Book Review: 2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey by Author C. Clarke reviewed by Sergio Ragno

2001: A Space Odyssey was a joint project between Stanley Kubrick and Author C. Clarke, the two hammered out the basic premise together and then split to actualize the story in their respective mediums. As such Clarke’s Space Odyssey should be very familiar and shed light on elements left ambiguous in Kubrick’s vision but is distinct enough that it can be appreciated as its own entity and neither project can accurately be treated as a Rosetta stone for the other.

Movie Review: 2001 A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey reviewed by Sergio Ragno

I don’t believe much needs to be said about the ground breaking masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. Director Stanley Kubrick set out to tell the greatest science fiction story in history, deeply insightful and scientifically accurate, a love letter from humanity to the stars that have fascinated us since we first gazed upon the heavens, and it is hard to deny his victory towards that end.

Book Review: Extinction

Extinction: A Thriller by Mark Alpert Reviewed by Sergio Ragno

I’m going to be honest with you.  I picked up Extinction because of the cool cyber arm on the cover.  I have a real weakness for Sci-Fi Espionage stories, and I guess I just have good instincts because Extinction ended up being a member of that rare genre, and an excellent one at that!  Extinction uses very topical world events such as the War on Terror, Wiki-Leaks, and Artificial Intelligence as a foundation to explore the boundaries between man and machine, and reveals the line to be more ethereal than one may assume, and on a more haunting note, may vanish via our own misguided machinations.

Book Review: Wither

Wither (Book 1 in the Chemical Garden Trilogy) by Lauren DeStefano Reviewed by Sarah Kramer

Wither, the first book in the Chemical Garden Trilogy, is a young adult novel set in a dark dystopian future– and the future, it turns out, is incredibly bleak and rapidly ending. Seventy years before the time in which the novel is set, “science perfected the art of children,” (p. 8) creating embryos without cancer, allergies, or other various ailments. At first thought, this sounds like paradise. Unfortunately, as protagonist Rhine explains, what humankind didn’t realize was that the children and grandchildren of those embryos were doomed to be “born healthy and strong, perhaps healthier than our parents, but our life span stops at twenty-five for males and twenty for females. For fifty years the world has been in a panic as it’s children die” (p. 9).