Wall to Wall Pirates

David Louis Edelman is interviewed by John Joseph Adams over on SciFi Wire, where he talks about the science of bio/logics that make up a large part of his extrapolative future in Infoquake:

""There are programs to help you stay awake, and ... the beginning chapters revolve around a program called 'NightFocus 48,' which enables you, during the nighttime, to see better... "There's [also] a program ... called 'PokerFace 83. 4b.' If you want to project zero emotion, to prevent somebody from getting a read on what you're thinking, you fire up this program real quick, and your face just goes to this poker face, essentially. There are lots of programs like that, and I tried to give the impression these people are operating these programs all day long. It's almost like when you're sitting at a computer, there's the antivirus program going on in the background, there's a defragmenting program going on, Windows Update is updating, or a Linux package is updating. So these people are running thousands of programs all day long, [with] 90 percent of them just going on in the background; they're probably not even aware of them."

Meanwhile, good words from the December 15th Library Journal regarding Mike Resnick's Starship: Pirate:

"After his crew rescued him from trumped-up court martial charges, Capt. Wilson Cole, formerly a member of the galactic Republic and now an outlaw, decides to turn to piracy to survive. His version of what pirates do, however, differs from the standard pillage-and-plunder mode; other pirates are his chosen quarry. This sequel to Starship: Mutiny, set in Resnick's Birthright Universe (A Hunger in the Soul; "The Widowmaker" series) shows the author's genuine flair for spinning a good yarn. Snappy dialog, intriguing human and alien characters, and a keen sense of dramatic focus make this a strong addition to most sf collections, with particular appeal to the sf action-adventure readership."