So what are you reading now? Part 2

[seigezunt]

I was reading the second book in the Stargazer series, but had to stop midway.....(It got too boring!)

I was hoping for the same feeling of Michael Jan Friedman's previous 'My Brother's Keeper' books, but he didn't 'bring back that lovely feeling'...

There are definitely some interesting characters, and a little interesting situation between an Admiral that wants to drown Picard's career; and, other situations involving male characters who want to sleep with or date the Asmund twins...but the book was just dragging...

Aw shoot. I just picked that one up at a garage sale.

 

[Steve Roby]

IMHO, the Stargazer books aren't MJF's best work. I remember quite liking the My Brother's Keeper trilogy but Stargazer underwhelmed me. The arc with the admiral makes all the other dumbass crazy Starfleet admirals look like paragons of virtue and wisdom. It's nearly impossible to take it seriously. Well, for me, anyway.

(ETA: the "it" I can't take seriously is that particular arc, not Stargazer as a whole, in case it isn't clear.)

 

[Joel_Kirk]

I was reading the second book in the Stargazer series, but had to stop midway.....(It got too boring!)

I was hoping for the same feeling of Michael Jan Friedman's previous 'My Brother's Keeper' books, but he didn't 'bring back that lovely feeling'...

There are definitely some interesting characters, and a little interesting situation between an Admiral that wants to drown Picard's career; and, other situations involving male characters who want to sleep with or date the Asmund twins...but the book was just dragging...

Aw shoot. I just picked that one up at a garage sale.

Sorry dude...

IMHO, the Stargazer books aren't MJF's best work. I remember quite liking the My Brother's Keeper trilogy but Stargazer underwhelmed me. The arc with the admiral makes all the other dumbass crazy Starfleet admirals look like paragons of virtue and wisdom. It's nearly impossible to take it seriously. Well, for me, anyway.

I'm glad I'm not the only one...!


******

I forgot to mention in my last post:

I finished Book 1 of the Riverworld series, and I understand Book 1 is all I need to read. {The other books are not that hot, and the final book explains the alien plot; I think it would have been more mysterious to leave it up to the readers imagination what the purpose was for reviving long dead people of Earth}...

I don't want to say anymore in case I spoil it for readers who may be intersted in the series.

 

[brynfreya]

I just finished reading (as in today, at work...) my second ever Trek novel. Yesterday's Son. I loved it. Spock's World awaits me at the library. Good thing to tide me over while I start a search for Time for Yesterday, which apparently is quite hard to find outside of Amazon.

Non-Trek reading right now is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I just finished Foundation.

 

[seigezunt]

I just finished reading (as in today, at work...) my second ever Trek novel. Yesterday's Son. I loved it. Spock's World awaits me at the library. Good thing to tide me over while I start a search for Time for Yesterday, which apparently is quite hard to find outside of Amazon.

Non-Trek reading right now is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I just finished Foundation.

I read Spock's World when it first came out, and loved it. I will be curious to see how it's aged, and how a new reader mgith come away from it.

 

[indianatrekker26]

Thanks to the new movie coming out on dvd, I have been in a major TOS reading mood. Im currently bouncing back and forth between Prime Directive and Vanguard: Summon the Thunder. I've been re-reading Vanguard from the beginning.

 

[Rosalind]

Next up, it's definitely going to be The Empty Chair.

I found that one OK but somewhat disappointing compared to the other books - its main twist seems to be that the specific plot twist it leads you to expect never actually comes...

I loved it! I found it a better read than Swordhunt.

I'm also almost finished with Vanguard: Open Secret, which has put Vanguard next with DS9 and Titan as one of my favourite series.

 

[Dayton Ward]

I'm also almost finished with Vanguard: Open Secret, which has put Vanguard next with DS9 and Titan as one of my favourite series.

 

[Reanok]

I started reading the new Titan novel Synthesis a few days ago. A really great followup to the last novel. I really like the story James Swalallow wrote in this book the AI in this book are compleax and conflicted very well written. I look forward to getting the next book in this series.

 

[Thrawn]

I'm working on Open Secrets with Precipice up next. I have a tendency to lose track of details, because I read a ton of books, so I try to wait until a few books in a series come out before reading several of them in a row. Especially with the more mainstream sci-fi authors, I'll wait for the whole trilogy or series to be out before I start it. Trek is ongoing, so I can't do that as well, but I read the first 3 Vanguard books in one go, and decided to wait until Precipice came out so I could do the next 2. Not that ANYONE cares.

I'm really enjoying Open Secrets so far, much more than Summon The Thunder which seemed disorganized and repetitive to me, and haven't been as much of a fan of Ward's books in the past so that's a pleasant surprise. I'm sure I'll love Precipice; Mack hasn't written a book that's anything less than holyshitawesome so far.

 

[Destructor]

In fact, the Trek concept is becoming kind of antiquated. Eventually, we'll have space-based telescopes powerful enough to let us make detailed maps of planets in other star systems. So the idea of a starship going anywhere that's totally unknown until it gets there isn't really something that will stand the test of time.

That's something of an assumption that there isn't some kind of upper limit on resolving distant images, or that the light from a planet's star won't always obscure the planet itself. We've never actually seen any extra-solar planets at all, in terms of directly observing them- we've just been able to imply their existence due to the behavior of certain stars. While it's certainly possible that we may someday have the technology to directly observe planets with the detail you describe, it's equally likely that the only way you can make observations of that nature is to move sufficiently close to the star system that the obscuring light of the system's sun is not a factor.

More correct would be to say that it's unlikely that starfarers will ever visit a planet that they haven't already bombarded with dozens of probes to learn as much as they can about it before visiting.

 

[Christopher]

That's something of an assumption that there isn't some kind of upper limit on resolving distant images, or that the light from a planet's star won't always obscure the planet itself. We've never actually seen any extra-solar planets at all, in terms of directly observing them- we've just been able to imply their existence due to the behavior of certain stars.

That's incorrect. We have directly imaged at least five exoplanets since 2004. (The link lists six, but one is only a possible.) Four of them were simultaneously announced to considerable fanfare just over a year ago. The proposed Terrestrial Planet Finder telescope is designed to capture further direct images of exoplanets.

While it's certainly possible that we may someday have the technology to directly observe planets with the detail you describe, it's equally likely that the only way you can make observations of that nature is to move sufficiently close to the star system that the obscuring light of the system's sun is not a factor.

That's not true, thanks to the wonders of the Solar gravitational focus:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=8813

...[G]ravitational focusing has been an active astronomical tool since 1978, when a ‘twin’ image of a quasar was found by the British astronomer Dennis Walsh. The gravitational field of a galaxy between the Earth and the quasar had bent the light from the more distant object, yielding the double image. And it was back in 1979 that Von Eshleman studied the Sun’s own gravitational focus at 550 AU, pondering how we might send a spacecraft there to study its effects.

The Sun at that distance becomes a huge celestial magnifier, and Dr. Maccone has been arguing that before we send a mission to any star, we should send a probe to this much closer target in the exactly opposite direction. Diffracting effects from the Sun’s corona may distort the image at the minimum 550 AU distance, so we may have to go farther, but we’re still talking about getting a spacecraft to well less than 1000 AU to begin making its observations. In fact, the further the probe travels, the less distortion from the solar corona, and the focal line extends to infinity.
...
Maccone is convinced that a tethered system of antennae can resolve the daunting imaging issues posed by a probe at 550 AU, with stunning capabilities at magnifying the object being imaged. Thus the possibility of getting high quality images of any planets of interest in a target solar system, down to small details on the planetary surface.

 

[Steve Roby]

So what am I reading? Still don't have Precipice, so I'm reading David Peace's novel Nineteen Seventy-Seven, second of the Red Riding Quartet of crime novels set in the north of England.

Wat a liiv an bambaie, when the two sevens clash...

 

[BrotherBenny]

I just started reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Weird but good so far.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I just started reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Weird but good so far.

It's like the book Jane Austen never wrote, about magicians. Or it's Patrick O'Brian, with magic instead of sailing ships.

One of my colleagues at work was struggling with the book. I told him that the first hundred pages are a bit of a chore, but then the book really starts to move.

And the footnotes could make whole books in their own right.

Clarke's short story collection, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, is worthwhile, too. Some Jonathan Strange fiction, a short story set in the world of Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Good stuff.

 

[Cap'n Crunch]

I'm currently reading DS9: Rising Son. Before that was Open Secrets and Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Priory School. Next up: whatever the next Sherlock Holmes story is, then DS9: Unity.

 

[BrotherBenny]

I just started reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Weird but good so far.

It's like the book Jane Austen never wrote, about magicians. Or it's Patrick O'Brian, with magic instead of sailing ships.

One of my colleagues at work was struggling with the book. I told him that the first hundred pages are a bit of a chore, but then the book really starts to move.

And the footnotes could make whole books in their own right.

Clarke's short story collection, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, is worthwhile, too. Some Jonathan Strange fiction, a short story set in the world of Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Good stuff.

I'll finish it, but yeah I do agree that it reads more like a creative doctoral thesis than a standard novel. I'm enjoying it though.

 

[Count Zero]

I've read the novelisations of two missing Doctor Who serials in the meantime: The Celestial Toymaker and The Savages. Now I can finally finish watching season 3 of the old show.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

I finished 'Mindshadow' the TOS novel from J.M.Dillard....

** out of *****

I'm actually at Chapter 12 with 'By the Book'....the ENT novel....

I may be reading other things here and there...

 

[Tom Riley]

FINALLY on to Unworthy, it's great so far.