free hosting   image hosting   hosting reseller   online album   e-shop   famous people

"Take me to your paleontologists".
An alien spaceship lands outside the Royal Ontario Museaum and goes to talk with the paleontology department head Dr. Jericho. It seems that on at least three different planets in the galaxy, there have been several sychronized extinction events. The reason? God is controlling evolution on the three planets.
I like this book because it brings up a lot of issues that are big news today. Besides the obvious existence of god question, there is also the debate between intelligent design and evolution.
In case you're wondering the aliens in this book subscribe to ID theory. The put forward the classic argument of irreducible complexity. The conversations between the alien Hollus and Jericho are very interesting and the end of the book when Dr. Jericho and the aliens go to meet "god" after being saved from destruction by a supernova, is pretty cool.

In order to avoid a fatal disorder inherited from his father, Jake Sullivan uploads his mind into a new artificial body. He comes across another new upload named Karen who he knew when she was an old women encased in flesh. They then fall in love and try to get married but must deal with Karen son's lawsuit against her.
Meanwhile, the "old" flesh and blood version of Jake gets treated for his disorder. He then takes hostages demanding that he be allowed to return to Earth and live out the remainder of his life.
This book brings up a lot of issues that although not frontpage news today, will be mid-century. Of course the underlying issue in this book is that if two people have the same mind are they still the same person? Sawyer does a excellent job of bringing this issue to the reader's attention.
Another topic, that is important in this book is the nature of consciousness. When Jake is uploaded, the company that does the uploading creates several copies of him and whenever another on comes online, they become quantumlly entangled.

Ever since the Emperor conquered death 15 centuries ago, he has ruled over his empire.
When the Emperor's sister, Anastasia "The Reason" is taken hostage by the Rix, a culture that worships planetary scale AI, Captain Laurent Zai of experimental frigate Lynx has a choice: retrieve her alive or die. Even when he fails, his love, Senator Laura Oxham, convinces him not to commit ritual suicide as the Emperor's law dictates. Suprisingly the Emperor pardons Zai. However the pardon is only a PR stunt as the Emperor also dispatches the Lynx to destroy the Rix battlecruiser that is attempting to contact the newly formed planetary AI Alexander. Out gunned the Lynx accelerates towards it doom.
At the same time, a single Riz commando escapes and makes her way towards the interplanetary comm station at the north pole of the planet Legis XV.
This book is one of the best sci-fi stories I have ever read. Not only does Westerfeld create intriguing characters with realistic motivations, but he also succeds in creating a entirly new universe. The way this is done is by changing the units used to measure time and distance. Instead of using the familliar 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day, he adds a "Note on Imperial Mesures" that explains the units used in his book.

Humans have been contacted by an extraterrestrial civilisation