Over Christmas, I did get in a little bit of fiction reading, most of it in the form of advance reading copies from Tor and another publishers. One was Wolf’s Empire:Gladiator, by Claudia Christian and Morgan Grant Buchanan, which will be released in June and which is filled with action, aliens, incredible treachery and double-dealing and is the kick-off volume of a series [don’t say I didn’t warn you]. Another was Faller, by Will McIntosh [from Tor next October], which has an almost whimsical SF premise presented in a most factual manner and which begins with a man waking up with no recollection of who he is, and only two objects in his hands. One is a toy paratrooper and the other a photograph of him and an unknown woman, on which he has scrawled symbols with his own blood — and the cut he made for the blood is still bleeding, not to mention that he and others are marooned on a section of a city floating in an ocean of air. As for non-fiction, one of my Christmas presents was what if? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, which I found both amusing and strangely informative. The other book I found truly fascinating was Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, most accurately billed as a brief history of humankind, a very well-written but quite provocative work.

2 thoughts on “”

  1. Wine Guy says:

    I gave Randall Munroe’s book as an Xmas present to my father: he has 3 degrees in various forms of chemistry. He’s read through the book three times since Xmas and spent the better part of two weekends trying to work out the solutions on his own to some of the questions.

    His verdict: “This Munroe guy’s pretty smart.”

    A TED talk by Munroe about his “What if” blod and book:
    https://www.ted.com/talks/randall_munroe_comics_that_ask_what_if?language=en

  2. Hi from Down Under! Thanks so much for taking the time to read our book. Very much appreciated : )
    Best,
    Morgan Buchanan

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