Tim Sullivan's The Teacher has left me wanting more

 One of my favorite authors, Tim Sullivan, mentioned in his latest newsletter, that fans could sign up to read an advance excerpt from his upcoming book, "The Teacher".  I couldn't resist the offer because I'm addicted to his excellent mystery novels which focus on Detective Sergeant George Cross.  Plus the opportunity to get a headstart on the next installment was too much to resist.  

DS Cross differs from most of his colleagues by being on the autism spectrum which gives him an incredibly focused approach to investigating crimes as well as a unique way of interacting with other people.  Sullivan's writing skill makes Cross a compelling and sympathetic figure.  The mysteries are well plotted and peopled with a believable cast of characters.

So how did I enjoy this latest book in the adventures of DS Cross?  I loved it!  I can't wait for the book to be released so I read the rest of it and find out what happens next.

Cory Doctorow's new book is really good

I shouldn't be surprised about how good Cory Doctorow's new book, Red Team Blues, is.  I've been a fan of his books for about 20 years.  His books invariably involve new trends in technology and their possible consequences.  Cory definitely has the technical chops to write convincingly about emerging technologies.  He's an activist and has been involved with the EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) for many years.  Cory also has a frequently updated blog called Pluralistic which features an interesting article and lots of links, which often involve technology and its unintended consequences or occasional intentional misuses.

Red Team Blues follows the adventures of a forensic accountant (which apparently can be a much more interesting profession than the position title would imply) named Marty Hench.  Hench specializes in the cybersecurity and accounting involved with digitally accessed assets such as cryptocurrencies.  In Doctorow's capable hands this premise becomes a gripping detective novel and a cutting edge one at that.

I backed the audiobook version on Kickstarter.  Cory resorted to using this method of funding because Audible won't carry books without DRM and he insists on allowing readers to own the books they purchase.  As an added bonus, Cory got Wil Wheaton to narrate the book.  I always enjoy Wil's narration and I think he does an especially good job on books with a technology or a SciFi focus.

I strongly suggest you check this book out.  It's very compelling and made me wish I needed to commute to the office more often so I could have finished it quicker.

Favorite books

Since I love to read, people sometimes ask me about my favorite books.  I inevitably leave some out so I thought I'd collect them in an easy-to-find place.  So here are my favorites.

Favorite authors still actively publishing
Connelly, Michael - Harry Bosch series
Crais, Robert - Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series
Doctorow, Cory - Little Brother, Walkaway, Makers, and others
Gaiman, Neil - American Gods and anything else
Hiaasen, Carl - anything
Ide, Joe - IQ series
Kowal, Mary Robinette - anything
Scalzi, John - anything
Sloan, Robin - Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and others
Stross, Charles - the Laundry File series
Taylor, Dennis E - Bobiverse series
Wells, Martha - Murderbot series


Other favorite books (sorted by author name):
Adams, Douglas - First two Hitchhiker's Guide books and Dirk Gently series
Asimov, Isaac - Robot series, Foundation trilogy
Dudley, John Ball - In the Heat of the Night
Ellison, Harlan - Dangerous Visions and others
Feynman, Richard - Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
Follett, Ken - Eye of the Needle
Goldman, William - The Princess Bride & The Marathon Man
Heinlein, Robert A. - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and his juvenile series
Irving, John - A Prayer for Owen Meany
Kidder, Tracy - The Soul of a New Machine
Kipling, Rudyard - Kim, Captains Courageous, and others
Leonard, Elmore - Maximum Bob
London, Jack - anything
Miller, Walter M - A Cantical for Leibowitz
Niven, Larry - Ringworld
Noah, Trevor - Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
Parker, Robert B. - early Spenser novels, Jesse Stone series, Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch series
Pullman, Philip - His Dark Materials trilogy
Robinson, Spider - Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series
Sayers, Dorothy - Lord Peter Wimsey series
Shute, Nevil - Trustee from the Toolroom
Sturgeon, Theodore - More Than Human and all others
Tolkien, J.R.R. - The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Twain, Mark - anything
Vonnegut, Kurt - Slaughterhouse Five and all others
Weir, Andy - The Martian
Winters, Ben H - The Last Policeman trilogy
Wodehouse, P.G. - Meet Mr. Mulliner and others

Favorite graphic novels (sorted by author name):
Ennis, Garth - Preacher, The Boys
Moore, Alan - Watchmen, V for Vendetta
O'Malley, Bryan Lee - Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
Vaughn, Brian K. - Ex Machina

e-audiobooks rock!

For a long time I've been listening to audiobooks to make commuting or exercise more bearable. Our local library used to have a great selection of audiobooks on cassette. The last time I checked, they were slowly transitioning to CD based audiobooks. I never borrowed a book in that form as they only seemed to stock recent bestsellers and I don't find most recent books as engrossing as some of the old classics by authors like Nevil Shute, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson among others.

Fast forward to a couple years ago. I discovered that our local library had started carrying e-audiobooks which could be downloaded to an MP3 player with support for Windows Media DRM aka protected WMA files). With mixed feelings, I purchased a refurbished MP3 player capable of playing protected WMA files. It irked me that I couldn't play this protected media on the iPod I used for most of my music. The MP3 player gave me a years worth of service before developing some interface quirks which became so bothersome as to be unbearable. It's hard to believe that with an iPod as a model of how to design a decent user interface, other manufacturers do such an abysmal job.

The refurbished replacement I purchased from another manufacturer was slightly better but still paled in comparison to the iPod's interface. It lasted me another year before refusing to connect using its USB interface without jumping through a strange series of steps I found on a user forum for a different model player from the same manufacturer. The prospect of spending more money on yet another unsatisfactory MP3 player didn't thrill me.

Fortunately, my library wasn't sitting idle during this time. They've recently made available a new service from Overdrive, the company which offers e-audiobooks for download. They offer an MP3 version of some of the e-audiobooks. Sadly this is a fledgling service at the moment so the selections aren't nearly as extensive as the WMA selections are yet but I'm hoping this will improve with time.

So far I've listened to Kipling's Captains Courageous and Stevenson's Kidnapped. Both were wonderful and made me choose longer paths when walking the dog so I could listen longer. If you've got activities which might benefit from distractions such as a good book being read by a skilled narrator, I recommend you check with your local library to see whether the offer e-audiobooks.

Good Books

I'm reading a couple excellent books at the moment which I thought I'd pass along.

During my commute, I'm listening to Spider Robinson's Callahan's Legacy. Whenever I read a new book by Spider or go back to re-read one of his older books, I'm always amazed at how good I feel while reading it and how I don't want the book to end. There are a handful of authors whose work makes me feel this way: Rudy Rucker, Robert Heinlein, Carl Hiaasen, Richard Feynman, and Richard Dawkins to name but a few.

At night I've started reading Theodore Sturgeon's The Nail and the Oracle: Volume XI: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon. I've been reading this complete collection of Sturgeon's works as they have been published which has been sorely trying my patience as I wait for each new volume. I was originally under the impression that there were to be 10 volumes in the series but a good friend recently mentioned that he had received volume 11 as a gift which caused me to order it as soon as I got home. When I started reading Sturgeon 30+ years ago, I was struck by the fact that his work really transcended the genres of SciFi or Fantasy and that it was sad his audience was probably much smaller than his talent deserved because of these labels. Reading Harlan Ellison's lengthy and touching foreword in this volume, I find I'm not alone in this feeling.

I highly recommend both books. If you haven't read anything by one or both authors, I envy you. You're in for a great read.

Rudy Rucker

One of my favorite SciFi authors, Rudy Rucker, has kindly released his latest novel called Postsingular under a Creative Commons license. This is a great way for people unfamiliar with Rudy's work to try it out. If you like it (and I'm sure most people will) please buy his earlier books. I like to keep my favorite authors gainfully employed because that means more good books for me to read.

MST3K

The guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 (AKA MST3K) have a new project called The Film Crew Online. It's sort of a continuation of the work they did with MST3K. I'm giving it a recommendation based on how funny MST3K was.

Michael J. Nelson, the former head writer of MST3K, also has a series of MP3 files you can buy and play at the same time you're watching DVDs. They're available at a site called RiffTrax. It's a funny concept.

Mike Nelson has also written a few really funny books. My favorite is Mind Over Matters though Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese was pretty entertaining.

Cory Doctorow

Lately I've been listening to Cory Doctorow's podcast available from both his website CrapHound.com as well as from iTunes. On his podcast he frequently reads from his works in progress as well as some of his older stories. I've been finding them immensely entertaining. If you like Cory's work as much as I do, please buy his books to help support his efforts. He's a real stand-up guy. He used to work for the EFF, he gives lectures on the absurdity of DRM around the world, and he licenses many of his works under Creative Commons. All that and he edits one of my favorite blogs, BoingBoing. I don't know where he finds the time to do all of that but I'm glad he does.

Steve Wozniak interview

10 Zen Monkeys has a great interview with Steve Wozniak (aka Woz), a personal hero of mine.

Woz is a true geek success story. He made his money from sheer technical prowess. The elegance of his designs are the stuff of legend. Through it all he's remained a genuinely nice guy, seemingly unaffected by his success. Just last week he was handing out t-shirts while waiting in line for an iPhone.

If you get the chance check out his book, iWoz. It's a great read about a fascinating guy. Another great book about the early days of Apple is Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made. The stories will give non-engineers a taste of what it's like to create something from scratch.

miniature engines

I just found a New York Times article which brought back fond memories. It's about people who build scale model replicas of engines as a hobby. One guy built an amazing 1/6 scale model of a Chevy V8. These really must be seen to be believed. The pistons are not much larger than a quarter. The rocker arms (the parts which help the valves open and close) are incredibly tiny. It's hard to believe these small engines actually run.

I mentioned that seeing these brought back fond memories. No, I didn't used to build working engines though I did spend many happy hours in my younger days building model cars. This reminded me of one of my favorite books of all time, Trustee from the Tool Room by Nevil Shute. Shute is my favorite author of fiction, bar none, and Trustee is an excellent example of his best work. It's the story of an engineer who builds and writes articles about miniature machines including engines. He undertakes a very long journey due to a strange twist of fate and develops some well deserved self confidence along the way. Sadly, like many of his books, it's no longer readily available in America. You can still get many, if not all, of his books from Amazon UK though.

Stan Kelly-Bootle

The latest issue of the ACM Queue has an interesting article by Stan Kelly-Bootle. I always loved reading Stan's articles in Unix Review and Software Development magazines. Sometimes his column was the only thing I'd find of interest in the magazine. Thank goodness for complimentary subscriptions, eh? I always got a chuckle and usually learned something by reading his articles. He has a real gift for making technical discussions interesting. Check out his article if you have time.

Also worth reading is his book, The Devil's DP Dictionary. I purchased my copy quite a while ago which is a lucky thing as it seems a little tough to find copies. It's very amusing.

New note: A good friend has pointed out that the new edition of Stan's book is called The Computer Contradictionary. That may even be the edition I have... it would be tough to tell since I can't lay my hands on it at the moment.

50 Most Significant Fantasy/SciFi Books

Tonight I was catching up on some old posts I'd missed on the blog of an old friend, Chard Nelson, when I happened upon an interesting list of the 50 Most Significant SciFi and Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years. Following the links back from his posting, I find that everyone posting this list seems to be marking the books they've read in bold. I've also taken the liberty of marking books I really liked with italics.


The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer


I'm not sure I agree with all the books on the list. There are definitely some omissions I'd like to correct. For starters, I'd add more books by Theodore Sturgeon, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Heinlein, and Larry Niven. If I weren't constrained by the SciFi/Fantasy category, I'd add a lot more by Nevil Shute, my favorite author of any genre. Then I'd add a few favorite books from more recent authors like Spider Robinson and Rudy Rucker. Ah well, I guess no list is perfect.