Now that I have finished the Foundation Series, a few reads back, I have been wanting to read some of the other related novels by Isaac Asimov, before moving onto the three Foundation novels written posthumously by other authors.

I've read all the robot stories and novels, which are also set in the same universe, but not yet read any of Isaac's earlier related works, one of which I have in a hard cover omnibus, but is the second of three books in a series, the first and third of which I don't have.

Now you would think that it would be easy to find ebooks of a hugely popular author like Isaac Asimov, one of the three greats of Science Fiction, but alas it isn't. Very few of his ebooks are available outside of the USA. Only a few of his fiction works and a few of his non-fiction works are available to me in AUS.

That situation is totally ridiculous, shocking even, and I am sure Isaac is rolling in his grave ... at least metaphorically.

I could wax all day long about the corruption of many publishers, when it comes to ebooks, especially outside of the USA. There are many shonky situations and deals going on. From my understanding, it is all to do with the unethical monopoly many Aussie publishers have, where certainly some of the big ones here have issue with ebooks, and are resisting progress into the digital age.

Part of the issue I am sure, is because they refuse to see ebooks and physical books as two different products, and they want to sell all their physical book versions first, before they will even consider providing ebook versions. And when they do in some cases sell ebooks, it is at very high prices to cover their physical book losses.

The behavior by these publishers is both unethical and immoral.

I can, like I did before buying ebooks, buy a physical book from stores in the USA, and I often did due to Aussie prices at local stores. Hell, I even used to buy secondhand books from overseas, many that came from overseas libraries, especially in the USA or Canada.

This region zoning nonsense for digital goods has to stop. I see it akin to racism in some ways.

Finished the first tome of The Stormlight Archive - "The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson. I can say that it's one of the best fantasy books that I've read. In short: very good writing, interesting characters and a few unexpected twists of action. The book has some longueurs but they play a strictly specified role. Thanks to the slower pace of the action that the longueurs cause, you get more tied to the characters. The book has a significant size, but once you finish it, you want more and it doesn't matter that you've just read 1100 pages of the first tome. :) It has some original concepts which I won't reveal here. You should explore them by yourself. I'll only say that there are things there you won't see in any other fantasy book.

I'd certainly want to see a TV series, but it probably won't happen. Too long and would need a lot of special effects which would pump the budget to an enormous size.

Rating: 5/5, even despite the longueurs.

Maybe you're in luck (though no TV series planned):
https://variety.com/2016/film/news/brandon-sanderson-cosmere-movie-adaptation-dmg-1201902500/

I'm awfully wary of what it'll be turned into, if anything. Not that anything seems to be happening.

★★★ Technical Leadership. Od eksperta do lidera / Mariusz Sieraczkiewicz
★★☆ The Sittaford Mystery / Agatha Christie
★☆☆ Start with Why / Simon Sinek
★☆☆ Wihajster, czyli przewodnik po słowach pożyczonych / Michał Rusinek

List of all books read in 2021.

The High Crusade (1960) by Poul Anderson: 2.5/5

Originally published as a serial in Astounding, but since I had access to a physical copy I read that instead. I don't think there was much revision done, if any.

I thought this was a bit of a classic, with aliens or at least alien tech getting involved in the Crusades. But instead it's the story of a huge spacecraft from an alien empire being captured by brave Englishman who easily defeat the blue aliens who have forgotten all about melee fighting. Made me think of Pikemen defeating a Battleship in Civilization. But as Sir Roger and his people are all set to zip down to the Holy Land and kick some Saracen ass, one of the blue meanies pushed the "back home" button and our brave kniggets and their serfs are Lost in Space. But this is just an opportunity for Sir Roger to carve out a empire for King Edward.

So it's an interesting and original premise, and it doesn't really have a tacked on boy-meets-girl story (it's told from the POV of a friar) that cheapened so many Anderson stories. But the writing is just not very good, the humour is feeble and I didn't really care about any of the characters. It's all just too easy and simple, and the interesting premise is mostly wasted.

There is no Psi in the story, but the Earth men (English) being so superior (despite being totally inferior technologically) must have pushed the right buttons with editor Campbell of Astounding.

The Deep Blue Good-by by John D. MacDonald. This is the first in the Travis McGee series of hard-boiled detective novels. McGee is a classic tough guy who lives the 1960s equivalent of an "off the grid" existence. He has a small boat he lives in because he likes the freedom to be able to literally move his life somewhere else whenever he feels like it, and he likes to keep as few attachments and official connections to things as possible. He makes a living by helping people who need things recovered, charging half the cost of the thing when it's done, and he says it's a line of work that is surprisingly high in demand, which is why he never goes broke. Like most similar heroes, he's sort of good at everything and he somehow always knows the right thing to say, or at least when he does make a mistake things will always fall in his favor.

In this one, the thing he's supposed to find is some treasure that was illegally smuggled out of Asia during WWII by a woman's veteran father, but what it's really about is that the thief, a hulking brute named Junior Allen, is a serial abuser of women and McGee needs to take him down to get revenge on the people he's wronged and to make sure he doesn't hurt any more or escalate up to murder.

It's not a bad book but I also wasn't totally in love with it. The plot isn't terribly interesting - McGee tracks down leads and questions people on them to gather information on the victims and on Allen. The encounters are mostly businesslike, although in one case McGee kidnaps a man and tortures him in a motel room to get more out of him. Otherwise, McGee spends a lot of time rehabilitating one of Allen's victims, which slows things down but it also shows a pretty nuanced understanding of what domestic abuse does to people, especially by 1960s standards.

MacDonald has the usual detached writing style and he loves to comment on society a lot. I find it more entertaining when he keeps it brief because when he starts going on at length about how people are, he stops being amusing and starts sounding like a sociopath. It's one thing to make a cute remark like how a view from an airplane is depressing because you realize that people are eventually going to fill up all that open land, but when you go on for paragraphs you just start sounding like Joseph Cotten droning on in Shadow of a Doubt. There's also a lot of boat talk that kind of went over my head. And it's very 1960s, which I think has weirdly dated worse than even books from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. Maybe it's just a blindspot I have.

The Godblade, by J. Christopher Tarpey. This is a novel-length sequel to one of the stories in the Swords of Steel Omnibus. The first story involves a Lovecraftian god being summoned to the world, and this book covers how the hero is supposed to deal with that and you might be able to tell from the title that it involves a magical sword that can kill gods.

This is a fun, quick read that reminds me a lot of mid-list 1970s books that you used to see from imprints like DAW. It's a straight forward, unpretentious work of dude fiction, where men are tough and and women have extremely large breasts and wear minimal clothing (and are also tough). Lots of action and no introspection or character building chapters. The one unique angle that the book has is that Tarpey is actually a blacksmith in addition to being a heavy metal musician, so he made his hero a blacksmith. Although he thankfully doesn't get carried away with technical details, he throws in just enough that it adds something to the story, little mentions of collecting special ashes or other materials involved in smithing to create items with unique characteristics. So you get an idea that blacksmiths have a certain culture or kind of magic in this setting without the story crawling up its own ass with its "magic system", which happens to way too many fantasy novels today.

ALAS BABYLON by Pat Frank.

(we own it as a "Bantam Fifty", ie a fifty-cent book in 1960.) The book deals with the results of a theoretical 1959 USSR/NATO war on the small town in the middle of Florida.

Very good read. Mature themes, language that was sadly common in the 50s and is not acceptable anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alas,_Babylon

Highly recommend for anyone who enjoys apocalyptic, sci-fi, etc. if you enjoyed Andromeda Strain, I think you would enjoy this.

I agree that the author stopped too soon

Tremendously enjoyed it overall; I wish a few words had been omitted or changed hither and yon. Would have been a better, more enduring book if they had been.

Finished Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter and I'm about a quarter of the way through James Islington's The Shadow of What Was Lost. I found info about best book reading app recently. There are millions of books that are available for free. For book lovers this app is real catch.

The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality

Expected an infuriating rose-tinted view of the present, and it does start that way, but it also makes plenty of good points, such as the value of knowledge over wealth and growth, the fact that things quite often get worse, and definitely that market forces can't be trusted with progress and public works and policies are needed. The section about poverty in the USA, which applies in general, is also surprisingly good, as is the later one about measuring poverty, plus most of the section about politics and inequality and most of that chapter's conclusions.
But population growth being clearly listed as positive is infuriating, as is the rant against population control, spewing the usual idiocies, and the repeated assumption that life is in itself worth living. Same goes for stating that inequality can be good because it can show the way to those who are behind, and while saying that progress creates inequality is fair, it doesn't really tackle unfairness, injustice, why wealth would determine who benefits first. Actually, the author seems to often fail to grasp the limitations created by lack of money when goods and services are just business, even repeatedly wondering why the knowledge and developments that work in wealthy countries fail to bring the same benefits to poor ones and mentioning social acceptability as a likely answer! And he flits between positions, not taking stances and repeatedly seeming to change conclusions. For example, contrary to the good points mentioned above, still trusting and relying on the free market too much, as well as the impossible concept of endless growth, or failing to grasp obstacles and largely blaming the worse off in the part about labor market inequality, or stating that poverty may be overevaluated and listing particularly low thresholds for it. And then there's the chapter about aid, which makes some good points about potential problems but has utterly dreadful conclusions and recommendations, largely boiling down to "hands off and let them handle things themselves"... And that USA and Sweden example, offered in support of that stance, is something that would actually be great!

Rating: 2/5

Fear (1940) by L. Ron Hubbard :2/5

A short novel, or novella, originally published in the magazine Unknown, which may be the genre magazine with highest quality to quantity ratio. Apparently this was an edited version, and Hubbard's original text was only published in 1991.

The protagonist is Jim Lowry, a big, rugged university professor in ethnology who is a vocal disbeliever of demons and devils.
The other main character is his wife Mary and his best friend the pretty-boy Tommy Willliams. One day after having visited Tommy, Lowry finds that he has lost four hours which he can't account for (and his hat) and he starts seeing things.

This story was one I initially considered and decided against reading, but even 20 years after being published it was still referred to as a masterpiece, so I decided to give it a chance.

I can't say I agree with that; far too many pages is spent by describing how Lowry walks up and down stairs in some nightmarish dreamscape. I only gets interesting around page 60, and the ending is kind of shocker that didn't need so many pages of build-up.

The best part of this story is that it's unclear whether Lowry is just crazy or if he really is the target of demonic revenge.

Shadowheart by Tad Williams. *Spoilers Follow* I liked it a lot, even though there's a section where a member of the Fairy race tries to justify the incest her dynasty has been committing for centuries. I only got past this part because my interpretation is that she and her Brother/Husband simply didn't know better, nor did her ancestors, never mind the "ugh" factor. Also, I was much relieved that the two sibling protagonists weren't expected to and did not marry each other, though they have fairy blood from the incestuous dynasty in their veins. Otherwise, the world building, plot and characters were all examples of solid writing and near perfect pacing. This was the fourth and final book of the series and made me want to read more books by the same author.

Under Pressure (1955) by Frank Herbert :4/5

Psychological thriller set in a U-Boat (or "subtug") in the near future.
This was Herbert's first novel (his second one was Dune) and the version I read was the original serial that started in the November 1955 issue of Astounding.

It was later published as a novel under the title The Dragon in the Sea, which may sound more sexy, but doesn't quite capture the essence of the book.
According to Wikipedia the text was revised for book publication, but it seems to me that whomever wrote that Wikipedia article misunderstood; it was Dune World that was revised for book publication.

The story takes place some time in our own near future. There's still a cold war going on with the "Eastern Powers", but it has gotten warmer, and oil is now the most precious substance in the universe. Norway is now controlled by the EP, and there has been a war which obliterated the British Isles.


The western powers are stealing oil from the east using "subtugs" (manned by only four persons) which can suck up millions of barrels of oil from underwater oil fields. Unfortunately the last 20 missions have all failed, with some crews going insane, and there is suspicion of the EP having sleeper agents among the subtug crews. Our hero John Ramsey, a psych/electronics expert goes undercover to find the out more, in a subtug under the command of the unfortunately named Captain Sparrow (conjures up images of a certain other captain who looks like a faggot full of mascara and is the star of some very tiresome movies), replacing the former electronics expert who went insane.

I found the book quite enjoyable and exciting, but it gets too technical at times and I had problems visualizing most of the "engineering problems", which as usual are my least favourite parts of any SF story.

It seems Herbert underestimated how far miniaturization would go and how quickly.


So better to just pretend that it takes places during the Oil Crisis in 1973, which still is near future from 1955.

Winning Insurgent War Back to Basics by Geoff Demarest

A thought provoking book where a military officer lays out some easy to understand concepts. He also provides real life events to help illustrate the concepts. He sure likes GIS (Geographic Info. Systems?). He doesn't like post-structuralism . He explained it but I still don't quite understand it. Something about zombie Marxist-lenism and anti-American.
Those concepts are:
Impunity
Anonymity
Inventory (Book of Domesday)
Line of Retreat (to sanctuary)
Geography
Property
Adaption
Deception