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Way more action packed than the first Foundation book, story structure and overall tone here clearly inspired George Lucas quite a bit for "The Empire Strikes Back". The starship captain Han Pritchard also predicts Harrison Ford's Han Solo in the "Star Wars" movies.

remember this being my favourite among the series because I found The Mule by far the most interesting among all the characters, not yet at the point where he makes an appearance so I am curious how this will go

Amazing seeing so many classic paintings by Charles Knight and Zdenek Burian reproduced in THIS level of detail, as well as learning about less well known paleoartists like Neave Parker and Maurice Wilson who lived at the same time but had polar opposite styles.

I also like seeing an early illustration of Elasmosaurus from when people thought it had a short neck and long tail instead of vice versa!

I am familiar with much of the paleoart here but not the surrounding historical context until now - like how many of the earliest paleoartists were creationists as Darwin's theory of evolution took a while to be commonly accepted in scientific circles, and how that influenced their depictions of dinosaurs. (and those who accepted evolution understood it in significantly different ways than people do 200 years later)

rereading this there are so many places where I can tell "Frank Herbert stole this for Dune", "George Lucas stole this for Star Wars", "Gene Wolfe stole this for Book of the New Sun" or "Games Workshop stole this for Warhammer 40K" (the whole "priesthood preserving advanced technology that would otherwise been lost" thing is more or less where the Adeptus Mechanicus came from)

I'm going to say that even if Asimov's writing style is pretty dry, I still end up enjoying all the slow burning political drama as well as detailed exploration of cultural differences between all the various in-universe faction more interesting than when I read this as a teenager. Back then I preferred "Dune" for that kind of thing, but thing is? Herbert probably wouldn't have been able to write it without this.

I remember reading the Foundation trilogy in high school and not finding it terribly exciting, going to give it another try to see if I "get it" this time since I quite like the recent TV series based on the novels. And if there's nuances and meanings I missed first time around.

I like that this constantly goes in new and crazy directions showing off almost every single audacious idea the author could think of while being fairly concise and easy to read, tied together by political satire directed towards self-important opaque public sector bureaucracy

This is one of the weirdest SF novels I have read in a long while. Simultaneously feels like a parody of "Dune" and the Australian soap opera "McLeod's Daughters", written in a similar style and tone as "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" but predates all 3 works.

pure tripped out 1970's fantasy bliss!

Most of the action scenes in this novel play like something from a particularly whacked out Hong Kong wuxia film from the same era the novel was written (mid/late 1960's), which I find absolutely awesome.

This has a similar vibe as Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" in that it appears at first to take place in a fantasy setting but is slowly revealed to take place in a science-fiction universe, that only looks fantastic to most of its inhabitants because they only have a pre-modern frame of reference for understanding the world. Really enjoying it so far, for most of the same reasons I liked "Book of the New Sun".

I will say this much that finding out about J. Allen Hynek's role in the disinformation campaign against Bennewitz has made me significantly more critical of him, even if he's done useful work within ufology.

Also interesting how many of the disinformation tactics that AFOSI used against the UFO community in the 1980's are those used today by CIA, MI6 and FSB against various activist milieux and alternative media.

this covers much of the same territory as Mark Pilkington's "Mirage Men" but focuses more specifically about the Paul Bennewitz case and the Dulce Base mythology - learned a lot of new information about Kirtland Air Force Base's history as well as that of New Mexico in general in the process

Reading this because I can understand that "The Rhinegold", a volume of the comic book series "Yoko Tsuno", is a whole plot reference to it. So far it really does feel like the perfect detective novel, and a classic for a reason.

Vandt den her som mandelgave til en julefest sidste år, kan mærke at det er en meget anderledes type poesi end det jeg plejer at læse. Kræver helt sikkert lang tid at fordøje og forstå.

This is nominally a detective novel that strikes me as mostly an excuse for infodumps on various unrelated topics the author has an encyclopaedic knowledge of, from the insides of the circus industry to the history of various Eastern Orthodox Christian monastic orders. The fact that he gets something coherent out of that is still impressive in its own right.

one of the weirdest novels I have read in a long while since at least Brendan Connell's "The Galaxy Club" (also a nominal crime novel with fantastic elements) not sure I understand it yet but I do enjoy its atmosphere

read this on recommendation from my mother, argues that human ancestors lost their body hair by adapting to an aquatic lifestyle where hair got in the way of swimming, and this explains many other quirks of human evolution (like upright stance and fewer sweat glands for instance)

completely mindbending experience to read about the theory that Lewis Carroll (of all people) was the true identity of Jack the Ripper, and that someone sunk so much time and energy into arguing for exactly that thesis

this is one of those novels where every single character (and there are quite a few from many different cultural/social backgrounds) has each their complex hidden agenda which is slowly and meticulously revealed as the labyrinthine plot unfurls... REALLY curious where this goes

So far it feels like a streak of genius - it STARTS with a scene that is basically the ending of "Ghost in the Shell" or "Neuromancer" where the heroine sets free a superhuman AI (which ends up changing her into something not quite human) only to end in jail as a result, with the rest of the plot examining the large scale political and social consequences of all this in fine detail.

bought this at a science-fiction convention after hearing the author speak at a panel on how to write nonhuman intelligent characters - so far it seems VERY William GIbson inspired but goes in more depth with superhuman artificial intelligences and how they would realistically interact with people than Gibson did in his Sprawl Trilogy

interesting to learn that Mercedes Benz mass produced a rear engine car just before WW2 (the 170H) but it sold so poorly that the model was quickly discontinued, unfortunately there is no photographs of it in this book so I had to look the 170H up on Wikipedia instead

coffee table book about the history of Mercedes Benz as a company and their cars - makes a point of belabouring that the Daimler-Benz company were the first company anywhere to massproduce motorised carriages (which weren't allowed to drive on public roads in most of Germany at the time)

interesting that people in different parts of ancient Egypt had different creation myths each centring the main deity worshipped in their particular city, but people had no problem with any of that

Really liking volumes 4-6 of Natacha collected here: Complex and fastpaced crime/espionage thrillers with unpredictable twisty plots and enough elements of humour (including quite a bit of Cold War political satire) to keep things lighthearted

Done with "Adventures in Wonderland", paying significantly more attention to the poems which are quite good on their own right. I also find the chapters with the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle one of the funniest things I've ever read, especially when the Mock Turtle goes on about having learned in school about arithmetic categories like "derision", "distraction" and "uglification".

Lots of stuff I don't remember from the first reading, like all the birds and the loris and the mouse who welcome Alice when she first gets to Wonderland, as well as the foot race between them where Alice has to hand out candies in her pocket as rewards afterwards. Or the pigeon who flies past Alice after she grows in size when eating from the caterpillar's mushroom, and mistakes her for a snake.

forgot about this so resumed reading it front to back, interesting learning about the mythologies of less well known ancient cultures like Ugaritic and Hurrian