I just finished The Great Hydration by Bayley. Regarded as minor, even by Bayley himself, but I thought the novel was an effective satire on enterpreneurial venture capitalism in the emerging world. The novella has palpable sadness and anger. **** stars
Finished "The soul of a robot" by Barrington J. Bayley...I must confess that I had high expectations and the book didn't quite meet them. It was a quick read and fast-paced, but not very deep in the speculative ideas
It's a quirky book and it came in at just the right level of oddness for my tastes, probably wouldn't appeal to all though. I agree with Mr Frayn - it's a lot of fun and has a great central character, but I'd put it in amongst the top ten best books I've read so far this year.
Having said that, I'm nearing the end of Connie Willis' Doomsday Book, which I'm sure will be a front runner for my favourite read of the year. It's a bit repetitive in the usual Willis way but is outstanding in all other respects.
I am now reading Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh for the book group. I can't tell if I have read it before or not. It is part of the Alliance-Union series. These books are standalone but they are in the same universe and deal with the conflicts between the merchants and the company. This book falls under the heading of Company Wars.
Here is a link to the page at her site that lists them by sub-groups and rough order.
I have read many of them and they often have the same families and ships, stations and planets in them, so I may have read this in 80s or I may not. I am just starting so I may be able to figure it out once I get further into it. Anyway I am glad to be reading one of her books, she is one of the best, and a favorite of mine.
Doomsday Book has a dreadful title but is a fantastic (if rather bleak) book.
Very surprised you've not read Downbelow if you're a Cherryh fan, Ficus. Nebula and Hugo award winner, more straightforward than a lot of her later work. I liked it a lot. In my list of favourite space operas. (And yes, there are links to other Alliance books!)
What redeemed this whole plot for me, however, was the fact that Chris did ultimately give her the boot. I wasn't really expecting that, right up until the end when Chris smokes all of his opposition and drives off into the sunset, "accelerating into the curve".
Chris and Carla's relationship actually reminds me of some of the political chats I had with my ex-girlfriend, who was Swedish (albeit a lot less spiky ... I knew enough to keep my mouth shut most of the time). Making Carla scandinavian was an inspired choice- Most of them are true believers in their brand of soft-edged socialism. If I mentioned politics I could be sure of hearing about how terrible private healthcare and schooling was, and how schools should place more of an emphasis on mutual development and progress rather than encouraging competition and entrepeneurial spirit.
To be honest, I found even less plausible the relationship between Chris and his father-in-law, Eric.
On the one hand Eric is supposed to be this critic of the hypercapitalism that Shorn Associates represents, and yet he is willing to let Chris foot the bill for his continued stay in the UK. As Chris astutely points out, its perverse that Eric continues to live in the slum when unlike the other occupants he always has the option of opting out and returning to his welfare-state 'scandinavian wonderland' roots.
Morgan could have done more, IMO, to explore this hypocritical facet of Eric's character. How does he resolve this contradiction? (Apart from drinking blended whiskey?).
A final comment on the political commentary in 'Market Forces'. It's actually quite easy to tune out, perhaps thanks to the sheer coolness factor of so much of the coporate carnage which goes on. Morgan may intellectually dissaprove, but his fiction belies the fact that he does not understand the dynamics of the whole thing on a more visceral level. He writes genuinely good splatterpunk violence.
I've given this book to corporate bankers and others who have enjoyed it. Perhaps they read it in a way that Morgan didn't quite intend, but that's OK too.
If occassionally the anti-capitalist slant does begin to grate, the solution is always to pick up a John Ringo book from Baen, or something from Peter F. Hamilton (like the Greg Mandel novels ... recently re-released with snazzy new covers, I see).
I'm giving Doomsday Book a try now too. Connie Willis is GoH at WorldCon next week, so I feel I need to do my share. I'm only afraid I'll have trouble getting into it due to all the preparations for travel and all the distractions of the con. I've only ever read Passages by her, which I did enjoy.
I'm giving Doomsday Book a try now too. Connie Willis is GoH at WorldCon next week, so I feel I need to do my share. I'm only afraid I'll have trouble getting into it due to all the preparations for travel and all the distractions of the con. I've only ever read Passages by her, which I did enjoy.
Not quite. It is Richard's third book that was published (after Altered Carbon & Broken Angels and before Woken Furies) though Richard does say that it was one of the first books he wrote and took a long time developing and rewriting.
I loved Passage but Doomsday Book has real depth to it.
You're right, I think, that 'Market Forces' in it's final incarnation wasn't his first novel. However, I think that the short story and screenplay that it was based on may precede his other published novels. So the concept is an early one, at least.
Very surprised you've not read Downbelow if you're a Cherryh fan, Ficus. Nebula and Hugo award winner, more straightforward than a lot of her later work. I liked it a lot. In my list of favourite space operas. (And yes, there are links to other Alliance books!)
I may have Hobbit, its too soon to tell. Pell, the Norway, the Quens and Signy Mallory are all familiar, but it could be from other books.
I have almost 50 Cherryh books. One of the reason I started my DB was because I had lots of books by certain authors, and they were scattered all over, and I wasn't even sure what I had, let alone what I had read and what I hadn't.
If I read it, it was over 20 years ago, so it may have also slipped my mind with so many in the series that are similar.
Newton's Wake - A space opera by Ken MacLeod
Fun read, with a lot of ideas and some action. However this book could have been a lot more - most of ideas and plot lines only scketched or hinted, and the ending is kind of underwelming. I guess MacLeod put "space opera" into the title as a disclaimer.
However there is absolutely brilliant verses in the book -very minor spoiler:
Humans - The Great Old Ones
Do you ever feel in your caves of steel
The chill of an ancient fear ?
When you pass this way do you shadder and say:
A human once walked here ?
They cut off our heads but we are not dead
and we're bound by an ancient vow:
That does not sleep which dreams in the deep
We're the Great Old Ones now!
When the stars are right there will come a night
when thunder and lightning dawn.
You'll hear the guns of the Great Old Ones
rip the heads of your zmombie spawn
We'll stalk you through hell and we'll cast a spell
down your twisted logic lanes
We'll come back and fight when the stars are right
We'll come back and eat your brains!
In august, I've read Dinosaur Planet by Anne McCaffrey which was ok but nothing special about it. Guess also I will have to read the next one since the end didn't felt like it was ending... oh well.
I finally managed to read Earth's Last Citadel by C.L. Moore & Henry Kuttner, which I did not enjoy anywhere near as much as I expected to. I also finished Rich Horton's Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition, which was a strong debut for Horton; it is certainly a better "Year's Best" than Jonathan Strahan's Best Short Novels: 2006. And it's nice to finally have Alastair Reynold's noted novella, "Understanding Space and Time." The anthology can be purchased electronically from Fictionwise.
Sorry you were dissappointed. I got a big kick out of how it jumped from standard, shotgun paced, wartime pulp SF fare, to a Merritesque, SF flavoured fantasy of the far future (with a hint of the Wizard of Oz) in a little over a hundred pages.
I can absolutely see what you're saying about "Market Forces." I'm with you in not understanding why Erik was willing to accept Chris' money, or why they didn't move back to Sweden.
I think one of my problems with Chris and Carla is that I've never understood how married couples that fight all the time stay together in real life. I know it happens, and I guess it isn't rare, but it's outside my experience and I'd never put up with it. I'm married to a person with much different opinions that mine, but when we talk about them it's always civil, never yelling. If I were going through that all the time I sure wouldn't last 1 year in my marriage, much less 10.
I agree that the ending was pretty amazing. I thought it was going to be predictable, but it really surprised me. And the action, as always from Morgan, is so gripping! He really knows how to write so that you *feel* it, vicereally. And like I said, considering that his political sympathies were clear, he did a good job balancing his perspectives.
I was particularly stunned when Chris attacked the wife beater next door to Erik and Erik & Carla responded like he'd done something horrible. They were willing to let the abuse continue, and didn't want to get their hands dirty. All they would do is disapprove. He actually did something and put a stop to it. It was a really powerful moment for me, and did point up a problem with some liberal ways of dealing with the world.
I think one of my problems with Chris and Carla is that I've never understood how married couples that fight all the time stay together in real life. I know it happens, and I guess it isn't rare, but it's outside my experience and I'd never put up with it.
I think Chris and Carla's relationship is really a lot more deeply dysfunctional than it appears at first glance. At the opening of the novel Morgan writes them as having a really idyllic relationship, and maybe because of this when the cracks become obvious it seemed a bit abrupt to me.
Carla essentially remains the same person throughout the novel, whereas Chris either changes or 'finds himself' depending on your perspective about who he really is. Was there ever a time he genuinely didn't like his job, or was he deceiving Carla and himself by pretending to be secretly above it all?
I'm not really surprised that they last as long as they do together, in the sense that I'm sure most of us are familliar with people who have stayed in abusive or mutually destructive relationships for longer than is healthy. For some people the abnormal can become normal...
His relationship with Liz Linshaw was also a little baffling. I can understand how me might have lusted after her, but Liz's character was kind of non-existent. She was this characterless vamp, with no explanation given for why she and Chris should have any kind of emotional bond.
After a couple of years of being intrigued by Cordwainer Smith and a couple of months waiting for The Rediscovery of Man to arrive by post, last night I finally sat down to read the first story in it, No, No, Not Rogov. A strange tale inspired I think by the usual Cold War paranoia though obviously the product of quite a scientific yet mystical mind. First impressions were very pleasing and I want to read more.
A book to make you think ‘what-if,’ a pleasant way to while away hours whilst sitting on the beach on your summer holiday, (and definitely made me think what’s out there!), very entertaining if you can stand the distance, but not one to push the genre forward too hard. A book not for the weak of arm, without stamina, or those who find ‘scientists at work’ dull. For me, at the end of it I could say that it is typical of what good SF makes you do - makes you think. And for that reason its bestseller status deserves to be repeated outside Germany.
Dropped Stross Glasshouse in the middle. Boring and uninspiring, nothing like Accelerando. However it may have something to do with my bias against Stross due to some of his controversial political statement on usenet lately.
s271: I, too, have been amused/bemused at some of Stross' recent political statements; however, I think he does an admirable job of leaving them out of his fiction, thank goodness!
I read Glasshouse a few weeks ago, and enjoyed it much, but you're right: it's doesn't hold a candle to Accelerando. I'm really looking forward to the next novel, Juggernaut, which will be a true sequel to Accelerando.
Edit:
Incidentally, I don't blame you for dropping a book that is not working for you. I will not hesitate to go to something else if a novel is boring me out of my mind, which is what I did to these books, and have never looked back: Moving Mars, by Greg Bear, Battlefield Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard, The Garden of Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke & Gentry Lee, etc.
Anyway I am glad to be reading one of her books, she is one of the best, and a favorite of mine.
