Bibliography
The City of Gold and Lead - John Christopher
The second of the Tripods books, in which our lead protagonist gets into the city of the Masters after winning a competitive athletics competition and discovers that his prize is to serve as a slave in the city. He eventually escapes and brings his knowledge of the city back to the rebels, thinking he has left the companion who made it through dead inside. I remember reading this when I was younger, although there are scenes in it now which I find more problematic - the killing of the main character's Master, for instance, is a lot more morally problematic than I remember it being. But this is a children's book, technically, and I suspect some of the nuance probably got ironed out early on.
The Pool of Fire - John Christopher
The last of the Tripods books (I am not counting the prequel and don't intend to read it), in which the rebels manage to destroy the cities of the Masters and bring mankind into freedom - only in the last pages of the novel for their companionship to collapse and for the nations to begin squabbling amongst themselves. Which, given the current political climate, feels woefully apropos as I type this, but there we are. It's all a bit tech-wizardry and trying out clever actions and so on and so forth, and not bad to read, but eh. Also, all the boys. The whole of the Tripods series is All About The Boys and it's just... I suspect that might have something to do with why I never hunted down the third book as a kid. It's all a bit alienating, really.
Altered Carbon - Richard K. Morgan
More silly sci-fi, this time based on the premise that people can be stored in the cloud and downloaded into 'sleeves' (i.e. bodies) with or without neurological enhancement of various levels of sophistication. The first few chapters are heavy going as the exposition is done without a great deal of finesse, and it feels clunky and 'look at how I can write about lots of heavy weaponry going boom!', but once the plot gets rolling it's quite engaging - the main plot follows a whodunit police procedural arc, as the main character is bought in to find out whether a man was assassinated or committed suicide. The twist is that it is the man himself who is buying in our protagonist when the police have lost interest, because he has been downloaded into a clone but has lost the memories of whatever happened immediately before his death because they hadn't been downloaded. It's not bad - there's a lot of emphasis on the amount of violence, and admittedly there is quite a bit and some of it's pretty imaginative, but it's all plot-relevant. Some interesting thoughts there about what happens if humans can effectively live for ever, and the social effects of disposable bodies, not to mention what you have to do in order to police an intergalactic star-system. I enjoyed it more than the opening pages led me to expect.
The second of the Tripods books, in which our lead protagonist gets into the city of the Masters after winning a competitive athletics competition and discovers that his prize is to serve as a slave in the city. He eventually escapes and brings his knowledge of the city back to the rebels, thinking he has left the companion who made it through dead inside. I remember reading this when I was younger, although there are scenes in it now which I find more problematic - the killing of the main character's Master, for instance, is a lot more morally problematic than I remember it being. But this is a children's book, technically, and I suspect some of the nuance probably got ironed out early on.
The Pool of Fire - John Christopher
The last of the Tripods books (I am not counting the prequel and don't intend to read it), in which the rebels manage to destroy the cities of the Masters and bring mankind into freedom - only in the last pages of the novel for their companionship to collapse and for the nations to begin squabbling amongst themselves. Which, given the current political climate, feels woefully apropos as I type this, but there we are. It's all a bit tech-wizardry and trying out clever actions and so on and so forth, and not bad to read, but eh. Also, all the boys. The whole of the Tripods series is All About The Boys and it's just... I suspect that might have something to do with why I never hunted down the third book as a kid. It's all a bit alienating, really.
Altered Carbon - Richard K. Morgan
More silly sci-fi, this time based on the premise that people can be stored in the cloud and downloaded into 'sleeves' (i.e. bodies) with or without neurological enhancement of various levels of sophistication. The first few chapters are heavy going as the exposition is done without a great deal of finesse, and it feels clunky and 'look at how I can write about lots of heavy weaponry going boom!', but once the plot gets rolling it's quite engaging - the main plot follows a whodunit police procedural arc, as the main character is bought in to find out whether a man was assassinated or committed suicide. The twist is that it is the man himself who is buying in our protagonist when the police have lost interest, because he has been downloaded into a clone but has lost the memories of whatever happened immediately before his death because they hadn't been downloaded. It's not bad - there's a lot of emphasis on the amount of violence, and admittedly there is quite a bit and some of it's pretty imaginative, but it's all plot-relevant. Some interesting thoughts there about what happens if humans can effectively live for ever, and the social effects of disposable bodies, not to mention what you have to do in order to police an intergalactic star-system. I enjoyed it more than the opening pages led me to expect.