Reading Into the Past: Week of 3/26

The dice roll six this week, so I'll be looking at the books I read this week back in 2000:

• Asimov's Mirage by Mark W. Tiedemann (3/20)
  Um. I'm not precisely sure this one was, though I do remember it was part of a trilogy of novels in the universe of Asimov's robots stories. A little research reveals that it was the first of a trilogy. I didn't like this one as much as Roger Allen's first robot book, but both trilogies (in common with a lot of Byron Preiss projects) start pretty well and peter out a bit. This one's certainly worth reading, as far as my fuzzy brain can recall.
• Strange Brains and Genius by Clifford A. Pickover (3/22)
  Double um. Not a single memory of this book remains, though I expect it's some kind of popular science. A quick trip to Amazon tells me that it's an examination of the lives of several eccentric geniuses, but that still doesn't bring it to mind.
• Star Trek: Preserver by William Shatner with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (3/25)
  Triple um. I have never been a Trekker, particularly, but I've generally enjoyed the novels professionally (since they were a) guaranteed to sell well, b) generally short and c) never, ever, more difficult to read than an eighth-grade reader). I'm not sure how any of that translates to any other reader, since I doubt any of you have to read Trekbooks for business reasons. But I can say that I thought the Trek Powers That Be let Shatner get away with a lot more oddball stuff than any other Trekwriter (my assumption was that Random Book-Licensing Middle-Management Guy at Paramount wasn't about to annoy Captain Kirk over something as minor as a book, so they just let him do whatever he wanted). His first trilogy was pleasant, dumb dun, with lots and lots of one-line paragraphs. And his third trilogy (just finishing up this year) seemed a bit padded. But the middle three books were chock full of bizarre skiffy ideas, throwing the Mirror Universe, the Secret Homeworld of the Borg, and Alien Plots from Deep Time into a spicy, if not entirely coherent, gumbo. This is the third of that trilogy, and I suspect it's caviar to Trek-geeks.

and that was it. Not a particularly busy, or exciting, week in the world of reading. I'll try to be more interesting next time.