After finishing the Commonwealth Saga, by the same author, I started reading the next series: The Void Trilogy. As in the aforementioned saga, the story does not end in any way at the end of the first book, you have to read all three books to reach the end, which effectively makes this another huge monolithic story, not a series or saga.

Set in an even more technological advanced future, but in the same Commonwealth universe, it depicts the interactions between a powerful pseudo-religious void worshipers, ANA (a quantum artificial intelligence where people download when the are tired of living and the next evolutionary phase of the SI) and its competing factions, the different alien races and the void, which is a dark impregnable sphere in the middle of the galaxy that only some psychic humans seem to penetrate.

The style is the same, the writing as almost flawless as before. I do think that P.F. Hamilton is one of the greatest sci-fi writers I've read, up there with Tolkien and Herbert.

I have seen the movie on TV a while ago, but didn't catch the start, so I never knew what the name was. Finally, someone in a Romanian book club found the translated print here and reminded me of it and told me that it was based on a book. I've decided to read it in its native language, a bit scared that I would understand nothing of it, but the French is pretty easy to understand. Maybe because the author is Belgian :)

The story of Fear and Trembling is about a Belgian girl, born in Japan (just like the author), employed in a big Japanese corporation as a translator. Due to her inability to understand the local customs and the irrational feelings of her employers, she is demoted time after time until she ends up replacing toilet paper in the water closets.

The book itself is not meant as a comedy. The main character sees everything with a stoic detachment, analysing both her feelings and the feelings of others, trying to make sense of a world that she can't seem to fit in. It made me understand more than ever the illusory nature of reality. Both her and the Japanese were occupying the same space and time, were observing the same events, but their realities were completely different. That clash of incongruous realities is the core of this small novel.

A bit too French for my taste, not in the language, but in the endless repetitions of metaphoric interpretations of the same event, that overwording of inner thoughts that makes French writing sound pompous. However, I did enjoy the book, I recommend it to anyone wanting a light and distracting reading.

This is a funny little story about a bunch of low end kids finding a way of letting everyone build whatever electronic device they want for almost free. The lead character is a broker, getting more and more terrified about how this simple thing destroys markets and the capitalist economy. In the end, he is to be replaced by electronic neural networks that perform flawlessly.

It seems Peter Hamilton has some issues with capitalism as there are always some characters criticising it in his books. However, in this particular story, the ending can be only one, where humans are completely replaced by the low cost electronics. It does not destroy communism, it replaces humanity.

My guess is that this is bound to happen sooner or later. Already software glitches are more frequent than hardware ones. When is someone going to realize that we, humans, have the worst hardware possible, even by biological standards. And we're only getting fatter, slower and less efficient by the day. Would I mind being replaced by a race of star faring robotic human replicas? No way.

I've just finished reading the book and, while it was the usual easy read, it wasn't as much fun as I expected it to be. The two deaths in the book that were announced so dramatically are actually four, but none of the people that have actually mattered in the story. Their deaths are also irrelevant to the plot.

You see, the entire attraction of Harry Potter, for me, was the many possibilities opened by the magical universe in the books. But really, after the first and second book, there was no novelty, only the drama of Voldemort and the condescending moral crap that was always thrown in the face of the curious reader, the kind of reader that goes "what if..." whenever a new spell is described or some principle of magic is explained.

Bottom line: Harry and the kids wonder in fear and confusion the whole book, only to discover that it all was some kind of master plan and to luckily (or randomly) escape death. The passion killer ending chapter, where Harry is a father of three is not that great either.

I will be watching the 5th Potter movie someday soon, but I believe I will do it for the special effects only. Come to think of it, I can hardly remember what happened in book 5 anyway. Just as the books, only the first two films are worth anything.

This Hamilton guy is a serious writer, dude! Just having finished the first volume of this story, Pandora's Star, I was blogging desperately about how the scifi writer manages a huge book, with many characters and with colliding story arches. Now, I have finished the second and last part, Judas Unchained, which I personally think is not so good as the first, but still a damn solid scifi.

I did find myself feeling a bit of pleasure seeing how the author fails to escape cliche in the end of the story and the story lines just become accelerated and the actors predictable. But after writing this humongous book, I guess the inner emotions could not be stilled anymore and the ending had to lose some cohesion.

Bottom line: a very good book, one that shows how stories should be written: with a considerate, serious, prolonged effort to give the tale logic as well as create emotion in the soul of the reader. I would have gone for a different ending, but hey, I don't write anymore, I have no right to complain!

Funny enough, I was considering starting writing again. I even had this story in my head and I was considering the three parts it must have, maybe even three books. But how will I ever write three books, with my notorious impatience and lack of interest for details?

And then I've stumbled upon this book, Pandora's Star. Just the first part of a larger, two books, story, it amounted to 2Mb of text. That's like four slim books or two large ones. The author didn't even bother making the first part stand alone, I mean it is not a book that you can read and know it's over, but it can still be continued. It just stops in mid story and you have to read the other book (Judas Unleashed) to understand anything. So what this actually is... is a single story that has the size of about five normal sized novels.

The plot is also interesting, with many distinct arches that touch occasionally within a coherent world. Placed somewhere in the 24Th century, the human kind has spread to hundreds of worlds using artificial wormholes and has found the secret of rejuvenation. More than this, electronic implants make death obsolete, as anyone can be cloned and their memory restored even if their body is destroyed. So everything is nice and beautiful until they find a Hive-type alien who considers any other species a threat to be eliminated and the peace loving Commonwealth must now do battle with an expanding mind with no conscience, limits or the concept of pain.

I've just started Judas Unleashed, but my reading will probably be slower this time around. A very nice book, a bit humbling for any aspiring writer, it will hopefully end at least as well as it started.

I really enjoyed the Warcraft and Starcraft ministories in the game and I was happy to hear that books have been written that take place in those parallel worlds. One of these is Starcraft Uprising.

I am disapointed to say that the book sucks. It is like a fast forward screenwrite test, with ideas that are both boring and badly conceived. The entire book can be read online, but I've lost the link, but I tell you this: it is not worth it. And the action takes place just after humans discover the Zerg, but have no idea what they are, a prequel to the Starcraft storyline.

I have finally finished reading this book. I've tried reading it in Italian together with English, but after a while I've only read the Italian version. My first impression was that publicists do more than just print books. There were several passages that were missing from the English translation, for example. I also felt that they were related in that they were more aggressive against the idea of the Church. Although I can't say for sure.

I also had difficulty reading the book after seeing the movie. I've heard a lot of people describing the movie as a pale imitation of the book. Bullshit! The movie was great: the adaptation, the casting, the music, the directing. The only thing lacking from the movie was the political dimension, the battle between religious factions and the description of the political situation of the time. Which is a lot, but is not really relevant to the idea of the book.

So, if you have seen the movie, you might find it difficult to read the book. If you haven't yet, I suggest you read the book and certainly watch the movie afterwards. There is a certain magic when Sean Connery's accent overlaps with Ennio Morricone's music :)

Anyway, the book describes not only the murders and the process of finding the killer, but also a world where books are copied by hand by people who can speak Latin and Greek, but not the vernacular, the language of the people, then they are hidden in great libraries with access restricted by religion. A time where the inquisition's main purpose is to get rid of troublesome Christian cults with their own interpretation of religion, gathering momentum and followers just like a political party would. A world where the Pope and the Emperor have great powers and fight each other using any means necessary. A period when the universities are slowly replacing the abbeys as places of learning.

All in all it is a good book. I don't think the Italian language brought a lot more to the book. I was quite satisfied with the English translation and there isn't much word play in the original text. There are some passages where the author seems unable to stop listing items, making them tedious, but overall the style is easy to follow and the logic good. The end moral is that the pursuit of knowledge is more important that the knowledge itself and that evil lurks even in the most holly of hearts.

Space Mowgli is a short novel that describes, much like Solaris, the first contact with an alien race. There is a twist, though, as the alien is a human kid, modified to survive on a planet by unknown beings with unimaginable power.

You can immediately separate Russian scifi from American scifi.
The Russian space exploration expeditions are mostly civilian, led by the smartest and more rational scientist around, acting as the brain of the expedition; the characters are unique and react unpredictably, led by their own feelings or beliefs; their biggest problems are bureaucratic or social and mostly internal in the group.
In contrast, American scifi usually deals with military expeditions led by a charismatic or at least authoritative figure, acting as the heart of the expedition; the characters usually act within a strict set of rules which, if they chose to bend, they do as a group rather than as individuals, their greatest issues being external or technical.
I personally prefer the Russian version.

This particular book explores the way humans understand their own humanity, rather than a true interaction with an alien race. The aliens are there, but they choose not to be characters in the story. Each human character has their own view of things and of how things should go on. Reading the book, one is forced to evaluate humanity together with the crew of the expedition and the ending becomes irrelevant. The inner exploration of the reader himself becomes the story.

Bottom line: nice and introverted. Easy to read and rather short. Lacking a conclusion because their is no need for one. The Strugatski brothers considered this story the closest to their hearts.

I have been reading this very nice blog (in Romanian) called BookBlog, where people talk about and review books. They had a nice initiative of getting people together to swap books. I've decided to go and see how it is.

The result? Man, I'm old! And if so much opinionated and energetic youth, as were the people that came to the meeting, did somehow manage to infest me with their vitality, someone inevitably bumped a chair into me then excused themselves using the polite form of addressing your elders.

The meeting took place at Carturesti, a nice book shop/tea shop in Bucharest, one that has a very nice atmosphere, but lousy service. You see, the whole thing was organised with the approval of the people at Carturesti, but when we got there, no one knew we were coming and were very apprehensive about us moving tables around. Then they've decided to bring a big mug of fruit infusion (improperly called tea) to all of us, as it was too much the trouble of making individual tea pots for each request. I was bent on drinking mate tea and I hate boiled fruits, so it did upset me a lot.

But back to the meeting. The layout (a big makeshift table) did not encourage group discussion, but rather a group of small discussions. I've talked a little with the nice girl next to me, until a lot of her friends came and make it awkward. They all seemed to know each other, more or less, making me feel like an outsider. And I was outside everything you can imagine: size, age group, book interests.

Yes, the books everyone brought were mainly taken from the second hand book shops, not that mine was different, but I could find no single book that caught my eye. Eventually I bought a Strugatski book and left them my beloved "Fisherman's Hope". I do hope someone that knows how to appreciate it fished it home. Or I could have gotten A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, by David M. Friedman, which was a huge success, although I doubt anyone took it home.

Eventually I got bored, talked a little to the organizer, a very nice guy from BookBlog. He has what it takes to make it in life... that particular energy that is found in both successful businessmen and sales people. Then I left.

At least I had the opportunity to read some more on the way back and at the Pizza Hut place, for now I return to my designated purpose for today, viewing as many movies as possible before the wife comes back. Muhahahahhaa!

Update 2020 - most of the links here are dead, the things they referred to long forgotten. So much for "once you put it on the Internet it never disappears".

Having reached the 200^th entry, I really wanted to write something cool, something interesting, something that sticks (and it ain't shit).

I thought of blogging Kartoo, a very nice - albeit slow - visual search engine that shows not only relevant links, but also the context items that link different pages.

But Kartoo is not personal enough, so I switched to YouTube, thought about blogging (yet another) female vocalist nu-metal with goth overtones band like the Italian band Exilia. Or something else, like the Turkish band maNga, or the Spanish Dead Stoned or Demiurgo. But this is a blog, not a video/music site.

Then I thought about programming; there must be something in the three projects I am working on worth blogging about, or at least something important like Don't use the .NET Random class when concerned about security. But then again, the blog is full of (I hope) interesting programming hints.

What else is there? Ranting about bycicle lanes the city hall is building on the sidewalk and on which old people are happy to walk (slowly) without losing themselves;
interesting conceptual games like BoomShine, Straight Dice or Stickman Fight and how they can be improved;
the BBC Baghdad Navigator, to show you the distribution and timeline of Baghdad bombings;
the Lilium song for the anime Elfen Lied;
the Coma article on Wikipedia (I didn't write it);
coming improvements in the Sift3 algorithm;
InuYasha manga reaching chapter 500;
the new Google/Kartoo/Wikipedia searches for any selected text in the blog;
how I am reading Il Nome de la Rosa and The Name of the Rose in the same time, trying to grasp more of the Italian language;
Gwoemul, a very nice South Korean film...

No, there is too much to choose and I can't decide. I think I will skip entry 200 entirely.

Clive Barker is a man of extraordinary imagination and, while HellRaiser is what people most know him for, I think his "young adult" books are what define him. And by this I don't mean sweaty teenager sex, but wonderful fantasy worlds that also have a tang of darkness and stories that have a conclusion beyond the idiotic morality taught to little children. They are also a bit more actual, without dwelling on feudal or anachronistic features like, say, Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. I liked "The Thief of Always" and I also enjoy, although not to the same extent, "Abarat".

Abarat is a magical series, much like a darker Alice in Wonderland, with two books currently having been released. The classic "girl enters magical world" is expanded to the point of bursting with the description of the 25 isles of Abarat, one for each hour (including the 25th), each with their own features and crazy-weird inhabitants. Abarat is also a twisted mirror of Earth, with coca-farma conglomerates trying to destroy the magic in the world.

You can find a site at www.thebooksofabarat.com, very nicely done, that teases the imagination with flash animations and excerpts from the books.
I've read a review that compared Abarat to Harry Potter and even declared that it is the writer's alternative to it. I dare say that is completely wrong. The worlds of Clive Barker are about finding your way through your own inner power and imagination, whether you choose the path of Light or of Darkness. Purpose is what defines a Barker hero, not taking sides.

Bottom line, a nice book, clearly well written (I like Barker's style), and the storyline is detailed and well thought of. I may not be in a wonderland mood right now, but it is the best book I've read in the last month. There was an attempt to create a movie based on Abarat schedulled for 2005, but, according to the Wikipedia entry for Abarat, creative differences killed the project.

I enjoyed this book. It is the fantasy story of a medieval land where magic is seen as the most sinful of things, all through the eyes of a woman that falls in love with a magician.

At first, I thought the ideas were nice, as the entire plot reminded me of Berserk , the latest chapters of the manga, and so I upped my expectations a bit too far. Then I realised that, even if the book was written in an even and professional way, I wasn't getting caught into the story. Was it because I couldn't relate to a woman? No, that wasn't it. After a few more uncomfortable pages I realised that the thing missing from the book were true emotional descriptions. The lead character was almost cold, rational as very few women (or any people of that age) would be. The scenes were detailed enough in describing whereabouts or scenery, even facial expressions or human interactions, but no feelings.

I thought to myself "Damn! This is a book as I would write if I started writing one". Funny enough, after I finished the book, the author was described as an American mother of three, who writes books while being a software engineer. I am curious of the percentage of software people that have a lack of emotional vocabulary like I do.

The ending of the book was also slightly disappointing, as I couldn't relate to any of the characters and their actions. The reasons for the story to end like that also eluded me. However, as I wrote in my first sentence, I enjoyed the book, as it was well written. I don't think I will read more of the series.

Rarely have I had the honor to read such a boring book. It took me forever to finish it, as you can see, only so I can blog about how unreadable it is. It's not like Iain Banks doesn't have the good ideas that make a book great, but he has no idea on how to use them.

The entire book had the feel it was patched together from pieces of text written with completely different moods by different people. The ideas shifted from one to the other without any sense. The science was ludicrous. And worst of all, the ending had that wonderful "huh?" feeling, when all the plot finally ends just as boringly as it has begun.

And all this in a book that talks about the Universe in the far future, with great empires spanning galaxies and fighting epic battles with weird technologies. I appreciate the effort, but not the result. The book seems like something a writer would do and throw away and a publicist would pick up from the garbage and publish.

Caught in a desire to be more scientist-like I've borrowed the book "I Am a Mathematician" by Norbert Wiener from a friend of mine. While being a rather old book (written in 1956), it was exactly what I was looking for: a book that described in layman's terms what the life of a true scientist is like and how he thinks.

I think the book itself was rather boring, but the world described and the way this guy was thinking really opened my eyes to things I wish I understood in my early teens. He sees, for example, the way sciences come together in one big thing called science. Even if he was a mathematician, he worked in physics, psychology and electronics, because he saw the way they worked together, not as separate unconnected subjects. He was thorough, focused and science minded. He went to the beach and thought about equations to define the movements of waves as they break against the shore.

My conclusion is that it is a wonderful insight in the mind of a scientist. It is not a popular science book, it is an autobiography, so it might get a little boring, but it also puts everything into context.