The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James R. Hogan (1979) Long before Terminator brought us the terrors of a unified, anti-human computer named Skynet, James R. Hogan addressed the issue with exciting but more favorable results. In the near future, an integrated computer system on the moon follows an order to remove a lunar ridge for a construction crew. Unfortunately, the engineers who requested the removal are on-site when a lunar cannon obliterates it. On Earth, a charismatic scientist and his department have been working […]
Finding Mrs. Right
Downtiming the Night Side by Jack L. Chalker (1985) As a longtime hard science fiction reader, I’ve always liked Jack Chalker books, especially his Well of Souls series. He’s a space opera kind of guy, and a reader can splash easily into one of his books. However, Downtiming is something completely different. Time travel books are by nature convoluted and this is probably one of the most convoluted time travel tales you’re ever going to read. Poor Ronald Moosic is having a really bad first […]
Degrees of Freedom: The Metrozone Series, Book 3
The third book in Morden’s Petrovich trilogy finds our hero standing as a figure of rebellion, symbolically trying to rescue the AI that the Americans tried to destroy in the previous book. His city is starting to rebuild itself, but his personal life has slid into a series of of soap opera plots. Once again, there are a series of international conspiracies that all seem to circle around him – the Americans want to make sure the AI named Michael is done once and for […]
Theories of Flight: The Metrozone Series, Book 2
The first book in this series, Equations of Life, left us with young super genius mathematician Samuil Petrovitch standing in the ruins of what had been London after taking in millions of refugees from an international nuclear disaster. While the city had been virtually destroyed by an AI, Theories of Flight finds Petrovitch in a slightly better place overall. He has invented an anti-gravity generator that makes him world famous; he ends up having married the nun-warrior he had met in the first book, and […]