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Post by Jesse on Jun 20, 2015 1:05:47 GMT -5
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seaby Jules Verne This was my first time reading Jules Verne as an adult and I really enjoyed it. This edition contains a few color illustrations by Joseph Ciardiello. Verne gives very detailed descriptions that for modern readers may slow down the pacing of the story. Still visually he paints a vivid tapestry for the reader as he takes us on this absolutely epic underwater adventure. While there are few main characters the comradery between M. Aronnax, Ned Land and Conseil is well developed and at times very heartfelt. Few other characters in fiction are as interesting as the enigmatic Captain Nemo and his Nautilus. I'm looking forward to checking out the sequel "The Mysterious Island".
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 21, 2015 21:56:11 GMT -5
VOR by James Blish c. 1958... based on a story co-written with Damon Knight An alien, containing unfathomable energy, has crash landed on Earth, and the local CAP team (Civilian Air Patrol), ends up dealing with it, including Marty Petrucelli, a former WWII pilot that won't fly, but has an unmatched knowledge of planes and aviation. They eventually talk to the alien (which calls itself Vor), and it wants to die, but it's pretty much indestructible.. anything that would kill it would destroy most of the United States. The resolution in the end, and WHY Vor wants to die, is extremely clever (I won't spoil it)... a very different and unique first contact story. On the down side, this is one of those stories that probably should have stayed a short story.. though I can't say for sure having not read it in that form. Much of the character development, which intriguing, seems out of plae, and doesn't really contribute to the story at all.. it's just there. While it helps make the characters real people, rather than the tropes they often are in classic sci fi, it really didn't add to the story, especially Marty's relationship with his wife, which had a lot of time used on it, for no particular reason. At times the committee dealing with Vor reminded me of M*A*S*H, with everyone more concerned with how things turn out for them than the bottom line, but they get it together in the end and (barely) save the day.. which seems about right to me.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 25, 2015 17:26:23 GMT -5
Space Lordsby Cordwainer Smith collection c. 1979.. the stories with from 1961-1964 This is a collection of 5 stories all taking place in Smith's 'Instrumentality of Man' universe, where human kind is alone in the universe, but goes out and colonizes. There are 'underpeople', animals give human traits and intelligence, that are used as semi-slave labor. At some points the government seems authoritarian, others more socialist. The stories take place over several millenia. Smith in his prologue makes direct corrolations to other literature, which are.. sorta clear. The main story 'Dead Lady of Clown Town' is clearly 'Joan of Arc' in space...it definitely has some fun stuff in it, even if you know how it's going to end. There's a short story about how Australians control a planet where they make a drug that lets people live for 400 years, and thief that tries to steal from them and feels (the author is Austrailian) There's one that's basically an acid trip.. not my favorite. Another claims to be loosely based on a Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but I'm prettyy knowledgable about those stories, and this wasn't similar to any of them. It was pretty good, though, so no problem. The last one was also pretty trippy... invoving a prison planet where the native organisms make anyone exposed to the air grow extra parts... so they drug them up to make the suffering less and use it for medical stuff. Yeah. Overall, so very interesting bits, and some very..shall we say 'grown in the 60s' bits.
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Post by gothos on Jun 26, 2015 13:12:13 GMT -5
Justine (The Misfortunes of Virtue) by Marquis de Sade So does Sade being the basis for the word sadism live up? Well I didn't read it in the late 1700's, but I am sure to some it is still quite offensive. Before the internet and the popularity of slinging the word misogyny, Sade was writing something that probably got the same reaction that Joss Whedon got for his portrayal of Black Widow. The difference is, Sade was writing Justine's story for the purpose of expressing an opinion and/or belief rather than bending to his corporate partners that were writing him a check for his services. I take from it he had something to say about his feelings on what boils down to vice vs virtue more than the hatred of women. The story follows Justine, who along with her sister Juliette, who are left with nothing earthly at the suicide of their father. From age 12, at the start to age 26, in the end, the story follows Justine, who aims to travel to France after leaving behind a life of sin and debauchery, whom her sister embraced as a harlot to start (as I read it). Justine wanted no part of this kind of life, as she was a virtuous woman of God. In her travels she runs across people, both male and female, who entice her with help, pitying her for her predicament, yet in the end always challenge her vow to virtue by rewarding her if she simply gave into vice. Some were the ultimatum of bow or torture. Some were monetary rewards for doing something that benefited her but conflicted with her virtues. Many of these would be benefactors would delve into long sermons on the benefits of vice over virtue. A theme which in each instance seemed Sade making sure the reader understood, or trying to persuade the reader, to his beliefs. Sade took the side of nature, and the reliance on God as either a weakness on human part or a ineptitude on God's part for explaining to Justine why her continued allegiance to virtue just ended her up in one calamity after another. Many times her life was threatened, and she was submitted to torture for her virtues. Yet she never faltered. She kept her virtue. (An interesting aside when reading the wikipedia article ... they take it to mean that many of these men enslaved her sexually. Yet, as I read the book, no hint was really given to that. Some of the actual physical torture was described, hence sadism, but if there was anything sexual done to Justine, it seems to be at the reader's consent. In fact, in starting the book, my impression always was, that Justine's virtue was her virginity. And at least in the first part, and upon meeting the first antagonist female in the book, she saves her "virtue" from the drunken robbers that had taken her by pleading to said female antagonist to let her rest the night and she would consent to them in the morning.) By the books end one can certainly see Sade's point made. BUT ... Justine does eventually encounter her sister Juliette at the end, the sister that when she meets her has unprecedented wealth and comfort due to her lifestyle of sex and debauchery, also has a turn of fate. So what is Sade's point? He seems rampant throughout the story of Justine, but in the end, the twists of fate of both characters seem to suggest that maybe Sade isn't what he has come to be labeled for the past 200 years. I'd recommend it to anyone willing to read someone else's ethical or moral viewpoint even if it drastically differs with their own. If nothing else but to see if Sade is worthy of the hype society has given him. I know I want to read more of his work now. I'm not a Sade expert, but I have read later works, like JULIETTE and 100 DAYS OF SODOM. These are much liberal in presenting delirious scenes of either men torturing women, women torturing women, or, more rarely, women torturing men. I speculate that JUSTINE is a little on the tame side next to these works because Sade wasn't entirely sure he could get away with the extreme fantasies of his later work. I've always heard that Kraft-Ebing, an early researcher in the science of sex, is responsible for naming "sadism" after Sade and "masochism" after a later author, Leopold Sacher-Masoch.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 3, 2015 19:41:12 GMT -5
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
This is the fourth novel nominated for a Hugo this year that I've tackled. It's the sequel to Ancillary Justice, which won last year's. It involves Breq, a starship AI now confined to a single humanoid body, and a mission of revenge. The book got a lot of attention for its approach to gender; the main society of this future has no gender, and female pronouns are used throughout. Breq has difficulty distinguishing between the genders when she goes to a planet which still has divisions, and uses 'she' for the people there, even slipping up and using it for people she has learned are male.
It's intelligent and well-written, but I just didn't care what was going on. The main character is a computer intelligence, and well-done as such, but that just makes her harder to relate to. The whole gender-free bit is interesting, in a theoretical way, but in practice is just annoying. And if a bit like that deserves a Hugo, then the first book already got it; the 2nd book doesn't add anything to it.
So - well done, but left me cold. Better than The Goblin Emperor technically, but I enjoyed that book more.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 5, 2015 9:48:40 GMT -5
Planet of Exile Ursula Le Guin c. 1966 You can't really go wrong with an Ursula Le Guin novel... this one is no exception. On the outskirts of the League of Worlds, humans are now as 'farborns' on a planet where they're not quite adapted. The locals (called 'Hilfs' by the humans, but 'men' to themselves) refuse to take to any technological help, so the 'farborns' are forced to give up all but the very basic technology.. they don't even like wheels. The farborns populations is slowly diminishing, as the world takes its toll, it seems the next generation might be the last. On top of that, Winter is Coming. (I do wonder if Mr. Martin was inspired a bit by this book.. the seasons in Game of Thrones could easily have come from these pages). With Winter comes the Gaal, an even more barbaric race that seems more organized than even and willing to conquer rather than just raid for the first time in living memory... perhaps the one bit of cultural influence the farborns have had. Some really great stuff here on relations between two different groups of people (Which Le Guin excels at), as well as a great analysis of cultural influences and assimilation between different groups... I feel like if we could drop this book through the time stream to the various conquerors of the past, we'd be in really good shape today .
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 5, 2015 13:55:10 GMT -5
The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs This is Burroughs' take on The Prisoner of Zenda. Barney Custer of Nebraska is a dead ringer for the lost "Mad King" of Ruritania, who just happens to be in country when the king escapes his captors. He is mistaken for the king and must save himself, a princess and the entire country. The book is actual two novellas that were published about the exploits of Barney Custer. While they feel like historical novels now...they were contemporary adventures at the time of publication. And they hit all the normal Burroughs tropes. The noble hero, the damsel in danger, the idea that "blood will tell". Not Burroughs best, but bursting with the energy that makes his early books always entertaining. Going Postal by Terry Pratchett Moist Von Lipwick is saved from the gallows and "allowed" to revitalize the Ankh-Morpork post office and postal system. This, of course, puts him at odds with the big business interests that run The Clacks, a telegraph company that has a monopoly on information flow. Pratchett absolutely skewers corporate greed and insider trading. Easily one of the the best of the Discworld novels. Proper Gauge by Hugh Howey. The second Wool story moves up from short story length to novella length. With the last sheriff having gone to cleaning the Mayor of the Silo has to find a new Sheriff and sets her sites on a radical maintenance worker deep in the bowels of the Silo. This is a tad disappointing as a follow-up to the short story. It's not bad. And it succeeds at what it sets out to do. It's essentially a travelogue that looks at the set-up and the politics of the Silo. Which is fine. Just not necessarily what I was looking for.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2015 23:32:00 GMT -5
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu)
This is the fifth nominee for this year's Hugo for Best Novel. And it's easily getting my vote. This is a terrific book, starting with the brutality of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, going thru secret government projects and a bizarre video game to Earth's first contact with another intelligence. There are big ideas (physics isn't real, blocking human scientific development with only 2 protons), the range of reaction to the approaching aliens (welcoming them, worshiping them, resisting them), with characters that (while not overly deep) I was interested in, and a building mystery that made me want to finish the book. Really good stuff. And a solid reason to resent the whole Sad/Rabid Puppy thing. Remember, this book wasn't on the initial list of 5 nominees. It only made it because another writer withdrew his book. So this book almost missed out on getting nominated for the Hugo because the Puppy blocks put up the Anderson and Butcher books (which, whatever their merits, ain't Hugo material).
How many other worthy works didn't make the cut because of the Puppy slate? Consider the Best Novella list. Three out of the five nominees are by one writer. Come on; there's no way one person deserves 3 out of the 5 slots. Especially since that writer is John C. Wright; he also had a short story nominated, and it was awful. Embarrassingly, ineptly awful. But he's right wing, religious, and published by Theodore Beale, founder of the Rabid Puppies and creator of their slate. What a coincidence, eh?
So the novella and short story categories are a wash. The Best Related Work category is mediocre work at best, and includes one work which is a collection of short, right-wing thoughts and comments, none of which are related to science fiction, fantasy or fandom. I call bullshit. And as much as I hate the idea, I'm thinking I may have to vote for NO AWARD in some of these categories. The Hugo Awards still mean something to me, and a lot of this year's nominees have no business being mentioned in that context.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 19, 2015 22:43:18 GMT -5
Desert Places by Blake Crouch
This is the guy that wrote Wayward Pines, which I'm enjoying on TV, so I thought I'd see how he is as a writer. This book claims to be 'a novel of terror', but it's so over the top, it's almost funny. It was a page turner, to be sure, but between the crazy violence for shock value and the disappointing ending, I can't say it was good exactly, though I much say I care enough to want to know what happens next...and the guy sure does have a flair for violence. I may just find some review spoilers, though.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 19, 2015 22:58:54 GMT -5
Mutant Cinema by Thomas J. McLean A look at the first three X-movies, how they came to the screen, how they were made and how they fared there. Moderately interesting. I got it free so it was definitely worth the price.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 19, 2015 23:05:22 GMT -5
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown I honestly read this one because it was recommended to me highly through both Goodreads and Amazon. I know absolutely nothing about rowing. And while I know a bit about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, as to this story I was a blank slate. I was pretty surprised to find out how popular rowing was in the 20s and 30s (if the author is to be believed) and the story of the University of Washington crew team that went too and won the 8-man crew at the '36 games is an interesting and compelling read. It really is hard to believe that most of them entered the U-Dub as Freshmen in 34 having never rowed before. And two years later were the best in the world. It's definitely "feel good" history. But it's a fun easy interesting read.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 19, 2015 23:08:32 GMT -5
He Done Her Wrong by Stuart Kaminsky Hollywood's favorite detective is back as Toby Peters has to protect Mae West from a deranged killer who appears to have escaped from an insane asylum. The Toby Peters books run on formula. But it's well-informed and fun formula and reading one every month or so is like a nice escape from the diet for a bit of fried food.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jul 21, 2015 18:36:49 GMT -5
A British publisher is putting out new editions of some classic novels, but instead of the usual stodgy packaging such books get, they're doing them as lurid pulpy paperbacks. www.pulptheclassics.com/index1.php?imprint=8Examples:
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 21, 2015 22:18:48 GMT -5
Those are amazing covers! Love your description of the Toby Peters books, Slam... I used to use Tom Clancy novels that way
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jul 22, 2015 13:53:49 GMT -5
Have not posted here in a while but I'm still a reader. In fact, I am continuing my big read on The Collected Short Stories Of Robert Silverberg. I'm now up to the middle of Volume 8 and there's one more to go after. Volume 8 covers the years 1990-1995. Each book is approximately 400 pages (never did find Vol. 1) so that's close to 2800 pages of short stories and novellas of his that I've read these past couple of months. The fact that I go from one volume to the next without a long break between is a testament to the man's talent and the varied stories that he tells. With each book he has a nice introduction for what was going on in the science fiction field during that time period and each individual story also has an introduction to what was the inspiration or any other interesting fact about that offering.
Silverberg certainly deserves his Grandmaster title. I'd definitely place him amongst my top 10 SF writers, narrowly missing out of the top 5 (Heinlein, Asimov, Dick, Clarke, Ellison). Besides being a highly sought after author for the SF digests, he regularly contributed to Playboy and Omni. He participated in many originally anthology paperbacks as well as editing some of his own. He also worked on some of the shared-world paperbacks. I guess the only thing that kept him from being more known amongst non-SF fans was the lack of movie or TV adaptations of his work. Too bad, but many of his stories would work out fine on the big screen.
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