Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Choice, Purpose and Design

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

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While A Closed and Common Orbit deals with the aftermath of the events The Long Way to Small, Angry Planet, it can be read independently.  The novel alternates between the view points of two characters.  Lovelace/Sidra’s perspective takes place directly after the other novel, and Jane’s chapters take place about 20 years prior, and explore how she ended up escaping a planet where she was genetically engineered for one specific function/job.  This isn’t a spoiler since Pepper was introduced in the previous novel as a […]

Wrapping Up the Murderbot Novellas

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

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I read Artificial Condition earlier in the year, but finally read the final two novellas in the last month.  Given that, I figured it might be easiest to combine my reviews of the three novellas. Spoilers, naturally. When All Systems Red ended, Murderbot had decided to strike on its own, and find answers.  Artifical Condition follows Murderbot as it goes back to the system and planet where it became the titular Murderbot.  Murderbot has wondered for a long time what happened and what made it […]

Why Is It Always So Hard to Review the Great Ones?

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

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Bingo Square: Award Winner I’ve been meaning to read this novel for quite a while now, but BR 11 Bingo was the final push to get me to start it.  I like sci-fi, but some sci-fi can become a bit dry and too technical for me to enjoy, and I feared this might be one of them.  As it turns out, I should not have been concerned about that at all. I also started reading Becky Chambers’ novels recently, so it was interesting to read […]

A Few Too Many Space Bobs

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I think it was the title of this thing that caught my attention: We Are Legion [We Are Bob]. It just sounded a little goofy, and as it turns out, you can judge this book by its title. The premise is pretty standard sci-fi: guy at the peak of his career with a great life ahead, decides to get himself cryogenically frozen when he dies, and is almost immediately killed off. He wakes up about a century later to find a very different world than […]

Clones in Space

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In Six Wakes, The Dormire, a generational ship travelling to colonize the planet Athena, is manned by six clones and an AI. It is the responsibility of the clones, with the help of the AI, to fly the ship, make any needed repairs and keep the cargo of humans, clones and homesteading materials safe. Clones are chosen to man the ship due to the fact that the journey to Athena will take hundreds of years.  And, unlike a human crew, when the clones die, the […]

I’ve Got Friends in High Places

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The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James R. Hogan (1979) Long before Terminator brought us the terrors of a unified, anti-human computer named Skynet, James R. Hogan addressed the issue with exciting but more favorable results. In the near future, an integrated computer system on the moon follows an order to remove a lunar ridge for a construction crew.  Unfortunately, the engineers who requested the removal are on-site when a lunar cannon obliterates it. On Earth, a charismatic scientist and his department have been working […]



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