-
Read This Week
This week I finished reading Volume XXI of the Writer’s of the Future series of anthologies. Stories that particularly interested me were: “Betrayer of Trees” by Eric James Stone. A stone worker with a troubled past is called to work on a new palace back near where he grew up. We learn early that he betrayed his people, but the exact details are revealed slowly. A strong central character and interesting world really elevated this story for me, and I enjoyed it. “Deadglass” by Lon Prater. A religious father who’s duty is to capture sinner’s souls so that the ‘devil’ cannot use them faces a dilemma that makes him question…
-
Read this week – various stories
Finished reading Writers of the Future XXII. Many good stories in this one, a few that stood out for me: Broken Stones by Judith Tabron. The main character’s faith is challenged when she disagrees with how the aliens are being treated on a world that her people have colonized for generations. I thought the world well invented and the dilemma of the main character authentic. Games on the Children’s Ward by Michail Velichansky. Creepy story about children dying in a hospital and the games they play to survive in the dismal, lonely place where too often one of them is wheeled away, dead. This story will be stuck in my…
-
Read this week – "A Memory of Wind"
These last few weeks I’ve been reading novels mostly and in general I’m probably going to stop doing reviews of the various magazines I’ve read. What I will do is call out anything that stood out for me and one story did, this week. A Memory of Wind by Rachel Swirsky can be read at tor.com. This is a haunting story that has stuck with me a few days after reading. It tells the tale of a minor figure whose sacrifice during the Trojan War has been largely overlooked. Well worth a read — and its free. Also, if you’ll remember my rant about online magazines from a few days…
-
The Last Theorem
Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl wrote this novel together, the history of which is summarized nicely on the wikipedia here. I bought this a while back from Fictionwise (it’s an ebook version) but hadn’t had time to read it. (Luckily?) as I’m recovering from a recent surgery I’ve been able to do a lot more reading and finally finished it. I have read little of either author in recent years, so I came into the novel with few expectations. And overall, I enjoyed it. I found the many excursions into mathematical theory entertaining and have been annoying my wife with a few of the parlor tricks described in…
-
Review for "From the Sea"
A nice review from SFCrowsnest about my story “From the Sea” in On Spec #78 …This story is not very heavy on fantasy but it’s perceptive about humans. The bleak setting and the hard life of a fishing village were well conveyed and the story was quite moving. Read the full review here. In all they really liked the issue.
-
Review – PHP Cookbook
The PHP Cookbook by David Sklar and Adam Trachtenberg is an excellent reference manual for PHP. I’ve meddled with PHP a bit in the past, but now after going through the book, I feel a lot more confident about my ability to use PHP and know that if I’m stuck there will likely be a recipe in the book that will help me out. The book, like all the O’Reilly cookbooks, is organized into problems and solutions, which are clustered into topic chapter, such as Web Basics, Database Access, et cetera. I read it front to back because from past experience I’ve found that doing this lets me stumble across…
-
iPhone Game Development
iPhone Game Development (Paul Zirkle and Joe Hogue — O’Reilly) is the second iPhone development book that I have read. The first, The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook was a general introduction to development on the iPhone while this book is focused on building games. To start with the book does a good job of laying out the iPhone game development process. I especially liked the section on the registration process (developers have to sign up and pay fees to be allowed to develop iPhone applications). I feel the authors did a good job of walking a new registrant through a process that some might feel intimidated by. The primer on Objective-C…
-
iPhone Developer's Cookbook – Review
I originally purchased this book while at BioWare in anticipation of working on an iPhone game and so it had sat on my unread pile for a bit. I finally decided to tackle it, one reason being that I’ll be writing a review shortly for a new book from O’Reilly called iPhone Game Development and thought it would be interesting to compare the two titles. The author of The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook, Erica Sadun, seems very knowledgeable about the iPhone SDK and the book was organized well and was a good read. It should be mentioned that I do not have a Macintosh and hence couldn’t actually test any of…
-
Dragon Age – The Stolen Throne
Dragon Age – The Stolen Throne by David Gaider Disclaimer: I worked with David Gaider at BioWare for ten years This is David’s first novel but he has been writing for over a decade on BioWare’s award-winning, dialog filled roleplaying games. This book is a prequel to the events of Dragon Age: Origins (which is now available in stores). We follow the story of Maric, upon whose shoulders falls the responsibility of ousting an oppressive conqueror from Ferelden. Maric, by blood, is the rightful ruler of Ferelden and he and Rowan (his betrothed) and the outlaw Loghain have several adventures across Ferelden. Overall I enjoyed the book, despite already being…
-
Review On Spec #77
A little late in reading this one as I just finished it before #78 arrived but I had to clear a backlog of other stuff first. Wish I hadn’t waited so long because this is certainly one of my more favorite issues of On Spec in the last while. The Resident Guest By Sandra Glaze A young woman working in a hotel grows up under the watchful eye of a ghost (a World War veteran) that lives in the hotel. This was a fascinating story, hitting the reader on several levels. Really enjoyed this one. The Far-springer by E. Catherine Tobler One of medusa’s sisters tries to survive in a…
