Nemesis Games: The crew of the Rocinante get their own stories this time I just wrote a fantastic, insightful, and extremely clever review of this...anNemesis Games: The crew of the Rocinante get their own stories this time I just wrote a fantastic, insightful, and extremely clever review of this...and then deleted it by mistake when trying to upload it. So I'm still trying to recover from the psychological shock of this tiny tragedy. I'll just have to write a very short version instead, sorry about that.
This was a great return to form for the series, which keeps things fresh by exploring the backstories of the crew of the Rocinante: James investigates a number of ships that have gone missing after going through the protomolecule gate, Alex goes to Mars to try to patch things up with his ex, Amos returns to the mean streets of Baltimore after hearing of the death of a friend, and Naomi Nagata is forced to face the demons of her past, triggered by a horrific terrorist act against Earth and Mars that may have been done by Belters as they see their economic significance dwindle amid the mad rush to colonize the thousand new start systems now available via the gate. Since the Belters are adapted to zero gravity life and have previously made a living mining various minerals and selling this to the Earth and Mars, they are suddenly facing the prospect of becoming obsolete in this new world order, so some are ready to commit acts of terror to try to change this. Naomi is embroiled in the middle of things, and we learn about the dark secrets she has kept secret for so long.
All in all its a very enjoyable exploration of their individual stories, and we all get some time with Bobbie Draper and the foul-mouthed stateswoman Avasarala, whose insults are at such a high level of creativity that you imagine the authors must spend hours coming up with them and need to give her more story time to deliver them....more
Cibola Burn: Fizzles out, my least favorite entry to date At the end of Abaddon's Gate, we know that the alien ring has opened up the universe and a thCibola Burn: Fizzles out, my least favorite entry to date At the end of Abaddon's Gate, we know that the alien ring has opened up the universe and a thousand new suns for humanity to explore and colonize, so you might expect the series to open up in scale after the tight quarters and political maelstrom of the solar system and the conflict between Earthers, Martians, and Belters. Well, you'd be wrong. Instead, two-author duo James S.A. Corey decide to focus the entire fourth book on a single planet and the fight over a virgin planet between refugee squatters and an evil Earth corporation to control a rich lithium supply.
Little do they know the planet contains remains of an ancient and long-gone alien civilization, along with plenty of the usual dangers of settling and surviving on a new world, but the hardest thing they face is the venal rivalries and petty grudges of the two groups of settlers. It's certainly realistic for the author's to show that you can take humanity out of the solar system, but they still bring all their cultural baggage and biases and general inability to get along. So Avasarala decides to send Holden there as a neutral mediator to defuse a volatile situation. Predictably, things get very messy and there are plenty of gun battles, space battles, damaged ships and tense standoffs, along with the trademark wise-cracks of the crusty crew of the Rosinante: Holden, Naomi, Amos, and Alex.
This time we meet some new faces among the security forces and settlers, with fairly clear good guys and bad guys. However, I found the vast portion of the book a fairly dull slog, as I just didn't care who prevailed, and the little hints of alien civilization didn't add up to much of anything, even the continued mystery of the Miller construct. The whole book felt like treading water after the authors signed a control for 5 more books, so they are pacing themselves for the long haul, which is pretty disappointing considering all the large-canvas potential of a mad rush to colonize a thousand star systems. It was like looking at just a few threats in a huge tapestry without enough sneak peaks to keep the reader engaged.
I already have the fifth book in the series, Nemesis Games, on audiobook so I'll give it a listen so it isn't wasted, but I fairly doubtful I'll go the distance with so many other series clamoring for attention....more
Abandon's Gate: My least favorite installment due to annoying new characters The Expanse has been a pleasure to discover, thanks to its well-crafted blAbandon's Gate: My least favorite installment due to annoying new characters The Expanse has been a pleasure to discover, thanks to its well-crafted blend of gritty, sarcastic, idealistic, and ruthless characters, lots of meticulous world-building and technical details to describe a smaller-scale solar-system stage rather than the usual galaxy-wide canvas of space opera, and very convoluted military and political scheming plots. It's a lot of work for the two-headed team that writes under the pseudonym James S.A. Corey. I've also been watching the Sy-Fy TV series (now available on Amazon Prime) through the first three seasons, and this is the last book that has a TV equivalent to compare to.
So despite having the same great core cast of crew members on the Rocinante, namely James Holden, Naomi Nagata, Amos Burton, and Alex Kamal, the biggest problems I had with this installment were:
1) Really annoying new characters There are two major new characters introduced this time around. A) The first is Clarissa Mao, younger sister of Julie Mao and daughter of Jules-Pierre Mao. Since Holden dismantled the massive corporation of her father since it was bent on weaponizing the proto-molecule for profit, she is hell-bent for revenge at all costs, and since she still has a lot of money available as a war-chest, she then concocts the most elaborate revenge scheme to humiliate, discredit, and kill James Holden. B) Anna Volovodov is a Methodist pastor from Europa who joins a UN delegation of religious figures seeking to examine and understand the mysterious ring/gate built by the proto-molecule in the previous book.
2) Difficult to believe motivations I found the motivations of the above two female characters very difficult to believe in, particularly Clarissa Mao. While we often see stories of totally obsessed characters bent on revenge at all costs, it's just hard to buy the lengths she goes to carefully trap Holden into her revenge fantasy. There are just too many implausible elements, and frankly I find it hard to believe that someone born into wealth and privilege can become a ruthless killer and determined assassin so quick (then again, Osama Bin Laden fits that bill). The depths of her hatred seem far to deep for someone who really hasn't suffered as much as many of the other characters.
Pastor Anna is, like most religious characters in SF novels and (sometimes) in real life, very sanctimonious, unbothered by contradictions, and irritatingly self-assured in her morality while at the same time brushing away moral conundrums with the typical vapid idea that mere humans cannot understand the will of God, which can cover all manner of sins and misfortune. So pretty much every scene with her grated on my serves, though I am certainly biased in this respect. I also really do wonder how believers in the current set of archaic, outdated, and Earth-centric religions would actually react to a bona-fide alien presence. Could they really do the mental-gymnastics required to accept an alien intelligence not mentioned at all in the holy scriptures? Or would it expose their beliefs as wrong? Hard to say, but I've found the religious mentality can incorporate all kinds of nonsense since it's not based on reason, but rather on faith.
So I have two more books in the series on Audiobook, Cybola Burn and Babylon's Ashes, which do not have TV series available yet to compare with, so I'll have to create my own mental pictures this time. The series is still well worth following, I just didn't gel with the new characters this time around....more
Caliban's War: Exciting New Plotlines in Second Installment I'm now well on my way with The Expanse, having watched the first three seasons of the Sy-FCaliban's War: Exciting New Plotlines in Second Installment I'm now well on my way with The Expanse, having watched the first three seasons of the Sy-Fy series before starting on the audiobooks. Although initially hesitant, I've come to like the characters on the Rocinante, each with their quirks and moments of greatness amid the action and intrigue. Holden the idealist captain, Naomi the super-competent engineer, Amos the tough, no-bullshit mechanic, and Alex the cowboy pilot, now share the stage with three new major characters, Avasarala the elderly Indian politician with a brilliant scheming intellect and sailor's mouth, Bobby Draper the Polynesian space marine who has to go outside her comfort zone of fighting to the messy world of politics, and botanist Prax Meng who is desperately searching for his lost daughter Mei.
These characters get caught up in the complex ongoing tapestry of interplanetary military conflict between Earthers, Martians, and Belters, along with the sinister and deadly proto-molecule, which behaves at times like a bio-weapon and at other times like an alien proto-intelligence with unknown designs on humanity. Then there is the Machiavellian plots and schemes that Avasarala is deeply entwined with as she tries to defuse the every-increasing tensions between the three main power groups, as this gets stirred up by the brilliant opening set-piece on Ganymede where Bobby Draper and her Martian marine squad face a mysterious attack that ignites events beyond her understanding.
Having seen the series before listening to the audiobooks, the book characters of course mirrored the appearance of the actors in the show, so it was very easy to picture them as I listened to the story. They are depicted well in the TV series, and gain additional depth thanks to the audiobooks, so it's a nice synergy to experience the story from different media. In the last few years I've enjoyed this approach, whether it is Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Man in the High Castle, Altered Carbon, etc. Much of the pleasure derives from comparing how the stories and characters and images differ between the book and film/TV versions. As I'm enjoyed The Expanse in both media, it's on to Abandon's Gate next....more
The Temporal Void: An Action-Packed, Mind-Bending Final Volume Much like the Commonwealth Saga,this is a very long, detailed, imaginative, and sprawlinThe Temporal Void: An Action-Packed, Mind-Bending Final Volume Much like the Commonwealth Saga,this is a very long, detailed, imaginative, and sprawling epic space opera that involves dozens of characters, plots, advanced technologies, alien races, ancient galactic mysteries, nefarious plots and counterplots, all told in an engaging narrative that doesn't get bogged down in exposition like a lot of other hard SF stories. It's far more entertaining than the more grim future vision of Alastair Reynolds, to which Peter Hamilton is often compared to. The human characters here remain far more human than the cold post-humans of Reynolds, which sometimes strains credulity, as they regularly make contemporary cultural references and seem not so different from us, despite being set in a galactic society set in the 31st century, but that largely lies in how you would imagine future humans will be like.
The story is split into two main storylines, a fantasy-like coming of age story about Edeard, a young man coming into his own powerful telepathic powers in a medieval society, and another far more complex future narrative about the search for a Second Dreamer broadcasting dreams of a utopian world within the Void, a giant black hole that is steadily consuming the galaxy from the center outward.
Fortunately, this book makes up for the self-indulgent and juvenile power fantasies of the middle book with a vengeance, packing enough action, mind-bending speculation, and galaxy-busting events that I decided to give the overall series a 4-star rating for the wealth of ideas even if it lacked a tight focus and much of the characterization was a bit two-dimensional, as he seems to go for cramming as many characters and storylines into his epic, though he does go in-depth on his main protagonists. Overall, it's a very ambitious and entertaining series if you can forgive some of its excesses....more
The Temporal Void: A Draggy Middle Book that Indulges in Tedium Much like the Commonwealth Saga,this is a very long, detailed, imaginative, and sprawliThe Temporal Void: A Draggy Middle Book that Indulges in Tedium Much like the Commonwealth Saga,this is a very long, detailed, imaginative, and sprawling epic space opera that involves dozens of characters, plots, advanced technologies, alien races, ancient galactic mysteries, nefarious plots and counterplots, all told in an engaging narrative that doesn't get bogged down in exposition like a lot of other hard SF stories. It's far more entertaining than the more grim future vision of Alastair Reynolds, to which Peter Hamilton is often compared to. The human characters here remain far more human than the cold post-humans of Reynolds, which sometimes strains credulity, as they regularly make contemporary cultural references and seem not so different from us, despite being set in a galactic society set in the 31st century, but that largely lies in how you would imagine future humans will be like.
The story is split into two main storylines, a fantasy-like coming of age story about Edeard, a young man coming into his own powerful telepathic powers in a medieval society, and another far more complex future narrative about the search for a Second Dreamer broadcasting dreams of a utopian world within the Void, a giant black hole that is steadily consuming the galaxy from the center outward.
Unfortunately, this book spends much of its length dallying in the tedious romantic misadventures of of its increasingly powerful psychic Edeard, and really indulges in some self-indulgent and juvenile power fantasies that really takes away from the other storyline. It certainly feels like he had a contract for a trilogy and was treading water and filling pages in order to set the stage for the third book, when he could have cut this out and done better with two big volumes like the Commonwealth Saga....more
Falling Free: Enjoyable early novel, but not quite up to Miles Vorkosigan standards I believe this is the first of Bujold's books to win a major SF awaFalling Free: Enjoyable early novel, but not quite up to Miles Vorkosigan standards I believe this is the first of Bujold's books to win a major SF award and bring her name into the spotlight, as most military SF Baen books had not been aiming for major recognition (in my opinion), but it got me started on the Miles Vorkosigan series and it's a bit of a mystery why I never actually read/listened to it till 30 years after publication! Still, better late than never.
As most readers and even fans admit, it's a decent and enjoyable hard SF adventure with a no-nonsense engineer hero, lovable and innocent genetically-altered quaddies with four arms and no legs designed for zero-G work, and an evil corporate villain who exploits them and isn't above trying to get rid of them when the profit margin is not sufficient.
So it sets up some pretty obvious targets for readers to love/hate, and lacks the complex and clever plots and characterization of the later Miles Vorkosigan books, so it mainly suffers from comparison rather than being a bad book by any measure. Still, it is inevitable it will be considered a lesser work along with Ethan of Athos, but it's a high hurdle to compete with Miles.
Still, certainly a decent read and worth your time if you like this kind of story and want to complete your knowledge of the backstory of the Miles Vorkosigan universe....more
Elysium Fire: Solid Sequel to The Prefect Elysium Fire (2018) is the sequel to Alastair Reynolds’ The Prefect (now renamed Aurora Rising to designate iElysium Fire: Solid Sequel to The Prefect Elysium Fire (2018) is the sequel to Alastair Reynolds’ The Prefect (now renamed Aurora Rising to designate it as part of the PREFECT DREYFUS series), a complex and detailed police procedural set in the Glitter Band of his REVELATION SPACE series, set before the Melding Plague that destroyed the 10,000 orbitals that sported every conceivable political system, all run by real-time neurally-based electronic democratic voting systems that allow citizens to weigh in on each issue and decision on how to run their societies. This democratic utopia features few formalized rules among the orbital other than keeping the voting systems inviolate and this is enforced by a police force of Prefects based on the world of Panoply, armed with versatile “whip-hounds” in place of an armed military.
Many of the characters from the first book reappear, including Deputy Tom Dreyfus, fellow Prefect Thalia Ng, hyper-pig Sparver, their boss Supreme Prefect Jane Aumonier, and Aurora, the AI that goes psychotic in the first book. You can read this book as a stand-alone, but it makes much more sense to have read Aurora Rising first, and you’ll get even more if you have read the much later books in the REVELATION SPACE series, such as the main trilogy and Chasm City in particular.
This time around there is a mysterious plague appearing at random among citizens in the orbitals that overloads their cerebral implants and fries their brains. There appears to be no connections among the victims, as they are scattered throughout different parts of society and worlds. As Dreyfus and his colleagues investigate case after case, they struggle to find any meaningful leads to understand the source of the “Wildfire” virus.
Meanwhile, there is a new voice of discontent arising, a critic of Panoply named Devon Garlin, essentially a demagogue who claims that the Glitter Band orbitals have no need of the Prefects and encouraging to secede from the group and go independent. So Dreyfus and his fellow Prefects are racing against time to contain the Wildfire virus while also fending off the growing criticism of Garlin, who sows discontent everywhere he goes among the habitats, making the investigation that much harder.
There is also an important subplot in Elysium Fire about two twins, Caleb and Julius, who grow up in a strange family environment and appear to have telekinetic abilities to manipulate quick matter and, later on, polling stations, that most fundamental tool that underpins the Glitter Band’s democratic system. It is not clear what their connection is with the Wildfire or even the timeline they are operating in, so Reynolds keeps their significance to the main story wrapped in mystery even as he fills in their stories and it is only much later in the book that we start to understand who they are and the connection to the Wildfire plague, the AI Aurora, and the demagogue Devlin.
All the complex storylines do get tied up eventually, and the Caleb and Julius relationship gets a surprise reveal that I didn’t see coming. Like all Reynolds books, the storyline is complex and the overall tone is dark, and the characters are far more like real people with flaws and hang-ups and personal issues. Elysium Fire is narrated by John Lee, like all of Reynolds’ books, and his dignified British gravitas is a good fit for the tone of the books....more
The Invicible: Early classic encounter with a swarm intelligence Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Stanislaw Lem was a Polish SF author, one of thThe Invicible: Early classic encounter with a swarm intelligence Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Stanislaw Lem was a Polish SF author, one of the most famous and successful writers outside the English language world, selling over 45 million copies in 40+ languages over five decades from the 1950s, but mainly in Eastern European communist bloc countries such as Poland, Germany, and the Soviet Union. However, despite his success he had a rocky relationship with the United States SF community, having a fairly low opinion of American SF fiction writers other than Philip K Dick’s works, and having his honorary membership with the SFWA taken away when he became eligible to become a regular member, which may have been intended as a slight and which he took as one. He refused to join.
Lem even translated PDK’s UBIK into Polish in 1972, but as PDK was already pretty eccentric as he neared his own personal 1974 religious experience, he wrote to the FBI saying that Stanislaw Lem was a name used as a cover for the Communist Party to influence Western public opinion (just a wee paranoid, I’d say). Basically he felt he got stiffed for payment for the translation and blamed Lem for this. So there was a lot of misunderstanding with Lem and the Western SF world. However, as time has passed there have been many more English translations of his works, including a number of retranslations and audiobook versions, which has brought his work to the attention of newer readers again.
His most famous book is Solaris written in 1961 in Polish (see my review of the book as well as the 1972 Tarkovsky film and 2002 Soderbergh film versions), which was not translated into English until 1970 (from the French edition, rather than the original Polish). It finally received a direct Polish-to-English translation from Bill Johnston and an audiobook version in 2011. Similarly, The Invincible was first published in Polish in 1964, then translated to German in 1967, but only received an English translation of the German version in 1973. Finally it received a proper Polish-to-English translation by Bill Johnston in 2015, so we have him to thank for bringing Lem’s works more skillfully and faithfully to English language readers. The audiobook has just become available from Tantor Audio, narrated by Peter Berkrot and based on the Bill Johnston translation, so it was a perfect opportunity to rediscover a classic Lem story.
Turning to The Invincible itself, it is a classic take of alien contact and rumination on the nature of human and non-human (in this case non-organic) intelligence, and the possible futility of trying to communicate with a truly alien intelligence at all. Rather than the simplistic and anthropomorphic aliens popularized by American SF pulps and films and TV shows like the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises, Lem’s thoughts on alien consciousness or machine intelligence was way ahead of its time. He was a pioneer when he wrote about encountering a sentient ocean in Solaris in 1961, and an artificial machine-based micro-bot swarm intelligence in The Invincible in 1964, almost a half century ago. One wonders how much more influence he might have had on the Western SF scene if his works had been translated more quickly and accurately than they were.
In any case, The Invincible is the story of an heavily-armed exploration ship that sets out to discover what happened to The Condor, a similar ship that landed on the uninhabited and desolate planet Regis III before losing contact without warning. The first half of the book focuses on the crew’s efforts to discover what happened to The Condor and its crew, and they soon discover a mysterious artificial city, which seems to have been abandoned long ago. They then discover The Condor, still intact and largely undamaged, hundreds of kilometers from the city. Then they have their first encounter with an ominous and metallic cloud that emits a strong electromagnetic field and interferes with their communications. Things quickly spiral downward as they realize they are dealing with an artificial machine intelligence that does not possess higher consciousness, but is perfectly capable of destroying human technology and mental functions, and even the mighty anti-matter weaponry of the Invincible.
There are various arguments among the crew, particularly the captain and the first navigator, Rohan, who is the main character in the story, about how to confront this implacable alien swarm intelligence, one that hardly seems aware of the pitiful human presence on the planet. However, unlike Kris Kelvin in Solaris, we really don’t get to know the human characters in The Invincible, as they seem largely lost in the face of an impossible situation. Ostensibly they are there to discover the crew of The Condor, but their whole mission comes into question, and by extension the whole justification for human exploration of strange and hostile worlds is also put under the microscope. Do humans really have a moral imperative to explore and conquer, and when they encounter an inorganic swarm intelligence that is perfectly adapted to its environment, but also perfectly uninterested in organic life, what possible gain can be had by trying to “communicate?”
Like many SF novels of the 1960s and 1970s, the ideas in Lem’s books take precedence over excessive characterization and plotting, which accounts for their welcome brevity (under 200 pages vs. the doorstoppers produced by Peter F. Hamilton or Alastair Reynolds), but Lem is very much a modern philosopher, ruthlessly stripping away the pretensions of the Western idea that humanity has a Manifest Destiny to explore and conquer the universe. The themes he prefers to explore are what intelligence and consciousness are, and what their role is in a large and uncaring universe. It is often a chilling vision, and may well have been influenced by his long exposure to the Soviet Union’s dominance over the communist bloc countries, including his homeland of Poland. Rather than the naive optimism of American SF, he painted an often bleak canvas of the limitations of human ambition.
Given that perspective, it is quite fascinating how popular his works became. I’ve only touched the surface of his books, and look forward to reading some with a more satirical slant, such as the stories of "Ijon Tichy: Space Pilot" (The Star Diaries, The Futurological Congress), along with his fable-like short stories exploring artificial intelligence (The Cyberiad, Mortal Engines). There is a depth of intellectual rigor and refusal to provide escapism in his books that appeals to me, and I hope he will find more readers thanks to the new translations and audiobook versions....more
All These Worlds: The action-packed Bobiverse finale Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Dennis E. Taylor’s BOBIVERSE series has turned out to be a All These Worlds: The action-packed Bobiverse finale Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Dennis E. Taylor’s BOBIVERSE series has turned out to be a real winner, starting with We Are Legion (We Are Bob) in September 2016 and continuing with For We Are Many in May 2017. Usually I tend to read fairly serious, literary, and ambitious SFF books, but after going through not one, but two long episodes dealing with a debilitating herniated disc this year and being confined to lying on my back for weeks, I badly needed a comic break, and the BOBIVERSE series is a perfect place to get an action-packed, science-literate, hilarious, and even moving story in under 8 hours of audiobook bliss. It would not be an exaggeration to say that narrator Ray Porter is brilliant and absolutely perfect for this series. His delivery is so in tune with the snarky tone of the book that Dennis E. Taylor really should buy him a round or two if he hasn’t already.
If you’re looking for an ultra-fast-paced SF adventure featuring multiple AIs originating from the same individual, Von Neumann probes exploring the galaxy, the moral dilemmas of whether to assist a primitive race as a mechanical god, trying to combat the misguided policies of a human government on a new ocean colony, and battling to save the entire human race AND Bobiverse from an implacable alien race that consumes planetary systems and sentient species as a light snack, these are the books for you.
In All These Worlds, the third and final installment in the Bobiverse, Bob and his other fellow AIs remain engaged in dozens of different situations, mainly exploration and terraforming of planets to create new homes for the surviving remnants of humanity. This is not an easy business, and Taylor devotes a lot of time explaining the science and technology of it, but in a very understandable and reader-friendly way. This time he focuses on the various technologies involved in terraforming, starship engine drive back-engineering, and finding the optimum balance of producing enough technology and equipment to support terraforming while at the same time building enough weaponry to defend humanity from the rapacious Others, who simply have zero interest in sitting down for a cup of tea and discussing their differences like a civilized species.
The terraforming story on Poseidon involves a lot of political machinations between Marcus, one of the Bobs, and the local governing body of this water planet that seems to disagree on EVERY SINGLE POINT of managing the colonies’ development, and this rapidly develops from tense discussions, to embargoes, and finally open warfare. It’s all very frustrating for Marcus, as he is only trying to help them out, but they just won’t see common sense (at least from an immortal AI perspective).
There is also again a bittersweet love story for one of the Bob AIs, Howard, as he is in love with a mortal woman biologist, who is a perfect personality match for him but refuses to consider the idea of being digitally stored and made immortal. Howard, who has seen so many “ephemerals” come and go, cannot idly watch as she ages while he does not, and finds himself in a nasty fight with her children over her last wishes. Once again, this adds an element of thoughtful speculation on what it might mean to live forever, and whether most people really would take this option.
Finally, we have the Others, the implacable advanced alien race that likes to turn star systems into raw materials, and treats sentient beings as food. This time the Others plan to annihilate humanity wherever it has settled in the galaxy, and are racing to Earth to destroy it completely, so it is up to a group of “younger” Bobs to find a way to stop the Others to save both humanity and all the other sentient races that will be callously wiped out if they can’t find a last-ditch solution. Once again, it reminded me of a more light-hearted version of the unstoppable aliens of Alastair Reynolds’ REVELATION SPACE series.
All These Worlds’ story just flies along at near light speed — there are 76 chapters in only 281 pages, which translates to 3.6 pages per chapter. If anything, I think Taylor could slow things down a little and flesh out some of the side story elements, but then again part of the charm of the BOBIVERSE is that it never rests, unlike so many of the bloated series that jam the shelves of bookstores. All the Bobs are relentless workaholics, so the story never stops for very long, despite the wealth of ideas that could get more in-depth treatment in a longer book.
Finally, I must again say that the Kindle versions of all the books are only $4.99 each on Amazon.com and adding Audible narration is only an extra $1.99 if you are an Audible member. That is a ridiculously good deal, and one of the reasons I gave it a try in the first place, so take a trip to the Bobiverse!...more
For We Are Many: More adventures in the Bobiverse Originally posted in Fantasy Literature I really enjoyed Dennis E. Taylor’s We Are Legion (We Are Bob)For We Are Many: More adventures in the Bobiverse Originally posted in Fantasy Literature I really enjoyed Dennis E. Taylor’s We Are Legion (We Are Bob) last December after discovering it by accident as Audible’s Best SF of 2016. I generally tend to read fairly serious, literary, and ambitious SFF books and realized I needed a light break and For We Are Many was the perfect change of pace. The BOBIVERSE series really is a fun place to spend some time, and it is the narrative voice that makes the books worth reading. In fact, I think the audiobook narrator Ray Porter is absolutely perfect for this series, his delivery is so perfectly in tune with the breezy, snarky tone of the book that his performance deserves a star all its own.
If you’re looking for a fun SF adventure featuring multiple AIs originating from the same individual (Bob, of course), Von Neumann probes exploring the galaxy, the moral dilemmas of whether to assist a primitive race as a mechanical god, encountering an implacable alien race that considers planetary systems and sentient species as raw materials and food, then you’ve come to the right place. After listening to the melancholy, deadly-serious, artistic, and brooding Viriconium by M. John Harrison, handled by the skillful British narrator Simon Vance, Ray Porter’s light, matter-of-fact, and sardonic delivery was a welcome relief.
In For We Are Many (2017), the second installment in the Bobiverse, Bob and his other AI counterparts are now scattered throughout the nearby star systems, most intent on exploration and terraforming in order to create new homes for the surviving remnants of humanity. The original Bob took a special interest in looking after a primitive but sentient race of Deltas in the Delta Pavonis system, and he spends a lot of time making sure they are not killed off by the local gorrilloids. When a new and more formidable predator shows up, he is faced with the Prime Directive dilemma popularized in Star Trek — how much do you intercede in the affairs of another sentient race, just because you like them? Is it ok to play God and take sides? Well, Bob is as human as you or I, and a very reasonable and humane person to boot, so he sets aside philosophical questions in favor of helping out his beloved Deltans, particularly the family of Archimedes, a Deltan who is especially intelligent and ambitious.
Terraforming new worlds to establish human colonies is not an easy business, and the author devotes quite a lot of time to describing the science and technology of it, but in a very understandable and reader-friendly way. Perhaps because Dennis E. Taylor is a computer programmer by trade, he knows how to describe things clearly, but I found his technical explanations not only logical, but actually interesting, and I am a liberal arts type. I’ve had to slog through many a page of technical exposition in other books (I’m thinking of Alastair Reynolds at the moment), but Taylor pitched his material at exactly the right level for me.
Meanwhile, in one of the only story elements in For We Are Many that I took strong exception to, there is a radical environmental terrorist group called VEHEMENT whose basic attitude is that the Earth would be better off without human beings, so why not just help the process by hatching various plots to kill off humanity. Of course SF is about extrapolation of current world trends, but SERIOUSLY, how many of us think that radical environmental terrorists are going to be the biggest concern in the coming decades? We have plenty of other unpleasant political trends that are happening around the world right now and I refuse to get into that debate, but I’d say there are far worse threats to humanity in some of the world’s current leaders and politics than tree huggers gone wild. So I’d have to voice my displeasure with Taylor’s choice of villains here, and the satire is so exaggerated as to lack any conviction. Okay, stepping off soap-box now.
The terraforming story on Vulcan involves a bit of a love story for one of the Bob AIs, something I wasn’t expecting. It’s not overdone, and it is a natural issue to arise when immortal AI personalities interact with humans, though some dismissively label them “ephemerals.” I actually found this storyline quite moving, which was an added bonus from a book where I was mostly expecting light-hearted space adventure.
Finally, we have the implacable advanced alien race that likes to turn star systems into raw materials, and treats sentient beings as food. Having read Alastair Reynolds’ REVELATION SPACE series just last year, this reminded me of that series’ unstoppable alien machine race, so much so that I wondered if Taylor wasn’t making a bit of fun of it, but since he treats them as a serious threat, I don’t think that was his intention. In any case, these aliens are indeed bad-asses and painfully lacking in any sense of humor, so fighting them to save humanity is no mean feat. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that we will have to wait for the next installment to find out what happens with them. Finally, did I mention that the Audible version of For We Are Many is only $4.99 on Amazon and adding the Audible narration is only an extra $1.99? That is incredible value for the money, so go out and get it before they decide to hike the price!...more
Galactic North: Reynolds excels at shorter lengths Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Having read all the full-length novels in Alastair Reynolds’ Galactic North: Reynolds excels at shorter lengths Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Having read all the full-length novels in Alastair Reynolds’ REVELATION SPACE series, I knew I’d eventually get to his shorter works set in the same dark and complex universe. The main novels are Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, Chasm City, Absolution Gap, and The Prefect. Reynolds has produced a detailed future history, inspired by works such as Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix, Larry Niven’s KNOWN SPACE, and Iain M. Banks’ CULTURE novels, and the stories in Galactic North (2006) fill in important details and serve as memorable tales of post-humans in a cold and inhospitable universe.
When I read Reynolds‘ full-length works last year, one of my biggest complaints was that they were overlong, turgidly-paced, and heavy on exposition. Those problems are largely absent from this collection — these stories are action-packed, dense, and effective. They revolve around morally-complex, highly-augmented mercenaries, hive-mind humans, conflicted ships captains, ruthless pirates, and scientists, and often pack a nasty punch at the end — this is not a forgiving galaxy for humans of any kind. But when you get used it, it really draws you in. Now that I understand the chronology and scale of his universe better, I appreciate the events of the novels more. As with all Alastair Reynolds’ audiobooks, the stories are narrated well by John Lee, whose dignified British delivery is a good fit for his work.
Reynolds’ milieu is fully developed. Mankind has colonized many worlds in our part of the galaxy, but has not developed FTL technology, so star travel is frequently done while in hibernation (“reefer sleep”), and the level of cybernetic technology has split humanity into a number of sub-groups, including Demarchists (moderately-augmented humans that practice real-time democracy via neural implants), Ultras (highly-augmented cyborg humans), and Conjoiners (mentally-linked humans with hive-mind traits). Humanity has also encountered the remains of many dead alien civilizations, illustrating Fermi’s Paradox of why we have not been contacted by other alien species despite the billions of potentially-habitable worlds in the universe. The stories are ordered in a rough chronology ranging from 2,205 CE in “Great Wall of Mars” to 40,000 CE at the end of “Galactic North.” These are the stories in the collection:
Great Wall of Mars
This is the earliest story in Reynold’s future chronology, the pivotal story of Nevil Clavain, a prominent figure in the main REVELATION SPACE series, and Galiana, the founder of the Conjoiner movement. It’s a tense tale of the fight between Coalitionists, Demarchists, and a rebel group led by Galiana holed up on Mars. The Earth forces have the rebels pinned down in their fortified construct (the “Great Wall”) which extends deep underground. Clavain and Galiana are ostensibly enemies, but events conspire to force them together, and a young girl with severe brain damage plays a surprising role. The first-hand description of the Conjoiners’ collective consciousness is fascinating, and the story is action-packed and gripping.
Glacial
This takes place shortly after the previous story, as Clavain and Galiana arrive on an ice planet named Diadem, where they discover an abandoned Earth colony in which the colonists have all died after apparently going insane. They find one survivor who has jury-rigged a form of cryo-stasis, and revive him enough to question what happened. His story sounds fairly plausible, but Clavain has a nagging suspicion some details don’t add up. This is a fairly typical SF setup — the abandoned colony, mysterious deaths, and a suspicious survivor. But to Reynolds’ credit, he adds in some interesting alien biology about ice-worms, and the resolution of the mystery was a surprise to me.
A Spy in Europa
This is a short but intense story of an undercover agent who goes to a city situated under the ice sheet covering Europa. He is embroiled in the power struggle between the Demarchists (controlling Europa) and the Gilgamesh Isis (who control Ganymede and Callisto). He undergoes dramatic surgical alteration to be equipped with gills to survive in the freezing waters under the ice, and sets out to discover crucial secrets that will aid his side and undermine the Demarchists, but encounters some unexpected beings instead, who seem to be allies at first…
Weather
This is one of the best stories of the collection. It’s about Inigo, the shipmaster of the Ultra ship Petronel, which is attacked by pirates while transporting colonists in cryosleep. By a stroke of improbable cosmic luck, the pirate threat is eliminated and they find a lone Conjoiner woman being held prisoner. She has a name that is completely incomprehensible to baseline humans, but since it’s origin is from the gas cloud formations of Jupiter, he calls her “Weather.“
Inigo tries to establish a friendship with Weather though she is technically a prisoner, but the Captain distrusts her deeply as a Conjoiner due to events in his own past. But when the Petronel is pursued by a sinister stealth ship and needs to escape, they discover that the Conjoiner drive is damaged and no baseline humans or Ultras have the ability to repair it. It’s an ingenious aspect of Reynolds’ universe — the Conjoiners have mastered near-lightspeed travel and have shared it with other human groups, but refuse to reveal the secrets of its working. The slightest tampering will result in the entire engine going supernova and destroying the ship and everything nearby. All of a sudden, the Conjoiner woman’s cooperation is the only thing that can save them…
Dilation Sleep
This is apparently the first story written by Reynolds in his REVELATION SPACE universe. It’s a shorter tale of a man who wakes from cryosleep aboard a ship that is fleeing the Melding Plague that has overrun Yellowstone (these events are covered in greater detail in Chasm City). He did not remove the neural implants that make him vulnerable to the plague, but did make a digital copy of his wife, whose simulation tells him he needs to operate on one of the other passengers immediately. I thought this was one of weaker stories, which may reflect it being one of the earliest written.
Grafenwalder’s Bestiary
This is a dark and baroque tale of wealthy and decadent collectors of rare and freakish creatures in Chasm City. Grafenwalder is the most renowned collector, and he deeply covets something that will impress his little circle. Initially he manages to acquire a live adult-sized hamadryad (a creature also featured in Chasm City), but later gets whiff of something even more rare and valuable — a living specimen of a genetically-engineered human-fish hybrid first created on Europa many years back. He gets a DNA sample from his dealer which seems legitimate, and arranges the purchase. When he gets his prized specimen he can’t wait to show it off to his closest rival, with unexpected results…
Nightingale
This is a novella-length story of a group of mercenaries sent to track down a criminal accused of war crimes. An team of mercenaries is gathered (one of Reynolds’ favorite themes), the usual assemblage of highly-augmented Ultras and baseline humans. They get wind that their target, Colonel Brandon Jax, may be hiding out on an abandoned hospital ship called Nightingale. During the war on Sky’s Edge, this ship was in charge of healing soldiers on both sides of the conflict, but since the war ended it has been left untended.
However, when they arrive on the ship, it seems to be functioning more than should be the case for a derelict. Before you can say “Aliens or The Expanse,” it’s time to explore the ship’s innards. The team find increasingly strange activities aboard the ship, and when they encounter the AI intelligence running the ship, they’re in for a very nasty surprise…
Galactic North
This is another highlight of the collection, a wide-ranging novella that spans many centuries and covers many epochs of Reynolds’ future history, starting in 2,303 but ending far in the future around 40,000, covering some of the climactic events mentioned in Absolution Gap, the final book of the main REVELATION SPACE trilogy. At the end of that book, we learn of a new threat to the galaxy innocuously named Greenflies, but there are few details. In fact I found it quite frustrating for this to be introduced at the end of a massive trilogy (around 2,000 pages in total) along with several other mysterious alien presences and not enough explanation. Well, “Galactic North” explains what the Greenflies are and how they came to threaten the galaxy.
The story centers on Captain Irravel Veda, who is ambushed by pirates when making an unplanned stop for repairs. She is guarding two types of valuable cargo — 20,000 colonists in cryosleep, and terraforming Von Neumann machines called Greenflies. They fall under the control of the sadistic hyperpig Run Seven (yeah, don’t ask). He manages to pry the security codes via torture and trickery and flees with the cargo (why do badguys always leave their enemies alive, one might wonder?). What follows is a cat-and-mouse chase through time and space as Irravel pursues the pirates to get revenge.
Meantime, the Greenfly machines have malfunctioned and are dismantling every star system they encounter to build artificial habitats complete with plant-life (hence their name). Sounds great, except they destroy everything in their paths and don’t make exceptions for sentient beings or civilizations. It’s a particularly Reynolds-type of implacable disaster. Despite all the might of various space-faring civilizations, there isn’t much that even ancient races like the Nest Builders or Inhibitors can do but flee to the far reaches of the universe. There are some overlaps with Absolution Gap, but I’d be lying if I said there was total closure in this story....more
Ninefox Gambit: Careful or You’ll Catch Calendrical Rot Originally posted at Fantasy Literature I’m just going to add my two cents here, as a heretic whNinefox Gambit: Careful or You’ll Catch Calendrical Rot Originally posted at Fantasy Literature I’m just going to add my two cents here, as a heretic who refuses to conform to the calendrical hierarchy that forms the basis of this mathematical military hard SF space opera with some gender-bending thrown in for extra flavoring. Ninefox Gambit has drawn favorable comparisons to Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lighting, because this book not only throws you off the deep end, but chains you up in neologisms, a complex future society that is not gift-wrapped neatly with a bow, and then chucks you in the magma of an intergalactic battle between the Hexarchate and heretics who refuse to follow the consensus reality, which powers the exotic technology and weaponry with which this empire maintains its vice-grip on its subjects. As others have observed, replace high-level mathematical formulae with magical spells, and voila, you’ve got a space-fantasy novel.
Of course Ninefox Gambit is far more complicated than that, but the basic story is of Kel soldier Charis teaming up with an immortal, homicidal, and totally insane undead general named Shuos Jedao to put down a heretical rebellion that has captured the supposedly-impregnable Fortress of Scattered Needles. Great names throughout, by the way, for that classical Three Kingdoms Chinese-fable feel but plugged into a hyper-militaristic future empire. You can react one of two ways — either your mind will rebel at the relentless stream of weird and confusing neologisms and mid-stream action opening sequence and say, “WTF was that?” Or … no that’s probably the standard response. The question then becomes, “Do I stick with it and hope that things will fall into place in time?” or “Do I ditch this book even though everyone is raving about how brilliant it is and I don’t want to be the loser who couldn’t handle the steep learning curve?”
Well, one thing about audiobooks is that even if you’re in way over your head, unlike in the print version where eventually you just cannot carry on any further, unless you click stop the audiobook keeps playing. And since 11 hours isn’t really THAT long, once you’ve gone halfway it would be silly to give up, so just let those bizarre events flow past your ears, and pluck a couple words here and there and try to figure them out. I found the exchanges between Charis and Jedao to be the most interesting, and the exotic and muddled futuristic battle sequences and protected siege to be the most boring. I mean, who couldn’t love an insane undead homicidal general who doesn’t even act apologetic for killing a million people and shooting his own officers in cold blood? Now that’s a character that will stay in your memory for a while.
Charis is a much more measured person, a soldier who is trying to do her duty, but knowing she is playing with a primal force that cannot be contained but is a “necessary evil,” that old chestnut. I found interesting echoes of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, particularly, in the subtle subversion of genders that are casually sprinkled at random moments. Yes, we’re pretty sure Charis is female and Jedao used to be male (he’s just a computer program now), and as audiobook narrator Emily Woo Zeller chooses to use “cigar-chomping drill sergeant” for every male military character, it’s clear from the voices who should be male and who female. But then out of nowhere sexual scenes don’t play out in the usual way, and there is the same obsession with gloves and the military found in Ancillary Justice. Is this a “thing” now? I hadn’t realized.
In any case, I haven’t even bothered to describe the plot because a) it’s quite complicated, b) other reviewers have done that already, and c) I just don’t have the discipline this time. But suffice to say I was of two minds about Ninefox Gambit. One the one hand, I did like how Yoon Ha Lee just decided “screw it, I won’t explain anything – you do the work.” But that puts a lot of stress on the reader/listener, and if the events you are describing are not gripping (like Dune, for instance, equally baroque and complex but also a rip-roaring space opera extravaganza), then your attention is going to wander … like a heretic! So I found myself stopping and rewinding again and again, over and over, till I decided it wasn’t worth doing that anymore. And while I struggled to follow the storyline at many points, I appreciated the exotic world-building and mathematical magic, and the love-hate relationship of Charis and Jedao....more
We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Geeky SF fun a la The Martian Originally posted Fantasy Literature This seems to be a thing these days. Breezy, snarky SF stWe Are Legion (We Are Bob): Geeky SF fun a la The Martian Originally posted Fantasy Literature This seems to be a thing these days. Breezy, snarky SF stories by first-time authors that promote their own work, capture a lot of positive word-of-mouth and become very popular without major publisher help initially. I’m thinking of Andy Weir’s The Martian, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. Basically, these books are a whole lot of fun, drop liberal 1980s geek references, tell an exciting tale, and reject the dark and grim cyberpunk futures exemplified by William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, Alastair Reynolds’ Chasm City, etc. Don’t get me wrong, those are all excellent books too, but man, are they depressing! After listening to five Reynolds audiobooks in quick succession, I really needed something light and fun, and I happened to see Dennis E. Taylor’s We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (2016) mentioned as one of Audible’s Best SF of 2016, so on a lark I picked it up.
It’s a very simple story. Bob Johansson is a young Internet entrepreneur who has just sold his successful business to a larger competitor. Flush with cash, he arranges for his body to be put in cryogenic storage when he dies as an insurance policy, and on the way to a SF convention he gets distracted crossing the street and…
Wakes up 117 years later in a repressive future society that somewhat reminded me of Woody Allen’s classic SF spoof Sleeper (1973). We Are Legion (We Are Bob) is nothing if not topical — Taylor had me laughing out loud in painful acknowledgement with this succinct description of the future US theocracy. Obviously very different from our current world, thankfully…
In 2036, the USA elected an over-the-top, unapologetic fundamentalist president named Andrew Handel. Yes, that Handel. During his term, he tried to ban election of non-Christians to any public post, and tried to remove the constitutional separation between church and state. He was nominated, supported, and elected based on his religious views, rather than on his political or fiscal expertise. And of course, he appointed persons of similar persuasion to every post he could manage, in some cases blatantly ignoring laws and procedures. He and his cronies rammed through far-right policies with no thought for consequences. In a number of cases, when challenged on the results, he declared that God would not allow their just cause to fail. He eventually brought the USA to its knees in an economic collapse that made the 2008 recession look like a picnic in the park.
Anyway, that is just laying the groundwork for the main part of the story, which is that Bob is now a bodiless AI, or replicant, that has been revived along with several other candidates for an urgent project by one faction of the current US government to seed the stars for humanity while competing with other rival nations. It turns out that most AIs turn insane when they understand their new situation, but Bob seems to have a better temperament for accepting his new existence as an AI that essentially controls a collection of servitors, etc. The choice is elegant — either accept the assignment to pilot a fleet of Von Neumann machines to seed new stars with colonies, or be shut off permanently. Bob’s no-nonsense, self-deprecating internal monologue is the backbone of this enjoyable tale, very much like Mark Watney in The Martian. He always has a quip for each occasion, a super-rational and creative engineering mind, and indefatigable optimism no matter the circumstances. If you like that style of story, you’ll be in good hands, and the audiobook narration by Ray Porter is excellent. I found myself smiling at Bob’s one-liners and refusal to be dragged down by setbacks. He is a character any reader can root for.
The bulk of the book involves Bob’s adventures escaping the ploys of other nation-states back on Earth, hostile rival AIs tasked with the same mission, and then the very existential struggle of Bob coming to terms with cloning himself into a multitude of Bobs, hence the book’s title We Are Legion (We Are Bob). Bob’s chats and debates with his other alter-egos are hilarious and probably the best part of the book. It also makes the book less claustrophobic than The Martian, because the other Bobs do have distinct character variations, essentially different aspects of the original Bob’s persona. They choose names for themselves like Riker, Homer, Garfield, etc., so we get plenty of 80s geek references just like Ready Player One.
The final third of We Are Legion (We Are Bob) tells the adventures of Bob and his alter-egos as they encounter a more primitive species of humanoid aliens and play a bit of God trying to favor one group over another, much like a Star Trek scenario (you know, the Prime Directive and all that). The main mechanism that drives the engineering technology is the ability to use 3D printers to build anything with the right raw materials from asteroids and planets, so Bob has to decide between replicating himself, building colony ships for Earth’s survivors, and building other 3D printers. Imagine the SF version of “For my third wish I wish for unlimited wishes.” This is clearly intended as the opening salvo of an ongoing SF series, since Taylor can take Bob’s adventures in any direction he wants. If you are a fan of the books mentioned in this review, I think you’ll definitely enjoy the ride....more
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