Category Archives: Book Notes

Rereading Donald A. Wollheim’s THE UNIVERSE MAKERS

Posted on Friday 18 September 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Donald A. Wollheim’s The Universe Makers, published way back in 1971, is one of the earliest books that could be described as a history of SF, though Wollheim’s take is distinctly personal and even partisan. Wollheim was an occasional writer … Continue reading →

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The Methodical, Cheerful, Bluntness of Isaac Asimov

Posted on Wednesday 19 August 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I switched gears a couple weeks ago, after reading several recent (2014 and 2015) novels, to spend some time revisiting one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed science fiction authors, Isaac Asimov. It’s hard to tell, at this point about … Continue reading →

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James Morrow, THE MADONNA AND THE STARSHIP

Posted on Monday 10 August 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

James Morrow’s short novel The Madonna and the Starship is one of a handful of short novels or long novellas released by San Francisco-based Tachyon Publications in the past couple years, others including two Nancy Kress titles that both won … Continue reading →

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Stephen King, REVIVAL

Posted on Friday 7 August 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I enjoy Stephen King’s novels, but he writes too many of them (one or two every year) for me to keep up with all of them, and so I tend to get to only every third or fourth book, whenever … Continue reading →

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Andy Weir, THE MARTIAN

Posted on Thursday 30 July 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I don’t have a lot to say about Andy Weir’s THE MARTIAN, which I finally picked up because 1) it’s popular, having been on bestseller lists for months, and 2) Ridley Scott’s film version arrives on October 2nd (which Gary … Continue reading →

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Cixin Liu, THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM

Posted on Wednesday 29 July 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

The Three-Body Problem, by Chinese author Cixin Liu and translated by American author Ken Liu (himself winner of numerous awards), is one of the more acclaimed novels of 2014, especially because it’s the first prominent Chinese novel to have been … Continue reading →

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Follow-up thought about KSR’s AURORA

Posted on Monday 27 July 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

One more thought about Kim Stanley Robinson’s AURORA: I don’t *necessarily* agree with or endorse KSR’s conclusions in this book. Which is to say, human history shows a long pattern of inventing things or implementing things that the previous generation … Continue reading →

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Kim Stanley Robinson, AURORA

Posted on Thursday 23 July 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I began reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s AURORA on the Sunday before last, in the afternoon, and later that evening realized that I had the answer to an ‘elevator conversation’ question — actually a dinner conversation question with some in-laws — … Continue reading →

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Steven Weinberg, TO EXPLAIN THE WORLD

Posted on Monday 13 July 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Steven Weinberg is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who is best known (I gather) as a leading proponent of the idea that progress in physics will ultimately lead to a small set of fundamental principles that explain everything — i.e. the … Continue reading →

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Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony

Posted on Thursday 2 July 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

This was the third collection, published in 1983, of Lewis Thomas’s elegant, mostly short, essays, following The Lives of a Cell (which I blogged about last week) and The Medusa and the Snail. I read (or reread, I’m not sure) … Continue reading →

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