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Post by berkley on Nov 24, 2016 3:34:14 GMT -5
That title reminds me of one of my favourite Nero Wolfe books, Some Buried Caesar
Read some science fiction lately: Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others, which lives up to its reputation: some of the best modern SF I've come across, though I must admit I haven't been keeping up with the new stuff much the last few years. Like most of the best SF, these are stories of ideas, and Chiang is able to make even what I consider the weakest and least interesting of his premises (the last one, Liking What You See) thought-provoking. Also contains one of the very best "super-intelligence" stories I've ever read, Understand - and that might not even be the best of the bunch, though it's probably my favourite.
And I also read a couple more of entries in the Adventures in Time and Space anthology, Lewis Padgett's The Twonky, which I remembered only vaguely from reading it years ago, and Frederic Brown's The Star Mouse, both excellent, as is almost everything in this famous and classic SF collection. The Twonky was better than I recalled, more unsettling and Twilight Zone-ish, in a good way, underneath its light-hearted style.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 25, 2016 15:30:00 GMT -5
I'm halfway through Seveneves by Neal Stephenson.
Hard SF. Real science-fiction as opposed to space fantasy. It's very impressive, but I think it suffers from its very qualities... The book is so relentless in its pursuit of verisimilitude that it devotes pages and pages and pages on celestial mechanics, engineering details, crowd psychology and impromptu constitutional considerations.
The overall plot is gripping : the moon is hit by something incredibly powerful, probably a micro black hole, that shatters it in seven fragments. These pieces remain close together due to gravity, but little by little they start banging into each other and crumbling into smaller pieces. It is soon realized that the debris generated will in large part fall to Earth, probably within two years if models are to be trusted, and that the ensuing hard rain will sterilize the planet. In an attempt to save something, a desperate plan is set in motion : tiny orbital modules will be put in orbit, and in these diminutive Noah's arks a few hundred people will need to build an orbiting civilization with the incredibly scarce resources available to them. The plan itself is a longshot, technically and economically speaking; politically, it is the hottest of potatoes. Who gets to live? Who has to sacrifice what instead of living out those last two years in peace or hedonistic abandon? How do you react to countries who refuse to play ball and threaten to derail the whole attempt?
With such a premise, you'd expect a real page-turner... but in all honesty, the pace is frigid. Too many technical details, too many small emergencies that we know will have no impact on the overall plot, and characters whose name you recognize but who never come across as particularly easy to identify with. It might be an exercise in authenticity: if these things were to happen, the pace would be slow... the people involved would not sound like characters out of a novel... it wouldn't be "the exciting adventures of scientist X against daunting odds". But still, I often feel tempted to skip dozens of pages, knowing I'll probably miss nothing crucial.
I can't help compare this to Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, which was also hard SF about living in space... But in that one, the politics and characters really got me to switch off the light way too late at night.
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Post by berkley on Nov 26, 2016 2:24:07 GMT -5
The only Neal Stephenson book I've read was Snow Crash, which I came to about 10 or 15 years too late, long after whatever had once made it feel fresh and new was assimilated to the mainstream of pop-culture. I still enjoyed the book, but didn't feel any great impulse to immediately look for more Stephenson, though I still hope to do so eventually.
Totally agree on KSM's Mars trilogy - though, come to think of it, I haven't yet tried anything else of his, either. His books will be nearer the top of my list.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 26, 2016 18:41:24 GMT -5
I really enjoyed the Mars trilogy, but not really any of his other stuff I've read.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 29, 2016 12:54:46 GMT -5
The Lord of the Rings: Book 3 – The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien. I actually finished my re-read of The Return of the King months ago, but I've only just gotten around to writing down my thoughts on it. For some reason, as a younger man, this novel was always my least favourite of the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings. I think the reason for that was because, by this point, the story has become so epic and sprawling, that I longed for the simpler narrative of The Fellowship of the Ring. However, I didn't feel like that at all on this re-read. Quite the opposite! Like The Two Towers, this volume of the story is divided into two distinct halves, with the first part centring on the defence of the great city of Minas Tirith and the final Battle of the Pelennor Fields, in which the free peoples of Middle-earth fight the armies of the dark lord Sauron for control of the realm. The second part deals with Frodo and Sam's continuing journey into Mordor and the final destruction of the one ring, as well as Aragorn's being crowned as the King of Gondor, and the Hobbit's return to the Shire. Tolkien's writing is as authentic and poetic as ever, and, if anything, he pours even more characterisation and emotion into this final volume than in the two previous books. I mentioned in my review of The Fellowship of the Ring (read it here) that it seemed in places as if you were reading the forgotten mythology of a real place, and, here again, I'm reminded that Tolkien's intent with the LotRs was to fashion a mythology for the pre-Norman invasion English. It's perhaps not surprising then that Tolkien's prose takes on a much more archaic bent in parts of this volume. He conjures the language and syntax of musty, ancient manuscripts, while his prose takes on an almost Shakespearean quality, in a way that it simply didn't in the preceding two instalments. This faux archaic style reaches its zenith during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and really does make it seem as if you are reading some ancient legend, rather than a semi-modern fantasy novel. For me, one of the absolute best things about The Return of the King – and maybe this is just the miserabilist in me talking – is that it ends on a sad and decidedly downbeat note. When the four Hobbits return to their once bucolic homes in the Shire, they find that, while they were away, the evil wizard Saruman had invaded their lands, bringing violence and environmental destruction with him. Gangs of cut-throats and evil men roam the countryside and it's up to the Hobbits to defeat the wizard and restore peace to the Shire, which they do, of course. However, even with the Shire saved and peace secured, Frodo Baggins can't quite return to his old life. For Frodo, there could be no solace from all he had witnessed. As a ring-bearer, he had seen horrors that no one else could comprehend. There would be no peace in Middle-earth for him. He elects therefore to leave Middle-earth with the Elves, bound for the Grey Havens, much to the sadness of his Hobbit friends. The underlying theme of this portion of the book being that, even though the war is won, the ring destroyed and our heroes triumphant, some things are so terrible...some events so world shattering...that things can never truly go back to how they were. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give The Return of the King, and indeed the whole LotRs saga, is that upon finishing it for the umpteenth time, I still felt a niggling frustration that there wasn't more of Tolkien's story to read. Yes, yes...I know that there's lots of other books set in Middle-earth, like The Silmarillion, or the Christopher Tolkien edited Unfinished Tales, but what I mean is that there's no direct sequel or follow-up to The Lord of the Rings. How blessed we are that Tolkien gave us this land and these unforgettable characters, but what a shame that, ultimately, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are basically the whole story.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 29, 2016 13:23:29 GMT -5
Snuff by Terry Pratchett. Commander Sam Vimes is forced to go on vacation to his wife's estate in the country. However, there is no rest for the Duke of Ankh as he must deal with the enslavement of goblins and drug smuggling. Though written following his diagnosis with Alzheimer's this is a strong entry in what is arguably the strongest series-within-a-series of the Watch novels. Only two more books and I'll have read the entire Discworld series.
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Post by berkley on Nov 29, 2016 14:09:11 GMT -5
I haven't re-read LoTR since I was a teenager but I do plan to do so sometime in the next few years and I'm quite looking forward to it.
I think I've probably asked this question before, but does anyone have any advice or recommendations on the posthumous material edited by Christopher Tolkien? I read the Silmarillion when it came out in the late 70s or early 80s, and never tried any of the later books because I figured it was all covered in the Silmarillion. But lately I've started to wonder if I'm missing some good stuff. I believe I read somewhere that Christopher edited the Silmarillion pretty heavily and that the later books give the reader Tolkien's notes as he left them, with little modification by the editor. Are they all worth a look? Or is there some duplication amongst them?
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 29, 2016 14:45:40 GMT -5
I haven't re-read LoTR since I was a teenager but I do plan to do so sometime in the next few years and I'm quite looking forward to it. I think I've probably asked this question before, but does anyone have any advice or recommendations on the posthumous material edited by Christopher Tolkien? I read the Silmarillion when it came out in the late 70s or early 80s, and never tried any of the later books because I figured it was all covered in the Silmarillion. But lately I've started to wonder if I'm missing some good stuff. I believe I read somewhere that Christopher edited the Silmarillion pretty heavily and that the later books give the reader Tolkien's notes as he left them, with little modification by the editor. Are they all worth a look? Or is there some duplication amongst them? I've only ever tried reading The Silmarillion and I'm up to three abortive attempts so far -- that book really is some impenetrable s**t! So, no idea how the likes of Unfinished Tales or the History of Middle-earth books are. However, the bolded part of your above post is what I've always understood to be the case, yes.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 29, 2016 15:32:11 GMT -5
I haven't re-read LoTR since I was a teenager but I do plan to do so sometime in the next few years and I'm quite looking forward to it. I think I've probably asked this question before, but does anyone have any advice or recommendations on the posthumous material edited by Christopher Tolkien? I read the Silmarillion when it came out in the late 70s or early 80s, and never tried any of the later books because I figured it was all covered in the Silmarillion. But lately I've started to wonder if I'm missing some good stuff. I believe I read somewhere that Christopher edited the Silmarillion pretty heavily and that the later books give the reader Tolkien's notes as he left them, with little modification by the editor. Are they all worth a look? Or is there some duplication amongst them? You're right about the rest, as far as I'm concerned. lots of duplication. Unfinished tales has a few good moments, like the discovery of Gondolin by Tuor, but it lacks the epic sweep of the Silmarillion. It also has another and longish telling of the depressing tale of Turin Turanbar, already covered in the Silmarillion. The children of Hurin is just another telling of the depressing tale of Turin Turanbar. That I would leave on the shelves. The book of lost tales is really just for Tolkien completists, but I found it interesting in its telling the same stories over and over, in different forms; just like with Greek myths, you get to see alternate versions that do not agree with each other or with the "canonical" Silmarillion, but all seem to reflect actual events that were poorly remembered by the people of Middle-Earth. The Silmarillion was indeed edited by Christopher Tolkien and by people like Guy Gavriel Kay, but I think it really works as it is and is the Tolkien book I re-read the most frequently now. I even used to tell some of its stories to my kids at bedtime!
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Post by berkley on Dec 1, 2016 1:12:29 GMT -5
Thanks, RR and Cofessor, for the info. I might try something from those later books one of these days, and this will help me narrow it down a bit.
Indirectly related to the subject, I'm currently reading William Morris's epic poem, The Story of Sigurd and the Fall of the Niblungs. I know Tolkien acknowledged Morris as an influence, though I'm not sure if he ever read this particular work or not. I'm already familiar with the story from other versions - including a translation of the Saga by Morris himself in collaboration, a few years before he produced this verse narrative. I haven't yet read Tolkien's own translation of the saga, or his Beowulf, but intend to try both of those someday.
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Post by Calamas on Dec 2, 2016 15:03:02 GMT -5
RECENTLY FINISHED:
Firebreak by Richard Stark With the very first line of Firebreak I had to laugh, though there is nothing funny about Richard Stark’s Parker books. If you want that, read the misadventures of John Dortmunder written under the author’s real name of Donald E. Westlake. But that opening sentence: “When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man.” It tells you everything you need to know about Parker. The rest are details. Like that he’s a professional thief; professional meaning that it is how he makes his living and the attitude with which he goes about his work. An attitude that carries with it some hard and near-unbreakable rules. A major one is, because it brings more heat from the police, you avoid killing whenever possible. That Parker usually leaves a long line of bodies in his wake, it tells you everything you need to know about the series.
It’s about the complications. It may well be possible to write a story where the planning and execution of a robbery plays out perfectly--it probably has been done--but that does not a series make. When the setup and/or completion of a job encounters what seems to be unending interference and obstacles, that’s when Parker is at his most ruthlessly efficient. Everything that does not pertain to success is expendable. And everyone. And that’s what we paid to see.
The man being killed in the garage was a hit man sent to kill Parker. The phone call concerns liberating some priceless but illegal paintings from their current owner. Initially Parker has to trace and eliminate the source of the first so he is free to concentrate on the second. More complications ensue.
As they had to.
As Parker backtracks the trail of the assassin; as we meet and learn the lives of his current colleagues and what complications their personal situations bring to the equation; and, of course, how far Parker will have to go to clear each obstruction. Otherwise what’s the point? Westlake had always meant these books to be quick, clean reads and, despite all the bodies, light entertainment. Since there are no deeper meanings or serious introspection to be found, individual success depends on each set of complications. Are they interesting? And is Parker’s response as they begin to pile up equally engaging? It’s not always the case. Firebreak is an example of when it is. Quick, clean entertainment.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson As best I can remember this is the first translated novel I’ve read and I opened it wondering if a given style actually could be translated effectively. It was a non-issue, as Larsson had a straight ahead, no frills narrative. That settled, I started looking--involuntarily, almost subconsciously--for comparisons. The novel opened on a single, particularly-interesting aspect of greater mystery before expanding outward, similar to the way John Dickson Carr used to set up his stories. This is not that. Then with each character introduction we got entire backstories, reminiscent of the paperback originals John D. MacDonald wrote in the 50s. Not that either. It turns out it only felt like the entire backstory. There were many facets left to reveal as Dragon Tattoo became its own thing. Of course the novel had its own identity all along; the other perceptions were mine alone.
The story opens as recently disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired by Swedish industrialist Henrik Vanger to solve the disappearance and presumed murder of his brother’s granddaughter, whom he loved as if his own daughter, thirty-six years earlier. The driving force behind the arrangement is time: Vanger has little left and Blomkvist has nothing but, as his loss of credibility currently prohibits him from working with any effectiveness at his profession. Unknown to Blomkvist, before being offered the assignment he had been thoroughly investigated by a freelance researcher for a prestigious security firm, Lisbeth Salander, for whom the novel is titled. We follow both characters. They each have particular talents, and Salander specifically has endured some extreme hardships.
Time is also applicable when describing the book itself. It is well over 600 hundred pages and the story covers more than a year. This is not a detriment. Larsson makes each scene feel like just another day in the lives of his characters, and this continues to hold as extraordinary things begin to happen, some of which will include violent confrontations and harrowing experiences. He neither builds toward each act nor floods the aftermath with relief. Instead he allows only as much emotion as the viewpoint character is feeling and no more--an effect that makes it feel as if these events were actually happening across the street from our homes rather than in a dramatic presentation. This lack of structural manipulation also permits him to expose the killer with a good quarter of the book left. By then the reader has been conditioned. We gladly come along as other elements in the story are leisurely closed out. It’s just the next day in their lives.
Which makes it all the more sad that Stieg Larsson did not live to enjoy his worldwide success. He died shortly after delivering three completed manuscripts, of which this is the first. I’m grateful that it was three and not one. Perhaps the publishing model is different in his country but I can’t imagine an American publisher printing a single book; they would want the prospect of slowly building the readership with later additions to the inventory and access to the writer for publicity. I’ve only read the first of Larsson’s work but I feel safe in saying that the world is better for the existence of all three.
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Post by brutalis on Dec 2, 2016 17:23:51 GMT -5
Finished up last night the 3rd novel in the Baba Yaga series. Deborah Blake writes up a decent heroic urban fantasy/romance story. The idea being that the old Russian fairy tales of the with called Baba Yaga is tru, but that the Baba Yaga is more of a title and their more than one around. In this series there are 3 young ladies in their 20's who have grown and trained by their elder Baba Yaga teachers and are now going out on their own. Each "protects' a third of the USA and each has their own elemental specialty. So far Earth, Fire and Water, so i expect a 4th witch to appear at some point. Each Baba Yaga find love with a human male, they all are in tune with Earth and as the legends tell they travel the country as "summoned" by natural occurrences or by the old world Russian folk who remember the legends. Oh, and each of the Baba Yaga's has a partner/familiar in a dragon who has taken on earthly form as giant ass dogs or cats (and they can talk and are snarky and full of attitude as a dragon should be) who assist them.
A fairly light fun read that does what you want it to: entertains and takes you away from the mundane world we live in. It respects, teaches and expands upon Russian fairy tale/mythology and is quite a pleasing read. There is a fourth book that just came out: Dangerously Charming about 3 male counterparts to the Yaga's called the Riders. They are part of their books and now have been spun into their own adventures. They were once immortal and now are something more....
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 2, 2016 19:08:51 GMT -5
I really have to get back to Parker... I had trouble having the library get me the seventh... I'll have to either set the librarian on it or skip it I think
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 3, 2016 11:50:23 GMT -5
Close to Critical by Hal Clement c. 1958 My copy is the novelization (it seems to have been a serialized magazine story) from 1964. This book falls victim to the 'short story idea that shouldn't be a novel' issue that comes up alot in 60s sci-fi. The plot is pretty basic.. humans are trying to uplift a stone age culture on a crazy planet called Tenebra, while studying its unique geophysical properties. During a diplomatic visit from a civilized alien race, the diplomats son, and the daughter of one of the human diplomats, are standed alone in a semi-functional shuttle and end up trapped on the planet's surface. The entire book is the rescue operation, which turns out to be very simple indeed after the twist at the end. While the characters are pretty engaging, it really didn't need to be a novel.. there was alot of repetition of the planetary conditions and descriptions of the natives tromping through the forest that was just padding. On the plus side, it definitely made some fun points about the science community in general, (which would be spoilers)... so it was probably worth the slog....really, I think this would have been a 4 star short story, but the stretching made it a bit of a chore to read.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Dec 3, 2016 12:11:09 GMT -5
Close to Critical by Hal Clement c. 1958 My copy is the novelization (it seems to have been a serialized magazine story) from 1964. This book falls victim to the 'short story idea that shouldn't be a novel' issue that comes up alot in 60s sci-fi. The plot is pretty basic.. humans are trying to uplift a stone age culture on a crazy planet called Tenebra, while studying its unique geophysical properties. During a diplomatic visit from a civilized alien race, the diplomats son, and the daughter of one of the human diplomats, are standed alone in a semi-functional shuttle and end up trapped on the planet's surface. The entire book is the rescue operation, which turns out to be very simple indeed after the twist at the end. While the characters are pretty engaging, it really didn't need to be a novel.. there was alot of repetition of the planetary conditions and descriptions of the natives tromping through the forest that was just padding. On the plus side, it definitely made some fun points about the science community in general, (which would be spoilers)... so it was probably worth the slog....really, I think this would have been a 4 star short story, but the stretching made it a bit of a chore to read. During the course of my life, I read more short story SF than anything else. When it was very good, it hit you like a sledge hammer. When it was bad, it was over quick. I pretty much only tackled novels when I knew it was highly regarded or from my favorite authors.
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