Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!
This is it! Isaac Asimov’s Foundation will finally make it to visual media. After the rights passing through a few hands, they’ve finally made their way to HBO. Check out the entire article at The Wrap where Jonah Nolan talks about the new project. I’ll definitely keeping tabs on the development. No dates were given, so I’ll try to hold back most of my excitement until I hear more.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Timothy Zahn after the first book in this series. Johnny, the main character from the first book, now has three sons. The eldest at 27 is involved in politics, just like Johnny. The two other sons are a pair of twins, one which becomes a Cobra. I was hoping that there would be more action, but for the first third of the book I was fairly disappointed. It consisted mostly of political ramblings concerning a very controversial offer that one of the Troft trading partners proposed. They had identified a world near Troft space that was considered a significant threat. If the Cobras could neutralize this threat, the Trofts were willing to give the colony five new worlds. (more…)
I prefer the Robot City series to Robots and Aliens. At the end of Robot City I felt like everything was building up to a new series, which it was. I don’t think that Robots and Aliens did a good enough job to tie everything together. It seemed like just the last few chapters of Book 6 were used to close any loose ends in the plot lines. (more…)
When I was looking for what to spend some of my first Audible credits on, The Martian by Andy Weir stood out. This still ranks at the top of roughly 15 audiobooks I’ve listened to for two reasons. First, the story and writing was engaging. This was “hardest” sci-fi I’ve read so far. There is a lot of math, chemistry, physics, and botany (yes botany). I’m sure that many people would be put off by such dry and detailed descriptions, but that leads me to my second point. The performance of the narrator, R.C. Bray, was superb. He made the “hard science” interesting and entertaining. His voice strikes me as a perfect fit for the main character, Mark Watney. Do yourself a favor and listen to the 5 minute sample on Audible and judge for yourself. While the book focuses on his Watney’s mission log, R.C. Bray does voices for other characters in NASA back on Earth. The voices are OK, nothing but nothing spectacular. I can’t say there is anything wrong, but there are other narrators with a stronger skill for differing character voices. (more…)