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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 3, 2022 7:29:52 GMT -5
A Separate War and Other StoriesJoe Haldeman, 2006  This is a collection of 15 stories, a few of them almost novella length and some only a few pages long, but there’s not a dud in the lot. Most were first published from the mid-‘90s to the mid-‘00s, although the final three are from the early 1970s. They showcase Haldeman’s talent as a writer, as they range in tone from dark through romantic and/or tragic to almost entirely humorous, and there’s even (unusually for him) a low-key fantasy story in here (“Diminished Chord”, about a small-time musician who is given an unusual gift: a chitarrone that ends up being magical). Like I said, all of the stories are quite good, but a few of the highlights for me are: The title story, i.e., “A Separate War” which fills in a little gap left over from The Forever War, namely what happened to Marygay Potter when she and Mandella were given separate postings (and I have to say, as a follow-up to the novel, it’s far better than Forever Free – as I noted in my review above). “Four Short Novels,” which consists of four brief takes on humanity attaining immortality about a thousand years in the future. Each section (which are named after well-known novels, i.e., Remembrance of Things Past, Crime & Punishment, War & Peace and The Way of All Flesh) begins with, “Eventually it came to pass that no one had to die…” and then goes on to explain how. Very cleverly written and amusing. “For White Hill,” the longest in the book and also Haldeman’s personal favorite in this collection. It’s a tragic romance set in the distant future when Earth is already a lifeless planet (due to a bioweapon used by an enemy race in an ongoing interstellar war) and a group of artists from different human colonies are invited to come there and set up an artistic installation as a sort of monument to the disaster. Two of said artists fall in love and, well, I already said its tragic, but it’s so beautifully written. “Out of Phase” and its sequel “Power Complex” first appeared in SF magazines in 1969 and 1972. They feature the same main character, a super-intelligent alien who is a shapeshifter with the additional ability of controlling time phases and who gets stranded on Earth and eventually becomes the US president. There’s a lot of wry humor here, but also some deathly serious socio-political commentary. The last one, also from the early 1970s, “Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip” appears here for the first time; it was supposed to be in the third, never-published volume of Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions. It’s written in the form of a screenplay and is pretty ahead of its time; in the story notes at the end of the book, Haldeman kind of jokes that it would have started the cyberpunk subgenre about a decade earlier. So to sum up: highly recommended.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 4, 2022 21:13:32 GMT -5
Hm, yeah, Weinbaum. Based on the one book of his I've read, The New Adam, I think he was a guy who had some novel but also wonky ways of thinking about SF concepts. For example, in New Adam, he posits the next evolutionary step for humankind, which involves some subtle physical and mental traits, but also stuff that made me think, 'yeah, I don't think so.' And, of course, he also fell into that trap of thinking that its individuals rather than populations that evolve - but then again, lots of SF writers and the wider public in general still misunderstand that concept to this day. I think mostly I appreciate Weinbaum for being ahead of his time... that stuff he wrote in the 30s and 40s wouldn't be out of place in the 60s. I really like his Martians and his professor van Manderplootz... this was definitely far more ambitious. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 5, 2022 4:09:42 GMT -5
I think mostly I appreciate Weinbaum for being ahead of his time... that stuff he wrote in the 30s and 40s wouldn't be out of place in the 60s. I really like his Martians and his professor van Manderplootz... this was definitely far more ambitious. I guess my comment comes across as sort of a diss - I didn't mean it that way. Weinbaum's work definitely has an 'ahead of its time' vibe that I find laudable. I would like to read more of his work eventually. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 5, 2022 21:57:37 GMT -5
not exactly, I get it. Some things age better than others for sure... some quirks of different times can be endearing or interesting, some annoying or even offensive... and what things are what to whom can vary of course.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 7, 2022 7:02:54 GMT -5
Roadside PicnicArkady & Boris Strugatsky, 1972 (English translation by Olena Bormashenko, 2012)  The story is set in the fictional town of Harmont, somewhere in North America (most likely Canada, although it’s never entirely mad clear), which is the site of one of six Zones on Earth that were visited by aliens. Nothing is left alive in the Zones, and they are filled with detritus left behind by the aliens, much of which has practical use when scientists figure out their underlying technological principles. Access to them is restricted – officially only the staff of government-run research institutes are allowed to enter them with special gear. However, there are many scavengers, called stalkers, who sneak into the Zones to collect the alien ‘artifacts’ and then sell them on the black market. The main character is one such stalker named Red Schuhart, who by his early 20s is a hardened veteran of forays into the Zone. The book’s four longish chapters cover about ten years of Red’s life, in which it becomes apparent that the Zone has both psychological and physical effects on those who enter it: Red has a serious drinking problem, and his daughter is a mutant with a rather feral appearance and fur all over her body (in fact, both he and his wife refer to her as ‘the Monkey’). Overall, I found this a pretty interesting book, mainly because of the unique take on the alien visitation trope. The book’s title, by the way, is based on a theory expressed by a physicist in the book, who posited that the Zones were perhaps nothing more than the result of some passing aliens deciding to make a brief rest stop on a random planet during a long interstellar journey.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 7, 2022 9:50:35 GMT -5
That sounds like a great set up for an RPG campaign!
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 8, 2022 13:18:29 GMT -5
Roadside PicnicArkady & Boris Strugatsky, 1972 (English translation by Olena Bormashenko, 2012) The story is set in the fictional town of Harmont, somewhere in North America (most likely Canada, although it’s never entirely mad clear), which is the site of one of six Zones on Earth that were visited by aliens. Nothing is left alive in the Zones, and they are filled with detritus left behind by the aliens, much of which has practical use when scientists figure out their underlying technological principles. Access to them is restricted – officially only the staff of government-run research institutes are allowed to enter them with special gear. However, there are many scavengers, called stalkers, who sneak into the Zones to collect the alien ‘artifacts’ and then sell them on the black market. The main character is one such stalker named Red Schuhart, who by his early 20s is a hardened veteran of forays into the Zone. The book’s four longish chapters cover about ten years of Red’s life, in which it becomes apparent that the Zone has both psychological and physical effects on those who enter it: Red has a serious drinking problem, and his daughter is a mutant with a rather feral appearance and fur all over her body (in fact, both he and his wife refer to her as ‘the Monkey’). Overall, I found this a pretty interesting book, mainly because of the unique take on the alien visitation trope. The book’s title, by the way, is based on a theory expressed by a physicist in the book, who posited that the Zones were perhaps nothing more than the result of some passing aliens deciding to make a brief rest stop on a random planet during a long interstellar journey. I read this and The Ugly Swans by the Strugatsky Brothers about eight years back. Between the two of them I came to the conclusion that their writing just didn't work for me. I did like this one a fair bit more than The Ugly Swans, but really didn't care for either. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 10, 2022 13:19:37 GMT -5
Flashback by Dan Simmons.  Oh, criminy, I really wanted to like this, but... Dan Simmons was my favourite writer as some point, when I first discovered Hyperion. It looked as if he couldn't write a bad novel; Fall of Hyperion, Summer of Night, Song of Kali, Hardcase, Illium, Olympos, even the unfairly-maligned Endymion books, I enjoyed them all. But then there was The Terror, which was surprisingly a frightful (not in the good sense) bore, and Abominable, and Drood... I gave up at some point. With Flashback, we deal with a private eye down on his luck (and addicted to a memory drug that allows one to relive the past) having to solve an old murder case he failed to elucidate years before. The plot is pretty decent, the nightmarish near-future dystopia depicted is convincing and suitably depressing, but the delivery is marred by frequent political rants on how wind power is a scam, global warming is a hoax orchestrated by corrupt scientists, Obama is going to destroy the United States and immigrants are bad people. I'm rather centrist when it comes to politics so I'm not going to tear out my shirt if an author expresses conservative views, but this is really over the top... Just as had happened in Michael Crichton's ridiculous novel about a supposed "climate hoax", State of Fear. When opinion is presented as fact even in the face of contrary evidence, it really hurts my willing suspension of disbelief.
The novel is a little more than ten years old now. I wonder what Simmons thinks of the climate change "hoax" as we keep beating temperature record after temperature record, as California doesn't know where it will find water in a few years and as Europe is on fire. Also, the Obama years turned out to be pretty darn good for the economy, didn't they? There's one Cassandra we were right in ignoring. I'm always disappointed when a respected figure turns into something of a crank.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 10, 2022 13:42:05 GMT -5
Flashback by Dan Simmons. Oh, criminy, I really wanted to like this, but... Dan Simmons was my favourite writer as some point, when I first discovered Hyperion. It looked as if he couldn't write a bad novel; Fall of Hyperion, Summer of Night, Song of Kali, Hardcase, Illium, Olympos, even the unfairly-maligned Endymion books, I enjoyed them all. But then there was The Terror, which was surprisingly a frightful (not in the good sense) bore, and Abominable, and Drood... I gave up at some point. With Flashback, we deal with a private eye down on his luck (and addicted to a memory drug that allows one to relive the past) having to solve an old murder case he failed to elucidate years before. The plot is pretty decent, the nightmarish near-future dystopia depicted is convincing and suitably depressing, but the delivery is marred by frequent political rants on how wind power is a scam, global warming is a hoax orchestrated by corrupt scientists, Obama is going to destroy the United States and immigrants are bad people. I'm rather centrist when it comes to politics so I'm not going to tear out my shirt if an author expresses conservative views, but this is really over the top... Just as had happened in Michael Crichton's ridiculous novel about a supposed "climate hoax", State of Fear. When opinion is presented as fact even in the face of contrary evidence, it really hurts my willing suspension of disbelief.
The novel is a little more than ten years old now. I wonder what Simmons thinks of the climate change "hoax" as we keep beating temperature record after temperature record, as California doesn't know where it will find water in a few years and as Europe is on fire. Also, the Obama years turned out to be pretty darn good for the economy, didn't they? There's one Cassandra we were right in ignoring. I'm always disappointed when a respected figure turns into something of a crank. I don't want to get banned (again)...but...yeah. Simmons has gone right round the bend and is barely tethered to anything resembling reality. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 10, 2022 14:08:47 GMT -5
Flashback by Dan Simmons. Oh, criminy, I really wanted to like this, but... Dan Simmons was my favourite writer as some point, when I first discovered Hyperion. It looked as if he couldn't write a bad novel; Fall of Hyperion, Summer of Night, Song of Kali, Hardcase, Illium, Olympos, even the unfairly-maligned Endymion books, I enjoyed them all. But then there was The Terror, which was surprisingly a frightful (not in the good sense) bore, and Abominable, and Drood... I gave up at some point. With Flashback, we deal with a private eye down on his luck (and addicted to a memory drug that allows one to relive the past) having to solve an old murder case he failed to elucidate years before. The plot is pretty decent, the nightmarish near-future dystopia depicted is convincing and suitably depressing, but the delivery is marred by frequent political rants on how wind power is a scam, global warming is a hoax orchestrated by corrupt scientists, Obama is going to destroy the United States and immigrants are bad people. I'm rather centrist when it comes to politics so I'm not going to tear out my shirt if an author expresses conservative views, but this is really over the top... Just as had happened in Michael Crichton's ridiculous novel about a supposed "climate hoax", State of Fear. When opinion is presented as fact even in the face of contrary evidence, it really hurts my willing suspension of disbelief.
The novel is a little more than ten years old now. I wonder what Simmons thinks of the climate change "hoax" as we keep beating temperature record after temperature record, as California doesn't know where it will find water in a few years and as Europe is on fire. Also, the Obama years turned out to be pretty darn good for the economy, didn't they? There's one Cassandra we were right in ignoring. I'm always disappointed when a respected figure turns into something of a crank. I don't want to get banned (again)...but...yeah. Simmons has gone right round the bend and is barely tethered to anything resembling reality. Somehow you'd expect that to be a good thing for a fantasy writer, but alas... |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 11, 2022 10:07:09 GMT -5
I never really got Dan Simmons... I read Hyperion, and maybe a couple of his sequels, but he just never did anything more me.
The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s Over Germany
by Stephen Ambrose
This book had been sitting on my to read shelf for quite a while, I got it at a book sales years ago because I like Stephen Ambrose's book on the Transcontinental Railroad, but WWII is not my favorite history topic.. I think it's just too scary and there's too much out there on it for my taste.
Had I know it was focused on George McGovern, it would have been a lot higher on my list...I met Senator McGovern at a book signing back in my bookstore days, and he was the nicest 'celebrity' I encountered. Instead of a short greeting, and perhaps a thank you for selling the book (more often I'd be treated like an adding machine 'hi, how many did you sell?') Senator McGovern sat next to me to sign books, and hung out with me until the end of the conference.. it was great. We chatted much more about politics than his service, but he did mention a story to me that appears in the book, about borrowing a few books for a base library and never returning them (the library shut down during his training and actually sent him a letter gifting him the books officially). It was one of my favorite moments in the 15 ish years at that job.
The book itself does assume you know about World War II, which most do, and instead focuses on anecdotes about McGovern and a myriad of others that flew B-24s out of Italy towards the end of the war. The book was very much about how these boys were trained, and their daily life on the front as bomber crew, which was really interesting. Ambrose balances enough details to let you know you're hearing about real people without giving you too much detail that bogs down such books in many cases.
He briefly goes into whether the bombing campaign and philosphy was a good idea (he seems to think so) and the last couple chapters deal with that, including some material from the defeated Germans on how effect they thought it was. It put me in mind of the various little resource management video games I enjoy...I can't imagine the heavy responsibility of making such decisions in real life.
My verdict on it was that it feels alot like Grant winning the Civil War.. it may have been overkill, but we had the resources, and had to make sure we won, so we did it. It definitely makes you appreciate those who served quite a bit.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 12, 2022 7:22:14 GMT -5
SunfallC.J. Cherryh, 1981  A collection of six short stories, all written originally for this book. They’re thematically tied, as they are all set on Earth at some distant point in the future when humankind has departed for the stars, while the old home planet is sort of a backwater that’s barely habitable due to drastic environmental changes, partly caused by what is described as a ‘failing sun,’ and possibly other natural and human-made disasters. Most people live in the world’s major cities, although there are apparently bands of nomadic peoples and tribes who live a severe and hard-scrabble existence ‘outside’. The six stories each focus on one city, as follows: Paris (“The Only Death in the City”), London (“The Haunted Tower”), Moscow (“Ice”), Rome (“Nightgame”), New York (“Highliner”) and Peking (“The General”). Although the setting is definitely SF, most of these stories have magical/fantasy elements. Thus, the first and last stories deal with reincarnation, the second one has ghosts, and the third one, “Ice” has some sort of supernatural visitations/visions/dreams. That one is also the least SF in another way, as the people of this distant future Moscow live in old-style wooden cabins on the ruins of the old city at a medieval technological level. Dreams are also a key plot-point in "Nightgame", although grounded in some manner of futurist technology. Overall, this is beautifully written, but very melancholy book – as one might guess given its subject matter. My favorite of these is “Highliner”, about the construction workers who build the still-expanding city of New York (it now consists of gigantic structures called ‘mountains’ that have completely swallowed up and transformed the city’s appearance). It has a nice organized labor message.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 13, 2022 5:41:39 GMT -5
AlmuricRobert E. Howard, 1939 Somehow – during my phase of reading Conan and other stuff by Howard in my early teens – I never got to this one, although back then in particular it would have been right up my alley. Anyway, a few years ago I downloaded the original issues of Weird Tales in which the novel was first serialized and read it last night (it’s a quick read).  Basically, this is a mash-up of Conan and John Carter. The main character, Esau Cairn, is a sort of misfit or man of another time on Earth: he’s preternaturally strong, chafes at all authority and given to fits of violent rage that makes him invincible in fights (so, Conan, basically). When this gets him into trouble, a scientist offers to transport him (the means are never made clear, because it’s a big secret, i.e., Howard couldn’t be bothered to come up with some pseudoscientific principle to explain it) to a distant but habitable planet that he calls Almuric. Once there, alone and naked, Cairn lives for a number months in the wilderness, foraging for food and fending off the planet’s nightmarish wildlife, and then – after some bloody confrontations – gets taken in by one of the planet’s intelligent races, called Gura, who mostly resemble humans. The men are homely, burly, hirsute and boisterous, sort of like over-sized Neanderthals, while the women, somehow, are fair of face, petite, smooth-skinned, nubile and docile. The Guras are simple and barbaric, mainly engaged in hunting and warring with each other, but they are also honorable and loyal. Although most of the Gura men are larger and stronger than Cairn, they’re impressed by his stamina and fighting prowess (and by the fact that he survived in the wilds on his own), and give him the name ‘Ironhand’ because of the virtually bone-shattering punches he deals out in brawls. The main plot driver about half-way through the book is the abduction of Altha, a young Gura woman who’s taken a fancy to Cairn, by a band of Yagas – a race of super-intelligent yet cruel, dark-skinned (yikes!) people with bat-like wings. It ends up the Yagas hold thousands of slaves (many of whom they eat) in their tower-like citadel, so Cairn makes it his mission to retrieve Altha and free them all…  ( The magazine installments have nice illustrations by Virgil Finlay) This is a solid diversion, but little else. While it’s an interesting take on the sword-and-planet concept, any number of Howard’s Conan stories (as I recall them) are far better. Also, while it would have flown over my head as a tween when I first discovered Howard’s prose, as a middle-aged guy I couldn’t help but notice the sexist way the gender differences among the Gura are described, or the suggestions of racism in the descriptions of the Yagas.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 16, 2022 20:47:07 GMT -5
Inverted World
by Christopher Priest (The other one)
This definitely makes it on the list of 'good sci fi makes you think'... it's a REALLY weird world... the inhabitants of 'the City' have to constantly move to keep close to 'the optimum' to stay alive.. all while battling hostile natives. Natives from where, you say? And why are they human? and Why is the sun that shape?
The answers are... disappointing, but in hindsight, make alot more sense than any of the things I was guessing. There is definitely some interesting commentaries on the human condition in here, a closed society that makes some hard choices to survive. One could definitely make some parallels to the pre-World War British Empire and some of their choices. And it was pretty progressive for it to be a woman that 'solved' the mystery, and she didn't even (quite) live happy ever after with a manly hero! Still, the ending was a bit too... I guess pathetic would be the word, for me to really be pleased with the book.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 20, 2022 14:54:43 GMT -5
High Couch of SilistraJanet E. Morris, 1977  Silistra is a planet that – although a member of an interstellar alliance (called the ‘Bipedal Federation’) – exists at a very low level of technology (something slightly better than medieval, with minor exceptions) by choice. The planet’s denizens opted to leave behind the industrial technology that led to an unspecified major catastrophe (probably a nuclear war) some thousands of years prior, and organized life into city states ruled by a precognitive priestly class, with order enforced by a warrior class called the Slayers. Although the people are apparently quite long-lived (their life spans are measured in centuries), infertility is a real problem, so life in all of the major communities center around ‘wells,’ which are basically high-class brothels. The women in the wells apparently exert a great deal of power in society, with particularly great prestige and influence wielded by the ‘well-keepress’, who’s also called the ‘high couch’ (‘couch’ by the way, is not only the term of the piece of furniture, but also synonymous with sex, i.e., ‘couching’ here means sexual intercourse). The book’s main character is Estri, the 300 year-old well-keepress of the planet’s most important well, Astria; as the story begins, she’s given an archaic video recording from her deceased mother and a rather cryptic letter from her precognitive grandmother. Her mother’s message sheds some light on her mysterious father, who was a visitor from another planet, and the video viewing device contains a ring left behind by her father that has a large black stone with some kind of jewelled star pattern on it. That and her grandmother’s letter prompt Estri to go on a quest to find her father, as it seems that this is crucial to the fulfilment of some kind of prophecy. This first involves travelling to a different city where one of the galactic federation embassies may have better records of offworld visitors to the planet, and then an arduous journey to a remote cave in the north where, so Estri is a told by a Slayer, there is a giant version of the stone she has on her ring in a mountain cave. As she ventures out on her quest, Estri has to brave many dangers – and endure lots of sexual assault. Not sure what to make of this one; the world-building is pretty interesting, although ultimately the story is pretty standard sword and planet fare with some pseudo-philosophical trappings thrown in for good measure. However, the ways sex and sexual politics in Silistran society are described are pretty out there in my opinion – and not necessarily in a good way. And like I said, there is a lot of sex-based violence and degradation (in some ways, these reminded me of the Gor books that I read in my early teens). This is the first book in a quartet, and I have to say I’m not necessarily looking forward to reading the rest – although I am somewhat morbidly curious to see where this is heading.
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