Book Foo! + a bit of TV foo...
I'll start with TV so you can more easily skip the book reviews. I've been falling a bit behind on TV watching. Doctor Who is in a few days though, won't be falling behind on that. But of the shows I've been watching, bearing in mind that I'm probably only halfway through the aired episodes:
Falling Skies: Got pretty bad real fast. The show was never GREAT, but it was decent fun with a sense of progression in the storylines... until this year when they decided to just abandon a bunch of plots so they could do riffs on prison camps, Hitler Youth, hippies, and the old Guerilla war plot they started with and did to death. I can barely care anymore. But it's not nearly as bad as what happened to...
Under the Dome:
One of the initial executive producers of UtD, season 1, was Brian K. Vaughan, author of Runaways, and a number of excellent comics. He left for season 2. If how season 1 turned out was disappointing (and it was), it is at least somewhat of a relief to know that the moment he left, it turned to complete and utter crap instantly. I mean, it's pretty much laughably bad.
The Last Ship: Watching this mainly because Adam Baldwin's in it playing the first officer. It's okay.
Defiance: Something of a surprise, they actually seem to be taking some risks here, and it has the sense of a show that somebody actually cares about. Sure, there's still a lot of problematic stuff, and it's still more than a little cheesy, but on the whole I'm enjoying what I'm seeing more than the first year.
Orphan Black: Only seen the S2 premiere, watching it as it airs on TV here. Enjoying it, though.
Continuum: Haven't even dipped into the third season yet.
Penny Dreadful: Watched and liked the first episode, but I haven't gone beyond that yet.
I think that's all of it. There are some other TV shows I've heard that might appeal to my interests (The Strain comes to mind), but I haven't dipped into yet.
So, now, onto books. Before I move onto reviews, I thought I'd mention two things. First, the Hugo Awards were this past weekend, and the Best Novel winner was Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which also won the Nebula, Locus, and Clarke award. It is also a book that I received free through a Goodreads giveaway before publication. So I have a signed ARC of a Hugo and Nebula award winning novel, so, yay me. :). And I think it's quite worthy of the honors. If you're interested, my review is here.
Second, I went to the used bookstore yesterday and picked up 6 books, including the final Culture book, The Hydrogen Sonata (sniff... RIP Iain M. Banks), Un Lun Dun by China Mieville (sort of a similar premise as Neverwhere which I always enjoyed), and Grass by Sheri S. Teper, which I've heard some good things about.
Anyway, onto reviews. As usual, usually snipped from my Goodreads reviews.
Finished: The Apex Book of World SF (short story collection)
A collection of short stories from authors from or in different parts of the world than the traditional sources of western SF. Some are science fiction, some fantasy, some horror.
I actually won a free copy of this ebook as part of a bundle that I was given a free copy of, but I do like reading SF from different perspectives, and people from other cultures can certainly have that, so I was excited about this more than anything else in the bundle. I was a little disappointed, because of the definition of SF... the book takes it in the broader, speculative fiction definition, whereas I was really hoping it'd be mostly science fiction. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Some of the non-science fiction stories were still entertaining, of course, but I really wanted to see other culture's view of science and the future, and I didn't get enough of that. And most of the stories that I felt nothing for were, of course, in the fantasy/horror blend. One I wouldn't even call fantasy, but at best a fable. And honestly, most of the fantasy and horror stories didn't even showcase especially original stories... often they were rather uninspired plots that happened to be written by a foreign author or have a foreign setting. To a certain extent this was true of the science fiction stories as well, although to a lesser degree. Maybe my hopes were too high, but for a book collecting SF from around the world, one would hope they could find something particularly innovative that was missed by the western world, instead of fairly conventional stories.
My favorites were probably "Transcendant Express" by Dutch writer Jetse de Vries, "An Evening in the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia on My Mind" by Croatian writer Alexsander Ziljak, and "The Lost Xuyan Bride" by Aliette de Bodard from France.
Although I was left a little disappointed, I still would read future volumes of this if I stumble upon them... although I would really like an all science-fiction collection of foreign SF.
Finished: The Fenris Device, by Brian Stableford (Hooded Swan #5, reread)
Flying in certain types of planetary atmospheres can be more difficult than flying in space. And landing can be trickier still. When Grainger fails to land on the planet Mormyr, he outright refuses to try again... even if it means losing his ship and getting the crippling debt that his employment is working off reinstated in full. And if that means the first outreach between the notoriously isolationist but utterly peaceful Gallaceans fails, he doesn't particularly care, he doesn't want to die in the attempt. Except, when, during his recovery, he is waylaid by a madman with a gun, who wants him to make the drop... and steal the ancient alien warship he believes is what the Gallaceans want to recover.
The penultimate book in the Grainger/Hooded Swan series, this one once again puts a high emphasis on flying, but with the Gallaceans Stableford's biology skills once again come into play, creating an alien race with a psychology that reflects its biological origins. We also learn a little more about the wind, the helpful voice in Grainger's head... Grainger has never wanted to hear about its life, but when the information becomes relevant, that changes.
This one might be the highest on action in the series, what with the tense standoff (and eventual resolution with) the madman Maslax, and huge weapons are even fired, but Grainger's aversion to killing is still front and center, though not obtrusively. But really, for me, the book shines around two scenes it seems built around... one, where Grainger has to make use of the wind's skills in full view of one of his shipmates, and another, where he makes a hard negotiation with his boss after the immediate threat is over. Aside from the first, the other books could probably be skipped and you wouldn't miss a huge part of the plot... this one fully advances that plot.
Lots of fun, again from a very subjective point of view. One to go.
Finished: Swan Song, by Brian Stableford (Hooded Swan #6, reread)
The last of Stableford's Hooded Swan novels, about an abrasive pilot and expert in alien environments and the occasionally unwelcome mind-symbiot that shares his brain, starts with him free, at least as somebody in his position can be. He's finally gotten out from his debt, and away from the Hooded Swan, master of his own fate. But his past associations make him interesting to the wrong people, and he gets drawn back to his old employers... and then, when he finds out that most of his old crewmates are lost and presumed dead, asked to recreate the mission they disappeared on, a journey through an astrological anomaly into what is believed to be a completely different universe.
Reaching the end of this series is bittersweet, and I mean that seriously, because it really does end, he brings to a conclusion several plot points and some of them in a way that not only has its sweetness but also surprising bitterness. The series is told exclusively from Grainger's own point of view, and it makes this finale painful in ways because he lets me down, but at the same time... the book is full of examples where it's obvious that Grainger is being harder on other people, in his judgements of their motives and personalities, than they deserve, so I get the strong sense that he's doing so here, again, especially when some of his feelings and emotions contradict what he's said on previous occasions. In other books, I might call it a mistake, but I truly believe in this it means something, that the only way he can come to terms with things is to be more of a bastard than he needs to, to finally do to the reader what he's tried on repeated occasions to do to everybody else: make them hate him so he doesn't have to deal with them in the parts of his life he's not ready for. It's not the healthiest approach, but it's very Grainger. In the end, I don't hate him, but I feel sorry for him, and I wish Stableford would write one more book set years later that would give me more closure (heck, there's a part of me that wants to write it myself).Still, revisiting the universe provided me with a lot of enjoyment, and I'm sure I'll come back to it somewhere down the line once again.
Finished: The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters
Detective Hank Palace is investigating a man found hanging in a restroom, that he thinks may be a murder. Nobody believes him, and many think he's crazy or stupid, he should just let it go, mark it down as a suicide, and move on. It's not a grand conspiracy of silence, it's simply a matter of fact: everybody in the world knows that there's a civilization-ending asteroid on it's way to Earth, hitting with one-hundred percent probability, and impact's only months away. Suicides are way up. Of course that also means that if you wanted to get away with murder, the easiest thing to do would be to make it look like just another suicide.
The coming asteroid and its impact on society is the only SF element in this book... it's otherwise set in the present day. You might consider it just a standard mystery novel with a gimmick. But it's a good gimmick, and well-executed, painting a vivid picture of a world full of lost people, trying to deal with their imminent deaths all at once. Some opt out, some take the opportunity to indulge their long-delayed dreams, some join fringe religions or conspiracy groups, clinging to hope that there's a way to escape or avert the apocalypse, and some just soldier on as best they can. But society doesn't work so well when there's no future. It's bleak, but strangely compelling, even uplifting in a roundabout way, seeing people still carrying on nobly when it's easier to just quit.
As for the mystery itself... well, I'm not much of a mystery reader, so I can't judge it comparatively... all I can say is that there weren't many suspects so it wasn't all that hard to guess who it was before the detective did, although the why was still left in doubt (and indeed, in this setting, there are so many more potential motives). But I didn't care, because just existing in the world for a time was more engaging than the mystery.
I get the feeling that I shouldn't like this as much as I do. The protagonist is something of a generic, though likeable, character, a bit of a geek with a tragic past, but you do root for him. The mystery is, as said, not all that hard to figure out. Despite that, and other minor flaws, the book just swept me along and kept me going with a myriad of little details about how things are different, and I was left thinking about it immediately after I was gone, particularly the obvious question of what would I do with my life if this happened to us, but also some broader questions. And, shortly after finishing, I went out and bought the other two books in the trilogy (I don't think it's a significant spoiler to reveal that, although the particular mystery does get solved, there are loose ends and the book doesn't end with a big bang... each book in the series gets closer to the impact date).
Quite recommended, probably even for non-science fiction fans.
Finished: Countdown City by Ben H. Winters
Book Two of the Last Policeman series so I'll cut the whole description. Short version: Better than the first.
Hank Palace is trying to do a favor for an old friend... her husband has gone missing, and she wants to find him. It's practically a fool's errand... missing persons are as common as dirt, these days. After all, there's only two and a half months before a civilization-destroying asteroid hits Earth. Lots of people are leaving their responsibilities behind and going after their bucket list, and much of society has already started to collapse, with modern conveniences like the internet and gasoline no longer available. But for reasons Hank can't entirely understand or explain, he takes the case.
This is the second book in the series started with The Last Policeman, and I think it's one of those rare sequels that are even better than the first book. The first was a mystery book with a somewhat unique, almost gimmicky setting. This one delves more into world building and you really feel that the state of the world and the sense of growing desperation. The mystery element is also a little more complex, with more suspects and possibilities, and although I guessed a few elements, others were more of a surprise, and it was a better vehicle to explore how the world starts to fall down.
If there's a weakness, it's probably in the use of sudden conveniences, familiar characters who manage to appear in places where it's a little unbelievable to find each other, or right in the nick of time, but it's a small problem. The book is a lot of fun.
Finished: Ventus, by Karl Schroeder (reread)
On the planet Ventus, where humans are prohibited from all but the most limited pieces of technology, Jordan Mason lives what he believes is an ordinary life, expecting to eventually inherit his father's stoneworking business. But that all changes when he begins having visions of a distant warrior named Armiger whose army is destroyed for defying the powerful Winds that control and moderate the planet's ground, seas, and atmosphere. Soon, Jordan learns he's also key to finding Armiger, who is the agent of a malevolent and nearly godlike entity known as 3340, recently defeated in a centuries-long war against the galaxy-spanning human civilization Jordan has never heard of. Worse Armiger may not simply be an agent, he may be a means for 3340 to recreate itself from scratch and take over all of Ventus and the rest of the galaxy.
This book was the first novel of, and my first experience with, Karl Schroeder, who has since gone on to become one of my absolute favorites. He excels at really inventive speculations not just on possible technologies, but how they may influence our lives and societies and our quests for meaning, all while wrapping it up in a compelling plot. This book is no exception, tying in some intriguing thoughts on artificial intelligence with a storyline that could be a fantasy novel. That is a fairly old technique among writers, but Karl Schroeder pulls it off well, and in my favorite way. Instead of using it solely as an excuse to tell a fantasy story, with magic just briefly explained as being the product of some higher technology, Schroeder does it in a way where all of the fantastic elements make perfect sense given the technological underpinnings, which he explains well. Nor does he shy away from the outright SF element... although most of the story is set on the quasi-medieval world of Ventus, we also visit far-future Earth and living starships and meet robots and people with technological enhancements to their body. In this way, the story can serve as an ideal bridge for a fantasy reader who is interested in trying out hard SF, as the main viewpoint character is a man who doesn't know much about SF concepts that a person in a fantasy world wouldn't, and it's explained to him as others. And even if you are very familiar with these tropes, it never feels condescending.
Usually with a first novel, I give the author some leeway and am more forgiving of its flaws, but this didn't need much. Sure, flaws exist... the plot meanders a little and the ending juggles too many plot threads at once and has to end them quickly, for starters, as well as some minor incidents of head-hopping. And you could argue that the main character is a somewhat cliche "young male hero who gets wish-fulfillment abilities", with a romance subplot that's pretty by-the-numbers... but enough cliches are averted in other angles that it's easy to forgive this one. And even though Jordan and Armiger are the main characters, they're far from the only ones, there are several characters, including a number of strong female characters who could be argued are the heroes of the piece except that they don't get enough page time. There's Calandria May the advanced agent of technological humanity, who was responsible for bringing down 3340 in the first place, there's Queen Galas who is not content to rule in comfort and privilege like so many others but tries experiments to recreate society under different lines, and even Marya Mounce, Ventus expert and anthropologist.
One of the things I've come to really appreciate about Karl Schroeder is his resistance to easy villains. Aside from a few minor characters, and 3340 who is mostly off-stage, most of the conflict in the book comes from people who are legitimately trying to do what they see as the right thing, in difficult situations or with inadequate information. That opens the door to conflicts being resolved not just through battle but for coming to new understandings, which might sound boring to some, but I really appreciate in SF. Even Armiger, who in many books would be the "big bad" type character, is humanized and complex and at times you (warily) root for him.
I think this is my third or fourth reread, and, although it's not my favorite of Schroeder's books (that honor belongs to Lady of Mazes, which is set in the same universe but centuries earlier and far from the planet of Ventus), but I'm sure I'll be rereading it many times over the years.
Finished: World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters
Conclusion of the Last Policeman series, so I'll cut completely. Short version: Weakest of the three, but worth reading. Former Detective Hank Palace has a good place to live for the rest of his life, but he also has one last mystery to solve, and so he leaves it all behind to go on the road with his dog and a criminal associate. His sister's missing, and hooked up with some conspiracy theorists, and he has to find her within the next week. It's rather urgent. Because, only days away, an asteroid will hit the Earth ending most of the life on it.
The conclusion to the series that started in The Last Policeman, this one's set in the last days of humanity as we know it. The first two books set a high standard, so it may be difficult to live up to... and in fact, it doesn't. It's the weakest of the three books, at least in terms of story and the mystery. I figured out much of that central mystery pretty early on (although there were a handful of surprises, I'm not sure they made sense). It's still a good book for all that... this is the kind of story where you can derive enjoyment just as much from how it forces you to imagine how you might react in similar situations, and reflect on what's important, and why we do anything when ultimately we all end up dead eventually, big questions that are sometimes too big to think about in everyday life. Where the final book does have a leg up on the others is in the emotional punch... this book certainly makes you feel a lot. Not quite the emotions I wanted to feel out of it, but in a series like this, you can't really expect that. The emotional punches alone are what pushed this from a three-star rating to a (low) four-star. Still, I kind of wish that I could see a book where other things happened.
I still highly recommend the series as a whole.
Finished: Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (reread)
Marcus Yallow is skipping school with his friends to play a game on the streets of his hometown, San Francisco... when terrorists blow up a nearby bridge. In the ensuing chaos, all four are detained by the government, interrogate, and threatened... and only three make it out. They have no idea what happened to their friend Darryl, but they've been warned against talking about what happened, and the country is growing even more paranoid, mass surveillance and monitoring of everyday citizens and civil rights are being quashed in the name of fighting terror, and Marcus realizes that he has to do something. He organizes like-minded people and starts to quietly, peacefully fight back... not against terrorists, but against the people who are the real threats to freedom... those who destroy it in the name of preserving it.
This is a YA book, targeted towards teenagers, and there's a tiny bit of a sci-fi edge, but not much... it's meant to take place in the very near future, so near it could almost be tomorrow, or next year. Unfortunately, at times it already feels a little out-of-date because of it, but regardless, it's perhaps one of the most important YA books there is, teaching not just the importance of standing up for your rights, but also concrete ways that you can protect your privacy, ways people monitor and falsely use terrorism fears to push their agenda, ways your own noble actions can be twisted against you. There's a lot of depth here, but it's not a didactic polemic, it's a love letter to freedom and technology.
It's also a lot of fun. The basic story is very exciting and fairly believable (though perhaps the wrap-up suffers from the need for a quick wrap-up victory, when in reality struggles like Marcus is on can take place over years), and even when it gives a lecture on the history of hacking or protest movements or how encryption works, it's not dull, it's done in an excited way, like the best of teachers (or geeky friends) sharing something they love in a passionate way that lets you see why. And there is a lot of practical information that actually can be followed... it gives you just enough to know what's happening in the story (like how Marcus evades school monitoring techniques), and to look up for yourself if you're interested in more. The "do it yourself" philosophy is pretty deeply engrained, not that you have to, but that you should be free to, if you want to. And you should be ready to, if you have to. This is a book that is sometimes banned or discouraged from (the less-enlightened, more authoritarian) schools, but I firmly believe it should be taught by them all. It's the kind of book I want to press into the hands of any teenagers I even tangentially know and say, "you have to read this," except that might be a little creepy.
It's not a perfect book, it has its flaws, and the main character is the standard white middle class teen male, where it might have worked (except for one glorious moment where he's forced to face his own privilege) better if they attempted to be a little more diverse. It doesn't quite have the storytelling magic of Harry Potter or top the Hunger Games as an emotionally gripping adventure tale, and it might never be made into a movie, but I think it's more important than all of them. And it's free, if you want. Although the book form is great, the author has made electronic versions of the text available on his website, so if you read ebooks you really have no excuse. I rate it 4 stars for me personally, it's really enjoyable even to me as an adult, but I think as a YA book, it rates 5.
Finished: Lockstep by Karl Schroeder
Toby McGonigal has been lost in space, hibernating for 14,000 years, and then is found, to find his younger siblings rule an empire. For them, only 40 years have passed, thanks to an innovative society they started on worlds between the stars and far from home. These societies are built on the Lockstep method, which involves whole societies freezing themselves on a schedule, living for very short periods in inhospitable worlds, then hibernating for years while their bots gather resources. This allows not only survival on these marginal worlds, but trade, for the light speed limit might be insurmountable, but if you time your journeys correctly, travel to other worlds can happen in one night's sleep from the perspective of not only you, but both worlds. However, Toby's return threatens his own family's rule, and they want him out of the picture. Short version: disappointing, the mix between hard SF and YA doesn't work too well, but stunning ideas.
Let's start with the really stunning feature of this book: the ideas, especially but not limited to the basic one. It's not an absolutely original one, in that other authors have explored the idea of civilizations hibernating together to avoid problems with travelling between stars, but Schroeder's perhaps put the most thought into it, creating an innovative setting where everybody lives with the weird intersection of the past and future (for then newest members of the society may come from worlds where the lockstep has been ancient history, and a twenty-year-old person could meet somebody who's entirely family has told legends about him for centuries). And on a technological level, a lot of the ideas are made convincing, far more than I would have expected (some of the social ideas I'm a bit iffier on, but that's par for the course). He really has something special with this concept, and it's worth reading for that alone. Schroeder's one of my favorite authors, particularly for these inventive ideas, and in that respect, he doesn't disappoint.
I just wish it was a little more of an adult novel, and that I liked the story a little more.
Lockstep has been somewhat marketed as YA, and it has several of the hallmarks of books aimed towards teens, a teenage protagonist, a love interest, even a cute animal. And I think here's where the book's biggest flaws in... the YA elements are relatively competent, though nothing special... the problem is that I don't think it meshes especially well with the rest of the book. The ideas of the lockstep are really cool, but a lot of them are somewhat abstract, and I don't think it has that visceral wow factor that a really good YA has. It inspires the mind more than the heart, and even with the descriptions, might be difficult for younger readers to really visualize exactly what things look like... some of it takes place in the atmosphere of gas giants, others on cold, sunless worlds lit artificially, or weird spacegoing vessels.
The simplicity of the YA storyline also, I feel, prevents the cool ideas from reaching their fullest potential. Too often I got the feeling that the society was too simplified to be believable, a problem I have in YA all the time.
The weird thing is, Karl Schroeder has sort of written YA fiction before, several times. His first novel, Ventus, has some of that vibe, as does Permanence, and even the first book in his Virga series, Sun of Suns. They all had young protagonists, but they managed the balance much better, and I think they'd be more entertaining not only to adults, but teens as well.
There are a few pacing problems as well, where it seems like it takes a long time to get going as he really need to get you to understand the ins and outs of his SFinal conceits, and then everything wraps up extremely quickly, and not entirely satisfyingly.
Despite all this, I did enjoy it, and I absolutely loved the basic ideas and the universe he set up. I'd love to read more stories in this setting, particularly ones where it's just "business as usual" for the universe (albeit with big stakes for the characters) rather than a character who's quest threatens the upheaval of the system entirely.
Finished: The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi
The conclusion of the series that started in The Quantum Thief, The Causal Angel deals with posthuman gentleman thief Jean le Flambeur as he tries to rescue his friend and perhaps save humanity from the All-Defector, a creature that knows how to beat anybody and is manipulating factions that span the solar system.
I didn't reread the other two books prior to coming back to this one, and each prior book, on its own, was intimidating to get through, what with introducing scores of new or obscure terminology and never explaining them, forcing you to pick it up through context. I was a little worried that this would be the same way, but I did manage to get into this one much more easily and understand the basics of what was happening, based on what I remembered from what came before.
That doesn't mean the book is simple, by any means. There were wide stretches that I only had a limited idea what was going on. And I loved every page of it. The author's got a way of making that confusion not so bad, you keep hanging on for what happens to the characters, and the prose itself is wonderful despite (or perhaps because of) all the weird terms being thrown around.
The ending did perhaps fail to satisfy a little bit, but only because after such a series, almost anything would. I'm not disappointed, I simply wanted more, it all seemed to go by too fast.
Highly recommend this series for fans of post-singularity fiction.
Started: Blindsight by Peter Watts (reread)
Started: Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross
Started: Zero Echo Schadow Prime by Peter Samet (received for free)
Falling Skies: Got pretty bad real fast. The show was never GREAT, but it was decent fun with a sense of progression in the storylines... until this year when they decided to just abandon a bunch of plots so they could do riffs on prison camps, Hitler Youth, hippies, and the old Guerilla war plot they started with and did to death. I can barely care anymore. But it's not nearly as bad as what happened to...
Under the Dome:
One of the initial executive producers of UtD, season 1, was Brian K. Vaughan, author of Runaways, and a number of excellent comics. He left for season 2. If how season 1 turned out was disappointing (and it was), it is at least somewhat of a relief to know that the moment he left, it turned to complete and utter crap instantly. I mean, it's pretty much laughably bad.
The Last Ship: Watching this mainly because Adam Baldwin's in it playing the first officer. It's okay.
Defiance: Something of a surprise, they actually seem to be taking some risks here, and it has the sense of a show that somebody actually cares about. Sure, there's still a lot of problematic stuff, and it's still more than a little cheesy, but on the whole I'm enjoying what I'm seeing more than the first year.
Orphan Black: Only seen the S2 premiere, watching it as it airs on TV here. Enjoying it, though.
Continuum: Haven't even dipped into the third season yet.
Penny Dreadful: Watched and liked the first episode, but I haven't gone beyond that yet.
I think that's all of it. There are some other TV shows I've heard that might appeal to my interests (The Strain comes to mind), but I haven't dipped into yet.
So, now, onto books. Before I move onto reviews, I thought I'd mention two things. First, the Hugo Awards were this past weekend, and the Best Novel winner was Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which also won the Nebula, Locus, and Clarke award. It is also a book that I received free through a Goodreads giveaway before publication. So I have a signed ARC of a Hugo and Nebula award winning novel, so, yay me. :). And I think it's quite worthy of the honors. If you're interested, my review is here.
Second, I went to the used bookstore yesterday and picked up 6 books, including the final Culture book, The Hydrogen Sonata (sniff... RIP Iain M. Banks), Un Lun Dun by China Mieville (sort of a similar premise as Neverwhere which I always enjoyed), and Grass by Sheri S. Teper, which I've heard some good things about.
Anyway, onto reviews. As usual, usually snipped from my Goodreads reviews.
Finished: The Apex Book of World SF (short story collection)
A collection of short stories from authors from or in different parts of the world than the traditional sources of western SF. Some are science fiction, some fantasy, some horror.
I actually won a free copy of this ebook as part of a bundle that I was given a free copy of, but I do like reading SF from different perspectives, and people from other cultures can certainly have that, so I was excited about this more than anything else in the bundle. I was a little disappointed, because of the definition of SF... the book takes it in the broader, speculative fiction definition, whereas I was really hoping it'd be mostly science fiction. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Some of the non-science fiction stories were still entertaining, of course, but I really wanted to see other culture's view of science and the future, and I didn't get enough of that. And most of the stories that I felt nothing for were, of course, in the fantasy/horror blend. One I wouldn't even call fantasy, but at best a fable. And honestly, most of the fantasy and horror stories didn't even showcase especially original stories... often they were rather uninspired plots that happened to be written by a foreign author or have a foreign setting. To a certain extent this was true of the science fiction stories as well, although to a lesser degree. Maybe my hopes were too high, but for a book collecting SF from around the world, one would hope they could find something particularly innovative that was missed by the western world, instead of fairly conventional stories.
My favorites were probably "Transcendant Express" by Dutch writer Jetse de Vries, "An Evening in the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia on My Mind" by Croatian writer Alexsander Ziljak, and "The Lost Xuyan Bride" by Aliette de Bodard from France.
Although I was left a little disappointed, I still would read future volumes of this if I stumble upon them... although I would really like an all science-fiction collection of foreign SF.
Finished: The Fenris Device, by Brian Stableford (Hooded Swan #5, reread)
Flying in certain types of planetary atmospheres can be more difficult than flying in space. And landing can be trickier still. When Grainger fails to land on the planet Mormyr, he outright refuses to try again... even if it means losing his ship and getting the crippling debt that his employment is working off reinstated in full. And if that means the first outreach between the notoriously isolationist but utterly peaceful Gallaceans fails, he doesn't particularly care, he doesn't want to die in the attempt. Except, when, during his recovery, he is waylaid by a madman with a gun, who wants him to make the drop... and steal the ancient alien warship he believes is what the Gallaceans want to recover.
The penultimate book in the Grainger/Hooded Swan series, this one once again puts a high emphasis on flying, but with the Gallaceans Stableford's biology skills once again come into play, creating an alien race with a psychology that reflects its biological origins. We also learn a little more about the wind, the helpful voice in Grainger's head... Grainger has never wanted to hear about its life, but when the information becomes relevant, that changes.
This one might be the highest on action in the series, what with the tense standoff (and eventual resolution with) the madman Maslax, and huge weapons are even fired, but Grainger's aversion to killing is still front and center, though not obtrusively. But really, for me, the book shines around two scenes it seems built around... one, where Grainger has to make use of the wind's skills in full view of one of his shipmates, and another, where he makes a hard negotiation with his boss after the immediate threat is over. Aside from the first, the other books could probably be skipped and you wouldn't miss a huge part of the plot... this one fully advances that plot.
Lots of fun, again from a very subjective point of view. One to go.
Finished: Swan Song, by Brian Stableford (Hooded Swan #6, reread)
The last of Stableford's Hooded Swan novels, about an abrasive pilot and expert in alien environments and the occasionally unwelcome mind-symbiot that shares his brain, starts with him free, at least as somebody in his position can be. He's finally gotten out from his debt, and away from the Hooded Swan, master of his own fate. But his past associations make him interesting to the wrong people, and he gets drawn back to his old employers... and then, when he finds out that most of his old crewmates are lost and presumed dead, asked to recreate the mission they disappeared on, a journey through an astrological anomaly into what is believed to be a completely different universe.
Reaching the end of this series is bittersweet, and I mean that seriously, because it really does end, he brings to a conclusion several plot points and some of them in a way that not only has its sweetness but also surprising bitterness. The series is told exclusively from Grainger's own point of view, and it makes this finale painful in ways because he lets me down, but at the same time... the book is full of examples where it's obvious that Grainger is being harder on other people, in his judgements of their motives and personalities, than they deserve, so I get the strong sense that he's doing so here, again, especially when some of his feelings and emotions contradict what he's said on previous occasions. In other books, I might call it a mistake, but I truly believe in this it means something, that the only way he can come to terms with things is to be more of a bastard than he needs to, to finally do to the reader what he's tried on repeated occasions to do to everybody else: make them hate him so he doesn't have to deal with them in the parts of his life he's not ready for. It's not the healthiest approach, but it's very Grainger. In the end, I don't hate him, but I feel sorry for him, and I wish Stableford would write one more book set years later that would give me more closure (heck, there's a part of me that wants to write it myself).Still, revisiting the universe provided me with a lot of enjoyment, and I'm sure I'll come back to it somewhere down the line once again.
Finished: The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters
Detective Hank Palace is investigating a man found hanging in a restroom, that he thinks may be a murder. Nobody believes him, and many think he's crazy or stupid, he should just let it go, mark it down as a suicide, and move on. It's not a grand conspiracy of silence, it's simply a matter of fact: everybody in the world knows that there's a civilization-ending asteroid on it's way to Earth, hitting with one-hundred percent probability, and impact's only months away. Suicides are way up. Of course that also means that if you wanted to get away with murder, the easiest thing to do would be to make it look like just another suicide.
The coming asteroid and its impact on society is the only SF element in this book... it's otherwise set in the present day. You might consider it just a standard mystery novel with a gimmick. But it's a good gimmick, and well-executed, painting a vivid picture of a world full of lost people, trying to deal with their imminent deaths all at once. Some opt out, some take the opportunity to indulge their long-delayed dreams, some join fringe religions or conspiracy groups, clinging to hope that there's a way to escape or avert the apocalypse, and some just soldier on as best they can. But society doesn't work so well when there's no future. It's bleak, but strangely compelling, even uplifting in a roundabout way, seeing people still carrying on nobly when it's easier to just quit.
As for the mystery itself... well, I'm not much of a mystery reader, so I can't judge it comparatively... all I can say is that there weren't many suspects so it wasn't all that hard to guess who it was before the detective did, although the why was still left in doubt (and indeed, in this setting, there are so many more potential motives). But I didn't care, because just existing in the world for a time was more engaging than the mystery.
I get the feeling that I shouldn't like this as much as I do. The protagonist is something of a generic, though likeable, character, a bit of a geek with a tragic past, but you do root for him. The mystery is, as said, not all that hard to figure out. Despite that, and other minor flaws, the book just swept me along and kept me going with a myriad of little details about how things are different, and I was left thinking about it immediately after I was gone, particularly the obvious question of what would I do with my life if this happened to us, but also some broader questions. And, shortly after finishing, I went out and bought the other two books in the trilogy (I don't think it's a significant spoiler to reveal that, although the particular mystery does get solved, there are loose ends and the book doesn't end with a big bang... each book in the series gets closer to the impact date).
Quite recommended, probably even for non-science fiction fans.
Finished: Countdown City by Ben H. Winters
Book Two of the Last Policeman series so I'll cut the whole description. Short version: Better than the first.
Hank Palace is trying to do a favor for an old friend... her husband has gone missing, and she wants to find him. It's practically a fool's errand... missing persons are as common as dirt, these days. After all, there's only two and a half months before a civilization-destroying asteroid hits Earth. Lots of people are leaving their responsibilities behind and going after their bucket list, and much of society has already started to collapse, with modern conveniences like the internet and gasoline no longer available. But for reasons Hank can't entirely understand or explain, he takes the case.
This is the second book in the series started with The Last Policeman, and I think it's one of those rare sequels that are even better than the first book. The first was a mystery book with a somewhat unique, almost gimmicky setting. This one delves more into world building and you really feel that the state of the world and the sense of growing desperation. The mystery element is also a little more complex, with more suspects and possibilities, and although I guessed a few elements, others were more of a surprise, and it was a better vehicle to explore how the world starts to fall down.
If there's a weakness, it's probably in the use of sudden conveniences, familiar characters who manage to appear in places where it's a little unbelievable to find each other, or right in the nick of time, but it's a small problem. The book is a lot of fun.
Finished: Ventus, by Karl Schroeder (reread)
On the planet Ventus, where humans are prohibited from all but the most limited pieces of technology, Jordan Mason lives what he believes is an ordinary life, expecting to eventually inherit his father's stoneworking business. But that all changes when he begins having visions of a distant warrior named Armiger whose army is destroyed for defying the powerful Winds that control and moderate the planet's ground, seas, and atmosphere. Soon, Jordan learns he's also key to finding Armiger, who is the agent of a malevolent and nearly godlike entity known as 3340, recently defeated in a centuries-long war against the galaxy-spanning human civilization Jordan has never heard of. Worse Armiger may not simply be an agent, he may be a means for 3340 to recreate itself from scratch and take over all of Ventus and the rest of the galaxy.
This book was the first novel of, and my first experience with, Karl Schroeder, who has since gone on to become one of my absolute favorites. He excels at really inventive speculations not just on possible technologies, but how they may influence our lives and societies and our quests for meaning, all while wrapping it up in a compelling plot. This book is no exception, tying in some intriguing thoughts on artificial intelligence with a storyline that could be a fantasy novel. That is a fairly old technique among writers, but Karl Schroeder pulls it off well, and in my favorite way. Instead of using it solely as an excuse to tell a fantasy story, with magic just briefly explained as being the product of some higher technology, Schroeder does it in a way where all of the fantastic elements make perfect sense given the technological underpinnings, which he explains well. Nor does he shy away from the outright SF element... although most of the story is set on the quasi-medieval world of Ventus, we also visit far-future Earth and living starships and meet robots and people with technological enhancements to their body. In this way, the story can serve as an ideal bridge for a fantasy reader who is interested in trying out hard SF, as the main viewpoint character is a man who doesn't know much about SF concepts that a person in a fantasy world wouldn't, and it's explained to him as others. And even if you are very familiar with these tropes, it never feels condescending.
Usually with a first novel, I give the author some leeway and am more forgiving of its flaws, but this didn't need much. Sure, flaws exist... the plot meanders a little and the ending juggles too many plot threads at once and has to end them quickly, for starters, as well as some minor incidents of head-hopping. And you could argue that the main character is a somewhat cliche "young male hero who gets wish-fulfillment abilities", with a romance subplot that's pretty by-the-numbers... but enough cliches are averted in other angles that it's easy to forgive this one. And even though Jordan and Armiger are the main characters, they're far from the only ones, there are several characters, including a number of strong female characters who could be argued are the heroes of the piece except that they don't get enough page time. There's Calandria May the advanced agent of technological humanity, who was responsible for bringing down 3340 in the first place, there's Queen Galas who is not content to rule in comfort and privilege like so many others but tries experiments to recreate society under different lines, and even Marya Mounce, Ventus expert and anthropologist.
One of the things I've come to really appreciate about Karl Schroeder is his resistance to easy villains. Aside from a few minor characters, and 3340 who is mostly off-stage, most of the conflict in the book comes from people who are legitimately trying to do what they see as the right thing, in difficult situations or with inadequate information. That opens the door to conflicts being resolved not just through battle but for coming to new understandings, which might sound boring to some, but I really appreciate in SF. Even Armiger, who in many books would be the "big bad" type character, is humanized and complex and at times you (warily) root for him.
I think this is my third or fourth reread, and, although it's not my favorite of Schroeder's books (that honor belongs to Lady of Mazes, which is set in the same universe but centuries earlier and far from the planet of Ventus), but I'm sure I'll be rereading it many times over the years.
Finished: World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters
Conclusion of the Last Policeman series, so I'll cut completely. Short version: Weakest of the three, but worth reading. Former Detective Hank Palace has a good place to live for the rest of his life, but he also has one last mystery to solve, and so he leaves it all behind to go on the road with his dog and a criminal associate. His sister's missing, and hooked up with some conspiracy theorists, and he has to find her within the next week. It's rather urgent. Because, only days away, an asteroid will hit the Earth ending most of the life on it.
The conclusion to the series that started in The Last Policeman, this one's set in the last days of humanity as we know it. The first two books set a high standard, so it may be difficult to live up to... and in fact, it doesn't. It's the weakest of the three books, at least in terms of story and the mystery. I figured out much of that central mystery pretty early on (although there were a handful of surprises, I'm not sure they made sense). It's still a good book for all that... this is the kind of story where you can derive enjoyment just as much from how it forces you to imagine how you might react in similar situations, and reflect on what's important, and why we do anything when ultimately we all end up dead eventually, big questions that are sometimes too big to think about in everyday life. Where the final book does have a leg up on the others is in the emotional punch... this book certainly makes you feel a lot. Not quite the emotions I wanted to feel out of it, but in a series like this, you can't really expect that. The emotional punches alone are what pushed this from a three-star rating to a (low) four-star. Still, I kind of wish that I could see a book where other things happened.
I still highly recommend the series as a whole.
Finished: Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (reread)
Marcus Yallow is skipping school with his friends to play a game on the streets of his hometown, San Francisco... when terrorists blow up a nearby bridge. In the ensuing chaos, all four are detained by the government, interrogate, and threatened... and only three make it out. They have no idea what happened to their friend Darryl, but they've been warned against talking about what happened, and the country is growing even more paranoid, mass surveillance and monitoring of everyday citizens and civil rights are being quashed in the name of fighting terror, and Marcus realizes that he has to do something. He organizes like-minded people and starts to quietly, peacefully fight back... not against terrorists, but against the people who are the real threats to freedom... those who destroy it in the name of preserving it.
This is a YA book, targeted towards teenagers, and there's a tiny bit of a sci-fi edge, but not much... it's meant to take place in the very near future, so near it could almost be tomorrow, or next year. Unfortunately, at times it already feels a little out-of-date because of it, but regardless, it's perhaps one of the most important YA books there is, teaching not just the importance of standing up for your rights, but also concrete ways that you can protect your privacy, ways people monitor and falsely use terrorism fears to push their agenda, ways your own noble actions can be twisted against you. There's a lot of depth here, but it's not a didactic polemic, it's a love letter to freedom and technology.
It's also a lot of fun. The basic story is very exciting and fairly believable (though perhaps the wrap-up suffers from the need for a quick wrap-up victory, when in reality struggles like Marcus is on can take place over years), and even when it gives a lecture on the history of hacking or protest movements or how encryption works, it's not dull, it's done in an excited way, like the best of teachers (or geeky friends) sharing something they love in a passionate way that lets you see why. And there is a lot of practical information that actually can be followed... it gives you just enough to know what's happening in the story (like how Marcus evades school monitoring techniques), and to look up for yourself if you're interested in more. The "do it yourself" philosophy is pretty deeply engrained, not that you have to, but that you should be free to, if you want to. And you should be ready to, if you have to. This is a book that is sometimes banned or discouraged from (the less-enlightened, more authoritarian) schools, but I firmly believe it should be taught by them all. It's the kind of book I want to press into the hands of any teenagers I even tangentially know and say, "you have to read this," except that might be a little creepy.
It's not a perfect book, it has its flaws, and the main character is the standard white middle class teen male, where it might have worked (except for one glorious moment where he's forced to face his own privilege) better if they attempted to be a little more diverse. It doesn't quite have the storytelling magic of Harry Potter or top the Hunger Games as an emotionally gripping adventure tale, and it might never be made into a movie, but I think it's more important than all of them. And it's free, if you want. Although the book form is great, the author has made electronic versions of the text available on his website, so if you read ebooks you really have no excuse. I rate it 4 stars for me personally, it's really enjoyable even to me as an adult, but I think as a YA book, it rates 5.
Finished: Lockstep by Karl Schroeder
Toby McGonigal has been lost in space, hibernating for 14,000 years, and then is found, to find his younger siblings rule an empire. For them, only 40 years have passed, thanks to an innovative society they started on worlds between the stars and far from home. These societies are built on the Lockstep method, which involves whole societies freezing themselves on a schedule, living for very short periods in inhospitable worlds, then hibernating for years while their bots gather resources. This allows not only survival on these marginal worlds, but trade, for the light speed limit might be insurmountable, but if you time your journeys correctly, travel to other worlds can happen in one night's sleep from the perspective of not only you, but both worlds. However, Toby's return threatens his own family's rule, and they want him out of the picture. Short version: disappointing, the mix between hard SF and YA doesn't work too well, but stunning ideas.
Let's start with the really stunning feature of this book: the ideas, especially but not limited to the basic one. It's not an absolutely original one, in that other authors have explored the idea of civilizations hibernating together to avoid problems with travelling between stars, but Schroeder's perhaps put the most thought into it, creating an innovative setting where everybody lives with the weird intersection of the past and future (for then newest members of the society may come from worlds where the lockstep has been ancient history, and a twenty-year-old person could meet somebody who's entirely family has told legends about him for centuries). And on a technological level, a lot of the ideas are made convincing, far more than I would have expected (some of the social ideas I'm a bit iffier on, but that's par for the course). He really has something special with this concept, and it's worth reading for that alone. Schroeder's one of my favorite authors, particularly for these inventive ideas, and in that respect, he doesn't disappoint.
I just wish it was a little more of an adult novel, and that I liked the story a little more.
Lockstep has been somewhat marketed as YA, and it has several of the hallmarks of books aimed towards teens, a teenage protagonist, a love interest, even a cute animal. And I think here's where the book's biggest flaws in... the YA elements are relatively competent, though nothing special... the problem is that I don't think it meshes especially well with the rest of the book. The ideas of the lockstep are really cool, but a lot of them are somewhat abstract, and I don't think it has that visceral wow factor that a really good YA has. It inspires the mind more than the heart, and even with the descriptions, might be difficult for younger readers to really visualize exactly what things look like... some of it takes place in the atmosphere of gas giants, others on cold, sunless worlds lit artificially, or weird spacegoing vessels.
The simplicity of the YA storyline also, I feel, prevents the cool ideas from reaching their fullest potential. Too often I got the feeling that the society was too simplified to be believable, a problem I have in YA all the time.
The weird thing is, Karl Schroeder has sort of written YA fiction before, several times. His first novel, Ventus, has some of that vibe, as does Permanence, and even the first book in his Virga series, Sun of Suns. They all had young protagonists, but they managed the balance much better, and I think they'd be more entertaining not only to adults, but teens as well.
There are a few pacing problems as well, where it seems like it takes a long time to get going as he really need to get you to understand the ins and outs of his SFinal conceits, and then everything wraps up extremely quickly, and not entirely satisfyingly.
Despite all this, I did enjoy it, and I absolutely loved the basic ideas and the universe he set up. I'd love to read more stories in this setting, particularly ones where it's just "business as usual" for the universe (albeit with big stakes for the characters) rather than a character who's quest threatens the upheaval of the system entirely.
Finished: The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi
The conclusion of the series that started in The Quantum Thief, The Causal Angel deals with posthuman gentleman thief Jean le Flambeur as he tries to rescue his friend and perhaps save humanity from the All-Defector, a creature that knows how to beat anybody and is manipulating factions that span the solar system.
I didn't reread the other two books prior to coming back to this one, and each prior book, on its own, was intimidating to get through, what with introducing scores of new or obscure terminology and never explaining them, forcing you to pick it up through context. I was a little worried that this would be the same way, but I did manage to get into this one much more easily and understand the basics of what was happening, based on what I remembered from what came before.
That doesn't mean the book is simple, by any means. There were wide stretches that I only had a limited idea what was going on. And I loved every page of it. The author's got a way of making that confusion not so bad, you keep hanging on for what happens to the characters, and the prose itself is wonderful despite (or perhaps because of) all the weird terms being thrown around.
The ending did perhaps fail to satisfy a little bit, but only because after such a series, almost anything would. I'm not disappointed, I simply wanted more, it all seemed to go by too fast.
Highly recommend this series for fans of post-singularity fiction.
Started: Blindsight by Peter Watts (reread)
Started: Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross
Started: Zero Echo Schadow Prime by Peter Samet (received for free)