Tag Archives: science fiction

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

Posted by melydia on December 11, 2012 1 comments

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin: An emissary arrives on a planet called Winter, where the people are strangely unisexual. That is, they’re asexual until a certain time of the month, when they turn one gender or the other and, er, go into heat, as it were. This is the story of the emissary, who is a human man, as he attempts to convince the people of Winter to join the federation of human worlds. Winter, as its name suggests, is in the middle of a vast ice age. Like many classic SF tales, this is far more about the concept than the plot, but what a concept! The questions it raises regarding gender identity and its effects on society are legion. I wouldn’t say so much that I enjoyed it, but I did find it very interesting. Had the characters been a touch more compelling, it would have been un-put-downable.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Food of the Gods by H.G. Wells

Posted by melydia on November 9, 2012 None comments

The Food of the Gods by H.G. Wells: Two men create a substance to accelerate growth in any living thing, which is fine for vegetables but gets a little out of hand when wasps the size of dogs plague a nearby village. Things really start getting weird when one of them has the brilliant idea to feed the stuff to his infant son. This is a decent premise, but turned out not to be one of my favorite Wells stories. The characters fell a little flat and the story sort of unraveled as if Wells had this great idea and then had no idea what to do with it. It wasn’t bad so much as it just didn’t really hold my interest.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson

Posted by melydia on October 23, 2012 1 comments

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson: A group of scientists are in a spaceship bound for a far planet, some thirty light-years away. And while they cannot travel faster than the speed of light, the time dilation considerably shortens their trip. Due to the mechanism driving their speed, separate engines are required for deceleration. When these decelerators are broken after a collision with a rogue nebula, the crew find themselves accelerating faster and faster, while the time difference between them and the rest of the universe continues to grow. This is my first time reading a science fiction novel that really deals with the relativistic effects of space travel, and I found that part of it fascinating. The interactions between crew members, on the other hand, were far less interesting. I did notice, however, that when someone in a relationship was unfaithful, it was always the woman. Funny, that. But hey, if you can get past the often dated gender roles, it’s a pretty decent story of survival.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card

Posted by melydia on June 22, 2012 1 comments

The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card (unabridged audiobook read by Scott Brick and a full cast; 18.5 hrs on 15 discs): The first half or so of this book is a novella about the life of Jason Worthing, a telepath born thousands of years before. Jason’s world revolves around Somec, a drug that basically puts people into suspended animation and is distributed out based on merit, not money, to preserve the “most valuable” individuals for future generations. The greater the value of the person, the greater the ratio of time asleep to time awake, with the Empress at the highest Somec levels: awake one day for every five years asleep. Like a pebble skipping across a pond, these people skip across time, and ultimately the human race stagnates, as the most innovative minds are never awake long enough to accomplish anything. This is also the story of Jason’s colony started from scratch, the colonists adults with the minds of infants. This part got a little preachy – one of the examples of how degenerate life in the capital city had become was how the citizens found defecation more offensive than fornication – but most of the rest of it was pretty good. The latter half was a bunch of short stories, some retelling tales from earlier in the book, others new stories of Somec. Though some of them were kind of interesting, the addition felt unnecessary. All in all, well, this book passed the time. It wasn’t especially engaging. I find Card to be hit or miss; this wasn’t a complete miss, but it wasn’t a hit either.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Walpurgis III by Mike Resnick

Posted by melydia on April 27, 2012 None comments

Walpurgis III by Mike Resnick: A lot of Resnick books are about a super criminal being hunted by a super bounty hunter/assassin in the far future, and this book is no exception. Luckily, this is the sort of story he tells very well. The trouble here is that the criminal (Conrad Bland) fancies himself Satan incarnate, intent on killing everything and everyone in his path. Which would be fine – his quotes at the beginning of each chapter are often scandalously amusing – but he’s decided to base himself on the planet Walpurgis, a haven for a large number of Satanic religions. This is where things get a little silly. Told from the alternating viewpoints of the assassin (Jericho) as he attempts to find Bland, and the chief of police (John Sable) as he tracks down Jericho for killing random civilians in his jurisdiction. There’s a little bit of “who’s more evil, the man who kills compulsively or the one who does it emotionlessly as a means to an end,” but this is overshadowed by the focus on the fairly ridiculous religious practices of the assorted sects of Satan-worshippers. I guess if you’re easily shocked and titillated, this might be a delightfully scandalous read, but I could have skipped this one and been none the worse for wear.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

Posted by melydia on January 27, 2012 None comments

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke: Just as man is about to achieve space flight, a group of alien ships appear over every major city in the world. The aliens, whom the human race refer to as The Overlords, bring peace and prosperity to the entire planet over the course of the next hundred years. The Overlords are mysterious and secretive, never revealing their true purpose – until one day they announce that the current generation alive will be the very last of mankind ever. It’s a difficult read, though admittedly not quite as depressing as, say, On The Beach by Nevil Shute, but sobering nonetheless. Another interesting facet is the view of the future from the past: here, for example, it’s the mid-1970s and we still haven’t reached the moon. But I wouldn’t mind the near-instantaneous travel, where people living in Australia can attend a dinner party in South Africa. So while this isn’t what one might consider a rolicking adventure, it’s a fascinating look into one possible first contact scenario. One final note: at the beginning of my copy is a disclaimer that the views held within this novel are not held by the author. Which views, however, are not specified, so I am left to speculate. Does it refer to the polygamy of men? The passive submission to the Overlords? Something else? Hard to say, but in all honesty it added to my enjoyment of the book, because I paid more attention to the subtle clues of what, if anything, the author is disavowing.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Lodestone Book Three: The Crucible of Dawn by Mark Whiteway

Posted by melydia on December 16, 2011 None comments

Lodestone Book Three: The Crucible of Dawn by Mark Whiteway: It’s difficult to review this book without leaving it full of spoilers for the first two, but I’ll give it a try. Our heroes continue in their efforts to stop The Prophet, with help from some unlikely allies. The action was well paced and exciting; the plot moved along at a good clip; and uses of the magnet-like lodestone technology continued to be inventive and consistent. I was unconvinced by Lyall’s sudden obsession with his missing sister, a fact that had barely been mentioned since he was first introduced, but I was able to more or less just go with it. Whiteway’s depiction of relationships is interestingly lopsided: the platonic interactions are complex and realistic, especially those between Keris and Boxx, Keris and Shann, and Shann and Alondo. The romantic relationships, on the other hand, leave a bit to be desired. Oliah’s introduction was too swift and I never felt Alondo’s connection with her; Rael is a whiny little doormat who doesn’t deserve Shann’s affections. (She needs someone with at least as strong a personality as herself.) All the same, I enjoyed this installment of the Lodestone series easily as much as the other two, and with the ending clearly leading into another sequel, I am looking forward to finding out what happens next.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Posted by melydia on November 18, 2011 None comments

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis: Wow. And I mean that in a good way: I am completely awestruck by this novel. Kivrin is an undergraduate historian who wants to visit the Middle Ages. Mr. Dunworthy is a professor in the 20th Century History department who is trying to convince her not to go, since the Medieval History department has never sent anyone back in time and the Middle Ages were totally dangerous. She goes anyway, but while the tech is getting the fix to make sure she ended up in the correct place, he falls ill with a mysterious and possibly deadly virus. Oxford goes under quarantine as Dunworthy scrambles to figure out when and where Kivrin is. Meanwhile, Kivrin has her own set of problems in the 14th century, where she also has fallen ill and no longer knows where the rendezvous location is for when she is to be picked up two weeks later. On top of all this there are the blustery bureaucrat Gilchrist, the obnoxiously overbearing Mrs. Gaddson, the endearingly enthusiastic Colin, and a whole host of other wonderful and memorable characters. This book is nearly 600 pages but not once did it feel long. I was completely absorbed. If you like thrillers and are at all interested in the Middle Ages (and have a strong stomach, for many of the various symptoms and remedies are described in horrifying detail), definitely check this one out. It’s simply marvelous.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

Posted by melydia on September 16, 2011 4 comments

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.: This is one of those books that routinely shows up on lists of Best SF Books Evar and is often grouped with other dystopian stories like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. In the first section of this novel, Brother Francis of Utah stumbles upon some artifacts from Saint Leibowitz himself: the sacred shopping list and the holy blueprints, among other things. This beginning sounds silly but the story is anything but. We begin about six hundred years after mankind has more or less annihilated itself through nuclear war and is just now beginning to rebuild. The Order of Leibowitz is a group of monks following in the tradition of a man who led others in the storing and memorization of books in the face of the mobs who wished to burn them. Like monks of the Middle Ages, they spend their days copying – and illuminating – blueprints, math textbooks, and other findings. I enjoyed this first section the most. The other two sections were difficult to follow. The second, taking place several hundred years after the first, explores some of the first rediscoveries of ancient technology, such as electricity. The third is several centuries after the second, and man now has space travel, colonies on other worlds, and – you guessed it – nuclear weapons. I wish I’d understood the whole deal with the ancient pilgrim/Benjamin/Eleazar. I wish I knew even a tiny bit of Latin, as I had to skim several passages in that no-longer-dead language (though this also served as a constant reminder of the fact that the book was written before Vatican II). In short, I’m not sure how I feel about this book because I’m not entirely convinced I understood what it was trying to say. I’m glad to have read it, but I’m not positive I would recommend it to someone else. This is often how I react to the rapidly growing pool of Classic Literature I Don’t Get.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov

Posted by melydia on September 13, 2011 None comments

The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov (unabridged audiobook read by William Dufris; 15 hrs 47 min on 15 discs): This time around, Baley is sent to Daneel’s home planet of Aurora, the first and most arrogant of the spacer worlds, to solve the “murder” of Jander the robot. Along the way he must deal with his own crippling agoraphobia, the Auroran prejudice against Earthmen, and foreign sexual mores. That last bit was the most unexpected: the lengthy and detailed discussions of sex and sexual practices, compared and contrasted among Earth, Aurora, and Solaria. I had trouble not thinking about Asimov’s doofy muttonchops, turning these passages even more surreal. It was certainly a well-written book with lots of interesting speculation into human societies, but it is easily my least favorite in the series. That said, it was particularly fascinating to read this after reading Foundation, as this was clearly a sort of prequel to it, from the talk of a galactic human empire to the introduction of psychohistory as a field of study. Taking into account the references to Susan Calvin (of I, Robot fame), I start to wonder just how many of Asimov’s books take place in the same universe.

A note on the audio: There isn’t nearly enough Daneel in this book, and I think Dufris’s excellent voice acting made me miss him all the more.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

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