K. Van Kramer
Website of Science Fiction Author,
K. Van Kramer
The Phobos Series
K. Van Kramer
Website of Science Fiction Author,
K. Van Kramer
The Phobos Series
K. Van Kramer
Website of Science Fiction Author,
K. Van Kramer
The Phobos Series
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Books I've Read 2023/24:
2001
The story begins with Moon-Watcher, the leader of a tribe of early ape-man, who struggles for survival during the brutal Pleistocene ice age. After an alien monolith appears, it seems to advance the way he thinks, leading him to develop crude weapons. When the same monolith is discovered in the future, we seem fated to find the answers behind the eerie structure. Skipping to a team of astronauts who travel aboard a ship to further investigate, things take an unexpected turn when the ship’s A.I. called HAL-9000, gets very confused about keeping secrets.
Metropolis
With a dense and mysterious narrative, a future city is torn between an elite upper class, and a working-class, who toil as slaves underground. Freder, the son of the powerful Metropolis leader encounters a working-class prophet named Maria, and falls in love with her. Divulging old motivations and riddles behind the characters, Freder’s father visits a bitter adversary named Rotwang, who's built a robot replica of a woman they once both loved, named Hel. The robot becomes both ethereal and powerful, and the path to destruction, as Freder and Maria join forces and try to free the working class.
I, Robot
By Isaac Asimov
When robotics experts Powell and Donovan build an advanced robot called QT-1 or “Cutie” for short, Cutie seems to doubt everything he’s told, including the fact that humans built him. When Powell asks Cutie why he doesn’t believe it, Cutie claims it’s intuition. When Powell tries to explain to Cutie about the stars, planets, and space, Cutie disagrees with him and decides to “reason” out things on his own. This robot is so far advanced, it has the ability to form strange opinions and ideas, that don’t necessarily equate to logic—leading to questions about the ultimate intelligence.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
​World War Terminus has devastated Earth, leaving the populace to either cope with the nuclear fall-out, or escape to off-world colonies. In an ironic twist of fate, Deckard, a bounty hunter, is forced to remain behind, in order to destroy rogue androids who have escaped to earth—or replicants, as they’re sometimes called. Deckard, goes about his business like an unflappable cop on duty, until he winds up falling in love with an android named Rachel, and begins to understand that there is no true distinction between the Nexus-6 Androids or human beings. You sometimes wonder if Deckard may be an android himself, but maybe that’s part of the point.
The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1
Ruthie and Joe, own a robot whom they call the “grey-green” thing, the hound, the Rover, or sometimes just “bitch”. In order to increase their chances for a successful hunt, Joe programs the robot to track a bear, and it does so with ease. Eventually Joe commands the “grey-green thing” to actually kill it, and the robot carries out its deadly mission. At the end you shudder at the thought of the careless use of the machine. Pelt is another of her genius short stories.
The Windup Girl
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A chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world among famine and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe. Anderson Lake is AgriGen’s Calorie Man, sent to work undercover as a factory manager in Thailand in search of crops thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories and save the planet. Emiko is the Windup Girl, an android, living among the human population —a strange and beautiful creature developed by the Japanese to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman.
A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, 1)
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This book is fascinating but extremely dense and detailed so I'm not quite finished. Written in the first person, Ambassador Mahit Dzmare comes from a planet where consciousness can be preserved after death. A past ambassador's mind has been melded into hers, so she exists as two minds simultaneously. In the story Mahit must discover who is behind the murder of her predessesssor, rescue herself, all while navigating an alien culture.
Books I've Read 2021/22:
Whispering Leaves in Grosvenor Square 1936 (Fiction)
by Yuki Yoshida (Author), Ian Nish (Author)
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One of the pleasures of writing historical fiction is discovering wonderful people that wrote detailed memoirs. This book was written by Yuki Yoshida, who was the wife of Shigeru Yoshida, the then Japanese Ambassador in London, and her diplomatic life. It's also a first hand account about life in 1930's London. Of particular interest to me was her train ride on the Flying Scotsman to visit friends in Scotland.
Crocodile on the Sandbank
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Amelia Peabody, an independent woman of the Victorian age, embarks on her debut Egyptian adventure armed with cool self-confidence, a journal to record her thoughts, and, of course, a sturdy umbrella. On her way to Cairo, Amelia rescues young Evelyn Barton-Forbes, who has been abandoned by her scoundrel lover. Together the two women sail up the Nile to an archeological site run by the Emerson brothers, where romance blooms, treasures are found, and a mummy appears.
4:50 From Paddington
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Elspeth McGillicuddy is not given to hallucinations. Until she witnesses a murder at Paddington Station. But did she? No victim, no suspect, no other witnesses. In fact no one believes it really happened at all. Except her friend Miss Jane Marple, and she's returning to the scene of the crime to discover just exactly what Mrs. McGillicuddy saw.
A Thousand Miles up the Nile: Fully Illustrated Second Edition (Fiction)
by Ameila B. Edwards
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In 1873, Amelia B. Edwards, a Victorian gentlewoman, spent the winter visiting the then largely unspoiled splendors of ancient Egypt. An accurate and sympathetic observer, she brings nineteenth-century Egypt to life. A Thousand Miles up the Nile was an instant hit in 1876, and is received with equal enthusiasm by modern readers. Amelia B. Edwards was an author and co-founder of the Egypt Exploration Fund.
About The Author
K. Van Kramer is a writer who draws. She's best known for the Phobos Series and other fiction stories. Read more...
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