Category: Reading

What I’m cur­rent­ly reading.

For the past few years, each April 26th I have to look up why it’s “Alien Day”. The date is named after the plan­et LV-426, where the xenomorphs are first encoun­tered in the orig­i­nal, 1979 Rid­ley Scott film. Well, I’ve been a fan of the hor­ror-sci­fi fran­chise since I saw the sequel, Aliens. I’ve since watch any film in the series (good and bad) and read a lot of the comics. So, any­way, hap­py Alien Day to my fel­low sci-fi fans.

Aliens
Some comics, graph­ic nov­el col­lec­tions, and my attempt at draw­ing a xenomorph from cir­ca 1996.

Octavia Butler’s Oankali

Amy Deng’s Oankali for an art exer­cise “Imag­in­ing the Oankali.” A Google image search for Oankali and Ooloi does’t turn up much oth­er than a lot of rough fan art, but I liked this draw­ing a lot; as much because of its ana­lyt­i­cal approach as the rep­re­sen­ta­tion itself. For the sec­ond year now, I’ve read… Con­tin­ue read­ing Octavia Butler’s Oankali

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

I recent­ly lis­tened to the direct-to-Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Solaris com­mis­sioned by Audible.com. While I could appre­ci­ate much of the nov­el, I frankly did­n’t find it all that enjoy­able of a read/listen. I felt guilty about my 3‑star review on Goodreads.com until I noticed that Patrick Roth­fuss gave it 2 stars. Solaris by StanisÅ‚aw Lem My… Con­tin­ue read­ing Solaris by Stanis­law Lem

The Windup Girl

I fin­ished the audio­book of The Windup Girl, Pao­lo Baci­galupi mul­ti-award win­ning nov­el about life in a dystopic Thai­land after glob­al warm­ing and genet­ic engi­neer­ing have wrecked much of mod­ern soci­ety. Baci­galupi is a won­der­ful writer and it is an imag­i­na­tive sto­ry, wor­thy of the praise and awards that were heaped on it after the… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Windup Girl

The Hyperion Cantos

Last night, I fin­ished the final book in Dan Sim­mon’s epic sci­ence fic­tion tetral­o­gy1, the Hype­r­i­on Can­tos. My imme­di­ate reac­tion to the series’ con­clu­sion was that I only want to read it again. They are just that great of a read. In fact, if any­one who knows me had read these pre­vi­ous­ly and did­n’t rec­om­mend them… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Hype­r­i­on Cantos

Reading Zero History

Watch­ing this video of the Fes­to Air­Pen­guin, I’m remind­ed that every­thing in William Gib­son (@greatdismal )‘s Bigend tril­o­gy has already hap­pened, just not yet in that order.

Free by Chris Anderson

In the pro­logue, Ander­son men­tions that his research showed two camps: those above thir­ty who remain skep­ti­cal of any­thing labeled “free” and those under thir­ty who think any­thing dig­i­tal is gen­er­al­ly free. This age def­i­n­i­tion has noth­ing to do with Tim Leary and every­thing to do with the tim­ing of the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. It was… Con­tin­ue read­ing Free by Chris Anderson

Convert Text to iTunes Audiobook

Since I’ve been all about lis­ten­ing to audio­books late­ly (actu­al­ly, for the past year — just more recent­ly of the fan­ta­sy genre), this link was pret­ty time­ly. Using some of the inte­grat­ed Apple ser­vices and some script­ing, macOSX­hints user miketyson put togeth­er a Ser­vice in OS X to sim­ply con­vert high­light­ed text to an Audio­book… Con­tin­ue read­ing Con­vert Text to iTunes Audiobook

Five Fun Things Friday — Mid-April Edition

Oh, to have blogged in so long and only to come back with a measly list of fluff. Well, some­thing’s bet­ter than noth­ing, right? I’ve been on a rather ram­pant fan­ta­sy kick as of late: “Dun­geons & Drag­ons” — That ven­er­a­ble fan­ta­sy RPG lost one of it’s founders last month. How­ev­er, not to be stopped, a new… Con­tin­ue read­ing Five Fun Things Fri­day — Mid-April Edition