Product Description
Science Fiction.What would you do, if you wereSuperman?Save the world, fight crime, have fun?Or is it true, thatabsolute power corrupts absolutely?Amazon.com Review
Rob Lewis, an ordinary computer programmer with a wife and two kids, becomes something extraordinary one day after he wakes up and discovers he can read--and control--other people's minds. It's an ability most people dream of having, but for Rob it quickly destroys his life. There is a death, injuries, the threat of warping the lives of his children. Rob flees to New York where, homeless and destitute, he contacts Edwin Barbaross of the National Institutes of Health. Together they travel to Uzbekistan, where Rob will face both the source of his powers and his own inner demons. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

With great power comes great responsibility
Rob Lewis awakens one morning with strange mental powers.Suddenly, he can read and influence the minds of those around him.At first, Rob thinks this is great--he helps his wife out at work, and single-handedly reforms the entire population of a correctional facility near his home.As his power increases, Rob becomes less enamored of his situation.In fact, he comes to see it as a curse, as a fireman is killed due to his carelessness and his infant twins begin to exhibit mental abilities far beyond their years, simply because he is near.Unable to deal with what he has become, Rob flees to New York City.

Fearing human contact, yet unable to totally avoid it, Rob lives on the street, occasionally influencing the city's richer denizens to take him in.This is a very dark time for Rob, who is both exhilarated and disgusted by his powers.Although he generally uses his powers wisely, his animal nature often comes to the fore, as when he nearly rapes the teenage daughter of one of his "benefactors".

Rob hits bottom, but is saved by a chance meeting with a good natured scientist named Edwin Barbaross.Edwin, grateful to Rob for saving his niece's life, helps him understand and control his powers, and eventually joins him in his search to discover the source of his abilities, a search which leads them to the far off land of Uzbekistan.There, Rob engages in a fight to the finish with the man who gave him his powers.

I enjoyed this book, although it did not fulfill its potential.Endlessly inventive, Clough never fully develops her ideas.Many a time I'd get excited about a plot twist, only to be disappointed by its conclusion.This didn't detract from my overall favorable opinion of the novel, however--the book is full of energy, and has a real pulpy feel to it.Things happen fast, as though Clough can't wait to get to the next exciting idea.Two things really grabbed me--Clough's constant references to comic books (never has Stan Lee's line, that "With great power comes great responsibility" had so much resonance) and the hero's use of the scientific method to solve his dilemma.

A favorite of mine
I was talking about this book to a friend and flipped open amazon.com to look up the spelling of the author's last name -- and was shocked to see so many negative reviews of this book.It's been a favorite of mine since I found it, worth many rereads.Questions of pacing reflect each reader's own preferences, of course, but for myself I found nothing rushed or unexplained, and I found the ending deeply satisfying.

(For some context, I have been a voracious science fiction reader all of my life, with a slight leaning toward space opera and fantasy;I have only small experience with comics.)

Terrible
Please, don't waste your time reading this pedantic book.The author clearly thinks she is a superb writer, but unfortunately has a tin ear.

I read this BOOK!HOLY MIKE!!!
How Like a God, really does have an interesting premise, thats the reason I read this book.
I thought it would be interesting to see how the power of a God would effect a regular human.What would he do with it?How will it change him?

Although this book attempts to take on these issues, it just seems like the are all half hearted attempts.Ultimately this book leaves one feeling unsatisfied.

It is also worth commenting that the books dialouge is so silly and child like at times, it appears that the author simply is attempting her hand at some form of satire.The character repeatedly yells " Holy Mackerel ", and my personal Favorite " Holy Mike!"
Although there are some interesting themes in this book, I just dont think it is worth the time to read it.

HOW LIKE A COLLEGE WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Like many, the description of this novel's premise hooked me, but within only a few pages, I was literally groaning out loud.

Brenda Clough's idea was wonderful, but was squandered on an execution so amateurish, I find it hard to believe a qualified editor even read it. Truly, the dialogue was so silly, it verged on parody. (Adult american men do not EVER say "Gee whiz!", or "Gosh, no!" or "Holy Mike!".And no straight man I know responds to another man's filthy appearance with "My goodness, you're a mess! Let go shopping!")

The characters in this book were no deeper than the pages they appeared on, with trivial acts causing absurd levels of tormented 'soul-searching' in one chapter, and life-altering events tossed off with a shrug in the next.

If it wasn't for the fact that I was truly intrigued by the premise, I would have done the (for me) unthinkable, and tossed a hardcover in the trash.Note to the publisher: Hire someone who knows how men talk to each other to at least read what you're considering putting into print... I'm seriously wondering about the quality of the other books bearing your logo. ... Read more

Product Description
On March 16, 1912, British polar explorer Titus Oates commits suicide by walking out of his tent into an Antarctic blizzard, to save Robert Falcon Scott and the other members of the English exploration team. His body is never found — because he was snatched away into the year 2045 by scientists experimenting with a new faster-than-light drive. Arriving in the future, Oates stubbornly sticks to his old explorer job and sets off on an intergalactic adventure that leads to both knowledge and self-knowledge. The first section of this novel appeared as a novella in Analog Science Fiction magazine (April 2001) under the title “May Be Some Time.” It was a finalist for both the Nebula and the Hugo awards. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

"What may I do with this life?"

Revise the World is the best science fiction novel I've read this year. Maybe for many years. Maybe simply the best novel I've read this year.

If you've not already jumped away to order the book on my recommendation, let me try to enumerate some of the features that composed my positive feelings. First and foremost was the writing. Well, no, first and foremost was the story. No, not the story, but the story's protagonist, Captain Oakes. Aw, gee, why does one factor have to be first and foremost. They're all first and foremost.

The writing is as crystal clear and sharp and gorgeous as the Antarctic ice, where the novel begins. Begins with the protagonist dying, which happens to be one of many astonishing risks taken by Ms. Clough (rhymes with "tough," and rightly so). She risks him walking out into the Antarctic blizzard to die for his companion on page one. Then, she risks bringing him back to life in New York City, 130 years later, on page 3. And from then on until the end, she risks showing us how Captain Oakes feels about returning to life after death.

Less than a year ago, I returned to life after death. My cancer doctors wrote me off with no more than two months to live, and I accepted their prognosis-two week to two months. Like the Captain, I wrote myself off for dead. In addition to all the other pleasures I found in Revise the World, there was the uncanny experience of seeing my own thoughts and feelings on the printed page.

I suspect that not many people have experienced returning to life, yet Ms. Clough knows precisely what it feels like. Has she experienced death herself? If not, I'd have to attribute her perspicacity to her research, which is in clear evidence throughout the entire novel. Reading, I was transported into the deadly Antarctic of 1912; the technologically advanced and morally evolved New York of 2043; Britain at the end of the Victorian era; Wyoming in its covered wagon days; and everywhere and every-when Ms. Clough took me in her story.

She captured the nuances of the "common tongue" that divided two countries and two eras ("charva"). The language of arctic exploration, ("sastrugi"). The subtleties of my own mother tongue ("pernickety" as opposed to "persnickety"). Even if you loved only language, you would adore this book on that basis alone.

But mostly what I loved about Revise the World was brought home to me when I reached the end. I yearned for more, and seeking any scrap, I came upon a page entitled "Publication Information. Partway down that page was the question, "What may I do with this file?" I misread the question as "What may I do with this life?"

I thought it was the subtitle.

Time travel adventure plus romance
This science fiction time travel novel involving one of the Antarctic explorers from the Scott expedition evolves into a fascinating first contact story with a surprisingly poignant adult romance as an added bonus. Good job. Pleased to have found it.

Superb - and about Antarctica, too
1912: Titus Oates, an actual member of Scott's doomed South Pole Expedition, is dying of starvation and gangrene and walks into the blizzard to die and give his comrades a better chance to survive.

2045: Titus is revived by scientists attempting to prove the efficacy of time-travel without altering the past. Oates' body was never found in Antarctica, and knowing this, the scientists have traveled back to snatch him before he dies in the blizzard. The reason for the time-travel experiment? - to determine if a faster-than-light, time-traveling drive is safe for use in space travel. The specifications for the drive have been received from a distant planet, and modern society would like to visit the alien civilization and return to report to Earth within the span of only a few years.

Titus awakens into a world he cannot comprehend. The language is the same, but usage and terminology for all the intervening years renders most sentences unintelligible. Constant and instant communication, medical miracles (his rotting limbs have all been cloned and replaced), total equality of race, gender and orientation, and scientific marvels, all are a challenge to his notions of reality, propriety, and his place in life. Much of the book is concerned with his struggles to find trust and purpose again. His rescuers fear for his sanity, and there are many times he must readjust his judgments and attitudes lest he succumb. At one point he tries to find a way to return to the past and die as was meant. He falls in love with one of his doctors, makes friends and some enemies, revolts and runs, tries again, watches his lover sail off in space for a years-long mission to the distant planet, decides to try again to be an explorer and meaningful member of society. The last third of the book takes place 8 years later, with Titus almost fully integrated into 21st century life and embarking on a final huge adventure.

Titus is a fascinating character, an Edwardian gentleman adjusting to an egalitarian, space-age, consensus-ruled society. The author has researched the realities of early 20th century Antarctic exploration, and her imagining of a far future life for one of them is creative and realistic, with natural dialogue. The 500 pages go by quickly, and the last 100 are almost guaranteed to be read in one sitting. Highly recommended! ... Read more

Product Description
In the Year Without a Summer, a group of mad geniuses descended on Geneva. In an attempt to save the body and mind of George Byron, they performed a dreadful and forbidden experiment that forever changed history—and tore their own lives apart.

Years later, Byron’s daughter Ada has inherited her father’s genius. With Charles Babbage, inventor of the analytical engine, she invents the “automatic sciences,” allowing the creation of machines that mimic human action, and even human thought. Once again, history has changed. Mechanical spiders perform menial tasks. Intelligent locomotives keep their own time schedules. Massive dirigibles and flying automata have flung the Empire—and piracy—into the sky itself.

But even a golden age casts a long shadow, and silent forces are moving in the darkness. Whispers of a conspiracy to destroy the Empire are beginning to surface. The fate of the Geneva experiment and the mad geniuses that created it remains unknown.

And the fate of the world itself rests in the hands of Ada Lovelace.

In The Shadow Conspiracy, Book View Café’s lineup of bestselling, award-winning authors combines forces to create an unforgettable shared world of steam-powered science, fantastic magic, and dark conspiracy.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Stories!
Some really powerful stories, both long and short.Whether you're a steampunk enthusiast or just like great storytelling, this anthology is way worth the money.

Great Intro to Steampunk
Great steampunk e-anthology deftly weaves poet kings, mad science, immortality and revenge.

I didn't love reading this on the Kindle, though; frustrated by an inability to easily jump back and forth into the loosely threaded stories, or to even know how far from the beginning or end I was in any particular story. It actually made it difficult to write a more in-depth review.

If they offered it POD, I'd buy it in a second. ... Read more

Product Description
After years of living abroad, ten-year-old Rianne and her family move to Reston, Virginia, where the acquaintance of a talking possum seems to influence the luck in their lives--sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Awesome Opossum Uses Its Claws Some!
Consider the opossum -- easily the most underestimated and least-regarded of all God's creatures.Yet, beneath its unprepossessing exterior beats the heart of a mighty warrior, and its beady little eyes give little hintof the shrewd intellect that hides behind them!This rollicking adventureyarn is the story of a single mighty marsupial, and the impact hisfur-covered, vaguely rat-like presence had on three lonely kids in thesuburbs of Washington, DC.

Washington, DC, you say?Surely thesurrounding municipalities are naught but soulless concrete and macadamexpanses!Opossums are creatures of the wilderness, where they roam freeand untrammeled by the laws of Man!How could such suburban terrain offerany home to the plucky pouched perambulators in question?Easy! Unassuming in mien and strangely loveable in demeanor, the awesome opossumis tough, tenacious and territorial.The species arouse in South America(where life was and is cheap), along with other pouched compadres, even asplacental counterparts evolved in North America.When the land bridge ofCentral America rose from the waters, the placental mammals migrated Southand wiped out the indigenous species -- except for the mighty opossum. With its nightmarish claws and near-prehensile tale, not to mention itscunning strategy of feigning faint ("playing `possum"), the white-furredwonders soon carved out a place for themselves in the North American foodchain (somewhere above cat food and below hillbillies).Now, nopatch ofpark bigger than my mother's apron is free of the cuddlynight-crawlers!

This book is a lot of fun.It reminds me of E. Nesbit'swork, and all those English kids novels about young ones who haveadventures while their parents are off crushing rebellions in India orsomething.I wish that there had been more of the talking opossum in it,but that's probably because I just can't get enough of thosewhisker-snouted wayfarers. ... Read more

Product Description
A Crown With a Mind of its Own... When Liras-ven Tsormelezok set off into his garden that morning, he knew he could claim some sort of royal ancestry-but then, so could most of the rest of the population of Averidan. Therefore, being named King while pruning his klimflower vines was a trifle unexpected. But that was only the first of the surprises waiting for Liras. For example, he discovered that the Crystal Crown of the Kings of Averidan could not only speak to him-it could kill him, if it decided he shouldn't be king. And then were certain other inheritances from the late king: a war about which he knew nothing, and a royal bride-to-be with whom he could not speak. No wonder Liras decided to make a run for it... ... Read more

Product Description
The mind tells the story--but the heart inspires it with dreams of what might be waiting Out There. With evocative stories of lost comrades, alien first contacts, and strange, often unexpected confrontations with evolving science, Rocket Boy And The Geek Girls embraces both our pulp-dream past and cutting-edge future.

Thirteen authors (fifteen if you count pseudonyms) from the Book View Café got together one rainy Saturday afternoon with a big bowl of popcorn and reruns of Buck Rogers. They started comparing short stories and a new anthology took form.

Rare reprints, hard-to-find favorites and new tales all combine in this one-of-a-kind story collection, available exclusively from Book View Press.

What happens when thirteen authors get to giggling over implausible titles for the collection? They choose the most illogical and then they have to write something to go with it. So, yes, there are three flash fiction versions of Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls.

Stories by: Vonda N. McIntyre, Brenda W. Clough, Katharine Kerr, Judith Tarr, P.R. Frost, Pati Nagle, Madeleine Robins, Nancy Jane Moore, Sarah Zettel, Amy Sterling Casil, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Jennifer Stevenson, Sylvia Kelso, C.L. Anderson, and Irene Radford
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Stories!
ROCKET BOY AND THE GEEK GIRLS is a wonderful mix of thought-provoking, action, and humorous science fiction.I especially liked "Sitting Shiva" by Judith Tarr and "Ask Arlen" by Maya Bohnhoff.Way worth the cover price!
... Read more

Product Description
If the twentieth century was the American Century, who will the next one belong to... and what will become of the nation's capital? Will Washington D.C. be drowned in the rising tides and its glory days forgotten, or will its residents rise to the challenge and remake the world in its image? In these stories you'll find as many questions as answers, but if assembled authors agree on anything, it's that we are destined to live in interesting times and more than that... ones that we will have a hand in creating. Ask not what the future can do for you... with stories by Cory Doctorow, James Alan Gardner, Joe Haldeman, Sean McMullen, Kim Stanley Robinson, Allen M. Steele, and many more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Good collection of short stories by some very good writers
The common theme of this collection of short stories is the future of washington. Some of these stories are very good and some very good writers like Kim Stanley Robinson, L. Neil Smith, and Joe Haldeman contributed to this effort.
There is a lot of variety and a lot of imagination in these stories. Something for just about everyone.

Clarification
The story "The Day of the RFIDs," alluded to in the Daniel Miller review as a highlight of the FUTURE WASHINGTON collection, was actually written by Edward M. Lerner.

Not as good as I expected it to be
I was kind of disappointed with this book, honestly--the stories are very hit-or-miss.The best one is by Kim Stanley Robinson, but it's an excerpt from a novel, not written for this collection--probably better to just read the novel.Another highlight is by Cory Doctorow, exploring the use of RFID tags and the Dept. of Homeland Security, although I felt like going up to him and whispering "Your ideology is showing".As for the others, some of them are amusing (particularly one near the end in which Democrats and Republicans have devolved into warring tribes--it reads like it was co-written by David Broder and Hunter S. Thompson), but only a few make a serious attempt at exploring an interesting future.More common are relatively shallow attempts at parody, such as one story in which Indiana real estate agents plant a nuclear bomb in DC and exploit the chaos to move the capital to Fort Wayne.Overall, the book doesn't have enough worthwhile material to make it worth buying.Check it out of a library for a few of the stories, but don't waste your time or your cash.

Is there a future for Washington DC ?
Future Washington contains 16 stories from a variety of authors most usually not found in anthologies.The stories posit many different futures for the DC but most are dark and distopian in one way or another.

"Primate in the Forest" by Kim Stanley Robinson, "Hothouse" by Thomas Harlan, "Civil Disobedience" by Joe Haldeman, all have the area suffering from one degree of global warming or another as background.

"Ignition" by Jack McDevitt gives us an idea of what can happen with fundamental religion take over. Paranoia takes over a computer geek in Edward M. Lerner's "The Day of the RFIDs" but is he really that paranoid?

Jane Lindskold in "Tgers in the Capitol" has the original designer of the capitol area who is not all that happy with what was done with his designs. "Hallowe'en Party" by Nancy Jane Moore is basically directions and instructions for a future party in the DC area (the directions are only slightly off from those you'd get if you lived in this security conscious area now).

"Agenda" by Travis Taylor, "A Well-Dressed Fear" by B.A. Chepaities, "The Lone and Level Sands" by L. Neil Smith, "Hail to the Chief" by Allen M. Steele, and "The Empire of the Willing" by Sean McMullen, all deal with politics and intrigue on one level or another.

"Mr. Zmith Goes to Washington" by Steven Sawicki has my favorite aliens (from sfrevu.com's Damned Aliens Column) drop in for a Senate Hearing. "Indiana Wants Me" by Brenda W. Clough gives a look at what could happen to the DC area if Congress moved elsewhere. "Human Readable" by Cory Doctorow deals with the concept of who has access to IT and will it be economic status blind."Shopping at the Mall" by James Alan Gardner give us a view of what would happen if Americans just disappeared one day.

All in all, there are stories to make you laugh out loud, shake your head in frustration, dispair, and agreement.Those that make you think maybe you should pay just a bit more attention to what are leaders are doing FOR/TO us in DC.Every story is strong with character, place, and plot.It's a good buy. ... Read more

Product Description
CONTENTS: ~ ~~ ~ NOVELLA: May Be Some Time [Brenda W. Clough]; NOVELETTES: Talking Monkeys [Rob Chilson]; The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars [Ernest Hogan]; Pressure Gradient [Pete D. Manison]; SHORT STORIES: What Weena Knew [James Van Pelt]; The Wanderlust [Brian C. Coad]; ARTICLES: How Mt. St. Helens Blasted Conventional Scientific Wisdom [Richard A. Lovett, Ph.D. ]; Odds and Ends #2 [Jeffery D. Kooistra]; Biolog: James Van Pelt [Jay Kay Klein]; Beliefs and Believers [Stanley Schmidt] ... Read more