July 2018: Reading Thread

[tobl]

finished the year of the oracle by charles soule. an interesting idea but you have to swallow at least two impossible carachters. one the hero and the opposition. for me the opposition was way more difficult to believe.

 

[The Judge]

After a false start with his Children of Time (why didn't someone mention the spiders before I bought it...) and a disappointment with Guns of the Dawn, a lot was riding on Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Tiger and the Wolf. I'm delighted to say I thoroughly enjoyed all 590 pages of it. A review to follow.

Two much slimmer SFs on the go now. I'm about half-way through John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids and failing to recognise any specific scenes, so my belief that I'd definitely read it in my teens looks to be misplaced, despite my general awareness of the plot. And I'm just shy of a third of the way into Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss, in which it appears a catastrophe has occurred on board a generation ship, which has led to the creation of separate settlements of smaller-than-average humans who no longer understand they are on a ship. Interesting, but I'm finding the characters less than amenable.

 

[Vertigo]

After a false start with his Children of Time (why didn't someone mention the spiders before I bought it...)

*holds hand up* I did ma'am! From my review: "Only the great experiment there went a little wrong and instead of sentient monkeys we have sentient spiders. Not recommended for suffers of arachnophobia!"

 

[The Judge]

Unfortunately for me, you gave your review in May. I bought the book last December.

It's just not good enough, Vertigo! Next time get your review in earlier!

 

[dask]

Reading:

The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence (1989) is a book about the history of science fiction, written by Alexei Panshin and Cory Panshin
The World Beyond the Hill - Wikipedia

It is a history of the stories and authors that created the Golden Age of Science Fiction up to 1945. It is interesting though I don't buy this transcendence stuff. Lots of curious details about the lives of authors.

There was an overall sense that the whole cause and effect of the history of the world had one goal in mind: the creation of science fiction. I loved it.

 

[psikeyhackr]

There was an overall sense that the whole cause and effect of the history of the world had one goal in mind: the creation of science fiction. I loved it.

The description of the relationship between Heinlein and Asimov during WWII was pretty funny too. Plus John Campbell's influence on writers and the development of modern SF.

 

[Danny McG]

I've started tonight on The Invasion, the sequel to The Call by (him whose name I never spell right) Peadar O Guilin

 

[Danny McG]

I've finished listening to Looking Glass by Andrew Mayne. It is the follow up to The Naturalist and is just as good if not better

I never realised until I spotted this that he also wrote fiction.
A nephew is really into the science of magic tricks and has a couple of his non fiction.
Based on your review I think I'll try a bit of his sci fi myself.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Finished re-reading Dune. Simply an exceptional book, and deservedly the biggest selling SF novel to date.

I'm very tempted to go straight into Dune Messiah and finally plunge through the series... but I just got Red Mars at a discount...

 

[Vince W]

Tough choice there.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Tough choice there.

Nah, Red Mars trumps Dune. Realism Rules!

Red Mars has an SF density of 1.382 while Dune is 0.415

Statistics Forever!!!

 

[nixie]

Grey Sister, Mark Lawerence.

 

[Vince W]

Nah, Red Mars trumps Dune. Realism Rules!

Red Mars has an SF density of 1.382 while Dune is 0.415

Statistics Forever!!!

People can come up with statistics can prove anything. 40% of all people know that.

 

[Brian G Turner]

SF density

There's something to be said for quality over quantity.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Okay, I'm a third of the way into Dune Messiah, but there's been no real sense of anything happening. People talk, discuss, argue, dump us with information. We hear about the Jihad Paul always feared, but never see it. Nothing moves forward. It feels directionless.

Even the steel-eyed zombie in the latest chapter feels contrived. Paul is supposed to have changed from a boy to warrior-prophet in the past 14+ years, plus it's convenient that neither Paul or Alia ever saw this coming - despite their presience. Are both Paul and Alia going to act like angsty teenagers now? My fear is: yes.

I read the first chapter of Red Mars but it comes across as a little unbelievable so far - that's a helluva lot of progress in just a couple of decades. Plus, build a town on Mars then let off fireworks under the protective dome? Have cats wandering lose, and buskers on street corners? The setting sounds more like Mexico than another planet!

 

[thaddeus6th]

Far more modern subject than my usual historical fare, but reading Liddell Hart's History of the First World War. Interesting, so far.

 

[Vertigo]

Okay, I'm a third of the way into Dune Messiah, but there's been no real sense of anything happening. People talk, discuss, argue, dump us with information. We hear about the Jihad Paul always feared, but never see it. Nothing moves forward. It feels directionless.

Even the steel-eyed zombie in the latest chapter feels contrived. Paul is supposed to have changed from a boy to warrior-prophet in the past 14+ years, plus it's convenient that neither Paul or Alia ever saw this coming - despite their presience. Are both Paul and Alia going to act like angsty teenagers now? My fear is: yes.

I read the first chapter of Red Mars but it comes across as a little unbelievable so far - that's a helluva lot of progress in just a couple of decades. Plus, build a town on Mars then let off fireworks under the protective dome? Have cats wandering lose, and buskers on street corners? The setting sounds more like Mexico than another planet!

Sadly I didn't get on with Red Mars very well; I finished it but never went on to the sequels. I was surprised as it is renowned as being excellent hard SF which I usually love but I think my problem was that I just didn't get on with Robinson's narrative style. I found it heavy and long winded, and that from someone who loves Hamilton's work!

 

[Titus Groan]

Currently reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. A very literary take on a police procedural. You spend a whole chapter just at breakfast with our grizzled detective. I'm enjoying it but it's definitely a slow read.

 

[Toby Frost]

Yes, I didn't much take to Dune Messiah. I think one of the big problems with Dune was that Shaddam IV's reign was much more interesting than Paul's.

I finished Persepolis and enjoyed it greatly. The art and story fit together really well. The thing that strikes me about it is how normal all the main characters are: they're neither the crazed fanatics or defeated victims that you might expect (although there are both in the story). The book leaves me with the feeling that the fanaticism of the Iranian government wasn't the characters' culture: in fact, the characters' culture had been taken away from them by the fanatics.

Now I'm onto Black Man (aka Thirteen) by Richard Morgan. I've picked this up partly because I thought the TV show of Altered Carbon was quite enjoyable, and partly because the vision of the US splitting into a liberal democracy and a theocracy seems quite timely.

 

[williamjm]

I've started Max Gladstone's Ruin of Angels. I enjoyed the previous five books in the series, and this one is good so far as well. It does features reappearances by characters from previous books, but the plot isn't obviously connected to any of the previous books in the series.

Okay, I'm a third of the way into Dune Messiah, but there's been no real sense of anything happening. People talk, discuss, argue, dump us with information. We hear about the Jihad Paul always feared, but never see it. Nothing moves forward. It feels directionless.

I think it might have taken longer to read Dune Messiah than Dune despite it being much shorter in terms of page count, I did find much of it tedious. Children of Dune is a bit better, but I think the first book is clearly the best.