The Archives / Books

A while ago I set myself on a personal mission to learn Flex. I know myself around HTML, CSS, and Javascript like a pro -- but to be honest I've never been a fan of overly "strict" programming environments like Flex. Actionscript 3 is a strongly-typed language, and the the rest of Flex is all XML files. It was a hard transition to me (being a huge fan of loosely typed languages like Ruby). As a result, I was having an increasingly difficult time picking up Flex — so I opted to pick up a book.

Imperial Earth is a short novel about a young man named Duncan Makenzie, a resident of Titan who takes his first and last journey to Earth. The vast majority of the book is dealing with an outsider's point of view of earth and its many lifeforms and complexities. The rest of the book deals with a myriad of struggles Duncan is forced to deal with while on Earth to give a speech in Washinton DC for the United State's Quincentennial celebration in 2276.

If you're as big of a sucker for epic-like science fiction stories as I am, you'll definately enjoy The Stars, Like Dust. It rings true to Isaac Asimov's writing style with a story that just keeps sucking you back in. I found myself discarding homework and delaying sleep just to finish this delightfully short read.