David Clennon and Stephanie Zimbalist head a first-rate cast in this excellent, thought-provoking play produced by L.A. Theatre Works. It's a story, and performance, I won't soon forget!

"Infection" by John Gregory Betancourt

The Enterprise is called to Archaria III, a planet jointly colonized by humans and Peladians. A new disease has cropped up and is only treatable (the double helix), in a temporary fashion. The Enterprise supposed to deliver the drug, quarantine the planet and see what help they might render. What follows is an excellent story, primarily using Dr. Crusher in her quest to find the cure. The author set everything up very well and wrapped up his portion beautifully.

"Vectors" by Dean Wesley Smith & Kristin Kathryn Rusch

Finally we have a story using Dr. Pulaski, who was unceremoniously dumped from the show. Not that she was anywhere near a replacement for Dr. Crusher. It is particularly interesting to see "Terok Nor" during the occupation and have the interaction with Gul Dukat. I felt the character development was very good and the Ferengi portions were written very well. The only true complaint is that the author's seemed to have done a poor job of closing out Kira's story.

"Red Sector" by Diane Carey

Red Sector is a fantastic story. It's very refreshing having a book that concentrates almost primarily on a non main character in John Eric Stiles. The character is extremely well thought out and written. The author nailed Spock and a hundred and thirty something Dr. McCoy perfectly. I'm dying to find out who the voice is at this point. Hopefully the next three in the Double Helix series will be as good as this one and the other two were.

"Quarantine" by John Vornholt

John Vornholt kicks out another fantastic story. Quarantine gives us a good idea of how "Tom Riker" ends up joining the Maquis. As is par for the course with John Vornholt, he goes into great detail describing a beautiful planet and all of its surroundings. Not a lot of Trek authors do that. I thought Torres seemed a little soft, considering her personality, but that can be explained away.

"Double or Nothing" By Peter David

This is another great installment to the New Frontier and the Double Helix series. Not having read the last of the Double Helix books yet, it seems that this one pretty much finishes the Double Helix storyline???? A favorite quote from the book, Riker - "I've got to get off this ship." Peter David did an excellent job of integrating Picard and Riker into the New Frontier. It's really interesting and well done how he brought Riker and Shelby together again. That portion was done very well and even better than I'd expected in another meeting of those two.

"The First Virtue" by Michael Jan Friedman & Christie Golden

The First Virtue is an excellent conclusion. It pretty much wraps up the reasoning to everything we learned in "Double or Nothing." In the First Virtue, we learn why Gerrid Thul wanted to create the Double Helix virus and why he wanted so much revenge for the loss of his only child. Both authors did a great job with their portions. The plot is well thought out, especially the portions of the book with Commander Jack Crusher and Lieutenant Tuvok. I felt that they captured Tuvok's personality quite well and gave a precursor to some of the decisions and general personality we saw on screen in Voyager.

Overall, I would recommend this Omnibus to any fan of good Star Trek fiction.

I was given this classic about 15 years ago. It was the basis of everything I ever knew about programming in Atari BASIC. Now I am learning Visual Basic and C++. All the basic concept I laened from Dr. C. Wacko still aply. It's unfortunate that due to the fact Atari BASIC and Atari computers have become obsolete, so has this hilarious and educatonal book. It's better than the "complete idiot's guide's" or "...for dummies" books could ever hope to be. Wouldn't it be great if David Heller wrote new books for current programming languages?

Even though my father wrote this book, I have to write and say that after President-elect Bush' appointments of Cheney and Rumsfeld to head the Defense Dept. and the Pentagon, we need this book now more than ever! It will rile the military establishment whilst they reconsider "Star Wars" this spring. The book is a brilliant twofer about the movie "Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" by Stanley Kubrik and the Cold War. It neatly slices up the critics of the movie at the time of its release for missing the point completely, and savages the U.S. military strategists for spending our treasure for decades trying to find a way to war without the bomb. It's a funny book and a tight paradoxical argument. Like the movie, it shows how a nuclear accident is impossible as is nuclear warfare, and how paradoxically the bomb could mean the end of the military as we know it. It has 18 caricatures by David Levine.

I'm selling my copy, and the "notes" field didn't have room for the following information:

This book is from 1992, so the disks included are 5 1/2" floppies. They probably won't work any longer. I'm willing to bet you could get 3 1/2" floppies by calling the publisher's toll-free number, but I don't know that for sure.

This unique format for a biography helps young people remember all about Ike's life, by intrducing each chapter with one of the many hats he wore. The illustations, in watercolor, line drawings, and historic photos, add tremendously to the story. The history is presented in an accurate and easily read style and covers Eisenhower's childhood, West Point years, WWII, Columbia Univ., the Presidency, and his retirement years. Perfect for ages 12 to adult.

This is a well written and engaging look into the importance of the Mandan and Hidatsa Indian villages as a pivotal point in trade systems during the late 1700's through early 1800's. Being located along the Missouri River in present day North Dakota, the Mandan/Hidatsa Indians traded horses, robes and furs to Canadian Fur Companies in return for guns and ammunition. They would then trade these goods for other commodities from various Northern Plains Indian Tribes, who previously may have traded with other tribes or the Spaniards further south. In part one, the authors give a lengthy but excellent and relevant chronological introduction as to the fur trade history of this geographical area. Part two includes five journals (or excerpts) of some of these Northwest Fur Company traders' first hand accounts depicting life as it was: John Macdonell's descriptions of the Indians, geography and trade in the 1790's; David Thompson's narrative describing his harrowing 1797 journey from Fort Assiniboine to the Mandan villages in the dead of winter; Larocque's two narratives, the "Missouri (1804)" and "Yellowstone (1805)" Journals, the latter of which, in the company with Crow Indians, he may possibly have been the first white man to descend the Yellowstone River, pre-dating William Clark by more than a year. The final narrative is of Charles McKenzie's four journeys to the Mandan villages (1804-1806), the first two in company with Larocque's expeditions. This is a fascinating read for fur trade enthusiasts and/or those whose interests are in early western exploration.

The first ElfQuest story to be set in the far future, "Jink", a 12-issue series first published between 1994 and 1996, follows the adventures of the title character, an exotic woman of strange powers and questionable parentage, and her lover, Ensign Kullyn Kenn. The first half of the series, covered in this book, describes the couple's effort to stave off a catastrophic space-war between the humans of their world and a mysterious, warlike race called the Neverending. (The second half of the series will be published as the book "Mindcoil" in September.)

First, let it be known that Jink is the most charismatic new ElfQuest character in many years. She is a study in opposites - godlike foresight and amusing improvidence; hard street wisdom and a soft heart; sophistication and innocence - that make her seem at once both most adult and most childlike. The contrasts between she and Kullyn Kenn - hapless and too laid-back by half, yet uncommonly brave and clearheaded - is continually fascinating.

As vividly as the protagonists are presented, the real masterstroke is the portrayal of the "enemies", the Neverending aliens. Wendy Pini, who conceived and co-wrote the story, hints in the Afterword that the culture of the aliens is heavily based on that of the Japanese Empire of the 1930s, a regime then openly committed to world domination. Ingeniously, she presents the aliens as a symbol of the perils of nationalism, and especially of the futility of conquest as a way of life; the plot turns on Jink's revelation to the Neverending warriors that their campaign of space-conquest has not empowered their people, but has instead virtually destroyed it. This leads to a climax as sobering as the early chapters are lighthearted.

Married to this ingenious story is high-quality artwork; though the original color illustrations are presented here in black-and-white, the clarity and precision of the line-art come through. In all, _Jink_, a tale far more than skin deep, points to a fascinating new direction for the ElfQuest saga.

Although there are probably as many theodicies as there are people in the world, Stephen Davis does a fine job selecting scholars who represent various, major viewpoints on the classic problem of evil to elucidate their positions. John Roth represents a theodicy of protest whereby it is insinuated that God may not be totally good. God, says Roth, has a dark side and so must be persuaded by human protest and prayer to do what is right. Hick, of course, represents the position of an Irenean theodicy where God is portrayed as simply unable to stop all evil since evil is born our of free will and God cannot contradict the free will He gave us (lest it cease being free will). More than that, however, God has created a world in which trouble and evil exist in order that, by virtue of our free will, we might grow in character through the hardship. God, says Hick, is in the business of soul-making and has an overall plan for us as His creation to grow into spiritual maturity through the joys and sufferings of this life. Davis takes the classic Christian perspective position that evil is the result of human sin, that Jesus died to redeem us of that sin. We are responsible for the evil in the world, but God has created a way to redeem the world by taking sin on Himself in the form of Jesus Christ. By recieving Christ into our lives, not only are we promised a future in eternity without evil, but we are able to grow through the sufferings of life instead of shun them as worthless. He argues that there is no logical contradiction between the Biblical God (omnipotent and omnibenevolent) and the existence of evil in the world. Griffin represents the process theology position that God is evolving with the creation and so is learning as He goes. Matter, says Griffin, is eternal like God and has its own kind of "free will." Complexity in the arrangement of matter, furthermore, is tied to the amount of free will something has. Thus a rock can do less evil and yet God is less able to use it for good, but something as complex (and thus having more free will) as a human is capable of doing much more evil by resisting God and much more good by submitting to God. Finally, Sontag takes a highly skeptical position about God's goodness. God is unpredictable and violent at times and all we can do is hope for the best. We must acknowledge God's existence and power, but Sontag's god is semi-demonic in nature which explains evil in the world and why he doesn't stop it.

Of course, this small review doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the indepth and well written arguments of each of these scholars. The book is complex enough for college and graduate classes but written with the lay-person in mind as well (the writers are careful to define their terms in most cases). Also, I really enjoyed the fact that each contributor has the opportunity to critique the other's theodicies and then the chance to defend against the other's critiques. This point/counterpoint approach was excellent and informative.

My only critique of this book is the subtitle ("Live Options in Theodicy"). While the five views represented in this book are indeed reflective of five major worldviews of the problem of evil, they are not the only *live* options. To suggest so implies that any theodicy significantly different than those represented in the book is not a valid option. But because the problem of evil is more of a mystery and less of a logical problem to be solved with a fancy syllogism, it can be approached in a number of ways -- not just five.