Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An archaeologist, an amusement park employee, a talking pig. Everyone is doing their best.

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

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In 2020, when many of us began working from home, I started listening to a podcast series called The Happiness Lab. The creators had produced a string of episodes dedicated to coping with the pandemic, and one episode in particular stuck with me. The theme was that, at some point, we would come out on the other side of our current global challenge, and one way to get through it was to think about what kind of story we want to be able to tell […]

Oh Lois, you hold my heart so gently.

Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold

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So, you pick up a science fiction mystery novel by your favorite author. You know the one, who wrote your favorite character of all time? It’s another in her long, award winning series following Miles Naismith Vorkosigan through his life of adventure and mystery. (if you’ve read Bujold, you know why you never leave out Naismith in his name.) The soletta – the key to terraforming Komarr – has just been hit and almost catastrophically damaged by an ore freighter. Miles is a newly minted Imperial […]

Dune Is a Classic For a Reason

Dune by Frank Herbert

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It’s hard to know what to say in reviewing Dune since it is such a classic and a cultural monolith at this point but I’ll do my best! This was my second time reading it with the first time being somewhere during college. Instead of throwing out the book again, I’ve kept this new copy since my personal rule is any book I buy twice I should keep the second copy of rather than keep buying books infinitely. Dune is a fast read for me […]

“Never before have so many been threatened with so much…Never has so much been promised to so many.”

The 9th Annual of the Year's Best SF by Judith Merril (Editor)

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This is a pretty long and comprehensive collection of good SF from 1963 (384 pages, so you’re definitely getting a lot). I enjoyed most of these stories and breezed through this on the Amtrak to and from visiting home. My mom also enjoyed the chunk she read while I was home, so it’s intergenerationally approved. However, nothing in here really blew me away and it all felt pretty standard and not hugely boundary pushing or subversive. Sometimes you do just need to read some classic […]

“The future may make these famous stories facts of history!”

Man Against Tomorrow by William F. Nolan (Editor)

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This was honestly a pleasant surprise in my continual quest to work through the classic SF/F collections in my possession. I think this is in large part attributable to the fact it’s from 1965, so is pre-New Wave. This era clicks with me, as does contemporary sci-fi/fantasy. It’s really only the 1970s and a chunk of the 1980s where I run aground. Man Against Tomorrow is a reprint collection which I enjoyed almost every story in, a real achievement in my opinion. The one con […]

Trapped in space with psycotic rage zombies

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

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Nowhere Book Bingo: An epistolary novel CBR16 Sweet Books: Binge (I have already bought the next two books in the series in paperback, so I can read all of them as soon as possible.) Official book description: Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the worst thing she’d ever been through. That was before her planet was invaded. Now, with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra are forced to fight their way onto one of the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship […]



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