Creative Review has a review of Tony Davidson’s new book, One-Track Mind, a book of objects that are reminiscent of breasts.

Feminists may initially shake their heads wearily at the premise for Tony Davidson’s new book One-Track Mind, which bears the subtitle “a revealing insight into the obsessed minds of men”, but should read on as it’s actually surprisingly amusing. The book contains photographs, taken all over the world, of objects that are reminiscent of breasts.

…

Davidson is keen that the book will appeal to everyone. “I hate all these lad’s magazines,” he says, “I really want it to be something that both men and women pick up.” He also wants us to join in on the project, and is working on a website where users can upload their own images. And if all this wasn’t enough to get involved, all proceeds from the book’s sales will go to charity, for breast cancer and prostate cancer research.

A copy of the book can be purchased here. Also see the Save The Ta-ta’s website.

Globalhead is a collection of 13 “dazzling” stories. IMHO, maybe three of them are really good, and the rest I didn’t care for much.

After wading through the first seven stories, ‘The Moral Bullet’ is where the book starts picking up. Sniffy, the main character, appears as a 12 year old child, but in reality is an older person who invented ‘FREE’, the Free Radical Endocrine Enhancer, which keeps people young. As a result of FREE, society in general has collapsed and has reverted to small territorial holdings, or fiefdoms. The Europeans, who have recovered faster from the societal effects of FREE, are looking for Sniffy, to put him to work in their labs on a new drug. Once found, Sniffy has his own solution. It’s a reasonably fast paced story with an amusing end.

‘We See Things Differently’ is a story of an Islamic journalist reporting on the life of Americas biggest rock star, Tom Boston. The story leads you to believe that there is such a thing as a moderate Islamic, up until the end. What happens is no major surprise, but it’s still an enjoyable read.

‘Hollywood Kremlin’ and ‘Are You For 86′ feature a character named Leggy Starlitz. He seems like a familiar type of character, particularly if you’ve ever read any Tim Dorsey (good stuff!). Serge is described as [...] obsessive, psychopathic, and frequently homicidal, but Storms serves as the anti-hero in Dorsey’s works due to his strong sense of moral absolutism and justice. This seems to describe Starlitz fairly well. He’s an enjoyable character, and I like these types of stories.

The last story, ‘Dori Bangs’, seems sort of Hunter S. Thompson-esque, although I’ve never actually read any HST, only about him. It makes amusing filler to get thirteen stories in, but it’s nothing amazing. Unfortunately, it’s still one of the better ones in the book.

Overall, Globalhead shows the characters Sterling is capable of creating, but is nowhere near as good as Heavy Weather or Islands In The Net, or the very enjoyable story, The Bicycle Repairman. If you’re looking for stories that really showcase his talent as a writer, I’d skip this one and go with A Good Old-fashioned Future.

Other people seem to have a more favored opinion of Sterling, with his Wikipedia page being a good example.

Publisher: Bantam, Year: 1992, ISBN: 0-553-56281-9, Price: $5.99

Alpha Centauri has to be one of the worst books I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. Of all the hundreds of books I’ve read, this has to rank in the bottom 10, if not the bottom 5. I can’t remember reading a book this bad in the last 10 years. The suckitude this book exhibits simply cannot be overstated.

From the back cover:

The last salvation of humanity is traveling with the crew of the starship Mother Night, on a colonizing mission to Alpha Centauri.

But a terrorist plague has infiltrated the ship, planting the seeds of failure and extinction in every man and woman aboard.

Initially, there are 10 crew members and supposedly 10,000 people in cold storage. The crew members are woken as the approach Alpha Centauri, although one has died due to equipment failure. One of the remaining 9, Mies, carries an engineered autoviroids in his testicles. Any female he has sex with will become sterile, with no evidence as to why. Mies’ mission is to have sex with anything that has a pulse.

And from that point, you have most of the book. Some of the characters are both male and female, thanks to surgery and hormone treatments. Meis will screw any of them. Oh, and apparently he has some sort of personality overlay that drives this, and provided the cover he needed to get assigned to the mission. Complete crap.

The only redeeming technology in this entire book is the idea that cosmic string fragments exist everywhere, and with certain technology, the “hyperpipes” can be examined, and resulting data close to the near end can be constructed to form images of events the hyperpipes have “seen”. Although the hyperpipes do carry information, they can’t be used for instellar transport. Or not at least until the crew members discover the amazing alien technology that lets them do just that.

The characters are not engaging, the unbelievability level is off the charts, and Mies trying to screw everything and his internal conflict surrounding it gets monotonous very quickly. Personally, I think the authors have some serious mental issues, and should seek professional help. And perhaps consider attending several years worth of classes in writing science fiction.

Kevin J. Anderson said:

The fiction of William Barton and Michael Capobianco is always remarkable, a compelling and masterful blend of diamond-hard sf and humanistic character studies… which is what science fiction is all about.”

I’ve liked KJA’s books. But personally I think he received a big check to dash off a complementary line, and never picked the book up. I can’t imagine anyone actually liking this book. You can be sure I won’t waste the cover price on anything else they’ve written.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this a solid -74.

Publisher: Avalon, Year: 1997, ISBN: 0-380-78205-7, Price: $6.99

I’ve enjoyed almost all the JPH books I’ve read, and Voyage From Yesteryear falls solidly in there. Written in 1982, it still holds up well in 2008. Even the best authors didn’t foresee where our technology was going: people “flipping switches” to get reports. Nor have any of them foreseen the fall of the Soviet Union, or Americans molasses-like progress in exploiting the frontiers of space.

Nonetheless, the characters are well developed and consistent, the plot viable, and the pacing good. It’s an entertaining read, and I can recommend this book to anyone that enjoys hard science fiction.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rate this an 8.5 or 9.

Publisher: Del Rey, Year: 1982, ISBN: 0-345-34246-1, Price: $4.99