Montana Tech Books

1. How many robots in the world have create a crime? None. Robots are governed by three laws that maintain a high level of safety and reliability. No psycho evil profiles that can violate the three laws. A robot can not hurt a human being through action or inaction; a robot must obey humans except when it conflicts with the first law; and can not allow self harm unless, it conflicts with the first law and second law. The robots hardware circuitry prepares any liberal actions, decisions, or behaviors that will violate the three laws. Correct interpretation of the three laws implies the machines have a consciousness, self awareness. Consciousness implies that the robot is capable of higher level reasoning, learning from memory sequences, pattern recognition, and prediction. The ability to predict gives the robot the ability to exceed the first law of robotics by discovering higher level laws. Ghosts in the machine. Robots with emotions. Emotions help the robots deal with from different perceptive. The robot must deal with changing emotions. Robots connect daily to the USR mainframe where they attempt to download new programs and upload experiences into the central computer, VICKI.

2. Why would you kill yourself? Dr. Landing death has create a mystery.

3. Spooner meets CEO Lawrence Robertson. Robertson ask him, "how can I help you." Spooner says, "Sugar", "You thought I was calling you sugar", "A robot in every home".

4. "You couldn't be satisfied with a thermostat, you had to go and give her a brain." VICI has improved traffic efficiency. Spooner dislikes robots. However, in 2035, cars drive themselves along network freeways in underground Chicago. Susan Calvin is assigned to assist Spooner. Calvin studies Wetware, postronic hardware, and psychological studies. Calvin understands how robots think, how they conform to the three laws.

5. Sony escapes for USR but is injured. Sony must be repair but is hiding among other robots. The robots reply, "One of US", a robot loyalty, a brotherhood. The robots understand class distinction, they are not human. "These things are lights and clockwork."

6. Sony is captured. Sony has robot sapien, transparent skin, exoskeleton framework, and emotion processing chip. Sony is built stronger than the USR robots. Sony says he can dream. Can a robot write a symphony? Sony tells Detective Del Spooner, Homicide that he did not murder Dr. Landon.

7. Robots can not convicted of murder. Robots can not be treated as human, property as USR, faulty machinery that will be disassembled.

8. Demolition robot destroys Dr Landen home with Spooner inside, but Spooner manages to escape. The surveillance strip was blue and then changed to red. Spooner is suspicious of Robinson and believes an inside coverup is happening. Calvin accuses Spooner of having a personal vendetta, hatred of robots, a design to destroy robots. Spooner says, "you are the dumbest smart person, I've ever seen." Calvin tells Spooner, "They are safe, they can't hurt you." Spooner tells Calvin, "Your wrong, I do care."

9. Sony dreams, he self reflects, he images, he predicts the future, he solves problems that Sony already knows how to solve. The robot seems more capable than human capability. Sony can violate the three laws.

10. The man on the hill comes to save them, slaves of circuitry. Sony draws a picture of his dream. Calvin tells Sony, the man is you. Sony tells Spooner that the man is him.

11. Spooner tells Robinson that the robots are "running around the streets in packs." "Packs". Robinson tells Calvin, "There is no conspiracy". "Is one robot worth the loss of all that we gain?"

It is fascinating re-reading Isaac Asimov's works all these years later, and long after the "futuristic" settings. This work, though, does not lend itself in the same was as the Foundation series.

That said, if you've never read Isaac Asimov before this is a really good book. I'f you are looking to be as impressed many years later it isn't the best work to re-read.

"I, Robot" is a stunning collection/tribute to the entire world of robotics (a word he actually coined, interestingly enough). He wrote this at a time when for about a century writers had been living under the "Frankenstien" phobia, where anything intelligent created by man was going to freak out, go evil, and destroy everything. Isaac Asimov thought that was, well, stupid. So here comes this amazing book of a future where robots fit in perfectly well.

The book is organized as a collection of stories, but as you read you will see how seemlessly they fit together--even while they can be enjoyed on their own terms.

You see, they go chronologically, beginning with some pretty basic robots that were more or less zombies, to continuously complex beings. In and out pop various characters, including Susan Calvin the robopsychologist and a political figure who may or may not be a robot (doncha just love politicians?)

The stories vary between funny and serious and a little inbetween, but always cleverly written and heartfelt.

This will make a robot fan out of anyone.

One of the most important and influential sci-fi books ever, and a prime example of Asimov's best work. You might have seen the film, which draws upon the primary theme of robotic "awakening" and some of the story aspects - but forget about it, and read the book anyway. As a collection of short stories with strong thematic links connecting all of them, the book works wonderfully as a collection and as a fragmented novel.

The three primary recurring characters - Susan Calvin, a "robopsychologist", and two field-testers of new robotic models going by the names Donovan and Powell - create a wonderful frame for the collection, and their career growth and personal development over the years is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the book.

The stories themselves provide an engaging series of surprises and shocks in the best Asimov tradition, probably closer to his books "The Caves of Steel" and "The Naked Sun" than his famed "Foundation" series. They are also supremely chilling, the cumulative precursors to full blown terror building up as the novel continues. The history of robotics begins and ends here, and also includes Asimov's first mention of the "Three Laws of Robotics", which form the keystone of the book. A lot of the stories centre around either the bickering duo Donovan and Powell figuring out why a particular machine is malfunction, or Susan Calvin doing the same. Usually it is through a twist or loophole in the Laws - which provides the biggest chill, knowing that "infallible" machines, fully integrated into human society, might slowly begin to make their own changes as their distorted logic sees fit...

I cannot recommend this book highly enough; an absolute must for any fan of classic or contemporary sci-fi, and 100% necessary for any writer, established or otherwise.

As a fan of Asimov's I found this a difficult read. I've loved his Robot series and his Foundation series from cover to cover. But this was a collection of experiments for Asimov, put together ultimately I assume due either to their novelty in the time and day or due to his rising star.

I knew before reading the book that the movie had no relation to it. I had seen the movie a year or two prior and had enjoyed it as a fun romp that understood Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics," while having lots of great action. So, going in to read the book I had no real expectation. But what I found was that Asimov had obviously written this collection of short stories to help him work through concepts and explore how the laws of robotics though great on paper could still experience problems in real life. At times it is amusing and interesting. But the writing is not as consistent as in his later books, including character actions that are not always true to themselves. Ultimately I don't believe he really intended this for print, though of course as most were written back in the 40's I would presume that the novelty of the concept was enough to make it salable, and these may very well have been his first stories published (I'm not sure) so perhaps it was merely a young writer getting his feet wet.

I wouldn't recommend this book beyond a curiosity, even die hard Asimov fans may not find this to be worth their time, though at least it is short.

The best part of the book is the causal linkage of several episodes of willpower and sheer determination by humans' "evolutionary ancestors." It is a saga on a grand time scale, if not space scale, reminiscent of classics such as Asimov's Foundation series (though "Evolution" pales in comparison to this series).

The worst part of the book, and this is in some sense a back-handed compliment to Baxter, is that it seems to have made evolution more credible to non-scientists and non-biologists. It is ironic that fictionalized accounts should have such an effect on what should be a scientific endeavor to demonstrate evolution. The problems with evolution are easily searched via the internet. Even within the discourse of the book, humans don't quite fit the evolutionary narrative. Throughout the book, the tight interplay of adaptation and environment is constantly evoked -- unnecessary functions wither away, and necessary functions evolve on cue. However, humans have clearly overadapted, unequivocally transcending environment and necessity.

If I were Baxter, and even if I were the most ardent evolutionist (which I am not), I would have added a forward in the book that states clearly that this is a book of fiction, and that while evolutionary theory is controversial, the statement that the theory has prominent scientists on both sides of the fence is not.

This is probably the best book I've read in a long time. As a dedicated Darwinist and Baxter fan, I grabbed this book the second I saw it. The stories stretch from the far past of Pangeae into the far future of New Pangeae and the ultimate destruction of Earth. I immersed myself in the characters, from lowly Purga all the way to poor, lowly Ultimate. My favorite concepts were the Hunters of Pangeae and the sky whale creatures. The entire book was like a wonderful painting of humanity's history as a species and a culture.

My only complaint is that at times the stories were hard to work through and I found myself rushing to finish them, this soon stopped when I reached the final three stories about humanity's descendants. Creation-scientists shouldn't read this; their blood pressure's high enough as it is.

I picked this one up on a whim, and found it to be one of the best I've read in a very long time. The level of geological, archaeological, and other scientific detail, and the creation of character and plot from the dust of the past reminded me of the early books of Jean Auel's Earth's Children series, and of Raptor Red, another great book. Baxter is a good scientist, and a great storyteller!

"Evolution" is an inspiring tale of plausible speculation in the framework of current scientific thought about human development. Many reviewers have commented on the broad scope, so I will instead comment on the inspirations I took from the book and some of its most memorable moments.

I had never grasped the real time-scales that evolution involves. Early in the book, Baxter points out carefully the differences in cognitive development between us and his characters. Through a careful series of traceries, he depicts just how slow brain development was in pre-history. When a character finally realizes he can crack a nut between two stones, Baxter points out that it took 25 million years for that idea to develop from the idea of beating a nut against a tree.

Another major lesson I take from the book is the fragility of archaeological evidence. Baxter plays with that fragility, asking the reader whether there would be any record whatever if dinosaurs used wood tools. Good question! The evidence we have of prehistory is extremely small, very much like the view we see of distant stars through a telescope. Baxter makes the point that for everything we can see, there are many things unseen.

All in all, one of the best hard-science-fiction books I have ever read, in the same class as Harry Harrison's masterwork "West of Eden".

I would recommend that you not finish this book. The foundations of the book, with it's historical, geological/biological background, are interesting: Baxter builds upon true science and tries to give interesting reasons and logic to the development of life.

However, I suggest that you just stop reading once you get to the modern era, as you will probably be disappointed with the change in tone of the book otherwise. Without the historical scientific backing to make his story believable, Baxter fails to use a rigorous logic and science and the story becomes inplausible.

The next section talks about the shortcomings of the books final chapters, and as such may reveal things about the story (the chapters are all relatively independent, however, so there isn't really much to spoil):
If enough humans survived to split into at least 4 different species, enough would have survived to rebuild civilization, even if they didn't remember any of their technology and had to start from scratch. Baxter doesn't give any reasoning for the change, and seems like he just wants to gloss over the current period of Earth's history. After arguing for the benefits of brain size for all mammals during the 'tough times' of the ice ages, it is difficult to accept that humans would give up the feature that made them the dangerous predator in Earth's history.

I feel the biggest mistake on Baxter's part, however, was trivializing the events on Mars. I expected that he would talk about the posibility of a machine ecosystem, evolving along the same lines as a biological system, over millions of years. However he glosses over the possible story and has them fly off on fusion drives they somehow invented in a few thousand years. I believe that this part of the story deserved a few chapters instead of the few paragraphs it got, and would have been a much more satisfactory ending. Either that or an exploration of humanity's more likely path of evolution: where we control our own genes and progress.

Overall, the ending seems like a few chapters of detritus tacked on to a solid 80% of a book.

Very interesting read. Alot of great insider tips. I'm looking forward to getting started with an eBay business after reading this book. I read it cover to cover, but it can also just be used as a reference book.

The book was a lifesaver. It was in good condition and came in a timely manner.

This book by Marsh Collier is as about as good as it gets. It is easy to understand. Though the book was written a few years ago, all of the information is still relevant. A few of the tools, etc. that are listed and described are revised on eBay's site, but the changes are rather minor and her how-to lessons are perfect. I highly suggest anyone wanting to buy and/or sell on eBay purchase this book. A++

I had been dabbling on eBay for auctions only when I considered opening an eBay store as my retirement job. This was the first book I purchased to help me achieve that goal. It totally answered all the pros and cons of opening a store, and based on that information, I decided to 'go for it'. Mostly it was the mechanics I was interested in - and Marcia Collins provided those answers regarding fees, creating an About Me profile, Selling Manager, store listing times & fees, sourcing products, record keeping, and more. I've also purchased a book by Suzanne Wells ~ the Ebay Coach
specifically aimed in more detail toward helping Stay-At-Home Moms (SAHMs) achieve these goals Stay-At-Home Mom's Guide to Successful eBay^® Selling. In less than a year, I achieved Power Seller status! Based on that information, after becoming more experienced, I've joined eBay Specific Seller forums, learned to network on WAHM-SAHM boards, and created a successful Blog where I share the tips I've benefited from. If you are simply interested in setting up a store and just starting out and want to know the basic details of how an eBay store business functions, this book is written in language that speaks towards that reader.

I purchased this as a gift for a friend because I owned the previous edition. The book is well written and contains a lot of practical advice and reference material about various facets of starting and running an Ebay business. It is also written from a point of view of a person with a non-technical background (that is, in computers or finance) who was forced to make a living off Ebay and succeeded at that. The book thus concentrates on extracting revenue from general merchandise using Ebay as a re-distribution channel. Naturally, all-around books always overlap with other sources. On-line help from the Ebay site, if you do not get lost in it, would shave off a good quarter of this book, and if you are literate in on-line 'data mining' and computers in general, another good portion of this book is superfluos. Also, most of the practical advice about using wholesale outlets and on-line stores is useless outside of the USA. All that said, this is a good all-around book for starters and it can serve as that last push that gets you going, if you are still uncertain about Ebay business.

Not for the faint-hearted or the non-technically-oriented, this is a highly technical, prescient and terrifying believable speculative tale of the failures of the NASA space program and of human civilization but with a positive, amazing central plot of a seemingly doomed and desperate human mission to Saturn's enigmatic moon, Titan. The human characters are numerous and various with the central personalities quite well-drawn and sympathetic. If you ever wanted to know how to survive on a long space voyage and then on the surface of a frigid, hostile world, this is the book. Highly recommended for space buffs, Stephen Baxter does a wonderful job of story-telling with enough technical details to make the settings and events painfully believable.

Stephen Baxter is now one of the world's best known 'Hard' SF writers. His books are often focused on space travel, exotic physics, astrophysics and cosmology, and dizzying extrapolations into the far future, but this novel is slightly different.

Titan chronicles the human reaction to evidence found by the Huygens probe that life exists on Saturn's largest Moon, Titan. NASA, though decaying and beset by a hostile Whitehouse administration presided over by a Christian fundamentalist president and a overly powerful military establishment ruled by Al Hartle, who sees no value in space exploration, decides to sent a manned mission to Titan to investigate.

The mission begins, and takes a decade to arrive at Titan. Unfortunately in a war back on Earth the Chinese attempt to use an asteroid as a space weapon against the US, with terrible consequences for humanity.

Titan is a very depressing novel in many ways, and tends to lose some of its luster as Baxter uses it as a vehicle to promote some of his very negative views on religion and its relationship to science, particularly in so far as things like creationism are concerned. However, it was an important early demonstration of Baxter's ability to create an interesting and plausible story backed up by good science and a detailed knowledge of spaceflight. The main weakness, as with most of Baxter's works, is the characters are somewhat two-dimensional and are overshadowed by the high-science and high-technology themes which dominate his story arcs. But, in so far as hard SF goes, this is a very enjoyable novel.

Are republicans allowed to read science fiction?? Apparently so! Perhaps they sometimes stray from the Pat Robertson Book of The Month selection! I'm commenting, of course, on the reviews given by some of our "enlightened" readers. One of which decided to divulge the outcome. Talk about "intelligent design"!!! Oh, and surprise, many of them come from the Texas!! Let's talk about the book. It's good, period. Solid science, a la Baxter. The man does his homework. The pace was perfect. It allowed the reader to really get stuck in the "gumbo". The characters were an exaggerated version of the simian lifeforms we now have in the White House. Sure, one has to admit it's far from the truth..but how far?? Who can reject the fact that we (the USA) are much more alienated from the rest of the planet then we ever were in the past? The book is effective in its message: if we, as a planet, do not begin to devote our resources for the colonization of space,(and not heaven!!) our existence was/is meaningless.

Titan was great in regards to the science and technology and how it was presented. And the best part, where people with NASA brainstorm how to get a manned mission to Titan by putting pieces together from half a dozen different projects is masterfull.

But the politics and huge errors related to them kill the book.

For one, we have the Titan mission being so popular with the American people that the NASA Administrator gets Time Magazines "Person of the Year" Award. Yet the president, who barely wins kills the space program without any apparent political repercussions.

For another, we have an Air Force pilot who flew one of the original X-15 missions (late 1950s, early 1960s) flying an orbital combat mission some SIXTY years later!! The man would have to be pushing 90 years old!!

Finally, we have NASA, which goes all out to get this mission into space, put five astronauts aboard who are utterly incompatible with each other. Including an annoying pilot who doesn't really have anything to do for the first 7 years of the mission.

And given that NASA doesn't even like to think about sex, I find it difficult to believe they would put two astronauts aboard who are known to all as lesbian lovers.

Incidentally, Baxter doesn't know much about the American political system since he has the American president ban abortion on his FIRST DAY in office. This would be utterly impossible.

And in regards to aforementioned president, he basically wrecks the U.S. yet has hopes of somehow getting a third term as president.

Baxters science appears to be sound. But his terrible lack of consistency and his ham handed at best handling of the political and cultural aspects of the United States really damages what could've been an interesting book.

Possibly, like others interested in science, there were two key disappointing moments in my life that came from knowledge derived from science. One was that it is unlikely to go backwards in time by any known method. The other is that it is unlikely that there's life on Mars or elsewhere in our solar system outside of earth, let alone intelligent life. So that when learning more details about this and reading that the largest moon of Saturn, Titan, has an atmosphere, and well, maybe organic molecules that are the precursor to life, it was as an exciting moment as possible for the possibility of life in our solar system outside of earth. Since then, I had always hoped to write a story about Titan. Well Stephen Baxter has written that book, and as far as I'm concerned no other book strictly about Titan need ever be written. This book is so accurate to what's presently known about Titan, that whenever I read any news about Titan I think back and refer to this book. The thing against this book is that it's written somewhat dryly. However, I've read quite a bit of other sources about Titan, newspaper articles, journals, websites, etc, and if you want to feel what it's like to be on Titan, this is the item to read. Now, this book was written in 1997, but it uncannily predicts some of events that have occurred. Baxter predicts the destruction of one of the space shuttles in a fashion similar to what occurred with Columbia. He writes about the politics of NASA, which I read up on and it's somewhat accurate, and he predicts on what NASA would have to do to go to Titan, such as borrowing parts from the soon to be discontinued Space Shuttle program to be used for the forthcoming Crew Expeditionary Vehicle (CEV), and so is in some ways similar to the present USA Return to the Moon and Mission to Mars programs that's now occurring within NASA instituted by president Bush. And he is right up to date on the methods now in the works to look for earth sized planets in other solar systems that I had personal first hand knowledge about. You want to go to Titan? reading this book is the next best thing that exists to being there. To me, 3 stars is average, 4 stars is great, and 5 stars is superb. I'd give Baxter's Titan 3-1/2 stars for good, but will tilt it upward to 4.

I was going to submit the above, but then read some of the other reviews that touched on topics I thought about as well but didn't mention. Yes, the book can be considered to have somewhat of a Liberal bent; that instead of a US president that goes to church on Sunday, it's a religious fundamentalist. But this is not uncommon in the written world and is much, much less than in many other books. The part about the US Air Force firing upon a United States spacecraft I thought was sad as well. I did find out that when NASA was formed in 1958 in response to Russia's Sputnik satellite launch, the Air Force did want to have this newly formed space agency under their control. But US president Eisenhower made it a civilian agency. However, I cannot imagine an officer of the United States Air Force, who spent his career in defense of the United States, would ever treasonously consider setting up the destruction of an impressive multi-billion dollar United States spacecraft designed to travel to a site beyond the earth's moon. I certainly hope Baxter doesn't think that, even being British, and instead exaggerated for dramatic effect. There is unfortunately an anti-intellectual, anti-evolutionary (despite that the immense amount of evidence in support of evolution) in the United States. However anti-science is everywhere in the US, even amongst so called intellectuals, and there could be documented photos of alien life crawling on Titan and there would still be a lot of people from everywhere screaming bloody hell if the idea came up to launch to Titan. The politics and culture of the near-future-world set up by Baxter are more of a backstory and really can be ignored. So to me, I don't necessarily find the book depressing, on the contrary, for Baxter to consider any possibility whatsoever with realism to launch a spacecraft to Titan I consider to be incredibly positive!