Ahmed Writes

PEOPLE MACHINES  By Jack Williamson   Ace, 1971   After a long time I have across another book worthy of a Bookscan post.  "People Machines" is a collection of 9 short stories by Jack Williamson. The stories are very good but better than the stories are author's notes that precede each story. In these notes, Williamson discusses various elements of a story: characters, plot, scene, language, style, etc. In these notes, I found 2 things worthy of extra attention. First is what I consider the best definition of Science Fiction: "Fiction based on the imaginative exploration of scientific possibility."  Second is his mention of "stratificational grammar" postulated by Sidney Lamb. This was a new term for me and as I love going on excursions tangentially from a book, I started looking up transitional grammar. And I was disappointed. I was not able to locate a single resource for explaining the concept to a layman or to demonstrate any applicability. For my ...

Book: MY NAME IS LEGION Writer: Roger Zelazny Del Rey, May 1978 - Third Printing The cover of this edition of the book is quite unattractive. The book itself consists of 3 novellas, losely connected by the fact that they have the same protagonist. He, like almost all Zelazny protagonists, is a larger-than-life character. His real name is not known to anyone, including the readers. He appears under a different name in each story. The stories are told in first person. The first novella is titled "The Eve of RUMOKO". It is an interested read except that I detested the ending. I have found that other than larger-than-life characters, unsatisfactory endings are quite common in novellas and novels of Zelazny. However, he writes so well that most of his stories are worth reading in spite of unsatisfactory endings. This story made me look up more details about undersea drilling of earth's core. I found out about the American Miscellaneous Society and about project Mohole. I...

Book: THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHRISTMAS PUDDING Writer: Agatha Christie Fontana, 1990 This is a collection of 6 of Agatha Christie's stories: 1. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding 2. The Mystery of the Spanish Chest 3. The Underdog 4. Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds 5. The Dream 6. Greenshaw's Folly The first 5 of the stories feature Hercule Poirot and the last one features Miss Marple. All the stories are pretty good and eminently readable. The title story stands out in being one of those rare Poirot stories that does not involve a murder. It is actually quite a pleasant little mystery. For me, "The Dream" turned out to be a rare story too - rare in the sense that I was able to solve the mystery way before the author revealed the solution. Go me! As I had expressed in one of my earlier blogs, when I read a book, I try to pick up a tiny bit more than what the book gives me. In the course of reading this book, I picked up two things. In one of the stories ...