Reading in February 2014

Hobbit

Hobbit

Cat Wrangler and Reader
Staff member
Joined
Jul 16, 2001
Messages
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Here's where you tell us what SF you've been reading this month. Whether good or bad, we want to hear what you think.

Mark/Hobbit
 
I'm hanging out for Sand by Hugh Howey. Not sure if it is classified as SciFi or dystopia. But I think that's the only SF on my plate at the moment.
 
Finishing up Helix Wars... then moving on to Abaddon's Gate
 
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Just bought Dark Eden by Chris Beckett as it was the only thing in the shop that I fancied taking a chance on. It better be good..!
 
Ropie, I read Dark Eden when.it was first published and liked it a lot. I was very happy to see it win the Clarke Award.
 
Dark Eden is, in my humble opinion, just excellent. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
 
Right now I'm reading Ian Sales' Apollo Quartet--I've followed his blog for quite awhile and figured it was time to actually read the novellas. The first entry was interesting... certainly unique. I like his attention to realistic detail, but also appreciate the fact that he's willing to surround the realism with elements that are obviously speculative (or even fantastic). I'm currently working on The Eye With Which the Universe Beholds Itself.

I'm also reading Cosmos by Carl Sagan, because I never have. Doesn't need much of an introduction, this one...

Will probably also read Ready Player One sometime later this month, since it was highly recommended in the January thread!
 
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Luke_B said:
Ropie, I read Dark Eden when.it was first published and liked it a lot. I was very happy to see it win the Clarke Award.
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odo said:
Dark Eden is, in my humble opinion, just excellent. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
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Thanks both. Looking forward to this one.

Jussslic said:
The Eye With Which the Universe Beholds Itself... Cosmos... Ready Player One
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Three excellent, and very different, reads.
 
Finished Dan Simmons's The Fall of Hyperion last night. What a brilliant book.

The two Hyperion books together form one of the greatest stories I've ever read. In the first book we were given the space opera story, the cyberpunk story, the military SF story, the SF horror story...etc. as individual, separate stories. I think in my post after having finished reading it, I called it Simmons's Ode to SF (or something to that effect). In this book, The Fall of Hyperion we are again given those various sub-genre stories, but this time they are united into one massive, conceptually staggering tale. There's really nothing else like it that I can point to.

Maybe the best way to sum it up: [Kwatz!]
 
Both Endymion books are in my stacks and ready to go. Excited to read them. Of course they are battling for primacy with the other two hundred as yet unread books piled around my nightstand, and with the upstart fiftyish ebooks on my ipad. (Their contest to be read is violent and pulpy, they all dream of the day they get to join their read brethren on my own version of Parnassus: the book shelves!)
 
I love Hyperion, but subscribe to the firm belief that everything Simmons did in the rest of the series undermined the brilliance of that first book. All that mystery and gorgeous structure pooped away.
 
Luke_B said:
I love Hyperion, but subscribe to the firm belief that everything Simmons did in the rest of the series undermined the brilliance of that first book. All that mystery and gorgeous structure pooped away.
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I concur. The first one is just superb. The others... not so much.
 
I thought that the last book, The Rise of Endymion, was a real slog and a disappointing end to the series. It was almost as if Simmons had moved on but still needed to pad out another 700 page book to tell the ending.

A shame as the first three were excellent, I think I actually liked Endymion better than The Fall of Hyperion. Looking forward to whenever I re-read these.
 
odo said:
I concur. The first one is just superb. The others... not so much.
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They are the worst kind of sequels - not only unnecessary, but detract from the original. I prefer to pretend they don't exist. A bit like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or all the Star Wars prequels.
 
Luke_B said:
They are the worst kind of sequels - not only unnecessary, but detract from the original. I prefer to pretend they don't exist. A bit like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or all the Star Wars prequels.
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Yes, I was especially disappointed with The Fall of Hyperion because I was expecting something along the lines of structure and literary style of Hyperion and what I found was just a Space Opera (a good one, agreed, but nothing especial). I find it a bit ironic that it is something similar to what happened to Martin Silenus and his Cantos :)
 
I thought Ancillary Justice was average.

It had points for ideas and originality but lost it for me in the slow, plodding writing style and extra info that wasn't necessary.

Over to Jeff Vandermeer now.
 
"God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" by Kurt Vonnegut.
Though it's not expressly science fiction as much as say, "Slaughterhouse Five" might be with Tralfamadore, I like great writing in whatever genre it might originate from and Vonnegut certainly qualifies. Plus I'm currently writing satirical SF and there really isn't a better inspiration for such.
Besides, how can you go wrong with Kilgore Trout? :)
 
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