Posts Tagged ‘science fiction’
TBR Topple!
Posted on: May 19, 2013
Thanks to Dark Cargo for starting the TBR Topple campaign. This is where you look at your teetering stack of books you’ve been meaning to read, and instead of buying more books (for therapeutic reasons, of course), you take a handful of books from your TBR pile, read the first chapter or two just to get a taste, and see which ones taste good enough to keep reading. And the ones that don’t do it for ya? Get ‘em outta the TBR and regret nothing!
Other great folks involved in TBR Topple include Lynn’s Book Blog and Over the Effing Rainbow. Maybe we can all help each other out.
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Here’s what I got:
Some of the books mentioned below I’ve already cracked open to see what tasty morsels abide within, others I, umm…. haven’t. But I will! I hope!
From the library:
War for the Oaks by Emma Bull, recommended by My Bookish Ways, it’s magical realism/urban fantasy. Kinda Charles deLint-esque?
Mastering Communication at Work – yes, this is something I’m reading for work. You know how must business books are drier than dust and make you want to die of boredom? This one isn’t. It’s readable, interesting, has a bunch of exercises to do. I’ve read the first 2 chapters and flipped through the rest. I wish I’d read this 10 years ago. A bit heavy to read all in one go, but I may need to buy a copy of this.
The State of the Art (short story collection) by Iain M. Banks
published in 2007
where I got it: gift from a friend
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Iain Banks’ Culture novels were love at first page for me. I didn’t mind being thrown far into the deep end, I was amused by the silly names and dry humor, I adored the drones and the Minds. Succinctly, I love me some Culture books.
But. . . . they are long, and tough to get into, and being tossed in the deep end isn’t for everyone. The State of The Art isn’t entirely Culture short stories, but it’s enough to give someone an easily survivable introduction to The Culture universe and Banks’ writing style. Even better, there’s an entire chapter A Few Notes On The Culture, which is quite a bit more than a few and gives even more indepth info, including what someone can expect if they live in The Culture (and where they’ll live), body modifications, life span, interactions with other civilizations, why everyone has such a long name, and the reason why most Culture novels take place on the edge of their sphere of influence. In fact, I wish I’d read that portion first, even though it’s at the end of the book. Also, Banks insists on making it very clear that The Culture is completely fictional. Pretty telling that this is the 2nd scifi book in a row where the author felt the need to do that.
Short enough to be read in a few sittings, the first story, Road of Skulls, serves as a wry introduction and so should be read first, but other than that you can bounce around and read the rest in any order you please.
here are my thoughts on some of the entries:
The State of the Art – Featuring one of my favorite Culture characters, Diziet Sma, The Culture discovers Earth, circa 1978, and they are trying to decide if they should make contact with us or not. Along with other Culture people who can blend in and look human, Sma and her counterpart Linter are sent to Earth for one year to observe us. Linter goes missing and Sma is sent after him. Has he gone native? Did he fall in love with an Earthling and doesn’t want to leave? What could possibly make an Earth life more attractive to Linter than living in The Culture, where everyone has everything they could possibly want?
Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, by Spider Robinson
published in 1977
where I got it: purchased used
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I suppose Spider Robinson wasn’t the first guy who started writing because he passionately hated his day job. Not the first, and certainly not the last. But when was the last time I ran into scifi that was so casually inviting? Reading this short story collection felt more like chatting with a friend over a beer than reading a book. I finished it in two sittings, which means Jake Stonebender and I will need to have another chat (beer for me, he’ll have a whiskey) soon. Had I know how good it was going to be, I’d have savored it, only allowing myself one story an evening, instead of seemingly rushing through it.
How to describe Callahan’s Saloon? Drinks are cheap, toasts are required, references to classic science fiction is appreciated, puns are a dime a dozen, and there’s always a story to be told and a laugh to be had, often at the same time, especially if it isn’t a funny story. The bar doesn’t advertise, only accepts cash, and if you need to be there you’ll find yourself at the front door and welcomed in. Anything, and I do mean anything, can happen at Callahan’s.
The stories in this collection are told through Jake Stonebender, a regular patron of Callahan’s who found himself there after blaming himself for the car accident that killed his wife and child. We’re quickly introduced to the owner of the bar, Mike Callahan, and a few other regulars, including piano playing Fast Eddie, and the incorrigible punster Doc Webster. Each story introduces another character who will be referenced later, so it’s a good idea to read them in the presented order.
Some evenings momentous things happen at Callahan’s, such as when an alien walked in with regret at his mission to destroy the earth, and Mike Callahan ended up offering him a job as a bartender. Other evenings it’s simply the weekly punning contest, which I guarantee will have you laughing out loud, or at least groaning at some truly awful wordplays (and then using them on your friends later!).
Even more new stuff
Posted on: May 4, 2013
I don’t think I can afford to buy any more books until the end of the summer! Also, reviews have been light recently because I’m up to my eyeballs in epic The Diviner, by Melanie Rawn. ignore it’s hokey cover art, and go read this right now because it is amazing. Review will show up eventually, I’ve got to finish it first!
but, there’s New Stuff!
A Stranger in Olondria was recommended to me by my friend at the bookseller. The debut novel from Sofia Samatar from Small Beer Press, it never hurts to support new authors and small presses. the cover art? eh, bleh.
River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay – after a long discussion with the other half last night about how Kay’s writing has evolved over the years, we decided that even though neither of us were in love with Under Heaven, we should give the pseudo-sequel, River of Stars a try.
New to me stuff! (because I can’t resist a used bookstore!)
Yes, I know the Doctor Who novelizations are kinda hokey. BUT I DON”T CARE I LOVE THEM!
Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding – I remember hearing a ton about this when it came out, time to give it a shot.
Kushiel’s Dart by Jaqueline Carey. When 99% of the blogging world is saying this book is a must read, who am I to pass on it?
New Stuff!
Posted on: April 29, 2013
well, at least New To Me!
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. For those of you paying attention, yes, I already have a copy. But I wanted another one.
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I found a really nice newer printing, with some beautifully Frazetta-esque cover art. I had started listening to an audio version of this, but the audio I had (free download? sometimes you get what you pay for) just wasn’t working for me. Happy to have finally found a copy, regretting that I didn’t the other two Burroughs books they had.
Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, by Spider Robinson. Never read any Spider Robinson. And how can I say no to something with that ridiculous of a title?
Plague Ship by Andre Norton. Speaking of things I can’t say no to. I got a kick out of the cover page that says Andre Norton writing as Andrew North. The “about the author” page closes with”Miss Norton presently resides in Florida under the careful management of her feline associates.”
A Million Open Doors by John Barnes. I loved his earlier novel, Orbital Resonance, so why not give this one a try? It’s the beginning of a trilogy, I think.
Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein. A title I’ve heard about, but never actually seen a copy of. HAD to buy it! I like that it says “To Fritz Leiber” on the copyright page. this might be a first paperback printing. anyone know?
The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross (The Laundry Files, book 1, also includes the novella The Concrete Jungle)
published in 2004
where I got it: purchased new (not in 2004. closer to last year)
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finally! I have finally read the first Laundry novel! and learned two things: You can read these out of order and do just fine, and the first book is decent but not the best in the series. For fans of Stross’s Laundry series this is a must-read, and if you’re not a fan, start with the 2nd or 3rd book in the series, work your way backwards, and then you’ll be a fan, so you’ll want to read it.
Bob Howard is not a hero. He doesn’t kick ass, he can’t keep his roommates from trashing the house, and cops are embarrassed if they have to work with him. Bob is your average IT professional, a super nerdy guy who spends his days checking the network for viruses, keeping spam out your e-mail, and avoiding his supervisor, which is totally okay because she’s an absolute bitch. Bob’s problem is that he’s way too good at what he does. So good in fact, that he can’t help but get involved when things go to shit, especially when the jackass from accounting gets himself possessed by a Lovecraftian intelligence during a training class.
IT jokes? Lovecraftian horrors? If you’re not into IT or Cthulhu, don’t worry, there’s no experience needed to enjoy The Laundry. Everything is explained. For god sakes, these books are how I got into Cthulhu mythos in the first place! and what isn’t explained in easy to understand language is glossed over in purposely arcane and sometimes sarcastic infodumps.
The Atrocity Archives is where it all begins (well, not where it all begins, but you know what I mean). We learn how Bob got “invited” to join the Laundry, his bachelor-esque life before Mo, and how many mainline supervisors he had to piss off to end up in Angleton’s office. It looks like fantasy horror, but The Laundry books are really hard scifi thrillers. Mathematics are the name of the game here, where changing a variable gets you from pie are squared to Azathoth coming up your bathtub drain. If you’re the scientist who hits on which variable and what to change it to, you can expect a call from The Laundry.
- In: Kage Baker
- 8 Comments
In the Garden of Iden, by Kage Baker
published in 1997
where I got it: library
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I’d read Kage Baker’s The Anvil of the World a while ago and loved it, but where to begin with the rest of her works? Why not start at the beginning, with her first novel, In the Garden of Iden? Her first “Company” series book, In the Garden of Iden is told in a diary style by Mendoza, a young company operative who is reminiscing about her youth and her first mission.
Saved as a young girl from the Spanish Inquisition, Mendoza is recruited into The Company, a 24th century organization of time travel and artifact hunting. Instead of sending people or cyborgs back in time to collect specimens or change history, they send a few people back with all the technology, recruit “natives”, and offer them immortality and cyborg implants in exchange for being a Company operative. It sounds gruesome, but Mendoza happily takes this over starving to death in an Inquisition prison. As a native, Mendoza knows the languages and the customs like the back of her hand.
Yes, this is a futuristic scifi book that takes place one hundred percent in the 16th century. That’s pretty damn awesome when you think about it. Remember Joss Whedon’s show Dollhouse? Garden of Iden had a bit of that feel, with operatives being trained to act and roleplay and dress and walk in a certain way, except no hypnotizing or brain scans. All the operatives remember everything that happens to them with perfect clarity. And some of them have been working for The Company for centuries. All of a sudden that sounds awesome, and, uh, really creepy.
- In: Guy Hasson | interviews
- 10 Comments
Welcome to the Guy Hasson THE EMOTICON GENERATION blog tour! Today we kick the tour off, and be sure to check here for the schedule and links to the other blogs.
Guy Hasson writes near-future science fiction, intimate stories suggesting technologies that fifty years away, or twenty years away, or maybe twenty minutes away. His stories are all different, but what they share in common is characters the reader instantly cares about, and a story that pulls you right in. THE EMOTICON GENERATION deals with a wide range of technological questions, but most importantly (at least for me), the idea that just because we can create a technology that does something, that doesn’t mean we should use it, that we should play God with it. Guy Hasson is also serializing his new mythology/fairy tale story TICKLING BUTTERFLIES on his blog. After a handful of e-mails back and forth with Guy I finally formalized a few questions for him.
You can find Guy Hasson at his blog, Guy Hasson’s Imagination and on twitter at @VisionEtc. Short stories, comics, movies, screenplays, serialization, talk about a Renaissance man!
Guy took time out of his busy day to answer a few questions for me, what a great way to kick off the blog tour!
You publish in both Hebrew and English. Do you find certain words, phrases, or even types of scenes work better in one language or another?
Oh, there are many, many differences, even between two Western societies that are basically similar. I’ll give you an example from The Simpsons. In season one’s first episode, five hundred years ago, what did Bart call a mailman that’s actually a woman? He called her a ‘fe-mailman’ (or a ‘femaleman’, depending on how you want to spell it). Try translating that into another language you know. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
I’ve lived in two different countries, in two different societies, speaking two different languages, and I write my science fiction to fit both of them equally. To do that, I use a few tricks. Here’s one of them: Americans find it very hard to have the ‘hero’ of a science fiction story or novel be anyone but an American. Now you’d think that for other countries, they would need the hero to be from their country. But that’s not the ‘foreign’ mentality. The US has dominated world SF for practically a hundred years now in stories, books, and film. So readers and movie-goers in foreign countries expect to see American heroes star in their SF. So Americans and ‘foreigners’ expect to see the same thing, for completely different reasons.
Have any funny stories about translations gone wrong?
None that have to do with my stories come to mind. But here’s one that didn’t happen to me. Once, a translator had to translate the sentence “I saw Christian Slater.” You’d think that’d be a simple enough sentence to translate.
But this translator never heard of the Christian Slater the actor. So the translation read, “I saw a Christian roofer.”
That really happened.
You work in films and the written word. When an idea forms in your mind, how do you decide if it would work better as a written story, or as visual media?
The Emoticon Generation Blog Tour!
Posted on: April 1, 2013
The time has come everyone, and I am thrilled to announce the beginning of Guy Hasson’s THE EMOTICON GENERATION blog tour! During the month of April, you’ll see book reviews, interviews of and guest posts by Mr. Hasson, and yes, giveaways too! Our tour kicks off tomorrow, April 2nd, right here, with an excellent interview!
Here’s the schedule, go ahead and bookmark all these folks:
Little Red Reviewer – April 2nd
Over the Effing Rainbow – April 4th
Dab of Darkness – April 6th
Attack of the Books! – April 8th
Postcards from La La Land – April 10th
My Bookish Ways – April 12th
Lynn’s Book Blog – April 14th
Two Dudes in an Attic – April 16th
A Fantastical Librarian – April 18th
it’s gonna be awesome!
How movies got me to read more
Posted on: March 30, 2013
It’s Ok. I saw the movie first too.
How many times have you said:
That movie was awesome! what? you say there’s a book? Dude, I can’t wait to read it!
So many times have I seen a movie, loved it to pieces, learned there was a book, loved *that* to pieces, and went on to have a simply lovely time. This has been going on my entire life. I give movies and TV all the credit for getting me into science fiction. A child of the 80s, I knew who Han Solo was before I knew who Isaac Asimov was, I thought Carl Sagan was just that guy who did the cool outer space PBS show, I knew David Lynch had something to do with this weird epic scifi movie that made no sense but looked and sounded really neat, and I stayed up late to watch reruns of Star Trek (back then it was just Star Trek).
The best thing about seeing the movie first? Since you don’t know what you’re missing, you’re probably not going to walk out of the theater saying “that movie sucked”. Well, maybe you will, but it won’t be because they didn’t follow the book.
Here’s just a few recent examples of movies that got me to finally pick up the book:
Howl’s Moving Castle – Diana Wynne Jones’s famous children’s book gets the Miyazaki treatment. I admit it, I’m shallow. A few minutes into the movie I was madly in love with Howl’s voice. An hour and a half later I was in love with the entire movie Sure, Miyazaki played fast and loose with the characters and put his own spin on the ending and on Howl’s “secret”, but it’s such a pretty movie, and certainly one of my favorites from Studio Ghibli. After watching the movie a few times, I read the book, and greatly enjoyed it.
Disney’s John Carter of Mars/A Princess of Mars – panned by critics, I actually really liked this movie. It was well paced, the CGI martians were cool, I liked the premise, I liked the opening. Other than a plot that didn’t make much sense, it was a fun adventure movie. (also, I’m shallow. I have no idea what color his eyes were. My attention was umm, elsewhere.) I downloaded an audio version of A Princess of Mars, and it’s awesome! I don’t agree with all the changes they made when adapting the book to a screenplay, I do understand them. Had I seen this movie after experiencing the book, I probably would have panned it too.
Lord of the Rings trilogy – yes, I suck, I’d never read these until about a year ago. But I liked the movies! Nice visuals, great music, excellent cinematography, great acting, what wasn’t to like? After ten years of my other half (who loves The Lord of the Rings almost as much as he loves me) nagging me to read them, and me giving him lame excuse after lame excuse, it was my enjoyment of the films that finally got me to read the books. Doing it as part of a read along with some other bloggers didn’t hurt either.
The Hunger Games – that was one damn good movie. my family loved the book and have been bugging me to read it for a while. I will. . . eventually. It’s going to get me addicted to this super trendy YA post apocalyptic stuff, isn’t it?
Dune (1984) – yes, that one, and you had to know this was coming, and okay, this isn’t so recent. I was ten or eleven years old the first time I saw this on T.V., and it was love at first sight. Mind you, I had absolutely no idea what was going on, or why it was important, but I was fascinated by the imagery and the epic music. I read the book as a teenager, and took my first step in a life long love affair with science fiction. And yes, the book is a zillion times better than the movie. But I had to start somewhere, didn’t I?
now it’s your turn. What movies or tv shows got YOU to finally pick up the book?
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