Category Archives: Book Notes

But What’s at Stake? Hal Clement’s Needle

Posted on Wednesday 22 January 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Needle (Astounding Science Fiction, May-June 1959; expanded to book form: Doubleday, 222 pages, $2.50 in hardcover, 1950) by Hal Clement Hal Clement (legal name Harry Stubbs) was one of the stable of science fiction writers developed by John W. Campbell … Continue reading →

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Things Are As They Are: George R. Stewart’s EARTH ABIDES

Posted on Wednesday 15 January 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Here is one of the best science fiction novels of all time. It’s about the entire world, and implicitly the entire human race, and it’s as timely as ever as, for one reason or another, humanity faces the realization that … Continue reading →

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Peter Watts essay: “Understanding Sarah Palin, or, God Is In the Wattles”: Summary and Comments

Posted on Saturday 21 December 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

From the book Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays (Tachyon, November 2019), a selection of posts from the blog of Peter Watts, which has been running since 2007. Watts is the noted author of high … Continue reading →

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Carel Van Schaik & Kai Michel, THE GOOD BOOK OF HUMAN NATURE: An Evolutionary Reading of the Bible (2016): Introduction

Posted on Thursday 19 December 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a fascinating book because it describes how there really is some rationale (if not reason or logic) to the stories in the Bible. It’s a set of answers to the general question, a sort of meta-question that one … Continue reading →

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Stephen King, THE INSTITUTE (2019)

Posted on Saturday 7 December 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a solid contemporary thriller with SF (or perhaps fantasy) elements. As I’ve said before I like Stephen King but read only about his every third or fourth book, just the ones that seem to have some, to me, … Continue reading →

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Isaac Asimov: THE EARLY ASIMOV (1972)

Posted on Monday 18 November 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a book I’d never read before, and debated recently about whether to ever read it. On the one hand, life is too short to read every book one might have accumulated, and this book consists, frankly, of all … Continue reading →

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Robert A. Heinlein: SIXTH COLUMN (1941/1949)

Posted on Thursday 14 November 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

This was the earliest novel-length work by Heinlein, though it was serialized in Astounding magazine (Jan, Feb, and March 1941) and not published in book form until 1949, by which time two or three other Heinlein novels had been published … Continue reading →

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Robert Silverberg: REVOLT ON ALPHA C (1955)

Posted on Friday 8 November 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

Robert Silverberg’s first novel was published in hardcover by Thomas Y. Crowell in 1955 and then went through many printings as a thin paperback edition from Scholastic Books; see http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2796 for a list of all editions, and cover images. I … Continue reading →

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Arthur C. Clarke, PROFILES OF THE FUTURE (1962..1999)

Posted on Thursday 31 October 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a book first published in 1962, a nonfiction book speculating on potential technological developments and human achievements. The subtitle is “An Inquiry in the Limits of the Possible.” Clarke revised it three times, the last in 1999 (he … Continue reading →

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Richard Dawkins: OUTGROWING GOD: A Beginner’s Guide (2019)

Posted on Wednesday 30 October 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

This book, clearly aimed at younger readers, repeats many of themes from his earlier 2006 book THE GOD DELUSION, boiled down and made even more pointed. The first part of the book is structured as a series of “but what … Continue reading →

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