A small piece

Anushka Ravishankar is a writer of children's books - and pretty well known too, especially as a pioneer of good nonsense verse in English with an Indian touch, for children. I happened to read her science fiction short story 'Travelling Light' online at http://www.writeclique.net/work.php?ID=134. Quite good - was wondering if there's any collection which features only her science fiction stuff, apart from the recent 7 Science Fiction stories.

This and that

My favourite Roger Zelazny (sf, not fantasy) work remains Lord Of Light - but there was this gem of a story I read recently. 'My Lady of the Diodes' is one of the pieces in his collection 'Unicorn Variations'. It's a reworking of an old theme, of human AI relationships, but I find the title itself fascinating. Fantasy predominates in this book, with a couple of stories displaying a touch of Ray Bradbury, but most of them interesting experiments in story-structure-building, as Zelazny himself acknowledges. The other book am halfway through right now is Mindstar Rising - Peter F Hamilton. Not as hardcore technology driven as Neal Asher, and not so fast paced either.

X Men 3 is a ridiculous movie.
And they should never have made W/G:The Curse of the Were-Rabbit - should have stuck to that minimal-dialog-effect we all know and love in all Gromit episodes. Why do most movies made from TV Series/limited series suck?

Replay

First suggested by Prashant, I managed to pick up and finish Ken Grimwood's Replay - which is another retake on the idea of intelligent unknown entities controlling our lives on earth to the extent that they actually rewind some lives and watch them again like a taped TV show. The focus in this book is more on the characters and events rather than the unknown force, which is left unnamed.

On a different note, from time to time I get this urge to read these books which are not pure SF, but are too tantalizingly close for me to not buy them. They usually lie on the lowest rack in book sales, are hardcover, the jacket dusty and sometimes tattered, and not thicker than 3 centimeters. They are usually written by sf, horror or occult authors. Surprisingly, I end up enjoying most of them.

Am rereading the Dirk Gently books, for the third time.

Barlowe's guide to ETs

Bought Barlowe's guide to extraterrestrials. The most significant omission I could think of at first glance was Niven's Moties.

A nice, long, detailed review of Contact.