SciFi Kindle

2 hits, 2 misses, but all enjoyable

Revisado: 02-15-23

I enjoyed all 11 stories, although 2 were intense character portraits with only superficial SF settings, a formula I usually don’t like (Ted Kosmatka’s “Chasing Ivory” and Shariann Lewitt’s “Fieldwork”). My favorites were probably the two stories that are most undeniably HARD SF: Alastair Reynold’s “16 Questions for Kamala Chatterjee” and Ken Liu’s “Seven Birthdays”.

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A fun procedural with a dash of SF

Revisado: 01-18-23

Fast-paced, filled with characters that are all just a little TOO witty to be believable. Decent twists, but nothing stand-out. The SF element gives things just enough of a new flavor to make it memorable

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More mechanical than 'Clockwork Rocket'

Revisado: 12-27-15

Because this sequel is such a direct continuation of events from Book 1 in the series, I recommend reading it quickly after that novel, so that you don't suffer the same confusion I did on returning to the series after many months. Like most of Egan's work, this story is a tribute to the process of scientific discovery, using a few characters and a plot, although only by necessity. Seriously, if you removed all the mathematical and laboratory discussions, you'd only have about 30 pages or so of narrative. Nonetheless, it has interesting ideas and a fairly strong feminist theme, as did "Clockwork Rocket".

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A welcome improvement following 'Cibola Burn'

Revisado: 12-27-15

Corey did something in this book that I've been wanting to see for a while in the series now; he divided up the Rocinante crew and explored the characters independently.

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Most believable generation ship story yet

Revisado: 12-27-15

KSR applies his hard-science style to the generation ship sub-genre, exposing many of the problems we hadn't considered.

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Following the apocalypse

Revisado: 12-27-15

Wilson's story continues into the early days after the robot apocalypse, now dividing the narrative across multiple factions.

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Largely mental narrative

Revisado: 12-27-15

This is a very character-centered story, relying less on dialog, plot or action to advance the story as it does internal monologue. It reminded a bit of Asimov in that regard. Be prepared for a highly psychological journey and character feelings as they regard other characters' feelings. I would also recommend a close reading of the early chapters where many of the characters are introduced in quick succession to prevent later confusion.

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'Walk a mile in their shoes' Syndrome

Revisado: 04-03-15

This book is a spiritual, if not narrative, sequel to Haldeman’s 1975 “Forever War”. Both novels won the Hugo & Nebula, and explore the theme of war’s futility, although from different perspectives and in separate story-worlds. Readers expecting a continuation of Forever War’s interstellar conflict or relativistic time dilation effects, will see that instead this story features a strictly terrestrial struggle between the wealthy nations, fueled by effortless nano-factory produced plenty, and the struggling excluded masses. The earlier novel, written in the immediate post-Vietnam days of an antagonistic welcome for returning veterans, further exaggerated the alienation of the protagonist with a fish-out-of-water situation that placed the character hopelessly out of touch with his own century. Here, in the 1998 novel, one senseless war is supplanted by an invisible one to end all wars, as the protagonist discovers a pacification treatment that involves sharing one of the military’s tightest-held tools with all of humanity to bring individuals together into a community incapable of violence outside of self-defense. Haldeman uses SF technology as vehicle to explore the age-old thought that ‘if we only walked in our enemies shoes for a day’. At the same time, the greatest opponent to this peace movement is one of religious zealots who inexplicably seem to want death and destruction for its own sake. I felt that not enough insight was given to their internal motivation, even when the narrative was told in first person perspective of one these characters. This left them a bit too archetypical and cartoon-evil for me. On the human-scale drama of this story, there is a compelling relationship that is shown conquering the challenges of race, age, military-civilian differences, then ‘jacked’ vs natural minds until it is thoroughly proven to be unshakable. There are also some notable thriller scenes and a number of high-tech asymmetric warfare scenes as well. Absent, sadly, are any aliens or Space Opera tropes or any references to advanced climate change expected over the coming century (CliFi).

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Great setup, then stalls despite fast pace

Revisado: 03-20-15

Like a lot of threequels, this read isn’t for those who haven’t already digested the previous installment novels. Not only do many of the background conflicts and events rely on an understanding of those books, but the history between the major characters is found there, too. This is no criticism, however. A lot of series these days try too hard to be a ‘big tent’ for an expanding readership, that early chapters drag with exposition and ‘catch-me-up’ material. If Tolkien felt compelled to do this, he would have needed another hundred pages. I personally prefer when authors treat the reader with enough respect to trust us to remember (or re-read) important previous material- that’s what all the fan Wikis are for, right?

No, my peeve with this story is that it starts off extremely promisingly, with a collection of characters and motives that are all appealing, both new and returning, with those in the latter category having undergone substantial personal evolution between novels. They are drawn together and undertake a hero’s journey in the form of an expedition into hostile alien territory, further outside of human space than anyone has ever traveled before. And then, with this spectacular set up, the remainder of the story devolves into a finger-pointing mystery among the characters to uncover the infiltrator in their midst. This would have been welcome in a moderated dosage; a sideplot that allows the greater focus to move on to more wondrous, alien, Space Opera, big concepts. However, the story really spiraled into one betrayal after another, and while this kept the tension and action quite high, I feel like it missed an opportunity to accomplish both of those things more engagingly using external threats. It’s possible I feel this way only because of how stupendous the epilogue was in this regard, and it reminded me of all the things that later half of the story proper missed. While this bodes well for my enjoyment of the 4th installment novel, Marauder, it did cause my attention to drift at moments.

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Enjoyable, but not as innovative as earlier books

Revisado: 03-16-15

After the undeniable SF pedigree of the earlier two novels in the series, this entry felt entirely too devoted to politics and diplomacy, although still enjoyably so. The smirky protagonist (found in all of Scalzi’s books, as far as I know) brings a dry humor to the narrative. In this series, the character is named John Perry, and along with his wife and fellow former soldier, Jane Sagan, find a way to avert disaster for underdog humanity in a hostile universe. The pair are bit too idealized, however, and would be more interesting with some character flaws or blind spots. Another missed opportunity I noted was that while the novel is full of plenty of alien species and characters, there are practically no descriptions of their appearance, physiologies, or philosophies. They could all very conceivably stand-in for humans in all their nationalities and factions, operating from some non-SF setting. The cookie-cutter approach reminds me of the TV aliens in Star Trek, ironically something Scalzi quite successfully lampooned in 2012’s “Redshirts”. For this level of multi-layered strategic diplomacy, one could just as easily have picked up a thriller from the current NYT bestseller list in the Fiction aisle, but as a SF fan, I would have liked to see something more exotic from the characters, settings, motives, etc. A final criticism is one I’ve spotted in other Scalzi books: An overuse of the verb “said” in dialog. After a string of several, my ear was straining for some variety. Where the novel succeeds, however, is in the moderate humor and clever solutions to the tough spots the characters find themselves in. There are some very satisfying ‘back from the brink’ moments here, and on the strength of the earlier novels in the series, I’m willing to continuing reading the series after this bridge book.

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