america the new rome and declining

read john julius norwichs history of the popes demonstrates that the career church professional outnumbered the nepotist and the magnifico
the last of rome by adrian goldsworthy follows the gibbon line with asides on the true extent of atiiolas empire and why the sassanid empire never became a superpower or encouraged in a standoff cold war with the roman empire shows the strengths and weaknesses of theRoman empire as USA

impact by douglas preston had read his tyrannosaur canyon before quite a fast moving thriller reached the denoucement expected tale of NASa scientist discovering an alien artifact while engaging in depscan of deimos moon of mars and the number of interested parties and hit emn after the evidence the artifact turns out to be an alien planetary bombardment weapon millions of years old and starts taking potshots at the moon and earth good ending unexpected

under heaven by guy gavriel kay famed for his historical fantasies set in countries not unlike byzantium( sarantium) or moorish spain( al rassan)
this was set in tang china and related the often novelised story of the an lushan rebellion and the foundation of the failed yan dynasty
lot of words lot of similiar plots

viking berseker chick lit

read giles kristians raven odins wolves kristian lives in cottage overlooking his ancestral norwegian fjord and yet still churns stuff like this out
part three of a trilogy it reads like watershop down and is told in rugged first person viking the tale of an oathsworn band(robert lows whale road )the vikings travel via moorish spain getting into fights all the way to contantinople and the middle east(robert low, tim severin, anyone)save emperor nikephoros from a revolt is this the 803AD or 808AD revolt (both are mixed up)
a much better plot would have been the oathsworn band of berserker muppets involvement in nikephoros bulgarian campaign where his head ends up as a drinking cup and court conspiracies surrounding the brief reign of the paralysed war wounded emperor staurakios but sadly it is the same old just viking cliche

the evolutionary void yes County libraries actually now stock more than one volume of a trilogy better than the last series as multiple story strands come together but straying towards the expected
stephen hawking the grand design hawkings usual rehash of scientific ideas passed off as cosmology
alex's adventures in numberland read this before from numbers starting at zero to infinite counting

putting poems on youtube

i was looking at new media to publish my poems and combined work created on my bryce world building software course with movie maker to upload a poem as a visual experience to you tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxeEQOEFfzU

I had created a series of postcards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gx_fccwckU&feature=related

island based human animal hybrids fighting against robots

read future science books this week an optimists tour of the future by mark stevenson bit of a kurzweil tour looking at genomes, synthetic biology carbon neutrality bionics and other things not happening in the future

electrifed sheep by alex boese i had previuously read his elephants on acid and more of the same eccentrics in science good chapter on humanizing apes and the experiments since victorian times to train monkey butlers but now we try to learn their language rather than in the past try to teach chimps to speak english with the rise of robot machines the idea of monkey servants declined
i say carry on perfecting both and let them fight it out!!

peter j hamilton dreaming void part two of the trilogy librairies often only stock the middle book of a trilogy as usual with hamiltons work it only gets started after page 400 full of world building, multiple story threads voyages to the far edge of the galaxy isolated communities and alien enemy getting there eventually not as good as judas unchained epic rather than interesting

pathfinders the history of arabic science a tale of translation from greek to arabic, arabic to latin and what peace and patronage can do to aid intellectual pursuits the west had the dark age science it needed at the time

history written as it should be

library read belisarius II an omnibus of two alternate history novels destinys shield fortunes stroke by eric flint and david drake the belisarius series these are the middle two out of the six novels are set in an east roman empire where wars are fought with armoured lancers, guns and rockets against an alien controlled indian empire the malwa c530AD setting aside the out of time technology and that belisarius is aided by an alien it is your typical romo war novel with set piece battles
likewise master of rome the third novel of the masters of sea series by john stack set during the first punic war i have previously read his ship of rome and captain of rome in the last year and this continued the story of the greek sailor atticus fighting for rome as usual with stack people and events are combined for narrative purposes ie the multiple hannos and hamilicars on the carthaginian side combined as one
the novel seemed to pick up in the middle from the usual leisurely campaigns of the first two book masters of rome starting in 255BC with the sicilian campaigns i suppose one rammimg and rowing naval battle is the same as another by now as if to prove this the events rushed on to the end of the war in 241BC where it all ended happily read that stack is now working on spanish armada series
story of archeology starting with first discoveries of the past and moving on chronologically
complete world of greek mythology i first read this in 2004 but only ever wrote one classically inspired poem Bewailing Actaeon in 1999 ........Circe she waits upon him and serves him fattened for the swine....Zeus, truth in marble.descent of the perfect circle the buttocks bared, face of an angel.

dog headed aliens created humanity from apes

library human secrets by linden lewis a good read a book with a beginning and end and chapters that followed each other to tell a story from page one this is very rare started with relics and crystal egg revelation of an earth millions of years ago and dog faced anubis like aliens creating humans for food to the existence of aliens returning for their artefact and the experience of a couple abducted to solve maths puzzles in base eight( the aliens have 3 fingers and a thumb on each hand) to test if they have evolved intelligence and are no longer food prey
read it and will read it again

five greatest warriors last of matthew reilly's jack west jr call sign special forces para mystic archaelogist novels at least he finds the vetices and constructs the machine but didn't he do that in seven greatest wonders - not a secret tomb or sacred lost site he has not found just in time before the murderous rivals and with one bound he was free- why are his allies always double /triple agents for the murderous rivals got to the end wished there was more - liked the bit about the villain using a tu 144 concordski as his private jet

gothic verse from the 18th to early 20th century scott, hood, shelley, coleridge and others the long unspeakable horror of very very long narrative verse- inspired me to write my own brief version

the war which killed achilles- a iliad commentray chapter by chapter inspired me to create a fantasy historical novel in one afternoon trojan fire in which cassandra is the pyschic military genius who defeated the achaeans in a day and is enthoned at the end with helen of troy dressed up as a gorgon on one side while hector fights with a giant snake in the achaeans one remaining ship and the achaeans are served up as a cannibal feast for kassandre the new queen
this is my second trojan war novel the first the key to the traveller (2000) a series of hero tales told by a band of warriors about their youthful campaigns
quite good inspiration from random visit to library this week