Wednesday, 23 September 2015

Related Reading

Tacitus' biography of his father-in-law, Agricola, is pure hagiography.

Guy Consolmagno and Paul Mueller (see here, here and here) rightly say that there are two creation stories in Genesis but also that there is another such story in Maccabees. I am not familiar with the latter. They mention some possible responses to the heat death of the universe but not the two that are posited in later works by Poul Anderson: AI expects to survive by utilizing the energy of particle decay or by - some even more obscure means, which I cannot remember.

SM Stiring's Under The Yoke resolutely refuses to arrive. There is almost a Draka stubbornness about this.

I have bought KW Jeter's Morlock Night, yet another sequel to You Know What. Jeter's text is well written and imaginative with many good qualities but simply not a continuation of Wells' narrative. I suggest that the Morlocks should have been kept out of the title. Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, while certainly not a sequel, is an excellent conceptual successor to The Time Machine.

Jeter's book is introduced by Tim Powers, the author of one of the great circular causality novels of the universe. See here.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'm baffled as to how and why your copy of Stirling's UNDER THE YOKE "refuses" to get to your house. I'm tempted to buy another copy myself and send it to you!

And the Consolmagno/Mueller book is yet another of the many books I should reread!

And your comments about cosmology makes me wonder if you also had Poul Anderson's short story "Requiem For A Universe" in mind. It can most conveniently be found in ALL ONE UNIVERSE.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
Please don't send me an UNDER THE YOKE! I am sure we will sort it out here.
I was thinking of HARVEST OF STARS, not of "Requiem For A Universe" but that is relevant as well.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I will continue to wait, then! (Smiles)

And I must have read a half dozen of Tim Powers books. THE DRAWING OF THE DARK and THE ANUBIS GATES comes to mind.

Sean