I bought this because I had recently read a book about the Inklings and because Solid State Books has a wonderful selection near the bar (yes, they have a bar) on the philosophy shelves. Continue reading
Science Fiction and Fantasy
A Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet
Space opera but almost totally lacking in shots fired. Those fired are key to the plot but, notably, the protagonists never fire back.
A good ensemble piece that steals greatly, but not badly, from Firefly (but with aliens). Continue reading
‘Station Eleven’ By Emily St. John Mandel
A loan from a friend from my D&D group who thought I’d like and I did. Continue reading
Ace Double: The Sun Smasher & Starhaven
Edmond Hamilton’s The Sun Smasher is a surprisingly slow paced (but not boring nor lacking in excitement) novel for something barely one hundred pages. A man on earth is told his life is a lie and he’s actually the brainwashed heir to an old empire. Swift, but not blunt hints are dropped that maybe that old empire wasn’t so great. An apocalyptic weapon too powerful to ever use. Oh, and giant psychic spiders. Continue reading
The Cold Commands
He lost me. Seven hundred odd pages culminating in some poorly explained gobbledygook that reminded me of a lot of earlier gobbledygook, albeit less densely packed, that I had deigned to overlook. Continue reading
The Curse Of Chalion
I can’t remember where this was recommended to me as an excellent fantasy novel by a female writer whose work is in danger of being overlooked these days, but it made enough of an impression that I bought this when I saw it at library book sale near my house. Unfortunately, Ms. Bujold will boy get royalties on the dollar I gave the Southeast library. Fortunately, I did get a good book. I devoured it as quickly as I could over the first few days that I had it. Continue reading
The Engines Of God
I no longer remember where I heard about this book, but it stuck in my mind as something I should read if I got the chance.
I spoke to a fellow aficionado with very specific tastes. Among other features of his personality, he really only considers so-called hard science fiction to be genuine science fiction; the rest is just fantasy with space ships.
By those standards, The Engines of God is not science fiction, but it is closer and I recommended it to him.
It is a science fiction (by my lights) novel, but centered around discovery and investigation and despite having one action sequence with ‘blasters’ (here called pulsers), a sequence that is gritty, unnerving, and realistic in feel, it resolutely not an action book. There are alien ruins but the aliens are long gone.
The highest praise I can give is that it makes a semi-sentient, apocalyptic space cloud seem realistic and explainable.
