Alastair Chisholm

Something has happened to the Colony and they have lost the knowledge and technology that they used to have. They are living an almost medieval existence with glimpses of modern technology such as batteries being in short supply. Anyone who controls old technology, has power. Cora lives in a mountain hut with a strange woman called Seleen. She is told not to go to the village or mix with people and she doesn't know why. This was fine when she was a child but now that she is 13 she's starting to ask questions. One day Seleen leaves to go to the village to get supplies and Cora is left alone. She discovers an injured boy. Instead of leaving him alone, she brings him into the hut and cares for him. And then the trouble starts....
Cora may hold the key to unlocking the knowledge behind the old technology and everyone is looking for her. The boy she saves Kai, may not be her friend after all and Seleen may actually be hiding her true identity.
First in a series. Great mix of Science fiction and medieval worlds… (mehr)

Adam-2 by Alastair Chisholm

Adam-2 is a robot that has been living alone beneath the post-apocalyptic city of Edinburgh. When Linden and Runa stumble into his cell, they are immediately seized with fear. Why? Because humans are at war with all robots, and have been for generations. The artificial intelligence that humans created to serve its wants and needs eventually turned on them and attempted to wipe them out. Society as we know it collapsed, and the few humans that survived now continue to do so by hiding their whereabouts from the ever-watchful robots.

Adam saves Linden and Runa from a robot attack, so they bring him back to the human settlement where he is treated with hatred and mistrust.
But it is clear that Adam is different from other robots. Could he perhaps even be the key to ending the terrible centuries-long war?

What I liked about Adam-2:
It challenges readers to question their assumptions and behavior.
It encourages us to examine our relationship with technology.
It exposes the pointlessness of blind prejudice and hatred.
It promotes the importance of communication with those who hold opinions which differ from our own.

What I did not like about Adam-2:
Linden is gender-neutral, and the book uses gender-neutral pronouns. This is not a problem in itself, but it does not seem to fit into the story very well for the following reason: In the book modern society is said to have collapsed, and when people are fighting for their very survival it seems unlikely that they would be much concerned with gender identities and gender-neutral pronouns. I therefore think that this kind of character would fit much better into the scenario of a more stable society in which people have the time and resources to devote thought to existential matters. Actually, this may have worked better in the author’s first science fiction novel, Orion Lost. I must also say that I found the set of gender-neutral pronouns chosen for the story distracting and artificial. They are by no means universally accepted, and are unlikely to become standard simply because, although many neologisms are coined every year in English, languages cannot be forced to change in a certain way. Of course, the book will undoubtedly receive kudos for minority inclusion.

Another small gripe I have is that the book is pretty thin on physical description of the characters, and we get almost no idea of the appearance of the main human character, Linden. I found that this makes Linden rather hard to imagine and relate to.


Overall, Adam-2 is a solid work of middle grade science fiction. It is well written and engaging. However, in my opinion it does not quite live up to the high standard set by Chisholm’s first novel, Orion Lost, which is superior in plot, narrative, and characterization.… (mehr)

Hashi are puzzles where you need to form connections between all the bubbles on a page. Each bubble shows the total number of connections to that bubble and no two bubbles can share more than two connections. Then, all connections are simple orthogonal.

I found the puzzles a lot of fun. It is engaging enough to keep you occupied and the complexity seems right. Except for the simple introductory puzzles, they can be solved in less than about 20 minutes.

The one problem I felt, was they did not get more complex. The puzzles are rated delicious (fairly trivial), pernicious, malicious and vicious. But other than the delicious puzzles being trivial, the others did not get more difficult. They increased in size which provided more places to make an error, but they did not require more thought or problem solving.

They are fun. Now that I’ve solved the book, I don’t feel I need more of them, unless they can truly become more difficult.… (mehr)