Rancid

Nemesis by Isaac Asimov My rating: 3 of 5 stars Nemesis by Isaac Asimov I consider myself a fan of Isaac Asimov literature, I know the robots and Empire series by heart as well as the foundation series. Asimov in his prologue wanted to go in a different direction with his novel nemesis. But then he hinted that maybe Nemesis and follow up novels would tie everything to one Asimov universe. It seems to me that Isaac Asimov was always interested in the Progressive future of humanity as a collective. You may have noticed that he also was behind the woman's right to progress to her full potential, but with taste. The protagonist and supporting characters are mostly females. I say females because the protagonist was a child of 15 not a full adult. I don't want to get the impression that I'm some sort of sexist but I try to use the proper wording the best way I can. It was a woman astronomer who discovered a star closer to earth. A woman who discovered superluminal flight. A g...

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon and Heechee rendezvous... Both interesting novels by Frederik Pohl. As with my other reviews, I really will not get in too much into the plot anybody could look up the plot on the internet today, Wikipedia something like that. With me, it's always the technology that thrills me in the story. If one had the opportunity to read some of the Gateway stories it will be understood that the primary cause of the story has to do with humans finding ancient technology from an advanced civilization. And the way individuals make their money in this universe is by taking the risk of getting on to advanced spaceships and then going to the destination that the ships had in their navigation computers and returning and of course in returning if you bring something of value the more money you earn. The plot centers around an individual whose name is Robin who took some risk and became wealthy. The other side of the Plot has to do with his ex-girlfriend who got stuc...

Origin by Dan Brown My rating: 4 of 5 stars Origin by Dan Brown. Most of Dan Brown's "Robert Langdon" novels are considered to be thrillers, this particular book falls into the Genre of Science Fiction. I found the book fascinating because it has to deal we would we all call the singularity. The plot can be found of course on the internet. Wikipedia or Goodreads. Why one may consider this book to be science fiction? Let's talk about the technical singularity. At this point, I will go into spoilers if you haven't read the book and if you're planning on reading it please stop here. The technical singularity deals with the ability of machine intelligence that can become self-aware. As of now, many companies are already using expert systems. In other words artificial intelligence. But are these artificial intelligence or AI self-aware? Michio Kaku a renowned physicist has mentioned once in his many talks that the most advanced AI system has less intelligence th...

Gateway by Frederik Pohl My rating: 2 of 5 stars Gateway by Frederik Pohl As usual, I won't get into the storyline and plot much and I'm really interested in the technology more than anything else. I can say that some of the storylines remind me of the novel Eon. As with many such a story, go technology used is technology borrowed from an alien race. Well maybe using the word alien is not politically correct anymore let's say an advanced species that seem like it disappeared. I always wonder about stories where we run into advanced Technologies and yet The Originators of the technology cannot be found or have disappeared. The Fermi Paradox really comes to mind. You have a civilization that is gone but the tech that remains is fully functional and it's not affected by entropy in the least. I guess that was the thought of the day when he wrote the book in 1977. Many other stories, one may see in sci-fi TV series touch this subject, for example, Stargate and it's se...

Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds My rating: 3 of 5 stars Redemption Ark This novel is in the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds. As usual, I won't go into the plot because it can be found on the internet. However, I would like to share some observations that I noticed in the book or in the novel. In one of my reviews, I mention Chasm City and I called it Total Recall on steroids. In this book, we see how the revelation space universe evolved. The concept is not new. Humanity develops the ability to merge with his technology to live longer. They have a hive mentality similar to the Borg but with a difference. The Borg in Star Trek is directed by a queen or primary individual and all Borg are subject to the queen forcefully. There is no independent thought among them except that of the queen. The Conjoiners is also a collective but the members have a certain degree of independence it is almost like having the internet wired to your brain. Knowledge is shared but your ...

Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds My rating: 2 of 5 stars Let us talk about Chasm City. For me, this was a hard read. As I mentioned before in a book club I am on Facebook the plot or the storyline reminds me of Total Recall. What Memories belong to who? It is an interesting story I have to agree. But I did find some contradictions that did not follow. I am not going to write a synopsis of the story anybody can find that on the internet. But I am interested in requiring help on trying to understand some of the inconsistencies or contradictions that I found. For example, in the story there is a flotilla of ships, that is traveling to a specific location. I think they're about 6 ships heading towards a place called " Journey's End". These ships are carrying individuals who are in stasis. These individuals are unique when they come out of stasis their life spans will be much longer than the average human being it is hinted that these lifespans are immortal. But there is...

I, Claudius by Robert Graves My rating: 4 of 5 stars Every so often I read a book not related to science fiction or science, among other literature that I like its history. The book that I have finished reading just called 'I Claudius'. As you know Claudius was an emperor. A Roman Emperor the book is in form of an autobiography. And of course, it was written as fiction by Robert Graves in 1934. After I read the book I made a mental note to myself, never to claim Roman Imperial royals. I can tell you that Robert Graves had a good imagination. I actually laughed and some parts, and many of you know me I am not prone to laughing at all me being of the intj collective. But I am only human just that these emperors were even though they thought they were gods. Please read the book in a very quiet place and let your imagination run wild how you believe the Roman empire used to be at the very top. View all my reviews