New books forty-two to forty-nine (May)
I seem to have got a bit behind, somehow, and a four month backlog is a bit embarrassing, so I've finally got round to making notes on the missing one of these ((46), for what it's worth) and put them up. June's batch to hopefully follow fairly soon, followed by July and August :)
42) Professor Branestawm's Perilous Pudding (Norman Hunter). Fairly standard Branestwam fare, with the usual mixture of stories from so-so to brilliant illogicality.
43) A Plague of Demons and other stories (Keith Laumer; ed Eric Flint). There's some good stuff in here, but nothing really brilliant, and either the author or the editor is obsessed with the idea that teh hooman brane is speshul and not subject to the laws of physics. And the title story is actually two unrelated shorts nailed together; it's just that the author didn't know how to finish one or start the other. Definitely disappointing relative to (38), but I don't know which is more typical.[Library]
44) Morning Child (Gardner Dubois). It occurred to me that while I'd read numerous collections edited by Gardner Dubois, I'd never read any of his work as an author. All of the stories in this collection are well written, and present interesting variations on the themes they consider, but somehow they never quite clicked with me. I'd definitely recommend that other people try Dubois's work, but I probably won't be reading it again. Strange, really.[Library]
45) Newton's Wake (Ken MacLeod). Not at all bad, and suffers less from MacLeod's problems with producing endings than some of his other stories, many of which seem to just trail off while you're waiting for the.... I'll probably be reading this one again at some point.
46) Seeds of Earth (Michael Cobley). Highly enjoyable, with some interesting ideas. There's some rather obvious political stereotyping-cum-association, and a total of exactly one major female character, but definitely better-than-average sci-fi.[Library][ETA: I've just bought a cheap s/h copy of this, and might add more detailed commentary when I've re-read it!]
47) Born Under Mars (John Brunner). From Brunner's ridiculously productive patch in the mid-1960s. Simple but ingenious, with a plot that works and nicely drawn characters (no female ones of any significance, although the female walk-on parts do at least get to be doctors and scientists in higher proportion than the men). Not heavy-weight Brunner, but enjoyable and well worth reading twice.
48) Starwater Strains (Gene Wolfe). Five weeks on, I remember nothing about the contents of this book except that they didn't excite me much while I was reading them. I don't think the stories were bad, particularly, but they've very completely failed either to grip me or be memorable in any way at all.[Library]
49) Queen of Candese (Karl Schroeder). Which, by the time I finally wrote it up in September, I still remembered more about than I did about (48) after a fraction of the time. But I couldn't remember all the details, so I got it out of the library to reread. Worth re-reading, although slightly disappointing in comparison to many of Schroeder's other books. I suspect (and the reread reinforced the suspicion) that that's because it takes place in a world that he's already described in a previous book (Sun of Suns); this is an excellent story, with well-written text and solid characters, it's just that - unlike most of Schroeder's books - you're not having to get to grips with the physical and social properties of a weirdly-constructed world at the same time. (While this is set in a different part of Virga to Sun of Suns, and the local societies behave somewhat differently, there's nothing very startling about them, and the underlying physical structure is already known.)[Library]
42) Professor Branestawm's Perilous Pudding (Norman Hunter). Fairly standard Branestwam fare, with the usual mixture of stories from so-so to brilliant illogicality.
43) A Plague of Demons and other stories (Keith Laumer; ed Eric Flint). There's some good stuff in here, but nothing really brilliant, and either the author or the editor is obsessed with the idea that teh hooman brane is speshul and not subject to the laws of physics. And the title story is actually two unrelated shorts nailed together; it's just that the author didn't know how to finish one or start the other. Definitely disappointing relative to (38), but I don't know which is more typical.[Library]
44) Morning Child (Gardner Dubois). It occurred to me that while I'd read numerous collections edited by Gardner Dubois, I'd never read any of his work as an author. All of the stories in this collection are well written, and present interesting variations on the themes they consider, but somehow they never quite clicked with me. I'd definitely recommend that other people try Dubois's work, but I probably won't be reading it again. Strange, really.[Library]
45) Newton's Wake (Ken MacLeod). Not at all bad, and suffers less from MacLeod's problems with producing endings than some of his other stories, many of which seem to just trail off while you're waiting for the.... I'll probably be reading this one again at some point.
46) Seeds of Earth (Michael Cobley). Highly enjoyable, with some interesting ideas. There's some rather obvious political stereotyping-cum-association, and a total of exactly one major female character, but definitely better-than-average sci-fi.[Library][ETA: I've just bought a cheap s/h copy of this, and might add more detailed commentary when I've re-read it!]
47) Born Under Mars (John Brunner). From Brunner's ridiculously productive patch in the mid-1960s. Simple but ingenious, with a plot that works and nicely drawn characters (no female ones of any significance, although the female walk-on parts do at least get to be doctors and scientists in higher proportion than the men). Not heavy-weight Brunner, but enjoyable and well worth reading twice.
48) Starwater Strains (Gene Wolfe). Five weeks on, I remember nothing about the contents of this book except that they didn't excite me much while I was reading them. I don't think the stories were bad, particularly, but they've very completely failed either to grip me or be memorable in any way at all.[Library]
49) Queen of Candese (Karl Schroeder). Which, by the time I finally wrote it up in September, I still remembered more about than I did about (48) after a fraction of the time. But I couldn't remember all the details, so I got it out of the library to reread. Worth re-reading, although slightly disappointing in comparison to many of Schroeder's other books. I suspect (and the reread reinforced the suspicion) that that's because it takes place in a world that he's already described in a previous book (Sun of Suns); this is an excellent story, with well-written text and solid characters, it's just that - unlike most of Schroeder's books - you're not having to get to grips with the physical and social properties of a weirdly-constructed world at the same time. (While this is set in a different part of Virga to Sun of Suns, and the local societies behave somewhat differently, there's nothing very startling about them, and the underlying physical structure is already known.)[Library]