The stunning conclusion of the trilogy that began in the Cultural Revolution in The Three Body-Problem and, in this volume, moves ahead 17 billion yeaThe stunning conclusion of the trilogy that began in the Cultural Revolution in The Three Body-Problem and, in this volume, moves ahead 17 billion years. Death's End has fewer characters than the previous books, really just six of any note (including an robot/AI/avatar) but it follows much the same trajectory of exploring and extrapolating from social science and some physics to understand the unfolding consequences of humanity not being alone in the universe in conjunction with the massive technological progress that some have gone through, all combined with the deep seated desire to personally stay alive and also to keep memories alive. As increasingly wild and fantastical as the events in the novel are, they all seem completely plausible--even logical and inevitable in retrospect even if one did not predict them in prospect--based on the rules established by the book. (And a note--I do not think this would work as a standalone novel, you really need to start with The Three Body Problem.)...more
This delightful debut novel begins with Karl Bender, the proprietor of a dive bar and former indie rock cult sensation, discovering a worm hole in hisThis delightful debut novel begins with Karl Bender, the proprietor of a dive bar and former indie rock cult sensation, discovering a worm hole in his closet. He quickly works with a customer/friend to commercialize it--selling people trips back in time to famous concerts with the strict rule that they do not alter anything. It all starts going wrong when his friend sets out to break the rules by returning to 1980 to warn John Lennon about his impending assassination--but instead due to human error ends up in Manahatta in 980. At this point Karl needs a physicist to help return his friend to the present and flipping through pictures on the Northwestern Ph.D. candidate website he finds Lena Geduldig, a tattooed woman in an indie rock t-shirt. He calls her up and his adventures, romantic and time travel, begin--becoming more and more complicated.
Every Anxious Wave wears its science fiction/time travel lightly, instead focusing on the characters, the story, and challenging you to think about the divide between personality and response to circumstances, and between accidents and inevitability. And all this delivered in a wry, humorous, humane, and unique way that makes Mo Daviau an exciting new voice in fiction....more
I liked the concept--three stories interwoven in the same place in England, one from Roman times, one from the Civil Wars, and one from the present daI liked the concept--three stories interwoven in the same place in England, one from Roman times, one from the Civil Wars, and one from the present day. But while all three of the stories had strange and interesting aspects, none of them was fully satisfying as a story or as characters (the closest it came to that was the one set in the present day with a mentally unstable boy and his girlfriend who is moving away and turning their relationship into meeting up one day a week). And given certain places and artifacts kept showing up in all three stories, I was hoping for a more satisfying completion to tie them all together which unfortunately never came....more
The first time I tried reading this to my 5 and 6 year olds they got bored and wanted to stop. This time my (now) 7 year old and I listened to the audThe first time I tried reading this to my 5 and 6 year olds they got bored and wanted to stop. This time my (now) 7 year old and I listened to the audiobook, which features a full cast recording of the unabridged book, and found it delightful--wonderfully intelligent children, humane, a nice image of fantasy in the United States, albeit thin on the plot and not overly inventive in world building. But a pleasant group to spend some time with....more
Wow. The sequel to The Three Body Problem, the second in the trilogy, is just as good if not better (and, as an aside, while I strongly recommend bothWow. The sequel to The Three Body Problem, the second in the trilogy, is just as good if not better (and, as an aside, while I strongly recommend both books they are both worth reading on their own merits and either one can be read as a standalone novel). It harkens back to classic scifi, especially Foundation, but also is sufficiently modern and told somewhat from a Chinese perspective to make it truly unique. In this novel, the fleet from the highly advanced Trisolaran civilization is heading to take over Earth, on a journey that is expected to take 400 years. They can contemporaneously listen to any communication on Earth so that humans set up four "Wallfacers" who are meant to deviously design plans on their own. Some of the options: vast nuclear bombs, a huge starfleet, and a spell that is cast on a far away star by a person whose "plan" also includes living in a fancy house and drinking expensive wine.
The novel itself covers about two hundred years, with many of the same characters in it throughout thanks to hibernation that allows people to send themselves to the future. Typical of hard scifi the characters are not particularly developed, but the world building is superb and there is little extraneous description/development, most everything has a purpose.
But it is not just the technology that is developed, the sociology of human societies, the Trisolaran society, and the galaxy--including the roles of deceit, betrayal, transparency and dishonesty--all play a starring role throughout the book.
The Dark Forest races along to an unexpected conclusion--and it truly is a conclusion--but I will certainly be starting the third book in the trilogy when it comes out in April 2016....more
I missed reading Robert Scheckley's stories when I was thirteen, which would have been the right age to think they were brilliant and a stepping stoneI missed reading Robert Scheckley's stories when I was thirteen, which would have been the right age to think they were brilliant and a stepping stone to Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut. At something more than thirteen they were still quite good, many of them providing a fresh and ironic perspective on the science fiction contact narrative in which you learn more about the foibles of the humans than you do about the aliens. This collection is relatively long and I read it on and off for a year, there is a certain amount of thematic similarity in the stories that you would not want to read it much faster than that--and reading just about any subset would be fine. The Seventh Victim was one of the few that was particularly different, a semi-thriller set in a semi-dystopia where murder was managed away into an elective sport. But otherwise the typical story was something very much resembling 1950s America but in contact with monsters or an alien planet they were trying to colonize voluntarily or fixing a biological spaceship with humans as a part....more
This excellent novel tells the story of the cab-driving son of a prominent/wealthy/powerful communist official in current-day China. He starts receiviThis excellent novel tells the story of the cab-driving son of a prominent/wealthy/powerful communist official in current-day China. He starts receiving letters that tell five sets of vivid stories--a poor scrappy rural girl turned courtesan set in the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 632), two boys/lovers drafted into slavery by the Mongol's in the Jin Dynasty (1213), two concubines in the court of a sadistic emperor in the Ming Dynasty (1542), a scrappy sea-borne boy and an englishman in the wake of the opium wars in the Qing Dynasty (1836), and two girls/lovers in a middle school taken over by the Red Guard middle schoolers in the Cultural Revolution (1966). The stories may or may not be about previous incarnations of the main character and a mysterious person who (mild spoiler alert) reverse roles and betrayals in each of these lives/stories. Some of the suspense of the book is trying to figure out who the second person is in the present day.
The writing is very good, the settings provide interesting mini-stories set in different periods in China's past, the story set in the current day is somewhat suspenseful and the plot is all tied together nicely with a possible interesting twist....more
A lovable page turner that falls well short of mind blowing or even spine tingling. I kept waiting for plot twists that never happened--everything thaA lovable page turner that falls well short of mind blowing or even spine tingling. I kept waiting for plot twists that never happened--everything that obviously seemed a certain way actually was--and instead of twists there were, arguable, giant plotholes and unrealistic/naive depiction of the future IRL ("in real life".) That said, I kept wanting to read more, I loved the main characters, it was suspenseful at times, and created an interesting world.
Specifically, Ready Player One is about the near future when a set of energy and other crises is undermining the world leading to poverty and instability. At the same time, most people spend much of their day plugged in to the "Oasis"--a VR world that you can access with goggles and haptic gloves (although more haptic stuff is even better). You can learn, work and play in the world much of which is built on a combination of 1980s video games, dungeons and dragons, movies, and music. The creator of this virtual world, a Mark Zuckerberg/Steve Jobs/Bill Gates-type figure dies and leaves the entire company to whoever finds an "egg" he has hidden in the game. Getting to the egg requires getting three keys to go through three gates. Individuals, clans, and an large, evil corporation are all vying for the prize and looking for clues online. The central character has an avatar named "Parcival" and meets up with "Art3mis", "Aech", and "Shoito" as they fight the evil corporation in their race for the egg....more
My children are liking the Narnia books a lot more than I am. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe lived up to the memory but Prince Caspian and The VMy children are liking the Narnia books a lot more than I am. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe lived up to the memory but Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader felt dull, humorless, largely plotless, with relatively uninteresting characters. That probably overstates the case against the books, and some of the writing is still rather pleasant, but they have not aged well for me....more
To say The Girl With All the Gifts is a great zombie novel would be wrong in at least two respects. One, it might actually be somewhat better than greTo say The Girl With All the Gifts is a great zombie novel would be wrong in at least two respects. One, it might actually be somewhat better than great. And two, they're not zombies--they're a fungus. I will say more about the former and let you read the book to learn more about the later (but I am not giving away anything you would not get towards the beginning of the book).
The Girl With All the Gifts combines a well-constructed plot with deft storytelling, psychological insight, creative world building, and excellent writing. It is set in near future England, beginning in a remote test facility that houses a set of special children in cells being taught/observed by teachers and guarded by soldiers. But it quickly develops that they are not ordinary children. The short chapters are told from the alternating perspectives of one of the not-at-all-ordinary children, her favorite teacher, the scientist in charge of the facility, the soldier in charge of security, etc. The premise unfolds relatively quickly for the reader but not as quickly for the characters, in a perfectly realized world with a consistently executed premise.
The power of the book is in the not-at-all ordinary girl who appears to be a genius, but is also deeply sympathetic--both in that the characters increasingly sympathize with her and also in the traditional sense that she comes to feel their emotions deeply. All of this is set against the backdrop of a hellish attempt to make it from the prison/experiment/school camp to what they think is the only remaining human city in England.
I just got back from Mars. Yay, as astronaut Mark Watney would say. Somehow The Martian felt more real than most books I've read--even if it took placI just got back from Mars. Yay, as astronaut Mark Watney would say. Somehow The Martian felt more real than most books I've read--even if it took place almost entirely on the surface of Mars. It begins with Watney stranded as his crewmates leave him behind, assuming he is dead, with no communications system, only a few hundred days of food (not enough to wait for a rescue--and no one would even rescue anyway him because they think he is dead), but lots of ingenuity, bravery, gallows humor, and undauntedness. All of which leads him to grow a crop of potatoes (a vastly complicated exercise that involves extracting hydrogen and oxygen to mix them for water, mixing soil samples from Earth with Martian soil and his own feces, etc.), go on a multi-day expedition to retrieve the Pathfinder Rover to get its communications systems going again, communicate by writing messages for the Pathfinder camera and arranging rocks for morse code for orbiting satellites, and overcome setback after setback. Well, you get the idea.
It begins Robinson Crusoe-like with him all alone on Mars and no one else in view (actually Robinson Crusoe did not being Robinson Crusoe-like, but that is another story). Most of Watney's story is told in the form of his daily log entries. Then eventually it starts alternating with NASA and his mission-mate's orbiting craft, all well paced and well written.
Some have described it as hard scifi, but it feels more like relatively standard engineering, chemistry and biology--all feeling completely realistic, albeit set in a harsh alternative world.
I re-read this to my children and it was just as exciting for them as the first one, maybe more so because they knew all the characters already. I hadI re-read this to my children and it was just as exciting for them as the first one, maybe more so because they knew all the characters already. I had remembered this one as considerably less exciting than most of the others in the series but it held up better than expected....more
An excellent premise, very good writing and pacing, and a plot that keeps you going for much of the book but falls well short of the spine tingling feAn excellent premise, very good writing and pacing, and a plot that keeps you going for much of the book but falls well short of the spine tingling feeling it appears to be aspiring for.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is a time travel novel. Some time travel is about human relations and particularly romance (e.g., About Time). Others are about time travel to change the course of history, like to assassinate Hitler. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is essentially internal to time travel itself, in that it creates a subculture of "kalachakra" who are people that, every time they die, end up starting live again from the same birth and by age 4 have full recovered their memories from their previous lives. The reaction to this life generally starts with depression (like suicide, so it starts all over gain) but then turns into wide-ranging exploration of different identities, professions, languages, etc. The kalachakra may have relations with normal people "linears" but tend not to form lasting attachments and do not go back to the same ones in life after life--instead the kalachakra's measure their lives in the hundreds of years counting the repetitions as new years. Harry August is a special type of kalachakra called an "ouroboran" who remembers everything perfectly from his previous lives.
Harry August, like many kalachakra, ends up joining the "Cronus Club" with many of his fellow kalachakra, a group that is partially social, partially mutual help, and partly has the mission of making sure that the kalachakra do not end up changing history--with the possibility of chasing down and punishing those that do with either a "forgetting" where they shock the brain into forgetting so when reborn they're just like a "linear" or killing the kalachakra, literally in the womb which prevents them from ever being born.
All of this exposition is spread out across the opening of the book and is reasonably simple, effortless and feels natural. The plot also launches from the very opening--beginning with a dying Harry August getting a message that the world is coming to an end and it is happening sooner than it happened in the past. This starts a book-long quest to understand why and attempt to do something about it. Which ends up in thriller-like territory with a global pursuit across time and space as someone hunts down and destroys Cronus Clubs all over the world.
The excellent conclusion to "The Last Policeman" trilogy, World of Trouble takes place in the weeks before a comet is set to hit the Earth and wipe ouThe excellent conclusion to "The Last Policeman" trilogy, World of Trouble takes place in the weeks before a comet is set to hit the Earth and wipe out most of humanity. Although there are some pre-apocalyptic scenes, the coming destruction only serves to create an interesting set of psychologies in the characters--and to make Detective Henry Palace's ordinariness that much more peculiar. The novel, like its predecessors, is largely a police procedural. In the final volume Detective Palace is searching for his sister and ends up coming upon a multiple murder quasi-locked room mystery that he works hard to solve up until the eve of humanity's destruction. The writing is breezy, the plot is reasonably compelling, the setting is well done, and a few of the characters are genuinely interesting. Overall a relatively enjoyable and thoughtful read....more
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