Question What are you reading?

Not much of a challenge. Apparently the USSR decided to recycle ASTP hardware.

About that art, though, it reminds me of an old anime show called Thunderbirds 2084 which was a Japanese future version of the old puppet animation show Thunderbirds. In one episode, an old spacecraft which had gone into solar orbit and was lost with one soul aboard returned to Earth and was headed for a crash in Tokyo (of course). The T-birds had to rendezvous with it, rescue the astronaut in suspended animation, and destroy the spacecraft before it hit the city. What an awesome show that used to be.
 
I remember that show. One of the first ones I started watching when the family first got cable. Loved that one and video comics on Nickelodeon.
 
Ian Rankin's fourth novel 'Westwind', which from where I've got to so far seems to be his only attempt at a techno-thriller.
 
Graham2001 said:
I've just finished reading Black Alert as part of my ongoing research for wikipdia's 'List of Fictional Astronauts'.
Click to expand...

Talk about most obscure, utterly useless collection of information ever. :lol:

However, the little plot summaries are great, I'm gonna drive myself nuts trying to track down obscure sci-fi now. Were any of the "Modern Period" books any good? Always wondered what would happen if Shuttles went up against Salyuts. :)

Also this sounds entertaining as hell, was it?: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097911/
 
Just picked up Mike Mullane's "Riding Rockets". Looks good! :)
 
Ark said:
Talk about most obscure, utterly useless collection of information ever. :lol:

However, the little plot summaries are great, I'm gonna drive myself nuts trying to track down obscure sci-fi now. Were any of the "Modern Period" books any good? Always wondered what would happen if Shuttles went up against Salyuts. :)

Also this sounds entertaining as hell, was it?: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097911/
Click to expand...

Not entirely, where do you think David413 got the names for the extra shuttles in Shuttle fleet from?

As to your second questions it depends on if the Salyut is armed with a particle cannon ('The Hunting of Salyut 7') or is merely the shell for a pair of laser ASAT weapons ('Blind Prophet').

As for 'Moontrap', I've only watched it once, laughed out loud in places, if you can find a copy it is well worth it.
 
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If you want to read good shuttle combat fiction, I recommend Storming Intrepid, if you can find a copy. I found one in a used book store.
 
I should be getting Gene Kranz's Failure is Not an Option for my birthday......
 
I just finished Winds of Dune and have started Julia Nevarro's Bible of Clay, her books are like Dan Brown's, only better.
 
If I didn't have tons of homework and assigned reading, I might finally read my (signed! :D) copy of Magnificent Desolation by Buzz Aldrin.
 
Just about finished James Randi's Flim-Flam!
After this, it's The Men Who Stare at Goats novel by Jon Ronson.
 
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Currently hacking my way through Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

I am not a huge fan of Brown's books, which I find a little thin on substance, but a friend at work gave me the book and told me to read it, and Brown is a quick read so what the heck.

EDIT: So I finished it. Not the greatest book in the world, and a few things about it bugged me. For starters there were two major mysteries, or twists, in the story which I easily guessed early on, making the rest of the book a bit boring to trudge through.

In addition, Dan Brown describes the King Street Metro train station in Alexandria, Virginia, as having a tunnel at the end of it, as if it's an underground station, but that is completely wrong. King St. is an elevated rail station.

Makes me wonder how sloppy the rest of his setting research is.
 
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Right now, I'm reading Gogol's Dead Souls; just finished re-reading Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, and next on my list is some nonfiction, Andrew Wilson's The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation.

I'm also reading V.K. Arseniev's Dersu Uzala for one of my Russian history classes.
 
Notebook said:
Just found this while looking for some Blue Streak info:
http://homepage.mac.com/sjbradshaw/baxterium/prospero.html

Got a few of Baxter's books: Quite good short, but spotted a couple of errors so far.

N.
Click to expand...

I miss out on all your stories because I'm too lazy to wait for links to load and you never provide a summary of the topic...

Anyway, I'm reading [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous-Legacy/dp/0385524374"]The Dead Hand[/ame], a history of the end of the Cold War focusing on Soviet WMD, including the secret Soviet doomsday system the book is titled from, as well as the extensive biological weapons programs, both of which went largely undetected by Western intelligence agencies.

The Dead Hand is a very Strangelovian system: in the event the US hit the USSR with a decapitating first strike, these three guys in a bunker underneath a mountain would launch "command missiles" which would broadcast launch orders from above to any remaining ICBM bases in the Soviet Union, bypassing dead communications lines and assuring a retaliatory strike.

Great idea for deterrence, but it stayed secret and thus was of no deterrent value!

Even scarier is that it was designed at first to be completely controlled by computer with no human intervention! Too crazy even for Soviet generals.

"Skynet became self-aware at 2:14am EDT August 29, 1997..."
 
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