Orson Scott Card’s work Ender’s Game began as a novelette, that he says he wrote as a means of leading up to the full story he had developed, Speaker for the Dead. Ender’s Game was published as a full novel in 1985, won the Hugo and Nebula awards (as did Speaker for the Dead in ‘86 and ‘87). I think it is safe to say that Ender’s Game is ensconced in its position as a science fiction classic. Now, 23 years later, Card has finished the first direct sequel to Ender’s Game in his new novel Ender in Exile.

While Speaker for the Dead was published right after Ender’s Game, there is a huge gap in time between the two stories. Due to the effects of traveling at close to light speed, thousands of years pass between the two novels. Chapter fifteen of Ender’s Game does give an explanation of the events that fill that time. Card also went on to write other novels set in the Ender universe that do not involve Ender directly but rather other students from the battle school and family. This makes Ender in Exile more of a ‘midquel’, a term Card uses in the afterword, than a sequel. Because of this, from a high level view of the plot, readers who have stuck with the saga will not find much new here. This is a closer look at events already related in other books for the most part.

Card is an able author and this story is solid. Much of it reminded me of some of my favorite classic science fiction. There is colonization, extended periods of life aboard space ships, discovery of alien civilization and not much in the way of hard science. Card’s primary purpose is to analyze and consider the human condition as opposed to exploring technological possibilities or theories. Almost everything that is highly advanced is the result of alien technology and is never explained or understood. Much of it functions on an almost mystical or magical level.

Ender is a young adolescent with an incredibly unique life and mind. In this novel we see him transitioning and growing from a youth into a man. I was often reminded of Herbert’s Paul Atreides when he was first on the run in the desert with his mother in the book Dune. Ender is aware that he is different and has amazing capabilities but he is unsure just what the full ramifications of that difference are. He is trying to find his place in humanity and in the universe as a whole.

The story encompasses four basic plot lines that flow one to the next. I never felt any great sense of urgency or climax and resolution in the story. Really what it felt like was a thread weaving together pieces from the earlier stories. While the themes and issues were great, sometimes the characters were remote or the working of the issues very subtle. The most impacting and emotional moments relied upon knowledge of events from the other books in the series to carry their full force. In that light the novel is very effective. I think that fans of the Ender series, already biased towards this work, are going to be very pleased and enjoy Ender in Exile greatly. They are going to get to dig just a bit deeper into this world and it’s primary character Andrew Wiggin. They will enjoy moments of discovery and the answer to questions that may have been in the back of their minds, possibly for the last twenty years or so.

On the other hand, someone new to the series may not be as enthralled and may find the story to be a bit flat. If I could I would rate this book in two ways. For those who have not read all the other Ender books, a 6 or 7. This is not bad since the book is designed to sit in the middle of an existing set of tales. It is possible that someone could pick this book up without having read a single Ender story or novel and track with it. I think they would even find it interesting if a little flat. But for a fan of the series with a high degree of familiarity with the characters and events of this world it is probably a solid 8 or 9. At the very least, Card has done nothing to tear down what he has built up but has completed a sturdy addition to the body of work.

In the afterword Card has some interesting comments to make about reader involvment in helping him to write this story. He also explains how he would like to approach some discrepancies between this story and what is related at the conclusion to Ender’s Game. I thought it was a sign of the times that an author, facing a large and complex world he had created but could not track on his own, was able to use the internet to call upon readers assistance in achieving as much consistancy as possible.

This is a thoughtful, well written book. It may even motivate some to dig up an old copy of Ender’s Game so that they can relive the enjoyment of a classic and see what is new to find. I think that most will not be dissapointed. Some may not be as thrilled as they would hope, but there is something here for any science fiction fan.

On a side note, in conjunction with the release of this new book, Marvel Comics is doing a limited series comic adaptation of the original Ender’s Game novel.

Title: Ender in Exile
Author: Orson Scott Card
Publisher: Tor Books
Pages: 377
ISBN: 978-0765304964
Rating: 7/10

John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War universe now spans four novels, The Last Colony is the third. Of those initial three this is the one that is most a sequel. The first, Old Man’s War and the second, The Ghost Brigades each stand alone. And I think that The Last Colony actually can do so as well, but this is the first where the main characters are both from the previous books. That said, this is still a complete story and may even appeal to readers who may have not been crazy about the previous books.

The first two books were very much military sci-fi with quite a bit of action. I think this is what drove a lot of the comparisons to Heinlein. Scalzi himself has said that he is glad for those comparisons and they have helped him to sell books. (It is what got me to read Old Man’s War.) But what I find funny is that Scalzi’s similarity to Heinlein seem to me to be only in two regards. First that they are both excellent authors who can write a good story with compelling characters and second that they both wrote at least one story about a soldier in the future.

Heinlein used much of his fiction as a vehicle to illustrate and present his moral and political philosophy. Scalzi does too, but is not nearly as heavy handed in doing so. But even more importantly, the messages the two have to get across are not the same. If anyone could doubt this from the first two OMW novels (I don’t see how - but let’s just pretend.) then The Last Colony should ruthlessly crush that misconception.

The Last Colony picks up with our earlier heroes John Perry and Jane Sagan living peacefully with their relatively young family that includes adopted daughter Zoe. Things are nice and quiet for both, now regular colonists no longer in the military. They no longer have the special abilities of military members but they aren’t involved in regular combat any more either. But this quiet is short lived, when an old military acquaintance shows up and asks them to lead a new colony. Of course they accept, and then the ride begins.

The story twists and turns and is in many ways a political thriller. There is still some good action, but it is not the center piece of this tale. I enjoyed plowing through, to see where the next turn would come. The story does not fall into a rut of predictability. I had guesses where things would go next but I never ‘knew’ and a lot of my guesses where wrong, delightfully wrong because what happened was so much better than what I had thought.

Scalzi has created sympathetic and well rounded characters that pull the reader in with crisp and meaningful dialogue. Humor keeps things from getting too heavy and keeps the pace moving well. The book never feels preachy, but to get back to my earlier point, there are some strong messages. There is a strong value placed on life, all life. There is a strong value placed on the freedom of individuals; their right to know what is going on in their world and their right to determine for themselves how they will act. This is in strong contrast to Heinleins work, like Starship troopers, where there is a strong emphasis on the individual but just as high a value on setting aside those rights for the betterment of the race. Often this involved submission to a benevolent and mostly wise authority. In The Last Colony Scalzi does more to emphasize the danger of authority that does what it does because it can.

I am a hard-core Heinlein fan. I own everything published by the man and read many of them repeatedly. I see the similarities that Scalzi brings to the table but I think some have fallen into the trap of looking at everything Scalzi does in terms of Heinlein. I don’t think that is really the right path to getting the most out of Scalzi’s books. Does Scalzi owe a debt to the Sci-Fi masters? Of course, but he has his own strong voice and a high degree of skill in his craft.

The readers who felt that the military action side of Old Man’s War and Ghost Brigades was too heavy may really enjoy the more tactical and political emphasis they will find here. The flip side of that is Last Colony does not have the same sense of intimate involvement between the reader and protagonist. Often the viewpoint is more distant than in the previous two novels. This is necessary to take in the full scope of events and their import.

The afterword includes a note explaining that Scalzi is finished with John and Jane. This is a satisfying conclusion to their story while at the same time it is comforting to know that Scalzi has already been true to his word to return to this universe with Zoe’s Tale.

I would recommend that anyone new to the Old Man’s War universe, read the books in order. Not because it is necessary but because they are all so well written and fun to read. Anyone curious about the universe, but having trouble committing, can get a free taste by reading After the Coup a short story set in the Old Man’s War universe. This is a completely stand-alone story that will not spoil any of the plot line in the four novels. < a href="http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/fall2007/fiction-the-sagan-diary-by-john-scalzi/">The Sagan Diary is also available on-line, another short story but this one sitting between The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony.

On a final note, Scalzi’s blog is an excellent source of information about his work and writing in general. Aspiring authors (and many fiction readers seem to fall into this category) would do well to keep up with it as Scalzi is extremely transparent and free with advice from writing itself to the business side of being an author.

Title: The Last Colony
Author: John Scalzi
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Pages: 324
ISBN: 978-0-7653-5618-5
Rating: 8/10

The number and functionality of web based applications has exploded recently. Many of these applications rely heavily on AJAX to provide a more desktop-like experience for users. As the number of people using JavaScript grew, libraries were developed to assist with commonly encountered issues. Jim Harmon’s new book “Dojo: Using the Dojo JavaScript Library to Build Ajax Applications” aims to introduce readers to one of those libraries, the Dojo Toolkit.

The Dojo Toolkit, is a JavaScript library, created to increase the speed of writing JavaScript applications. It provides developers with widgets, themes, wrappers for asynchronous communication, client side storage and more. It does all this across various browsers and platforms without requiring the user to worry about differences in browsers.

The book follows an interesting pattern. It begins with a five chapter tutorial. The tutorial launches immediately into taking a straight html form and using Dojo widgets to add functionality. All of the code used in the tutorial is availble at the book’s web site. This tutorial moves quickly, introducing a number of available widgets and giving the reader a nice feel for how Dojo integrates with html markup.

What does not take place in the tutorial is the normal introductory material on just what Dojo is, how it is installed, or what it can do. I’m guessing that this will be a welcome change to those used to quickly brushing past the first chapter, or more, of any programming book. Harmon takes advantage of the fact that Dojo is available via the AOL Content Delivery Network, so the examples will work any javascript capable browser connected to the internet. He does give a quick explanation of what would need to be different to use local files.

All of the introductory material that I’m use to seeing is still in the book but it does not appear until chapter ten. There Harmon covers the motivation to develop Dojo, explains the history of the project, provides a bit of information regarding the dual-licensing of Dojo. (It is available under the BSD and Academic Free Licenses.) This leads into the last seven chapters, that cover the ‘deeper’ material in the book.

Between the tutorial and chapter ten, there are four chapters of widget documentation with examples and some explanation. Of the three sections this is the longest, though this is in part due to sometimes large sections of white space, as each widget begins on it’s own page. The documentation covers each widget and provides a visual representation where applicable. There is some repetition as this section covers widgets that were used in the first section’s tutorial.

The third section is entitled “Dojo in Detail.” It’s the level of detail that marks this book as more of an overview, rather than an in-depth treatment of Dojo. Harmon is true to the title, this book is an extremely pragmatic guide to getting started with Dojo as a means of adding Ajax to applications. It is not however going to take the reader to any great depth into the toolkit. There is plenty here to get started, and enough to hit the ground running, but anyone to get really in-depth coverage of the library will be dissapointed.

The person who will get the most out of this book is someone with some knowledge of mark-up and programming but not to an advanced level. The developer with a lot of experience will probably be frustrated with the amount of explanation and repetition of simple material combined with the lack of depth. The reader with no programming experience may struggle, though they could keep up if they are willing to look outside the book for a few resources to get a good grasp of web technologies. They may become extremely frustrated with some of the later chapters where the code examples skip steps and leave the reader to assume what has happened in between what is shown and the output.

That said, this book allows the reader to dive in quickly, get a quick overview and move immediately to making use of the Dojo Toolkit. If one is not concerned with gaining insight on every aspect of the library but would rather just get into it immediately with a little guidance, this may be just right.

With this in mind, it would have been nice if the book had provided less time on documentation and more on examples and ideas for how to best use the capabilities of Dojo. It is nice to have a book that isn’t so huge that it is overwhelming and difficult to find anything. But if something had to be given up to keep things compact, I’d have much rather lost things that are easy to find in the on-line documentation and subject to change as the toolkit develops. This keeps the book from being excellent, but it is still a solid introduction and primer.

Title: Dojo Using the Dojo JavaScript Library to Build Ajax Applications
Author: James E. Harmon
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Pages: 316
ISBN: 978-0-13-235804-0
Rating: 7/10

There is not a single person writing code in the US who is not impacted by the countries intellectual property laws. I think that it is safe to say, that not all of them have a strong understanding of just what those laws are, let alone what they mean. At the same time, there are a number of people, who may or may not be qualified, but are more than willing to share opinions and advice. Some take the time to slap a warning label on such input and IANAL is now widely understood. (I Am Not A Lawyer - Because widely does not mean everyone.) Stepping into this gap is programmer become lawyer Van Lindberg with his new book “Intellectual Property and Open Source.” Lindberg has really done something special with this volume. I don’t think I’ve ever read a tech oriented work where I’ve felt so convinced that I was reading something that would become a standard by which others would come to be judged.

Let me quickly state what this book is not. It is not comprehensive. It does not cover all of US law on intellectual property. What it does cover is mostly viewed from a high level that does not address many finer points. It is not a reference for IP laws outside of the United States. While there is some commonality in various parts of the world, I think the differences preclude this book from being too useful for anyone not impacted by US law.

So what is this book? To me it felt very much like sitting down with a lawyer who can speak my language, understands my concerns, uses open source software, cares about freedom and has a gift for building metaphors and illustrations that make sense. It is that ability to bridge the gap between lawyer and developer and do it in an readable way that makes this such an incredible book. If it were just accurate and thorough but I couldn’t get past a couple pages it wouldn’t be worth much. If things weren’t put into terms that I could grasp and apply to real life situations, the same would be true.

The first seven chapters are a primer on the history and current status of U.S. IP law. Lindberg walks the reader through patents, copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, contracts and licenses. He discusses how these impact inventors and developers. I had considered myself to be casually familiar with most of these, but was surprised how much I learned. I was also a bit scared by the time I was done with it all. Lindberg cites not only the pitfalls that are out there, but backs it up with case history that illustrates his points. More than once I caught myself thinking, “I guess that is possible but it is unlikely.” only to be reading a page or two later about how it had already happened and was in some cases still finding its way through the courts. This was all quite a wake-up call for me.

Chapter eight and on deal with how one can operate in the open source world. Lindberg talks about just what Open Source is and then handles the many things that a developer needs to consider from just how to handle a new idea (especially if one is employed) to choosing a license, accepting patches, reverse engineering without being as likely to get sued, and setting up a non-profit to run a project.

I found the discussion on various licenses and just what they mean to be especially helpful. There is a general discussion that covers a wide array of licesnes, and then a separate chapter just for working with the GPL. There is an illustration in that chapter that I think stands as an excellent illustration of what this book is like. “The Darth Vader Scale of Derivative Works”, found in chapter twelve, serves to illustrate the Free Software Foundation’s position on the applicability of the GPL. Lindberg takes time and care to explain the issue, but the figure showing a range from little “Anny” to the fully cloaked and helmeted Darth Vader shows how he also makes it fun at the same time.

It is not absolutely necessary to read through the book from start to finish but I would highly recommend it. The conversational style makes it easy to do, and there are concepts and metaphors that Lindberg reuses throughout the book that will be easier to understand if the reader has familiarity with their use right from the start. That said, the table of contents, index and topical separation of chapters will make this useful as a reference. I would just agree with Lindberg that reading it through first will make such use easier in the future.

The book has appendices that contribute over 80 pages to the total length. These include a sample Proprietary Information Agreement, a list of Open Source licenses ( along with some descriptions of how they are used), a Free Software license list, a list of the licenses used with Fedora on a grid that lists GPL compatibility, the full text for a number of licenses and a very nice GPL Compatibility Matrix. That matrix shows what versions of *GPL licenses can be used with one another from the perspective of adding code to an already licensed project or licensing a project that will include code already licensed under one of the *GPL licenses.

Some of the sections are quite sobering. I don’t think becoming more educated about these issues is going to encourage most people that things are headed in the right direction. That said, I don’t think they will arrive at that conclusion because Lindberg is pushing some opinion. He is very even handed in his approach and it is obvious that he took great pains to focus on one single goal, disseminating accurate and valuable information without letting anything else get in the way. He leaves value judgments to the reader. When there are issues of debate he presents information on both sides, and may express his leaning but does not argue for it or attack other view points.

This book may be frustrating for those who just want copyright and all intellectual property laws to go away. I get the sense that while Lindberg believes that there is a lot of room for improvement, he isn’t trying to describe what could or should be, he is just giving advice on how to try and best navigate what is. Right now, the penalties for failing to understand the current environment can be quite harsh, and so I think that such a guide is very important.

I’ve not ever rated a book a ten before. I don’t want to sound like a publicity or marketing piece and I hope in this review I’ve successfully argued that I am reasonable in my belief that this is an important book. It is a book very much worth reading, most especially if you create for a living.

Title: Intellectual Property and Open Source
Author: Van Lindberg
Publisher: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Pages: 371
ISBN: 978-0-596-51796-0
Rating: 10/10
Tagline: A practical guide to protecting code.

The first two chapters cover introductory material, discussing just what CSS is, what it does, and syntax/nomenclature issues. After that, every chapter is reference material, until chapter 16. The last three chapters cover vendor specific properties, various hacks and work-arounds as well as the difference between html and xhtml. Those five chapters are presented more as straight out prose compared to the reference chapters between, though they still use extensive highlighting and background colors to divide and organize content.

The reference chapters are extremely well laid out. A command, property or other item is in bold at the beginning. Below it, highlighted in grey are various arguments that can be used with that item. An example will be given in a colored box. There are two grids. One covers three aspects of the spec for this item; if it is inherited, the initial value and the css version of the item. There is also a list of browser support for the item in IE6+, FF1+, Saf1.3+ and Op9.2+. The second grid shows compatibility for three versions of Internet Explorer (5.5, 6.0 and 7.0), three versions of Firefox (1.0, 1.5 and 2.0), three versions of Safari (1.3, 2.0 and 3.0) and Opera 9.2. When appropriate there is also a discussion of or list of appropriate values and discussion of usage.

At the end of the book is a single appendix which contains an alphabetical index of properties. There is no proper index for the full book, which is not as bad as it could have been, without the other tools, but is still disappointing.

The typography is clear. The book is concise and clear with little wasted space or verbiage. The color scheme for highlighting the various sections is extremely easy to read and pleasant.

There is one more feature of the book that, aside from content, makes it very useful. There is an online edition of The Ultimate CSS Reference and as far as I can tell, it is completely open to use by anyone without any kinds of restrictions. I couldn’t find any in my copy of the book, I didn’t have to sign up for anything to use the site. This really makes up for the lack of an index as the entire book is searchable from the site. For me, it is the best of both worlds. I have the dead-tree version on my shelf, ready to pull down and satisfy my curiosity. I have the electronic version freely available on the web site, should I need it. The site has the added bonus of including an area for comments on the contents of the book, and there are already some helpful comments and tips there.

I think then, it is safe to say that mechanically this is a more than acceptable reference. The other important piece aside from it being usable, is the quality of the information itself. Good information is useless if one cannot get to it, and a great access system is useless if the information is no good.

The authors, O’Brien and Olsson are themselves extremely experienced in the field and I think it is safe to say they are experts in regards to CSS. The book also had two experienced “Expert Reviewers” in Natalie Downe and Roger Johansson. I couldn’t find any problems with the content, and I think that it is safe to say that these four, along with others have done due diligence to provide an accurate guide to CSS.

Is this the ultimate CSS reference? I haven’t read the others, and ultimate seems to imply comparison to me. So while it might not be the ultimate, I do feel comfortable recommending it to anyone who needs an extremely usable, accurate reference to CSS. I would even recommend it to a beginner who wants to learn CSS, though they should probably augment this book with something aimed at teaching CSS, not just providing a reference.

Title: The Ultimate CSS Reference
Author: Tommy Olsson & Paul O’Brien
Publisher: SitePoint
Pages: 420
ISBN: 0980285852
Rating: 9/10
Tagline: All the CSS knowledge you’ll ever need.

I’ve been using WordPress blogging software for about four years now. I started messing around with themes pretty early on in the process. My approach has not really changed too much over that time span. I start by going on-line and just browsing through themes that are available to down-load and use. There are tons of them available and usually I’ll hit more than one that looks pretty good. I download it, and then I start messing with it, making changes so that it perfectly fits what I want. I am not really inclined to learn all about CSS, PHP or exactly how WordPress works. I just change, save and refresh and usually I eventually get where I want to go. But now, those days are over. Tessa Blakely Silver’s new book “WordPress Theme Design” has made it possible for me to quickly learn the basics, without getting bogged down in minutiae and tons of documentation. This has been a real life-saver for someone who just wants to knock out a nice WordPress theme. I do have to admit though, I’ve learned a number of things about web design that relate to quite a bit more than just WordPress.

This book is not a definitive guide to anything. It will not tell the reader all there is to know about WordPress, CSS or the myriad of other issues that it touches upon. It hits upon most everything that is absolutely necessary to know and there were quite a few bonus areas covered that I didn’t expect. At 211 pages, it is a pretty quick read. The conversational style also makes it go by pretty quickly. The only thing that will slow a reader down, is if they take the time to work alongside the author and follow the examples, and build a theme themselves as they read the book.

In fact reading this book could be summed up this way; it felt like Silver had dropped by and offered to sit with me at my laptop, talking me through how to build a theme for Wordpress. The book is logically laid out, but the text just flows, and related topics just come and go as the specific task at hand is addressed. I really enjoyed that and it made the book so much more useful to me than a dry recounting of API’s and CSS parameters. Silver steps way past a step by step how-to and adds much of her experience and opinion. That’s the kind of thing that makes this book worth having, as opposed to just going through on-line documentation.

A couple great examples of the little extras are a nice discussion of font usage and a list of some of the more common fonts and how they might best be employed. The chapter on packaging and distributing a theme has a short, but informative section on licensing and gives a few choices. In both instances Silver is not afraid to voice her preferences, but also informs the reader of other options, as well as pointing to good resources for more information.

Since the book is not exhaustive, there are a lot of these pointers to other sources of information. I found these to be of value as well. I didn’t feel like the book ever got bogged down in minutiae, but if I wanted to dig deeper on something, there was almost always a url pointing to just where I could do so.

The first five chapters give a quick guide to designing and coding a WordPress theme. There are a lot of extras there on design methods, debugging, and implementation tools that will really come in handy for anyone doing web development with xhtml and css. Silver advocates using tools that are available freely, for the most part, and the primary tool for the bulk of the book is the Firefox web browser and a few developer plugins. She does use Photoshop as her image editor, but I had no trouble following along using the Gimp myself. By the time I had completed those chapters I felt like I knew quite a bit more about WordPress and the technologies that it relies upon. I’m not an expert by any stretch, but I’m not just grasping around in the dark any more either.

Chapters 6 through 8 deal with a lot of what one might call ‘flashy’ options for a blog. Silver covers things like using Ajax, embedding flash, dynamic menus and other interactive options. Once again I learned a bit about these in general, and the basics that I needed to know to get them to work with WordPress without too much hassle. There is a short WordPress reference in chapter 6 that covers the most important functions for a theme designer. Chapter 9 closes out the book with a nice review and some good advice that would work for any design whether it is in WordPress or not. I was happy to see the author constantly reminding the reader to consider standards, accessibility and performance. Too many sites seem to have completely forgotten any of those three in pursuit of some certain ‘look’.

I’d say that this book is going to do well with anyone who is comfortable getting in and messing around with mark-up. It will most likely be a bit basic for anyone who is a web design expert. Though if they are coming to WordPress for the first time, this may be just enough to jump-start the learning curve for the WordPress side of things. Someone who doesn’t know what FTP or CSS is, will have a difficult time with this material, though it might be a decent place to branch out from in order to learn. I doubt anyone with a lot of experience creating WordPress themes will find much of anything here that is going to make it worth their time.

As I mentioned, the tone is extremely conversational and casual. The text is well laid out and easy to read. Illustrations are there to aid in understanding, as many of the issues are visual in nature. All the code and files that go along with the text are available for download from the book’s web page. The index is a bit light but acceptable. The table of contents breaks things down to a rather deep level and helps make up for the lack of information in the index. If the index were as good as the table of contents it would be excellent.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to better create and alter WordPress themes. This may be the quickest path to learning what needs to be known to create them. Mastering all that is possible with the platform will take much more time and many more resources, this is not everything to everyone, but a great resource for getting the job done.

This is the first book I’ve ever read put out by Packt, a relatively young publishing company. I found this to bode well for them and was interested to read in the back of the book that they donate part of the proceeds of any book to the open source project that is covered by any book they sell. I thought this was an interesting idea and a good way for readers to support the projects they are interested in. The book is also available from Packt as a PDF, with some access controls, though they are not as onerous as some I have seen for e-books.

Title: Wordpress Theme Design
Author: Tessa Blakeley Silver
Publisher: Packt Publishing Ltd.
Pages: 211
ISBN: 1847193099
Rating: 9/10
Tagline: A complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes.