By: Hatless Jack [2006-03-07]

Capsule book summaries

Three Books of Known Space
She packed my bags... last night. Pre-flight. Zero hour. Nine a.m. And I'm gonna be high... as a kite by then... And I think it's gonna be a long long time... till touch down brings me back again to find I'm not the man they think I am back home. Oh no no no, I'm a rocketman. Rocketman, burning out his fuse out here alone...

Freakonomics
Trend regression is like mainlining the purest china white.

The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century
All considered, it is a decent collection, however the editors choice of authors are questionable in the extreme. They continually choose obscure no-name authors over respected hard sci-fi authors like H. Stockton Thompson or authors of magical-realism like Thomas Leo Clancy Jr.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97, 101, 103, 107, 109, 113, 127, 131, 137, 139, 149, 151, 157, 163, 167, 173, 179, 181, 191, 193, 197, 199, 211, 223, 227, 229, 233, 239, 241...

The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft
Don't ask me to summarize the debased contents of that dread tome. Even now, I can feel the muculent words of that madman squirm and insinuate themselves behind the partition of my consciousness. I only proffer this warning: Burn that vile fiend's works. Burn them, and besiege all that is good and virtuous to protect us from those who would make known that which must remained veiled.

The Trial
Meh, it's more humane than Gitmo. Sort of adorable in it's out-and-out quaintness, really.

A Canticle for Leibowitz
Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. d/dx (c) = 0 Adveniat regnum tuum. d/dx [f(x)+g(x)] = f'(x) + g'(x) Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. d/dx [f(x)g(x)] = f(x)g'(x) + g(x)f'(x) Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. d/dx f(g(x)) = f'(g(x))g'(x) Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. d/dx [f(x)/g(x)] = (g(x)f'(x) - f(x)g'(x))/[g(x)g(x)]
Amen.

The Martian Chronicles
Oh I miss the earth so much. I miss my wife. It's lonely out in space. On such a timeless... flight. Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact it's cold as hell. And there's no one there to raise them if you did. And all this science I don't understand. It's just my job. Five days a week. Rocketman. A rocket man, a rocket... man.
A Canticle for Leibowitz [2006-03-07 00:25:32] König Prüße, GfbAEV
I liked the idea of a guy salvaging books from a post-apocalypso liberry. I got a lot of visual imagery while reading that book. Here's a book titled Evolution
coolness [2006-03-07 04:34:37] posthumous
I am liking this. A whole new genre here. I wanna do some!
"Capsule book summaries" is a trademark of HATLESSJACK LLC. [2006-03-07 08:49:11] Hatless Jack
No, I'm just kidding. If other people did them, we would get funny summaries from genres besides pulp sci-fi, trashy fantasy, and random shit I heard about on NPR's "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross. And that would be a good thing.

Seriously, I was that close to doing Lucifer's Hammer, Ringworld, and Flatlander before I realized I pretty much only read sci-fi. And mostly Larry Niven at that. The only reason I didn't do A Clockwork Orange is that I couldn't get the futuristic cockney rhyming slang right. Screw you, Burgess. Screw you and your awe-inspiring mastery of the English language.
Fu Manchu [2006-03-07 09:02:34] König Prüße, GfbAEV
I'm reading Fu Manchu, I think it was written in 1913--Fu Manchu just stole the plans for the new aero-torpedo! What was that website that had short-funny versions of Sheakespear? I disremember.
Book-a-Minute [2006-03-07 09:56:54] Sean
These remind me of Book-a-Minute
A Good Thing! [2006-03-08 05:56:04] König Prüße, GfbAEV
A book a minute is a good thing because it takes me 48-Hours to watch 60-Minutes!
This is going to hurt you more than us [2006-03-08 23:46:34] Wyatt
Konig, on behalf of the readership, let me present you with this coupon for 10% off treatment at the Betty Ford Used Joke Rehabilitation Center.

Annotated HPL [2006-03-10 22:33:27] Annna
The Annotated HPL is pretty weirdly edited - the footnote for "lemure" talks about lemurs, which yes, they are named that because they reminded people of ghosts, but HPL clearly meant the restless spirit kind, not the adorable tree-dwelling kind.

This example might actually be from the Annotated HPL #2, but they're both like that - it's like they only had a couple of days for the annotations and went straight to the OED.
All content copyright original authors; contact them for reprint permission.