### #Reading in Week Ten of 2025
~1200 words | March 03–09 | #BokBooks

●●●◐○ Exile of the Eons - Arthur C. Clarke (ss) 1950
  The Master hoped to rule the world, and came closer than most. When his forces were almost defeated, he retreated to a bunker deep in a mountain and entered a suspended animation chamber, planning to wake in a century and try again. But the awakening device malfunctioned, and he slept on.
  Millennia later, when humans had spread across the galaxy, Trevindor the Philosopher clashed with the Empire. They were too civilized to kill him, but they could exile him to the far future, on a backward planet called Earth.
  When Trevindor awoke, he searched for years, trying to find another living being beneath the bloated red sun. Finally he found a metal bunker exposed by erosion…

●●●●○ Hollywood Horror - Paul Ernst {Doctor Satan 3} (nvt) 1935
  Doctor Satan's latest diabolical invention is a ray that turns flesh – but not bone – invisible, leaving a famous actress with a lovely body with a skull atop it. Unless the rich studio heads pay him millions, they'll be next. It's wealthy amateur sleuth Ascott Keane to the rescue again. He tells the moguls not to pay, and saves one from the ray, at the cost of the flesh on his right hand going transparent. Now he must track down Doctor Satan's lair to vanquish the villain. #WeirdTales #thriller

●●●●○ Of Men and Monsters - William Tenn (nov) 1968
  Untold generations ago, huge advanced aliens colonized Earth. Humankind lost all its civilization and science, and was reduced to living like mice in the walls of their giant structures, while the six-legged, long-necked, brontosaur-like beings (with a ruff of finger-tentacles) mostly ignored them.
  Eric, from a front-burrow tribe (primitive warriors who raid Monster larders for food and useful material), loses his tribe (politics) after his Theft (the solo run that's a manhood ceremony), then gets captured by Monsters, and meets Rachel, from a more advanced back-burrow tribe. An interesting tale, rather damaged by the out-of-nowhere ending that shows that things were both better and worse than they seemed.

●●●○○ Final Enemy - L. Ron Hubbard (ss) 1950
  Earth, as represented by the Western Alliance and the Asian Union, had been exploring the galaxy for over a century. They'd found no signs of another spacefaring civilization, until a Western ship heard a story from the Aloyts, a currently primitive people, that a ship had wiped out millions maybe 75 years ago. The Asians heard of a similar tale elsewhere soon thereafter. In a panic, West and East confederated. Now the quest was on to find the Enemy before they found Earth… #SciFi

●●◐○○ Isolationist - Mack Reynolds (ss) 1950
  Alex Wood was a crotchety old man. He'd lost both his sons to war, and his wife to cancer, and he was in no mood to have some weird-looking man with an odd accent land an experimental ship in the middle of his sweet corn field. He gave that foreigner a piece of his mind.
  The Galactic Union accepted that Earth was not interested in help. Atomic wars destroyed the civilization within a century.

●●●○○ Panic Button - Eric Frank Russell (ss) 1959
  Terrans and Antareans were both scrambling for new worlds, and they used the same type. "Finders keepers" was the rule: first to put people on a planet owned it. Disputing that could lead to war. But when an Antarean ship landed on a world and an extensive search showed that one and only one Terran was on the planet, they were tempted to make him disappear. But he'd already hit the big button, and the blue light turned on…

●●●●◐ Infinity Gate - M R Carey {Pandominion 1} (nov) 2023
  Hadiz Tambuwal: the Nigerian particle physicist who discovered how to travel to alternate Earths, not long before the final war on her messed-up Earth.
  Essien Nkanika: the minor thief and part-time sex worker Hadiz turned to for companionship when she moved to his Earth – sorry, Terr [sic] – while she carried on her research.
  Hadiz died in an encounter with the Pandominion, the Union of a hundred thousand variant Earths, when she demonstrated her invention to Essien and inadvertently appeared on one of their worlds. He ended up a Pando soldier fighting the Machine Hegemony.
  Topaz Tourmaline FiveHills: a rabbit-descended high-schooler who befriended – and went on the run with – Dulcimer; she would change the Pandominion's relationship with the bound artificial intelligences that served it.
  Dulcimer Standfast Coronal: a Machine extrusion from a polity bigger than the Pandominion, whose Earths the organics had intruded upon, and immediately set to warring with. Appearing as another lagomorph student, Dulcimer was investigating if these odd biological beings were sapient. Friendship changed Dulcie into an individual in the course of her assignment. Deciding she didn't want her consciousness melted back into the fluid overmind of the Machine Hegemony, Dulcimer fled.
  A researcher, a rogue, a rebel, and a robot: together they remade the multiverse.¹ #ScienceFiction

●●◐○○ Imitation of Death - Lester Del Rey (ss) 1950
  Earth had settled Mars, Venus, and the Jovian moons. When those colonies declared independence and set up a Planetary Council, the dreamers ruling Earth had begged to join what they should have ruled. The dreamers had been put aside.
  Practical realists ruled Earth now, and they used men like Max Fleigh to get their way. He had helped the Plutarchy² set up the Asteroid Colonies, and installed the leaders who would quietly follow Earth's line when the Belters got a Council seat.
  Now they needed one more vote on the Council. Fleigh and his henchman had kidnapped Martian Councillor Curtis, and replaced him with a life model decoy. It wouldn't be needed for long, just long enough for the critical vote. Except the simulacrum had other ideas…

●●●◐○ Hate - Rog Phillips (ss) 1948
  Gregory Jones was selected as a backup for an automatic, self-repairing station monitoring etheric eddies. (The Solar Service had found that a man might go mad in two years of solitude, but scholars writing a book were least likely to, and using only one man avoided murders.) His declared goal was researching the occult in history and literature.
  Gregory held that Hate was the most powerful human emotion, and could accomplish much. His research enabled him to develop a device that allowed him to materialize and dematerialize matter, as well as make himself an immaterial, invisible phantom. And many more things, in this odd but interesting tale that got much wider than expected.

***
[1] Among various interesting things – I quite like this book – two are worthy of a footnote. First, the book never says ‘person’ or ‘people’. It always says ‘self’ or ‘selves’ instead. Second, it introduces #pronouns for non-biological minds: et/et/ets/ets/etself. Et told me etself. I gave et the news. Ets opinion differs. I have mine, et has ets.

[2] They call themselves this publicly, not even trying to hide it.

Cumulative 2025 totals as of Week Ten:
62 ss | 06 nvt | 02 nva | 18 nov