Behind in the Science

I received a Kobo reader for my birthday and as I have previously stated I'm not interested in discussing the death of anything (book, novel, etc.) I will have to talk about another thought that has come to me as I play with this cool new device.

As with any new media player, I needed to get the content up. Fortunately the Kobo reader comes with 100 free books. As a 21st century man though, I need more. So I did some digging on the Internet and found that Tor (www.tor.com) had a number of novellas (all science fiction) available for free on their website. I finished the first one this week, "Eros, Philia, Agape" a story about a human or robot in love. It was a character driven story rather than about science specifically, but it felt modern and engaged my mind in that fashion. It also reminded me about how behind I am in my science fiction reading.

I use to guzzle down the sci-fi, but thinking over the past decade, I have rarely gone to the science fiction well, at least from a book sense, I have watched a lot of American science fiction television and movies. This made me a little sad as book science fiction tends to be more challenging and less comfortable then what is put up on the screen. A matter of not designing by committee perhaps?

With the notable exception of Cory Doctorow most of my Science fiction reading I have managed to do has been from the 1990's. A lot has changed in the world of science since Factoring Humanity was written. Perhaps I should sit down and go through the Hugo short lists.

Well the Kobo has a solution for that particular idea, I can borrow books via the library and read them within 21 days. This solves the problem of access, but not the problem of time. Which I guess loops us back to the beginning about what to think of the new ereaders. The only conclusion I have come up with is that it will end up being like my PSP, PS3, Wii, ipod; fun devices that require too high a time commitment to enjoy fully and so I will use lightly.  None of these devices create time so in that regard they are not much different than a book read for leisure.

Still, at the end of the day. It's a cool device.
S