Zorac's LiveJournal

New toys arrived today, including (inspired by this post in jiggery_pokery's journal) an Evil Clock featuring the image to the left (one of thegraybook's user icons, taken from a comic reworking of a scene from her fic Draco Veritas. Sadly it no longer seems to be available, so I guess I'm one of very few people in the world to have a wall graced by this fabulous timepiece!

Review: James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear is another interesting piece of science fiction, although this one is more social since than some of his other work. The premise has a colony at Alpha Centauri which was established by a robot probe with cloned colonists and their robot carers. The main story takes place some 40-50 years later with a society very different from ours - technology provides pretty much everything at minimal cost, so there's no need for money or a concept of material wealth, plus many other differences for a society which has evolved from scratch without the baggage of the past. The conflict comes with a colony ship from Earth whose leaders expect to come in and smoothly take over only to find there's no government to take over etc. Plenty of interesting ideas and well executed.

Meta-Review: I just love the double act of reviewer quotes from two giants of the genre on the back cover:
'Arthur C. Clarke move over' - Isaac Asimov
'Much though it hurts me to say so, Isaac, you are right. Welcome, Jim Hogan, to the hardcore science fiction club' - Arthur C. Clarke