NPR’s top 100 sci-fi/fantasy books – Page 3

February 8, 2018February 8, 2018

#85: Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Anathem is a meaty sci-fi romp through a number of philosophical thought experiments. When i use the term “meaty” here i mean meaty like a primal cut of beef brisket: It’s large (this is quite a read), and dense (i’d guess close to 50% of the word-count of Anathem is dedicated to philosophical debates).

The Title “Anathem” is a mashing together of Anathema and Anthem and refers to a sort of ceremony of disgrace that takes place during the story.

Stephenson does a good job using a sci-fi setting that’s not Earth to make some great observations about life on Earth as we know it. Two of my favorite of these observations were the “Jeejaw” and “Slines”.

Jeejaws are the cell-phones of Stephenson’s world. The world is seperated into Avout and Saeculars. Avout are those pledged to a monastic tradition and committed to a minimalist lifestyle, most of the main characters are Avout. Saeculars represent basically everyone else in the world. The Avout live without Jeejaws and they find them to be intrusive and great distractions when they move out and interact with the Saecular world. It was just another nudge to help me see the intrusive impact my own cell-phone has made in my life.
Slines: Slines represent a sort of popular culture consumer in the Saecular world. If you’ve ever felt like an outsider to those enamored with popular culture you’ll likely find in the Slines a familiar sort of occurrence…

The story-line is pretty sweeping overall (but the book is certainly long enough to contain such an ambitious plot). You’ll travel from simple monastery life, through Anathem’s world-at-large, and eventually wind up in space with pan-dimensional beings… Things wrap up with a very jarring, and intriguing, exploration into the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, with an interesting twist asking, “what if the many worlds have some sort of effect on each other?”.

Book Club of One grade: B+ Worth the read. Anathem is not light reading and sometimes it felt like the story-line was moving in fits and starts, you may spend many pages on a dinner chat then in two pages find yourself across a continent or into space itself. Overall the concepts it lays out, the social insights, and the refreshing story-line make it a fine piece of Sci-Fi.

January 25, 2018January 23, 2018

76: Rendezvous with Rama -Arthur C. Clarke

The sweet sweet taste of speculative science fiction!

Let me open by saying there’s quite a bit i really liked about this book… and not a lot that i disliked (got ya!)

It really was a refreshing read for me: A Strange cylindrical object hurtles through our solar system. The closest space-ship makes an unplanned run for the object to see what it is and finds out it’s an alien spacecraft (cue orchestra hits here).

One of the things i most liked about Rendezvous with Rama was that it doesn’t spoon feed the reader explanations for everything the explorers find on the vessel. It’s packed with mystery the way raisin bran isn’t packed with raisins. When i finished the last page of the book it left me wondering what certain areas in the giant ship were really for, about the ecology of the place, about… well, about so very much!

i know that there is a whole series of Rama books that Clarke penned, and honestly i’m torn. Part of me wants to read them, i want to dig deeper into the mystery that is Rama with him. Yet, i also want to keep the curiosity alive and not plug it with explanations.

To pass judgement: Book Club of One grade: A. It’s fun, it’s thrilling and tense without dipping into horror. Rendezvous with Rama is a near perfect read for a long trip, by car, plane, or space craft!

January 4, 2018December 30, 2017

#89 Outlander – Diana Gabaldon

The tale of a post-WWII nurse who finds herself 200+ years back in time! Scottish highland shenanigans and political intrigue abound! Oh… and it’s a romance novel…

It’s my first dip into a real “romance novel”. Granted, i’ve read lots of books where romantic interests were front and center, even some books that if made into a movie would certainly fall into the category of “Chick-Flick” (spoiler: i LOVE a good chick flick! haha). “Real” romance novels use a lot of words like “Slippery”, and “Swollen”, and “Thrust”… There’s also the phrase, “He sheathed himself all the way to the base…” (that’s in there… double entendre intended)

Pardon me while i fan myself off! This is sexy stuff!

Also… it was super distracting for me. i’m all for healthy sexuality, heck i really enjoy healthy sexuality! But the constant jumps to sexy-time with steamy (granted creative) descriptors was just too much for me. Let me explain by not talking about The Sex: Epic battles are AMAZING, but if a novel spends too much time describing every sword-stroke and wound inflicted in flowery and creative language it eventually (by which i mean quickly) becomes a distraction to the story-line.

Outlander was pretty well written overall (even the gratuitous sexual encounters were written with some real skill). i really wanted to like Outlander. Characters with complex personal and political motivations. Strong(ish) female lead. Scotsmen!!! But alas it still never managed to grab me. Jamie felt like a perfect hero up until the end of the book. Claire was an engaging heroine, complex in her actions and reactions, but close to the end of the book she pulls a stint as a seer-level insightful immersive psychologist… that really killed it for me. There were hints at some cool fantasy elements that never really seemed to develop: a scene with a witch where something engaged with the lead character and a cameo by Nessie, but neither went anywhere and could have been removed without affecting the plot…

Outlander was also plagued by a villain with thin motivations. There was nothing likable about Captain Randall… An enemy with nothing likable is just not very engaging to me (even Satan himself knows how to party!).

After reading the first book i think i’m done with the series. If you want to read something that throbs, thrusts and swells but don’t want to check your brain at the door you can’t go wrong with Outlander… But if you’re looking for time travel fantasy that features a strong female lead go with Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.

Book Club of One grade: C-, see above if you’re wondering if you should read this. Written with skill but not my cup of steamy, sweaty, throbbing tea.

December 21, 2017December 17, 2017

93- A Fire Upon the Deep – Vernor Vinge

Let me open this Book Club of One entry by redundantly hammering on a thing: This is a long book! One thing i’ve learned in this process is that us nerdy-folk must be drawn to thick books! If books were fast-food, sci-fi and fantasy books would be the Hardee’s/Carl’s JR’s Thick-Burgers of the book world! If novels were toast… they’d be the Texas Toast of the toast-verse! If these tales were toilet paper… they’d be triple-ply!

Observations about the average length of sci-fi/fantasy reads aside, let’s move on.

i really enjoyed A Fire Upon the Deep. While i never really got my head around Vinge’s “Zones” i liked the concepts of them. They made for some very interesting Sci-Fi reading.

Probably what i enjoyed most about A Fire Upon the Deep was the exploration into the idea of sentience. Vinge pokes at our notions of sentience without falling into the same tired tropes of many sci-fi novels. Sure, there’s a program that “becomes” sentient (or was it always a sentient presence and just needed the program to manifest itself) but it comes off as fresh. Partly because of the way he introduces and then develops it with the reader, partly because it is a new take on the idea. There are also some very interesting races. The Skroderiders are a tree-like folk who biologically lack short-term memories, but gain them by attaching themselves to mechanical motorized bases, called Skrodes – hence “Skrode-riders”. Because their natural memories are long-term based-only they bring a distinct world-view with them into the universe of the story. Another interesting race are the Tines. Tines are a sort of canine race but a single “person” consists of 4-8 individuals that are sort of telepathically linked to one another. Fewer than 4 and they are lacking in intelligence, greater than 8 and they become a sort of mob, too many conflicting minds to really form a properly functioning “person”. There are also transcendent beings, capable of manipulating physical matter as easily as we can manipulate our thoughts.

The story-line is enjoyable itself, nicely tying together medieval level action with super-advanced technological challenges! Children stranded on a low tech planet are thrust into low-tech political intrigue in their fights for survival while rescue streaks across the galaxy!

Mixed in like a dash of salt into chocolate chip cookies (if you don’t put a dash of salt into your cookies, you’re not doing cookies right) is a sort of space-internet known as “The Net”. The Net is limited by transmission bandwidth over the vastness of space. It’s full of “trolls” and half-truths (just like our current analogue in the real-world). Vinge’s frighteningly accurate portrayal of net-life is even more amazing when you consider that the book was published in 1992!

Book Club of One Grade: B+ (would be a super solid A but there’s a sort of Deux ex Machina thing that goes on). Solidly on the “read this” list for me. So good i bought a copy to put in my own personal library (which is being parred down with our down-size in dwelling, and it STILL made the cut). Not since Perdido Street Station has a setting of a book been so engaging to me!

December 14, 2017December 9, 2017

95. The Mars Trilogy: Kim Stanley Robinson

There’s been a long delay in entries from the Book Club of One. That’s because the BCoO has been powering through The Mars Trilogy!

Red Mars, Green Mars, and the conclusion Blue Mars.

The Mars Trilogy is a Sci-Fi tome about the colonization and terraforming of our red neighbor, Mars. Robinson writes a story that is worthy of words like: “Epic” and “Saga”. If you stack the mass market paperbacks together they come pretty close to making a cube of Science Fiction print.

Robinson does some very interesting things with his trilogy. He digs into lots of social, socio-economic, and governmental issues. i’ve mentioned before how much i like it when Sci-Fi is used well to help us see issues from a fresh angle, often helping us see past our own blind spots. The Mars Trilogy follows the tales of the “First 100” (the first one hundred settlers to Mars) and their immediate descendants (mostly).

Several interesting developments arise that lead us down some long but interesting rabbit trails. A near-cure for aging is formulated, bring up issues of what that looks like morally, socially, and economically. Is the treatment a human right? Is it a benefit for the wealthy? What happens to population control when people don’t die naturally? etc, etc, etc.

There’s the turmoil between those who want to terraform Mars and those who want it left in it’s natural state (“Greens” and “Reds”, who eventually are pressured by circumstance to reach some sort of compromise… “Blues” – spoilers haha).

There’s the task of establishing a whole new government, one unlike any on Earth. Which leads to some very interesting questions.

In the end Robinson brings things back around to the basics of human existence and our search for our place in the scheme of things, leaving us with a conclusion that is tied to the intimate connections between two characters. Two characters who have been with us for the entire trilogy.

My best descriptor of the series is that it is a platform for some pretty ambitious thought experiments.

The Mars Trilogy wasn’t one of my favorite reads of this project so far, which is a real shame. “Aurora”, a newer book by Robinson (published in 2015) is one of my top reads from the past 5 years or so. If you’re looking for something by Kim Stanley Robinson i’d recommend Aurora instead, same style: still using Sci-Fi to ask big questions and think through their ramifications. Aurora is not nearly as daunting as The Mars Trilogy though.

Book Club of One Grade: C- The writing is rock solid, the series is very thorough and in-depth… but for me that may be what kept its BCoO grade lower. If you’re the kind of person who wants that daunting epic read over the summer this could be the very thing you’re looking for. If you’re like me and after some time the large cast of players and the depth become a little overwhelming, well… did i mention that Aurora is one of the best books i’ve ever read?

November 2, 2017October 30, 2017

#99: The Xanth Series – Piers Anthony

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Disclosure: i’ve read the first three books in the series. In a series that currently sits at 41 books (with two more waiting in the wings for release) i felt like reading the whole series would be an undertaking in itself. An undertaking on par with the NPR’s top 100 Sci-Fi/Fantasy books (the herculean task the Book Club of One is currently doing!).

Here’s what i think you should know about the Xanth books:

There’s going to be more puns than a dad-joke competition. i LOVE a pun so i was the proverbial pig in slop! Some folks get weary of puns after a while, those folks are to be avoided… and if you’re one of those folks it may be best to avoid Xanth.
Xanth books are overall FUN. They’re light and goofy and tons of fun. Don’t think you’re picking up high fantasy or you’re going to be disappointed.
They are about the pay-off at the end. Every one i’ve read has a sweet (and worthy) pay-off in it’s final pages. (the second one, “The Source of Magic” has a very cool pay-off indeed!)

If you’re looking for something to pick you up and have a hankering for wacky fantasy then Jump into the expansive pool that Piers Anthony has created and swim around in his world of Xanth.

Book Club of One Grade: Solid B! The books are light and fun and tend to be a pretty quick read. Brace yourself for word-play and embrace the wonder of Xanth!

October 19, 2017October 14, 2017

#91: The Illustrated Man -Ray Bradbury

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i like to read older Sci-Fi. i think it gives us a glimpse into the zeitgeist of our recent past in ways other media don’t.

News reports give us an objective view of bygone eras (at least those from the past did)

History books paint for us the portrait the victors have for us to enjoy

Comedy writings and shows allow us to see the humor of those cultures

And Sci-Fi lets us see the hopes or dreads of our forerunners.

This collection of short stories, tied together by the tale of a carnival-freak tattooed head to toe who has at least two very special tattoos that depict the future, was published in 1951. The Illustrated Man paints a picture of Bradbury’s visions for the future that range from dread to beautiful optimism.

Especially engaging was the story, “The Other Foot”. Bradbury couldn’t find anyone to publish the story in the U.S. so he gave it to a magazine overseas. It’s a powerful story of hope for a better future. In a society of segregation and racism Bradbury dreamed of a future not just of equality but of overcoming the hatred that was pervasive in American society.

Book Club of One Grade: C+. It’s a quick read, the format makes it easy to power through the stories that aren’t as engaging. Bradbury is (obviously) one of the greats of Sci-Fi and this is a great place to dip your foot into the waters of this American master.

September 21, 2017September 21, 2017

#98: Perdido Street Station – China Mieville

Perdido Street Station is quite the Tome!

The Good:

Mieville builds a rich world filled with amazing sights and peoples. New Crobuzon, the city in which the action takes place, is so very well developed! Bustling with a kaledescope characters, districts, artifacts new and old, and what feels like a deep history that undergirds the setting.

Mieville also throws in quite a collection of races, beyond just the human characters there are:

Garuda: Basically Bird folk
Khepri: Insect people, the females are sentient, but the males are smaller and seem to exist only for mating.
Wyrmen: Gargoyle-esque knuckle-heads
Vodyanoi: Frog-like folk who have a really cool innate “watercraeft” that allows them to temporarily stabilize the structure of water. Made for a very cool dock-worker strike in the book.
Cactacae: basically cactus people… i wanted to like them more but they never really seemed as neat as the other races.
Also of note: The Remade (mostly victims of the criminal justice system, their bodies are “enhanced” with freakish modifications like pincer hands, or their heads turned around, etc etc.); the Construct Council (a group of mentally linked sentient machines); the Slake Moths (the baddies of the story); and everyone’s favorite The Weaver (an inter-dimensional shifting giant spider beast who talks like a beatnick poet spewing a never-ending stream-of-conciousness performance)

Every race seems to have it’s own unique world view and sub-cultures that paint how the communicate with and move through the world.

The Meh…

Honestly the story-line wasn’t the most compelling. For a world as complex as this one i kept expecting the story to come together. Instead of feeling like a piece of story-craft it instead felt like a window into something happening in a different universe. Here’s what i mean by that: Stories have conflict and conclusions, there are story arcs, things often resolve somewhere along the way and you reach the end realizing that you’ve reached The End. The story line in Perdido Street did almost none of those things. It was a mass of tangled threads all thrown into this beautiful world-building basket together. Some things were left hanging that left me thirsting for some completion, things happened that hinted at deeper workings that we never get to see, the book ended and it didn’t feel like a “The End”…

The more i think about it the more i start to like what Mieville did with that… The story feels more like “Real-life” (IF real life had nightmare moth-men, crazy giant spider things, cactus people, and insects that sort of poop out art…) than many sci-fi/fantasy stories.

A few real plusses for me were: The “resolution” of Yagharek’s (a disgraced Garuda who has been de-winged as a punishment) and Isaac’s (the main protagonist) storyline/relationship was very interesting and well-done. Another high-point for me was the evolution and complexity of Isaac and Lin’s relationship through the story.

I’d give Perdido Street Station a C as a book (admittedly though it gets better the longer i chew on what i read. If it was shorter it would be a B-) , but an A+ as a setting. Reading the book really felt like reading the campaign notes from an amazing tabletop RPG. In fact if anyone ever turns Mieville’s world into an RPG setting, sign me up!

The setting is so rich and deep that although i wasn’t blown away by the story-line i do hope to one day read the other two novels in this series: The Scar, and Iron Council. They’re set in the same world (Bas-Lag) as Perdido Street Station and i’m interested to see what other great sights await us in Mieville’s universe!

September 19, 2017September 19, 2017

NPR’s Top 100 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books, a personal project

Things i enjoy include: good books, good book clubs, nerdiness! Those three things combine into one mighty personal project!!!

To Read ALL the Things on NPR’s top 100 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book list!!!!!

I’ve been a part of a book club for a while now, i recommend a good book club (focus on the GOOD book club part of that) if you’ve never been a part of one give it a whirl. Book Club pushed me to read so many books i’d never have given a chance on my own, and i was blown away by the experience. Due mostly to the chaotic and hectic nature of this thing we call life: that book club may be on an extended hiatus. So, i, in an effort to push myself to read more started: Book Club of One! (Discussion in my book club can get really heated, which garners some real looks when Book Club of One is held anywhere public!) NPR’s list of Sci-Fi books has become my source list for this project: to push me to read books i may not otherwise pick-up but that are still well within my personal wheel house.

Many of the books on the list i’ve already read. Some will be re-reads because it has been literal decades since i read them last. I’m a quite a few books deep into the project and it’s been quite fulfilling so far! i’ll be posting reviews here on a fairly regular basis from here out so keep your eyes peeled to see what a middle-aged fellow thinks about books that have been deemed worthy by a troop of reviewers and voters.

If you want to check out the list for yourself click here, it’s very good and hopefully it may steer you to read something new for yourself: NPR’s article and link on their top 100 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books

If you want to see the most up-to date data on my progress you can click here, this is a current doc of my journey through the books with a color code of recommendation (Green = Read it, Yellow = Read it if you have time, Red = pass on it); there are also brief notes on my overall thoughts on the books here as well: My Progress on NPR’s top 100 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books

(a link to my list is also on the side-bar of my blog page)