Science Fiction – a couple wrong turns. . .

BOOKHUNT: Special Sections, Finding Treasure, and Things that Aren’t from Space

Growing up, I was notorious for having bad luck on my brother’s birthday. I usually sustained some kind of damage to my face, which was the result of various things, including cement at high velocity and a golf club to the eye. It seems to be something that I more or less grew out of…

BOOKHUNT: Obvious Titles and Awkward Authors

You know when you’re in a proper bookstore – one of those shops where the shelves are full, and overflow piles everywhere? And you notice someone else in that bookstore, and you wonder: “What is that person looking for?” And you kind of keep on eye on them, and possibly even follow them around, to…

BOOKHUNT: Telepathic Spiders from Space

Without constraints I can spend hours in a good used bookstore. Without constraints, I could probably live in one. But on any given occasion you will eventually need to eat, or go to the bathroom, go to work, or go to class. And if you’re with people? They won’t want to stay as long. Not…

BOOKS: Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson

“To be 21st Century scientists on Mars, in fact, but at the same time living within 19th-century social systems, based on 17th-century ideologies. It’s absurd, it’s crazy, it’s – it’s- … it’s unscientific! And so I say that among al the many things we transform on Mars, ourselves and our social reality should be among them. We must terraform not only Mars, but ourselves.” -Arkady Bogdanov, in ‘Red Mars,’ by Kim Stanley Robinson (pg 89)

[Astro Boy - "Here you go with some more energy!"]

Robot Design Considerations in 1957, Japan

This gem of a panel is from the story Ghost Manufacturing Machine in Astro Boy Omnibus 2 by Osamu Tezuka; pg 91, panel 2 (first published in a 1957 supplement edition of Shonen magazine). This was one of only two English books in my hostel’s library. The other was War and Peace. It did not…