SPORKY's Space

by Alastair Reynolds. This falls squarely into the 'space is weird' genre. This follows such classics as the Hyperion series, Rama, and Dune, in making space and the future of humanity a very strange place and time. In this case, it's partly cultural, including cultures of humanity that have symbioted themselves with machines, that travel between the stars at nearly lightspeed, without ever knowing planet dwelling individuals for more than a single visit, or possible a visit and a return to see their elderly selves. It's also partly alien, in particular the remnants of alien civilizations long past, unearthed by humanity and, of course, threatening it.

Overall, I rate this as a fun read, but as his first book the writing is a bit rough. I preferred Pushing Ice for books by Reynolds, because while there was a fair bit of 'space is weird,' and also a lot of time range between parts of the narrative, and drastic changes in characters over time, which made for an overall better story. Revelation Space has at least one sequel, however, so I'll be very interested to see how things progress in later books.

by Ken Grimwood. A time travel story, more or less, following the life and times of one Jeff Winston. And then doing so again, and again. Jeff has a problem, in which he relives the same twenty-five year stretch of life repeatedly. It's an odd problem to have; in 1988 he dies, and no matter what he's done returns to his original, 1963 existence. The book follows him, the things he learns, the people he meets and what he does with his time.

As a story, I'm not very impressed. The groundhog day movie makes this sort of thing less novel than it might otherwise be, and many of the stand-by's of past facing time travel are present: big sports bets, predicting wars, that sort of business. I find the supporting character to be the more interesting, by merit of simply being a more interesting person. I found the end of the story to be a bit predictable, which was a letdown.

by L. Sprague De Camp and Fletcher Pratt . A 40's era sci fi story (republished as a book in the 60's), involving a pair of psychologists that find a way to enter parallel universes. I enjoyed the Norse mythology portion a great deal more than the later Knights of Faerie plot, but I suppose your mileage may vary. Overall a fun read, but short and dated.

by Heinlein. A classic I've heard about forever, and the originator of the term 'grok,' I had to read this at the recommendation of a friend.

A large amount of future sci-fi is written as the future of the time in which the author lives. There are some very good examples of this (earlier I mentioned it with Sheckley's work), and this is one more. Stranger is very much the future of the 60's. Love as the greatest goodness, acceptance and approval of group love, and all the rest. It's a Heinlein book, so there's a fair bit of preaching as well; in this case the subject is (ironically) religion. The story follows a man who was born and raised on Mars, by Martians, coming back to Earth, living among people, and growing to be a spiritual leader.

I've never been a huge fan of Heinlein; while I like some of the things he's written (and this is no exception), the tone and the barely-veiled subject discussion make it less enjoyable for me than it might otherwise be. As a book, overall good and I'm glad to have read it, but it probably won't make my list of all time favorites.

by Neil Gaiman. I've always enjoyed God books; not in the Bible sense, but in the good mythology sense, and in the way gods can be used as characters differently from beings of other sorts. If a regular man in the story turns, with a flash of determination in his eye, and the room starts on fire, or a fish is made, or a disease is cured, or some other miracle is accomplished, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense without backstory and build up. A wizard needs training, a mutant needs to mutate, an outsider needs to arrive. But when a god does it, it's understood. The backstory is built in through a civilization's worth of thought, the rules are different.

One of my particular favorites in this sort of writing is the obligatory bit of explaining not only who the gods are but where they come from, how they become, or possibly how it is a mystery. Gods are inherently understood as misunderstood, so by nature the author can build upon or ignore vast tracts of material the readers might have heard, thought about, misheard and been confused with without necessarily needing to know what the readers will come in with. Probably they get a lot of what's needed right.

This was one of those sorts of books. The gods are given without background and with enough mystery, and the story builds upon an understood foundation, with only nudges in the right directions. As the story goes, I'd call it fun but bland. It didn't quite have the kick that American Gods did.

What it did have was something I wasn't expecting from Gaiman: a formula. Neverwhere: English man with a straight-edged fiance gets sucked up into a world he doesn't understand, and grows to learn about it. American Gods: American man with a dead-but-still present wife gets hired into a world he doesn't understand, and grows to learn about it. Anansi Boys: English man with a straight-edged fiance gets born into a world he doesn't understand, doesn't notice it for years, then grows to learn about it. The variations on the theme become smaller, and it hit me about a third of the way through that I'd read essentially this story before.

I was honestly looking for better. A good read, but not an impressive one.

by Alastair Reynolds. This was really good, it started with sort of a hard sci-fi/Rama sort of feel, and ended in an interesting way.

The timescale in the story was interesting... some chapters were continuations of others, others were separated by years. This worked surprisingly well, it means the story could cover years of habitation, and feel like it covered years of habitation, without necessarily going through all the details. I enjoyed the ending, this had the potential to drop off badly, but I like the way things were handled.

All around, good times, I'll read more by Reynolds :)

by Steven Erikson. This was recommended by a friend. In his defense, he's made some good recommendations in the past, but this was most definitely not one of them.

Gardens of the Moon is the first in a projected series of ten, of the sword, sorcery and empire drama genre. Unfortunately, while it does cover each of those aspects, it does each one badly. The action sequences are poorly written, either because one character is so overpowering that there is no action, or by simple lack of good descriptions. The magic has none of the flair of the story's contemporaries, none of the visuals of Prince of Nothing or the slow build up of powers and relations of the Riftwar books (and all the multitudes that came after). Instead, sorcery is simply given confusing names, and characters either win or lose battles with no real reasoning behind it. The empire and politics are dwarfed by the Song of Ice and Fire books, and the meddling of gods is laughable compared to the Shadowmarch series. At best the intrigue is childish, at worst it is just boring.

At the end of the day, this makes for a drudgery of a read, with few interesting characters in a boring setting. I finished the book because it was mediocre and I save my abandonments for books that really deserve it, but I suggest this book to no one. If a sinus infection followed by allergies to antibiotics hadn't given me an unexpected opportunity to read (between naps), it would likely take me another month to slog through this.