Suitable Gift Book

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200 word stories. 40,000 words. Mixed genre. Age 12 to 120. $9.


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Brief Answers to the Big Questions- Stephen Hawking

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     This is a great read, despite some minor repetitions. We have to bear in mind that this is really only a series of essays, some of which cover a little of the same ground. My view is that if Hawking had lived a little longer then this would have been a better compiled set of ‘letters on the big questions’, but that doesn’t much detract from the quality of the work, and certainly not from its messages. These essays run a lot wider than science, into Hawking’s hopes and fears for humankind. Some of the essays run into sensitive issues, which raise a good deal of honest debate. Well, there are just too many of us on our wonderful planet, which we are rapidly destroying, and this alone must justify our questioning of everything, even the very existence of God.      There are a few contradictions in the science, which isn’t surprising when writing about an incredibly quickly advancing field of science, cosmology, and especially when the material was...
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Déjá Vu All Over Again, by James Strait

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This fast paced action sci-fi thriller has some originality of content and style. It is one for lovers of a good Sci-fi romp, with plenty of action and a few glimpses of exciting sex. Science orientated SF fans will enjoy it if they keep their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks. One has to give one's imagination a free rein, not that there is anything wrong with that, to really enjoy this book. Strait has made very good use of the current fascination with the expiry date of a certain Mayan calendar, which certainly gives his book some current form, at least as far as the 21st December 2012. Actually, I don't really think the passing of that date will do anything to reduce the impact of the story, as there is always another convenient date looming for the end of the Earth, or at least of Earth as we currently know it. Projectile vomiting aside, I think this book could be the basis of a good film, though the date issue does rather reduce the time frame for this. Actually I ...
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Sequela- Cleland Smith

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I am finding it hard not to be over complementary. Smith has a sure-footed competence as a writer that has helped her put together a very original and highly entertaining book. This near future science fiction cleverly links the progress of science, the general `progressiveness' of social norms, at least in Britain and a quite plausible future `gated' City of London, into a page turning read. The version I read had a few silly editing errors, but a word of concern to the author has led to the knowledge that these are being dealt with. The timeline on the story, set in 2080, seems feasible. This is important because at first the hedonistic world she portrays seems to be a vast distance from where norms of social behaviour are today. There are always extreme deviants, individual cases, but those deviant behaviours rarely and only slowly become mainstream. But sometimes they do, and especially when as in this book they are centred on a particularly powerful subset of peopl...
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