Russia is complaining that it can't meet its space station obligations because of cash shortfalls. Russia's participation is even more important to the station now that the shuttle is offline. Read the full story.

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." That's one of the great opening lines in speculative fiction -- or hell, any kind of fiction.

It immediately evokes mystery, drama, adventure and an entire Old West mythology. It doesn't merely tug at the mind -- it rends. It compels. It forces you to read on to the next sentence ... and the next ... and the next.

It's from The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger, a novel that draws upon many traditions -- the western, science fiction, fantasy, horror -- to create something unique. Something that King himself would later describe as his "Jupiter" -- the creative giant that looms over his solar system of work. He wrote the first version of this book early in his career -- just after scribing Carrie.

I got some great news in my inbox yesterday -- Audible.com is now carrying all four of Stephen King's Dark Tower novels as unabridged (yes, unabridged!) audio books.

The books have been out in audio format for a few years but I never picked them up, and once I became an Audible subscriber, I was occupied with other King titles (like The Talisman, The Black House, Bag of Bones, and Dreamcatcher), all of which are unabridged, and most of which weigh in at 20+ hours. For a commuter like me, having twenty hours of a much-loved book available on my iPod translates directly into twenty-hours of highway sanity.