Nova War

I just finished reading Nova War by Gary Gibson.
This continues the story of Dakota from Stealing Light. In that book I was pleased at the strong ending, noting that the end of Against Gravity sucked a little. Unfortunately, the end of this book was also very flat, but it is clearly a lead in to the third in the series, which I have high hopes for. When Gibson is writing well, it's really really good, and chunks of this book go there. I get the feeling though that this book and the next should really be just one novel. Sometimes writers get screwed by the publishers like that.
Anyway, there was plenty of big action, but I'm going to hold off on a final decision until I've read Empire of Light.

This is Not a Game

I recently finished reading This is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams.
This was a really good read, blending a few of my favourite subjects. Dagmar is an alternate reality game designer, and this book follows her story as she builds up the game and garners more and more participants to the action. Obviously with this sort of story, the line between what is real and a game becomes blurred, but the story is so much more than that. There's some really cool software involved!
This isn't set too far in the future, in fact, could be set within a few years, which makes it just a little scary. The action is well paced and the characters are really interesting.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Freeman Dyson on Global Warming

I've just found a very interesting lecture by the legendary physicist Freeman Dyson.
There is a video here, and some of the text here.
My favourite contribution from Dyson is of course the Dyson Sphere.
Anyway, in this lecture from 2005, he is reminding us that heretics in science are important and that we shouldn't always blindly believe the common popular view. He goes on to try to put the problems of global warming into some perspective to try to pull us away from the current popular hysteria in the media. It really is worth a read.
(thanks to Neal Asher who linked this recently)