Ken Newquist's Blog at Lafayette College
Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice plays with the concepts of gender and identity with the framework of a conventional space opera. The main character is an “ancillary” — essentially a human being who’s consciousness has been overridden an artificial intelligence. That intelligence once controlled an entire starship and dozens of such ancillaries, and over the course … Read more
Two weeks ago I came back from HighEdWeb 2014 intent on changing my schedule. Inspired by David Cameron’s (Ithaca College) “Human at Work or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Get Better at My Job” presentation, I decided to re-organize my schedule to more aggressively defend my project time. I’ve been allocating project time in … Read more
Mistborn is the first book in Brandon Sanderson’s Final Empire series. The setup is simple enough: imagine if the hero destined to save the world from a terrible evil did so … and then decided to use his new-found power to establish a tyrannical empire. The ascended “Lord Ruler” is considered a living god, and … Read more
A Memory of Light is the final book in Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time series, a series so huge that Jordan died before he could finish it. Fortunately, he took voluminous notes and passed those on to his chosen successor, Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson’s done a fantastic job finishing up the series, and I’m looking forward to this … Read more
Century Rain is a space opera/noir/alternative history mash-up that echos Reynolds earlier work in its combination of post-Singularity speculation and end of the world/galaxy/university machinations. The book opens a few hundred years in the future. Earth has been rendered lifeless by a nanotechnology plague. Humanity survives in two factions: the Threshers, who are regular humans … Read more
When it comes to web design I find a lot of people like to start with the sexy part — the graphic design — and then either ignore the site’s underlying structure, create it as they go along or (more rarely) back into it after they realize the design’s turned into a mess because they … Read more
Book 2 of the Twilight vampire/romance series, in which the vampire Edward his leave of our protagonist Bella, leaving her distraught in Oregon. And yes, this is a huge change from reading The Cole Protocol. I’m reading the novel as part of a book exchange with my wife – I’m reading New Moon, she’s reading … Read more
I keep meaning to read the Halo universe books, particularly the original trilogy of books recounting the events of the first video game. It’s a compelling universe that’s only just barely been touched by the video games, and I’d love to delve deeper. When Amazon.com and Macmillan went to war over ebooks, and all of the … Read more
One thing I make a point of doing every summer is to put together a reading list. I may not get through all the books on the list, but I do try, and if nothing else, it gives me a non-work, non-family, non-computer related goal to strive for. Last summer, I decided to promote my … Read more