The Palace Job

"The Palace Job" (Patrick Weekes) - An interesting blend of fantasy and steampunk / high tech.  Floating islands suspend by crystals which are changed by the sun (some sort of solar panel coupled to contra-grav?).  A golem which mumbles about its programming as it shuts down.

Impressive overall.

Bridgehead

"Bridgehead" (David Drake) - I was unpleasantly surprised by this book.  I expect a lot more from Drake, and this was not up to his usual standard.  He took an unusual idea (FTL via some sort of row and column based system), and wrapped it up in a lot of mystery and drama (which are not his strong suit).  The combat was a fairly minor part of the book, and always one-sided.

"Trader's World"

"Trader's World" (Charles Sheffield) - I am really liking Sheffield.  This book reads like the Golden Age of SF, but is from 1988.  Reminds me of the Stainless Steel Rat.  Earth is recovering from WWIII, and the traders hold together the big nations through diplomacy and trade.

Starfarers

"Starfarers" (Poul Anderson) - I'm not sure what to say about this book.  The main idea is the development of a zero energy reactionless drive (so, no FTL, but lots of STL).  The story is told in two parts, the first follows the first star ship (traveling thousands of light years towards signs of other reactionless ships); the second follows the second generation explorers, settlers, and traders.

The two stories help to break up some of the monotony (not much happens in 495 pages - at one point, I broke out the old "I'm sorry, my friend, but you must die to make the movie more interesting!").  However, it seems like the whole thing could have been made shorter.

Hell's Faire

"Hell's Faire" (John Rngo) - This is the fourth book in the Posleen trilogy.  Apparently, Ringo was finishing the third book when 9/11 happened, and got writer's block through press time.  This book continues where the third left off (plus a small - "we last left our heros"), and finishes the war on Earth.

Ringo says in the afterword that this series was written for his enjoyment (not intended for publishing).  If you don't take it too seriously, it is definitely fun.  The Sheva (named Bun Bun, after Sluggy Freelance) gets up-armored and close support weapons and fights its way towards the main character.

When the Devil Dances

"When the Devil Dances" (John Ringo) - The third book of the Posleen War.  Word on the street is this and the fourth book were supposed to be combined to make a trilogy.

It should be no surprise that I like things "epic" (very large).  That's why I prefer Babylon 5 to DS9, and elements of Star Wars over Star Trek.

So, I was initially very excited about Ringo's SheVa (Shenandoah Valley) tank.  Basically, a shuttle crawler armed with a cannon.  It's about three times bigger, and nuclear powered.  The gun fires a high velocity DU round, with an anti-matter charge.

I was compelled to break out GURPS Vehicles and start drawing it up, but the only discussion on the net I could find was at Star Destroyer dot Net.  What a bunch of wet blankets!

They've soured the experience some for me, but, overall, I remember this third book as being in line with the first two - and enjoyable.

The first book introduced the setting, and the Posleen enemy.  All the action takes place off Earth.  The second book covers the initial landing on the east coast (Virginia and DC).  The third book pulls a Dune, and skips ahead 5 years, after the Posleen have conquered much of the world.  The middle of the US is still holding out, with the Appalachians acting as a Great Wall (and army elements plugging the passes).

The power armor units have taken heavy casualties, and we get more insight into the Posleen, as some of them start to smarten up after humans have killed off all the dumb ones.

Gust Front

"Gust Front" (John Ringo) - The second Posleen book.  I often imagine how movies might be made of books I am reading.  I think this one has real potential to be something memorable (of course, it could be done as another forgettable version of "Independence Day").

There is a lot character and "big ideas" (sacrifice, etc).

A Hymn Before Battle

"A Hymn Before Battle" (John Ringo) - This is the first "Posleen" book.  The Posleen are a race of centaurs who have high tech weapons and are invading the Federation.  All the Federation races are pacifists, so they come to Earth to recruit an army.

There is obviously a lot more going on (I know it won't be resolved, because I have read "Eye of the Storm" which takes place after all these).  Some hints have already been dropped.

It is very much the best of Ringo (I don't see how he keeps it straight in his head against the "Looking Glass" series).  Fun space opera combined with good mil-SF.

Caught in the Crossfire

"Caught in the Crossfire" (David Drake) - This is a collection of Hammer's Slammers stories (two longer pieces, two short stories, and one intermediate).

Pretty typical Slammers and Drake, although two of them showed a very ruthless side of the Slammers that you don't normally see.

Eye of the Storm

"Eye of the Storm" (John Ringo) - This is a Posleen spin-off.  I never read the Posleen books, because the library doesn't have the first one.  When did libraries stop carrying old books?  It's sad that you can't get anything more than ~10 years old at the library.

I really appreciate Ringo's sense of humor.  He's clearly setting up some sort of anime parallel, but I don't know enough anime to be sure if it is exactly the same as one of them, or just flavored for them all.  The mil-sf portions are good, as always, and he throws in a good twist at the end.  Hopefully the library has the next one, as it is a cliff-hanger...

Version Control By Example

"Version Control By Example" (Eric Sink) - I got this book for free (thanks Reddit!)

I admit I was skeptical at first.  The book includes discussion of a new DVCS (Veracity).  The DVCS environment is already very crowded (git, hg, bzr, bk, fossil, darcs).

The version control by example part is straight forward and pretty well done.  There is one example which is repeated four times (svn, git, hg, veracity).  But the author's humor resonated with me, and I found myself looking for the slight changes (which were always funny).  It makes for a fast read.

The two big players right now are git and hg.  I like git, but I will be the first to admit it is special.  It makes a lot of sense to a hacker, and very little sense to anyone else (especially those who are used to svn).  git really needs a front-end with a command set oriented towards people used to svn.

As I've mentioned, I hate hg.  I shouldn't, but using it everyday in a fashion it's not really designed for makes me blame it.  About once a week (twice this week), it just flakes out and refuses to work with any command (even hg log).  Then I have to find the documentation on how to fix it, and I lose a half hour.

Fossil has some people excited because it integrates a few developer tools (wiki and bug tracking, IIRC).  Veracity is similar, it has a distributed/versioned database which is used to implement these sorts of things (and user permissions).

As Sink points out, what good is it to commit code offline, if you can't update the documentation and the bug database?

I still have worries that veracity (vv) is oriented towards the svn/hg mindset (immutable history).  If it can support all the flows from git, I could make the switch...

Some Golden Harbor

"Some Golden Harbor" (David Drake) - This is actually an older book in the Lt. (now Commander) Leary series. It's interesting to read about the effects of some stressful event first, then go back and read it as it happens afterward.

Stormy Red Sky

"In the Stormy Red Sky" (David Drake) - Another Lt. Leary (now brevet Admiral!). I'm impressed how Drake continues to deliver solid characters and action. These are turning out even better than the Hammer's Slammers books.

Drake

"When the Tide Rises" (David Drake) - Another Lt. Leary (now Commander). More solid work from Drake.

Stuff I've Read Lately

"The Dog Said Bow-Wow" (Michael Swanwick) - A collection of short stories. Not too bad. Nothing spectacular.

"When All Seems Lost" (William Dietz) - A fun mil-SF. The first two pages set the tone - after a page and a half of introducing the characters of a ship:
"What followed took place so quickly Tanaka and his crew, and the ship's computers were just beginning to process what was waiting for them when ten torpedoes scored direct hits on the destroyer escort and blew the ship to smithereens."

New Space Opera

"The New Space Opera" (ed. Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan) - There were a lot of good stories in here. It's good to see there is still some space opera being written today.

Stuff I've read lately

"The Oxford Book of Science Fiction" (ed. Tom Shippey) - This was really excellent. It covers about 100 years of SF, and most of the stories I hadn't read before. Really unusual.

Edge of Battle

"Edge of Battle" (Dale Brown)(audio) - This one was bizarre. I don't know if his editor came to him and said "You're scenarios are too believable, it's scaring people". Here we have a group of Mexicans who believe the western US belongs to them. Then they engineer border skirmishes and steal nuclear weapons (not sure what they want the nukes for, they get blown up (reeeaal goood) before we can find out).

Why? To force the US to implement a guest worker program.

The book turns all cheery 1984 at the end too; with the Mexican and American presidents gulping down nano-tracking pills and smiling for the camera (only people with something to hide avoid swallowing nano-tracking pills!).

It's a Cookbook!

A COOK BOOK!
(apologies to the Twilight Zone)

I have completed my read through of "Tcl/Tk 8 Programming Cookbook". It reads very much more like a cookbook than a novel or textbook.

I see three possible consumer groups:

1. People who are experts at finding information from man pages (like me, and 1% of the rest of the world)
   
2. People who don't like reading man pages, and are interested in learning Tcl.
3. People who have "that Tcl app" at work, that they need to maintain once every six months.

I don't think group 1 will get a lot out of this book (I did find some lesser known switches of some commands).

However, groups 2 and 3 should benefit.

Beginners will need to read the whole book to cover everything they need. However, the "cook book" style allows you to jump to any point and try something out. That is important for a beginner, to keep the interest up ("is there something new and interesting here that is worth my learning it").

You can jump right into GUI development. That is what got me hooked on Tcl/Tk.

For people less interested in learning Tcl, but needing to solve a particular problem - the table of contents should allow you to jump right to it. No need to sift through man pages of sometimes historically named commands.

This book is up to date, preferring dictionaries (new) over arrays (old). Most of the other Tcl books are from before dictionaries. It also mentions using the new themed widgets (ttk).

Strike Force

"Strike Force" (Dale Brown)(audio) - Brown must have a lot of fun writing these books. The protagonist is an American general in charge of the "Air Battle Force" (basically guys with rudimentary orbital dropships and power armor). He is so aggressive as to make Douglas Macarthur look like a peacenik.

In order to make this guy look sensible and righteous, the evil guys are almost comically evil (although, they are in Iran, so it's not entirely unbelievable). Many explosions ensue (including a ground to orbit laser attack from the Russians! pew! pew!).