If Adam Nimoy's name sounds familiar to you, it most likely is you recognized his last name. Yes, he is Leonard Nimoy's son and, ironically, he sounds as happy as the son of Spock probably would have sounded. However, My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life is not, as one might expect, a whining account of what it means to be the offspring of a celebrity, but a heart wrenching anecdotal account of Adam's personal life, going through parenting, addiction, divorce and trying to pull himself together. The book is a collection of very short and stand alone chapters which feel like, and probably are, Alcoholic Anonymous stories about himself, just as raw and open as one might expect from the floor of a meeting of people following the 12 step program.

My personal opinion is that I absolutely loved it. As any good autobiography, it teaches something beyond a mere story, it reveals. I enjoyed the book not as a Star Trek fan, but as a human being. This stuff is not easy to get, at least not for me. I recommend it highly.

Not as complex as Daemon, Kill Decision still manages to impress, thrill and terrify with the very believable subject matter. As for the other two previous books by Daniel Suarez also covers the subject of technology disrupting the political and economical makeup of our society, this time focusing on unmanned autonomous killing drones and it also draws ideas from multiple very real and very interesting scientific fields.

I don't want to spoil anything, but it is mostly a book about the good underdogs fighting the all powerful bad guys, so in that sense it is most like FreedomTM than Daemon. It doesn't have a twist in the middle of the story, either, changing the perspective of the subject matter, it is a simple and by the book (pardon my pun) technological thriller. Perhaps that sounds a little disappointing, but it was a fascinating book and I finished it in mere days while also travelling abroad and visiting Italian cities.

I highly recommend it, not so much for the story directly, as for the multitude of subjects it touches, the sense of eye opening knowledge and the terrifying feeling that everything that happens in the book is not only realistic, but possibly happening as we read.

FreedomTM is the sequel, or rather the second part, of Daniel Suarez's Daemon, which I've reviewed previously. While Daemon spooked me with its realism, FreedomTM does away with all that and changes both pace, scope and plot. I guess Suarez had this in his head from the beginning of starting the book, but I didn't see it coming. Be warned, if you have not read Daemon, this review is going to have some serious spoilers.

You see, from a technological thriller, the book directly goes into socio-economic commentary and from a dumb AI engine that treats the world as a computer game, we get an Agent Smith Emperor of Dune kind of thing, which recognizes humanity as the scourge it is and assumes the role of the solution. Suspension of disbelief is almost impossible as you see "the good guys" surviving death (repeatedly), the bad guys being bad just because they can and being defeated with deus ex machina kind of solutions, and technological solutions solving every problem humanity ever had or could have. FreedomTM is the software developer's wet dream, where the algorithm that rules all other algorithms is not only possible, but implemented and bug free.

That doesn't mean that the book is bad. Far from it. I liked it a lot. However, compared with Daemon, it's like an American blockbuster movie cop out from a situation that is dramatic and full of tension: everything is going to be alright. Instead of maintaining the tension and having the reader on the edge of the seat, so to speak, everything gets explained in the first part of the book and the rest is just dedicated to epic conflict. Oh, and some completely unnecessary and quite difficult to believe romance. In fact, quite paradoxically, I will suggest you do not read FreedomTM immediately after Daemon. Instead, live with the daemon inside of your head, let it make you think about possibilities and wonder about what could be coming next, then, maybe, read the second part.

I read this short novel from start to end in under a day. Osamu Dazai writes from the point of view of a sociopathic young man who cannot seem to understand the human condition and fears all people around him, mostly because he expects to be found out at every moment. The title of the book can be translated in several ways, the English one relates to the protagonist's feelings of losing one's humanity, while the literal translation reads as "disqualified from being human", implying a societal judgement. Imagine a Japanese version of The Stranger, by Albert Camus, and you get a good picture of the plot and feel of the book. Both books were written in the same period, more or less, but while Camus probably imagined the character, many believe Dazai was talking about himself - he committed suicide soon after.

No Longer Human is the second best rated Japanese book and was adapted in movie and manga. It is difficult to imagine those being better than the dry accounting of the inner turmoil of the character, starting as a little boy who devises "clowning" as a method of passing the test of humanity, outwardly fun and good natured and inwardly terrified of being discovered as a fraud and punished by the society of strange human beings that he cannot understand or empathize with. I highly recommend it.

I have been watching horror movies since I was six and read books of all sort through the years, but rarely have I seen something so truly scary as Daemon. Daniel Suarez manages to convey terror not by upgrading the villain, but by making it mundane. The daemon is not an all knowing Artificial Intelligence that takes over the world, but a stupid game engine run by a logic tree. The ease with which something like this could be created makes the book truly terrifying, particularly for me, who has actually thought of the weakness of humans when faced with decisions and pondered a world where machines make the decisions not because they want to rule us, but because we don't want to choose.

But there is more to this book than its subject. It is actually very well written and that is remarkable considering it is Suarez' first book. I will read the sequel to Daemon, Freedom™ as soon as I can. I loved the attention to detail, not a descriptive boring series of useless trivia, but a close focus on what makes people tick and how technology falls into place to fill the gaps that our failings leave. On the cover of the new book that Daniel Suarez wrote there is a quote that I feel is totally true: he is a true heir to Michael Crichton.

Bastard!! is an adaptation of the manga with the same name. The manga itself is ongoing, but very slowly. At the moment of the writing it had 138 chapters. The genre of it is magical fights in an action comedy kind of style. Bob Samurai has a video review of it.

For myself I have to say that I had fun watching it, in a mindless "I come from work and I don't feel like doing anything" kind of way, but it wasn't that special in plot, animation or feeling. The "anti-hero" is actually the typical hero that does incredible good deeds for the love of women and the biggest source of humor are the few lines peppered throughout the episodes that break the fourth wall. Stuff like "What would have been the purpose of defeating that guy when we were off screen" or "a handsome hero like myself couldn't possible lose to one as ugly as you". The manga is a little bit more about the scoundrel nature of the main character - as it should be, there are 70 chapters (the Host of Shadows) covered by mere 6 episodes of the OVA - but it is also rather different from the anime: more story detail, more types of magic, etc. Probably the OVA, as quick dirty fun as it was, is not a very good one, since it relays only bits and pieces of the manga.

One can watch the anime at AnimeDreaming, read the manga at MangaHere and watch BobSamurai's video review on YouTube.

Another book that can easily be found in audio format on Librivox and YouTube, Creatures of the Abyss (also known as The Listeners), by Murray Leinster, is a slow mid 20th century sci-fi that reads as a cross between Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft and one of those books about people drinking and falling in love on boats in South America. More Verne, though.

The thing that made me continue listening to it was its way of depicting the mentality from back then. Written in 1961, it tells a story of people who, faced with extraordinary circumstances, first evade formulating a theory in their own head, for fear of contravening their own set view of the world, then - forced by events - they do allow themselves to formulate a theory, but keep it to themselves for fear of ridicule, even when they see other people considering the same things, then they proceed to test those theories by themselves and only then share them with others. Compared with the modern culture of sharing half formed thoughts before they can constitute complete phrases, it is quite different. It is also fun to read about people that think Venus is a large ocean planet, as is Jupiter, with a gravity four times that of Earth.

However, while it was interesting in a sociological way and good as a background for other activities, its slow pace might feel excruciating for the casual reader. More than half of it is more about boats and sailing and catching fish. The science fiction part is slowly creeping into the story and the climax is in the last chapter alone. Maybe my association of the book with Lovecraft is strained, as the only commonality is touching on tentacled abyssal creatures that might appear disturbing to human sensibilities and certainly the elements of horror are very rare in Creatures of the Abyss. The book does feel more real, though, as it goes through this slow process of examination of evidence and formulating hypotheses and testing them before jumping to conclusions. It depicts the beginning of the modern era of scientific thought, back when it was respectable and desirable to be thinking like that.

Bottom line: Slow paced, but very well written, you should at least try it, since it is so readily available. You can even listen to it right here, on this post.

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A day ago there was a "leak" of three TV series pilots. I know, it sounds like someone out there is pissing TV series, but a look at most of them and you start seeing the truth of it. I don't really believe they were stolen or anything, either. I think they were deliberately distributed to gauge viewer reaction. The three shows in question are Blindspot, Lucifer and Minority Report. What do they all have in common? Law enforcement. It gets ridiculous from here on, you've been warned.

Blindspot is about a young woman (lovely Jaimie Alexander - the actress playing the Asgardian warrior Lady Sif in the Thor Marvel universe) found naked, without memories and tattooed all over her body. The tattoos are clues about future crimes and our Jane Doe helps the FBI solve them. The series has the obvious hallmarks of the post Lost era, with just enough artificial mystery to keep one guessing, but not really caring. Anyway, all I can say is that if you make a show about Jaimie Alexander found naked you should bloody show her naked! Stupid Americans! The French should start remaking these shows and demonstrate how it is done!

Lucifer is about... the devil. He comes to Earth because he got tired of ruling Hell - which was his divine punishment from his father, God. And by Earth I mean Los Angeles. Yes, very subtle. He teams up with another lovely (Lauren German) who is a police detective. Why, you might ask? Devil may care, he just loves solving crimes and has daddy issues. The show is so ridiculously pompous that it raises hackles. It reminds me of the well deservedly cancelled The Transporter series.

Minority Report is based on a movie about "precogs" used to stop crime by predicting it, leading to the paradox of arresting and incarcerating people because of crimes they did not commit. Yet. I haven't watched it. Yet. But since the movie was based itself on the works of famous paranoid sci-fi writer Phillip K. Dick, it is the only one that I have hopes for. Of course the detective will be a young attractive person, teamed with another young attractive person with some special power that helps solving some type of crisis, probably crimes and possibly related to terror attacks. I can see it... in the future...

Update: I was right. One of the precogs in the movie helps a young black female police detective to prevent crimes. This is a horrible perversion of the film, which ended with showing the precog system not working and putting innocent people in jail. In the series, the police is frustrated that the precog era has ended and is convinced that every released arrestee from the program would have become a killer. Yuck!

Another great Star Trek novel placed in the Kirk era, Star Trek Prime Directive keeps the reader/listener on the edge of their seat. It starts with a disgraced Kirk, a scattered crew and a scrapped Enterprise. It shows the dark, bureaucratic side of the Federation, cruel and merciless when you are not the lucky wearer of the golden captain uniform or, even better, an admiral. How did it come to this? The answer is both captivating, original and with deep roots in the Star Trek basic tenant: the Prime Directive.

I actually listened to the audiobook, also on YouTube (see embedded video), which was very well narrated. If I had any problems with the story was that it was clearly very biased. Kirk is always thinking of the poor alien species that are like humans, but seems to have no qualms to experiment with phaser fire and even slightly torture other alien beings if they are bug like. Also Spock seems very little a Vulcan in this.

Bottom line is that the idea was intriguing and original and the style of the writing was very good. One of the best ST novels so far.

Star Trek: Strangers from the Sky is an audiobook read by George Takei and Leonard Nimoy. While it is a typical ST The Original Series plot, with god like aliens, travel back in time to significant moments of Earth's history and a focus on high moral values that, in the end, save the day, I felt that it was a little bit more subtle, deeper than a typical episode of any of the series. Was it because of the introspection of the characters, or the wonderful narration of Nimoy and Takei, I do not know. What I can say is that I enjoyed listening to the story quite a lot and I recommend it highly for any Star Trek fan.

I also don't know if it is in the public domain or not, all I can say is that I listened to it on YouTube and so can you:
Of course you cannot listen to it on YouTube anymore. Some lawyers saw to that.

This is the third writing of Esther Friesner that I've read, after The Shunned Trailer and Druid's Blood, both excellent and funny, combining fantasy elements with the present or other realistic historical settings. Gnome Man's Land does the same thing, but I have to say I didn't find it as funny or as good as the others I mentioned. I also attempted to start Here Be Demons, another of her books, but couldn't really enjoy it enough to go past the first chapter. Probably she is one of those authors who, when they are good are really good and when they are not, well...

The book is the first of a trilogy starring Tim Desmond, a young boy of Irish descent who finds himself in a strange situation when the veil between our world and the land of the fey is punctured and more and more fantastic creatures go through. They come and attach themselves to mortals, as many of them are creatures who's very reason for existing is serving their masters. Stuff like banshees, Mongolian ancestors, goblins, kobolds, Greek demigodesses, Russian bath spirits, sprites, elves and so on and so on just sprout from the rupture, bringing annoyance and confusion more than anything. Tim somehow gets tricked into becoming the champion of the Fey on Earth and he does the job mainly because he feels all of these supernatural creatures need his help (plus the girl he secretly loves supports this and his banshee is a hot redhead to boot).

Some hilarity ensues, but often feeling a bit artificial, while the actions of the characters involved are simplistic, inconsistent and dragging on, like the author wanted to tell a joke and she ended up writing an entire book. The crises are not that good either, oscillating between childishly funny and dead bloody serious. The ending was disappointing as well, leaving a very traumatic event just in the wind, like an afterthought, pending Tim's recovery of some of his memory. I really wanted to like the book, too, but in the end I just forced myself to reach the end and I am confident I will not read the other two books in the series. I have some hopes for the Princesses series, which I understand is one of Friesner's better works.

If you were born before the 80s, Ready Player One is going to fill you with melancholy. Ernest Cline combines several classical young adult themes - like a battle versus an oppressive corporate evil, true and pure love, villainy and lack of honor defeated through friendship and good feelings - with (often obscure) geek memes of the 70s and 80s. If you are the kind of person who likes to impress by quoting lines from movies or telling of your adventures in games that are older than your children, this is the book for you. OK, I won't be mean, the book is going to be fun no matter when you were born, but the level of enjoyment may vary.

However, the book is still a young adult book at its core and, besides the overall message that you actually have to make an effort to reach your goals - an often neglected tidbit in young adult books and movies - it reads like one. Young heroes, with enough skill to pass through the challenges of the story, but awkward enough to also be endearing, manage to save the world through the power of their dedication and ideals. Also Chekhov's Gun has been used so much that it left gaping holes in the story. Amazing how random things in the story come perfectly together at the end. Let a bitter Harry Potterish aftertaste.

But let's start with the plot, which is pretty fun. It all happens in a dystopian world where energy reserves dwindled, gasoline became way too scarce and expensive, Elon Musk never happened and most people live their lives in a virtual world called OASIS, created by a brilliant yet reclusive visionary who made sure the system will remain secure and anonymous. Kind of like the Internet, but without the MPAA or the NSA. Yeah, it already sounds like an impossible dream, doesn't it? Well, the maker of the game world dies and leaves his entire estate (hundreds of billions of dollars and complete control over OASIS) to whoever finds the Easter Egg he his inside the game. The heroes of the story are young "egg hunters", while the villains are corporate drones who have been hired to find the egg for their company.

The writing style irked me a little. I know it is Cline's first book, and it certainly was a decent effort, but it had that way of explaining things that I call "fake past" in which the narrator explains things as if he is telling a story from the past. "The OASIS was...". Since this is supposed to happen in the future, it took a while until I could stop feeling irritated by it. However this has the advantage of being very easy to read.

I think it matters a lot if the reader is into cultural references. I could understand some, I could remember some, most of the references in the book, though, were ancient or obscure enough that even I didn't recognize them, and I am a pretty geeky person. I felt rewarded when I could "get it" and frustrated when I didn't, so probably it will be the same for most readers. If you don't care about these things, I think it is better to wait for the movie.

...which is in the works, with Steven Spielberg attached to the project. It might be difficult to put the story on the screen, though, since the book made an effort to describe a future world where everybody is obsessed with this specific period of the late 20th century, kind of like the Star Trek episodes that happened in the past or that required Kirk or Picard to know some specific book from the school curriculum. There is even a Ready Player One web site, that might have some Easter eggs in it (they would be dumb not to program some) but to me it seems both way too geeky and way to social at the same time.

Bottom line: a fun book for geeks. I hope it inspires the younger generations to look at the world a little bit differently, but I don't have my hopes up. My guess is that they will go all 'Meh' on a story that references anything that happened last century.

Villains by Necessity is not a masterpiece of literature, but it is a fun fantasy book that doesn't feel the need to be part of a trilogy or take itself too seriously. Perfect for when you want to pick up a book because you are tired, not because you want to work your brain to dust. First work of Eve Forward, it is rather inconsistent, moving from silly to dead serious and back and making the heroes of the story oscillate between pointlessly evil and uncharacteristically good.

The best part of the book, though, is the concept. The world enjoys an age of light and good after a bitter war that saw all the forces of darkness and evil be defeated. The world is filled with happy people, no conflict, beautiful weather, lush vegetation. In a word, it is fucking boring. An unlikely party of evildoers gets together to save the world by bringing darkness back!

Alas, it was a concept that was not really well used. The characters, borrowed from classical fantasy, are "evil" by their professions only, but not by behaviour. Sam is an assassin, but he doesn't enjoy the suffering of his victims and is proud of his prowess. Archie is a mischievous thief, but other than that he is an OK fellow. Even Valerie, the dark sorceress, eats sentient beings just because it is her race's culture and her evil is more often artificial. Not to mention Blackmail, who acts as the classic stoic hero. Similarly, the forces of good are blood thirsty thugs that want to either kill everything dark or brainwash them, as a humane solution. This basically makes our heroes... err... heroes, not villains, and viceversa.

Now, the book wasn't bad. The style was amateurish, but it is Eve Forward's first book, after all. I could read it and I got caught by the story. I was more attracted to the original concept, though, and I was very curious how it would go. It is so difficult to present bad people as the protagonists, I know, because many people, including writers as they write, want them to be redeemed somehow. In the end, the moral of the story - excruciatingly laid out in a few paragraphs that shouldn't have existed - felt really heavy handed and simplistic. Ok, good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things, but it is important to explore what makes them good and bad, not just lazily assign them dark fantasy classes and be done with it.

Bottom line: fun read, but nothing special.

This is how reality stands right now: even if the danger of an asteroid hit is great, the risk of one hitting is small. That means that they hit (very) far apart and cause a lot of damage. Now, all governments in the world are run by politicians, who are by their very nature bureaucrats. They are reactive, not proactive, and they have insulated themselves from responsibility by manipulating laws and creating committees and departments that they can behead at any time, as they keep their fat asses on their chairs of power. This is not a rant, it's just the ugly truth, evolving, but never really changing since we were barely smarter than monkeys.

The logical conclusion of these facts is that politicians will not do anything about asteroids until we are hit by one. Even worse, since the probability that a really big one will hit without us knowing in advance has been reduced by space advances, the asteroid that will hit us will probably be small. The Tunguska and the Chelyabinsk events, real things that happened, changed nothing. The one that is going to change anything will be when something similar happens on top of a city.

This is not a doomsday prophecy, either. The probability that this will happen is extremely small. First of all the asteroid has to be small enough and/or fast enough so that we don't detect it in time. Then it has to hit at a certain angle to not be deflected by the atmosphere. Then it has to reach a populated area, which one would think is simple, since we can't seem to be able to fart without someone smelling it, but in truth, with the oceans and the human propensity of congregating for no good reason, it is less probable. However, with enough time, even a small probability becomes certainty.

So, the scenario goes like this: we all pretend to care, but we don't. We want less taxes, not asteroid protection. Politicians use our shortsightedness and our greed to enhance their own and do nothing. Then an asteroid hits, causing massive damage, death and loss of property. This is the moment when something happens. They implement new laws, launch asteroid defense programs, create new departments and committees. But, since the probability that an asteroid hits is small, the hype will fade, the budgets with it, politicians will rotate, people will forget. By the time the next asteroid hits, no one will be prepared for it any more than for the previous one.

In the end, the only things that ever made a dent in the probability that something will hurt us as a species or even as a larger group were technological. Not technology per se, just its price. Just more scientists with cheaper tech getting more done. When space launches become cheaper, satellites smaller, we can do more with them at the same relative price. That is why now we are discovering millions of asteroids in the Solar System, not because of some sort of scientific awakening. It's cheaper, probably as cheap as it was for amateur astronomers to buy telescopes in 1801, when Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the first asteroid, Ceres. I just hope this all gets cheap enough fast enough so we can do something by the time the big asteroid is coming. Well, if we don't destroy ourselves in some other way by then.

I know I'm a month late, but Happy Asteroid Day!

There are several stories happening at the same time in The White Luck Warrior, with almost no direct connection between them. There is the Great Ordeal, advancing slowly towards Golgoterath while being besieged by hordes of Sranc, also containing the story of this kid prince forced to march with it; then there is the palace life, with Esmenet left to rule the empire while Kellhus is away, while various factions are ready to take advantage of the lack of man power of the leadership and her half Dunyain children prove to be either insane or really insane; there is the trek of Achamian in search of the origin place of Kellhus. Among these there is a vague and a few paragraphs long subplot of The White Luck Warrior, a mysterious figure that seems to know all of its future, making him an automaton, I guess and some bits about the Fanim.

Why the smallest and insignificant portion of the book gave its title I do not know, but remember that the first book in the Aspect-Emperor series was called The Judging Eye, which is most prominently used or described in this volume. By far the most interesting and captivating storyline is that of Achamian, although I have to say that the logistics of long duration travel within enemy territory and the psychological factors involved seemed to me poorly described by Bakker.

What I knew will happen happened. I finished the book before the third volume in the series was released and now I am in withdrawal pains. That proves that the book captivated me. At very few moments I felt the need to "fast forward" and, considering the amount of distraction and that I had resolved to draw this book out a little bit in the hope that the third volume would be released, I finished it rather quickly.

Even if enjoyable, to me it felt more like a filler. I couldn't empathize with Esmenet or any of her demented children, nor could I care less what happened to Maithanet, who is one of the less fleshed out characters in the book. Similarly, the Sorweel story arch described a confused and frustrated teen, which was relatable, but uninteresting as a character. Unlike in the first four books, Kellhus sounds less godly and dominating and is mostly relegated to a minor role in the overall story. No, the most interesting characters and storyline revolve around Achamian, Mimara, The Captain and the mysterious Cleric, plus any of other members of the crazy bunch of mercenaries known as The Skin Eaters. And they just walk and walk and walk, only to end the book in a cliffhanger. While I await eagerly the sixth book, I have my misgivings and fears that it will not be as good as this one, just as this one felt a little bit short of the first.