The Marching Morons by Kornbluth

See my review of Search the Sky by the same author (along with Pohl) for background and context.

What happens when the less intelligent out breed the intelligent? This book examines this question.

Is the author correct? Are we headed this way? See what you think.

Please note that this book is very short - only about 40 pages or so.

The Songs of Distant Earth by A.C. Clarke

I was first attracted to this book by the title. It is very catchy I think, and after reading the book I think it was a good choice in many ways.

This novel considers many interesting problems in humans expanding beyond Earth. Given the vast distances involved and relativity - we are not assuming warp drive a la Star Trek in this book - communication is far from instant and travel times are much longer than average human life spans. Just think of the many implications there - and this book does consider several of them. One important one - each group of colonists is on its own, in most, if not quite all respects.

The story in this book follows a stop over by a group of colonists who left Earth in its last days on a world colonized many years before. Both groups are human, but in many ways they are alien to each other.

An interesting subplot deals with some lobster like creatures native to the planet the story is set on. Are they intelligent? Who does this world belong to anyway?

The stop over group faces great dangers in continuing to its planned destination. Wouldn't it be better for them to stay put? This and other questions will be answered for those who read the book. :)

I give this book 4, and not 5, out of 5 stars, mainly because I had a little trouble identifying with the characters. Maybe it was just me.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

In this book, we are returned to the world of Harry Potter many years after the last novel. Potter and his friends are now grown up and even running things in some cases. The characters are faced with a new, yet familiar problem - I won't spoil it by giving details here.

The book was OK, but I was a little disappointed. I had hoped for more, especially given how long it had been since the last Harry Potter novel.

Maybe it was the play format instead of the novel format that I was used to for a Potter story. Seemed like something was missing making it hard to visualize the story in my head. If watching a play, the actors supply this missing element I guess.

In any case, the story just seemed to plod along. The characters seemed rather flat. The story itself seemed a little shallow. It was nice to see some favorite characters again, at least in some form.

One thing I noted was how much blank paper there was in this book. Seems they could have been a little less wasteful in formatting.