Author: admin

“Electronic books are junk. To hell with them,” he said slamming his palm against the table. “It’s fake, it’s stupid! Goddamnit, it’s wrong! A book is a book!” Ray Bradbury

 

I love books printed on dead trees. You don’t need any gadget or batteries, and you can read them with the sun shining full on the page. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my childhood reading in the fork of an apple tree or under the blankets with a torch. I love the smell of them. I love running my eye along the shelf and choosing. I love rummaging through a box of them at a flea market. I have over a thousand books at home, and how I love libraries!

But in spite of this, and in spite of my vast respect for Ray Bradbury, I disagree with him. A book doesn’t have to be ink on paper.

It’s not so much the practical advantages, like saving money (provided you read a lot) or carrying a whole library around in your flight bag. Paper or ereader, what matters is the words.

Think of a childhood memory. I’m thinking of a Christmas tree in the front room of the house I grew up in. The room lights are off, and the tree lights are on, and the smell is magical. The tree is at nearly four times my height, which means I was less than three years old.

Go ahead and think of your own memory. Take a moment to get it clear.

Consider this. Practically every atom in your body and changed since then. (I believe the exception is the atoms in your bones.) So what makes me me? What makes you you? Whatever you are, it’s not the atoms in your body.

In the same way, ink and paper don’t make a book. The essential thing is the power those squiggles have to carry you to Mars or the Diskworld, or to let Plato speak, long after his bones have turned to dust. Put enough good thoughts into good words, and you’ve got a book. It doesn’t matter how the words are stored. Parchment scrolls are real books. Paper books are real books. Ebooks are real books.

And it’s much harder for Montag to burn them.

Our SF anthology, “The Dodo Dragon and other stories” will be on sale as an eBook from Monday 23rd April – Shakespeare’s birthday.

Nine quirky stories to entertain you from an off-beat imagination of Sheila Crosby.

“If you like tongue in cheek retro sci-fi, often filled with bad puns, much in the vein of those 50s & 60s anthologies, with a twist of Ellison, Sheckley or Silverberg, then you’ll find stuff in here you’ll like…had me laughing out loud on several occasions.” Matt Kelland

“Almost all the stories are witty and amusing. Many of them with surprise endings, a talent that Sheila often uses in her stories. Some of the stories are set in the Canary Islands where Sheila lives and provides with a setting that isn’t seen in too many stories. 

Scream Quietly was my favorite story in the book. That story is told in letters from an anguished mother who faces an unusual predicament, one of the stories with a surprise twist at the end.”  Hank Quense 

 

Full details at http://dragontree.sheilacrosby.com/blog/the-dodo-dragon-and-other-stories/

We are currently installing and testing software to support the shopping cart.  You can’t buy anything yet, but we expect to be open for business shortly.

Here’s the cover design for “A breathtaking Window on the Universe: A guide to the Roque de Los Muchachos observatory”. I think it’s well up to Eco-geek‘s usual high standards.

The book should be on sale in the late summer or autumn of 2012.  It explains why the observatory is on La Palma and how a telescope and its instruments work, and gives details of each telescope, plus many anecdotes and over 60 photos.

You can read more about the island of La Palma and its remarkable skies at Star Island.

Welcome!  Dragon Tree is just getting started, and we have nothing on sale yet. “The Dodo Dragon and other Stories” should be on sale in February, and “A Breathtaking Window on the Universe: A guide to the observatory at the Roque de Los Muchachos” should be on sale later in the year.