Tag: science fiction

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Review

“The Hammer Falls”

Travis Heermann

I’m of mixed feelings about this book. It’s a fun setting — a little post-apocalyptic in places, but mostly it’s that ‘megacorporation rule’ that feels closer to cyberpunk than any other genre. And while I hate that as a possible future, I do think that this book handled it better than I could’ve expected, so that’s a positive.

But then the negatives: the protagonist is only occasionally likable, and the way women are treated feels almost like someone set out to deliberately flunk the Bechdel Test. Arguably, that’s on purpose, as it’s in keeping with the way said occasionally likable protagonist would think, and it’s told from his perspective, but it still grates somewhat.

In the end, though, I made it to the end of the book, which is the main test I have.1 If you’re interested, you can learn more about the book here. 2

  1. Somewhere, I have a graveyard of books I started and didn’t finish; I’m stubborn, but I won’t force my way through a book if it’s just not enjoyable. Life’s too short for that. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Cloud Permutations”

Lavie Tidhar

It took me a while to come up with it, but the best description I have for this novella is “impressionistic.” It varies from being told up close by the protagonist, and drifting outwards into discussion of how historians tried to piece together the events of the story years later. It’s a folk tale of the distant future, a Promethean moment as someone pulls this corner of humanity out of a localized Dark Age.

The setting does a great job in establishing a sense of scale. Because you have forgotten technology of the ancients on the scale of “this is a colony, we remember the part of our history where we got here via interstellar travel, but now our highest tech stuff is boat engines”… set against a backdrop of what I interpreted as mysterious nanotechnology and Kardashev tier 2-3-ish feats of engineering.

It’s a pretty quick read, and different enough from the usual fare of science fiction, and I do recommend it. Give it a read.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“The Stark Divide”

J. Scott Coatsworth

I absolutely adore hopeful science fiction; dystopian and post-apocalyptic is fine for when the world isn’t ending, but in the midst of a global pandemic and a climate disaster, I want something hopeful. And this, despite the future Earth being a climate-change-wracked disaster, is hopeful.

The world may be ending, but it’s the end of a world, not the end of humanity. In the three parts of this book we see someone plant the seed, encourage the growth, and launch a generation ship. Three of them, in fact, though we only ever see the first. And that’s hope, to me—a chance at a better future. (And hey, it doesn’t hurt that it’s a queer author, including queer characters; a well-rounded population is a necessity for a generation ship!)

So hey, give hope a chance.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Ganymede”

Jason Taylor

I very nearly gave up on this book partway through. It felt like it was starting to fall into territory that I really don’t enjoy, with the author using the book to espouse their religious beliefs.1 I took a break, skimmed the leaf description again, an decided to give it another go, and managed to get hooked again.

While I can’t call it “hard” science fiction, because there’s some definite hand-waving about how things actually work, it’s certainly not “soft” science fiction, either. There’s clearly a system underlying all of the sci-fi elements, it just requires a bit of accepting “eh, it’s distant enough in the future that we’d probably have figured that out” and you can carry right along.

The setting is pretty interesting, overall – it’s a not-too-distant future, but the world has had some Busy Times in the interim. There’s a bit of the dystopian “the world is much worse than it looks, but our AR glasses make everything look fine, so who cares!” thing that I honestly despise, but underneath that grime there’s also a distinctly hopeful vibe to what’s actually going on. The best setpiece is definitely New Washington—rebuilding DC, following a nuclear bombing, as a network of bunkers buried below the continental shelf, with New Dulles as a floating airport/city above? Distinct Fallout vibes, in the best of ways.

Lastly, I’ll add that I can very clearly see one of the key influences for this book. What I won’t do is reference here what that is, because spoilers. If you’re curious, click through the footnote.2

All in all, I quite enjoyed this book. It takes it a while to really get going, but by the end it’s a delightful work of science fiction. Give it a read.3

  1. It’s okay for authors to do this in books! Just like it’s okay for me to not want to read those books as a direct result. ↩
  2. Andy Weir’s “The Egg” ↩
  3. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“The Planetbreaker’s Son”

Nick Mamatas

More ‘literary’ in feel than I usually go for, but it works. A time capsule, a billion people digitized and attempting to preserve what humanity was before we wiped ourselves out, held together by advanced technology and algorithms… it’s nice to imagine that we’d be able to retain every aspect of our humanity through a transition like that, but it also doesn’t seem that realistic. Things would have to change.

As I said, there’s more of a ‘literary’ style to this than what I usually read, and it definitely took me a while to really get into the story. But by the end, I found I quite enjoyed it, and a lot of what had been confusing me made more sense. The interview with the author also helped – provided some perspective, I suppose.

A fun little read; check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“The Caledonian Gambit”

Dan Moren

If memory serves, Moren has just released the sequel to this book, and I may have to pick it up. I wouldn’t say that “The Caledonian Gambit” was, like, earth-shatteringly good, but it fit my mood just right. It’s been a while since I read some light science fiction, it’s been a while since I read an espionage thriller, it’s been a while since I read something doing something really fun in that space.

I’ll sound the spoiler horn here – if you want no hints whatsoever about the plot, just go read it now.1

Alright, spoilers ahead!

I think my favorite thing in this book was the perfect payoff, how every aspect of the prologue went on to be massively important to the remainder of the book. It did a great job of seeming like a throwaway moment, but kept coming back in little bits of “oh, you thought that didn’t matter? Surprise, it did!”

And, having myself paused for the spoiler break (because apparently that’s how my brain works), I realized why I’m excited for the sequel: because I’ve actually read this exact plot before. It’s an early arc of Schlock Mercenary, although definitely played differently than it was there, and I’d love to see what someone else does with that idea. (Although, if you’re at all interested in comics and space opera, I highly recommend Schlock Mercenary, as well — it starts off very “lol it’s the 90s and I’m making a webcomic!” but by the end, it’s one of the best pieces of large-scale science fiction I have ever read.)

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

Star Trek: Lower Decks

I like the concept of Star Trek a lot — some of my favorite books growing up were optimistic science fiction, and the majority of Star Trek falls into that category. That said, I’ve mostly failed to actually get very much into Star Trek; without the nostalgia of having grown up watching it, I (watching in the ‘golden age of TV’) struggle to get past the date aesthetic of the older series.

All that said, Lower Decks feels like it was specifically targeted at me — I love the “adult animated television series” as a form of media, and it’s nice to have a clear entry point into the greater Star Trek universe.

The concept is pretty simple: instead of following around the bridge crew, what’s life like for the regular folks on a Starfleet ship? It feels more like a space opera: from this perspective you get glances into the crazy sci-fi goings-on, but half the time it’s just background dressing for interpersonal stories. It’s fun watching the characters shrug off a member of the bridge crew returning from the dead because “oh, they always do that. Probably they got Borg’d, or it’s a transporter clone, or something.”

Having it as animation also works quite well. It frees them to do ridiculous scenes without blowing through an entire season’s worth of special effects budget. It’s a lot easier to animate the aforementioned transporter clone scene when you just… draw the person twice and have them record two takes. No compositing shots together, no body-double in a green-screen suit. And, I hope, it will allow the animation to remain much more timeless than the live action shows can manage.

All told, I quite like Lower Decks, and do recommend it. As of this writing, we’re about halfway through the second season, with new episodes coming out every week, so go ahead and check it out. Each episode is around half an hour, and they work well as a palate cleanser between heavier series. Check it out.

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Review

“Fine Structure”

Sam Hughes

I actually read this almost immediately after “Ed”, and it makes for a heck of contrast. Where “Ed” is mostly pretty light and quick, this is all kinds of convoluted in terms of what’s going on with the plot. But it also does that thing that Hughes does really well—it spans a massive amount of time and space, and covers a staggering amount of ground.

The basic concept is truly excellent, though: what if, every time you tried some Cool Science Fiction Thing, it worked—once. And then never again.

It’s a really interesting constraint for a work of science fiction, as well: how can you do enough Cool Science Fiction Things for a full book, when the core concept is that those concepts are consumable? It makes for, as I said, a sprawling world that must be built out—larger than “Ed” or “Ra” had to be, and bringing in some definite “higher-dimensional beings would look a lot like Cthulhu, wouldn’t they?” energy.

The end result is, I can’t recommend this as readily as I did “Ed”, because it’s boggling at times. But it’s a great payoff, and ties together things you wouldn’t at all expect, much better than you’d expect. If that sounds good to you, give it a read.

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Review

“Ed”

Sam Hughes

I’m reading Hughes’ work all out of order, but happily, there’s really no shared universe from story to story, so it’s not an issue. And, having now read all four of his books, I can say that “Ed” would be my recommended starting place, if you want to give it a go.1 It’s the lightest – a very silly beginning, and told by a narrator who’s further outside the story than any of his other works. While it’s not quite to that space opera feel, with the big events happening in the background and the story following regular-sized people just trying to make it through, it’s more human in scale.

It’s also very episodic most of the way through, so it’s easier to pick up and put back down for a while, if that’s your reading style, though there’s enough callbacks that you’ll be rewarded for going right through. (And, because this is a web-first piece of fiction, if you’re reading it online, a great deal of those callbacks are hyperlinks to the correct chapter – an easy way to catch yourself back up without devolving into “as you know, Bob” territory.)

All in all, “Ed” is a fairly short read, and a fun one. It’s got that characteristic “sprawling across space and time” feel that’s characteristic of Sam Hughes, but at no point do you feel like you need to stop and take notes to try to follow what’s going on. I quite enjoyed it. Give it a read, and if it really captures your interest, buy a copy!

  1. I’ve previous reviewed “Ra”, and will at some point write up my thoughts on “Fine Structure”, but my stance on “There Is No Antimemetics Division” is the simple “if you like SCP, you’ll like this; if you don’t know what that means, this isn’t a good starting point.” ↩
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Review

“Knaves”

I was going to start with “it’s been a while since the last anthology I read and reviewed,” but, as it turns out, it hasn’t. I wonder if it’s the variety of stories that makes an anthology feel further away in my memory? No single story has as long to get lodged in my memory, or something. Hmm.

Still, I do like the anthologies – they’re fun in the same way that a 22-minute-long TV show is, a great way to fill a bit of time without getting yourself too invested in something.

Knaves is, admittedly, less fun than some of the other ones, because the focus is on villains. So, by the nature of their stories, it’s a bit of a gloomy topic.

Which isn’t to say the stories aren’t interesting, because they absolutely are. “All Mine” is heartbreaking, as is “Hunger in the Bones”; “The Bloodletter’s Prayer” is a fascinating piece of dark fantasy; “Cat Secret Weapon #1” is a delightful spin on the Bond archetype; “The Hand of Virtue” is sweet and a touch melancholy; and “Old Sol Rises Up” is… well, honestly, mostly confusing. But I suspect that was the intent, so I won’t fault it.

And, of course, there’s an introduction – every anthology has to have one. What caught my eye and, frankly, got me to actually read the introduction was who wrote it – Howard Tayler, the man behind Schlock Mercenary, another delightful piece of media that I’m happy to recommend. Read the intro – it’s weird, and silly, and fun.

In fact, read the whole book. It’s a good use of time.

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Review

“Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space)”

I do love a good anthology. It’s all the fun of starting a new book, several times over, and with much less of a time commitment each time.
This did have some of the downside, though – about halfway through, I found myself getting rather bored of the concept of pirates. It’s a bit too coherent a theme, I feel; the book had a lot of the variance that makes anthologies fun, but keeping everything tied to ‘pirates’ limited it a bit more than is really healthy for an anthology.
After that midway nadir, though, it recovered nicely, going off into some interesting science fiction bits, and ending on a delightfully weird fantasy (or, possibly, extremely-distant-future?) piece.
So hey, have some fun with a variety of pirate stories.

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Review

“Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets”

I’ve actually read several of the stories in this anthology before, in other anthologies. Which, I suppose, is a statement about my taste in books.
Of the ones that were new, however, a couple of them were sufficient to make a partial repeat purchase worth it.
So, which stood out to me?
Far and away the best was The Lantern Men, which was a mildly interesting take on the Sherlock story (he’s an architect this time around!), but was one of the creepiest things I’ve ever read. It followed The Rich Man’s Hand, which was creepy enough that I thought “oh, I can’t go to bed on that, I’ll read one more,” and that turned out to be a mistake.
A Woman’s Place is a delightful little cyberpunk kind of thing, and my favorite take on Mrs. Hudson that I’ve seen… quite possibly ever. The opening scene, of her delivering tea and sandwiches while Sherlock and Watson interview a client? Oh, I won’t spoil a thing, but within the first page I was enraptured, and by the end, utterly delighted.
The Small World of 221b turned into a different genre than I thought it was, which was a fun twist, and I like the story that it told.
The Final Conjuration, too, was a genre-blending version of the story, and one I quite liked.
Finally, The Innocent Icarus was a great piece of world-building, and I’d quite like to read more in that setting at some point.
And that’s more than half the stories in the anthology; there’s also, as I mentioned, a few that I’d read before and quite liked, so it’s well worth the price. Check it out.

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Review

“Ra”

Sam Hughes
This is one of the most interesting pieces of fantasy/science-fiction I’ve read recently. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, in these book reviews, that I like world-building and systems of magic, and this delivers in spades. Magic, in Ra, is a type of engineering, and involves a great deal of math and rules and planning ahead. It’s a system to be uncovered, and scientists around the world are doing science at it, figuring out the rules. Why isn’t natural mana usable? What’s up with the weird dreams that all mages share? What happens to waste energy — magical friction — and why hasn’t anyone managed to detect it yet?
Basically, this is a book that takes solid aim at the mindset of someone like me, who will sit down and read through a veritable textbook on the workings of a magic system. And then, instead of just being a textbook, it comes with a whole story, that answers some of those questions in a way that makes for a solid story. (It helps that there’s a good amount of in-jokes for computer nerds — I mean, Wheel? That’s a neat touch.)
So, if you’re at all this sort of nerd, go give it a read. (You can also read it for free on the author’s website, but, y’know, pay people for their work.)

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Review

“Children of the Eighth Day,” or, “but at least nobody cares that the prince is gay”

Don Sakers
I mentioned in my last review that I was reading this omnibus; I didn’t review the short story in the middle, as it seemed a bit too short to be worth the effort, but did enjoy it. And it provided a good introduction to the characters here, eased the transition of skipping forward half a millennium or so.
I’ll start off by saying that I enjoyed “Children of the Eighth Day,” but temper that by saying it wasn’t as good as “Dance for the Ivory Madonna.” It’s more removed — it’s a space opera, and I’m much less familiar with the goings-on of an interstellar empire than I am of the modern world.
The overall flow was interesting — the first half of the book wraps up far more than I thought it would, and the second half has an entirely different set of issues for the characters to confront.
In retrospect, I think the short story leading in to this is not just helpful, but perhaps necessary, to be able to at all follow the events of the first few chapters. Things kick off very quickly, and trying to figure out the context of the Empire and the Family would be a bit much in addition to the actual events of the plot.
Final verdict: I do recommend the omnibus as a whole, but it might be worth reading it out of order — there’s a bit of spoiler effect for “Ivory Madonna,” as historical context, but I don’t think it gives away enough to really ruin the book for you, if you do read it in that order.

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Review

“What Dreams Shadows Cast”, or, “the cave isn’t haunted, but it does hate you”

Barbara J. Webb
So, a year and a half ago, I read the first book in what I assume is an ongoing series. At the time, I was quite clear on the fact that I loved the setting of the book. If you want all the explanation, hit up that link; for now I’ll just say it’s a new take on post-apocalyptic, where the apocalypse was being abandoned by the gods who’d previously been quite happy to intervene on people’s behalf.
That gap between reading the first and the second wasn’t the greatest thing for my enjoyment of the second — I spent a bit too long trying to remember where we’d left off, and some of the references back to the first I gave up on trying to remember. Things are in a slightly better place than they were in the first, though in order to avoid spoilers I’m not going to explain how, but you still get the sense that the world is deeply broken. Which, true, it sorta is; they’d based their entire economy and governmental system around an external force, which one day decided to up and leave. Maybe not the best way to have done things.
Honestly, I’m a bit annoyed with the handling of business in Miroc, the city where the first book took place; in the aftermath of that one, it’s set up to begin recovering from the Abandonment. In this book, we’ve skipped forward six months, and aside from a couple references to tentative recovery, nothing much seems to have changed. Sure, it’s only six months, but it’s also a metropolis that just finished making itself entirely self-sufficient, there should be more happening.
Which is rather the crux of my opinion on the book: “there should be more happening.” There’s background details — mentions of an influx of immigrants, as well as an increase in emigration — that aren’t explored very well.1 Instead, there’s a digression, ignoring the leftover villains from the first book to go have an Indiana Jones adventure in the desert.
This book feels like it was supposed to be either the second of two books, or possibly the second of a trilogy, but halfway through someone decided they wanted it to be an ongoing series. And to match the expansion in scale, they tried to expand the setting — the already compelling villains from the first book are almost entirely ignored, despite having been clearly set up to be the main antagonist throughout the series, and what was set up as the background for the whole setting got awkwardly retconned.
It just didn’t work as well as the first book. Which is a shame, because that first one was amazing, and this, while still captivating, left me disappointed at the end. Nonetheless, here’s the link; that said, if you haven’t yet read the first one, go do that instead.

  1. That specific example is actually a huge plot thread that’s just… entirely dropped partway through. Everyone is all secretive about where they’re emigrating to, and then something new comes up and the characters decide to leave that Chekhov’s Gun just sitting on the table, ignored. ↩