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right Here, but if you have to ask how much....

Round out your geek's collection of O'Reilly books with perhaps the most influential scientific book of all time: Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica! Price varies widely with condition and provenance, but $175,00 - $200,000 wouldn't be surprising. If you're not feeling quite so flush, you might try a first edition of Darwin's Origin of Species instead, $40,000 at B and L Rootenberg Rare Books. They also carry a copy of the Principia, by the way. For more sellers, try a search at abebooks.com

Having been a fan for a long time, I am depressed that most, if not all, of his books are actually out of print and most easily gotten through second-hand book shops or the magnificient ABE Books.

Brunner wrote a lot, but his books are hard to get. Shockwave Rider is probably the most available novel, followed by Stand On Zanzibar.

(Zanzibar and the wonderful The Sheep Look up are part of Brunner's Brunner's "American Trilogy", which ends with The Jagged Orbit. A friend of mine recommends The Whole Man, unread by me.)

It is a shame that Brunner, one of Britain's finest and most prolific writers, died recently with little publicity. Why is it that sf writers -- Dick, Zelazny, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Van Vogt, and that British bloke who died last year -- tend to fade away rather than burn out?

It's also annoying how the geniuses tend to die prematurely, while tired old hacks like Arthur C. Clarke and Greg Bear are still on this planet. :)

You could've bought it through half.com. There are paperback copies of the book available for as little as $1.50.
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You can find affordable links to it at www.abebooks.com from anywhere between $7-$25.

You could also try Alibris - I have no experience with them myself...and, of course, you can always order through the link given above for Amazon.CO.UK.

I've enjoyed Ken McLeod's other books but haven't read Star Fraction yet.

yeah yeah - with all the 'new media' outlets and the old media scrapping for market share of eyeballs they are really cranking up the bullcrap factor - just like the number of dead in Venezuala, just pick a number bigger than your competing network ("50,000 dead" - now that ought to sell papers and get the ratings back up, jeez) and hang onto your liability disclaimer ("this news report is for entertainment purposes only, we are not responsible for the accuracy of any content, we're just passing on whatever juicy gossip we hear").

I've been making deals over the Internet for about 2 years and maybe I'm just careful but of all the eBay stuff (a Bandai FriskyTom! Gimme gimme!!) and cheapbyte CD's and about 10 books from Book Exchange and deal arranged on mailing lists - maybe *2* have gone wrong: one was an Error 404 on tigerdirect.com last xmas trying to buy a Lego Mindstorm (ok, so just drive the 5 miles to ToysR'us) and once a guys sent me the wrong signal generator - that's IT. I'm actually amazed at the integrity of the people I've delt with considering the opportunity for wire fraud.

Boojum

• How to build a working digital computer
  by Edward Alcosser
  ISBN: 0810407485

• The Tinkertoy Computer and Other Machinations
  by A. K. Dewdney
  ISBN: 071672491X

I have also seen computers built from plastic or wood (the Digi-Comp 1) and Lego (not just the case, but actual computation units.)