ALOBAM

Dear Readers,

Over the past six months, my blog has featured two main series: ALOBAM (At Least One Book A Month) and Travis’s Tuesday Tidbit. I’m announcing the end of both, at least in some ways. Before I get into that, let me explain why I started both.

I started the ALOBAM series in June after I started reading science fiction again. I really enjoy reading and I wanted to remember what I read, so I decided to write a summary of the story with my personal take. I also wanted to encourage myself, perhaps artificially, to read more stories as it’s something I missed. ALOBAM solved both these problems. However, I began to realize that my initial format wasn’t ideal as it forced me to split the story into parts with the idea of relaying information as someone read through the book, trying to avoid spoilers as they went. In hindsight, I should have put the entire review inside one spoiler tag and not worried about capturing all my thoughts about the book in the correct order.

Travis’s Tuesday Tidbit started in July when I stumbled across the weird tradition of women trying to “catch” men in leap years. Some of my friends commented on my obscure knowledge, so I decided to start the web series.  This allowed me to recap a lot of the bizarre things I had learnt and practice my writing skills, both of which it did well. I noticed by my fourth article that my passion for the subject matter had waned, mainly because there was no overall topic for the series. I was merely grabbing interesting things I had heard and recounting them. I continued writing every week until October when I took two weeks off while my girlfriend was in town and I presented my Ignite talk. Resuming the weekly tidbits was no longer enjoyable because they didn’t give me a reason to continue; there was nothing to tie them together. I wanted more than that.

Which brings me to what I’m doing now. In November I resumed working on my science podcast with my friends Dana Harrison and Jonathan Fritz. Titled The Wonder of Reality, the podcast covers what science is, what we’re discovering with it, and a lot of what fascinates us with the world around us. We’ll be launching our first episode on January 1st, 2013 and continuing every two weeks from there. In order to do this show, I’m reading a lot of science literature and writing the equivalent of six Tuesday Tidbits every two weeks.

Where does that leave these series? As I’m reading a lot of different publications and articles, I’ll definitely learn new things that I want to remember for later. As a result I’m starting a new, irregular series called “Segmented Science“. Whenever I have something science related I want to remember, I’ll quickly jot down the main points and publish it with links and files. Most likely these posts will later be used in the podcast, but it’s entirely possible that they’ll be thrown away, so think of this series as more of a link farm than anything else.

And just in case you’re a long time reader, you’ll notice that I’ve excluded “Play Smarter” in this discussion. Play Smarter was never a regular series and it’s actually the largest source of traffic to the site despite only having one post. I’m still very excited about it as I love games and analyzing things. Definitely don’t expect something soon, but do expect the series to continue.

Thanks for reading,
Travis

Nightfall is based on a short story that Isaac Asimov wrote in 1941 and which was then expanded into a novel by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg in 1990. It chronicles the experiences of an alien civilization on a planet with six suns, completely illuminating the surface at all times. That is, except for once every 2049 years when the suns disappear and the stars come out. The story is broken into three parts: Twilight (before the darkness), Nightfall (the period of darkness), and Daybreak (everything that happens afterwards). The characters were a good cross-section of different societal views, though the number of non-scientists and females were under represented (yes, there is a correlation between the two even in this alien society). The book forgoes alien terminology such as vorks in place of miles, making it more accessible to the general public. Overall I found that while the story fell into some predictable trappings, it kept me wanting more making its 7.5/10 well earned. A word of caution though: after reading most of the book in one sitting at night, I started to believe that it would not be light again. This is one of the few times I advocate that you take a break at the end of each section.

General Information:

Nemesis by Isaac Asimov was an enjoyable tale about how a small self-contained settlement leaves the Solar System to orbit another star. The story has two timelines that alternate, one in the present and another from fifteen years ago that slowly approaches the present. The intersection is well done and I enjoyed the story for the most part. However, there are a few scientific things that bugged me, so inside of doing a review I’m going to deal with the science concepts discussed in the book from a present day perspective.

General Information:

I picked up The Stars, Like Dust by Isaac Asimov on a whim, as it was one of the few Asimov books the library had at the moment and I needed something to read. I didn’t realize it was an adventure/mystery set in space, nor that it was written as well as it was. The mystery had multiple layers (as all good tales must) and had a very intriguing plot along the way. It wasn’t until I researched the book afterwards that I realized it was the earliest book in the Galactic Empire trilogy and the second one written (which means I have two more books to read).

I’d recommend trying to solve the mystery as you’re reading because it doesn’t involve any complex science and it’s well thought out enough that it’s a worthy challenge. The characters all have different motives, there’s more than just one mystery at work, and it all comes together beautifully by the end. Overall, I’d give it a 9 out of 10, earning high marks in plot, characters, world building, and mystery but losing a little bit from how the characters interacted and a slightly off-beat end (I’ll cover more of that later). It left me wanting more, so I’m eagerly diving into the rest of the trilogy.

General Information:

Glory Road is a fantasy novel written by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein and stands as his only full foray into the genre. This novel was written around the same time as A Stranger in a Strange Land and there is quite a bit of overlap between them in terms of philosophical views. The novel itself is well done overall and I could easily tell that it was written by the science fiction pioneer, though it doesn’t feel as completed as some of his other work. The copy I had was just under 300 pages and I enjoyed the first two-thirds, as they balanced the lecturing, adventure, and wonderful writing that I’ve come to enjoy from his books. But new readers to Heinlein need to understand that many of his novels don’t involve protagonists and great battles, so if you’re looking for an epic quest this isn’t it. In fact, I would say that the last third of the book is lacklustre and becomes more lecture than anything else, and an uninteresting one at that. I give the novel a 5 out of 10, losing large points for an ending that lacked the climax and resolution I desired.

General Information:

As this is the inaugural post in the ALOBAM series, I wanted to explain a few things. First, ALOBAM stands for “At Least One Book A Month”, meaning that each month I want to review at least one book. Second, most of the books I’ll read are science fiction, because that’s where my interests lie. I may include some non-fiction books in the future, but we’ll see how this goes first. Finally, my reviews will be broken into stages of various spoiler levels, allowing people to read a review at their comfort level, perhaps even reading it in parallel with the book.

Triggers is the 21st book written by Robert J. Sawyer, a highly acclaimed and multiple award winning speculative fiction author. I’ve read all of his works and enjoyed them all, so fans of the great Canadian writer will not be disappointed. It also provides a very fast-paced and thrilling story, which is different from what he usually writes, but is done beautifully. Further, the book deals with present day (or given the context of the story, November 2012 after the most recent presidential election) so there’s no spaceships, aliens, or much else to overcome. The only science that’s touched on is a bit of quantum physics and how the brain works, but it’s explained well enough that it’s easy to pick up. All in all, I give it an 8 out of 10.

General Information: