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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 7622028" data-attributes="member: 20564">After finishing "The Labyrinth Index", I moved on to the third Dagmar Shaw book by Walter Jon Williams, "The Fourth Wall".  I liked the first Dagmar Shaw book a good deal but did not love it, and the second book wasn't up to the first in my opinion.  If it wasn't WJW I probably would have stopped there.  This third book, told from a new character's point of view who is not an intimate colleague of Dagmar Shaw, was much nearer to the quality of the first book than the second.  Seeing her through outside eyes and inferring what was going on knowing her and her usual band, which the PoV character was not privy to, was a fun read.After that I read a collection of Larry Niven's Known Space short stories, "Neutron Star".  Copyright in '66 and '67, these could have been horribly outdated.  And the ocasional comment abotu a tape for the computer was there, but since most of the hard science was abotu astronomical bodies and the futurist parts were well done, it did not feel like 50+ year dated SF.Holy #^%^*, that was written more than 50 years ago.  I cut my teeth on it, when the librarians let em peruse the adult stacks of the SF and Fantasy after I read out the kids sections.  Dang, get off my lawn.Larry Niven has been and will continue to be among my favorite SF authors that I grew up with.  Not quite Heinlein or Zelazny, but still.I didn't actually read my first fantasy book until something like 4th grade, when a friend from summer camp lent me "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. LeGuin.  Wow.Back in modern day, I'm unearthing the horrible mess my library has become.  It has no room for more shelves and it seems my book purchases require another purge to fit.  I got rid of the entire Robert Jorden series, most in hardcover.  And a bunch of others, but I've already purged several time and there is little low hanging fruit.  Still need more room, so I'm rereading books I haven't read in a decade to decided if I am keeping them or not.Just started Andre Norton's "Sargasso of Space", copyright 1955 to continue my trend.  The town library had a good amount of Andre Norton when I was a kid, but I don't remember this one from then.  More about ... Zero Stones, that sound a lot like psychic Ioun Stones if we were playing D&D.The copyright is to Andrew North, which one could make a guess is the real name of the pseudonym of Andre Norton.  But the reality is that Andre Norton, Andrew North, and Allan Weston were all pseudonyms of Alice Mary Norton, back in the days when women SF writers were not just unknown but almost unthinkable.  She was the first female SFWA Grand Master but that wasn't until 2005 - 50 years after this story was written.Okay, enough blasts from the past.  Time to read.</blockquote>

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