Mike's Pick of the Week:Accelerando by Charles Stross

Charles Stross takes the cyberpunk genre and flips it on it's head. Accelerando follows three generations of the Macx clan as they effectively become post human. You have people with amazing implants, lobsters uploaded onto the internet, alien high speed internet routers in deep space and floating cities on gas giants. It's an idea a minute book with some very interesting characters and settings. It's like Neuromancer on steroids.

Julian's Pick of the Week:Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
This summer looks like it will be the summer for comic book movies. Iron Man blew away expectations and The Hulk has gotten very positive response. This week we get another treat as Guillermo Del Toro brings Hellboy to the big screen once more. From what I've seen so far, I'm very excited and looking forward to the movie. I trust Del Toro and I think he's one of the few filmmakers that views his work on a comic book movie not as another job, but as a true labor of love. Not only that, this is most probably the last Del Toro movie we'll see in a couple of years (unless the rumored Dr. Strange happens, but that's highly doubtful) until we finally get to see The Hobbit on screen as made by the mad genius that gave us Pan's Labyrinth.

Erin's Pick of the Week:Text Messaging

I think that most of the people I know use it and love it. I mean, what other device lets you sneakily have entire conversations while you're, in theory, working? How else can you nag from afar, tell secrets without fear of being overheard, ask for on-the-spot analysis of a situation? That's right. Text messaging. Smaller than a computer screen, typically funnier than lengthier conversations due to brevity, portable, easily able to be slid into a pocket should you, perhaps, supposedly be doing other things. How else would I wake up to the cryptic message "panda pants"?

Rich's Pick of the Week:Criminal Vol 3 Dead And Dying TP

I mean, you really should be reading Criminal in floppies to get the interesting guest-written articles on the love of crime films with the beautiful Sean Philips paintings accompanying them. But I can't blame you if you're a trade person - it's generally the way to go - and you won't be disappointed in the latest Criminal volume from Philips and Ed Brubaker. This is a short one, collecting just three issues but they're probably the best three issues of the series so far. The three stories are each done-in-ones but interconnected in the most twisted and interesting ways.

Larry's Pick of the Week:Boomsday, by Christopher Buckley:

RNB e-i-c Mike Collins and I were talking about how I just don't have time to read fiction anymore. My thought was that after producing same all day, the last thing I wanted to do was relax with something made-up, so I'd been reading histories and biographies and such. A day or so after our conversation, it occurred to me that after spending all day producing some fiction for folks to enjoy, I would very much appreciate it if Carl Hiassan or Christopher Buckley sat down and read something of mine.

So I picked up Boomsday, another in Buckley's long line of solid base hits. His style? Pleasing. His observations? Spot-on. This one's about what happens when a blogger accidentally hits on how to make Social Security last through the upcoming retirement of the Baby Boomers: "Voluntary Transitioning," offering tax breaks and incentives to folks who kill themselves at age 70, thereby removing themselves from the rolls. The appeal of this plot is that the deal isn't presented as anything other than a joke to get people talking... the bulk of the novel has the main characters dealing with a crazed and put-upon electorate who take the joke seriously.

An eminently satisfying read, all thanks to Mike Collins.