I’m a judge of the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest. This is the third year for the contest, and I’ll be sharing many full reviews of books as I get to them. Check out my group’s slush pile (the books we were assigned) here. Also note that I’ll be reviewing whatever books strike my fancy from other group’s slush piles.
Daliis a thought provoking sci-fi thriller disguised as a fun romp. In the future, humanity now has a third gender, itself a product of genetic mutations possibly with a deeper meaning. A movement known as the New Puritans has arisen preaching the need for humanity to survive by eliminating or setting aside those with a third gender.
Enter Dali, a third gendered human who uncovers an insidious plot that somehow both threatens humanity and appeals to fans of the New Puritanism. A lot of hijinks–sexual or fighting-based–later and we’ve got Dali with a pirate lord and in a whole heaping load of trouble.
The book nails the tone needed for a novel like this. It doesn’t get preachy about the ideals it’s confronting, nor does it shy away from the awfulness of bigotry. Yet it also introduces enough action scenes to keep the plot moving and enough jokes–many of them based on The Princess Bride, a favorite of mine–to engage the reader and not drag the feelings down too greatly.
I was provided with an audiobook of this novel by the author and I thought it was very well narrated by Justin Gibson. There was life breathed into the characters and world.
Daliis a great read for fans of science fiction that pushes boundaries and introduces new ideas. Recommended.
Note: I received my audiobook copy courtesy of the author.
The Great Honor Harrington Read Along is a read along led by me with critical analysis and SPOILER FILLED looks at the Honor Harrington series and related works by David Weber and collaborators. I’ve read the whole main series and the overwhelming majority of the offshoots, but some of these will still be first time reads. However, spoilers will be abundant throughout these posts, including for much later books in the series.
The Service of the Swordfeaturing stories by David Weber, John Ringo, Eric Flint, Jane Lindskold, and Timothy Zahn
The Service of the Sword is the fourth collection of Honorverse stories, and was published after War of Honor. As with my other looks at collections in this series, I’ll give thoughts on each of the included tales.
Promised Land by Jane Lindskold
I think this might be the best Honorverse non-novel I’ve read yet. Michael Winton, the crown prince of Manticore, is doing his time in the Manticoran Navy. He ultimately pushes back against the white glove treatment he felt he was getting and gets an assignment on a diplomatic mission to Masada. Meanwhile, on Masada, Judith is one of several wives of a prominent Masadan who makes his money in pirate raids. She had to work to cover up her life prior to her capture, but longs to find a way to escape. She discovers there’s a conspiracy involving many women who believe a promised one will lead them away from the oppressive, abusive, patriarchal Masada. When the plan starts to come to fruition, Judith and Michael’s missions collide in some fascinating ways.
I admit I did not expect a novella in an Honorverse collection to bring me to tears, but this one did. Lindskold weaves a fantastic yarn with some characters who are deeply important to the Honorverse but who don’t often get a time to shine. The collection was worth reading just for this story, but there are other great reads in it.
With One Stone by Timothy Zahn
Silesian piracy threatens shipping–shocker! But more is afoot, as Sonia Hemphill thinks there may be dangerous weapons being tested out there. Honor is sent for anti-piracy operations while Rafael Cordones is taken by the Bureau of Weapons on a secret mission to investigate the possible super-weapon. The story has all the makings of a classic Honorverse space battle, with stakes constantly getting raised, moral quandaries introduced, and more. It’s a great way to see some favorite characters in action yet again, and has a satisfying conclusion.
A Ship Named Francis by John Ringo and Victor Mitchell
I was honestly shocked by this one. It’s the first attempt I encountered to have a story deliberately based around humor in the Honor Harrington universe. GNS Francis Mueller is a ship in the Grayson Space Navy on which all the misfits are sent to be out of the way without having to find ways to get them back out of the Navy. When Sean Tyler, formerly of the Manticoran Navy, comes on board in pursuit of the opportunities for promotion that can be found by aiding a close ally of Manticore, he discovers an absolute shitshow. Prayers by the ship’s chaplain echo for hours at a time about the dangers of space; crew members have to be constantly sedated; and navigation can’t navigate. It’s right on the edge as a story of not being able to work, but if you’re willing to set aside some incredulity about whether this would all actually be allowed in the GSN, it’s a fun and often funny read. I was surprised. I actually really want more stories to tell us what happens to Sean Tyler after this experience, but I don’t think there are any.
Let’s Go to Prague by John Ringo
I found this one to be somewhat forgettable, especially in comparison with the rest of this collection. It’s a couple Manticoran agents who mess around with the Office of State Security. It has fun moments, but despite the fact that I read it maybe just a week or so ago, nothing sticks out in my memory as something I’ll carry forward. Again, it’s not bad, just kind of felt throwaway.
Fanatic by Eric Flint
Okay, this story was awesome. Victor Cachat sent to investigate the death of a People’s Comissioner. We get to see him fully dialed in as the brutal enforcer he was Before We Knew Him. There’s more than meets the eye to this story, too. He is ruthless, but fair, and Flint keeps us readers guessing what the catch is almost until the very end of the story. I loved it.
The Service of the Sword by David Weber
Abigail Hearns (a big name in several related Honorverse novels), at this point a Midshipwoman, is the first Grayson-born woman in the GSN, and her assignment takes her with Manticoran personnel (including captain Oversteegan, whose name should pop up if you’ve read Crown of Slaves or some other HH novels) to investigate the disappearance of allied ships. As always, there’s more here than meets the eye, and it leads to a direct, early confrontation with Manpower, Inc. We’ve got battles on space and on the ground in this tense story, and Weber brings it all to a satisfying conclusion. If you want stories to feature side characters that you care about from other novels, this is a great one to check out.
Overall Thoughts
The Service of the Swordmight be the best of the story collections that I’ve read so far. It has some absolutely fantastic stories, fills in lots of background for beloved characters, and has a diverse set of focuses. I highly recommend it to fans of the Honor Harrington series.
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I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees. I’ve also dropped a short reflection on the year’s Hugo list at the end.
Remnant Populationby Elizabeth Moon- Grade: B I enjoyed this pastoral first contact story. Ofelia is left behind at an abandoned colony and begins her life fresh, intent on living out her last days in relative peace and comfort. But her comfort is disrupted by an apparently violent clash with new colonists and the native aliens on a different part of the planet. The rest of the story centers around Ofelia’s interactions with the native people, their remarkable qualities, and another human group coming to make contact. Interspersed throughout are delightful explorations of pastoral settings, which is quite reminiscent to me of the best Clifford Simak novels. I wish the story had done more with the impact of colonialism and the impact of that on the people. That’s not the story Moon is telling, but I think it could have been added to it and built upon.
Blue Marsby Kim Stanley Robinson (Winner)- Grade: B Blue Mars is the third book in the trilogy by Robinson, and at this point you should know what to expect. The books are door-stopper length hard sci-fi explorations of what a future life on Mars might look like. In this one, we’ve got a couple twists thrown in as Earth experiences some severe climate problems, leading to pressure to expand Martian population. Meanwhile, on Mars, a group of people calling themselves the “Reds” (due to the planet’s color) push to keep Mars in its original non-terraformed state. This, of course, is the cause of Some Drama. Like a Ben Bova novel–another prolific hard sci-fi author of the time–your mileage on this one will directly correspond to two things: how much fake science (loosely based on real science) you can handle/enjoy and how much tolerance you have for fairly wooden characters. Don’t get me wrong, some of the characters here get development and real bones under their skin, but their arcs are predictable nearly from the first page you encounter any of them. I found it to be a good read, despite being overly long. It’s a worthy end to the trilogy.
Memoryby Lois McMaster Bujold (My Winner)- Grade: A- Miles Vorkorsigan must give up his double life and fully get involved in Barrayaran affairs as he needs to help uncover some nefarious plot therein. Simon Illyan, a top military man and Miles’s former boss, is struggling with his memory and he’s fading faster than seems possible. Miles is given broad power as Imperial Auditor to investigate what happened and why. I’ll be first to admit that the Vorkorsigan Saga is largely beach reading type sci-fi for me. While I will stand up and say Barrayar is among the all-time SFF greats, most of the series is pretty pithy and fun without much thought involved. Memory walks the edge, touching on the depths of despair memory loss can cause while still remaining pretty light reading. It’s definitely one of the best in the long-running series.
Starplexby Robert J. Sawyer- Grade: B- Sawyer wrote in the introduction to this book (in the edition I have) that his goal was to write a final spaceships go boom type of science fiction novel before he dove into his more recent stuff that focuses on more literary and plot conventions. I’m paraphrasing there, but after the intro I was kind of surprised at how little spaceships go boom type stuff there was. No, this is, like most of Sawyer’s other works, a thought-provoking look at the subject at hand. Here, the subject happens to be super powerful aliens (maybe) and mysterious interconnected gates and why/how they work. It’s a well-told story overall, though I did think Sawyer got caught up a bit too much in the minutiae of the invented tech rather than moving the plot along. It’s a good read, though, as most of Sawyer’s works are.
Holy Fireby Bruce Sterling- Grade: B+ In the future, humans have pushed life expectancies well into 100+ years. Going along with that, though, the near-utopic society provides the best health care to those who practice the best health practices. This has led to some people becoming truly ancient, as they push their health and limits to post-human endurance maximums. When our main character, Mia, has the option to become a youth again, she takes it, only to find out the utopia in which they’re living may in fact be sucking their humanity away.
Thematically, this is one of the more interesting books on post-humanism I’ve read, which makes the few caveats all the more frustrating. Starting with those caveats, the biggest one is that the post-human society is both sold to readers as a kind of moral quandary and as a moral horror. How are we supposed to see this society? Leaving it a question left up to the reader is a choice I enjoy in this dystopic/utopic type fiction, but having the post humans also casually dropping billions of deaths to set up the society makes the whole thing a bit of a non-starter. A society backed on such an act cannot be moral; that seems obvious. And because of that, some of the power of the ambiguity with some of the other questions introduced is sapped away. Additionally, Mia doesn’t strike me as a particularly powerful protagonist. Instead, she is kind of dragged along by events, only coming to realizations when other, perhaps more intriguing characters leader her to the conclusions. Perhaps that’s a function of Sterling’s narrative–Mia is a stand-in for the questioning reader–but it still makes it somewhat unsatisfactory.
There are, however, some truly fascinating things about post humanism mixed in here. What would we be willing to give up to “ascend” into a different kind of humanity. And just what would be worth it? And who would get to do that ascending–the powerful? Or are there other ways that play out (the healthy as the ascendant here)? It’s all very fascinating and Sterling is such an electric thinker and writer that I’m willing to forgive several of the more disappointing aspects of the novel. This is sci-fi for people who want to be forced to think about deep topics.
1997- 97 is an excellent year at the Hugo nominations. None of the books are terrible, and all of them are worth reading. The winner for me, barely, is Memory, which serves up a look at the horrors of memory loss while still giving readers more of the Vorkorsigan saga they know and love. Holy Fire is a superb read but stretched my credulity a bit too far to push it over the top. It’s a great read for those interested in post-humanism and I’d definitely put it on a required reading list for those readers. Sawyer’s entry is a fine space opera, though I admit I found it fairly forgettable. Blue Mars serves up a good conclusion to the trilogy, though problems of writing characters for KSR remain. Finally, Remnant Population hearkens back to some early cozy sci-fi along the lines of Simak, a favorite of mine. The list is fairly diverse in subgenre representation, as well, though it retains the 90s penchant for hard sci-fi. What did you think? Let me know in the comments.
Links
My Read-Through of the Hugos– Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!
I am beyond excited to introduce you all to the finalists for this year’s Self-Published Science Fiction Contest, the SPSFC3 (or Spacefic 3)! Here, I’ll have covers, blurbs, and some initial thoughts on each.
On the fringe of a broken civilization, a robot awakens with no memories and only one directive: find his creator. But in the village of Korthe, Beetro finds only radioactive pestilence, famine, and Miree—a tormented thief with dreams of retiring after her final score. Meanwhile, the fiefdom is plunged further into chaos when a new warlord seizes control, recasting serfs as refugees and leaving derelict robot peasants in his wake. With a shared interest in survival, Beetro and Miree team up to pull off an impossible castle heist: steal a single flake of dark matter, the world’s most valuable and mysterious ore.
Initial Thoughts
I’ve been meaning to read this one for a long time. I am excited to see that clearly many other judges liked it enough to bump it to the finalists! I wonder how this duo will manage to get through what sounds like a world fraught with danger.
Fifty years ago, a new civil war fractured the United States into a mosaic of polarized nations. Ever since, Harmony “Bibi” Cain has isolated himself: from society, from technology, from family. A powerful empath weary from the constant intrusion of others’ emotions, he’s finally cloistered in his rural Wisconsin retirement community. He hopes to find, if not peace, then at least a little quiet.
Initial Thoughts
I’ve actually got a full review up of Three Grams already! Check it out here. (Spoilers: I loved it.)
Tour Guide. Emissary. Diplomat. Thief. On her 317th birthday, Brianna Rei hooks up with smuggler-thief Jerrold McKell to steal the legendary Voyager Gold Record. But their partnership doesn’t go exactly as planned. Pursued across the Hundred Worlds by bounty hunters, and hiding the secret of her true identity as a Synth, Brianna finds herself having to make a series of increasingly difficult choices – choices that could put both of their lives in jeopardy.
Initial Thoughts
I love seeing the SPSFC bringing light to books with few readers so far (apparently). This one only has 6 reviews on Amazon, but a sterling 4.8/5 score! I will have a full review of this space adventure coming soon.
Humanity has survived. On the far end of the universe, with Earth little more than a faded memory, they thrive on worlds where once they were enslaved. In the millennia since, these persistent beings built new societies, but when the two greatest nations among them met for the first time, there was war. The all-consuming conflict bent the wills and morals of both powers beyond recognition, leading to levels of experimentation and cruelty once thought impossible. Yet, in a universe drowned in blood, an opportunity for peace is seized.
Initial Thoughts
So many reviewers had amazing things to say about this novel, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the hype is about. It sounds like a potentially dark sci-fi adventure, and I’m on board.
Jess Amiko is long past her days as a space marine, with all the glory of that time tarnished beyond repair by what came after. Trying to rebuild from the ashes, she’s taken a job as a security guard on Kenai, a lonely world far from the Council systems. It’s supposed to be easy duty – quiet and peaceful, on a docile world with no real threats, watching over an archeological dig at a site built by a race long vanished.
Betrayed and attacked by forces unknown, and finding that nothing on Kenai makes sense, Jess is plunged into a desperate fight for survival that leads her deep into the mysteries of Kenai’s past, and deep into the hardship and paradox the planet imposes on all who call it home.
Initial Thoughts
Space archaeology is one of my favorite things. I am super hyped to see this book show up as a finalist and give me a reason to move it atop my TBR stack.
Detective Ada Byron is pumped to finally be assigned her first murder case… until she sees the crime scene. Someone has been killed exactly the same way as her father was seven years earlier.
To see if this is a copycat, or something more sinister, Ada must work with her personal nightmare Jazlin Switch – the programmer who murdered her dad. What follows is a mind-bending, heart-stopping ride through the dark side of reality and the virtual world.
Initial Thoughts
Another favorite subgenre of mine is the sci-fi/mystery mashup. Reviews of this one have said it’s super brutal. We’ll see what I think when I have my full review up!
I’m a judge of the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest. This is the third year for the contest, and I’ll be sharing many full reviews of books as I get to them. Check out my group’s slush pile (the books we were assigned) here. Also note that I’ll be reviewing whatever books strike my fancy from other group’s slush piles. For all my posts for the SPSFC3, follow here (scroll for more).
Fifty years ago (but in our future) civil war fractured the United States. When a seemingly impossible assassination takes place, there is possibly only one person in the U.S. who might be able to help solve the whodunnit, but Bibi doesn’t really want to do so. He’d prefer to live his life away from the rest of humankind, shielding himself from the strong empathic feedback he gets through his abilities.
There are elements of a kaleidoscopic novel here, though the central narrative is much stronger than in most novels I’d consider kaleidoscopic. The kaleidoscope here is basically a “now” thread in which we’re hearing the story of Bibi, the past in which Bibi is figuring more about his empathic abilities, a few other timelines, and some other threads here and there like excerpts from an invented textbook, Three Grams of Elsewhere. The latter is greatly important because it fills readers in with, yes, info-dump type textbook style, but it does so in a charming way. I don’t know, I guess I didn’t get enough schooling despite having a graduate degree, but I can’t get enough of a good textbook! Anyway, Elsewhere is the kind of extra dimension in which empathic abilities lie and empaths exist. Is it spiritual, is it scientific? It’s not clear. But it’s a fascinating and central aspect of the novel, in which empathic abilities were weaponized by factions in the civil war that has left a fractured States.
Bibi himself is a great character, a crotchety octogenarian–an age we rarely see represented in any speculative fiction–who has a superb narrative voice. There’s an extended scene at one point in which Bibi is on a bike trail and talks about the “petty cortex”–a name he’s made for the part of the brain that triggers dopamine highs for having bad things happen to people we think deserve it. As someone who loves biking and brain science I found this completely absorbing. Scenes like this happen frequently throughout the book–truly character developing sections that often take place just within one character’s head.
The story drives along pretty well, but the setup described above makes it sound more action packed than it is. This is much more a character drama than it is an action novel. I found myself occasionally feeling a tad lost in the kaleidoscopic nature of it, as well.
Three Grams of Elsewhere is a fantastic, cerebral read that fans of literary sci-fi should consider a must-read. I hugely enjoyed it, and suspect I’ll be re-reading it at some point in the near future.
I’m a judge of the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest. This is the third year for the contest, and I’ll be sharing many full reviews of books as I get to them. Check out my group’s slush pile (the books we were assigned) here. Also note that I’ll be reviewing whatever books strike my fancy from other group’s slush piles.
What if you’ve been wrong about everything? Keith Brennan is forced to question everything when the President is assassinated on Mars and his investigation turns up much more than he’d initially thought is going on.
The book builds fairly slowly as a broad look at the power of corporations with unchecked power and the way that control can be easily manipulated from behind the scenes and with big enough checkbooks. I enjoyed these aspects of the building revolution, and I thought that Fox did a good job introducing motivation to the central characters.
I struggled a bit with the way the military scenes were described. Often, the focus in the characters’ minds seemed to be on whether they touched a hot guy’s bicep or if she brushed against him and whether that was supposed to be alluring or not. It took me out of a story that is focusing on the military aspects in several respects.
James Fox provided me with a copy of the audiobook for review purposes. I recommend the audio format because it really helped with my immersion in the story.
Revolution is a book for fans of military sci-fi that features the dangers of unfettered corporations. It is a good first step on a series that promises bigger stories to come.
Note: I received my audiobook copy courtesy of the author.
The Great Honor Harrington Read Along is a read along led by me with critical analysis and SPOILER FILLED looks at the Honor Harrington series and related works by David Weber and collaborators. I’ve read the whole main series and the overwhelming majority of the offshoots, but some of these will still be first time reads. However, spoilers will be abundant throughout these posts, including for much later books in the series.
There are so many huge storylines in this door-stopper of a book. The major threads pulling it along are: Honor is off in the Silesian Confederacy dealing with the Andermani Empire; trouble brewing and technology developing in Haven; Manticore’s leadership being split across Crown and anti-Crown lines. There are a slew of other storylines mixed in there, too.
The book is a stepping stone (and can literally be used as one!- okay last joke about how big it is) to so many massively important developments in the Honor Harrington series. Occasionally, I feel like it turns into a slog here and there. While I appreciate all the buildup, the massive amount of storylines being juggled here, along with so many side characters showing up for cameos or even being newly introduced, makes it take quite a while to feel like anything is happening at all. Of course, many things are happening, and when the gears finally unstick, dominos fall in a masterful last section of the book that covers a ton of ground. Erewohn jumps ship, Andermani realizes that Manticore is the lesser of two evils, the Queen sticks it to the Government so they have to deal with their own ineptitude, the Treecats continue to think on a grander scale, and more.
Honor feels a bit more vulnerable in this book than she has in a while. There also isn’t an additional “power creep” for her that seems to have been happening. Perhaps the greatest fault of her as a character–and I say this with a lot of love because this is probably my favorite sci-fi series–is that Honor is omni-competent. New problems arise and she doesn’t just rise to the task a lot of the time. Instead, she already has the answer in hand. An elite pistol duelist is sicced on her? No problem, she magically already knew how to shoot really well and will fire from the hip. Here, we have her in her element, threats on all sides, but she has to navigate diplomacy, threats, and not even knowing what might confront her. All of that, and she’s on the run from her feelings. It feels much more real as a person than she might have if she didn’t have this time of trial.
Andermani getting expansive and interesting was really surprising to me when I read it the first time. Here we had a whole new realm to explore, Silesia, and a whole new threat to fill out. I love the background of the Andermani Empire and the decisiveness of its leadership. Just a really cool world-building piece all around.
There is also some vague rumblings of Manpower and looking more deeply at the Real Threat that lurks out there, as readers of the series know. I can’t wait to see it all play out in the course of the nest few books.
War of Honor serves as a bridge book to set up a whole lot of high-impact storylines later in the series. Next up for me is The Service of the Sword, which is a first time read for me.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!
I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees. At the end, I have a summing up of my thoughts on the year’s nominees.
The Diamond Ageby Neal Stephenson (Winner)- Grade: B- The Diamond Age starts off strong. The interplay of the two major and several minor plots that were all woven together made it an interesting read just to see how it was written. Stephenson also does a tremendous job writing cyberpunk, though I guess it is technically postcyberpunk, based on a perusal of articles based on the book. It was intense at times, but also went down too many rabbit holes. It starts to get bloated beyond what the plot demands. At times, it reads almost like it’s a lingering dedication to the author’s skill rather than a tightly woven novel. Ultimately, I think it’s a good, not great book.
The Time Shipsby Stephen Baxter (My Winner)- Grade: B+ Baxter wrote an authorized sequel to H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine that manages to capture the tone and feel of the original while also massively expanding its plot and science. The two difficulties here are that it goes on a bit too long and that it diverges into some rather heavy handed pushing of worldview onto the reader. But neither of these issues becomes too distracting from what feels like, in actuality, one of those adventure-type sci-fi novels from Wells or Verne. It’s just as enjoyable as those books while also integrating a bunch of modern science into a time travel story. Buckle up and enjoy the ride if you like hard sci-fi, the tone of Wells, and/or time travel.
Brightness Reefby David Brin- Grade: C- Brightness Reef starts another trilogy in the Uplift universe Brin created. Here, there’s a new planet to explore with uplifted critters. I gotta say, like the other books in this series, this one drags and drags and drags along forever. The core ideas are great, but the book is then filled with so many characters and storylines that it just gets to be not confusing but just distracting. At some point, as a reader, I just kind of gave up trying to slog through all the names and people’s motivations, because despite being humans or aliens or whatever they all speak with the same voice, with little variation of character. The thing is there are great ideas here, as Brin always has, but it doesn’t get executed on the character front as well as many of his other books. I think this series just isn’t for me.
The Terminal Experimentby Robert J. Sawyer- Grade: C- Robert J. Sawyer’s work as a science fiction author ranks among the most influential for my own development as a sci-fi reader. I read his Calculating God as a teen and found that it pushed me to think more deeply about my own faith. It made me think about bigger questions. Hominidsand the books that followed it are among the most amazing and frustrating science fiction books I’ve read. The Terminal Experiment continues some of that grand tradition, asking questions about what it would mean if we could have conclusive proof that a soul-like thing exists within the human brain. The story is part mystery, part hard sci-fi, and full of thrusts and jabs at various beliefs, as I’ve come to expect from Sawyer. Peter Hobson develops a device capable of reading the activity of the brain with the help of his friend, Sarkar Muhammed. He’s shocked when he discovers that it appears to demonstrate that some cohesive brain activity departs the body at the moment of death. The rest of the world is rocked by this discovery as well, and Sawyer reports that largely through various news summaries at the end of chapters. Two things detract significantly from my enjoyment of the novel, along with a minor third. The minor thing is that, once again, Sawyer fails to take any religion seriously. While Sarkar is portrayed as a fairly devout Muslim, his different beliefs are frequently a source of annoyance for Peter, who’s supposed to be his best friend. It’s frustrating that Sawyer seems incapable of writing a religious person in an empathetic way. The two major detractors are, first, that suspension of disbelief is required very heavily, and second, that the book is filled with some truly obnoxious comments about women. Suspension of disbelief is just a part of reading science fiction, but time and again I struggled with the leaps of logic, abilities, and more of the characters. One example is late in the book when a character writes a massive, powerful piece of code having never done anything of the kind before, complaining it took him a few days. Another is when Hobson manages to cobble together completely new variants of his soulwave (that’s the name of the brain function in the book) detector basically at will without any effort. They’re small things, but they happen so often that it becomes hard to do anything but roll your eyes once you’ve run into another. Regarding the comments about women, I found myself laughing out loud at one point when Hobson congratulates himself on being a supporter of “the women’s movement.” Hobson himself has had so many awful comments about women so far that it is a clear example of a man thinking he’s a much better person than he is. For example, early in the book he mentally loses it because his wife isn’t dressed to impress. He complains in his head that they haven’t had sex in weeks, and is disturbed that she’s wearing a ratty sweatshirt. How dare she wear things that are comfortable, says this champion of women’s rights! Other examples abound, such as when Hobson thinks about how a detective he just met “hadn’t looked pretty to Peter when she came in, but when she laughed she looked very nice indeed” (Kindle Location 3727). Why does Hobson care if a detective clearly coming to pump him for information about being a possible murder suspect is pretty? Because he’s the epitome of male gaze in the novel. He later thinks about how if he weren’t so constrained by his high and mighty morals, he’d have had sex with multiple women like the detective right in his office. What a champion of the women’s movement! What makes this especially annoying is that it seems Sawyer is trying to portray Hobson as such, but failing spectacularly. Anyway, the novel does do a good job introducing a number of fascinating questions about the implications of knowing with certainty humans have souls–questions about abortion, about extending life, and more. Sawyer also weaves a somewhat compelling plot, even if a lot of the comments about the internet seem quaint some years later. Sawyer continues to both frustrate and interest me with his writings. I think I’ll continue to struggle with him for a while. I know I’ll be reading more.
Remakeby Connie Willis- Grade: B Imagine if we developed technology that would allow us to just interpose whomever we want on various movies and even change the plots on a whim. What would Hollywood do with that technology? The obvious answer seems to be that it would be abused as much as possible, used to replace actual people, and milked and litigated for every dollar. Willis imagines that exact scenario–one which seems not all that far off today–in Remake. Your mileage on this one will vary depending on how much you appreciate old movies–especially Fred Astaire. The more you enjoy them, the more you’ll probably enjoy this book. It’s a love letter to film, in a way, while also absolutely castigating the movie industry for preferring remakes, sequels, and reboots to advancing new ideas. It’s an enjoyable ride with limited scope. Since I read this book, the proliferation of AI tech with some creative fields has only increased, and the novel feels more and more a warning than it did when I first read it.
1996- ’96 continues to demonstrate the 1990s fascination with hard science fiction. While Remake and The Diamond Age don’t clearly follow into that subgenre, the former has some of its trappings. The Time Ships is a sci-fi adventure, but Baxter at times seems obsessed with the technology. Brightness Reef is a bloated space opera with hard sci-fi elements, and The Terminal Experiment is a frustratingly tantalizing look at what could be an intriguing core idea. Remake is disturbingly realistic almost 30 years later. It reads like a nearly prescient view of what could happen with filmmaking in the near future. I personally wasn’t blown away by any of these novels, but that’s the nature of taste. Sometimes things fall flat. Which books were your favorites here?
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I’m a judge of the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest. This is the third year for the contest, and I’ll be sharing many full reviews of books as I get to them. Check out my group’s slush pile (the books we were assigned) here. Also note that I’ll be reviewing whatever books strike my fancy from other group’s slush piles. For all my posts for the SPSFC3, follow here (scroll for more).
Richard is just a random human living a normal life… until his couch turns out to be a sentient starship that launches him into space on an adventure as the chosen son and ruler of a galactic empire. He meets an AI guide, AAL, who directs his path as he discovers that so many creatures thought of as mythological but are really denizens of that same kingdom. There are, of course, those who do not wish to have the return of the king (sorry, had to), so Richard must engage in some politicking and adventure to ascend to his rightful throne.
The book reads very quickly as a sci-fi adventure. It’s got a thorough, refreshing silliness to it that makes it easy to sit back and let the pages churn by. Richard isn’t the most engaging protagonist, but largely a stand-in for the events taking place. I wonder if he develops more as a character in the rest of the series.
The biggest problem with the book, in my opinion, is the question of who’s the audience. The overwhelming majority of the book reads like a YA novel. The young near-teens in love across species boundaries suddenly becomes a straight up explicit sex scene in a way that was quite jarring. It made me wonder if I’d been misreading the book the whole time. I’d been treating it like the happy-go-lucky YA adventure it felt like, and suddenly it changed tone almost entirely into adult fiction on a dime. Had I mistaken its tone? But then it just shifted back to the kind of tongue-in-cheek narrative the rest of the book had been. Maybe it’s just me, it just felt very off with the rest of the book and dragged me out of what I thought was the audience “feel” it was going for.
What I did enjoy was the integration of Earth mythology into a broader universe. I thought it was well done and it made the whole Kingdom seem like a real entity in a way that it might not otherwise have done.
Richard: Distant Sonis a good setup novel for more space adventure. Readers into some silliness in their adventure will likely have fun with this one.
The British Science Fiction Awards often highlight books that don’t even make it onto awards lists dominated by American authors. I’ve been reading and reviewing winners and nominees, looking for hidden gems I might not have found otherwise.
This magnificent novel subverts the act of reviewing and the act of writing. So far as I can tell, no Christopher Priest novel lends itself to an easy summary, and The Affirmation is no different. The basics of the plot are simple enough- Peter Sinclair has withdrawn to a friend’s home in order to work out the difficulties of his life through his writing of an autobiographic account of “how things got this way.” He is caught up, however, in the meta-narratives he creates for himself in order to try to come to an understanding of the events of his life, and as his perceptions shift and his reality melds together with the fictional points of his story, readers embark on a journey of discovery and questioning that never lets up.
Peter is caught into a dual world, with the fiction narrative of Jethra covering for his time in London, with invented names and an entire, apparently endless archipelago of islands to explore. Yet this fiction narrative doesn’t seem to be fiction after all, at least not to Peter, and perhaps not to the reader, either. Lines get blurred and it becomes entirely unclear what is real and what is not. Is Peter’s story in the Dream Archipelago reality? Is his winning of a lottery ticket that gives him the possibility of eternal life a spark of what we all seek, in reality? Does Priest, the author, intend for the fictional narrative to be the real one, and for London and all the people there to be unreality?
Readers are kept guessing and, like the story, which ultimately drops off mid-sentence, they are given no clear endings or answers. What we’re left with as readers is an incredible masterpiece of cognition. The nature of memory is not trustworthy–is it any moreso in fiction? What about the stories we tell about ourselves? Peter wrestles as a writer to grasp how narrative and storyline helps make sense of his world, but if the storyline of his life doesn’t exist, what is reality? Is it possible that the universe doesn’t craft storylines for us, but that we’re rather just anchorless minds churning about in a void of chaos? Even writing these words seems to make light of what Priest has accomplished in this novel, and I feel I must sit back and mull of it even more. Are the pages of the novel blank in the story? Do we create our own memories and life out of experience? How trustworthy are our own recollections when we can know we make mistakes? It’s all too much at times, just as it is for the characters of this novel.
And Peter–is he supposed to be a metaphor for us? The way we interact with the world can sometimes call into question our own sanity. Peter also seems to stand as an act of writing, a character standing in for the very activity of bringing narrative to life on the page. But there’s so much more to it than that. This is science fiction of the headiest, most mind-bending sort. It forces readers to think about reality and reexamine their own assumptions. It’s dangerous, in its way, because it presents us with a story that could break up how we think of life itself.
The Affirmation is an all-time great by one of the masters of the craft. It is a truly spectacular work of science fiction–if it even is that–and a work that I’ll be thinking of for quite some time.
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Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!
Eclectic Theist 