Thermal

Occasionally amidst all the dross, caption catz, and lols on the interweb, you come across a website that’s an informative, amusing and downright interesting way to spend a few minutes and I was lucky enough to find one today.

Back in 1972, Geoffrey Hoyle (son of Sir Fred Hoyle) wrote a children’s book about 2010:Living In The Future.

Being that we have now reached the future (so to speak) what better time to see what came true, and what didn’t, and that’s exactly what Daniel Sinker did at this site: 2010: Living In The Future – The Book.

The site’s well worth a read, and Daniel’s commentary is very amusing, whilst always affectionate. Geoffrey Hoyle did get a few things spot on, while a few were somewhat wide of the mark, though I do fancy that dedicated bacon oven and the throwing toast machine…..

So after you’ve read that; what are your predictions for 2048? Jumpsuits are a given

One of the highlights of the holiday was the boy’s discovery of the excellent Astrosaurs books by Steve Cole. We had wandered into a bookshop in Oban which had a special offer on 3 for 2 so we all got a book each, and the boys were taken in by the picture of space-suit clad dinosaurs – I mean what could be better for a 5 year old boy?

It soon became a feature of each evening for Mum to read a couple of chapters once they were zipped into their sleeping bags, and I must admit the audience often consisted of 3 boys…. The books follow the adventures of Captain Teggs and the crew of the DSS Sauropod as they travel the galaxy fighting evil (mainly Mammoths) wherever they find it. How? Well, you see the dinosaurs didn’t all get wiped out by a meteor strike millions of years ago, as they had developed space teavel and most had already left…..

They really are excellent books (any resemblance to Star Trek is completely coincidental) and are the first ‘real’ books (More words than pictures) that the boys have latched onto, and they’ve spent hours leafing through them and beginning to read them. They even went back the the shop and spent the rest of their holiday money on more.

If you know of any 5+ kids who like dinosaurs (probably most of them!) they’ll love these books. They even have their own Astrosaurs website, which also features the new CIA series (Cows In Action)……

Edward has been a regular visitor to my blogs for a while now, and you’re probably aware that he has a blog of his own, The Urban Iconoclast. What you may not know is that Edward is an author of several books, and he has asked me to review one of them; Free Spirit.

Free Spirit  is a novel about Brad, who gives up his job to move to a remote lakeside cottage to concentrate on writing his first novel. Intent on breaking his concentration are a wide group of characters, who make up the inhabitants of the small community around the lake, including an artist struggling with her career, her 7 year old daughter and her lover, Angel, who has her own problems which don’t improve even after a major life-changing event. Add into the mix Angel’s damaged sister, her slutty friend, Nugey the moonshine brewer, ‘special’ brownie supplier and part time treasure hunter, a comically inept local Sheriff and a Nazi hunting lunatic it doesn’t seem like Brad’s going to get much peace….

Free Spirit is an interesting read, and one that keeps you on your toes as you read – it’s hard to pigeonhole it, so I won’t try, but there are elements of drama, passion, humanity and no small amount of humour to be found throughout. The main arc of the story focuses on the relationship between Brad, Jade the artist, her daughter Spice and Jade’s lover Angel, which is further complicated by the presence of Angel’s sister Carla. Matchmaking, interfering siblings and a 7 year old girl’s desire for a Father figure in her life all conspire to give Brad a major headache, but one that leads to a major shift in his life and its priorities.
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Ten actually, in this list of the Ten worst sentences from third rate Sci-Fi.

I particularly like this one which is number 9:

Frank watched the mushroom cloud spread across the horizon with annoyance, knowing that this meant more weeks of disruption to regular cross-Manhattan train service while the debris was cleared.

But number one does take some beating. You have to admire Snarps determination and optimism.

I like Sci-Fi and read a lot of it, but there really is some dross out there. To be fair, it must be hard thinking up original names for characters and places, but I do blame the fascination with alien sex squarely on one James T Kirk.

“Show me the ways of what you Earthlings call love!”

Well, you’re in luck then. Although Envirochecks website is only for the UK, the KGB mapped most of the world, so yours will be out there somewhere.

Between 1938 and 1990, the Russian security forces mapped most of the large cities in Britain, to a very high level of detail. As the site says:

It is a spine-chilling fact. Every Soviet president from Stalin to Gorbachev, and all their highranking officers, knew not only where you lived but how to get there by tank.

These are the areas covered – I see Aberdeen is on there!

It’s weird to think that in some cases, their maps were better than ours at the time. To this day, some of the best maps of Africa and Asia remain those crafted by the KGB. You can view a sample map at the site, and registered users can view or download them all.

Again via The Register.

You can hardly fail to be an author with a name like that really can you? I mention him because his latest book has just come out, and as soon as I get some money for the er, ‘sponsored posts’, I’ll be off to Amazon to get it.

Conn’s last series was an epic 4 novel fiction based on the life of Julius Caesar. He’s a brilliant storyteller, and although the page count must have weighed in at over 2000 for the series, I read it in about a week, and could not put it down. It was one of those stories where the pages turn in a blur, and it’s almost like watching a film, although much better! If you enjoyed the ‘Rome’ TV series which showed last year, you’ll love this.
His next series is about Genghis Khan, and is another fictionalised, yet based on the known facts, story. Should be excellent. A short interview with Conn can be found on the BBC.

Read anything good lately?

What a fantastic idea: On Demand Books

According to the article where I found out about this, OnDemand Books (ODB? – wasn’t he in the Wu-Tang Clan? Perhaps they could have thought this through better) are looking to install these machines in libraries and other places. You find the book you want, select page quality options and a few other bits, and in about seven minutes, the machine will print, glue and bind the book and you can take it away. Not only this, it can do two at once, in any language and can even bind for those languages that are read right to left. Amazing.

This is a great idea and one I hope takes off. For now they are limited to about 1 million out of copyright books as indexed by Google, but they state that  within 5 years they will be able to re-create any book ever printed. Which will be quite a feat for those works that went up in smoke in the Library of Alexandria, but I think I know what they mean. Price will be around $0.01 per page, which is certainly cheaper than it is now. I’d use them.

Have a look at the article where I found this story – it lists 9 other innovations for 2007, including 6′ Roses, taking power from rivers, removable tattoos and more.

This is a quite marvelous idea: Thumb Thing

I do a lot of reading in bed, and sometimes the ache in my hand is worse than having used a mouse for 8 hours. Another gadget to add to the list of things I didn’t know I needed.

J-Walk has linked to the top 50 books on Amazon this year, and in common with him, I have read precisely zero. Can you do any better?

My favourite book of the year is Shield Of Thunder by the late, great David Gemmell. He died in July, only 58, before it was published. It’s a big hole in my reading life that there won’t be anymore from this amazing writer.

What was your favourite book of 2006?

Sound advice. Following on from my awful album covers post; behold! Terrible book covers.

What are they doing? Does it hurt? And how happy does that Alien look? Want more? Bad Book Covers.