The Laertian Gamble by Robert Sheckley

Since someone has this book on their reading list, I thought I'd finally get round to expressing my opinion of it before I take it to the SPCA charity shop.

I've enjoyed a lot of Robert Sheckley's classic work so when I saw this Star Trek novel, I grabbed it. However either the guy can't write any more or he's hired a very, very bad ghost writer, pretty much what I also suspect of Larry Niven who used to be a favourite.

This is a DS9 story featuring a beautiful alien called Allura. [rolls eyes] ( Read more if you dare. )

Memorial cars

While I'm here (and LJ is), this is something else I've been meaning to ask about.

A couple of months ago I was following a car with a man's full name on the rear window and something in a curving line above it which I couldn't read till I got closer. In a very fancy script it said, "In loving memory of". OK, that was weird, but then a couple of weeks ago I saw another car with a much more readable sans-serif "In memory of" followed by another name. Both names were fairly standard English ones FWIW.

Has anyone else seem this sort of thing and/or know anything about it? Is it a new thing or something old which has just surfaced here?

And now I'm off to a barbecue with some people from Greg's work. I hope some of the people I know relatively well are there.