Hal Stern's thoughts on the economy, software, services, technology, and snowmen. Hal Stern: The Morning Snowman

Once I hit cruising altitude on any vacation, I can typically read a sci-fi book a day. That rate of consumption assumes ample idle time by some body of water (bathtubs included) for reading and ruminating along with the complete lack of late-night calls or slide tweaking. The hallmarks of a real vacation, in other words.

This past week I finished John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" trilogy - Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony. As an added bonus Zoe's Tale arrived the day I finished Last Colony and I was able to devour it before I had filed the first three on the "books to share" shelf. Zoe's Tale is the third book retold from the perspective of a character principal in both the second and third books, and it fills in a few of the plot holes left by the close of the trilogy. The books read quickly and had me thinking about imperialism, colonialism, emerging markets and politics. It's much more of a political science than hard science read - comparisons to Heinlein's Starship Troopers on the jackets of the books are appropriate.