"Don't Swallow You Gum: Myths, half-truths, and out right lies about your body and health" by Dr. Aaron E. Carroll and Dr. Rachel C. Vreeman

Publishers: St. Martin’s Griffin

Copyright: 2009

ISBN: 9780312533878

This is the second book of Dr. Carroll's I've reviewed. The first "Bad Food Bible: How and Why to Eat Sinfully" was very good as well.

In this book he is joined by Dr. Rachel Vreeman, and it is a collection that reviews 62 health related myths about your body. It is separated into six sections entitled: Myths About Your Body, Myths About How We Contract and Treat Diseases, Myths About Sex and Pregnancy, Myths About Babies and Children, Myths About What We Eat and Drink, and finally Myths That Sparked Controversy and Debate.

The book itself is very well written and should be easy to understand for people of any educational background. Both the authors are practising paediatricians, and did extensive literature based research in working on this book. All of the 62 myths that are debunked are nice and short and to the point.

Some of the myths that are debunked include: only using 10% of your brain, ruining your eyesight if you read in the dark, you can beat a breathalyzer test, Cold and wet weather making you sick, a dogs mouth is cleaner than humans, flu shots can cause the flu, losing most of your body heat through your head, singles having better sex than marry people, not being able to get pregnant using the withdrawal method, prediction of gender, baby Einstein making your baby smarter, alcohol consumption by breast-feeding women, sugar making kids hyper, the good old five second rule, chewing gum is better than brushing your teeth, double dipping, poisoning and Hallowe'en candy, newer drugs are always better, and vaccines causing autism. All of which were debunked!

This book also has extensive citations, and references for those who want to check up and read more about the various subjects.

Highly recommended as a very good book, looking forward to reading Drs. Carroll and Vreeman's next book.

Wizard by John Varley

Publisher:    Berkley

Copyright:   1981 

ISBN:           9780441900671 

Wizard is the second book in the Gaea series, and takes place some 75 years after Titan. Chirocco "Rocky" Jones is the Wizard in the title and is essentially the Lieutenant (for lack of a better term) of Gaea, however over the years their relationship has become quite strained. Rocky has been given extended life because she is the wizard, and because of some of the limitations / requirement Gaea has forced upon her she has become a raging alcoholic. Gaby who was also in "Titan", as Rocky's friend/lover also reappears and has been granted long life, but only as long as she's useful to Gaea, so she therefore has to keep her self in Gaea's good graces.

In the last 75 years a lot as happened aboard the Gaea, such as some Titanades (Centaur like beings) have immigrated to earth and serve as ambassadors between Gaea and Earth for those wishing to visit Gaea. In addition more humans are visiting the station, mostly to see if Gaea can help them. It is not really explained what other have come for, but it is noted that Gaea herself likes to test them, and frequently play tricks on them.

For the most part this book is a bit of a travelogue of the adventures encountered by Rocky, Gaby, a bunch of Titanades, and two people (Robin, and Chris) who are visiting from earth to be cured of their afflictions. We meet a few more of the inhabitants of Gaea, but outside of this the story completely revolves around Rocky's group who are trying to circumnavigate Gaea.

This was a good book, but not nearly as interesting as the first one, and if you plan to read it, be sure to read Titan first.

"World Building From the Inside Out" by Janeen Ippolito

Publisher: Independently Published

Copyright: 2018

ISBN: 9781983788321

This is the third book on world building that I’ll be reviewing, as I am currently doing research on the various methods authors use to do their work, and see if there are any major similarities and/or differences.

This book for the most part serves as a relatively handy reference on world building. Ms. Ippolito wrote this book because of a mistake she says in the introduction. She had a lot of experience in world building due to a background in anthropology and teaching, but neglected the plot and characters. She concluded that she was “missing the cultural worldview”. Which in my opinion is something that is very important, as that is what motivates characters, gives them a reason for what they do, etc.

The book is short at only 60 pages, and Ms. Ippolito describes it as “a quick primer to get you to the core of your story world’s cultures”.

She briefly talks about such things as religion, government, societal structure, technology, health medicine, the military and education to name a few. However, as of these topics are addressed within approximately five pages, the text resembles a list of semi-detailed definitions. But having said that the definitions are extremely useful, and likely not something most writers think about. The author’s experience in anthropology is quite evident, and this is where most of her sources seem to be based, which is a good plan as it is the study of humans, and until we meet some aliens that is what we have to base things on.

A very handy reference to get an author thinking outside of the box with regard to their world building activities.

"The Minervan Experiment" by James P. Hogan (1940-2010)

Publisher:   Garden City, N.Y. : Nelson Doubleday
Copyright:  1981

The Minervan Experiment is the collective title of a trilogy consisting of "Inherit the Stars", "The Gentle Giants of Ganymede", and "Giants' Star".

The first of the three novels revolves around a first contact situation, however with a bit of a twist. The first contact occurs on the moon, during a surveying expedition, when the work crew finds the mummified remains of an astronaut from 50,000 years ago. The first book in the series takes this as its starting point how goes on to explain the methods used to determine how the astronaut got there, where he came from, and why he looks so human.

The second book in the series follows directly from the first, and mainly concerns itself with the discovery on Jupiter's moon Ganymede of a crashed alien spacecraft that has been trapped in the ice for 25 million years. The investigation of this craft occupies approximate the first third of the book, but things take an unexpected turn when a ship full of the same aliens whose skeletal remains were found on Ganymede show up. The remainder of the book goes on to give a fairly good examination of how humans might actually interact with aliens (it does however involve humans that have evolved beyond the petty jealousies, political rivalries, and military stupidity that is present in the world today). Towards the end of this book the aliens, leave earth bound for what they hope is the new world where their descendants now live.

The third book is a little harder to briefly sum up, as it looks at the ramifications of how humans, and the aliens from book two interact with each other when a third party which is hostile to earth makes itself known (this isn't the best way to describe what happens, but I don't want to give away too much). This book does show that Mr. Hogan has done his research on politics and the military and I feel gives a good representation of how these groups might actually think.

I've read this trilogy quite a few times, and find it to be very enjoyable. The characters are very well written, and you can easily identify with the types of people they are. Good characterization is definitely the sign of an accomplished writer. I can remember what attracted me to this series originally when I first bought "Inherit the Stars" way back when, and that was the cover art which showed two astronauts digging up a skeleton in a space suit. I'd read some of Mr. Hogan work before but not much as this was one of his early books.

One anachronism that I found rather interesting in the series is that virtually everybody drinks and smokes. But when you take into account that the stories were written in the late 70s and early 80s, when smoking was more prevalent than it is today this is understandable, but still it does tend to stand out, at least in my mind.

Recommended to those readers who like science in their science fiction, as well as a good mystery as well.

"The A-Zs of Worldbuilding: Building a Fictional World From Scratch" by Rebekah Loper

Publisher: Tulsa, Oklahoma: Fantasia Hearth Press

Copyright: 2017

ISBN: 9780692850558

This is the second book on world building that I’ll be reviewing, as I am currently doing research on the various methods authors use to do their work, and see if there are any major similarities and/or differences.

As the title indicates this book deals with 26 topics on the subject of world building. I felt some of the choices of topics assigned to the various letters were a little odd, and some readers may not know what the terms she uses mean until they look them up, but the author does give very good information in all the sections.

Some of the topics covered include architecture, birth, clothing, death, economy, geography, and history. One nice feature about all these various topics is the author gives exercises composed of a series of questions / prompts at the end of each chapter as an assist for writers in building their worlds.

In some cases their are significant areas of crossover such as M is for Military, and W is for Weapons and Warfare, and I feel these two sections could easily have been combined. This also goes for A is for Architecture, and I is for Interior Design.

None of the chapters in this book are overly long, with the average being 3 to 4 pages, with generally more pages in the exercises section mentioned above (as it is laid out workbook style with room for writing). I believe it would have given potential authors more information if Ms. Loper had gone into more detail in the various sections, but for a quick reference guide, or for a novice author that is just getting into world building it is adequate.

I found this book to be quite helpful in my research, and would recommend it to anyone interested in world building.

"The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" by Robert A.Heinlein (1907-1988)

Publisher: New York: Berkley Books
Copyright: 1986
ISBN: 0425093328

"The Cat Who Walks Through Walls” (whose name happens to be Pixel) is the fifth book in the World as Myth series by Heinlein. It starts out as a mystery with a murder, but gets quite involved from that point on.

The murder itself take place in a restaurant, across the table from Dr. Richard Ames, who was waiting for his wife to come back to the table. The soon-to-corpse had sat down at the table uninvited to ask Ames if he would murder somebody for him. What follows is a chase that essentially takes up 2/3 of the book, as everybody it seems wants to kill Ames, but nobody knows why-especially Ames. Ames also doesn’t know why the man was killed at his table, why the body was disposed of so quickly, and a host of other questions.

While Ames and his wife are busy trying to escape a few more attempts are made on their lives, and this deepens the mystery even more, to make an interesting tale that will easily entertain.

As was the case in “The Number of the Beast" we are introduced to the world of as myth scenario approximately 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through the book, and this is where things get slightly confusing as the whole storyline behind the world is myth system is the time travel works, and you can visit alternate universes at the same time. This is something that those of you who read “The Number of the Beast” would have been introduced to.

When reading the series it is best to start with “Methuselah's Children" then go onto "Time Enough for Love", and finally “The Number of the Beast" before tackling this book or a lot of the references will not make any sense whatsoever as a lot of the characters in the other books appear in this novel, and they help to explain things. In addition scenarios that previously encountered in the other novels appear in this one as well to form part of the backstory.

Surprisingly though Pixel himself or herself (I don't believe it says) doesn’t play a big role in this novel, but still it’s a good linking feature.

"On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume 1" by Timothy Hickson

Publisher: Independently Published

Copyright: 2019

ISBN: 9781798967652

The next three non-fiction reviews that I'll be doing are all going to be dealing with the subject of world building, which is something that all writers working in the various fiction genres have to deal with one extent or another (or at least they should). I am currently doing research on the various methods authors use to do their work, and see if there are any major similarities and/or differences.

Some readers and writers may disagree with the above statement, as world building has typically been defined as a staple of science fiction and fantasy. For other fiction genres it sometimes goes by such open-ended terms such as research, back story, plotting etc. rather than world building. However, I define world building very broadly and consider it to be anything an author has to do to make their story plausible to a reader, and allow the author to create consistent content for their stories.

In the first half of this book Mr. Hixson deals primarily with the techniques of writing rather than world building. In the second half he deals with the world building aspect of the title, and goes into some detail and discusses magic systems, polytheistic religions, hidden magical worlds, and then does three chapters on politics namely how empires rise, work, and fall.

I'm not going to deal much with the writing advice itself primarily because I picked this book up while I was researching world building techniques. However to give a fair review, I will say that the first part of the book gives the novice writer extremely good advice on writing in general, and especially character creation, exposition, character motivation and character interrelationships.

Moving on to world building, the first section is all about magic and he gives extremely good information on various types of magic systems, which are based on a system set up by Brandon Sanderson (author of the Elantis, and Mistborn series amongst others). In which magic is separated into two classes: hard and soft magic. He goes into a fair bit of detail concerning both these systems and gives good examples, as well as dealing with how magic should be written about.

When dealing with the polytheistic religions section he goes into detail here as well regarding the various religions themselves and how they might or should interact with the other parts of the society. Examples of this interaction would be variations in beliefs, the culture and its influences, economic influences, and how religions spread, to name a few.

He then tackles hidden magical worlds, which are a staple of the Percy Jackson series, Harry Potter series, Black Panther, and Wonder Woman, to name but a few of a large selection. He discusses things such as why is the world hidden? What technology is required to keep it hidden? How would the hidden society as well as the outside world deal with its discovery, as well as normal things such as economics, politics, and society in general.

Likely the best sections are with regard to how empires rise, work, and fall. And he goes into good detail with regard to these three topics.

All in all, I found this to be a very good book, but was a little disappointed in some of the examples he used, as a lot of them are very new and it seems as if he either ignored or didn't know about world building that had gone on in classic science fiction, and fantasy. One thing I did find useful was that in the section on empires he did use a history consultant to give it more accuracy.

"Abaddon's Gate" by James S. A. Corey

Publisher:New York : Hachette Book Group, 2013.
ISBN: 9780316129077
Characteristics: 566 pages

This is the third book in the Expanse series. I previously reviewed the first two books "Levithan Wakes" & "Caliban's War" sometime ago and you could read these reviews by clicking on the titles.

As you are likely aware this series is being made into a television series as well and I originally watched the first three seasons, then read the two first books but unfortunately had to wait due to COVID-19 to catch up with the third book. So far I am extremely impressed by the closeness that the directors have been staying to the books. There are of course some differences but these are easily overlooked.

I am eagerly waiting the release of the fourth season, but once again due to this pesky virus I have no idea when it's going to be available. Because of this I am somewhat hesitant to start the fourth book as I would prefer to read it after I watch the shows.

It would be very difficult to describe all the ins and outs of the plot in a review such as this, because it is so detailed, and I would be afraid of missing something.

This book takes place a few years after Caliban's War, and the entity that crashed into Venus, has since launched itself outward into the solar system, and constructed a huge torus shaped object known as "The Ring". The crew of the Rocinante along with ships from the Belt, Mars and Earth are on their way to investigate the phenomenon but other people have plans that don't exactly mesh with those of James Holden or most others for that matter. For example the Martain Navy would really like to get their ship back, which all happens to by the Rocinante. Julie Mao's sister is out to get Holden, and doesn't really care who gets in the way. The Belters aren't to crazy about him either, so he has a rather full plate to deal with.

A very good read, but definitely read this series in order or you will miss something.