Re: WWW:Wake

It’s so long since I invoked the 150 page rule, I think it’s time to restate it. Life is short. If you start reading a book, that doesn’t mean you have to finish it. Honest. The book won’t care. Sometimes, even though I’m not exactly enthralled, I feel obliged to give a book more of […]

Re: Od Magic

I’m not sure what’s more amazing about the first chapter of Od Magic, by Patricia McKillip: the appearance of Od, a giantess with mice in her hair; or the successful execution of a 12-page flashback. We meet Brenden Vetch about to enter a magical door under a cobbler’s shoe. He thinks back to how miserable […]

Re: Accelerando

I’m about to insert one large grain of salt into the 150 page rule. (Ouch.) The rule sounds generalized, but the results are individualized. There are books I can’t finish that you may love. Take Accelerando, by Charles Stross. Please.

Re: Odyssey

Considering my resistance to children in stories, I was beginning to worry I was being too much of a curmudgeon. But I can see I have some learning to do if I want to be nearly as grumpy as Gregory McAllister. The dominant voice in Odyssey, by Jack McDevitt, Mac is an editor with a […]

Re: The Accidental Time Machine

If you’d like a taste of The Accidental Time Machine, by Joe Haldeman, it’s worth listening to this interview from November 2006. He gives a great reading from the first chapters, in which Matt Fuller, lab assistant and sometime grad student at MIT, stumbles on a calibrator that’s taking tiny little jumps into the future. […]

Re: Halting State

When an army of Orcs rob a bank, you’re know you’re in for a good time. So who thinks it’s worthwhile to raid the central bank of the gameworld Avalon Four? Sue, an Edinburgh cop, Elaine, a forensic auditor, and Jack, a gaming programmer, are called together to find out. Throw in corporate backstabbing, terror […]