I have a simple idea for a science fiction book. But as part of the idea I want to build a story using the next concepts / eras/ mind-blowing realms. To do this I will need a reasonable handle on the range of ideas and concepts covered in the past.

I am gradually working my way through the list of Award Winning Science Fiction books (ref previous blog). To aid me in my search for the next direction in sci-fi, I am going to summarise the themes and ideas that come out of my readings.

In management speak, you might call this a gap analysis: what are we missing?

As I create and add to my reviews I'll put them in google docs as "The Next Dimension".

Already a pattern is showing:

> Take the alien's perspective with possibly(?) as little human involvement as possible

> Non-humanoid alien form

> Often the the character story is relatively basic and revolves around their experiences and actions to suit......

Like the previous post on Award Winning Fiction Books and Novels, I also created a list of award winning science fiction books. The linked Google document Books -Science Fiction is a list of books that have been shortlisted or won the following prizes:

• Hugo
• Nebula
• Phillip K Dick
• Campbell
• British Science Fiction
• Prometheus
• Arthur C Clarke

As I gradually chew away at the list, I'll add other awards as well. Special thanks to Wikipedia for the source info.

Why?

Some time ago I was pondering the latest winner of the Booker Prize. I had first come across the prize when given Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, which I loved. That book won the "Booker of Bookers", the best book to win the prize in its 25 (?) years of history. The pondering followed the lines that I should read award winning books.

To get started I needed to know what books had won the Booker prize, which of course the fantastic free resource Wikipedia provided.......

The linked Google document Books -Fiction is a list of books that have been shortlisted or won the following prizes:

• Booker Prize
• National Book Awards
• Most Listed Books

As I gradually chew away at the list, I'll add other awards as well. Special thanks to Wikipedia for the source info.

Why?

Some time ago I was pondering the latest winner of the Booker Prize. I had first come across the prize when given Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, which I loved. That book won the "Booker of Bookers", the best book to win the prize in its 25 (?) years of history. The pondering followed the lines that I should read award winning books.

To get started I needed to know what books had won the Booker prize, which of course the fantastic free resource Wikipedia provided. That then lead me to the shortlisted books, and a number of other prizes such as the Hugo and Nebula awards.

The problem with the Wiki lists (in my humble opinion)......

Chicken bits rolled in seasoning, served in soft tortillas with lettuce, cucumber, tomato, sour cream/ mayo, cheese.

Absolutely fabulous dinner. Anyway, right in the middle of this our youngest blurts this out:

"I love the club penguin and I'm so much happier that I'm a club member."

This is my youngest's penguin before he (the penguin) donned a superhero costume...

That was US$6 well spent! Check it out. Great for kids. They visit a make-up world as a penguin, walk it around and visit places and do stuff. They can play games against other members, say "Hi", wave, enter races like a toboggan race and earn (virtual) coins.......

Having only 245,000 points (collected for many years), we didn't have enough to get from home to Rome for all four of us. I had looked at one-way for all four, or return for two of us and hope the other two could get matching flights and seats etc. That might have been nice, actually: the missus and I could have taken one flight and the kids the other ...

So I called the frequent flyers number, and the very helpful lady pointed me in the direction of return seats for the four of us to Hong Kong, return. I doubt I would have been able to work that one out, not knowing where all the carriers fly to etc.

She was very helpful, as I've said because instead......

Dad, I know how to make a catapult" says my son, while munching loudly on his dinner.

"Mmm-hmmm" say I, not sure whether to be supportive of this achievement or scared witless at the implications.

Then the younger son speaks up"I know how to make a Shmarshmallow catapult". No, that's not a spelling mistake. Since the first day he could say 'marshmallows' he said 'shmarshmallows'. So the discussion continues:

"Does it come from Shaturn?"

"No, it comes from Shmars!"

And here are the Shmarshmallows from Shmars.

Here are some pics I've taken over the years - aiming to put them together at some stage as a collage.

Full set being loaded into Photobucket (http://s245.photobucket.com/albums/gg71/inspire-and-shine/Collage%20Work/)

Disclaimer: This is not a paid review. Its not even a proper review. I only say what I see. If you disagree, then in the true spirit of Monty Python please tell anybody but me...

I've been downloading a number of free videos and pictures from the usenet. And in case you're wondering, they are training videos on the "Art of applying decoupage to your bonsai". One little problem is that my wife won't let me print the pictures out cause they may disturb the kids, and as she quite pointedly said to me "Exacly where do you plan to stick that?". Well anyway, small problems aside, the files are in "rar" format, for which my Winzip couldn't decipher, and although the newsreader (Newsrover) could have decompressed them I was having a few problems with that also.

Now typically these days when I google something I include the words "free" and "open source". This brings out the best of the internet: free information.

In this case......

Why? Why write a blog about what my wife gave me for dinner? Well, I had just been telling my lovely wife about these blogs that I'd started, and we had sat down to the dinner table and there was this dinner.

Hmmm dinner. Could be, could be. Not sure if it had reached a reasonable level of effort/ taste/ quality to really be defined as dinner.  At any rate I don't remember my exact reaction, but it included elements of dismay and "oh my". See, it was cubes of steak, cooked and mixed together with an enormous proportion of mixed vegetables, and pasta tubes. You know, the short round tubes with angled ends.

What's with the mixed vegetables? Reminds of Chicken Run when Mel Gibson is looking up at the veges dropping in on the other chicken stuck in the pie machine. What was that chicken's name?

My wife seems to have developed an obsession with the mixed veges -giving me ever larger piles of them on my plate. Of which, I dutifully do not......

Italy with Kids

In September 2008 we are going to Italy. Two adults, two kids and a partridge in a pear tree. -no wait, that must be those darned Christmas carols invading my thoughts again.

Ok, to start again: yes, two boys aged 7 and 9 for the trip.

Six weeks.

Six weeks with no home to retreat to.

42 nights of finding ways to settle the boys into bed, and to keep them busy during that terror time of after dinner but before bath time.

Umpteen hours of keeping them interested while Mum and Dad try to appreciate art, sculptures, silence...

Hundreds of minutes of racing for the nearest toilet... which we can't find... with the inevitable accidents...

But surely it won't be that bad? What could be worse than stuck in a queue for 6 hours, tired and hungry with a one and a half year old at LAX? We've been there, done that. Never want to see it again. That time we made the mistake of waiting for others......