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\author{David Golombek}
\title{Summaries for Readings \#4}
\date{\today}
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{\large Radio Waves}

After getting over my initial confusion at the beginning of the story,
I really enjoyed ``Radio Waves.''  The twist on life-after-death was
well done, and the characters were interesting.  The plot twist about
the Widow and the Charlie/Danny was a bit predictable, but well
handled and led to a nice ending.  The discussion of the psychology of
the Corpsegrinder was particularly well done, as was the thoughts
about how to apologize for what can never be fully made right.

{\large Luminous}

I'm still thinking about the main premise of the story, long after
I've finished reading it.  I certainly enjoyed the whole story,
especially the thoughts about mathematics and the concept of an
entirely optical computer, but it's the main theme that has kept my
interest for the longest.  The correlation between mathematics and the
physical world has always been of interest to me, and I've thought
about different laws of physics in different areas of the universe,
but having mathematics change across space struck me as a really wierd
concept.  The Gibsonesque beginning seemed an excellent beginning, and
the story seemed very well paced overall.

{\large Mortimer Gray's History of Death}

This story was just far longer than it needed to be, and the parts of
it that I enjoyed were not the science fiction elements at all.  I
enjoyed the discussion of historical treatment of death and a bit of
the discussion of future politics, but they were spread out over a
bunch of far less interesting text.  I didn't find Mortimer very
interesting, nor his personal life.  As a short historical paper, this
could have been ok, but I didn't feel it worked well as a science
fiction story.

{\large Good News from the Vatican}

I'm still a bit unsure about the point of this story.  I suppose it
was a discussion of racism and integration in a way, but it didn't
seem to really go into enough depth with either of these.  In fact,
all I really got out of the story was a listing of various angels.
The conversations weren't particularly interesting, and I've seen much
better handling of the problems of human-robot interactions.  Maybe I
missed something, but I didn't get much out of this story.

{\large Strange Wine}

This is an example of Harlan Ellison at his best; very short, well
written, and hard hitting.  What more can be said?  I loved this
story.  I'm still not certain whether to be glad I live in such a
wonderful world compared to many possible, or despair of growing into
a world filled with such pain.  Ellison is one of my favorite authors,
and I was pleased (and surprised) to find something of his that I had
missed before.

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