Vernor Vinge makes Rainbows End available for free download

Cory Doctorow reports on Boing Boing that Vernor Vinge has made his latest novel Rainbows End available for download.

Read it and loved it.

Guy Gavriel Kay's World Fantasy Awards Toastmaster Talk

Canadian fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay recently gave a presentation at the World Fantasy Awards. The full text of the presentation can be found from a link off of SF Scope.

Check out my review of Kay's latest novel Ysabel.

I Am Legend

So I finished reading I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. It is a rather quick read as the entire story checks in at 170 pages. In it we follow the protagonist, Robert Neville, through his daily life where he putters around the house, works in the garden and disposes of vampires. As you see Neville lives in a post-apocalyptic future in which a plague, to which Neville is immune to, has descended upon humanity turning everyone seemingly into mindless vampires.

Much of the novel deals with Neville's research into the cause of vampirism. The author gives you a scientific, not supernatural, explanation for the vampire infection. Some of these are biological and some of them are psychological. None of them make the bleak future in which Neville inhabits any less horrific.

All the while Neville is doing his research and doing his level best to stay alive the vampires are forming a society of their own.

Without giving too much away the novel really holds a mirror to the struggle between humans and vampires. Is Neville more or less of a monster than the vampires?

On December 14th the third movie based on I Am Legend will be released starring Will Smith.