Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When your buddy has a real chip on his shoulder

Murderbot Diaries All Systems Red by Martha Wells

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cbr13bingo  Rec’d (by y’all) What can I say about Murderbot Diaries All Systems Red that has not already been said? I have nothing new to add to the conversation about Martha Wells series. Only (for those who have not read) this first novella deals with the idea of what is human and what is robot. It asks can a robot be “human” or at least human-like? Can one make that choice themselves or must someone or something validate them, make them “legitimate”? I told a […]

AI: Not scary in the way you think

You look like a thing and I love you by Janelle Shane

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You say AI and people immediately start thinking about Skynet, The Matrix, or HAL 9000. We have been programmed by decades of literature and film to associate the concept of AI with human like intelligence and thought processes that sees these creations go rogue and decide to “kill all humans”. Probably Boston Dynamics scary dancing robots and “dogs” are not helping here either! But as this book shows the reality is closer to the kind of decisions made in “I Robot” where a decision is […]

Privacy and free will? Who needs ’em if a drone brings the latest gadget right to my door!

QualityLand by Marc-Uwe Kling

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A blurb on the back of the book compares this one to a Black Mirror episode, and I find I don’t have much more to say about it. That is very accurate, but it wouldn’t be one of those episodes the internet is on fire about the next day. In the (probably not-too-distant future), corporations have taken over the world, and the US has been renamed QualityLand. People are assigned levels, and the higher your level, the more perks you get (high level people can […]

quiet duty, questionable faith, and children taking on the burdens of their parents

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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I’d remembered of course that I should be grateful as always, but hadn’t been able to keep the disappointment from my mind. Kazuo Ishiguro, the master of suffering with dignity, is back with another literary gut-punch. There is no one else who handles quietly doomed duty quite like him. Klara is alive, but not entirely. She is an AF: a robotic companion for disconnected children. She lives in a shop window where she strives to please the Manager. She hopes to bask in the nourishing […]

Escape From the Present with… THE FUTURE!

Ark by Veronica Roth

Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin

The Last Conversation by Paul Tremblay

Randomize by Andy Weir

You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towlesl

Summer Frost by Blake Crouch

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And you know what? The future isn’t that bad! Well, it is full of disasters- pandemic, plague, asteroids, climate change, robot uprising -but there are always sparks of humanity ready to push through none the less. Amazon’s Forward collection, a group of five short stories from some big names, throw some big ideas out into the universe and let you, in a way, choose your own adventure! I suppose there is a “correct” order in which to read these, but I didn’t bother. I don’t think […]

Mystery and murder and mayhem IN SPACE

Places in the Darkness by Chris Brookmyre

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#CBR12 Bingo: Book Club (this was a pick in my fantasy/sci-fi book club a few months back) Offical book description: Hundreds of miles above Earth, the space station Ciudad de Cielo – The City in the Sky – is a beacon of hope for humanity’s expansion into the stars. But not everyone aboard shares such noble ideals.   Bootlegging, booze, and prostitution form a lucrative underground economy for rival gangs, which the authorities are happy to turn a blind eye to until a disassembled corpse is […]



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