I'm not a big sci-fi buff. I mean I LOVE sci-fi, but not the HEAVY stuff. I may get there one day, but for now, the "Ender series" is more or less the most "hardcore" science-fiction books I've read.
Now, this said, it maybe explains why my most favorite theme is time-travel/parallel universes.
Too bad it's one of those less written-about sub-genres in science-fiction.

Anyhow, I think it was almost 10 years ago (I think I was about 16) when I picked an issue of "Amazing Stories", and fell in love with a certain short story there. It was called "The Drifter", written by Lawrence Watt-Evans; A beautiful, parallel-universe short story. It was the best short sci-fi story I ever read. (Again, I never read those "heavy" Asimov stories and the likes..). I liked it a lot, put the magazine away someplace, and didn't give it much thought for a few years.

A few months ago, I found the magazine and read the story. And it rekindled my love for it. But now - I've got Amazon. I logged in and searched for Lawrence Watt-Evans items.

And among various novels he's written, I've found this book - a collection of short stories. One of which is the Drifter!!! Wow... Moreover, there are a couple of stories here that actually won the Hugo award!
I had to have this book!

I got it, I read it, and I enjoyed. All the stories were just right for my love of "soft core" science-fiction and fantasy. Twenty of them.

I enjoyed most of the stories very much. There were a couple of very bad stories as well (Luckily they were very short), that the author himself describe as his early, premature, work.

In short, I can recommend this book. If you want to remember the stories that got you hooked on it as a kid. If you love short, science fiction and fantasy stories, dealing with different aspects not always touched by other writers, time-travel, parallel-worlds, and other cool stuff - buy this book!

This is perhaps the best collection I've ever read of short stories on time travel and alternate universes -- all by the same author. In my opinion, some of the tales are as good as anything written by Ray Bradbury.

Mr. Lawrence has written an absolutely great book about an alaskan timber wolf named silverfeet. Silverfeet begins his life roughly, two of his brothers and sisters die as pups. Later on in life he gets caught in a hunter's trap and is seperated from his remaining sister. This hunter, Morgan, is mean and tortures Silverfeet. Finally, one day Silverfeet, in an agonizing fight for survival in the sickining living conditions, breaks free from his pen while Morgan is trying to get him in a truck to take him to the zoo.Silverfeet defends himself by killing Morgan and escaping. Soon he finds himself being hunted by the authorities. Silverfeet narrowly escapes and travles a long distance trying to get home to his pack. He never finds his true home again, but he joins another pack and lives to rank so high that he takes over as pack leader. The overall story is great. While you read it you seem to become part of Silverfeet, through everything.

Mr. Lawrence takes the reader on a voyage through the life of the timber wolf Silverfeet.The story captures the very essence of wildness in the life of a wolf pack.When you read this fictional story,you will almost feel like a member of the pack as you follow Silverfeet through his daily life,his days as a pup,and hunting with the pack, as well as his terrible encounters with Man.A great story that nature lovers will enjoy.Mr. Lawrence has written many other books about wolves and animals,all of which are superb!

This is one of the best books you can read. The auther is fantastic and loads it full of information i could not find anywhere else[i.e.,the stones hardness on the mohs scale.that is hard to find on all crystals}If you have a fasination with crystals, it is a definite read.

Although this book isn't quite as interesting as Crystal Love Secrets, which is unfortunately out of stock, it is still an excellent resource for anyone interested in crystals and practical applications towards everyday life. Overall, a complete and accurate guide - excellent for beginners.

This book is a gem - concise yet thorough,very reasonably priced. I carry it with me most of the time as it fits in a sportcoat pocket. A great quick reference for all mental health providers.Hopefully it will soon be updated to include some of the newer medications such as citalopram,etc. though updates can be downloaded from the publisher's web site.

This was an excellent book. I used it during my third-year psychiatry clerkship as a reference. Good information and well-organized.

This lavishly illustrated, large-format "coffee-table" book would make a good showing in anyone's living room--even if it is never read. On the other hand, it provides the most succinct and informative descriptions of the Desert Southwest's major prehistoric native cultures that I have ever read. With this single volume, anyone interested in the ancient cultures of North America can acquire a basic understanding of the Southwest's major five: Anasazi, Mogollon, Salado, Hohokam, and Sinagua. Cheek provides all the information a person needs to know in order to begin learning about these fascinating groups of people.

Descriptions of each culture, along with major archaeological sites representing each, as well as respectable interpretations of major archaeological findings blend to form an indispensible resource for any student of prehistoric North America. I wish I had found this book years ago.

I just thought I'd say a word about my liking this book very much. I am very interested in the indians from the thirteenth century, and this book did a wonderful job of presenting the information extremely well.

D. H. Lawrence: Self And Sexuality by James C. Cowan (Founder and Editor of "The D. H. Lawrence Review" and recipient of The D. H. Lawrence Society of North America Award for Distinguished Scholarship) is a thoughtful and thought-provoking psychologically oriented examination of assorted issues arising from the sexual topics found throughout the writings of D. H. Lawrence. Professor Cowan ranges from employing object relation theories of D. W. Winnicott, to traditional Freudian interpretations, to self-psycho-logical terms, and much, much more. An erudite and meticulously reasoned account, D. H. Lawrence: Self And Sexuality is an original and seminal contribution which is especially commended to students of the life and work of D. H. Lawrence.

This short book explains D. H. Lawrence's sexuality in concise, illuminating terms. The author spent many years studying Lawrence and psychoanalysis; now he uses the insights of therapists such as Heinz Kohut to penetrate the creative work of a gifted novelist. The book's ten chapters, all impressively organized, reflect Cowan's wisdom and humanity; in the chapter on Lawrence's search for masculine identity, for instance, he shows how vigorously Lawrence searched, consciously and unconsciously, for a way to unify his divided male consciousness. Highly recommended for readers curious about the way sex - in all its forms - permeates the affective life of a genius.

What a joy it is to read a great book! If you want to learn the subject of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) get a copy of this book. Both the text and the CD help focus the reader to understand and maximize the learning experience. I am sure this book will become another classic for Dr. Cooper et al.

for researchers, this book is a must in that it presents a really comprehensive review of dea history and frontiers. but good applications and model comparison with stochastic or bayesian studies could be addressed more in details.

While The Doctor (from Doctor Who) is trapped in his own nightmarish story arc, his personal history collapsing, other effects are being felt by some of his former companions.

Bernice, battered from recent adventures, does not appear in this book. Rather, the story focuses on ex-Seventh Doctor companion Chris Cwej. Only he isn't quite the man he used to be.

An agent for a nameless, time-travelling race, he believes he used to travel with an "Evil Renegade" who manipulated and tortured him and killed his colleague Roz.

In London in the 1970s, he meets a young woman called Christine Summerfield, who narrates the novel in the form of a diary. Only it's not the London of the "Doctor Who" universe, where the solar system has fourteen planets and the fifth is locked in a time loop. This is our rather more ordinary Earth, recovering from the Summer of Love, entering the hangover period induced by the 1960s.

Cwej is cagey about his mission, which somehow involves Christine, and shows a cynical, manipulative side which signifies the end of the naive character we know and love. The apocalypse the book promises is a fitting closing chapter in the life of the younger Chris.

Dead Romance ranks among my favourite New Adventures (including the old Doctor Who books), with the guts to take an established universe: Time Lords, Daleks, The People, The Doctor and get under their skin, re-writing them where necessary, showing them from an outsider's point of view.

The Eighth Doctor might be in the middle of all the action, but it's these very real characters who experience and suffer the consequences and side-effects of what he does.

Brilliantly written and eminently re-readable.

According to Christine Summerfield, the 'world ended on 12 October, 1970'. This is the first of many conundrums in Lawrence Miles' fascinating novel in the New Adventures series. Immediately we are led to question the main narrator, a technique the author has used before, but never to such devastating effect. We are forced to witness the barbaric destruction of a whole culture - 'our' culture. Lawrence Miles uses the form of a pulp novel to dismantle the very conception of reality. All the motifs of the New Adventures are here: from Jack the Ripper who threatens Christine's life, to the mysterious race of time travellers, but nothing is quite what it seems. 'Dead Romance' sees the return of Chris Cwej, who appears to be working for the time travellers, who are in trouble. They find their power base usurped by sudden re-emergence of the incomprehensible and unknowable 'Gods'. Christine must help Cwej in his bid to build an escape route for the benevolent time travellers, via an entire universe entrapped within a bottle. However, the owners of the bottle don't want their space to be corrupted, and something much more horrifying has followed Chris in... 'Dead Romance' is a witty, macabre work by a novelist at the height of his powers.

Based exclusively on original research of the American Populist movement, Goodwyn's book is a masterpiece of historical scholarship. Goodwyn traces the origins of the People's Party to the Farmer's Alliance and shows that the most compelling American challenge to Capitalism came from the conservative agrarian segments of American society. The cooperative principles of the Alliance and the subsequent People's Party formed a uniquely American platform that was neither capitalist nor socialist in nature. This is a powerful account of a great American political movement. Read this book and your understanding of American politics in the 20th Century will be forever changed.

This book is a stunning revisionist look at the received wisdom about the history of populism in the late 19th century. Rooting through old trunks in attics and forgotten county library newspaper archives, Goodwyn discovers the true radicalism of the populist movement, and why so much of what we were taught about the populists is wrong, distorted to cover up their fundamental challenge to the consolidation of industrial capitalism that was sweeping the world. A great book, a tragic story

When the farmlands around you get smaller, the people around you tell you city-style life is better, and they essentially want to con you out of your money, there are two ways to cope: kissing butt, or kicking it.

Mitsuo Wada, a young farmer in Japan's countryside, chooses to do the latter as he struggles to keep his tomato-plantation hothouse afloat, and as his philandering father, greedy brother and bitchy tenement housewife neighbors seem to only look for themselves, Ayako, his life's love whom he had to meet at a marriage arrangement, provides him the spiritual help needed to withstand all the selfishness around him and find satisfaction and pride in his farm work.

Mitsuo on his own gives us a gritty outlook at a farmer with a strong will who wants his family and friends to do things for the good of all. He and Ayako together give us very sexy scenes as well. A very good translation who gives us a proposal for finding solace in the middle of the worldly environment we live in.

One of the best Japanese novels I have in recent years, this book pulls back the curtain on a little-noticed part of Japan: the contemporary life of rural "inaka-mono," or those living in the countryside, who make up the majority of the nation. There are no kabuki, Zen or origami cliches here; nor does it deal with the more-recently-hackneyed themes of Japan as a bladerunner-esque neon-soaked cyberpunk dystopia. This is real stuff, down to earth and relevant. The subject is the trials and travails of farmers who sold off their land during the economic boom of the 80's when the price of land was high, transforming the former Arcadian paradise into an ugly, anonymous suburban brown land of restaurants, nightclubs, convenience stores and the like. The transformation of the people is as shocking as that of the land: former farming communities suddenly found themselves with satchels of cash from their land sales, but uprooted from tradition they drifted predictably into all kinds of malaise, from indolence and nouveau-riche bad taste to family rifts and alienation. A must read for anyone who wants to understand the social issues *really* facing Japan beyond Tokyo.