What’s on my bookshelf

Somehow Erica, the sharpest cookie, noticed that I have a bookshelf and asked what was on it. So, because I got nuthin better to do I decided to (sorta) catalog it. Here goes…

[PS Erica, I hope you server can handle the extra 2 viewers your gonna get because I linked to you ;) ]

Starting from the top shelf (click on the photo for a bigger version)

1. a Dead Guy Ale bottle. I don’t recall exactly where I got this, but I thought it was some sort of novelty beer so I kept it. I later found it is commonly available.
2. A Homer Simpson beer mug with a mini baseball bat in it
3. a poseable wooden person. When I used to draw I would use this to get the body proportions right (I was horrible at it.
4. From left to right: Clone Trooper, Boba Fett, and Darth Vader. These are really nice semi-collectible vinyl models from Kotobukiya.
5. Some other assorted glasses that I can’t remember where I got them from.

1. ED-209 from Robocop. His arms move up and down… that’s about it.
2. Wall-E. Fully poseable, and he’s quite a hit with the ladies
3. A model Lamborghini that I bought probably ten years ago, with the intent to put it together and paint it “when I have the time”… Still waiting
4. Some WWII fighter/bomber. Just thought it was cool.
5. A Republic Cruiser from the Clone Wars era. I thought it was a model like the Kotobukiya ones above, but it turns out it is a regular model. I will probably do this one before I do the Lambo

1. Orson Scott Card. One of my favorite authors, especially his Ender series.
2. David Brin, another of my favorites, although I haven’t any of his stuff in a while.  Earth, in particular, is a really intriguing book about a black hole that somebody creates and accidentally drops into the earth (Ooops!).
3. The immortal Asimov and his Foundation series.
4. Empire by Orson Scott Card. One of the few hardcovers I own. Set in the near-future, it’s about an attempt by a group of Americans to take over America (yes, that’s correct). Basically a civil war. It speaks a bit about the news media, politics, and our behaviour as a society. It posits (probably correctly) that as long as the change of government is relatively painless the people will just go along with it… basically we’re too lazy to be disgruntled for very long.
5. Part of a series by S. M. Stirling, the first book is called Dies the Fire (thanks Cliff). REALLY fascinating book. One day, all higher level energy transfers (meaning electricity, explosions, etc) stop working. So imagine if you no longer had any electricity, guns wouldn’t work, cars wouldn’t run (no combustion), not even steam engines. No phones, no internet. What happens to society as the food in your refrigerator goes bad, there is no more food at the supermarket because their refrigerator doesn’t work either. If you’re in the city, there are no trucks or trains or planes to bring you food from the farms. How do you protect yourself and your loved ones and possessions if you can’t shoot intruders? Today’s society was basically plunged back into medieval times.

1. A couple of Media Guides I haven’t gone through yet. There is a DC United one around somewhere too
2. Dune. There is a ton of them, I think I have the whole series, although this shelf is missing a few.
3. Prince of Persia. I got it through the Amazon Vine program. It was an “OK” graphic novel, loosely related to the Prince of Persia video game.
4. Souls in the Great Machine. Another “disaster of our own doing” story. Now, you don’t find this out until way later, but humanity starts fiddling around with genetic manipulation and accidentally makes a breed of super smart whales that are angry we are killing whales. They happen to have mental telepathy and they make all animals on land walk into the ocean, where they are eaten by whales waiting for free lunch. So the story is about the survivors many hundreds and thousands of years later. There is also some AI controlled satellite system that destroys any object above a certain size, and makes EMPs and anything electronic (can’t recall why though). So technology is at a standstill. The big part of the first book is about a woman who creates a computer, but instead of with electronic components, it uses people (hundreds) to do equations in a very rough parallel computing sort of way. Fascinating stuff.

[DORK ALERT! DORK ALERT]

These are all tons of star wars books. Not because they are necessarily good books… quite the contrary. While there are a few good ones, many are downright mediocre. I have the whole series because I am fanatical about having the whole series (see Dune, Ender, Foundation as other examples) even if some of the books aren’t really worthy. Note that most of these are in chronological order.

1. Legacy of the Force series. One of Han Solo and Princess Leia’s kids becomes a Sith Lord and Luke has to stop him.
2. Miscellaneous Star Wars books, and or short series.
3. New Jedi Order series. There is an invasion by a warlike (think Klingons) species that is immune to the force. Most books were pretty decent, and there was a noticeable killing off of some major characters including Chewbacca.
4. Comics and graphic novels that I’ve finished reading, but haven’t filed away yet
5. Comics and graphic novels I haven’t read yet
6. Miscellaneous hardcover Star Wars Books. Of special note, the Revenge of the Sith book was way better than the movie. In particular, the description of the battle between Emperor Palpatine and Mace Windu was downright epic in the book. The movie version was a shocking letdown.

1. More Star Wars books, continuing the New Jedi Order series from the left.
2. Darwin’s radio series by Greg Bear. An interesting concept, but it moves really really slowly and at the end leaves you hanging out there without a clear resolution (more sequels?). Basically, it posits there is a built-in genetic clock that every couple thousand years results in radical genetic mutation. It’s set in the near future where more and more children are showing up different, being slightly telepathic/empathic, slightly smarter, and look a little different. Points at society shunning/persecuting anything that is “different”.
3. The Gripping Hand and the Mote in God’s Eye. Some of the better books in my collection. We meet a species of alien that nearly instantly “understand” new technology and adapt it to their own uses almost instantaneously. They start out in a really pre-industrial society and quickly catch on to the starfaring technology of humans. They breed like jackrabbits and threaten to take over everything.
4. A book by dog psychologist Cesar Milan, because our dog is crazy. And Presentation Zen, because… I’m a designer.

1. Miscellaneous books by various authors that I only have one or two of.
2. Rama series by Arthur C Clarke. I used to have the whole series, but the rest are missing some where. One of the grand sci-fi series of all time.
3. The Reality Dysfunction by Peter Hamilton. A really interesting, creepy, intriguing series. Basically, it’s set in the far future with space travel and all that. Apparently, there IS a hell (maybe heaven?) where souls go to when they die. One day an alien species watches a person die and tries to follow their soul into a “rift”. Well, the alien gets stuck in this rift and holds it open. And it’s not supposed to stay open. So out comes a soul, previously dead, and resurrects the body that just died. And then each person that gets killed, their soul gets sucked into the “rift” and another soul comes out to replace it and take over their body. Its a 1-to-1 trade. So think of all the people who might be in this “hell”… Napolen, Hitler, Genghis Kahn, and serial killers, all along with regular ordinary people. So this new horde of old souls in new bodies wants to let ALL of the souls out of hell and take over the living. In starships. and planets. And Colonies, etc, etc.
4. Most of my techie books. Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, PHP, MySQL, ASP, CSS, etc.
5. Books I haven’t read yet.
6. Assorted computer parts.

Hope you all enjoyed this. Now stop trying to peek in my window…