Reading in April 2006

[ArthurFrayn]

I finished Ubik, which I'd have to rank as my favorite PKD book to date.

Mine as well-it's the one on my Top 10.

The other is probably Now Wait For Last Year.
Parts of it just pop into my head like a song, from time to time.

 

[Jack]

I'm starting Old Man's War for the Book Club. Looking forward to a good sci-fi yarn.

 

[Ropie]

Just finishing up Iain M Banks' Excession. Very good in parts but unnecessarily fragmented and overly complicated by way too many different (but similar) Ship-Mind characters. Hopefully I'll be starting Old Man's War in a day or two.

 

[Ouroboros]

I'm a couple of chapters into Gridlinked. Very fine SF espionage and action so far, there's a sleek, minimalist feel to it, Asher has avoided any unecessary infodumps or wibbling and the result is that the plot takes off running from the start. I'm curious as to whether the pace is maintained.

Can't help but compare Gridlinked with Iain M. Banks' culture novels so far, and indeed Simmon's Hyperion cantos. Banks in particular has staked out such a ferocious claim in far-future SF that anything involving AIs and covert operatives instantly makes me measure it up against the likes of Use of weapons and Consider Phlebas (unfair, perhaps, in the sense that Banks' culture novels themselves owe a huge debt to what went before). While I'm a confirmed Banks' fan, Asher compares favourably in that occassionally Banks comes across as a little too didactic for my taste.

 

[Hobbit]

I'm a recent convert to Neal's stuff and working through it myself. What I've read so far I've really liked, and yes the pace seems to be maintained.

Just sad that Bujold's books aren't easy to get in the UK. Try second hand or the internet? Loved Mirror Dance, though you need to have read the earlier stuff to get a real idea of the implications.

The exchange rate between the UK and the US is very favourable for us Brits at the moment.....

Hobbit

 

[Ouroboros]

I'll probably get it on the web, alright. But I need to give my credit card a few weeks to recover at the moment ...

They're repackaging the Vorkosigan novels in omnibus editions, starting at the beginning. So the first six or so books are becoming more common, and the last few books are likewise common enough in that they haven't been in print that long. The ones in the middle are proving harder to get (although you're right, they're all hard to find over here).

 

[Eperitos]

But I need to give my credit card a few weeks to recover at the moment ...

Christ, I need to do that too.

Anyway, I recently finished Old Man's War by John Scalzi, although oddly enough not for the book club (I've been super-busy of late and haven't had the time to come here). Thought it was ok but nothing special.

Also Finished GRRM's Dying of the Light and thought it was great. I was expecting to be dissapointed, because it has got some bad reviews on amazon, but I really enjoyed this one. I was always baffled as to why GRRM was not that popular before ASoIaF and this one only furthers my puzzlement.

 

[s271]

Just finished Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross.
Nice Lovecraftian concpiracy-techno-mistic-horror-sf. The plot is very good, but I was not quite fond of the langadge. Too many too long sentences for my teste. There was also some suspension of disbelief about the key element of the plot. Worth reading, but I likde Accelerando more.

 

[tdeanatoz@yahoo]

I agree with you about THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES, I did not think it would ever end. ACCELERANDO, I thought, was much better; I believe it's a near-lock for the Best Novel Hugo.

I just finished a few old van Vogt titles, SLAN and THE WAR AGAINST THE RULL. I preferred RULL to SLAN, mostly because RULL made more sense and progressed in a smoother way.

I'm going over to create a new A.E. VAN VOGT thread to post a message about a long-awaited sequel to SLAN.

 

[Archren]

In the category of: "Not Hard SF by any means but funny as hell," I just finished reading "Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings" by Christopher Moore. It's like Hitchhiker's Guide for whale biologists. If you've ever seen a Discovery Channel documentary on whales, you will most likely enjoy this book. Again, the actual SF part of the story isn't rigorous at all, but it's sure imaginative.

I'd never read any of Christopher Moore's books before, but this is tempting me to go out and buy his entire back-list.

 

[Luke_B]

I'm a couple chapters into Justina Robson's Living Next Door to the God of Love. Heady stuff so far, but that's what I expected. I haven't really engaged with it yet, but it took me a while to get into Natural History.

 

[Hobbit]

There's a very interesting interview with Justina in this month's Locus, Luke. Evidently a lot of Living Next Door to the God of Love is sort-of biographical - women in midlife crisis type scenario. (and doesn't that sound like chick-lit!? I know it's not, though. )

Nice lady too. Met her briefly at WorldCon in Glasgow.

Hobbit

 

[Jack]

Just finished Scalzi's Old Man's War. It was good! I'm not very well-read in science fiction, but I enjoyed this story all around. Good characters, interesting concept, neat-o places and races, and plenty of action. I read through it so quickly (hundred pages a night for three nights) that it felt more like a novella then a novel. The book won't change the way I make butter or anything like that, but it was a good story that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Though I bet someone in the Book Club will find some nagging inconsistency that I missed somewhere.

 

[intensityxx]

I'm a couple chapters into Justina Robson's Living Next Door to the God of Love. Heady stuff so far, but that's what I expected. I haven't really engaged with it yet, but it took me a while to get into Natural History.

Wow. You got into Natural History? I tried, I really tried. Then gave up on that one.

I saw that Old Man's War was coming up in the book club, and since I need to read it before WorldCon anyway, I'm going to start it today.

 

[Archren]

I'm with you on "Natural History," Intensity. I read the whole thing, but overall, something just didn't "click" for me. I'm going to wait a while before trying Robson again, maybe my perspective will change.

I've got an order in to get most of the Hugo nominated novels from Clarksworld, so hopefully I'll be getting my copy of "Old Man's War" soon.

 

[Ropie]

Just finished Scalzi's Old Man's War. It was good!...I read through it so quickly (hundred pages a night for three nights) that it felt more like a novella then a novel.

I'm currently finding it a pleasurable read too - seems to go down easily

 

[Luke_B]

There's a very interesting interview with Justina in this month's Locus, Luke. Evidently a lot of Living Next Door to the God of Love is sort-of biographical - women in midlife crisis type scenario. (and doesn't that sound like chick-lit!? I know it's not, though. )

Nice lady too. Met her briefly at WorldCon in Glasgow.

Hobbit

Hmm, now that you mention it, it does have a chik-lit kind o' feel to it. So far, very much about a young girl trying to find herself. It's also pretty surreal at the moment. It seems to be following on from Natural History, though I wouldn't call it a sequel.

I follow her blog and she seems like a nice, funny and intelligent person. She's also got looks that certainly defy the stereotype of the nerdy sci-fi writer.

Wow. You got into Natural History? I tried, I really tried. Then gave up on that one.

Yeah. To be fair I found it a difficult, yet ultimately rewarding read. It's sort of like bran, you don't eat it for fun but you eat it to be healthy. I read the comments in the SFFBC posted about the book and it seems the metaphor holds up for others members but in a different way - it gave them the sh**s. Which I found depressing.

Interestingly, she has new series coming out, Quantum Gravity, which she describes as Big Space Opera with Girl Cyborg Detective in the SF and Fantasy Fusion, "a shameless romp". Sounds cool! Clicky the linky.

 

[odo]

I finished "Hammered" by Elizabeth Bear. I quite liked it (I'll post my comments at the book club soon).

Now I'm reading "The collapsium" by Wil McCarthy and "Old man's war" by John Scalzi. Very good both

 

[Archren]

Finished V for Vendetta, after seeing the movie. I liked it quite a bit, but I preferred Watchmen for Alan Moore's work. I've got a full review posted at my website. (And here at SFFWorld, actually.)

Now I'm starting Old Man's War, and I'm already really enjoying it. I think it'll be a quick read. And I'm trying to catch up on my magazines, currently reading the April/May Asimov's issue. That's got some good stuff in it.

 

[Ouroboros]

Gridlinked

Finished reading Gridlinked by Neal Asher, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of his catalogue (one of the joys, perhaps, of discovering an author when he is already well into his stride?).

Full review at my blog, with pics and commentary on some variant covers, but I'll stick the body of the review here as well.

---

Recently we've seen a growing awareness that British SF is undergoing something of a renaissance. Guys like Iain M. Banks and Peter F. Hamilton are obvious players in this, who are shifting huge amounts of their work. But there are others, like Neal Asher, who are successfully putting their work out there as well.

When Asher began posting at the excellent forum on http://www.sffworld.com, it worked as a very effective reminder that I needed to finally get hold of the first book in his Ian Cormac sequence, Gridlinked. While I understand that earlier material of his has been published, this seemed like the best place to start.

Gridlinked, it must be acknowledged, owes a heavy debt to a variety of SF authors, and indeed Asher has mentioned "standing on the shoulders of giants" in interviews. However, while it arguably treads very familliar ground, evoking Iain M. Banks, Asimov, Dan Simmons, Ridley Scott's Bladerunner and similar, Asher certainly demonstrates that he is more than a journeyman author, and by the end of Gridlinked I think it would be fair to say I was a convert. The approach Asher takes, heavy on splatterpunk ultra-violence and adventure, actually works well as a corollary to some of his more thoughtful contemporaries. Perhaps in the way that John Steakley's Armor can be read, several decades on, as a good adjunct to Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

Gridlinked is set in a far-future human society where travel is near-instantaneous, even across huge spans of space, thanks to 'runcible' technology. A benevolent central government administers to humanity, though with minority dissent and resistance from seperatist groups. In order to combat these and other internal threats (and handle whatever external threats present themselves, presumably) there exist 007-esque agents such as Ian Cormac.

Cormac has been 'gridlinked' for upwards of a couple of decades, giving him almost god-like powers of information access and instantaneous contact with the administering Artificial Intelligences of the Polity, and has served as an investigator and all-round troubleshooter and special envoy for longer than that. The result being that somewhere along the way, he's forgotten a lot of what it means to be human. At the opening of the novel, his handlers put him on the trail of whoever or whatever was behind the case of a sabotaged runcible which resulted in the death of 10,000 polity citizens. Cormac is simultaneously stripped of his gridlink facility, in an attempt to salvage his personality and humanity. He doesn't just have the toughest case of his career on his hands, but he's also going cold-turkey, grappling with his dependency on gridlinking and atrophied interpersonal skills.

Asher arrays against Cormac a rogue's gallery from his past- an ominous four-kilometre long behemoth alien called Dragon which blurs the line between flesh and machine, an insane vengence-crazed seperatist leader ... and perhaps most memorably, the android enforcer, Mr. Crane. Crane has, we learn, been broken to insanity by means of being directly linked to the mind of a psychotic murderer. The result is a serial-killing android two and a half-metres tall whose party trick is to hand people upside down with one brass hand while the other guts them. His unpredictability also extends to the seemingly whimsical- his fondness for 'collecting' little knick-nacks like ... er... small rubber dogs, and binoculars.

Not much else to say, beyond that I've now got to squeeze in the time to read the rest of Asher's catalogue. Shouldn't take a tremendous amount of time: His clipped, spartan prose goes down extremely easily. I don't want to say this is light reading (it isn't, necessarily...). But all the elements that Asher appears to value in his SF, I agree with. And when you're on the same wavelength as an author, you're not grappling for understanding- you're just sitting back enjoying the ride.

This is good stuff. Hook youself up to the grid...