Agent Palmer

Of all things Geek. I am…

Coupland Uncovers the Future of Bell Labs and More in Kitten Clone: Inside Alcatel-Lucent

The cover reads “You’re holding a book about a company you’ve most likely never heard of. This company has no Steve Jobs, nor does it have a CEO who jet-skis with starlets. It’s only the 461st largest company on earth, but were it to vanish tomorrow our modern world would immediately be the worse for its absence.”

The book in question is Kitten Clone by Douglas Coupland as part of a series of authors in residence, this particular edition focusing on being “Inside Alcatel-Lucent.”

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Are you really Chasing Black Unicorns?

“Chasing Black Unicorns: How Building the Amazon of Africa Put me on Interpol’s most wanted list” by Marek Zmyslowski is entertaining, educational, and more vain than you would expect.

It’s equal parts tell-all, vanity press, and fish-out-of-water. This is, after all, the story of a Polish entrepreneur in Nigeria.

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Tales Before Tolkien confirmed my love for more modern fantasy

Douglas A. Anderson’s collection of stories gathered in Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy appears to be more from before Tolkien’s works were published than “classic stories that inspired the author of The Lord of the Rings” but I can’t fault the publisher for trying to drum up sales.

Of the 21 stories that make up this collection, there were only a handful I enjoyed and four that I truly loved…

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The Monster Book of Zombies reanimates a horror trope

I have read the collection of stories known as “The Monster Book of Zombies” edited by Stephen Jones, which is more than just Tales of the Walking Dead as the subtitle suggests. It’s variations on a theme. Perhaps that’s the standard as I’m not often a short story collections reader.

I’m also not much of a horror reader, so to attempt to properly review this collection would be folly. However, I have chosen my favorite short stories from this collection to share with you.

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