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Soh Kam Yung Locked account

sohkamyung@bookwyrm.social

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Exploring one universe at a time. Interested in #Nature, #Photography, #NaturePhotography, #Science, #ScienceFiction, #Physics, #Engineering.

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Riley Black: When the Earth Was Green (2025, St. Martin's Press)

A gorgeously composed look at the longstanding relationship between prehistoric plants and life on Earth …

A look at the evolutionary history of plants.

A fascinating book that the traces the evolution of plants and the relationship plants have with animals, via a series of vignettes that look at the life of plants and animals at different periods of time. An appendix of information is also given to provide the scientific background to the vignettes, followed by a list of references.

While fossils of animals (especially dinosaurs) fascinate the public and are the usual 'stars' of palaeontology, plants are the ones that fuel those bodies directly or indirectly. Without plants, there would be no animals, and plants determine what kinds of animals can exist in areas of the world. So it is worthwhile to get an understanding of how plants evolved to understand more of the world that prehistoric animals inhabit.

Our first stop is at the beginning, when the first plants appeared. At some point in time, single-celled organisms in an ocean swallowed …

Daryl Gregory: I’m Not Disappointed Just Mad AKA The Heaviest Couch in the Known Universe (2024, Tor Books)

A stoner kid and his best friend attempt to move a sofa across town during …

When a couch is more than a couch.

A humourous and suitably weird story about an alien invasion and the attempt to move a rather large couch across town that the aliens are apparently interested in. It would be pretty obvious that one character and her magic levitating vacuum cleaner are not who they seem to be. But it would require a trip through space to fully reveal what the couch is capable of, in a homage to the Culture stories of Iain M. Banks.

Martha Wells: Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy (EBook, Tor Publishing Group)

Perihelion and its crew embark on a dangerous new mission at a corporate-controlled station in …

A story about Peri (aka ART) and friendship

A Murderbot Diaries story that fills in some background on the characters we encounter in "Fugitive Telemetry" and "System Collapse", although it logically takes place after the events of "Artificial Condition". Perihelion and its crew are trying to infiltrate a Corporation Rim station to examine a pre-Corporation Rim habitat. Unfortunately, the station itself is in the midst of a hostile takeover, meaning lots of hostile security people.

Peri (aka ART to Murderbot) guides the party through the station. But as the danger mounts, Peri shows off some hacking skills that the crew were not aware of. And it would need one crew member to show empathy with Peri to discover just how it picked up those skills from a 'friend' it met on a previous trip.

Pat Murphy: The Adventures of Mary Darling (Paperback, Tachyon Publications LLC)

Mary Darling is a pretty wife whose boring husband is befuddled by her independent ways. …

The story of Peter Pan reimagined from the viewpoint of the children's mother

A fascinating historical fantasy that mashes together the characters from Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes. It retells J. M. Barrie's story of Peter Pan from the perspective of the mother, Mary Darling, and gives a modern interpretation to the tale involving slavery, the denigration of native people, the restricted lives of women in the Victorian era, and the rougher side of actually living in Neverland with a Boy that Never Grows Up.

It starts on the night Peter Pan takes her three children to Neverland, and Mary Darling is determined to go there and get her children back. Mary Darling is the niece of John Watson, so he and his companion Sherlock Holmes gets involved in the investigation into the children's kidnapping (as told to the rest of London).

In the first part of the story, we follow Mary Darling as she prepares for the journey, and Holmes' investigation into …

Gareth Jelley (Editor): Interzone 302 (2025, MYY Press)

In this issue: stories by Seán Padraic Birnie, Rachael Cupp, Bogdan Domakha, Alexandra Grunberg, E …

A better than average issue of Interzone

A better than average issue of Interzone, with interesting stories by Kate Orman, Alexandra Grunberg and Yukimi Ogawa.

  • "I Object" by Kate Orman: an android 'play-thing' of a princess wonders what would happen to it when the princess dies. By tradition, males of the household are buried with the princess. Only, it isn't a he, and may have other ideas about what to do at the end when the princess comes for it.

  • "How Heroes are Made" by Alexandra Grunberg: heroes walk out of the gates of a city, hoping to make it pass the horrors that surround it. One especially well trained hero makes the journey, but what happens to her would start the making of a true hero.

  • "Nyobo" by Yukimi Ogawa: a 'monster' is created to be a companion of a boy who would grow up to be a magician, able to trap curses which is 'fed' …

Rosemary Mosco: The Birding Dictionary (2025, Workman Publishing Company, Incorporated)

With birding more popular than ever, this clever pocket-sized “dictionary” is a unique gift that …

Hilarious descriptions of birding terms.

A hilarious book that pokes fun at real birding terms by providing funny descriptions and interpretations of the terms. You may also pick up and learn some birding terms that you can use in everyday life, but remembered in a funny way.

Susanna Clarke: Wood at Midwinter (2024, Bloomsbury Publishing USA)

A short story about a visit to the forest that would change a girl's future

A very short story about an unusual girl who likes to speak to animals. She makes a trip to a forest and starts a conversation with the forest about a future she desires. The forest then shows her a vision; a vision that would make her future clear.

In an afterword, the author talks about the influences that lead to the story.

Menno Schilthuizen, Jono Nussbaum: Urban Naturalist (2025, MIT Press)

A manifesto—and a field guide—for a new dawn of natural history, practiced by community scientists …

A fascinating book about nature in the urban environment and how to observe it

A fascinating book by a naturalist on how to become a naturalist, why you should become one, and why there is a need for naturalists to explore the urban environment, and to bring attention to and to protect the wildlife that can be found in such urban environments. Far from being a sterile, lifeless place fit only for humans, urban places can host a mixture of life, some of it relics of the natural environment that existed before being replaced by urban development, but some are opportunists who have taken advantage of what can be found in urban environments. And naturalists are required to observe and document what can be found in such places, often ignored by governments and misunderstood by the people who live in urban areas.

The book can be divided into several sections. The first one looks at the history of naturalists and their role as observers …

Tade Thompson: Liberation (2025, Tor Books)

A young woman is recruited to be part of Nigeria’s first ever space mission, but …

On a Nigerian attempt to put people in space that does not turn out as expected.

The story, and the aftermath, of an attempt by Nigeria to put astronauts into space. While it initially succeeds, it was done with a limited budget, using left over equipment from other space powers. The strange activities of one astronaut would lead to a disaster, both in space and back in Nigeria, leading to a race to get the astronauts back safely.

David Erik Nelson: The Nölmyna (2025, Tor Books)

The star skeptic from a haunted house reality show finds herself in a jam when …

Never get involved with haunted furniture.

The story about of an unusual piece of furniture that ends up in the home of a TV producer of strange TV shows, one of which is called "Haunted House Home Inspectors" that includes a sceptical home inspector of so-called haunted houses. Said inspector is a friend of the TV producer and get called to look at a real piece of haunted furniture. As it turns out, it is much more than just a piece of haunted furniture; it could grant you your greatest dream; or your worst nightmare.

Mark Paul Witton: King Tyrant (2025, Princeton University Press)

A marvelously illustrated look at everything we now know about the fearsome king of the …

A marvellous look at T. rex based on the fossil evidence.

A fascinating, fact based look at the dinosaur that everybody has heard about: Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex). There has been a lot of hype, mainly due to films, and outdated information about T. rex in the popular media, and this book helps the reader to understand just what we know about this prehistoric tyrant. In the process, we get to know the actual T. rex as revealed by fossils. Alongside the in-depth text about T. rex, we also get marvellous paleoartwork from the author, giving us imaginative glimpses of what it might be like to live in a world where T. rex roam.

What follows is a chapter by chapter look at the book.

Chapter 1 looks at the history of T. rex., starting with the discovery of large fossil bones, eventually described as T. rex. Early museum displays and illustrations in media show T. rex as a large, lumbering …

Garth Nix: Asymmetrical (2025, Tor Books)

A man accidentally summons a shapeshifting demon with anger-management issues…

Dealing with a demon with anger issues against people you don't like

A fascinating story of a man who summons a demon. Problem is, when the man feels a bit of hatred towards a person, the demon over-reacts by consuming or killing the person who offended the man. Desperate to get rid of the demon, the man reaches out for some more magic for help and then figures out just what to do, at the possible cost of his life.

Ken Liu: The gods will not be chained (2025, Big Think)

The first in a series of short stories by the Hugo- and Nebula-winning author that …

When the ghost in the machine turns out to be more than just a ghost.

The story starts out with a girl being bullied on-line. Then, she gets help from an unknown person who only uses emojis to communicate. As the story progresses, a link develops between the person, her father, and a project her father was involved in at his company that involved copying his skill at seeing patterns.

Neil Clarke: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 225, June 2025 (2025, Wyrm Publishing)

FICTION - "Emily of Emerald Starship" by Ng Yi-Sheng, AUDIO EDITION read by Kate Baker …

A good issue of Clarkesworld

A good issue of Clarkesworld, with interesting stories by Ng Yi-Sheng, Claire Jia-Wen, A. T. Greenblatt, Matthew Marcus and Rita Chang-Eppig.

  • "Emily of Emerald Starship" by Ng Yi-Sheng: an entertaining story based on characters and story from a local popular Singapore play, this one has a high-flying son of a matriarchal star ship giving it all up to be with his lover, who runs a horse stable. He solution to getting out from the system is rather long term.

  • "If an Algorithm Can Cast a Shadow" by Claire Jia-Wen: a digital double of the dead son of a mother is delivered to her. What she learns from the double, made up of all the public information on his son, some of which she was not aware of, would make her re-look the reasons for her son's death.

  • "In the Shells of Broken Things" by A. T. Greenblatt: a writer travels …