong and lands a plush job teaching piano to the uninterested daughter of Victory and Melody Chen, an elite Chinese couple. ![]() As they and others struggle to survive, betrayals ripple through their fragile community. Exotic Hong Kong takes center stage in this sumptuous novel, s. Read 2,990 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. ![]() But the invasion of Japanese forces threatens their relationship: Will is sent to an internment camp, while Trudy remains on the outside forced to make dangerous alliances with the Japanese gendarmerie. Read 2,990 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Amid this startling collision of Eastern and Western cultures, Trudy Liang, a bold Eurasian socialite, and Will Truesdale, a newly arrived Englishman, begin a passionate affair. Impoverished local workers brush against a British expatriate society flourishing under illusions of wealth, grace and superiority. In 1941, Hong Kong is a bustling city under British rule. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Subsequently a performance of the poem appeared on the DVD of the tour - Escarpment Blues. In the spring of 2005 Rideout joined Sarah Harmer to read a commissioned poem on Harmer’s I Love the Escarpment Tour to draw attention to damage being done to the Niagara Escarpment by ongoing quarrying. In the fall of 2005 she released her first full-length book of poetry Delineation, exploring the lives and loves of comic book super-heroines, which was praised as a “tantalizing, harrowing read.” It has been featured on CBC Radio’s Bandwidth with Alan Neal and Definitely Not the Opera with Sook-Yin Lee. ![]() ![]() In 2006 she was named the Poet Laureate of Lake Ontario by the Lake Ontario Waterkee Tanis Rideout is a poet and writer living and working in Toronto. Tanis Rideout is a poet and writer living and working in Toronto. ![]() ![]() ![]() Sir John Mortimer was a barrister, playwright and novelist. Wodehouse will love, sees the magician of the Old Bailey at his unpredictable and brilliant best. Why are the residents pursuing their vendetta against the Timson boy quite so strongly? Could they have a sinister reason for not wanting him on their street? John Mortimer's hilarious Rumpole novel, which fans of Sherlock Holmes and P.G. And pretty soon he realizes something fishy is going on. Not that Hilda agrees, of course, but she's too busy completing her memoirs to dissuade him from taking an interest when one of the Timson children is given an ASBO for playing football in the street. ![]() The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole - a delightful novel starring John Mortimer's iconic character 'One of the great comic creations of modern times' Evening Standard ASBOs may be the pride and joy of New Labour, but they don't cut much ice with Horace Rumpole - he takes the old-fashioned view that if anyone is going to be threatened with a restriction of their liberty then some form of legal proceeding ought to be gone through first. ![]() ![]() ![]() More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. ![]() The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. From the author of 1491-the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas-a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. ![]() ![]() ![]() Now Jack is on the run, hoping to avoid the feds long enough to rescue his daughter, Sophie, from her maternal grandfather, a suspected terrorist in Palestine. ![]() Jack Sommers was just an ordinary accountant from Chicago - that is until his wife passed away, his young daughter was kidnapped, and he became the main suspect in an $88 million embezzlement case. Balson, author of Once We Were Brothers, Saving Sophie is the powerful story of the lengths a father will go through to protect his daughter and an action-packed thriller that will take you on an unforgettable journey of murder and deception, testing the bonds of family and love. ![]() ![]() ![]() While his peers flip through the pages of Murder Weekly ("Love - Rape - Revenge!"), barter for girls, drink liquor (Thunderbolt), and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink liquor (single-malt whiskey), and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. From behind the wheel of their Honda City car, Balram's new world is a revelation. ![]() ![]() Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life-having nothing but his own wits to help him along.īorn in the dark heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for his village's wealthiest man, two house Pomeranians (Puddles and Cuddles), and the rich man's (very unlucky) son. Introducing a major literary talent, The White Tiger offers a story of coruscating wit, blistering suspense, and questionable morality, told by the most volatile, captivating, and utterly inimitable narrator that this millennium has yet seen.īalram Halwai is a complicated man. ![]() |