'...The heroism of the crews of both sides and the difficulty of fighting in Arctic conditions is brought out in this well researched book which contains many personal reiminiscences as well as maps and photos. The battle was an important World War II turning point and it is hard to imagine a clearer description of the events that took place in The Barents Sea 60 years ago. Highly recommended...'

Ships Monthly review, Book of the Month, November 2002.

Michael Carrino's second book of poetry, Under This Combustible Sky, is a richly-peopled collection whose denizens are portrayed in a stark light, like that of certain Hopper paintings, a light no less beautiful for its starkness and hard edges. Reading these poems, one realizes that in lives so full of defeat there are redemptions in solitude, and victories within the sacredness of the moment. 'For me,' Carrino writes in the poem "Cat, Rose, Musical Score", 'self absorbed and anxious, objects explain/ passion, obsession; how you have/ no control unless you agree/ before dancing white on white in silence--/ we are what we arrange.' This could well be a statement of the aesthetic brought to the arrangement of this book: a pure witnessing, at times, of a moment's details which speak volumes of the poem's subject in a language that is both economical and plainly spoken, yet rich in its precision.

I think of the poem "The Woman" in which a photograph of a soldier's Korean mistress is ogled and handed around the family table, a favorite conversation piece:

In the photograph from Korea, my uncle Appears nostalgic despite his youth, Despite the slim immediacy of the woman Whose name no one spoke, if anyone Ever knew her name. After he came home With a Purple Heart, he favored The disenfranchised, claimed The rich were best at rationalization And the calculated risk. He got married Sold Insurance, died at fifty-four.

In the photograph from Korea The woman's candid stare Betrayed no expectation, no answer.

The juxtaposition of the details of the soldier's drab, predictable civilian destiny and the eternalness of the photograph woman's stare and demeanor is to me breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreaking. Carrino writes with a control that is difficult and enviable.

Among my favorites in this collection is the stunning opening poem, "Potter's Field." Though it depicts a cemetery for the homeless, it simultaneously seems to be the dark opening from which all the lives of the other poems spring. Knowledge of our eventual demise fuels the machinery of our lives and desires, and this theme ignites and animates the book.

From "Potter's Field":

On Hart's Island there's a memorial engraved With two crosses, two open books inscribed 'alpha' and 'omega.' Inmates Bury the dead. Light duty on a fair day. There's a lane of willow, a narrow Plot of wildflowers, aster and yarrow. Near the ferry slip a dinghy, Half submerged in the shallow water's muck, Is dappled by the white dung of gulls That circle in the endless sky, glide down And drop clamshells over rock exposed by low tide, Where cormorants sun themselves, wings outstretched.

The cormorants greeting of the readers into the book somehow seems like one of Rilke's angels from the Duino Elegies, those 'almost deadly birds of the soul,' a sight simultaneous awe and disturbance. Indeed, the candid stares of all these poems are full of unsettling beauty, and traffic no easy answers. Michael Carrino's accomplishment here is hard won and startling.

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This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen. I wish they would have given details on the printing process for this book. I've never seen such vibrant, sharp, photographs in a book. They look almost as good as professionally done prints on photographic paper. As for the artistic merit of the photographs themselves, they are wonderful, something to get lost in.

Michael Bishop, Nebula Award-winning author of No Enemy but Time, has just released Blue Kansas Sky, which collects four of his short works - one never before been seen in print - in a single volume. These stories showcase his mastery of different genres, and provide the reader with an sampling from various phases in Bishop's writing career.

"Blue Kansas Sky" is a moving story of a young boy in 1950s small-town America, who struggles between his love for an uncle just released from prison and loyalty to his mother (who blames the man for her husband's death). Bishop incorporated many details from his own childhood to make this tale come alive. There's no science fiction here at all - just an engaging tale, extremely well written. Michael Bishop is adept at incorporating fresh words and unexpected turns of phrase without making the reader scramble for a thesaurus.

In "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thurbana," a well-to-do Afrikaner "ghosts" in and out of reality after a freak auto accident and is forced to watch as the security police interrogate two black laborers - one who plays around with cosmic string theory as a hobby; another who receives pirate radio broadcasts courtesy of a metal plate in his skull. This story is very difficult to get through - not because it is poorly written (indeed, just the opposite); but because it captures in chilling detail the horrors of the old Apartheid system.

"Cri de Coeur" (Cry from the Heart) tells the story of a man who must cope with the responsibilities, and revel in the joys, of raising a son with Down's Syndrome aboard a generational starship seeking to colonize another star system.

"Death and Designation among the Asadi" deals with a human anthropologist living in the wilds of an alien planet, struggling to understand the enigmatic rituals of its lion-maned hominids - without losing his sanity. [After reading this story I asked the author what I should do if I didn't fully understand it - read it again, or embrace the mystery? His answer: "Death and Designation" is my Solaris (a novel by Stanislaw Lem). Real aliens, Lem implies, defy comprehension because they ARE alien. On the other hand, you could read my novel Transfigurations, which incorporates the novella, and which more than one critic badmouthed for explaining rather than embracing the original mystery. They may have done so with some justice.]

Blue Kansas Sky is a wonderful collection of stories that I heartily recommend. It's published by Golden Gryphon Press (a small firm specializing in anthologies).

Blue Kansas Sky is a collection of 4 novellas spanning 3 decades and the full spectrum of Bishop's talent. The title story is a sweet, poignant coming-of-age story set in Bishop's semi-fictional Van Luna, KS: it's all about life and growing up and the random difficulties of doing so. The last line is guaranteed to send you reeling. "Cri di Coeur" and "Death and Designation among the Asadi" are stunning morality tales in the guise of science fiction; as usual, Bishop's characters, no matter where or when they are, portray humanity at its most believable, wanderers who find hope in the most fragile of circumstances. The ringer for me, though, is "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana," a magical-realistic look at the horror of racism, the sin of inaction, all neatly and convincingly tied up with the Theory of Everything. Quite simply: amazing.

This is a collection for fantasists, for realists, for anyone who enjoys one of our best unsung writers at his very best.

Michael Bishop is a Nebula and World Fantasy Awards winning author. Blue Kansas Sky showcases four of his best novellas under one cover. These superbly written stories include Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thuban; Cri De Coeur; Death and Designation Among the Asadi; and the title piece, Blue Kansas Sky. This outstanding anthology is enhanced for the readers with an informative introduction to Michael Bishop and his writing by James Morrow. Blue Kansas Sky is "must reading" for Bishop's legion of science fiction and fantasy fans.

Hale's imagination of the consequences of time travel is the centerpole of this novel. The multiple variations of memory suffered by protagonist Peter Abbot are well illustrated and bring a real sense of his mental turmoil about the actual sequence of events in his life. At times, you get the sense that Hale is trying to write poetry instead of telling a tale as he wanders into bizarre phrases and metaphors, but despite these forays into semi-verse, the book has a quick pace and never drags. Overall, an interesting plot built on the always popular time-travel idea. I highly recommend it.

It's odd that this little gem hasn't received more attention, or that I'm the first one to review it, considering that it's more than a year old.

As the published reviews indicate, this is a novel about a group of psychics who work for an organization that uses their talents to assist law enforcement groups or search and rescue missions. One of the psychics is able to go back in time and affect events: for example, he convinces one of Charles Manson's cult members to leave the cult, which changes the past because that cult member originally killed actress Sharon Tate. Tate now (from our standpoint) ends up in a number of B-movies. Only the psychic remembers the world in which Tate dies. The psychic, who is a bit of a psychotic and paranoid to boot, starts eliminating his fellow psychics by preventing their conceptions. The race is then to stop him before he can wipe them all out.

This is a literary thriller. Hale is not particularly interested in developing the commercial side of the psychics' talents; thus, very little of the novel is devoted to the missions. Rather, he focuses on two aspects of the psychic talent: (1) what would it be like to have such a power?; and (2) what happens if you change the past?

The psychics are not a group of people who are enamored with their talent. For some, it's a curse that they can pick up so much of other people's miseries through a casual touch. None of them, prior to being recruited by the organization, has found the talent to be particularly useful. (One uses her power to select lottery tickets that pay $5, $10, or $20, but that's it.)

The second focus is clearly what Hale found fun to write. As the psycho psychic starts popping back in time and messing with the past, McDonald's becomes spelled MacDonald's, the Watergate scandal never occurred, and stock market tanks, and "some dork" is in the White House. The psycho remembers both versions of the past: the original one, and the one incorporating his changes.

As thrillers go, this is not a fast-moving or especially chilling novel. It is, however, an involving book with a satisfying resolution. As time travel novels go, this is far more satisfying than, say, Crichton's "Timeline," in that much more thought went into the time travel paradoxes here.

[The time travel aspect here was also featured in an episode of "The Outer Limits," where a scientist who discovered the power to time travel took it upon herself to kill murderers before they committed their murders.]

This thriller is about a group of psychics assembled together on St. Martin in the Caribbean by a venture backed company for the purpose of enhancing and then exploring the pyschics' abilities for remote viewing of past and present events - e.g. JFK's assassination. The most talented psychic, Simon Hayward, discovers early on that not only can he do remote viewing but that he can materialize in the past and alter history -his first act delivers Charles Manson into historical obscurity. Hiding this materialization ability from his employers, the increasingly paranoiac Hayward decides to "delete" his fellow psychics through either historical murder or simply "coitus interruptus."

Hale has done a great job playing with how the universe resolves the paradox of reconciling "known" and "new" pasts as Hayward's interferences combine together to have an exponentially increasing effect on history. If you're a time travel or Star Trek fan, I'm almost certain that you'll enjoy this one - and the satisfying ending which rings true - no fake ruses here that leave you feeling cheated at the end.

I found this book very interesting and loaded with information - but I couldn't take it all in one sitting, and I had to suspend my disbelief to take it all in.
If you have an interest in ancient pre-Celt and early Celt history, energy fields of the Earth, and some eye-opening theories by someone who has personally researched a field deeply (and literally, in the fields)- then this is for you.
If you are into debunking, this will also give you grist for the mill, however.
I only recommend this book for those with an openness to alternate views of physics/metaphysics.

This Book by Michael Poynder is very deep and obviously the product of many years of study and research. In parts, it is very difficult to take in all the information given and needs to be read thoughtfully and thoroughly to get the best from it.

Once digested, Michael Poynder gives us a new way to look at the world we live in and shows us how our ancestors were able to work with the natural forces coursing through the planet.

The geometry and graphics are fascinating and this book should be read by all who search for the inner meaning of life in the world around us and the artefacts left for us by ancient man.

After 50 years of wondering about stone circles and earth energies, I have finally found answers in this book.
Liked it enough to buy 7 copies for distribution to friends who also loved it and talked about it for years.

Covers the stars and the planets, and includes a detailed map of the moon. Includes a few quizzes even (i.e. name the constellations shown here). The book is small (7 X 4 1/2), which could be a drawback for some - too small for more than one child to see at a time, yet a plus for others who want to carry it in a pocket. The pages open well so that not too much info is hidden in the crack.

Collaboratively Nigel Henbest and Stuart Atkinson, The Night Sky is a brief yet vert nicely illustrated, full-color beginner's guide to stars and other fascinating things that can be viewed by children in the night sky, including comets, planets, and meteors. One of the titles in the outstanding "Usborne Spotter's Guides" series, The Night Sky is strongly recommended as a highly enjoyable and easy-to-understand primer for any beginning stargazer.

In reality, this volume is a collection of three separate but related Hamilton novels from the late twenties-early thirties: The Midnight Bell, The Siege of Pleasure, and The Plains of Cement.

The first relates the story of a barman's obsession with a scheming prostitute, the second is a tale of a "nice girl"'s downfall through drink, and the final novel tells of a plain-looking barmaid's emotional turmoil when pursued by a much older man.

These themes, and the dialogue used by the characters, are inevitably dated. However, Hamilton's wonderfully compassionate writing make simple themes appear to be universal and timeless.

Indeed, loneliness, unrequited love, fear of rejection, unfulfilled dreams etc are components of the universal human experience. However, in Hamilton's hands, these components never result in full-blown despair. The characters are so resilient that there is always, even after the most appalling experience, a note of optimism.

Few British writers have written so eloquently about the simple dreams, modest personal ambitions and cultural limitations of ordinary people in what was then a rigid class society.

In particular, his insight into working class "pub culture" (in these novels and later works such as "Hangover Square" and "Slaves of Solitude") is extraordinary. Its a pity his "research" led to such heavy alcohol dependence, with its resultant impact upon his literary achievement!.

The three novels in "20,000 streets" are a great introduction to Hamilton, and along with his later more sophisticated work, make a case for a much belated re-appraisal of his place in 20th century British literature.

Mike Resnick assembled this collection of SF stories about Africa, or a possible Africa, or... you get the idea. Anyway, being a huge Resnick fan and interested in Africa to boot, I picked this up without knowing anything about it, a real rarity for me. I was not disappointed.
I won't give the plots of all the stories, but here are a few tantalizing themes set forth by the authors. Political: world hunger is solved - but the solution carries its own problem, in a creepy story called "Termites." Personal: two very different worlds collide briefly on a train, in "A Transect," by Kim Stanley Robinson. Epic: aliens come and steal Egypt, in "Of Space-time and the River"! Magical: a foolish tourist gets a taste of African shamanism in "Still Life With Scorpion." Poignant: In "The Quiet," George Guthridge tells of an African tribe placed in a preservation for conservation on the moon; sad and well-written. The unclassifiable: Judith Dubois' "Etoundi's Monkey" is just bizarre and very impressive. And many others...
The rating is an 8 because of some submissions that aren't great; none is an actual klunker, but a few are just okay. My main problems with these lesser stories is just that they could have been about any civilization, and the focus is supposed to be Africa. My only other complaint is that one of Resnick's two stories (both are unique and splendid as always) is a real rouser - Jesus meets the African gods! - but is a scant three pages!
This is a fine collection of science fiction with an interesting angle. Few of the authors are really big names, but don't let that sway you. Sometimes the best stories are just waiting to be discovered

One of the other reviewers said that this book could be seen as the atheist's counterpart to CS Lewis' "Chronicles Of Narnia" as a set of allegories which describe the framework of atheistic philisophy (just as Lewis does the same for Christianity). Well, perhaps.....but....I must forewarn people the Martin is no where near the calibre of writer of Lewis. In fact, none of these short stories actually have a "plot", per se. While Lewis' books are imaginative stories, Martin's book has characters chatting about various philosophical issues & the atheist interlocutor always wins (surprise, surprise!). While the stories do a decent job of getting his point across, they are not much for suspense or drama.

But, it is probably unfair to compare Martin with Lewis. The book is basically a re-telling of the major points of his magnum opus ("Atheism: A Philosophical Justification") in a more "entertaining" way. As far as that goes, Martin does a pretty credible job.

The book is filled with (mostly ad-homineum) attacks against theism. One of the more notable cases is on page 229 where Martin infers that theists are unsophisticated, unintelligent individuals who lack education. That is not true, any more than it would be true to say that atheists have these unattractive qualities. In fact, the trend now is that religion is making a comeback - even in (whoa!) the ivory towers of academia. There are a growing number of people with impeccable academic credentials who are writing critiques of Darwinism as well as philosphical "justifications" for theism. Now, could these people be wrong? Of course. But that's not the point. If they are wrong, it is not due to the fact that they lack any adequate "training." Trying to write off one's adversary as just a bunch of backwoods, country bumpkin rednecks does not hold water. A logician the stature of Martin should know better.

The book also contains what I found a rather horrifying chapter called "The Free Will Improvement Project." In it, characters have the idea of using artificial surgical implants to "keep tabs" on what people are thinking & thereby prevent crimes & pernicious activities from happening. I am surprised that none of the other reviewers found this thought rather terrifying; to me it sounds like a cross between George Orwell's "1984" and the movie "One Flew Over A Cuckoo's Nest." As Nietzsche once said, "Better to will the void than void the will." I would agree.

Overall, this was a good effort & is worth reading by people on both sides of the fence.

I have to say I found this book easier to understand than Mr.Martin's ATHEISM: A PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION. The book a group of short stories, most interelated, that give a more simplictic account of atheism as understood by it's characters. I especially like the chapter MARY AND THE CREATORS. In it he gives a response to the watch maker analogy that I think was worth the price of the used edition I bought. For anyone just starting out in the study of atheism I highly recommend this book.But be warned. The previous book I mentioned is steeped in philosophical language. I had to buy a book on symbolic logic just to understand some of the language.

Michael Martin's collection of short stories is unique, there can be no doubt. I cannot name another popular fictional book that is inspired by the same subject matter - atheism. There are probably other books that do have an atheistic theme, but Martin attempts to make a case for non belief through entertaining short stories that ranged from absolutely touching to incredibly clever. Unfortunately, one may be forced to think a great deal while reading, and a dogmatic orientation will render this book impossible to read. That's their problem. For those who do not mind a challenge, in a number of ways, try this rational alternative to CS Lewis. THIS will make sense.