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Archive of posts filed under the books category.

WIJFR: The Girl Who Played with Fire

Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, the two reporters responsible for the article are murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. [...]

WIJFR: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch – and there’s always a catch – is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a [...]

WIJFR: FreedomTM

The computer program Daemon has taken over the Internet, and millions have joined its virtual world. Now the effect is spilling into the real world as Daemon assumes control of financial institutions, and the program’s real-life converts flock to small towns to re-create a sustainable lifestyle amid the agribusiness monoculture of the Midwest. During my [...]

WIJFR: Flashforward

Nobel-hungry physicists conducting an unimaginably high-energy experiment accidentally induce a global consciousness shift: in an instant, everyone on Earth is “flashed forward” 21 years, experiencing several minutes of the future. But while everyone is, literally, out of their minds, their bodies drop unconscious; when the world reawakens, car wrecks, botched surgeries, falls, and other mishaps [...]

WIJFR: The Foundation Trilogy

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future—to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds [...]

WIJFR: Watership Down

Set in England’s Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of rabbits on their flight from the intrusion of men and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of brothers, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing [...]

WIJFR: The Ringworld Throne

The human, Louis Wu; the puppeteer known as the Hindmost; Acolyte, son of the Kzin called Chmeee . . . legendary beings brought together once again in the defense of the Ringworld. Something is going on with the Protectors. Incoming spacecraft are being destroyed before they can reach the Ringworld. Vampires are massing. And the [...]

WIJFR: Makers

Covering the transformation of Kodacell (formerly Kodak and Duracell) into a network of tiny teams, journalist Suzanne Church goes to Florida and the inventors behind it all, Lester and Perry, who have more ideas than they know what to do with. The New Work takes off, with a mini-startup in every abandoned strip mall in [...]

WIJFR: Daemon

Gaming genius Matthew Sobol, the 34-year-old head of CyberStorm Entertainment, has just died of brain cancer, but death doesn’t stop him from initiating an all-out Internet war against humanity. When the authorities investigate Sobol’s mansion in Thousand Oaks, Calif., they find themselves under attack from his empty house, aided by an unmanned Hummer that tears [...]

WIJFR: The Wizardry Consulted

After rescuing the world from the creatures of darkness and chaos by applying a few computer logistics, Programmer and Systems Analyst Extraordinaire Wiz Zumwalt finds himself in another fix when he is kidnapped by dragons. “The Wizardry Consulted” by Rick Cook is my latest iPhone/Stanza read. Resuming the story three years after “The Wizardry Cursed,” [...]