I received a free advance copy from NetGalley for review.
So this is sci-fi set in the far future where humans caused a bunch of trouble for all the otI received a free advance copy from NetGalley for review.
So this is sci-fi set in the far future where humans caused a bunch of trouble for all the other known alien worlds, and after being driven to the brink of extinction they are still the most hated and feared species in the galaxy.
I can’t fault that story logic.
Sarya is the last known human living under a false identity with the protection of her adoptive mother, Shenya the Widow. (It’s kind of like having the queen from Aliens as a parent.) They live on a space station that is part of the vast Network which connects every alien and AI as well as organizing the structure of every facet of everyday life as well as providing the faster than light travel that connects them all.
When a stranger approaches Sarya with the knowledge that she is actually Human she soon finds herself on the run as she discovers just how big and terrifying the Network really is.
This is one of more unique and well thought set-ups for a future space civilization I’ve read, and it’s filled with interesting concepts. Most intriguing to me was how there are various levels of intelligence for Network users so manipulating lesser rated beings is a key point. I also admired how the story embraces the scale of it all because space is so freaking big that the Network can be enormous beyond all human comprehension and yet still be a tiny part of the galaxy.
However, that also turned out to be a stumbling block because at one point the story shifts away from trying to get us to really empathize with Sarya and instead tries to blow the reader’s mind. Which it does pretty well, but I think some of the emotions of the story got lost will all the effort to impress with the vastness of it all....more
Down these mean streets a man must go. Or to be more accurate in the case of Sammy ‘Two Toes’ Tiffin – down these mean streets a man must limp.
It’s 19Down these mean streets a man must go. Or to be more accurate in the case of Sammy ‘Two Toes’ Tiffin – down these mean streets a man must limp.
It’s 1947 in San Francisco where Sammy is a good guy with some skeletons in his closet who works as a bartender which is how he meets a beautiful blonde named Stilton, a/k/a the Cheese. As far as Sammy is concerned the Cheese stands alone, and he falls for her instantly. Unfortunately, his attempts at romance are hindered by his sleazy boss insisting that he procure some women for an Air Force general who wants to take them into the woods to provide entertainment for an elite club made up of influential men. Sammy is also working on get-rich-quick scheme that involves selling a deadly snake, there’s a racist cop causing trouble, and the news has reports about a strange incident in Roswell, New Mexico.
Since this was Christopher Moore writing a book called Noir I wasn’t expecting it to be James Cain or Jim Thompson. However, I was kind of hoping that he might stretch himself a little and be a bit less Christopher Moore. That's why I ultimately found this kind of disappointing because he gives it a try at first, but quickly throws it out the window to just write what he always does.
That’s the shame of it because the first couple of chapters do come across as Moore actually satirizing a noir novel with overblown pulpy language and a bunch of really solid jokes based on the concept. If he’d have stuck with that and resisted the urge to just do his usual thing of introducing the weird and/or supernatural he might have really had something. But then we get to the stuff about the aliens, and while it’s still got some laughs, it’s also a formula that Moore has done in pretty much every book.
I also found the shifting POV to be problematic. We start off with Sammy in the first person which lets him do the parody of the classic hard boiled crime novel which I wanted more of. But then Moore shifts to a third person narration which we later find out is coming from a very unlikely source. So the book starts off with this distinct voice which I was into, but when it shifts into something else which is when it becomes standard Moore. Then he tries to go back to first person Sammy telling the story, but he’d lost the tone of what he started with. Which was what I liked best and wanted more of.
It’s not a complete waste of time. Moore is just inherently funny and there are a lot of solid gags and lines that made me chuckle. But I wish he’d managed to actually write a noir parody instead of just doing the thing that comes easiest to him. If he wanted to write something in this time period and have aliens in it then why not do a pulpy '50s sci-fi kind of thing rather than claiming in the title that it's going to be a genre that it has almost nothing to do with?...more
I guess that 5 star streak for all the Saga collections had to come to an end sometime.
This is still the best comic book space adventure/fairy tale/rI guess that 5 star streak for all the Saga collections had to come to an end sometime.
This is still the best comic book space adventure/fairy tale/romance you’re likely to read, It also still has enough weird alien characters to populate a cantina in Star Wars as well as more violence, profanity, sex, and nudity than most R rated movies. However, it seemed to lack of a bit of the pop that made the rest of the series so next level. Part of this is probably due to so many story threads being scattered at this point, but some of those are knitted together by the end of this one....more
(I received a free copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for this review.)
I’ve read a lot of John Sandford novels so I was a little confused at firs(I received a free copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for this review.)
I’ve read a lot of John Sandford novels so I was a little confused at first when there wasn’t a serial killer on the spaceship.
In the year 2066 telescopes spot what can only be an alien ship near Saturn as it docks with a previously unknown object in orbit. The governments of the United States and China both want to get there first which leads to a rushed program to quickly put together ships capable of making the long journey. Political tension and potential sabotage make the voyage into space even more dangerous as crews from both nations race to Saturn.
Sandford (Real name John Camp.) regularly puts two new crime thrillers on the best seller’s list every year so it seems a little odd that he’d forgo one of them to team up with photo-artist Ctein to do a pure sci-fi novel. However, Sandford’s bio and his books have also highlighted his interest and knowledge of subjects like art, photography, archaeology, surgery, and computer technology so it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise that his mind might turn to this kind of book outside his normal genre.
There’s an authors’ note at the end in which they explain that the core of the idea was based on needing to get to Saturn in a certain time frame. From the details in that you can tell it was the focus of their thinking on how come up with some realistic near-future spaceship propulsion methods. By working up a couple of different ways to accomplish this they set up a kind of tortoise and the hare race between the Americans and Chinese which also helps set up the drama to the story. (The authors’ note also provides a very satisfactory answer as to why they decided to name the US ship after Richard Nixon.)
It also helps that Sandford has had a lot of practice at creating characters in familiar genre situations while still making them seem like real people who all work, bitch, commiserate, screw, take drugs, drink, scheme, and joke while risking their lives as part of a potentially disastrous contest with a rival nation to try and meet some aliens.
There are a few things here that make clear that Sandford’s not working on his usual turf. One of his strengths is writing scenes in which people have to act fast when things start going wrong, and generally his pacing is nearly flawless when it comes to building tension. However, the nature of this story requires a timeline in which months of boring traveling is involved, and while they do their best to use this downtime to set up story, build characters, develop the setting, and add humor, it just doesn’t have the sense of frantic momentum that Sandford can usually deliver except for a few scenes.
Plus, this is the only book of Sandford’s I’ve read which doesn’t focus on one single lead. While Sandy Darlington seems like he’s going to be the main character at first this actually turns into much more of an ensemble book, and that added to a sense that the story is drifting at times. I also question how much time and effort was spent describing the various cameras and the best way of using them, but that’s what happens when one of your authors is a photographer.
There’s also a slight letdown related to what they discover when they get to the alien object. It’s not a complete fumble, but it does show that Sandford and Ctein put more thought into how they’d get to Saturn rather than what the characters would find when they got there. (view spoiler)[While I thought the idea of the alien trading post managed by an AI was fairly clever, it really just existed to give the Chinese and Americans something to fight about on the way back to Earth. It was a bit disappointing that in a novel about people risking everything to make first contact that they essentially just end up getting an answering machine message. It gave me the impression that most of the creative juice was spent on propulsion systems and orbital mechanics which left me wishing that some of the same kind of care and effort was put into coming up with something equally well-thought out for an alien race. (hide spoiler)]
It’s still an entertaining read with some exciting fast paced parts, but those not interested in problems like how you vent excess heat from a spaceship engine might find it a bit dull at times.
3.64 stars.
(Also posted at Kemper's Book Blog. I also wrote a similar, but different, review for the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog for which I was paid after I had written and posted this.)...more
“This is as good as it gets. Can’t expect everyone to be on the same page. We’re still humans after all. Some percentage of us are always going to be “This is as good as it gets. Can’t expect everyone to be on the same page. We’re still humans after all. Some percentage of us are always going to be assholes.” - Naomi Nagata - Nemesis Games
"Boy, that escalated quickly... I mean, that really got out of hand fast." - Ron Burgundy - Anchorman: The Legend of Run Burgundy
After their latest misadventure the Rocinante is in need of extensive repairs that will keep the ship sidelined as the crew finds itself with a variety of personal matters that need their attention so they split up and head to different spots all over the solar system. Unfortunately, one of them gets caught up in an elaborate trap that will have a devastating and long-range impact.
The Expanse novels have been about big events potentially changing the future of humanity, but these things have been done against a backdrop that fundamentally hasn’t changed. The political and military organizations have remained mostly stable, and a large part of the story is about the reaction by those powers to what's going on. What happens here is particularly sneaky on the part of the authors who make up the James S.A. Corey name because this is the point where they’ve kicked over the table and upset the entire game.
That makes sense because by their 9 book timeline this is where we cross the halfway point so we’re firmly in the second act which is where things traditionally get dark for the heroes of any kind of story. What’s shocking here is the extent of the damage done, and it’s made even more disturbing that even those who have generally been portrayed as being the most powerful and savviest characters get caught flat-footed.
Once again, that makes sense in the greater context of The Expanse because one of its on-going themes is how short-sighted selfish people can always draw attention away from larger threats and find a way to fight over things even as humanity should be on the brink of a new age of limitless exploration and expansion. This is especially been built up as part of an increasingly good job of developing villains.
At the start of the series the third party subjective nature of shifting the point-of-view around a handful of characters sometimes made the threats seem vague or to come out of nowhere. Since the third book the authors have done a much better job of finding ways to put a face on the bad guys, and they’ve got a knack for creating a particular brand of smug self-absorbed jerkfaces who are masters of developing rationalizations for their actions.
Another selling point here is that at this point in the series we’re fully invested in our main characters. (Or at least I assume that anyone who is reading the 5th book of 500+ page novels cares at least a little bit about these guys.) By scattering the crew of the Roci around and making them the narrators who carry the story, it not only brings a lot of the epic scale down to a more relatable level, it also sets up a near guarantee in emotional investment. Even as they’re going through different trails and tribulations they all have one goal, to get back to their ship and each other. That's the hook that carries off this whole thing because it's what all the readers want, too.
I could nitpick a bit about how some of the coincidences seem a bit much or that the novella The Churn probably should have been boiled down to backstory for this one rather than selling it as a extra by itself. But overall I’m just having too much fun with this series to gripe much other than bitching about how now I gotta wait until the summer of 2016 for the next book. I just hope I don’t get Dark Towered on this thing…....more
In The Expanse humanity has spread out among our solar system, and there have been decades of political tension and hostility among the people of EartIn The Expanse humanity has spread out among our solar system, and there have been decades of political tension and hostility among the people of Earth, Mars, and the Belters of the Outer Planetary Alliance. The events of the previous books have resulted in the unlocking of a system of wormhole gates that puts literally a thousand habitable new worlds and all their natural resources within reach.
All the people put their differences aside to begin a new golden age of peace and prosperity as they work together to explore and colonize……BWAH HA HA HA! I’m sorry. I couldn’t even finish that with a straight face. I was just messing with you. Actually, most of the people in the future are still short-sighted selfish idiots who suck, just like today, and they promptly begin fighting over the very first planet that has boots on the ground.
A group of squatters from the OPA got to the planet first and set up a half-assed colony as they began mining lithium with the idea of selling it to become independent. The Royal Energy Corporation was given a charter by Earth’s government to survey the planet and exploit its mineral rights. The squatters and the RCE competing claims are complicated by the long history of bigotry and mistrust between the people of Earth and the Belt. Things quickly escalate to violence, and when the governments need a guy with a reputation for honesty and fairness to act as moderator they call on Captain Jim Holden.
So it’s a planet filled with angry people using terrorism tactics against a fanatical security chief for the corporation who will stop at nothing to protect RCE interests. Oh, and there’s lots of alien ruins and artifacts left by a long dead civilization. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
As usual Holden and his intrepid crew are trying to do the right thing and save people in the midst of a political tangle and general assholery. However, the first half of this book has both sides so entrenched in their hatred and grudges that I was half hoping that Holden would just throw up his hands and have the Rocinante bomb them from orbit. Things change a bit in the second half when events put everyone in a dire situation, but even then there’s no shortage of talking sphincters making a bad situation worse.
As I’ve said in my earlier reviews, that’s one of the things that I love about this series. There’s an on-going mystery and potential looming threat with all the alien stuff and the way that Holden is connected to it is very clever. The action and sense of tension are well done, and the good guy characters are all likeable and well-drawn so that you actively root for them while feeling the frustration of every set back and problem. The books also have a healthy sense of humor with a variety of one liners or funny beats drawing a laugh out of a reader at the most unexpected moments. The authors also do a superior job of figuring out bad situations to stick the characters in and equally clever ways to get them out of them.
But it’s still the commitment to making the biggest obstacle usually be rotten people of one kind or another that continues to help ground the series and make it really relatable. These people may be squabbling on another planet, but when they argue about who did what to who and use it for justifications for continuing to escalate the violence it’s all too easy to see ourselves in this collection of asshats.
Bonus Material: Check out the trailers for the TV show based on the series here and here....more
There’s a utopian idea in some sci-fi like Star Trek that humanity exploring space will bring out the best in us as a species. I think that anyone whoThere’s a utopian idea in some sci-fi like Star Trek that humanity exploring space will bring out the best in us as a species. I think that anyone who believes that hasn’t paid enough attention to what we are actually like. That’s one of the big reasons that I’m loving this series. It shows that people suck whether they’re on Earth, Mars, a moon, an asteroid, a spaceship, or exploring an alien construct built by an ancient protomolecule.
This third book in the Expanse series picks up shortly after the events of the last one. James Holden and his small crew of misfits continue to earn a living by hiring out the Rocinante as a transport or escort ship around the solar system. The governments of Earth, Mars, and the Belt have all sent ships out towards the mysterious giant ring that the protomolecule cobbled together that is now outside the orbit of Uranus. (Feel free to make your own Uranus jokes.) As you’d expect the three rival powers are spending as much time watching and scheming against each other as they are trying to figure out exactly what the ring is.
Holden wants nothing more to do with the protomolecule, especially since he’s having some freaky episodes that are apparently connected to it, so he tries to get them a job that will take them as far away from the ring as the Rocinante can get. Unfortunately, he’s got an enemy named Clarissa who thinks Holden is responsible for her family’s misfortune, and she manipulates events to get him near the ring where she can destroy his reputation and kill him.
As usual with this series we’ve got Holden and his crew as the on-going hero characters while some new people are introduced. Clarissa is a key figure, and her desire for revenge, extensive resources, and some illegal implants that give her a limited amount of berserker fury make her a very dangerous figure. Carlos ‘Bull’ c de Baca is the security chief on the main Outer Planets Alliance ship sent to the ring, but his loyalty to the leader of the OPA means that he’s been secretly given the responsibility of making sure that the ship’s idiot captain doesn’t screw things up. Pastor Anna Volovodov leaves her wife and child behind to go to the ring as part of an Earth delegation made up of religious figures and artists to try and figure out the significance of the ring to humanity from a spiritual standpoint.
As I noted before, one of the things I love about this series is how it sets up the idea that even with the terrifying and astounding things that have happened because of the protomolecule that the different factions of people scattered around the solar system still spend most of their time focused on squabbling with each other and looking for an angle to use the alien tech for their own purposes. That remains one of the key drivers to the plot, and it’s all too easy to believe that when confronted with something huge and scary that people would rather fight with each other than think about what it actually means.
Another aspect that I enjoy about Expanse is that it at least nods towards real science in that if you’re going to create a story in which spaceships can go fast enough to make travel within our solar system feasible, then that means you’ve got to account for the force of that on the human bodies in those ships. That’s built into these books with special gel couches and drugs having to be used to offset thrusts that cause high g-forces, and those forces get used to catastrophic effect in ways that are horrifyingly clever. When you’ve got people casually referring to how someone got turned into pasta sauce, you know things have gotten ugly.
The only off note is in how the book gets pretty black and white with the good guys vs. the bad guys. I’d complained before that the first two books had the heroes facing off against a shadowy conspiracy with no indications from their side what the plan was so it made the threat kind of vague and cartoonish. Here, we know that one big threat comes from Clarissa, and we get plenty on her motivations and her schemes. The other thing endangering everyone is the scared and stupid behavior of small minded people, and that’s also a relatable idea.
However, when things go sideways it seems like all the good guys line up on the same side immediately, and there’s no doubt whatsoever that they’re way is the right way even though with the information available the other side isn’t entirely out of line. It would have been nice to get a few more grey areas or some doubts creeping in rather than having almost everyone lining up along exact battle lines and sticking to that for the most part.
That was a minor point and didn’t detract much from the overall enjoyment I continue to get out of this ambitious space opera with it’s all too human characters....more
Infinity is an apt name for this Marvel event since it seemingly goes on forever.
Seriously, I know when it comes to these big crossover events that ‘bInfinity is an apt name for this Marvel event since it seemingly goes on forever.
Seriously, I know when it comes to these big crossover events that ‘big’ is the key word, but this collection contains the 6 issues of Infinity itself as well as about 18 issues of Avengers and New Avengers. That’s not even including the roughly 30 other tie-in books that are part of it, too. How many comic books must I read to get one story?!?
An alien race called the Builders that were supposedly the architects of the universe itself show up and start tearing through various star systems on their way to Earth. Captain America leads most of the Avengers into space to fight beside an alliance made up of friends and former enemies like the Skrulls and the Brood. Unfortunately, with most of the Avengers off planet Thanos sees an opportunity to carry out a personal vendetta on Earth, and he unleashes a full scale planetary invasion that Tony Stark and the other members of the Illuminati try to lead the defense against.
There’s a lot good sci-fi concepts here as well as some epic action with art that conveys the scale of the events. Overall Hickman’s story does a pretty nice job of shifting around to the different areas which allows him to get lots of characters doing lots of things. I also like this idea that’s spread across the Marvel books during this period of time that Earth is increasingly seen as a danger by the rest of the universe.
But the problem with these crossover events are that they seem to be built with the idea that they are for the fans reading every issue of the books involved as they come out. I have not been reading any of the recent Avengers books, but I’d pretty much caught up on Guardians of the Galaxy when I hit their part of the crossover so I thought I knew enough to check it out. Wrong. Even though I read about umpteen million pages of this story, I still had to go to the Marvel Wiki page to get the context of what happened.
When you’ve got more and more fans increasingly waiting to buy the collections or, like me, reading later via digital comics, it’s crazy when these things sprawl to the point where you can read over 600 pages that supposedly contain the core story, and it’s still not enough. If they could have boiled this down to one big 10 or 12 issue mini-series that felt like a complete storyline I would have been a lot more satisfied with it....more
If you’re an overweight slob with a job you hate then maybe you just need to be inhabited by an ancient alien entity who can teach you some disciplineIf you’re an overweight slob with a job you hate then maybe you just need to be inhabited by an ancient alien entity who can teach you some discipline and help you get your life in order. But before you sign up be aware that you’ll be picking a side in a centuries old war among the aliens to decide the fate of humanity, and you’ll have a very good chance of getting killed in the process. So maybe you want to take another look at that new diet after all?
This was entertaining but felt relatively light weight. The idea of a wise old entity stuffed into the meat sack of a whiny slacker was played for some good laughs, and I liked the idea of a covert war being waged between two alien factions. I would have enjoyed it more focus on the history of Tao and the other aliens on Earth, and a little less on Roen as a rehabilitation project. ...more
Some silly people think that the moon landing was faked. They don’t realize that there was a much larger story. It was all part of a secret alliance bSome silly people think that the moon landing was faked. They don’t realize that there was a much larger story. It was all part of a secret alliance between the American Manhattan Projects and Soviet space program after they discovered that Earth was about to be invaded by aliens. And of course President Harry Truman was the head of a secret society that really controlled the world, and they worried that the expanding scientific power being gathered could usurp their power so a conflict erupts. Things get really dicey when the AI that used to be President Roosevelt sides with Truman and unleashes a bunch of killer robots that Albert Einstein and others have to fight with machine guns. Luckily, the new Soviet allies including Yuri Gagarin and Laika the dog are there to help.
Steve Rogers is back from the dead but not acting as Captain America. Instead, Steve has been appointed the ‘top cop of the world’, the individual in Steve Rogers is back from the dead but not acting as Captain America. Instead, Steve has been appointed the ‘top cop of the world’, the individual in charge of dealing with threats from all the super villains, alien attacks, black magic, powerful artifacts and evil corporations in the Marvel universe. Steve-O probably won’t be getting many days off.
Steve is recruiting new teams of Avengers to deal with all this crap and this includes a secret team to gather intelligence and do covert type operations to head off threats. It’s a bit of a weird mix of heroes with Steve, Black Widow, War Machine, Beast, Valkyrie, the new Ant-Man, and Moon Knight. It gets even weirder when they learn that the powerful Serpent Crown they’ve been trying to locate is linked to a mining effort on Mars so Steve calls in Nova to help and soon they’re all off to the Red Planet.
I love the idea of Steve Rogers heading up a world-wide effort to deal with the all the dangers of the Marvel universe and personally leading a covert team, but I had some doubts about this book. The roster seemed to be a bunch of B-list heroes, and Steve isn’t even sporting his old Captain America duds these days. Plus, launching a title about a group supposedly designed to do sneaky covert stuff but then immediately sending them to Mars to face an interstellar threat seemed a bit out of whack.
But Ed Brubaker wrote this, and Ed Brubaker is The Man in comics to me these days and he delivers once again here. Part of the charm of the Avengers is that their line-ups and adventures have always seemed like genre fusing to some extent with a Norse god teaming up with an armored high-tech billionaire along with a guy who is really good at shooting arrows and then they’ve done everything from standard super villain punching to time travel and fighting aliens. To make that work takes some skill, and Brubaker has plenty of that.
The mix of hero types and personalities gels nicely from the scientific Beast making little quips as he delivers the technobabble to Black Widow’s spy talk to Ant-Man’s nervous chatter. The group works because Steve Rogers is running the show and in Marvel comics, when Steve Rogers talks, superheroes listen.
It’s also nice to see a team comic didn’t feel the need to find a way to shoehorn Wolverine into it for sales purposes....more
I’m no expert at colonizing newly discovered worlds, but I gotta think that naming your new planet ‘Roanoke’ and your settlement town ‘Croatoan’ is juI’m no expert at colonizing newly discovered worlds, but I gotta think that naming your new planet ‘Roanoke’ and your settlement town ‘Croatoan’ is just asking to be pimp slapped by fate. Why not just christen a ship ‘Titantic’ or call that new nuclear plant ’Chernobyl’? What’s the worst that could happen?
The third installment of this series finds John Perry and his wife Jane retired from the Colonial Defense Force and living quietly on a colonized planet with their daughter. The CDF approaches them to head up a new colony, Roanoke. All the other colonies have been started using people from Earth, but Roanoke will be the first to be made up of a hodge podge of people from different colonized worlds, and this makes it a political hot potato. John and Jane agree to head up the new colony, but they quickly learn that the CDF hasn’t told them everything and that the Roanoke colony is a pawn in the conflict between the CDF and other alien races.
Like Old Man’s War or The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony is a fun and fast mix of space combat and politics. Scalzi creates characters you like and then throws them into plots that race from one huge event to the next, and he also injects a welcome sense of humor into the books. My only complaint is that the pace is so fast that Scalzi skimps on descriptions of settings, people and alien creatures in favor of dialogue and action so that I sometimes had a problem getting a clear picture in my mind of what was going on.
This is space war action several notches above what you usually get in this genre, and any sci-fi fan should check out this series....more
James Cameron and John Scalzi Share An Awkward Elevator Ride
James Cameron: Could you hit the button for the top floor, please?
John Scalzi: Sure. Say, James Cameron and John Scalzi Share An Awkward Elevator Ride
James Cameron: Could you hit the button for the top floor, please?
John Scalzi: Sure. Say, aren’t you James Cameron?
JC: That’s right. My friends call me King of the World! Ha Ha! Just kidding.
JS: Right.
JC: You look kind of familiar. Have we met?
JS: Met? No. Maybe you recognize me from my author’s photo on my books. I’m John Scalzi.
Long pause
JC: Uh……No, sorry. I don’t think I’ve read your books.
JS: Really? You haven’t read Old Man’s War or The Ghost Brigades?
JC: Uh……Nope.
JS: You should check them out. I think you’d like them. The story revolves around soldiers having their consciousnesses downloaded into genetically enhanced bodies so they can fight wars on distant planets. I use that to bring up questions about the ethics of colonization.
JC: Uh…. Well, that does sound pretty good. I’ll check them out sometime.
JS: Now that I think about it, that sounds kind of similar to your movie Avatar.
JC: Huh.. Yeah, I guess there’s a few minor similarities there.
JS: Of course, my genetically enhanced bodies are green and yours were blue so I guess that makes all the difference, right?
JC: Uh……
JS: You’re sure you never read them? They came out a few years before you filmed Avatar. Probably about the time you were brainstorming ideas for the movie. Maybe even writing the script?
JC: OK, look. I guess it’s possible that I did read your books. Maybe….just maybe… I did and adapted a few of your ideas. You know how it is. Everything you’ve read or seen before gets mashed up in your head and you start combining that stuff with your own story ideas. Sometimes you may end up using a tiny aspect of someone else’s story. Hell, Tarantino has made a whole career out of that.
JS: Oh, so now you think you did read my books?
JC: It’s possible. But even if I.. uh…borrowed an idea or two from you. And I’m not saying I did! But if I accidentally incorporated some stuff of yours into Avatar, I’m sure you see all the differences in it. Like your book didn’t have flying mountains, right? And it wasn’t in hi-def 3D, was it?
JS: No, my book was not in written in hi-def 3D.
JC: There you go. Besides, other than whole idea of downloading people into genetically enhanced bodies, my overall story was about a man realizing that his own kind were corrupt and that he should join the other side to find peace and happiness. You didn’t have anything like that.
JS: True. I think you got that from Dances With Wolves.
JC: That’s right…Hey!
JS: Forget it. I’m not going to sue you or punch you. I just couldn’t help but wonder if maybe you hadn’t read my books and influenced your movie.
JC: Obviously, for legal purposes, I can’t admit anything.
Long pause.
JC: This is the longest elevator ride off my life.
JS: Oh, I never hit the button for your floor. I’ve just been leaning against the Door Closed button.
JC. Oh.
Long pause.
JC: Can I go now, please?
JS: Can I have a job writing your next movie?
JC: Yes.
JS: Pleasure doing business with you, King of the World....more
Getting old sucks but as the old joke says, it‘s better than the alternative. However, what if there was a way to get to be young again? The catch is Getting old sucks but as the old joke says, it‘s better than the alternative. However, what if there was a way to get to be young again? The catch is that if you do it, you’ll probably die in some horribly bloody and spectacular fashion at the hands of aliens on a distant world. Any volunteers?
In this terrific novel, humanity has spread out to the stars only to find that they’re competing with several types of aliens for habitable planets. The Colonial Defense Force has been waging those wars and gathering advanced technologies in the process. Needing volunteers, the CDF has a recruiting pitch that’s hard to top. They’ll take senior citizens from Earth and somehow make them young again. Survive the ten year enlistment, and the reward is getting set up on one of the colonized planets.
John Perry is a widower who joins the CDF on his seventy-fifth birthday. He quickly learns how the CDF makes good on their promise to make soldier young again, and also finds out that the war they’ll be fighting is incredibly brutal and that most won’t survive their enlistments.
The idea of humans fighting wars out in space with advanced technology is nothing new, but Scalzi did a great job of taking fresh approaches to this concept. The idea of an army made up of senior citizens is unique in itself, and the weapons and tech he came up with are also clever and inventive. It’s filed with rip-roaring battle scenes, and the alien opponents he created are also several notches above what you usually get in these space war type books.
But the real hook is here the outstanding job that Scalzi did with the characters, and the sense of humor that he weaves into the story. There’s a lot of very funny stuff in this book amidst the interstellar war, and that’s something that many sci-fi writers forget to include. I particularly loved how Scalzi took the standard war story scenes of the gruff old drill sergeant training the recruits and gave it a twist.
I’ll be checking out the sequels as soon as I can get my hands on them....more
Reluctant superhero Jack Knight took over the mantle of Starman from his father, but there have been several other heroes called Starman in the DC uniReluctant superhero Jack Knight took over the mantle of Starman from his father, but there have been several other heroes called Starman in the DC universe. One of those, Will Payton, was thought dead but his sister, Jack’s girlfriend, is convinced he’s alive and evidence shows that he may be somewhere in space. Jack takes off in steam punk spaceship with yet another former Starman to find Will and bring him home.
The Starman series has stalled out a bit for me. I really liked the first three collections that were oriented around Jack trying to adjust to being Starman while Robinson built up the elaborate world of Opal City using characters and stories from the Golden and Silver Ages of comics. However, the last volume was a bunch of crossover and one-off stories and this collection is set mostly in space so there’s little of Jack in Opal City, which is what I’ve liked about this series. Plus, this is the first volume without artist Tony Harris, and I really didn’t care for the new artwork.
So a bit of a disappointment despite another volume of big superhero stories. The next collection wraps up the whole story, and I’m hoping that Jack being back in Opal gets back to what I enjoyed about the first part of the series....more
I’d wanted to read this because I’m a fan of the Halo video games, and I’d heard that it was a big influence on those. I gotta say that I’d have likedI’d wanted to read this because I’m a fan of the Halo video games, and I’d heard that it was a big influence on those. I gotta say that I’d have liked it more if the Master Chief would have shown up and started chucking some plasma grenades around.
Set in 2855, human Louis Wu is recruited by an alien named Nessus to go on a hazardous mission to explore a strange structure that rings a distant star. Another alien called Speaker-To-Animals from a warrior race apparently descended from some really tough tomcats is also recruited. A human woman named Teela joins the group almost by accident.
When they get to their destination, they find a giant ring with a habitable inner surface that has an area many times greater than the earth. After an accident strands them on the world, they start exploring to find a way to get their ship back out into space.
This had some really big sci-fi ideas in it, most notably the Ringworld itself. But this is one of those books where the social attitudes of the time it was written have become really painful to read. Because even though it’s supposed to be 2855, the women in this book exist only to: 1) Sleep with Louis. 2) Be good luck charms. 3) Act as ship’s whores on long space flights.
You’ve come a long way, baby!
I generally try to avoid judging a book by the era it was written, but 1970 couldn’t have been this bad, could it? And if so, I’d expect a guy who could come up with concepts this big to have put a little thought into gender roles in 800 years. Plus, while the Ringworld idea is pretty clever, I found the rest of the sci-fi kind of crude and dated. Maybe that’s just because there’s been 40 years of material since it was published, but I didn’t get much enjoyment out of reading this. ...more
Loading...
