false 11 823 798 true 5808243 read 3 true 2740437 currently-reading 22 true 2740436 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26133789 to: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Paperback) by Robert A. Heinlein
I had to go back, as I often do, and re-read "Moon", as well as all the other Heinlein classics. While I was not *quite* as influenced by "Moon" as I was Stranger In A Strange Land (SIASL), it was right up there, and it stood up well upon re-reading.

Back in the day, it was supposedly the counter-revolutionaries handbook, but I saw most of that as far less interesting than the idea of the sentient computer, or the war between Earth and the moon using linear accelerators and rocks.

In particular, the computer aspects: the idea that a computer could create an image pixel by pixel, and have it be utterly realistic was so far ahead of its time that it is amazing.

Also of interest was the Botany Bay aspect: I knew about the "Moon" version far before I ever realized it was based upon real historical events.

This last reading, The first in 20 years, was less about the story, as I knew what would happen of course, than viewing it from the point of view of history: Both its use *of* history, and the ways in which it predicted some.

Where Moon disappointed was only in that the family / line marriage subplot was never as fully explored as other books like Time Enough For Love , Fear No Evil, or SIASL. It was not meant to explore those topics of course, but the Line marriage aspects of Manny and his kin were different enough from the other books that I would have been interested to see them more deeply explored rather than the rather glib way Wyo joins Mannys's family.

In all of these things, Heinlein kept making one major error: He expected that the race would grow up faster in terms of sexual mores than it would in other areas such as war. Maybe that was just the 1960's. More than 40 years later, we are farther away than ever from growing up it seems. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26134030 to: Variable Star (Hardcover) by Robert A. Heinlein
I saved this book for a while. It was the last Heinlein. It was the unthinkable: A collaboration between Spider Robinson and RAH. It was a return to the type of book I started reading Heinlein in: The so-called "Juveniles", in the same vein as "Tunnel in the Sky" (which it turns out the outline for this story was put aside in order to write "Tunnel")

OK: The ending was pretty obvious, right from the beginning. It pretty much had to turn out the way it did. As they say, the gun was introduced in the first act. No matter. I knew how Rocket Ship Galileo was going to end even if I did not foresee the Nazi's appearance in act III.

These stories work at a different level than plot. It was not a mystery. It was a story about people and ideas and philosophies and it was the stuff I had grown up on. It was a new book, but it was also an old friend.

If you like early Heinlein, and / or you like Spider Robinson then this one is for you. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/53092202 to: Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3) by Richard K. Morgan
I was sad to finish this, the last of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy. Morgan moves Tak into yet a new emotional / mental and in fact physical place, and the book starts out with him stealing the stacks of some priests. It seems someone is paying him to do this. But then he ends up fighting a war against renegade mechs up north on his home world then takes another left turn... and another... and another. There is really no way to tell where a Kovacs book is going unless you are re-reading it.

Slowly we learn not just about the priests stack removals, but how Tak has careened from the Envoys to being an ex-Envoy-for-hire to only doing whatever he wants to do. A nice but pwerhaps underused part was that he is double-sleeved, and the duplicate is from a storage copy from over 100 years back: When *that* Kovacs was still on Envoy, and has not made the journey of the older Kovacs. As you might expect, the two Kovacs do not get along. Not even a little.

Morgan says this is the last Kovacs novel because he has no place else to take the character for now... but that he might change his mind in 10 years as he himself grows and changes. That echo of the double sleeved Kovacs leaves a glimmer of hope for another book someday. When it happens, Tak will more than likely be on another world and on another journey.

While I enjoyed the books immensely they will not be everyones cup of tea. Even as I enjoyed them, so was I downright made uncomfortable by certain parts of them. Not just the parts that challenged my preconceived notions either. The concepts are huge, the violence is from Saw, and the sex is pure porn... in the literature sense of the word. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/53092017 Exhalation (Podcast) by Ted Chiang
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/48078885 to: Broken Angels (Takeshi Kovacs, #2) by Richard K. Morgan
This book is very different from the first one, Altered Carbon. It is less CyberPunk, and more Sci-Fi.

The first book made references to the Martians, and this one expands on the theme. The violence was less graphic, and the sex at first seemed a bit more grafted on to the story. In the end, the mystery of the Martians is not solved, leaving it open for more books in the universe. The end also resolved the seemingly out of the blue sex scene at the beginning as well.

Morgan is actually pretty good that way: He uses a great deal of detail, and seems to weave in seemingly throw away detail later into being key details. This was true about Altered Carbon as well.

Kovachs is a different man this time around: not because Morgan can't keep him consistent, but because he has changed by what has happened before to him. Don't read this expecting the hard boiled detective thriller of Altered Carbon. There is a mystery afoot, but I did not even know Kovachs was solving it till he did. This is at its heart a story about Xeno-archeology, cast in the world where people change bodies the way politicians flip flop due to polls and donations.

Another Morgan trademark is at work here: Things that are normal in our world are flipped upside down and made into that worlds crazy ideas: Democracy is being proposed and fought for by the villain. It is an effective way to allow Morgan to ask questions about things that are just often taking as delivered writ from on high.

The war at the background of the story is interesting, in that one of the B story lines is the concept that war is a male institution and inevitable. Religion also comes in for a fair amount of critical examination.

At the end, it is a good book even if it is not quite as enthralling as Altered Carbon. Still good. Still worthwhile. The ending is a pretty large payoff that I diud not see coming. Will be interesting to see where the third one goes from here. I have started it, and so far, Kovachs is altered yet again by where he has been before. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/48079781 to: Superman: Our Worlds at War, Book 1 (Paperback) by Various
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/48079705 Superman Chronicles, Vol. 1 (Paperback) by Jerry Siegel
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/48079679 to: It's Superman!: A Novel (Paperback) by Tom De Haven
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/48079635 to: Fool: A Novel (Hardcover) by Christopher Moore
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26271253 to: The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (Paperback) by Richard Dawkins
bookshelves: currently-reading
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