Después de leer la Trilogía de la Fundación falta algo, la historia no puede terminar ahí. Este libro entrega lo que faltaba. Una busqueda de los origenes en el Futuro, ir a los límites. Asimov muestra que el ser humano continua siendo escencialmente el mismo, es decir muy curioso. Todo lector de la trilogia de Asimov debe leerlo.

This is the fifth book in the Lucky Starr series, originally published under the pseudonym Paul French. In this volume, Starr and Bigman Jones travel to a moon of Jupiter to discover the cause of a series of accidents on a secret project to develop a space craft with an antigravity engine. They uncover a spy of Earth's enemy, Sirius. Jupiter IX is called Adrastea in the novel; however, now Adrastea is referred to as Jupiter XV (more (16) satellites are known now than were known in 1957). It is one of the closest moons to Jupiter's surface and could not be the moon referred to in the novel. In an introduction written in 1978, Asimov apologizes for some of the scientific inaccuracies in the story due to all of the new information that had been discovered since 1957. Besides the number of moons, Jupiter's magnetosphere would present severe difficulties to space travelers. The intense radiation field that surrounds Jupiter would be fatal to travelers unless some new method is available to counter the problem. It is also doubtful that the characters would have landed on Io due to its large degree of volcano activity (there are at least eight active volcanos). There is also evidence that Io forms a ring (or torus) around Jupiter consisting of ionized sulfur and oxygen. In 1989, it was discovered from infrared spectroscopy using Earth-based equipment that Io has hydrogen sulfide on its surface. The characters in the novel also land on Amalthea (Jupiter V). This moon, discovered in 1892, is small and has a low orbit. Also unknown in either 1957 and 1978 was the fact that Jupiter has a single faint ring encircling the planet, a ring not detected by Earth-based observatories.

Even though this book was published in 1996, it remains a good reference book for "women of a certain age" and those who love them. I found particularly useful the section on symptoms of menopause to see if my experiences were connected or associated with something else. Also helpful are the tips on ways to relieve symptoms,including natural, non-HRT options. While research is always changing, from what I have read in medical newsletters much of this book is still very sound.

"The Miller Masks" by Neil D. Isaacs is a good book for people who love short stories, but can also appreciate the fulfillment of a novel. It is also tailor-made for people who wear many hats within their own lives, since the main charcter, Jesse Miller, is many things to many other characters. But above all other roles, Jesse is a storyteller. Issacs reviews five-decades of Miller's life through a series of stories, including a majority told by the central figure, who is also a master storyteller. The tales do not link moment-to-moment, but are instead a collection of chronological episodes that capture the feel and the flavor of the life of the novel's hero. The stories are tragic, bittersweet, pathetic, cerebral, fulfilling, and humorous - sometimes very humorous. Also, it is a story about love which never falls into the traps of become a love story. In the end, Jesse Miller is a character with weaknesses, psychological defenses and self-deprecating humor. This makes him likable and, more importantly, very real to some readers. He is a character many readers will be able to identify with and empathize for.

This book goes step by step through each commandment, giving the text from the Torah, a brief explanation, and then short commentaries by various scholars. Short and to the point, and easy to use as a reference book.

Even though I've been years out of grad school and spend most of my geoexperience teaching earth science to 9th graders, I had to get this book, knowing that a lot of it would be over the top of my rusty geobrain. I live in SoCal and have experience with the Monterey Formation and other time contemporaneous formations. This book is nothing less than the biography of a rock formation and the most thorough book I've seen written about one rock formation. This book is not for the casual browser. If you haven't had at least Geo 101, stay away. My main complaint is with the price. I know this book has a limited audience and the company is probably charging what the market will bear, but how about a bigger break on the paperback edition. With lower prices on the paperbacks, maybe textbooks and technical books would have a wider audience.

Asimov wrote Black Widower short stories for _Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine_ for years, rounding out each batch to a dozen with a few previously unpublished episodes for each new Widower collection. The Widowers are a stag club who meet once a month at the Milano restaurant: Avalon (patent attorney), Drake (research chemist), Gonzalo (painter), Halsted (teacher), Rubin (author), and Trumbull (intelligence analyst). They rotate the office of host; each month's host brings a guest for an evening of dinner, conversation, and grilling, and each eventually produces a problem of some kind for the Widowers to try to solve. (Problem-solving isn't the point of the club; Avalon, for one, grumbles about how the grilling always seems to degenerate into sleuthing, lately.) The seventh Widower - Henry, the waiter - always produces the solution after the other six have batted the problem around awhile.

I can see why EQMM usually ate them up; the puzzles tend to be the kind of artificial gimmick that EQ's own early adventures were noted for - fair, if you know the right bits of trivia, and can view the problem as a constructed puzzle rather than a story about people. The crossword aroma is generally diluted with a healthy dose of Black Widower squabbling, though, as well as the wildcard element of the guests, so they're an entertaining read.

"When No Man Pursueth" Guest: Mortimer Stellar (a stand-in for Asimov himself), who's annoyed with a publisher who bought an article only to sit on it without explanation. [Asimov used this story to blow off steam about a real-life incident.]

"Quicker Than the Eye" - Host: Trumbull. Guest: Robert Alford Bunsen, Trumbull's boss - because Trumbull couldn't explain previous successes without violating Widower confidentiality. Bunsen's minions baited a trap with a small item, in hopes of tracing their opponents' network when it was passed in a restaurant, but they still don't know how it was done. (Henry points out the obvious problem - the agent's people *must* know, after various searches and X-rays, that his cover was blown - but Bunsen's response is adequate. My issue with Trumbull's occasional panics over the dangers of unbroken enemy codes is that either the problems are very dated or Asimov didn't concern himself with making Trumbull a realistic cryptography expert, but I can always read _The Devil's Code_ for that kind of thing.)

"A Chip of the Black Stone" (a.k.a. "The Iron Gem"), according to a family legend of the Widowers' guest, Latimer Reed, is supposedly a stolen fragment of the Kaaba, but the legend's dubious, at best. On the other hand, someone years ago was *desperate* to buy it...

"The Three Numbers" (a.k.a. "All in the Way You Read It") - Host: Drake. Guest: Samuel Puntsch, a fellow researcher, although in physics rather than chemistry. A family friend and co-worker, recently committed to a mental hospital, may have an important breakthrough locked in his safe. Why won't the combination work?

"Nothing Like Murder" The Widowers' guest, a Soviet paying his first visit to New York, believes his fears of street crime were justified: he says he overheard murder being plotted in a public park. What was really said?

"Confessions of an American Cigarette Smoker" (a.k.a. "No Smoking") One of a personnel manager's little psychological tests was to observe job candidates' reactions to a pack of cigarettes: if they refused, the manner of the refusal; if they accepted, their body language and subsequent behaviour. At least one candidate, however, appears to have turned the tables to manipulate the examiner, tricking the personnel guy into a badly mistaken hiring decision. [The trick here is to figure out how the examinee betrayed signs of his deviousness during the interview that the examiner failed to pick up on.]

"Season's Greetings!" The guest is one of the Widowers' occasional quirky collectors: they've had puzzles concerning guys who collected postcards, games, even matchbooks. This month's guest collects unusual Christmas cards - why did someone mock him recently by sending an anonymous, cheapo card?

"The One and Only East" - Host: Gonzalo. Guest: Ralph Murdock, Elder of the Disciples of Holiness and cousin of Gonzalo's landlady. He's a decent man, although sober in several senses: dress, manner, and drink. His late uncle was none of those things, and destroyed his health through his appetites. However, he was determined to have the last laugh: if Murdock can't deduce which of the six cities on his uncle's list matches his only cryptic clue, he'll have to gamble - guess randomly - if he wants the inheritance.

"Earthset and Evening Star" Guest: Jean Servais, whose partner inexplicably refuses to see reason about the setting of a lunar colony they're designing for a movie. [The puzzle resembles that of the Wendell Urth mystery "The Key" (_The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov_).]

A letter dated only "Friday the Thirteenth" may be a clue in posthumously proving the innocence of a man executed long ago for an assassination attempt on President Coolidge. [Asimov had weaknesses for both presidential and calendar puzzles; both pop up regularly in his mysteries.]

"The Unabridged" is the only clue the Widowers' guest, Jason Leominster, has to the location of a valuable stamp hidden in his late aunt's house; he must locate it before auctioning her effects.

"The Ultimate Crime" Guest: Ronald Mason. In the author's note, Asimov confesses that *he* was the writer (in this story, Mason) who felt obliged to contribute to Sherlockian scholarship to consider himself a true Baker Street Irregular, and the theory propounded herein is his own; Asimov just couldn't bear not to let the world know how clever he'd been. :) The problem herein is that of Professor Moriarty's academic career: what was his great work, _The Dynamics of an Asteroid_, really about? [I think Asimov came up with a cool theory.]

As someone whose grandmother and great grandparents were a part of the Barr Colony I was very interested to find out exactly what life was like for them when they came from England to Canada in 1903. The book answered all my questions and gave great insight into the conditions experienced by my grandmother and her family as they travelled across Canada and tried to make a home in the Barr Colony. At times I was a little overwhelmed by the amount of detail in the book, but overall I found it very interesting. It is particularly suitable for those who have a particular interest inthe Barr Colony.

This is the sixth book in the humorous Norby science fiction series for children about a space cadet and his unusual robot named Norby. A criminal from Earth has escaped into hyperspace and exploded a bomb that opens a "door" to another universe. Jeff and Norby, with their friends, have to travel through hyperspace and time to change history back to its original path. Malevolent beings from the other universe have entered through the door and take over our universe. Jeff and Norby strive to change history so this doesn't occur.