I decided like, I don’t know, six months ago? that I was going to read ALL THE STEPHEN KING, so I was eventually going to read this book (and all his others) no matter what. Deciding which books to read first was the main thing. I decided to read this one first (and Misery and The Stand, come to think of it) because I read his On Writing back in November, and he talks about the process of writing all three of them. The way he […]
Sharp, meta, and entertaining
I have to apologize in advance to Redshirts because I have major review fatigue. I was really hoping to do a double cannonball this year, and I can based on my pace, but lawd almighty am I ever running out of different ways to talk about books. And as such, this is going to be such a crappy review. Anyway, Redshirts was great. It hooked me immediately and kept me laughing throughout; I sympathized with the characters and was utterly delighted at each of Scalzi’s uber-winky PLOT […]
Test Driving a Sandworm
The Heaven Makers by Frank Herbert (1968 and 1977) – I’m a sucker for Frank Herbert’s writing. I fell in love with the Dune series as a youngster and reread all six books every five years or so. They are classic science fiction and some of my favorites (obviously). The Heaven Makers is typical of Mr. Herbert early work. It’s almost as if he was trying out ideas and concepts he was going to use later for his Dune masterpiece. The story is simple – […]
Who Says Sci-Fi Can’t Be Educational?
Earth by David Brin (1990) – At almost 600-pages, Earth has a lot of padding, but the basic story is good. Fifty years in the future, an unlucky scientist creates a molecule-sized black hole (to help a planet starving for energy). It ends up sinking to the middle of the Earth. When attempting to locate it to make sure it’s shrinking as predicted, he enlists the help of a Mori billionaire and his mentor, an older scientist. Albert, the younger scientist, is happy to see […]
Now this is what I call Sci-Fi
I am so far behind on reviewing that I’ve started to forget what I’ve read, although I recall a three day Courtney Milan marathon so Malin and Mrs Julien will be happy when I get round to reviewing them. First though, the best SF novel I’ve read since Anathem. Mark Watney is one sixth of the third manned mission to Mars, and it turns out that third time is not, in fact, the charm: during evacuation six days into the mission, he is left […]
A searing vision of post-apocalypse Africa in sci-fi
I’m currently planning a contemporary global literature course (for a variety of reasons), and I’ve been trying to extend my specialty in contemporary fiction to texts and foci outside my little niche. So when my friend M raved about Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death on Goodreads, I was intrigued. Okorafor herself had read an article from The Washington Post about rape as ethnic cleansing in the Sudan and was inspired to write about the child of one such violent conception. A young Okeke woman is […]
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