Tim Pratt recently won the 2007 Hugo Award for best short story with Impossible Dreams. The story’s main character, Pete, is a huge movie buff that stumbles across a new video store in his neighborhood. He doesn’t seem to understand how he missed the store before, but ventures in and finds an odd selection of movies which he though had been canceled, or made by different directors with different actors. What follows is an interesting commentary on movies which either were never made, were lost, or simply done differently. This is a truly awesome story with an excellently planned ending. It was a pleasure to read from start to finish. From the writing it either the author is a huge movie buff or his writing is so good that you’d never even suggest he wasn’t passionate about movies. Visit the link above and read the full story at Asimov’s Science Fiction.
Impossible Dreams by Tim Pratt
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Isaac Asimov’s Robot City Book 3: Cyborg by William F. WuIsaac Asimov’s Robot City Book 3: Cyborg by William F. Wu
This review will most likely contain spoilers for any previous books in the series, read at your own risk.
This book has a nice intro from Asimov talking about cyborgs that is quite interesting. I always like reading these. Derec and Katherine have proven they didn’t commit murder, and stopped the rapid expansion of the city. They still stuck in Robot City though and are still searching for a way out. They are sidetracked by a rogue cyborg that escaped from a medical facility. I like the repercussions that are explored by transplanting a human brain into a robot body. The book goes by really quickly with lots of action and a few tidbits of information to keep the main plotlines going also.
Isaac Asimov’s Robots and Aliens Book 1: Changeling by Stephen LeighIsaac Asimov’s Robots and Aliens Book 1: Changeling by Stephen Leigh
One thing I like about this book is there is a nice eight page synopsis of the whole Robot City series. Even after just reading the series, it was a nice refresher for the events leading up to Robots and Aliens. This new series involves Asimov’s challenge to the authors to describe what might happen if robots encountered an alien species. How would they treat them? How would the Three Laws apply?
I particularly enjoyed this first book because it addresses one of the main questions I had regarding the Three Laws of Robotics. What does the key phrase “human being” actually mean? Throughout Asimov’s books and it is explained that the laws aren’t as simple as the English translation. They are complicated sets of positronic potentials that govern every action of a robot.
In Changeling, Stephen Leigh describes a robot model that is given a very simple definition of “intelligent life form” as an equivalent. This idea seems to work very well in this book and after several chapters we see how this experiment intersects with the Robot City plotlines. Also, we get to see Derec use the powers he was given to control Robot City. One thing that did bug me a little bit was how little of the main plotlines was advanced.
Isaac Asimov’s Inferno by Roger MacBride AllenIsaac Asimov’s Inferno by Roger MacBride Allen
- A robot may not injure a human being.
- A robot must cooperate with human beings except where such cooperation would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First Law.
- A robot may do as it likes, except where such action would violate the First, Second, or Third Laws.
About a year has passed since Caliban was exonerated. The Limbo project is currently using the New Law robots developed by Freda Leving in the hopes of fixing the terraforming problem. Although these robots are equipped with range restrictors to limit them to the island, an illicit smuggling trade has developed which smuggles robots out of Purgatory and helps remove the supposedly infallible restrictors. This criminal enterprise has caused much strain between Spacers and Settlers. (more…)