 okay a real quick recap before I get to the books from this month patrons for a 30-second sci-fi are still only three at twenty six dollars a month the YouTube subscribership is almost 475 right now that's up from 450 a month ago the tumblr has 90 followers and last month I said that there were zero likes on Facebook well they were actually 17 and now they're 18 I was looking at some other figure that said zero likes Facebook is so hard to interpret sometimes anyway before I start talking about all these new books there's a couple of books I forgot to mention last time like this one continuum volume one which I got in the mail this is from 1974 edited by Roger Elwood it has stories by Philip Jose farmer Paul Anderson Chad Oliver and McCaffrey Gene Wolf and Dean Coontz apparently the idea of this series was that the stories would be ongoing that volume two each author would continue the story that they started in volume one I haven't gotten to this yet but I've had it for a while I also forgot to mention last time that I had read shards of honor if you're following the Twitter and the tumblr you saw me ranting about it when I started it was terrible instead of ranting about it now I'll give it its own review I also just finished reading Lagoon by Nettie Okorafor it was really interesting it was good I recommend it and I'll give it its own review and right now I'm reading Quest for the Future by A.E. Van Vogt 1970 it's not his best work in fact it's not even very good it's not very long though so I'm most of the way through it I'll finish it and I'll give it its own review I bought this specifically because while I was putting together a list of all the books that I reviewed I noticed that I had not reviewed a book that started with the letter Q and it was coincidentally lucky that I had just bought that copy of Night Moves which I just reviewed because I had also not reviewed a book that started with the letter K K and Q those are the only ones missing so once this is done I'll have a complete alphabet now other books that have come in Arthur C. Clarke's Prelude to Mars with the 16 short stories and two complete novels I don't believe I read these novels checked it out at the library I also checked out this at the same time Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney this is the same guy who wrote Circus of Dr. Lowe if I was aware at the time that he had also written Invasion of the Body Snatchers I'd forgotten it not a long book I'll give it a read this came in about two weeks ago got a really good price on it on eBay this is not at all what I thought it was gonna be its reprints of old black and white comics from the UK this is stuff from the 1950s I thought it was gonna be the Alan Moore comics from the 1980s anyway no country for old men Cormac McCarthy bought this at the thrift shop at the library a dollar and also this prey by Michael Crichton don't know anything about it other than it's by Michael Crichton a dollar at the library I got this in the mail it's called Borderlands I don't know if you can see the title reflecting the light there this is one of those examples of a poorly made cover on the spine it's printed black on black on the front it's printed black on black when I first got in the mail I couldn't find the name of the book anyway I bought it because it's got some short stories by some authors I wanted to read contemporary horror I'll get to that at some point speaking of poorly designed covers here's another book that I saw at the library see if you can figure out what this actually says what this book actually says looking at the author it became pretty obvious what it's supposed to be saying but that was the only way I figured it out I couldn't read it by looking at the actual title as written bad editing choice I picked these two up at a bookstore north of here that I rarely go to anymore here's a picture of it it just says books out front the Heaven Chronicles by Joan D. Vinge you know how much I like Joan D. Vinge once I discovered her I went in and got it and this the Texas Israeli War 1999 Jack Saunders and Howard Waldrop I know the name Howard Waldrop I don't know anything about this it was less than $2 so and also at the same store Galileo's daughter this is nonfiction this is a history and science I've read this before or I listened to an audiobook some years ago and I liked it quite a bit and it actually makes me angry to think about her she was every bit the genius he was but she was sequestered away in a convent her entire life practically in prison sleeping on a bare floor unable to take advantage of her genius it's a shame real shame now this is a book that I saw mentioned on Facebook let's see where's the front there it is the shy stegosaurus of Cricket Creek this is one of those events where somebody mentioned something and your mind explodes because it was something that you had a dim memory of way back in your history and you didn't know what it was and as soon as they mentioned this I was like okay that's what it is I remembered a couple of kids finding an old stegosaurus in a canyon I had no memory of what the book was called where I'd seen it of course this was it and has excellent illustrations on the interior and of course as soon as I realized what it was I went on eBay actually I didn't find this on eBay I found this at Biblio.com not expensive which reminds me I also got these two dinosaur related items which were also mentioned on Facebook this is a shift boy already mail-in premium apparently this envelope contains a board game I'll do a special opening of that later and then this book digging for dinosaurs which includes a set of projector slides of course I don't have the machine for that but it also has an audio record recorded by Walter Cronkite I'm going to record this record like I did that our mr. earth and make a special video for that well there you have it that's the stuff that came in this month I'll see you with a new couple of reviews this week you can support 30-second sci-fi and my other projects by becoming a patron there is a link in the description below and visit the 30-second sci-fi tumbler that's my headquarters in addition to my videos I publish links and updates there every day