REVIEW SUMMARY: A great book – over before you know it!

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Agent Lila Black is on her first mission for the Otopian NSA. Her mission? To guard and investigate the lead singer of the The No Shows rock band, who happens to be an elf. However, she is far from normal herself, even in a changed world intersecting with elven, faery, and even demon worlds. Her assignment leads to a plot much more involved than she had ever imagined and takes her through her own internal struggle and growth.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: A great blend of science fiction and fantasy! Imaginative characters, while based on previous fantasy archetypes – have their own unique aspects and personalities. Quickly pulls you in, and picks up speed from there.

CONS: The introduction, laying the basis of the book, could have been better.

BOTTOM LINE: Keeping It Real is anything but "keeping it real". It transports the reader to a familiar world with an intriguing fantasy and sci-fi twist.  Some good old fashioned espionage wrapped in futuristic technology and fantasy magic. If you are a fan of sci-fi or fantasy Keeping It Real has something for you!

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Ok, I happened to be traipsing over multiple blogs. When I ran across one on the Houston Chronicle. Here they had a link to this somewhat interesting news clip from KLAS TV, about the science of teleportation. If you want, they also have a video clip there so you can hear the words come straight from the “scientist” hired by the Air Force to do the study. They discuss different issues, including whether or not you are who you started out as after the “teleportation”. Of course they say there is no way to know because there is no biology of consciousness. You won’t believe this but he was criticized as a crackpot!!!! Hmmm, maybe all the comparisons to movie teleportation like Stargate didn’t help his credibility . . . On another note he is from Las Vegas but the story did not say if he worked at “Area 51″.

For people familiar with the SOE game Star Wars Galaxies, they might find humor in these cartoons.

The last week or so I have been mulling around a story idea for a kind of computer geek sci-fi horror story. It goes something like this . . . A “mild-mannered” but sometimes insulting computer programmer is working on a huge software project for his company. When all of a sudden they find out some integral part of the software has gone awry (insert your favorite software gaff here). He of course is chosen as a one-man “tiger-team” to completely re-write this so-called software in time for their big release . . . putting immense pressure on him to complete this on time or some huge catastrophe ensues. What follows is a psychological torture of sorts as he strains to complete this project on time while having the weight of the company on his shoulders. From here we can go to a whole “Capricorn One” type scenario or any other type of shadow-organization trying to keep the truth from the “public”.

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Anybody ever read the short story by Philip K. Dick, titled Paycheck? I found it listed in this “collected works” offering at Amazon

Well, it looks like somebody decided to “parlay” that short story into some movie bucks using some really blockbuster talent. You got it the star of Gigli, Ben Affleck, will be hoping that this one breaks even at the box office!

Oops, looks like this was a topic of discussion back in August – you can see that post here.

Ok, so I see there have already been some posts on the Sci-Fi Channel’s remake of Battlestar Galactica series as a new TV mini-series. And yeah this post probably doesn’t have any more information than previous posts but I found another website that has, if not different information, information re-arranged in a different order. So I thought I would post it here:

http://www.galactica2003.net/

Along with the original Sci-Fi link:

http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/

And for those of you who don’t think that it can get any better than the original series with Dirk Benedict and Lorne Green then Best Buy has the series on DVD in a commemorative Cylon packaging for a mere 89 bucks and some change.