There's a little bit about libertarianism, but this is mostly about the Libertarian Party. I learned more about Wes Benedict and how one talented and motivated activist can turn around a defunct and ineffective party. I wish we'd elected Wes Benedict the LNC Chair in 2026. But I'm sure Evan McMahon will do a fine job.

★★☆☆☆

Started strong, ended weak.

★☆☆☆☆

This is the worst book I've read all year.

It's an Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiche, except instead of placing the story in Africa or on the planet Mars, Lin Carter chooses the entire galaxy and the whole of Time as the settings.

Thane of the Two Swords
Our hero is Thane of the Two Swords, who we meet as he's approached by Prince Chan of Shimar and his dwarf servant Druu of Yoth Zembis. Chan offers Thane a hundred million gold pieces for three days of service. Thane insults Chan and leaves.

Immediately afterward, Thane runs into a beautiful woman on the run from five Desert Warriors who are chasing her with swords. Thane fights them off, then escapes with the woman--whose name is Illara--away from the city. Unfortunately, they are both caught by the forces of Shastar of the Red Moon. Shastar imprisons them aboard his warship. We find out right away that Shastar and Chan are working together. They need Thane because they believe he stole the Jewel of Amzar from the temple of the Time Priests of Aealim on Mnom the Dark World. They need the Time Jewel to open the Web of Time and lead them to the Tower Beyond Time so they can steal the treasure it contains. If all this sounds incredibly dumb, trust me, it is.

Illara is working with Shastar, and she tries to pump Thane for information (but of course she falls in love with Thane at the end of the book.)

Thane: psionic superhero
Shastar sentences Thane to fight a duel with Zangor, a Nexian Mind-Gladiator. Thane is almost destroyed by the mental blows that Zangor throws at him, but the mental blows shake something loose in Thane's mind and unlock heretofore unknown mental powers. Thane lifts Zangor into the air using the power of his mind, holds him aloft, then drops him to his death.

Cool. So our hero has psionic powers of psychokinesis now.

Thane is put into a very regular sort of prison cell on Shastar's jungle moon hideout. You know the sort: heavy stone walls with a tiny window barred by a grill of massive steel rods. Thane uses his new mental powers to simply realign the atoms of the steel, then rips the grill away with his bare hands. Then Thane uses his psionic psychokinesis on himself, to levitate himself through the air to the cell where Illara is being kept prisoner. He mind-punches a hole through the steel bars on her window. Then he flies them both to Shastar's little moored spaceboat, which they steal.

Thane: immortal god
Thane reveals to Illara that he didn't steal the Jewel of Amzar. He was trying to steal it when he dropped it. It shattered, and the spirit that was inside the Jewel entered him. The spirit of the last Immortal, a very god. That's what has been giving Thane these new mental powers--he has a god living inside him.

Illara double-crosses him. She activates an immobilizer that blocks Thane's psionic powers, then she sells him out to Chan, Druu, and Shastar.

The five of them--Prince Chan, his dwarf servant Druu, Shastar of the Red Moon, Thane, and Illara journey to Mnom the Dark World where they enter the Temple of the Time Web. There they turn off the mental immobilizer and Thane uses his psionic powers to active the Time Web.

Rage: purple prose
And here begins the most ludicrously and rage-inducing sequence in the book.

First, we get an entire chapter that is just the traveling through time. They see all of history unfolding. It's an entire chapter of paragraphs like this:

Before their dazed and astonished eyes, Torje and the Star Crusaders carried forward the starburst banners of Valdamar in savage struggles against the Machine Kings of Atrogon the Robot Planet... and the Sky Lords of Bartosca, who enslaved the Tigermen with their will-destroying death drug--watched as they battled the dread science of the Sun-Stealers of Arlomma the Ice Planet, and fought against the Mind Masters of Pelizon

Just pages and pages of that.

Rage, rage: the treasure
Then they arrive at the end of time. They find The Last Planet, and on it, the Tower Beyond Time where the Immortals stored their vast treasures. And here Lin Carter gives us pages and pages of description of treasure, like this:

Coins of a thousand ancient realms on a hundred million worlds. Coins of gold, silver, platinum, bronze, nickel, chaya, iridium, and the precious metals of many planets. Coins of bronze and silver from luxurious Sybaris and Iberia, and glittering Syracuse where wise Archimedes measured the earth; gold staters incised with the profiles of Seleucid and Antiochan monarchs with ivy-wreathed brows

Again, this goes on for pages.

Greedy Prince Chan is transfixed at the sight of all the treasure. His dwarf servant Druu chooses this moment to exact revenge against his cruel master: he stabs Chan in the back. Chan lives just long enough to kill Druu with a laser pistol, then he dies.

Rage, rage, RAGE!: the real treasure
And now the most acutely rage-inducing bit of this entire rage-inducing sequence:

[The] heaped mounds of treasure, for which they had come so far…vanished!

Yes, the treasure disappears. Then a disembodied voice explains that there was no treasure, and that the real treasure is the friends they made along the way.

The end.

This book is no treasure either.

★★★☆☆

I'm not usually fond of fantasy but this is a clever little story. In an alternate Earth, the universe is an egg and the sky is cracking. In a desperate attempt to save their world, the local magicians snatch someone from our Earth: the greatest builder in history, Dave Hanson. Unfortunately there has been a miscalculation. Instead of Dave Hanson, genious engineer and renowned builder, they've snatched his nephew: Dave Hanson, computer repairman.

But because that's how prophecies work, our Dave Hanson is the right guy after all.

★★☆☆☆

An interesting premise but the execution and the final resolution were disappointing.

Daniel Feldman, disgraced doctor, flees from the Medical Lobby and ends up on Mars. Why is he disgraced? Because he dared to defy the Medical Lobby by treating a patient outside of an official hospital. He saved the patient's life, by the way, but violations of Medical Lobby rules of ethics allow no wiggle room.

On Mars, the Medical Lobby rules technically still apply, but the locals don't care so much. Feldman ends up doing clandestine medical work for the settlers while the local Mars authorities look the other way.

An outbreak of Martian plague raises the stakes considerably. Feldman not only does medical work, but he starts doing medical research as well. He discovers that the plague has a fourteen-year incubation period and has likely infected most of Earth as well as Mars. Its threatens humanity with extinction. During all this, the Martians settlers rebel against the Earth authorities and start a war.

The answer ends up being ludicrously simple: smoking the local Martian tobacco alternative, bracky weed, kills the parasite responsible for the plague. And since it will take at least a decade for Earth to isolate and synthesize the particular compound in bracky weed that will stop the plague, Earth immediately capitulates and grants Mars indepedence. In exchange, Mars will supply enough bracky weed to cure everyone.

★☆☆☆☆

Only slightly improved from the previous book in the series. There is a third book, but I won't be reading it.

★☆☆☆☆

This is Bova's first book and it shows. Wow this is bad.

★★★★☆

I am giving The Sword of Rhiannon the inaugural Stranger than SF Book of the Month award. This is a best book I've read all month.

★☆☆☆☆

I enjoyed it. It's not a great book, but I enjoyed it.

Brad Stevens takes the Long Sleep, expecting to wake up in a few years when his cancer can be healed. Instead, it's hundreds of years later and he awakens to find a world completely changed after a nuclear catastrophe.

The new world he finds himself thrust into is brutally transactional. Those who cannot pay their debts are sold into literal slavery. Stevens finds himself saddled with the debt of what it cost to revive him.

What's worse, the world is strictly run by various guilds and trade associations, so it's not easy to get a decent-paying job. Some shady folks try to hire Stevens because he has some knowledge of nuclear physics, but he refuses to help them build a bomb, so he's reduced to manual labor.

After various shenanigans, Stevens ends up running with a shady relic-hunting outfit. With his knowledge of the London Underground, they manage to travel beneath the surface (avoiding the hard radiation aboveground) and emerge in the downtown zone where they ransack some jewelry stores. It's a bizarre sequence.

And in the end, it turns out Stevens isn't cured of cancer after all. Those who woke him up assumed he was suffering from radiation sickness and treated him for that, but his cancer is still there and still as untreatable as ever. He goes into the Long Sleep again.

★★☆☆☆

Nope.

The nation of Alphaland is run entirely based on models and predictions given by their advanced computers. When their computers tell them that they can start a war with neighboring Betastan and win it within two months, the result is predictable: Betastan doesn't play by the computer's rules. Their sabotage, guerilla warfare, and their clever ways of circumventing the Alphaland computers results in a complete defeat for the Alphaland regime. The war is over quickly, but it's Alphaland that loses.

This book was not great.

As it turns out, I don't like Tiptree's writing. She's talented, but she turns her talents in the wrong direction.

The only decent story in this collection is Birth of a Salesman, and that only marginally so.

And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side
Humans are genetically programmed to want to have sex with aliens, and that’s going to lead to the downfall of humanity

The Snows are Melted, Snows are Gone
Armless mutant woman uses her body to lure a primitive man away from his tribe, then kidnaps him. Plot twist: it’s the future, men are mostly extinct, and the world is dying or something. The story is happening in what used to be Ethiopia.

The Peacefulness of Vivyan
Drivel and incomprehensible. As near as I can tell, the viewpoint character is mentally deranged and travels from planet to planet subconsciously trying to escape the memories that his conscious mind has long ago suppressed: that his entire family was butchered in a revolt on the planet Atlixco—and that it was his brother who betrayed them all. But as I said, it’s incomprehensible drivel.

Mamma Come Home
Giant alien women come to earth to take men as slaves. Tiptree can't write anything not about sex, apparently.

Help
Religious fundamentalist aliens from Cygnus come to earth and blow up various houses of worship to coerce humans to worship the Great Pupa. Finally a story not about sex—but about the worst stereotype of imperialist religion.

Painwise
So dumb. Some guy has been tuned—altered—so he cannot feel pain, and forced to explore the galaxy for new planets. He’s picked up by some touring alien telepaths who use him for their amusement. He convinces them to take him back to earth, where he feels pain again. What kind of nonsense is this?

Faithful to Thee, Terra, in Our Fashion
On Raceworld, creatures from a million planets compete in races, for fame and money—and all run by the fair and incorruptible Solterrans. The poor, orphan, planetless refugees from a destroyed Terra.

The Man Doors Said Hello To
Nope nope nope nope nope. The doors literally say hello to the man. That’s the most sense this absurdist story makes.

The Man Who Walked Home
A science experience goes boom and triggers the apocalypse. Later, a post-apocalyptic world notices an annual specter that appears for a few seconds at the epicenter of the event: it’s a man, Major John Delgano, traveling backwards in time to his home—where he will cause the boom that triggers the apocalypse. This is not so much a story as a poetic description of a thought experiment.

Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket
Time-jumping sex maniac from the future. Ugh.

I'll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool is Empty
Terran boy goes exploring and sort of accidentally communicates Terran interstellar enlightenment to a primitive planet. I think Tiptree wants me to consider this a bad thing, but the Terran culture portrayed is far superior, morally and spiritually and from a human-rights perspective—than the cruel and inhumane native culture. If they lost some of their native customs, it’s a small price to pay for all the babies that weren't burned on pagan altars and women who were no longer forced to be slaves or men who weren't slaughtered in pointless wars.

I'm Too Big but I Love to Play
Drivel again. Some disembodied alien intelligence takes on the shape of various people and does various strange things. This is yet another pointless story with too much sex. I am not liking this Tiptree collection.

Birth of a Salesman
Mr. T. Benedict works in the off-planet shipping office, making sure products don’t cause unexpected reactions in alien lifeforms along the shipping route. This isn’t a terrible story, it’s just kind of rushed and harried.

Mother in the Sky with Diamonds
An asteroid inspector/cop for the Company is hiding a secret: the old derelict Ragnorak—and a woman, Topanga.

Beam Us Home
Little Hobie gets hooked on Star Trek, grows up expecting the Enterprise to come and beam him up, joins the Air Force, flies a plane to the stratosphere, and gets abducted by aliens.

It's refreshing to hear an approach to poverty that centers the gospel of Jesus Christ. Also, it seems that giving people stuff, except in the case of basic relief in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, never works out well. Poverty is a mindset or a worldview, and it's not something that can be solved merely by giving money and materials things to people who lack money and material things.

I do think anybody who wants to get into helping ministries should read this book.

★★☆☆☆

Dr. Jay Allison's other personality, Jason, undertakes a trek into the mountains of Darkover to ask the Trailmen (the Sky People) to leave their arboreal homes and come to the Terran outpost to help stop a plague.

A young woman finds her psi talent, and it's evil.

Also, it's worth mentioning that the young girl, Sybil, is "fifteen years old and as frail as a branch of willow," which is disturbing considering that author Marion Zimmer Bradley describes her using sex to entice and ultimately murder someone, and also considering the claims of child sexual abuse made against Marion Zimmer Bradley by her own daughter. One suspects Bradley may not have fully understood the enormity of what she wrote in The Waterfall.

Bradley escaped justice in this world, but there is a day of judgement in the life that is to come.

★★☆☆☆

Starts well, finishes weakly. Hubbard writes good fiction. He should have stuck to that.

Alan Corday is shanghaied and forced to join the crew of the Hound of Heaven. Alan has a fiancee waiting for him back on Earth, but because Hound of Heaven is an interstellar starship, it's on the Long Passage. The time dilation effect mean that when Alan gets back home a few months later, his girl is an elderly spinster in the throes of dementia. She doesn't recognize him.

Indeed, Earth doesn't recognize Alan, and he doesn't recognize what Earth has become. He realizes that Hound of Heaven is all he has left. He eventually becomes captain of the ship. There are various adventures, mostly dumb, and eventually (years later in his timeline, millennia later on Earth's timeline) the crew of Hound of Heaven fight a war against earthmen who try to steal their cargo.

This is not a great effort from Hubbard, but it's readable.

A typical Thompson book, not bad. Yankee is the dog.

I did it. I finished the Famous Forty. Also, it turns out that Merry Go Round is the name of a wooden horse from a merry-go-round.

It's a collaboration between husband-and-wife team of Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett. Hamilton's name is first on the cover, but I dare say there is more Brackett in the story than Hamilton.

John Eric Stark (who I'm told has his own series of stories) is sent into the future to the universe of the Star Kings to battle a great destructive entity that threatens to destroy all life in the universe. It's a decent story, albeit shorter than I'd like. Interesting--usually I complain that stories are too long.

Delightful. Thumbs up. This is one of the few non-Baum Oz books that's worth reading.

A boy named Jam from Ohio finds his way to Oz via a large kite. He lands in Gillikin Country. The supporting characters are memorable: his guinea pigs named Pinny and Gig, and his pet rat Pervical, aka Percy the Personality Kid. Percy is a lot of fun.

They end up in in a valley where the citizens toil as slaves of the giant Terp the Terrible. Terp is fifty feet tall, and he forces the citizens to tend the grapes and make jam, which he eats for breakfast on muffins from his magic muffin tree.

Percy helps Jam escape from the valley, and steals some of Terp's magic muffins. It turns out the muffins are what make Terp a giant; when Percy eats one, he becomes human-sized. But the magic only lasts a few days.

Jam and Percy meet Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Hungry Tiger, and together they have many adventures, finally returning to Terp's valley and chopping down the magic muffin tree. Terp shrinks back to normal size, and the citizens are free. Ozma sends Jam home and the Wizard makes Percy's large size permanent, so it's a happy ending all around.

Snow is improving.

Twins from Buffalo, New York named Twink and Tom are pulled through their television set into the fairyland. They've been summoned by the sorcerer Conjo to his island in the Nonestic Ocean. Conjo, as it turns out, is the sorcerer who created the Shaggy Man's Love Magnet, that totem that causes everyone to love whoever holds it. Unfortunately the Love Magnet has broken and can only be repaired by Conjo, so the Shaggy Man is also headed to Conjo's island.

Conjo is self-centered and deceitful. He fixes the Love Magnet, but the Shaggy Man realizes that Conjo intends to keep Twink and Tom as his slaves. So the Shaggy Man, Twink, and Tom steal Conjo's Airmobile and escape the island. After various adventures, they arrive at the Emerald City to find that Conjo is there. He is attempting to use the Wizard's bag of magic to take over Oz. Our heroes foil Conjo's plans and send him back to his island. Ozma sends Twink and Tom back home to Buffalo.

Tightly plotted, but every challenge is resolved by a fairy showing up and metaphorically waving her wand or literally waving her wand.

I've been waiting for ages to read this Oz book. Ozoplanes? Sign me up!

My main question is whether the "Oz" in Ozoplane should be pronounced as in "ozone" or like "Oz." Probably Oz.

Basic plot: the Wizard designs and builds two ozoplanes--the Ozpril and the Oztober--with which to explore the skies. As he's giving a tour, the Tin Woodman, Jellia Jamb, and the Soldier with the Green Whiskers accidentally launch the Oztober, which carries them off far away. The rest try to track them in the Ozpril.

There's a sky kingdom called Stratovania, whose ruler tries to invade the Emerald City and usurp Ozma's throne. In the end, Ozma uses her magic belt to end the threat and everything right.

Ozma's magic belt is a problem. It's too powerful, and it's the plot resolution device for too many Oz books. That and Ozma's magic picture are just too much.

Overall, the book was OK. Not the worst, but also not nearly the best.

Also, a nitpick: Thompson names the Soldier with the Green Whiskers as Wantowin Battles. Earlier books clearly established his name as Omby Amby. I disliked the unnecessary name change.

Return of Kabumpo. This story was...OK. Thompson seems to really like the character of Jinnicky the Red Jinn, as she brings him back in this book once again. I'm not as convinced that Jinnicky is interesting enough to justify his continued appearances.

Better.

An geyser accidentally blasts a seven-armed goat-herder named Mandy into Munchkinland in Oz. All right then. She immediately falls in with Nox the Royal Ox, who has a magic horn. It turns out that the rightful king of Keretaria (the little kingdom within Munchkinland where Handy Mandy has landed) is missing, so Mandy and Nox go on a quest to find him.

I found the uses of magic to be clever, and I quite enjoyed the story. But (as I'm writing this review a month later) the details have faded quickly. I still think it's one of Thompson's better Oz stories, but on the whole I'm not sure it's worth reading Oz beyond Baum. Indeed, even several of Baum's books could be skipped.

Thumbs down.

Captain Salt, first seen in book 25, Pirates in Oz, is back. He's been commissioned to explore the seas and claim new lands for Oz. He takes King Ato along (as his cook) as well as Roger the Read Bird. The story format is perfect for introducing little islands with strange and marvelous little societies. Unfortunately I found it tedious.

• Volcano island: They visit a volcano island called Lavaland and barely escape with their lives after the Lavaland Islanders throw lava at them.
• Jungle island: On Patrippany Island they rescue a little boy named Tandy (full name Tazander Tazah, son of the king of Ozamaland) from the Leopard People. Tandy joins the crew. They also pick up a hippopatamus named Nikobo.
• Peakenspire Island: An "island" that is all sharp spikes rising out of the sea. There's no flat land, and the people build bridges between the spikes to travel and to live on. They yodel a lot.
• Sea Forest: A forest of enormous trees growing straight out of the ocean.
• Seaweegia: An undersea kingdom.
• They fight off a giant narwhal that rams their ship with its horn and puts a hole in it.
• They find a hole in the ocean.
• Ozamaland: Finally, they end up back at Tandy's homeland of Ozamaland, where they foil a coup and restore order. Tandy declines to take his rightful place as king and appoints the very capable Chunum to rule in his stead. Tandy rejoins Captain Salt for more adventures.

★★★☆☆

The Sirians have colonized Titan, saying that the Saturn system was empty so it's theirs now. Earth won't stand for having an enemy base in their solar system, but to force the Sirians out will mean starting a war. Lucky Starr calls an interstellar council and persuades the rest of the solar systems to back Earth. Sirius is forced to withdraw.

I do so love when a problem is solved by people talking in rooms. Really. Asimov is fantastic at making conversations and diplomatic negotiations enthralling.

★★★☆☆

Lucky Starr roots out a Sirian spy.

★★☆☆☆

There's a saboteur on Mercury who is stalling progress on an important scientific research project. Lucky Starr solves the case. I found this installment in the Lucky Starr series to be below par, mainly because I didn't believe the motivations of the guilty party.

Also, the title is misspelled on the cover.

★★★☆☆

Lucky Starr solves a mysterious spate of accidents in an underwater dome city on Venus.

★★★☆☆

Lucky Starr fights space pirates and foils a Sirian plot to invade the solar system.

★★★☆☆

Poisoners and interplanetary politics
This is clearly a juvenile, but Asimov sure can write. David Starr, a newly minted agent of the Council of Science, cracks an interplanetary food poisoning plot that threatens the stability of the entire solar system. Someone has been poisoning food imports from Mars. This is a geopolitical crisis because Earth is unable to feed itself: its six billion inhabitants rely on imports, mainly from Mars. If the citizens of Earth stop eating Mars food out of fear, starvation will ensue.

A side note: I find it interesting that in 1952 Asimov found it reasonable to predict that Earth could not support as many as six billion people. In 2026 we have well over 8 billion and there is plenty of food. It's not always evenly distributed, but that's a political problem, not a food supply problem.

Council of Science, Galactic Patrol?
Parts of the plot remind me of the Lensman series. Instead of a Galactic Patrol that serves as a force for good in the entire galaxy, we have the Council of Science that serves as a force for good in the entire solar system. Our hero isn't a Gray Lensman named Kinnison who is pals with the President and the Port Admiral, he's an orphan named David Starr who is the surrogate son of the Chief Councilor Hector Conway and Councilman Augustus Henree. Like a Gray Lensman, though, Starr is given free rein to operate wherever and however he sees fit.

There are other points of similarity, too.

• Sidekick: Kinnison has Van Buskirk, a sidekick who isn't a Lensman but is basically good enough to be one. Starr pals around with Bigman Jones, who isn't technically a Councilman but might as well be.
• Like a Lensman, Starr visits a race of disembodied super-intelligences and receives a mystical talisman that gives him super-powers.
• Space pirates figure prominently in the series. (More so in the second book than in the first.)
• Members of the Council of Science have a thought-controlled skin tattoo that serves as an un-counterfeitable form of identification, much like the uncounterfeitable Lens of Arisia.

I'm probably reading too much into these points of similarity, but I also know I'm not the first to make the connection. Fortunately, Asimov doesn't turn this into a Lensman copy.

Bigman, Hennes, and Benson
Where better to investigate the poisoning of Martian food imports than at the source? David Starr goes undercover as a farm boy on a big Martian farm. He makes a friend in John "Bigman" Jones, an enemy of foreman Hennes, and an ally in agronomist Benson. It's Benson's theory that the poisonings are the work of native Martians who are angry about humans colonizing their planet. The others dismiss his theory because nobody has ever seen a native Martian: they don't exist.

Magic Martians
Of course David Starr finds the elusive non-existent Martians. They are not the poisoners: the Martians have long since abandoned their physical forms and now exist as beings of pure energy. They are content to exist in caverns deep below the surface of Mars while they explore realms of Inner Life of the mind. They are unconcerned with humanity. The Martians give David a gift: a personal force-shield that also makes him invisible.

Superhero origin story
Wait, is this a superhero origin story? David has a personal force-shield that makes him invincible and invisible! Fortunately, no. David uses it a few times in this book and the next, then Asimov wisely drops it.

Space Ranger
But before Asimov drops it, David uses the force-shield to don a secret identity: he is the Space Ranger, an invisible superhero who unmasks the real culprit behind the poisonings: it was Benson all along. He was disgruntled because the others looked down on him for being a mere "college farmer" and not a real man of the soil. And being a college-educated agronomist employed at a major Martian farm, Benson had the knowledge and skills to create a poison as well as the access to slip it into the outgoing exports.

Little Bigman
Bigman joins forces with Starr and becomes his sidekick for the rest of the series. It's with Bigman that the series is at its best and its worst. See, Bigman's defining character trait is that he's short. He's five feet and two inches tall, and he's sore about it. Because this is a juvenile, everybody in the whole series has the emotional maturity of a middle-schooler and makes cracks at Bigman about his short stature, and hotheaded Bigman responds with anger and starts fights. I say it's the best part of the series because Bigman is genuinely big-hearted: he's loyal, he's tough, he's incorruptible. And because he's not quite as clever as David Starr, he makes a great foil. But it's also the worst because every time you turn a page, somebody is making a short joke at Bigman's expense and Bigman starts swinging his fists. It gets tiresome.

The verdict
Overall, it's an enjoyable book and a fun series. Thumbs up from me.

I always say, if you discover that someone you know has written a thesis or a dissertation, you should read it. Well, I read it. The math was beyond me. I have a Bachelor's degree in math (technically, Computer Science and Mathematics) but either I never learned this math, or I forgot it all because I haven't used it since graduation.

800,000 miles of pipes
I learned that there are over 800,000 miles of sewer pipes in America and that most of them are nearing or are past their projected lifespan. I learned that in 1999 the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) published Statement No. 34 which requires municipalities to account for infrastructure assets in their financial reporting. As a result, the "false economy of deferred maintenance will be revealed as a long term mistake disguised as a short term benefit."

How this relates to pipe profiling robots comes in how Statement No. 34 specifies that sewer pipes be accounted for: "GASB 34 requires a condition assessment of sewer assets at least every three years using a consistent basis of measurement and scale that can be repeated." Sewer pipes, being buried, are not easy to inspect. Hence the need for sewer pipe profiling robots—robots that travel through the sewer pipes and inspect them from the inside.

Lasers, math, band saws and welders
And apparently, it's not as easy as sending a remote-controlled car with a camera into a pipe. Serious pipe profiling robots have fancy laser sensors to measure defects and pipe ovality. The problem is (and I never would have thought of this) if the robot is not pointed dead-center along the pipe centerline, the measurements can be skewed. Further, it's useful to know the orientation of the pipe itself with respect to the earth, to help in developing proper three-dimensional maps.

So, enter math: Dettmer shows a lot of fancy math about how to properly detect and account for the position and orientation of the pipe profiling robot within the pipe. The math was beyond me. Then the practical: with help from Swanbom he constructs a proof-of-concept pipe profiling robot and tests it in a 72-inch test pipe to demonstrate the validity of his new position and orientation technique. He writes a lot about how he had to construct the robot, which "included the use of an end mill, drill press, thread tap, welder, band saw, sheet metal bender, sander, and grinder." All that is as far beyond me as the math is.

Kill all humans
Finally, he ends with some suggestions for further research. My favorite recommendation is #5, "Sewer inspection vehicles are difficult to market if they are expensive. Developing a low-cost alternative would be well received by the industry." The recommendation most likely to lead to robots killing all humans is #7, "Develop an automated inspection robot which can be left alone in the sewers for days, weeks, or even months. Conceptually, a system could roam the sewers, periodically uploading condition information to provide constant asset monitoring."

A lot of it is common sense, but it's surprisingly helpful to have the common sense explained in concrete terms.

My two favorite parts were the suggestion to appeal to an independent objective standard, and the advice to always understand your BATNA—Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. Knowing your BATNA and (if possible) the other party's BATNA can be a real help. Also, the authors mention that sometimes, you're negotiating with the wrong person. Find out who is really the party you need to negotiate with.

Also, sometimes the why behind each side's negotiating points can help reveal a solution that satisfies both. The illustration of this is of two people negotiating over who gets an orange, with neither person realizing that one wants it for the juice and the other wants it to make a cake with the peel. A poor negotiation leaves each person disatistfied with half an orange; a good negotiation gives each person what he wants.

★★★☆☆

This is a fantastic story. Kioga winds up in a hidden kingdom of mammoth people. He and his friends must survive in a kingdom built on mass slavery. Kioga ends up a slave while the rest of the party gets caught up in the political machinations of the ruling class. Kioga escapes and falls in with a band of professional thieves and pickpockets. There is a princess, Loalla, and there are various love interests.

Characters
Kioga
Beth La Salle
Dan La Salle
John Ford La Salle
James Munro
Stanley Kirk
Captain Scott
Tim Sullivan
Pete Silver
Tom Codd
Sven Svenson
Macgregors
Otto Stumpf
Washington Madison Grant

Places
Nato'wa
Hopeka
Fort Teskatuna

Things
Narwhal
Bearcat
Pirate
Shoni, a native tribe of Nato'wa
Hiwasi, a major river
Acopi, a tributary of Hiwasi
Bearcat II
Amazon
People of the Tusk
Mammoths

Chapter I
Our narrator, Stanley Kirk, recounts how James Munro, Beth La Salle, and Dan La Salle sailed on the Narwhal to the arctic continent of Nato'wa. The three were marooned there when the crew of Narwhal abandoned them. From Narwhal Kirk recovered Munro's photographs, journal, and papers—including a "map of Nato'wa's eastern forest-land" and a "chart of perilous reef-filled waters on its coast." Armed with this map and chart, Kirk engages Captain Scott and his whaling ship Bearcat to sail to Nato'wa to find and rescue Munro. Before the expedition can depart, a thief steals the map and chart.

Chapter II
Despite missing the precious chart that would guide them safely to Nato'wa, the crew of Bearcat agrees to undertake the expedition. The party consists of Stanley Kirk (our narrator), John Ford La Salle (father of Dan and Beth), Captain Scott, and his crew: Tim Sullivan, engineer Pete Silver, cook Tom Codd, Sven Svenson, Mcgregors, Otto Stumpf, and Washington Madison Grant. Bearcat departs Seattle and sails into the Arctic Sea.

Chapter III
As Bearcat navigates the ice floes, they spot another ship, a schooner larger than Bearcat, crewed with ruffians, and well-armed. Kirk recognizes one of the men on the ship as the thief who stole the map and chart. The ruffians are after gold in Nato'wa.

A storm dashes Bearcat upon a reef. Tim Sullivan and Pete Silver die. The rest take to the ship's boat and reach the shore of Nato'wa. The schooner weathers the storm far better, and as it sails into shore Kirk reads the name off the bow: Pirate. Kirk and the others take to the woods to escape the pirates. They find their way to the banks of the River Hiwasi and make their camp there.

Kirk leaves the camp to search downriver for Munro, Beth, and Dan. He finds the remains of Fort Teskatuna, where Munro and the others made their last stand. It is deserted. Kirk explores the fort, encounters a talking crow, and is attacked by a tiger. Kioga shows up and kills the tiger, rescuing Kirk.

Kioga is disappointed to hear that Kirk's party lost all their weapons when Bearcat sank. The Shoni tribes are "at each other's throats." As Kioga and Kirk leave the fort, Shoni warriors attack them, wounding Kirk. Kioga carries him to safety. Kirk asks about Munro and the La Salles. Kioga says Munro and Beth are safe, but Dan has recently gone missing after a hunting trip.

Chapter IV
Kioga steals a dugout canoe from the Shoni, and he and Kirk make their way back to Kirk's camp. On the way, Kioga stops at a cave to retrieve a cache of rifles, pistols, and gunpowder, as well as bags of clothing and equipment. At camp, Kioga distributes weapons, buckskin clothing, and mocassins to everyone. Kioga leaves, and returns the next day with four canoes of loyal Shoni warriors. With them are Beth La Salle, Flashpan (Narwhal's former cook), Flashpan's monkey, Tokala (the Indian boy that Kioga brought to Nato'wa in a previous book), and James Munro.

Kioga leaves them once again to search for Dan La Salle, who has still not returned from his hunting trip. The rest stay at camp, where the Shoni warriors complete construction of a river-boat, which they name Amazon.

And this is where I got tired of writing a detailed, chapter-by-chapter summary. My apologies. It's a decent book, and the sequence in the land of the mammoth people is the best of the entire Kioga series. I recommend it.

The subtitle
The subtitle is a bit much. What has everyone else been doing all this time? Dishonest searching?

Thoughts
Preston Sprinkle takes us through the Bible and looks at various passages that talk about women's roles. When he goes through the New Testament passages about women in the church, he ends up concluding that the egalitarian interpretations are more likely. I agree with him for the most part, except that he falls back on the Artemis cult interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11-15. I don't buy it. I'm not impressed with the other interpretations either, which is why I'm reluctant to draw any conclusions from 1 Timothy 2:11-15. The textual evidence for complementarianism or egalitarianism must come from other places--and I agree with Sprinkle that the other passages make more sense in an egalitarian interpretation than in a complementarian interpretation.

One Against a Wilderness is the third entry in the Kioga series, and it's a collection of short stories about Kioga's childhood. These are boring stories.

I - The Eyes of Mialoka Will Burn Tonight

In far Nato'wa — that new-found land within the Arctic Circle — deep in the still, primeval forest called by the red-skinned natives Indegara, there stands a great rock called Chieftain's Head, supposed to be the image of Mialoka, legendary First-Chief of all the Shoni tribes. When the eyes of Chieftain's Head light up, Two-Star, the little son of Mialoka, will return to take his place among mortal men, so goes the legend, implicitly believed among the Shoni.

Kioga observes shamans Inkato and Kansa sacrifice a young Shoni boy to the Yei river spirits. Kioga and his bear companion Aki rescue the boy from the water, and Kioga recognizes him as Ohali, a boy from Hopeka. Kioga is unwilling to let this injustice stand, so he concocts a plan to return Ohali to Hopeka and take revenge on the wicked shamans.

First Kioga lights fires in the rock of the Chieftain's Head to make Mialoka's eyes appear to glow. Then Kioga disguises himself as a river spirit, takes a canoe and returns Ohali to Hopeka—not just as the boy he used to be, but returned from the dead as the spiritual reincarnation of Two-Star, son of the legendary First Chief Mialoka.

II - The Dire Wolves' Prey
On bazaar-day Kioga curls up in a wicker basket under some feather robes and overhears members of the Long-Knife Society plotting against chief Sawamic. Unfortunately, the plotters buy the basket of robes and carry it off with Kioga inside. Kioga escapes and warns Hopeka-town just in time for the warriors to rise up and defend chief Sawamic against the sneak attack.

III - Unharmed, He Dwelt Among the Forest People
Kioga finds a baby abandoned in the wilderness, and rescues him from hungry dire wolves. He recognizes the baby as the son of a chief, and attempts to return him to his village of Magua. Unfortunately, Kioga is accused of stealing the child, and barely escapes with his life.

IV - Flight of the Forest People
Kioga races against time to warn the Shoni about a flash flood that is barreling down the river towards Hopeka.

V - White Heritage
Members of the Long Knife society have murdered Kioga's adoptive Shoni parents, and as Kioga flees through the jungle he contemplates revenge. The proper Shoni response to a murder is to avenge the death by killing the man responsible and his entire family. Kioga burns with anger against those who have murdered his family and driven him from his home in Hopeka, but something inside him resists the traditional Shoni revenge.

Kioga stumbles across the wreck of the ship Cherokee, which carried his white parents to Nato'wa. In the wreck he finds various useful tools and weapons. He also finds a letter from his great grandfather Lincoln Rand, charging his son (Kioga's grandfather) to "hold life sacred," to "protect the weak," to "never strike except in self-defense," and to "never harbor hatred in your heart." This is Kioga's white heritage. He rejects the Shoni concept of revenge.

VI - The Turn of the Tide
Kioga is once again an outcast from the Shoni. He teams up with K'yopit, also an outcast, and tries to win over the men of Hopeka-town by showing them how to woodworking tools that Kioga recovered from the shipwrecked Cherokee. It doesn't work. Kioga and K'yopit barely escape with their lives. Kioga determines to quit the entire continent of Nato'wa, so he builds a boat. That doesn't work either, and he and K'yopit almost lose their lives--but they're rescued by the men of Hopeka who have used Kioga's tools and had a change of heart.

★★☆☆☆

Time travel
Grant Ryals has a natural ability to travel back in time to the age of dinosaurs. He uses this ability to film and produce a dinosaur documentary called The Shores of Kansas which makes him famous and wealthy besides. It's a fantastic story conceit: Grant can only travel by himself, and he can only take along whatever he can carry. To the past he takes only camera equipment, a bow and arrows, and an axe. From the past he brings back photos and videos, specimens, and occasionally dinosaur eggs or even a few living dinosaurs. Small ones, of course.

Author Robert Chilson gives us some fantastic sequences of Grant tracking a herd of sauropods, filming an attack by carnosaurs, and then watching the sauropods lay eggs on a sandbar, and, later, Grant digging up some eggs to take back with him. We also get a fantastic battle with a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The T. Rex is large and stupid, and Grant uses the creature's bulk against it, tiring it out over the course of several days until it expires from exhaustion. But the best sequence is when Grant gets in too close with a gorgosaur and barely escapes with his life.

Management woes
You'd think that the story would be a thrilling tale of survival in the savage age of dinosaurs, but no. It's a gripping tale of corporate governance woes. With the money from his first film, Grant has set up an Institute to disseminate the research data he brings back from the Mesozoic. Grant's real battles are with corporate politics in the Institute. The director, Dr. Adrian, is continually making decisions behind Grant's back: firing critical staff, hiring too many pretty secretaries, increasing the budget for public relations and book publishing while cutting science funding and restricting access to research data. Grant instructs Dr. Adrian to prioritize scientific research, but the changes Dr. Adrian promises never seem to materialize. (I think Grant should have fired Dr. Adrian.) Then there is Mrs. Cane, who is angling to get Dr. Adrian's position and may be actively sabotaging the Institute to make Adrian look bad. Things get so out of control that Grant has—*gasp*—to resort to legal threats to stop a secret Board meeting.

Thrilling stuff, this.

Woman troubles
As if that's not enough, Grant has woman problems. Specifically, his horde of adoring fans. Grant, with his trim physique and his shiny axe and his being-the-only-man-who-has-walked-with-the-dinosaurs is irresistible to women. This seems…unlikely. We're told that Grant is reclusive. His first and most famous film about dinosaurs, The Shores of Kansas, never shows him. It's his footage and he narrates the documentary, which makes him more like Ken Burns than Steve the Crocodile Hunter Irwin, but sure, we're supposed to take it on faith that Grant is the world's most famous and most desirable man.

Fortunately he turns most of these women down. Unfortunately, he only turns most of them down. There's a rich young heiress who invites Grant out on her boat and things progress as one might expect. That's distasteful but not exactly surprising. More concerning is an incident involving Grant with a farmhouse wife and her seventeen-year-old daughter that made me have to look up the age of consent laws in Kansas in the 1970s. As it turns out, that wouldn't have been illegal in 1976 when Robert Chilson published this book. As it turns out, it isn't illegal today. Kansas needs to fix its laws.

Marian Gilmore
Given his problems with women, Grant is not particularly happy that Dr. Adrian has employed another time traveler, Marian Gilmore. Marian is unable to travel as far back as Grant, but Dr. Adrian hopes that with enough training she will be able to join Grant in his trips to the Mesozoic. (This seems to be part of Dr. Adrian's attempts to bring in new revenue streams for the Institute. He has not been happy with Grant's focus on scientific research, and would like to diversify.) Marian asks for Grant's help to develop her time travel abilities, but Grant can't stand her presence, and refuses.

Emotional health
So we've established that this is not the thrilling story of survival, a man alone among the dinosaurs. But at its heart it's not the story of a man fighting corporate politics, either. It's not even really the story of a man fighting off his admirers. It's the story of a man facing his emotional trauma and coming to terms with why he has problems with women: it's the pain from a failed relationship.

Grant had been in love with a young woman named Nona Schiereck, who treated him poorly, and Grant let her go—but emotionally he was still hurt. Now, every time he sees a woman he's reminded of Nona and the painful memories. When Grant finally faces and deals with his emotional pain, he is able to move past it. The book ends with Grant realizing that he is in love with Marian Gilmore. (Fortunately Marian Gilmore loves him too, what with him being irresistible to women and all.) The two of them time-travel back to the Mesozoic together.

My verdict
Oof. No.

★☆☆☆☆

I've read this one before, because I vividly remember that the Pinkness made Shepherd Blaine's mind reflective and shiny. That was meant to protect him, but in reality marked him as a big shiny target for anybody with mental powers.

The book is dull and meandering. The characters' motivations rarely made sense, and the ending was not satisfactory.

OK.

I skimmed this one. It seems like a pretty basic introduction to narcissism. The unique thing that it offers is that it describes how narcissistic traits manifest in each of the Enneagram personality types. Given that the Enneagram is pseudoscientific nonsense with no grounding in research, I'm not sure how valuable that is. But I guess it can help by showing different ways that narcissism can show up in different people.

This was a lot of fun. I got to read this 1984 thesis about El Niño Fidencio, a curandero (traditional healer) in Mexico, and the movement that grew up around him. I say, if you meet someone and discover that he's written a thesis or a dissertation, you should read it. (Next up for me: a doctoral dissertation entitled Position and orientation correction for pipe profiling robots.)

★★☆☆☆

A middling science fiction novel. I read it because I know another, unrelated, Donald Barr and I found the coincidence of names amusing.

★★☆☆☆

This one was OK.

★★★☆☆

It was fine. I didn't write a detailed review, but I noted some key words as I was reading.

Iroedh
Antis
Vardh
Dr. Bloch
Daktablak
Rhodh
Queen Intar
Avtiny
Princess Estir of Elham
duel
machete

★☆☆☆☆

A fixup. Schmitz's writing is infuriating as always. He leaves out important bits of information to ratchet up the suspense, but the result is in three out of the four stories I never could satisfactorily figure out the plot. Big thumbs down from me.

★★★☆☆

Leif Svensen is kidnapped by Loki and taken to Asgard where he's put to work designing weapons for the Aesir to use against the giants when Ragnarok comes. With the help of clever dwarfs, Leif produces gunpowder grenades, explosive-tipped arrows, and fission bombs. Oh yeah, the dwarfs can refine U-235, don'tcha know?

It's books like these that reveal my almost-complete ignorance about Norse mythology. I'm sure there was a lot I missed out on.

del Rey writes well and Day of the Giants is engaging. I'm labeling this science fiction because it feels like science fiction, even though there's magic and this is clearly fantastic.

Starswarm is a collection of stories set in the same universe. The stories vary in style and do not fit into an overall narrative. Therefore I'm categorizing this as a collection rather than a fix-up novel.

My enjoyment of the stories varied widely. A Moon of My Delight is heartbreaking and may be the best story I've read all year. Shards is drivel. The rest are somewhere in between, but on the whole, they weren't my sort of story.

Sector Vermillion
a kind of artistry
Derek is an Abrogunnan which means he’s brave and competent, enough to make first contact with an alien life form and win the admiration of the elites of the Starswarm—but he’s an Abrogunnan which means his life is ruled by a matriarch who he serves as little more than a slave.

Sector Gray
hearts and engines
A colonel in an eternal war dreams of going on a mission and returning to meet a woman. But there is no woman and he is only a sergeant.

Sector Violet
the underprivileged
Saton and Corbis, immigrants from Istinogurzibeshilaha, arrive on the planet Dansson, where nobody is ever unhappy. They are inoculated against unhappiness by the immigration agent and taken to live in Little Istino, where—being happy—they don’t realize they are basically preserved specimens in a cage. The planet Dansson is museum/zoo, collecting all endangered species in the galaxy.

Sector Diamond
the game of god
On the planet Kakakakaxo, cayman-headed natives keep two kinds of pets, dubbed bears and pekes. But who is the real intelligent species on Kakakakaxo?

Sector Green
shards
Six pages of incomprehensible dribble about creatures in Mudland is explained in the final two pages: this is an experiment to adapt humans to live as aquatic creatures so they can infiltrate a group of invasive, aggressive aquatic aliens who have take up residence in Western Ocean and threaten the human residents of the planet.

Sector Yellow
legends of smith's burst
Stranded on the backward planet Glumpalt, a trader must escape from slavery, find his way to Ongustura and catch the only spaceship headed off-planet. On the way he encounters raiders, magicians, antigravity rocks, a warlord and his daughter, and of course the Black Sun whose dark rays smother all light from Glumpalt’s three other suns.

Sector Azure
a moon of my delight
The planet Tandy Two’s entire equator is ringing with a braking system for FTL spaceships. It’s an ingenious idea, and the poignant, sad story that Aldiss writes about the people who live in its shadow is the best story I’ve read all year.

The Rift
old hundredth
On an earth populated by the resurrected recreations of extinct animals, a megatherium (giant sloth) named Dandi Lashadusa wanders around riding a baluchitherium (giant hornless rhinoceros) and communicating telepathically with a blind Mentor who we later learn is a dolphin. She fights a bear, abandons her relics that came from humans, and turns herself into music. This story is so dumb.

★★☆☆☆

All but a few hundred humans vanish from the face of the Earth. The remaining few are now almost immortal, and they do well with their robot servants, but without sufficient population they must live without technology. As a result, they develop their latent mental skills, which includes telepathy and interstellar teleportation. Most of the remaining humans go jumping around the galaxy, exploring. Only a few stay behind.

There's some fuss about a strange intelligence located at the center of the galaxy, and there's some to-do about the robots (most of whom have no humans left to serve) building a giant super-computer robot brain to help them figure out the meaning of life or something. Also, it turns out the eight billion missing humans are alive and well on three planets far, far away from Earth. The strange intelligence had transported them there as some kind of experiment. The real experiment seems to be what the robots will do, though. I think (I'm not sure, it was unclear) that the strange intelligence is more interested in the robots than in the development of humanity.

Altogether a disappointing book. I usually like Simak, but not this one.

★★★☆☆

Ronnie Bronston is a newly-minted agent of Section G of the United Planets (UP) Bureau of Investigations. As a member of Section G, it's his duty to enforce articles 1 and 2 of the UP charter:

Article One: The United Planets organization shall take no steps to interfere with the internal political, socio-economic, or religious institutions of its member planets.

Article Two: No member planet of United Planets shall interfere with the internal political, socio-economic or religious institutions of any other member planet.

Bronston's first assignment is to uncover the identity of Tommy Paine, an elusive individual who has been traveling to various planets and meddling in their internal affairs by starting revolutions, assassinating politicians, undermining confidence in local gods, and so forth. If it becomes known that someone is meddling in other planets' internal affairs—and that the UP hasn't been able to stop it—it could undermine confidence in the UP itself.

Bronston tracks Tommy Paine across several worlds before he realizes that no one person could possibly do everything Tommy Paine gets credit for. The real Tommy Paine is an organization. The real Tommy Paine is Section G. And now that he knows the big secret, he can begin his real job: to violate the UP charter and meddle in the internal affairs of member planets to prevent stagnation and force technological advancement. Section G knows something that the member worlds don't: there are at least two hostile alien races in the galaxy which mankind has not yet made contact with, and Section G's job is to ensure that when contact is made, mankind is ready to defend itself.

In the second half of the book, Bronston hunts a mafia hitman and manipulates him into going back to kill his old mafia boss.

★★☆☆☆

A group sets out from Earth to Rigel, where they will secretly influence events on two lost colony worlds to bring their civilizations up to the point where they can join the Galactic Commonwealth. A disagreement on how to proceed sharply divides the group, so they agree to split their forces: one group will work on the planet Genoa and use capitalistic means; the other will bring communism and a command economy to the planet Texcoco. Who will win? Which planet will advance faster?

The events on Texcoco involve a lot of bloodshed to unite the disparate tribes and force them to industrialize. On Genoa there are problems too: unbridled capitalism brings winners and losers as well. But in the end, it's the Rigelians who are the winners: they realize they are being manipulated, and the two planets develop enough space travel to visit each other, join forces, and kick out the interloping Earthers. Genoa and Texcoco will develop their own economic and political systems, thank you very much. Earthmen, go home.