What is E. Paul Zehr reading?

This weekend's featured contributor at Writer's Read: E. Paul Zehr, author of Inventing Iron Man: The Possibility of a Human Machine.

His entry begins:

I just finished reading Into That Darkness by Steven Price. It’s a novel in the post-apocalyptic or at post-cataclysmic genre and outlines responses to the devastation and conditions on the West Coast of Canada and the USA after a major quake. After “the big one” strikes, survivors in Victoria BC on Vancouver Island cull through the wreckage looking for loved ones and reflecting on their lives all the while remaining isolated from the mainland for many days. Price is an excellent descriptive writer and carefully reveals the best and worst of human animal behavior after the crisis. I was curious to read this book as it is the first of this genre set in a city I am living in and the author is also a colleague at UVIC. I found it kind of freaky to...[read on]

Among the early praise for Inventing Iron Man:

"Back in the sixties, when I first dreamed up the concept of Iron Man, I thought, 'What if a man had a suit of armor, like the knights of old -- but modern armor that housed all sorts of miniaturized, technical weaponry? Such a man would seem to be the ultimate superhero.' At first, I didn't give much thought to what that suit of armor might mean to the man inside -- how it might affect his body and/or his brain and subtly blur the line between human and machine. But now, almost 40 years later, E. Paul Zehr has tackled that very subject. Inventing Iron Man is his fascinating vision of the real life implications of my original concept."
--Stan Lee, comic icon and creator of Iron Man

"E. Paul Zehr, surely one of the coolest of professors, has done something interesting, enlightening, and maybe just a bit quixotic; he has built a bridge between the fantasy science of superhero comics and the eyes-front innovations of real-life technological innovators. It is a primer on what's possible now and what might soon become possible in our world, and what Iron Man's been up to in his."
--Dennis O'Neil, Iron Man writer and editor

"This wonderful book lays out... the only true way to see the Iron Man -- as a prosthesis... a book that educates and delights. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did."
--from the foreword by Warren Ellis

Learn more about the book and author at the official Inventing Iron Man website.

Writer's Read: E. Paul Zehr.

--Marshal Zeringue