OK, 2 points to anyone who knows where the title quote comes from. Any Sci-Fi commando worth his waldoes should know that one. In any case, I'm right in the middle of a re-read of David Weber & Steve White's "The Stars at War", and it's a rocking good read. An omnibus edition containing two great novels, "Insurrection" and "In Death Ground", "The Stars at War" follows an ensemble cast through two Interstellar wars. Weber is a master of space combat, as those of you who've read the Honor Harrington series know, and Steve White knows what he's doing as well.
Without going into a complete synopsis of the two stories, suffice it to say that they're both about virtually unstoppable alien warmonger's who invade human space. After suffering initial setbacks, mainly caused by self serving politicians and liberal fascists, the honor, courage & commitment of the human armed forces saves the day.

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I read almost everything in ebook format.  I've never been one of those people who loves books for their physical presence.  To me, the story inside the book is what's important.  Ebooks let me take multiple books wherever I go and I just find the format more practical.  That being said, there is a lot of controversy surrounding ebooks.  For the same reasons that the RIAA is suing little old ladies for downloading music, many authors and publishers frown on the (illegal) downloading of ebooks.  On a basic level, downloading media that you haven't paid for is illegal, but here's my take on things. 
I recently posted about discovering David Gemmell's Drenai series.  I downloaded "Legend" from a P2P site.  I wasn't sure whether I would like it, I'd never read any of his work before, and I couldn't justify the money. 

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So, I started reading the Vlad Taltos series a few days ago. The first book, Jhereg, was great. A sort of swords and sorcery noir. I liked it a lot. Combining genres always turns me on. If you're not familiar with the series, Vlad is an assassin cum crimelord (albeit with a heart of gold) in a fantasy universe called Dragaera. It has real overtones of Dashiell Hammett or maybe Mickey Spillane, while being some good fantasy adventure. In any case, the first one was great. It drew me in, I fell in love with the characters, the plotting was smooth, everything I need to be happy with a story. The second book was at least equal to the first in terms of my enjoyment factor. However, then comes book three. The hard nosed, tough guy assassin, is having problems with his love life. He's suffering a mid life crisis. He doesn't kill anybody until the last ten pages, and the whole damn book is mostly about his wife. Blech... At this point, I'm completely turned off on the whole series. I might try to read the fourth one, but I don't know. It'll be awhile before I can get my courage up again. So, what's the lesson here authors? Don't change the formula in the middle of a series. Sure character development and all of that, but come on! Don't turn an adventure series into a romance. You just lost most of the readership that you've carefully built up over the last 2 or 3 books. What a waste...

I got an email newsletter from Tor books today. They had a pretty neat program a while back where if you signed up for their newsletter, then they would send you a free e-book (generally a new release) every week. they stopped doing that, but it seems that if you sign up on their website Tor.com then you can get the free ebooks. It doesn't seem as cool as what Baen has done with their free library, but it sure is great for anyone who's into ebooks. Give me a free sample and I'm much more likely to actually spend my hard earned money with you.

Silly, I know, but to me the little fella sums up the main distinction in science fiction. Sci-Fi has always fallen into two distinct categories, one might be called "Swords and Sorcery" and the other "Space Opera". I know, I know, that's an oversimplification but it illustrates the major differences in the two camps. In any case, you're probably a devotee of one or the other, and you may even be one of those militants who thinks Tolkien is God and Heinlein is crap. But, at least for me, they each have the same mission, even though they may approach it from different sides. That mission, like all great literature, is to hold up a mirror to "plight of man", to offer commentary on the way we live, who we are, where we came from and where we are going.

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