Reading in April 2011

[Sonja Ravenscroft]

Sorry, but I've given up trying to read the Forever Machine-not because of any content, not because of any themes, but because (and I RARELY say this about any book)-for a Hugo Award winner it's pretty poorly written IMO. That's the first time I've EVER said that about a Hugo Award winner. There are other's I haven't cared for due to characters, story, ect-but it's a very "simply" written book-I don't know how else to describe it. So "simple" in that it simply fails to keep my attention.

So now I'm onto Heinlein's "Double Star" which I am enjoying immensely.

So Hobbit, you wanted to know my feedback-there it is. Is this the reason that it is so "derided" as you alluded to?

 

[Hobbit]

Well, Hobbit, to answer part of your question, I am LABOURING through "The Forever Machine"-not that it's a hard read so much as its....well....how do I say it....it has a hard time keeping my interest....

It has dated quite badly, IMO. I've got it in it's original magazine version, 'They'd rather be right' as well as in its re-edited book form, The Forever Machine.

Mark

 

[Ropie]

Jealous, jealous, jealous. Mine doesn't even ship until next week sometime.

Patience, young lemur If you've ever lived in the UK you may be familiar with wartime TV dramas (of which there are many!) - at the moment Blackout is reading a bit like one of these but the way Willis builds tension and uses characters is better than just about any writer IMO, so I'm already in the grip of it.

 

[Sonja Ravenscroft]

It has dated quite badly, IMO. I've got it in it's original magazine version, 'They'd rather be right' as well as in its re-edited book form, The Forever Machine.

Mark

I'm sure at the time it was maybe quite something different, but now? Yes quite dated and I just couldn't finish it lol.

 

[Erfael]

Connie Willis - Blackout. Excellent, excellent, excellent

Actually, just got the note a week early that this shipped today. Should be able to have it done in time for May.

 

[nquixote]

Finished Infoquake. Wow, I blew through that one! It was such an easy, fun read! The downside of that is that the world wasn't very fleshed out...it was quite sketchy. I had no idea what anyone did for work who wasn't involved with the software industry. And I had NO idea of what anyone did for fun, because the characters were working feverishly throughout the whole book! But I definitely liked the characters, especially Jara, who was by far my favorite. I'll be getting the sequels for sure.

 

[nquixote]

Next up: something else I picked up off my dad's massive sci-fi bookshelf...

 

[suciul]

Finished Infoquake. Wow, I blew through that one! It was such an easy, fun read! The downside of that is that the world wasn't very fleshed out...it was quite sketchy. I had no idea what anyone did for work who wasn't involved with the software industry. And I had NO idea of what anyone did for fun, because the characters were working feverishly throughout the whole book! But I definitely liked the characters, especially Jara, who was by far my favorite. I'll be getting the sequels for sure.

That's the problem when you take an aspect of today's society, raise it to power n and make it dominant - eg the tech bubble world of the late 90's and to a lesser extent the tech world of today - the world seems one dimensional because it is. As for entertainment there is a virtual sex parlor in one the novels (may be in 2nd or 3rd though) where Jara goes to fantasize, while on the asteroids there is a lot of drug culture we see

This being said the series is excellent and the last novel is the best by far - so much so that I wish the series would have started there. Natch's arc is also a little unusual for sf and it is in the third novel where we really see that and that is a large part why Geosynchron transcended the mundane setting of the series and went into high-class sf territory

As for Foundation's edge - this used to be a heavy favorite of mine in the early 90's when i got seriously into sf but like with stuff like Star Wars or Star Trek the overdoing of the series especially in the three novels that brought robots and empire together written by Bear, Brin and Benford, got me tired of it. The characters though are probably Asimov's best this side of Hari Seldon, Elijah Bayley and R. Daneel

back on topic, I got another huge asap The Immorality Engine by G. Mann - June UK, Sept US - 3rd Newburry/Hobbes which concludes the first part of the 6 volume series and I've read about 1/3 and is excellent stuff fulfilling the promise of Affinity and Osiris...

 

[beniowa]

Next up: something else I picked up off my dad's massive sci-fi bookshelf...

I've always loved that cover. Much better than the re-issue cover that replaced it.

 

[ArtNJ]

Eh, kind of embarassing, but I read the YA stuff my 9 year old reads, mostly just to be able to talk to her about it, but apparently I have a soft spot for it as well. The Search for Wondla struck me as pretty darn good for YA science fiction. Not that its worth a read if you dont have a kid, its not, but its pretty good for YA sci-fi.

 

[Loerwyn]

Eh, kind of embarassing, but I read the YA stuff my 9 year old reads, mostly just to be able to talk to her about it, but apparently I have a soft spot for it as well. The Search for Wondla struck me as pretty darn good for YA science fiction. Not that its worth a read if you dont have a kid, its not, but its pretty good for YA sci-fi.

I don't think it's YA if a nine year old is reading it...

 

[spaziocain]

YA is a pretty nebulous term; often it's used inaccurately to include children's literature -- not worth getting hung up on.

I'm still reading The Dervish House by Ian McDonald. It's a book set in near future Istanbul on the verge of a nano-technology revolution, and it follows five or six character over a five or six day period. I'm finding the book absolutely brilliant, but it's not a book you (or I, in any case) can read quickly; it's densely written and tightly focused (in terms of time span and setting), but jumps around a lot (in terms of point of view characters and plot threads). I'm about halfway through, and I will finish it soon if I can put some time away this weekend to read.

 

[ArtNJ]

I don't think it's YA if a nine year old is reading it...

496 pages, and the bad guy rips a heart out and eats it...definitely not a kiddy book, my 9 year old is mature for her age, dont mind her reading an appropriate YA novel. That is why I read it too.

 

[Loerwyn]

496 pages, and the bad guy rips a heart out and eats it...definitely not a kiddy book, my 9 year old is mature for her age, dont mind her reading an appropriate YA novel. That is why I read it too.

Just looked it up; It's children's fantasy, not YA. YA is for 16-21 (Roughly), whereas the details for that book are 9-12. Am I being pedantic? Yes, very.

It actually looks slightly steampunk-y.

 

[PogiRunner]

Just finished Endymion, the 3rd in Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos. I was a bit apprehensive about starting this as a number of people have expressed disappointment after the impressiveness of the first 2 novels.

Well I have to day I enjoyed this immensely, at least as much as Fall of Hyperion! Probably also it's been a while since I read the first two, so it was good to be back in this world and read about some of the characters again. I loved the different planets the travellers go through as they journey through the farcasters, and the character development was interesting and well done too. (Rhadamanth Nemes is such a full on killing machine; would be a good entry for a tough character in some of the other threads that come up).

Very much looking forward to The Rise of Endymion now.

One of my favorite series, very thought provoking. I am glad you are enjoying the books also.

 

[ArtNJ]

Just looked it up; It's children's fantasy, not YA. YA is for 16-21 (Roughly), whereas the details for that book are 9-12. Am I being pedantic? Yes, very.

It actually looks slightly steampunk-y.

Amazon screws up age ranges all the time. I'm pretty sure only a moron would give a book where a sapient gentle creature gets it heart ripped out and eaten an age range of 9-12. The reviews put the grade school range a bit higher than that. That said, I didnt realize that YA was technically 16-21 when I (mis)used the term; actually, I'm somewhat surprised, when I was 16 I read 100% adult sci-fi and fantasy.

 

[suciul]

I finished The Immorality Engine by George Mann and it was excellent and a fitting end to the first arc of the Newbury/Hobes series, while it promises much for the second arc.

Before adding my mini-review, i will only add that I enjoy so much this series that despite having both White Luck warrior and ready to start on Greg Egan's The Clockwork Rocket, I put everything aside to read this when I got a copy.

"The third Newbury and Hobbes adventure starts dramatically with a funeral of a favorite character and then goes back some time to its real start several months after the end of the Osiris Ritual to recount the events that led to said funeral.

The Immorality Engine has the same structure as the first two books - seemingly unrelated mysteries, this time the murder of a high-class jewel thief and an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria - which bring Maurice Newbury out from his opium descent after the events and especially the denouement of the Osiris Ritual which made him question everything about his life, job...

His stout friend Inspector Bainbridge and Newbury's assistant Veronica Hobbes - who intuits that she is at least partly the reason for his descent into full addiction, though unlike us, she does not know exactly why, but things are trickier as we learn during the novel - try desperately to "bring him back" and finally the case of the jewel-thief and later the deeper mysteries involved do so.

The usual combination of great character interaction, inventiveness and a combination of villains that tops everything to-date plus a lot of moral ambiguities make the Immorality Engine a great culmination of the series to date ending its first arc on a superb note.

And of course the twist ending - though to be honest I saw that a while back, but still it made for a great last chapter - promises a lot to come and makes the next book an even bigger asap.

I will add the full FBC review closer to the publication date (June UK, Sept US) while for now I urge you to read the first two books for an excellent series that combines the best of Sherlockian mysteries, Bond secret agent stuff and steampunk"

 

[nquixote]

Foundation's Edge is pretty lame. The first two Foundation books were excellent, the third was OK. But the fourth just doesn't really add anything. And the fact that Asimov depicts rapidly advancing technology in the 4th book, although cool, kind of makes the whole "ten-thousand-year collapse-of-the-Roman-empire" backdrop seem a bit silly. He should have taken these ideas and just put them in a new series, instead of trying to shoehorn them into the Foundation framework.

 

[suciul]

Foundation's Edge is pretty lame. The first two Foundation books were excellent, the third was OK. But the fourth just doesn't really add anything. And the fact that Asimov depicts rapidly advancing technology in the 4th book, although cool, kind of makes the whole "ten-thousand-year collapse-of-the-Roman-empire" backdrop seem a bit silly. He should have taken these ideas and just put them in a new series, instead of trying to shoehorn them into the Foundation framework.

If you feel this way after Foundation's edge than see how you would feel if/when you read the 3 last Foundation books Bear/Brin/Benford books that try to wrap everything up, including a very silly explanation for Trevize's powers of intuition

Spoiler

essentially the way you always find someone to win 10 50-50 games of chance in a row; pick 1028 people and play a 10 round one-on-one elimination contest; the winner has by default won 10 rounds

Back on topic, I read the first 1/3 of Greg Egan Clockwork Rocket and this one is sense of wonder and strangeness galore - incidentally this book shows how to do strange (their biology allows modification of body at more-or-less will, they reproduce by the mother dividing into two pairs of twin boy/girls which then form another reproductive pair, though there is an occasional solo as well as the occasional mixing of lines, so their families consist essentially of older asexual men caring for the young generations) but still familiar aliens (families, jobs, science, industry) among many, many other goodies (the physics of the universe is explained best by the author on his webpage).

"Real" sf - in the original sense of wonder, what-if the universe worked that way - just does not get any better

 

[nquixote]

Put down Foundation's Edge. Just could not take any more degradation of the once-fresh Foundation universe.

Dang, that's two books I've put down in the course of two months (the other being John Meaney's Paradox). I hope I'm not losing my taste for sci-fi. Maybe I should take a break for a while.

In the meantime, I started When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger.

About a quarter of the way through (it's short). Wow, this is great! Perfect noir styling, incredibly three-dimensional protagonist, engaging plot, and better treatment of a "non-Western" culture than Paolo Bacigalupi or Ian McDonald could ever dream of pulling off (in part because it has evolved away from, rather than back towards, pre-1900s culture).

This makes four truly excellent authors I've discovered this year so far (Sterling, Wooding, Edelman, Effinger), in addition to some other solid ones (Schroeder, Bester, Rucker, Varley). Despite those couple misfires, I'm really on a roll!