Skulls in the Stars. Departing Scientopia...
So I've finally come to making a decision that I've been agonizing over for the past few weeks: I've decided to leave Scientopia and return to my WordPress blog at skullsinthestars.com. Suffice to say that this isn't due to any problems with the Scientopia crowd, who are awesome; I really just feel that I'm not that comfortable at this time being part of a collective.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race. I've described the work of Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) before.
He was a highly prolific author who was highly influential in a number of fields, although his overly romantic prose is often ridiculed these days. Nevertheless, Bulwer-Lytton's work survives to this day, and he has written a number of classic horror stories as well as the Titanic of his day: The Last Days of Pompeii, which I discussed in detail in this post. Bulwer-Lytton also left his mark on science fiction, in his very odd novel The Coming Race (1871). The story, about the narrator's journey deep beneath the surface of the earth, where he encounters a powerful utopian society, is one of the earliest science fiction novels. I can't say it's the most compelling book I've ever read, but it is fascinating from a historical perspective and bad science perspective.
Walker of Worlds. David brin.