Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Space Opera Done Fantastic

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

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You guys, I really, really liked this book. Let’s start off there. It combines what I loved in the first parts of The Expanse series with Star Trek, stirs in the best bits of Firefly, and then adds a bunch of its own stuff. It’s very good. If that’s all you need to get you started, then go forthwith and devour at the next available opportunity. But I can’t get away with that little of a review, and I don’t really want to anyway, so […]

Hyperion – a modern classic

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

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Some books make you think and force you to challenge long held concepts. Some books affect you emotionally and can force you to weep during social situations where it may be inappropriate (reading on the bus, for example). Only a true classic can achieve both of those objectives and Simmons’ Hyperion certainly qualifies. This is a book that has won many awards and been hailed as a classic for over two decades and I am now realizing how influential it is when I watch shows […]

“A whale’s graveyard on the whole is not a good place to stomp around on”

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

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I know, I know. Where have I been and how did I not get around to this earlier! To answer that easy question: I have been here, on earth, and I did read this approximately one million years ago. My memory of this volume was corrupted greatly by the 2005 movie adaptation (another issue, I know), and I figured that a new decade was as good a time as any to try out this classic again. Also, I wanted to listen to more audio books […]

“Beneath the modern political rhetoric and academic theories of history, I had an ancient hope that was indistinguishable from Spiritualism. If my edit took, maybe the good I’d done would outweigh the evil.”

The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

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I started this book first thing on New Year’s Day, made it about thirty pages in, and then didn’t pick it up again until Sunday morning on the 5th. I don’t know if it was feeling too heavy or what, but I needed to be in the right headspace for it. (It was probably the men’s right’s activists that did it, followed closely by a disturbing murder.) Then I basically binge-read the whole book yesterday morning. To sum the book up badly (and I will […]

“Slick” sci-fi for the middle school set

Friendroid by M.M. Vaughan

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Danny Lazio doesn’t get along with kids. It’s not really his fault – his single mom does the best she can to provide, but his classmates still come down on him for it. Of course, it probably doesn’t help that he has a bit of a temper, but who can blame him when kids say he has fleas and his mom gets his clothes from the dumpster? It’s fine – having no friends just gives him more time to play his favorite game Land X, […]

A bunch of gay as hell space books

The Disasters by M.K. England

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear

The Sol Majestic by Ferrett Steinmetz

Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White

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These are some of the sci-fi books I read in 2019. I’m not going to specify how for each one but they are all gay as hell in various ways, which is honestly just how I think space is going to be for us when we finally get there. Or at least, I sure hope. The Disasters by M.K. England takes one of my favorite tropes, a ragtag bunch of outcasts who circumstances force together must fight for their survival and learn to trust and […]



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