The Mote in God’s Eye, Niven ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Time Machine, Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Starship Troopers, Heinlein ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Gas, Platt ⭐️⭐️ The Demolished Man, Bester ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Old Man’s War, Scalzi ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Stars My Destination, Bester ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What did you read last month, and do you have any thoughts about them you'd like to share?
Whether you talk about books you finished, books you started, long term projects, or all three, is up to you. So for those who read at a more leisurely pace, or who have just been too busy to find the time, it's perfectly fine to talk about something you're still reading even if you're not finished.
(If you're like me and have trouble remembering where you left off, here's a handy link to last month's thread.)
The Mote in God’s Eye, Niven ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Time Machine, Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Starship Troopers, Heinlein ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Gas, Platt ⭐️⭐️ The Demolished Man, Bester ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Old Man’s War, Scalzi ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Stars My Destination, Bester ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
*Al Clark* by Jonathan G Meyer - this novel is a bit campy, having cavemen and dinosaurs juxtaposed with modern humans settling a new planet after things don't quite go right with their colony ship. It mostly follows an amnesiac man who must discover his own past to save the colony from destruction. Well written and engaging, its an exciting adventure with lots of open questions left for the sequels. "Imposter" and "King of the Elves" by Philip K Dick - knocked off two more of Dick's short stories. Enjoyed both, but no particular notes. *RAMmed: A Lifeline Novel* by James Belmont (ARC) - current read 50% complete - this is a sequel to Belmont's first novel, *Lifeline*, which was about a future London serial killer manipulating a global system tied into all aspects of life called Lifeline to stalk and murder their victims. This sequel shifts the story to a courtroom where a robot inhabited by an AI is seeking its freedom from the Lifeline corporation/government. If that sound a bit like one of my favorite ST:TNG episodes "The Measure of a Man", you wouldn't be wholly incorrect, but there a lot more going on. Not only is Phoenix's sentience questioned, but the manner of its creation and what ultimately its freedom, and very existence, portends for humanity.
Finished Dungeon Crawler Carl 8 books, with a psychotic AI (the only scific part) and his not quite follow up book Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinninan (the scific moral is on the last page, but don't skip to it.) Also N Joseph Glass 12 Plans from Outer Space, a riff on the movie Plan 9 from Outer Space Also K.S.Robinson's Ministry for the Future.
It seems like one of the major themes of Dinniman's work (and probably spec fic as a whole) is who gets to be a "person"- humanizing and de-objectifying marginalized groups (or standins for them) in a way that's approachable to the mass market. And I dig it! I have had Ministry for the Future on my TBR for a while, and I'm looking forward to it. Was it pretty standard KSR?
Interesting, I'd classify it all as 'scifi' while acknowledging that its a fluid definition. Everything in the story is presented as advanced alien tech.
The Ophiuchi Hotline -- Varley, John: 4/5, starts rather slow, but the worldbuilding eventually makes up for it, a pretty fun read eventually, though the lack of resolution means a star knocked down for me. Definitely going to read more from Varley, he seems just my kind of author.
Small Things Like These -- Keegan, Claire: 2/5, GR challenge read NOT a sci-fi in any way, shape or form. Meh. It tries to deal with those Magdalene laundry things, but it's pretty minimal and surface-level. Not the best execution.
Tatja Grimm's World -- Vinge, Vernor: 3/5. After enjoying A Fire Upon the Deep so much I decided to go back and read Vinge in the publishing order. This is a fix-up of his three previously published novellas; I found it very uneven and bearing many hallmarks of a first published work. The first story was very nice, the setting is pretty fun and the little twists were interesting enough, even if predictable. The others went downhill from there though.
I Who Have Never Known Men -- Harpman, Jacqueline: 3/5. Another GR challenge read. Even though it gets mentioned here pretty often, it's not really in my sphere of interest. There's next to no plot in this, but I found the exploration, both of the physical world and the inner thoughts of the MC interesting enough to make up for it, but not enough to really grab me. Didn't like some outdated takes on certain issues though.
Shanidar and Other Stories -- Zindell, David: 2/5, a free ebook from the author's mailing list, read in preparation for the Neverness. There's something in the author's prose that just doesn't work for me -- I get bored with it easily. Way too many pointless digressions, even in the short form. Some of these were his first published stories and it shows.
Neverness -- Zindell, David: 2/5, all the problems mentioned with the short stories exist in this, except upped to eleven. There's a lot of irrelevant to the plot, tedious infodumping, a lot of boring digressions. Which is a pity, 'cause I really liked the imagination that went into creating the world in this. But yeah, when I get a promise of a space pilot, I don't necessarily want to read hundreds of pages about daily life and customs of some neo-savage tribe or other. And the Marty-Stu type protagonist does not help. Nor does the bullshit ending. Won't be reading more from Zindell.
Moderan -- Bunch, David R.: 2/5, DNF about 40% in. Super interesting world and absolutely zero plot to go with it. It was way too tedious for me.
Inverted World -- Priest, Christopher: 4.5 rounded up to 5/5. This was a rare book that was interesting for me start to finish with almost no sections that could've been shortened (there were one or two, but generally there's no pointless padding in this,) there's no infodumps -- all the vital information's revealed just as the MC/POV character gets it >!or do they?!< and nothing's really over-explained. Pity the rest of his catalogue does not appeal -- I'd love to read more from this author.
The Summer War -- Novik, Naomi: 2.5 rounded up to 3/5, a GR challenge read. A fairy tale style fantasy thing with fairies and such, not necessarily my thing, but it was short and a quick read.
The Last Contract of Isako -- Lee, Fonda: 4/5. The setting is a fairly standard corporate dystopia with a little airlock-related spin. The plot did keep me interested, maybe not the edge-of-my-seat interested, but interested. Some sections could've been edited out/shortened though. But every time it was about to overstay its welcome, something engaging happened to pull me back in, so it never really got too boring. I also did enjoy that there was no magic fix of an ending in this. Probably that alone gained it a star.
Now reading: Tau Zero by Poul Anderson, but I am finding the incessant infodumps extremely tedious to get through, if it doesn't improve, I might just ditch it in favour of Samuel R. Delany's Out of the Dead City, which is next on my TBR.
Tau Zero shows up on a lot of "best of" and "top #" lists, but to me it was just a middling 3/5. That >!Sweden is the governing body of a post-nuclear earth!< is hilarious to me though.
I'm partway thought The Ophiuchi Hotline and was just about to give up, I guess I'll go on a little further. Right now it feels like a lot of interesting ideas that are barely touched on while the MC plods along.
I am slowly making my way through Book of the New Sun again. Currently towards the end of Sword of the Lictor. I have listened to the audiobooks 3 times, but this is my first time actually reading. It blows me away how these books seem fresh every time I approach them and how I am always seeing new things that I missed before.
Only got through a couple books this month, both well worth reading:
so I finally made it through TheRevelation Space trilogy plus Chasm City. This was my third try. The first two times I DNF’d because I really didn’t like any of the characters. I tried to set that aside for my third attempt and finally managed to get through all four books. The books were epic with lots of interesting ideas. I eventually grew to like some of the characters. I found them a bit depressing and I read a lot of dystopian books. I don’t think I’ll read any more in the series though. I do still have his Blue Remembered Earth series on my TBR.
“The Kaiju Preservation Society” by John Scalzi - 2.5/5 stars. It’s a fun read, and the fictional science behind the kaiju is really interesting. The novel falls down in several places, however. The descriptions of the kaiju themselves are vague and lacklustre, with Scalzi apparently satisfying himself with letting the reader know that these animals are really big and that’s all you need to know. With a couple exceptions, most of the characters are just the same character in different bodies, a character who apparently learned how to communicate with other human beings by browsing tumblr. Main character Jamie is absolutely insufferable, and almost every page does or says something that makes me think I’d actively avoid spending time with him if he existed in real life. Finally, Scalzi apparently has a vendetta against facial expressions. The phrase “My/his/her/their face did a thing” appears throughout the novel enough times that if I see it in any future book I read I’ll be forced to abandon it immediately. There are lots of fun moments and cool science here, which for me made it worth reading. But it could’ve been a great novel and instead it’s only fine.
Slow Gods by Claire North- I'm actively working on reading more "recent" books and have seen this recommended on this sub several times. I really enjoyed it. I had just read Embassytown by Mieville last month, so it was kind of funny to find myself in another story centering on an FTL pilot. I identified with a lot of the narrator's feelings of otherness. It was a pretty decent story! Bobiverse 3-5- I came back to this because my partner really loves it and I enjoy it, while not being a super huge fan. I am going to continue the series, as I'm interested in seeing where the story goes. I enjoy the competence porn for sure! Started the audio book for Gardens of the Moon (Mazalan 1) and realized it's something my partner will likely really enjoy, so I paused that to listen to together. The Scar China Mieville- originally started this right after Embassytown and decided I needed a mini Mieville break. As always, completely engrossed by his worldbuilding. Hoping to finish this one in August.
9 books and shorts finished this month.
Diaspora (Greg Egan) had been on my to-read list for a while and I finally got around to it. Fantastic, mind-bending book. Asks a lot of the reader but is very much worth it. Seeing >!Yatima gain self-awareness!< was a fantastic start, and really endeared the character to me for the rest of the book.
Five Ways to Forgiveness (Ursula K Le Guin) I’d read The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness previously, and had enjoyed both (the latter especially), and so I was eager to get more from the Hainish cycle. The interconnectivity of the stories was really well done, and seeing characters pop up in unexpected ways was great. To be honest, I think the original printing as Four Ways to Forgiveness would’ve been as enjoyable to me - the last story didn’t really grab me as much as the others, but it certainly didn’t detract.
The Player of Games (Iain M Banks) My first foray into the Culture series of books, and I’m really glad I did. The premise of the game and how it fit into the society of the empire Gergeh was visiting was really engaging, as was the meddling of the drone he was paired with.
Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson) I’ve just hit the halfway mark, but so far so good. I’m enjoying the character development that Ann is having this time around, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the dynamic between her and Sax takes them.
Last month I read *Roadside Picnic* by the Strugatsky brothers which was fantastic and bleak. I hadn't ready any of their work before. Added *Hard to Be a God* on my TBR short list. Also finished up *Helsreach* by Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Warhammer 40,000). It was good but not as good as other 40k readers had hyped it up to be. Started reading *Deathwatch* by Steve Parker which I'm enjoying significantly more thusfar.
This doesn’t usually happen, but 4 of the books I read last month had enough literary commonality forme to group them together-they all had a large number of viewpoint characters and the end was largely known. Comparing them highlights some of the pitfalls and advantages of constructing a story that way. « Deepsix » (McDevitt) a rather weak entry from an author who has not been able to recapture his mojo after a couple home runs in his rookie years (« A Talent for War » and « The Engines of God ». Too many characters not doing, thinking or feeling anything interesting or advancing the plot. Lots of redshirts wasting precious time. No meaningful story arc, huge amounts of wasted potential, basically like a really bad Clarke novel crossed with a really bad McDevitt novel. Obviously not recommended, unless you’ve got a skyhook fetish-there’s a framing archeological mystery, but don’t expect much from that, it mostly serves to setup a presumptive sequel \*shudder\*. « God’s Junk Drawer » (Clines). When the author finally gets around to pruning the excessive number of pointless red shirts cluttering up the story with their viewpoints, this one takes off-it’s basically a survival story, a party of earthlings is unexpectedly transported to a mysterious valley full of things from various times and places, including some that are very alien. The MacGuffin is that one of the members of the party has been to the mysterious place before and is returning to rescue his sister. It’s a pretty good beach read, there are a couple of cool twists in the story, but the large number of viewpoint characters and the telegraphing of the ultimate fates of certain characters sucks some tension from the story. « We all Died at Breakaway Station » (Meredith). In most respects this is a step up from the previous two, similar to the others you have a pretty good idea about the fate of the characters :). Though it starts off with a twist, the story is primarily told from the viewpoint of people who have already died fighting in a war against an implacable and largely incomprehensible alien foe. They were resurrected from scraps and repaired to the point where they could function as the crews of ships returning the wounded to earth for full repairs. Of course they end up in a strategically critical location where they are called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice again. The story is told from diverse viewpoints, which add something to it, some of them are less effective than others, but the author is always doing a right thing, but sometimes the execution is lacking. I wish SF authors had to get a license to write about sex, Meredith is better than most (it actually makes sense in context) but still cringy. Overall the book is a pretty good read and is good example of how an author can still tell a dramatic story even when the outcome is known (a lesson which, alas McDevitt has not learned). Worth a read, particularly if you’re looking for different spins on military SF. « Bloom » (McCarty). This is my favorite out of my little cluster-McCarty uses his various characters fairly effectively-thé story is a first person narrative with some supporting documentation. The basic setup is that the main viewpoint character is a journalist hired to tell the story of a small crew venturing into the inner solar system to deploy monitoring equipment. Because of his role as chronicler, in addition to recording what he saw and his interactions with the rest of the crew, he tries to get into their heads and their biography which for a journalist in a small group has largely the same effect as employing multiple viewpoints, technically it’s a fairly cool effect. The SFish scenario is pretty nifty too, basically humanity is dealing with a gray goo infection and has been forced to move into the cool reaches of the outer solar system, not a safe region, but one where they can beat gray goo outbreaks. It’s basically about the human immune response to a disease magnified to a macroscopic level, given the book’s publication dat. The trope makes sense in the aftermath of the big AIDs outbreak. Might not be so impactful to younger folk, since in the recent COVID outbreak the actual mechanics of the infection and human immune responses were not as important. A fine little adventure story about humanity trying to reclaim the Earth from the horrible disease that has conquered the planet. Definitely worth a read. « Baudelaire Fractal » (Robertson). Girly version of « Swimming to Cambodia ». Fantastic references to great art and artists and the required reading for young intellectuals back in ye day. Trying to suss out the connections to Baudelaire is a bit of a challenge. Since this is an SF sub, I will limit myself to one reference I am currently reading: « The Cyborg Manifesto » (Haraway) ». Definitely worth a read and reread. «The Imago Sequence » (Barron) - very well written and crafted cosmic (mostly) horror. The plots and narrative structures are tricky enough that I’ll be rereading this one very soon. No real standout stories, probably the most interesting thing is the number of very hardboiled, very dangerous psychopathic protagonists showing up in the stories, which attenuates the impact of the horror for me, because to some extent I feel the victim deserves an awful fate. “Finisterra” (Moles). Decent little environmental allegory about whaling, the environment and unregulated fisheries :). I read it because it was cited in an intriguing way in a review of “The Last Astronaut”. Worth reading. “The Wilds” (Elliott) a collection of weird, frequently SFnal tales. Very heavy doses of satire, got a very transgressive Jean Shepherd vibe. Superb prose style-definitely worth a read for fans of the new weird and good writing. “The Universe in Verse” (Popova)-pretty disappointing, labors under too many constraints, apparently only the contributions made by women (I guess Auden got included because he was gay, so he was considered one of the girls) to understanding the universe through science and poetry are included in the book. The poetry largely fails to connect to the science it is paired with-there were a couple exceptions, “We Are Listening” (Ackerman) and “Singularity”(Davis)-which is a glorious Whitmanesque catalog of cool things. The poetry Tracy K Smith and maybe one or two others really needed to be there, and they were, so yay! “Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou” (Hitoshi Ashinano)-gotta love living through a cozy apocalypse with robots. On to book 3. “The Mound” (Lovecraft and a hapless coauthor). Standard underground civilization story-consciously or subconsciously took a ghost story and turned into his own cosmic horror version of the fey. The unabridged version is pretty good, the plot structure might have had some impact on Langan’s “The Fisherman” which shares some similarities. Not bad and it’s essential reading for Lovecraft fans. “Possessing Genius: The Bizarre Odyssey of Einstein’s Brain” (Abraham). After you get past the first 20-30% it’s a riveting read. Einstein’s brain was involved in all sorts of controversies and adventures after his death and the cast of characters made it all the more interesting. Got some good follow up reading too, so this one’s a keeper.