I used this book for a complex variable course as part of my engineering study. I found this book very insufficient to explain things well as a beginner in the subject. There were often problems I could not understand because the book only offered a couple line explaination and no example. In fact almost all the class thought the book was terrible and didn't even read it. Now my school Rochester Institute of Technology has returned to its previous book. If you are well versed in math and want to explore another realm, go ahead with this book, but if you are no mathematician try something else.

It is wonderful to see this great book on undergraduate complex analysis back in print at even a more affordable price. I've used it in in one of my junior level courses and been totally satisfied with it. I will use a part of it again in a continuation course.

What is nice about this book is that it is a textbook, and not a cookbook nor a book that tries to include everything and fails at all of them. This book never lists too many results; instead it aims at the understanding of the subject matter. Its treatment of Cauchy's theorem clearly exposes the fact that different points of view (derivatives, series, integrals) in the complex plane lead to the same object, analytic functions. The sections on geometric and applied topics, such as linear fractional transformations and fluid mechanics, are a delight to read.

The book assumes nothing other than calculus (Green's theorem) as background. Topological concepts are kept at a reasonable level and some are introduced later when necessary so as not to hinder the development of its main topic. Some short side issues are discussed in tiny sections within the exercises. There are also plenty of regular exercises ranging from elementary calculations to rigorous proofs. This book also contains an appendix that I love on the zeros of polynomials, including the cubic and the quartic.

What attracted me most in this book is that one can read it straight through. There are no secondary undeveloped paths, sections to omit, unnecessary details, or long list of formulas. I recomend it for any course or self-study at the introductory level complex analysis.

This collection of short stories turns a lot of conventions on its head by ignoring them. The Doctor from the two movies staring Peter Cushing is just as real as the others. The Ninth Doctor has a history. The Fourth Doctor and Romana have a thing going on. The Doctor can be presented as a parody of himself. The wildly separated stories present views not only of the Doctor from television, but the Doctor from the future and parallel Doctors. There are enough views of all the different Doctors that not every story will be equally enjoyable to all people. (Thus four rather than five stars.) However, every long-term fan of Doctor Who will find enough in this book to hold their attention and keep them coming back for more. It's worth getting. Just bear in mind that you'll be disappointed a few times.

This is a really unique collection of Doctor Who short stories! It has all eight of the tv Doctors PLUS has a chap called "Dr Who", who (ha), is the Doctor as played by Peter Cushing in the two movies he did. His nemisis is a guy named Count Tarkin. Cute reference, to be sure. My favourite story is the one with the Fifth Doctor and Peri going up against the Master in the Old West. The least favourite was a series of bizzare stories centering around Barbra. Slightly confusing was a story featuring a Doctor called "Dr Who" and not "The Doctor", that I couldn't figure out the source for. Still, all in all, it's well worth owning. You get to see, amongst other things, the 7th Doctor and Ace take on a Hindu god, the 4th Doctor and Romana trying to get a birthday cake from the Masterbakers (don't even go there) for K-9's birthday, and a story with the 2nd Doctor and Jamie (and one other... Zoe, I think), that explains what REALLY happened to the last probe we sent to Mars. Buy this book! It's a great read.

Cole's book is a good account of current perspectives about sociological approaches to science - without prophetism nor milenarism. The author himself tries to criticise both constructivist and positivist approaches regarding a deeper analysis of scietific affairs and its making in the scientific mileu. He also rises interesting analyses about the notion of consensus in both the "research frontier" and the "core knowledge" trying to debunk the comonplace idea that in natural sciences the consensus is higher than in social sciences. I reckon he carries out a serious and interesting critique on some constructivist standpoints... well, just read it.

The text in this little booklet is much too short, but since it is part of a series of pamphlets called 'Postmodern Encounters,' I suppose its brevity was a requirement set down by the publisher. Basically it is an examination of why theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has become such a widely recognized cultural icon, even though his field of research (astrophysics and cosmology) is hardly understood by most people. Coles even speculates, correctly I think, that vast majority of those who bought his best-selling 'Brief History of Time' probably did not even bother reading it. Even though Coles never implies that Hawking is anything but a brilliant scientist and top-notch researcher, he also points out that Hawking can hardly be placed in the company of such 'revolutionary' physicists as Galileo, Newton or Einstein ' even though is how he is now perceived in the popular mind. Coles thus explores how this assignment of an almost guru-like status for Hawking came about. Along the way, Coles also provides a summary of the basic ideas underlying relativity theory and quantum physics, geared toward compleat idiots such as myself. This section actually accounts for the bulk of the text, and makes his rather brief investigation of the Hawking phenomenon all the more tantalizing. This subject matter deserves a much more detailed study ' hopefully Coles is working on a more comprehensive book.

This book consists of several different essays, each focusing on what the authors' feel is wrong in the field of sociology. From the lack of students in undergraduate programs to incoherence of work being done in the discipline, the writers' discuss the problems which workers' in the field face daily. Looking at both the academic world and sociology's place in social science research, editor Stephen Cole provides a wide range of critiques of the direction in which sociology is headed (or lack thereof).

The Brigadier needs the help of an old friend and that old friend comes arunnin'... albeit slightly bothered... at first.

I think this was a classic Doctor Who adventure. There really was no actual need for the aliens involved in this tale. It would have sailed along on its own merits with just the Fourth Reich group, a resurrected Adolph Hitler!?!(I won't spoil anything) and the time travel to WWII.

Both the Brigadier and Doctor are brought to life in this story. Although, neither this incarnation nor the Brig met in the original series, the conversations between them are just right. You can easily picture/hear Colin Baker and Nicholas Courtney saying these lines.

The solo trip back to WWII by the Doctor and the subsequent trip with the Brigadier were pure Doctor Who fun.

And I myself was not surprised by the ending. In traditional Doctor Who fashion... all the clues of what was going to transpire was there in the text.

A fun Doctor Who adventure! I can't say that for a lot of the novels I've read in this series. But I can on this one. Give 'The Shadow in the Glass' a try!

Right off the bat, forget that this book was plotted overnight, and written in just three weeks by the former and current "Doctor Who" editors at BBC Books. In spite of the behind-the-scenes woes (shown here as spelling errors and details that change in the middle of scenes), the book is quite enjoyable.

As with any Justin Richards book, the story sets up slowly, each chapter introducing a new character and idea, or a new setting. "Shadow/Glass" opens as a UFO crashes near a RAF military base in 1944, and slowly works up to the present day. Neo-Nazis gather in England and Antarctica, using alien technology -- and someone who looks a lot like Adolf Hitler -- in preparation for the Fourth Reich (given how many other Fourth Reichs there have been in recent DW, this should really be the Eighth Reich...).

As the mystery unfolds, the retired Brigadier and intrepid journalist Claire investigate Hitler's death, and the Sixth Doctor travels through time and meets a war epic's worth of historical figures. Tension mounts and builds up to the showdown with the aliens, and Hitler's suicide in the Berlin bunker in April, 1945.

At the end, the book self-destructs, with a too-short action sequence and a too-stale historical reenactment. Because this is the Sixth Doctor, there's some forced angst literally on the final page, and the Brigadier makes an unusually clumsy metaphor to try and cheer him up.

But never mind the rushed ending -- "Shadow/Glass" is a fun mixture of time travel and authentic history that, in its best moments, summons up the thriving spirit of "Doctor Who" and makes for great potboiler sci-fi. Highly recommended.

This book is great, even more so because it was written in such a short time and yet managed to maintain that fun sense of adventure. Nobody will ever confuse it with literature, but if you want a fun read, this is it.

The Sixth Doctor meets up with the Brigadier, and hijinks ensue. Since the Sixth Doctor has already met the Brigadier in the book series (in one of Gary Russell's books), there is no need to have yet another initial meeting between the two. Instead, Justin and Stephen can get on with the story.

And what a story it is. Did Hitler survive the events of the bunker at the end of the war? What's going on in that strange house? Why has an entire English village been cordoned off since World War II? All of these mysteries come together in a delightful fashion.

Colin Baker *is* the Sixth Doctor in this book. I could see him perfectly in this part. The Brigadier is perfect as the wise old soldier who's still got the will to go on an adventure even though his body may not agree. The "companion" role is taken by a television reporter who is also well characterized. She's got a nose for a mystery, and it shows. What happens to her in this story actually surprised me, though it was almost poetic when I thought about it afterward. It's something that Cole and Richards couldn't do if they had been forced to use a real companion from the series.

There's also a wonderful use of continuity in this book. I love continuity as long as it's used well (for an example of how not to use it, see The Quantum Archangel). This book references both the series, a previous BBC book and also a previous Virgin book, which surprised me a bit.

This book is a lot of fun. Don't expect anything truly deep and meaningful out of it, but it's a nice, straightforward adventure that will make you smile.

I love it when a Dr Who novel starts part way into the story. The Doctor, Compassion and Fitz are separated right from the beginning as a result from fleeing a doomed space station. Sadly I found the only interesting bits to be read were about Fitz's exploits on the other world, Mechta, a colony for convalescents, whereas the Doctor was tending not to do much and Compassion was being annoyingly annoying once again (still with no insight of who or what she is). The action and pace does pick up in the 3rd part of the story, giving the Doctor and Compassion a more interesting exciting role to play. Worth a read, but don't expect much from it.

PARALLEL 59 is a sadly incoherent book, with some really clichéd and dull portions being countered by moments of great interest and wonderful writing. There are some instances of rather clever storytelling at work here, but unfortunately the majority of them get bogged down by formulaic portions that do nothing more then tell the same old story that we've seen many times already.

The story is neatly divided into two sections with Fitz immediately becoming separated from the Doctor and Compassion. The Doctor and Compassion are captured by a government task-force and mistaken for spies while Fitz has adventures at a place called Mechta where things are not quite what they seem. Boiled down to their basic elements, both segments are fairly unoriginal, but the Fitz sections manage to rise above expectations due to the inspired execution. One mistake made is that for the second book in a row, Fitz begins an ill-fated romance with a native of the environment that he finds himself marooned in. PARALLEL 59, while not doing a bad job in this department, pales when compared to the Fitz relationship portrayed in FRONTIER WORLDS.

The sections containing the Doctor and Compassion rarely move beyond the type of adventure that we've seen time and time again, though to balance this out there are some hilarious portions mixed in. The secondary characters in this section all seem rather bland and faceless. There's the group of outlaws that we know so well from various other Doctor Who stories. There's also the large government-controlled project featuring bureaucratic types that we've seen in those same previous Doctor Who stories. Add one or two double-agents, and you're left with the entire dull cast. None of these characters leap off the page and become anything more than the simple two-dimensional figures we've been seeing.

Overall, this book was fairly disappointing, yet there were one or two very entertaining sections, and the further adventures of Fitz were rather enjoyable. I wouldn't mind reading further solo books from either of these two authors in the future, but I don't think their styles were really suited for co-authorship. It led to a feeling of inconsistency here that was very distracting.

Escaping from a doomed space station, the Doctor and Compassion splash down in the waters of the planet Skale. Fitz, as per usual, has gone his own way, and arrives on the pleasant world of Mechta. Compassion and the Doctor are not so lucky, as they are captured by Parallel 59, owners of the orbital station. The Skalens are a paranoid, competitive bunch who have divided their planet into seemingly arbitrary power blocs. In contrast, the Mechtans are chilled, relaxing in convalescence. Fitz literally becomes immersed in their culture. So Fitz once more acts the playboy, where his only anxiety is keeping each of his lovers unaware of the others. But is there really something sinister in Central, as Fitz's circle would have him believe? And what's happening to the people who leave Mechta?

Convinced that they're from another planet, Haltiel, the Skalens set about interrogating the Doctor and Compassion. But the denizens of Parallel 59 are very politically charged, and some of them don't want the Doctor to repair the damage to the space station (which had unwittingly been caused by the Doctor and friends). Compassion escapes, and finds the obligatory band of rebels. However, she and the Doctor are marooned, forced to leave the TARDIS behind in the space station. Not only must the Doctor recover his beloved time machine, but he must also save Fitz from the true nightmare of Mechta...

This is the first novel by the editor of the BBC books, Stephen Cole, and it looks as though it could have been a real disaster, a case of too many chefs (Peter Anghelides is acknowledged to have helped out also). But Anghelides seems to have carried on with the most effective device of the previous novel (his own 'Frontier Worlds'), by having Fitz narrate his time in Mechta. This again brings us closer to Fitz, a character who had previously seemed lifeless. There's nowhere near the same level of wit as in Frontier Worlds, and Parallel 59 appears to be quite formulaic (how many cultures has Fitz lived in now?), and Compassion seems to bear a gun as unthinkingly as any Ace (but without the same gung-ho). The opening's also quite dull, as we're told about the dramatic escape from the space station, rather than being shown it. This adventure is also the first to feature an unclothed Doctor, but this sight doesn't seem to faze his cell companion, Compassion, so we must assume that the Doctor is fully humanoid in appearance (no hidden appendages like the Centauri in B5). But then it's hard to see Compassion reacting to anything much.

There is a point in the novel where all the plots and counterplots seem facile, but there's an even bigger twist towards the end. And this novel's conclusion is it's real saviour, for it is genuinely pulsating. If you go and reread the opening pages, you do realise that there are subtle signposts to what's going to happen. With three authors contributing, Parallel 59 could have been a disaster. It's a triumph that a clear narrative emerges, and the authors certainly couldn't be faulted for the use of their imaginations. There are duff parts certainly, but the final drama, I think, makes up for it. Parallel 59 certainly gave me that always desired DW buzz.

There's nothing more frustrating than seeing a book that has a lot of potential starting to lose steam. Unfortunately, I experienced that sensation far too early in VANISHING POINT. There's a lot of really excellent material in the book, but for everything that it does right, there's something that it does wrong. A few changes, and this could have been one of the all-time best Doctor Who stories, but alas, much of what exists now simply doesn't quite work, ambitious though it is.

The premise to this book is fabulous. A society exists where God is real and death has meaning. Their faith isn't defined in the same way that ours is, as their religion is based upon fact and hard evidence. This is a beautiful premise and that it ended up being mishandled was quite frustrating. After carefully setting up this interesting scenario, Stephen Cole quickly backs away from it and confounds our attempts to view this sort of society by introducing us only to characters who begin the book full of doubts about the "facts" of their religion. The beautiful background simply never materializes, as apart from a few information dumps at the beginning, it never quite makes the impact on the story that it should have. No one that we see has really bought into the religion (though we are told that loads of other people in the population have), so it's difficult for the reader to understand the doubts that the characters already have. People with doubts are certainly interesting to read about (and they are portrayed extremely well here), but one really gets the impression that there was an opportunity wasted here.

That said, the characters that we do encounter are drawn extremely well, never falling into cliché or stereotype no matter how easy it would be for them to do so. Every action is believable and interesting. The regulars get a lot of good stuff to do and each of the secondary characters leap from the page. This makes up a little from the fumble that I mentioned earlier. The characters that we end up being presented with are drawn extraordinarily well.

The action flows fairly quickly and entertainingly. There are a few nice twists and turns to keep the reader interested, but there are also some long fight/escape sequences that go on for a tad too long. The prose is quite variable; while it mostly remains passable in some places it's quite effective and in other places it's difficult to read. A little sharper editing could have fixed these problems quite easily. What we have is good, but needs some further refinement. The ending also feels a bit confused and uncertain, with a few Doctor Who stereotypes rearing their ugly heads. If I never see a bad guy laboriously explaining his intricate plan to the Doctor before allowing him to escape, then I doubt I will miss it all that much.

Something else that should have been left on the cutting room flow was the strange and pointless "romance" that Fitz gets himself involved in. I put the word romance in quotation marks, because it's one of those romances that leaves you unsure of just what happened. It comes out of no where, lasts all of ten pages, and then leaves no impact on the rest of the book. On the other hand, the other slight romance in the book is handled relatively well. It's nicely understated and does everything right that the Fitz romance did wrong. It's just a pity that this one, too, dissipates halfway through the book.

It's a shame that the book contains the flaws that it does, because this really could have been something really special. If it had gone through another draft or two, we'd be discussing one of the great Doctor Who stories. The addition of an another character, one without doubts (or perhaps showing the Holy Man, Nathaniel Dark, at a point while he still has complete faith), would have made a world of difference in showing off the excellent premise. While I will always enjoy something that aims high like VANISHING POINT does, it's even more frustrating when a book like this doesn't quite pull off all the tricks that it could have.

"Vanishing Point" is a thoughtful novel with a dynamic role for the Eighth Doctor and another strong showing for new series regular Anji Kapoor. Former series editor Stephen Cole, in his first solo DW novel, works up a good mixture of philosophy and action sequences and in the author's own mind, I'm sure, the planetary setting must have looked really *neat*. There are cliffs, and rocky spires jutting out of oceans, city slums and mushroom-shaped skyscrapers.

In outline form this novel may have looked like a real corker. There are surprises and revelations at many turns -- one of the main supporting characters is a cross between a homicide detective and a priest, so there's a lot of mystery afoot.

Unfortunately, you have to read the prose in order to finish the novel, and there are missteps aplenty. On the first page, we see "smoky clouds" blow across "the moon's laughing face". There are bizarre attempts at comedy. The villain has a penchant for eating bananas, so of course a henchman will slip on a banana peel at a pivotal moment. The two romances (a priest and a prostitute, and Fitz is seduced by a deformed woman) don't seem to work very well, especially in the latter case -- perhaps because, after the sex, all the repercussions are glossed over. Realistic, perhaps. Interesting to read? No.

Even though the Doctor has a good presence -- that mixture of wacky irreverence and ferocious concentration that has suited the character well for decades -- he still gets kicked in the head while hiding behind a man's legs in the book's very first scene.

I wanted to like "Vanishing Point" more than I finally did. The book raises a lot of moral questions and the religious content is fresh. However, it was a chore to read and in the end did not leave a huge impression.

Vanishing Point is a novel that's hard to pin down. It starts out as a very nice examination of religion and how people relate to it. There is the crisis of faith as seen from both the layman's side and the clergy's side.

It then becomes a study on genetic engineering, though that part is not very deep. The issue gets glossed over and replaced with a "should we experiment on people who don't know they're the subjects of experiments?" book.

Finally, it becomes an action/adventure story. This is where the book fails, I think. There is a place in this world for books that examine hard issues. There is a place for adventure stories. They can sometimes even coexist. However, in this novel, the reader gets a bit of whiplash as it moves from one to the other.

That being said, I did find this novel quite interesting, and one of Steve Cole's best. While he doesn't write a theological text, the issues are brought up very well by the supporting characters who inhabit the novel. I particularly enjoyed the "monk" character (who's name I can't remember and the book is at home). What does a clergyman do when he begins to doubt? The conflict is well-established and his final decision, while inevitable, is still gut-wrenching.

The ending, though, is a disappointment. While I was on the edge of my seat wondering exactly how the Doctor was going to fix everything, I don't think it necessarily fit with the rest of the book. Year of Intelligent Tigers is a good example of how to do a "heavy" book that still has good adventure elements. In Vanishing Point, it falls a little flat.

It is still well worth a read, though.

I've been waiting to read The Ancestor Cell for a long time. It has never shown up at the usual place I buy Doctor Who books, so I finally broke down and bought it when I was in the States.

Given everything I had heard about the book, I had really low expectations going in. Given those expectations, I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. It's nowhere near classic Who, and there are a lot of problems with it, but I did end up finding it worth my time.

The thing that did it for me was the characterization of Fitz. I've had the benefit of reading a lot of Post-Earth-Arc books with Fitz in them, so perhaps that coloured my view a little. Anyway, Fitz is extremely well done in this one. For awhile, I really found the constant "womanizing" of Fitz extremely annoying. Every time he looked at Tarra, Romana or any of the other women characters, he was constantly thinking of how they looked, how he would follow those legs anywhere, etc. It got on my nerves.

However, as the book wore on, I started to realize something. This was Fitz's coping mechanism because he's scared spitless throughout the book. The events are too much for one human to handle, and he's taking refuge in what he's always done: going after the ladies. It also sets him up for a horrific revelation later on in the book involving one of those women, which might not have been as powerful if it hadn't been set up by Fitz ogling her earlier in the book.

The other really good character is somebody who's "related" to Fitz. I really ended up caring what happened to him, and his sense of betrayal. I thought he was going to be a stock character, but he turned out not to be. Unfortunately, I can't go into any more detail without spoilers. You'll know who I'm talking about when you read it, though.

The Doctor is also well-characterized, but he's not really anything special. He does Doctorly things, he has to make a momentous decision that can have drastic consequences. He's able to make that decision because of the direction the Eighth Doctor books was going to be changing, so at least it's not a reset-button issue.

The Faction Paradox come across as run of the mill villains in this book, which is a shame after the set-up Lawrence Miles gave them. In this book, they're more of a "Nothing can stop me now!!!!" sort of villain. I swear I could almost see one of them twirling a moustache at times. It really let the book down, I think.

It's too bad Miles couldn't finish the story that he started. I'm not a big fan of his, and it may have been just as bland, but it would have been nice to see what Miles would have done with his creations. Instead, we get a stock story that really doesn't go anywhere and the only reason it goes as far as it does is due to editorial fiat.

Too bad, but it's still an enjoyable read. Just don't go in expecting a masterpiece.

I did not like "Interference" and I did not think it was brilliant. Everybody praises Lawrence Miles for being a ground breaking and innovative writer. For someone who is so innovative, he spends a lot of time mucking about in the past. And to the man who makes a past time of slagging off his fellow Doctor Who writers, he got his just desserts with this books and must face the facts that he is not and never will be as brilliant as either Robert Holmes or Douglas Adams!!

Almost everything is set right in this book. I thought the writers found a great way of tying up all the loose ends rather nicely in this book while causing a few more problems. Although I am very fond of Gallifrey and I happen to be a fan of most of the stories set on the Doctor's home planet, I'm not bothered by it's destruction.

The Ancestor Cell gives us a wrap up of the events that began in the 2-part Interference (actually, the events really began in Alien Bodies). It's another really strange story, in the tradition of the books by Marc Platt and Paul Cornell. A lot of really interesting things happen, and the story centers on Gallifrey, which has changed a bit since we've last seen it, in preparation for the coming war with the Enemy. A newly regenerated Romana is the President, and a huge structure made of bone, known as The Edifice, is hovering in its sky, and it's growing. The events on Gallifrey include the truly nasty practices of some young and naive Faction Paradox initiates. The whole involvement of Faction Paradox in this story makes it very unpleasant to read at times, but anyone who has had some interest in the Interference arc will want to read this book to see how it all comes out. The end result is ultimately unsatisfying, but at least we have closure, and a fairly interesting read along the way.

Hmmmm, I'm afraid to say that this anthology of short Doctor Who stories isn't really worth recommending. Out of the 15 stories presented here, only one was impressive. this being the 1st Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan story 'The Last Days' which captures the toe and characterisation of the period excellently. The rest are just mediocre stories or those that make you think "What the hell was that all about?" Along with stories featuring all 8 doctors, you'll find the return of the Krynoids and the Master. RECOMMENDED for the DIE-HARD fans only.

While I admire the manner in which authors of WHO-fiction push the show's limited concepts and characters, in some cases I just don't see the point. This collection is full of examples of this. Fetuses being sucked from aliens? Bisexed water-apes? I just don't see why these concepts were important enough to be roughly married to DR. WHO. However, as with any collection, there are diamonds to be found. In my opinion, these include the 7th Doctor adventure with Krynoids, the characters are depicted to perfection. The curious "Model Train Set" offers an interesting comparison between the 7th and 8th Doctors. Otherwise, sorry, nothing to be enthusiastic about.