Nancy E. Shaffer's Blog, page 4
July 3, 2016
Juno at Jupiter – July 4th, 2016
After a five-year journey through the solar system, NASA’s Juno spacecraft is scheduled for orbital insertion on Monday, July 4th. Due to the time delay between Earth and Jupiter, the insertion will be in the hands of the computers aboard the spacecraft, and mission specialists will have to wait48 minutesto know if it was a success.
Sounds a lot like those long moments of terror when Curiosity plunged towards Mars four years ago.
If all goes well, Juno will study Jupiter and its moons much a...
March 29, 2016
Firestar
Firestar by Michael Flynn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I am always on the lookout for solar system exploration fic, which is difficult to find, because aliens are king in contemporary space opera. I wish I liked classic SF more than I do; a lot of the old stuff was solar system specific. The oldest I’ll go back is 1990’s/ turn of the turn-of-the-millennium, and even that stuff seems dated. To a book, late 90s solar system fic is cynical. Not the writers; but their characters. The writers are despe...
February 21, 2016
Existence
Existence by David Brin
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
I give this tour-de-force exploration of one possible answer to the Fermi paradox a 3.5. Better than a three, but not as good as a four. However, there is no 3.5, so four it is. It reminds me, in structure, of Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312–a long, meandering novel with multiple characters and story lines, where the plot eeks along at a snail’s pace while entire chapters are turned over to philosophical musings.
Then, in the last quarter of the b...
February 11, 2016
Planetfall
Planetfall by Emma Newman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve decided that, “My science fiction is pasted on, yay!” stories make me cranky. These are stories that could just have easily have been set in early 21st century Earth, but are instead plopped onto another planet, or a ship or station in space. The mechanisms of travel between stars aren’t even hand-waved, they’re just not mentioned at all. The aliens are Obscure, or are referred to as “human.”
Renata Ghali is a complex character, and even...
January 23, 2016
Luna: New Moon
New Moon by Ian McDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was a bit disoriented at first by the admixture of common moon colonization tropes with the almost medieval merchant-dynastic politics whose commonplaces include trial by combat and arranged marriages (granted, some of them are same-sex arranged marriages).
This novel is soap opera-meets-space opera, most specifically, a 1980s-prime time type soap opera of the “Dynasty” stripe. Once you accept that, though, it’s good entertainment. Me, I dig...
January 11, 2016
2312
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
It might have been too soon after Aurora to read another Kim Stanley Robinson novel. But I’ve had 2312 in my collection for two years and needed to finish it. Also, I’ve been Jonesing lately for science fiction stories that take place exclusively in our solar system, rather than depicting interstellar travel.
Robinson builds up a plot in his usual way– out of a mosaic of endless, tiresome, breathtaking description. He does random, nonsensic...
January 2, 2016
The Three-Body Problem
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
2015’s Cloud Atlas: a somewhat offbeat tour-de-force whose character motivations ultimately strain credulity just a bit. Every time someone went into the three – body game, I wanted to skip over those parts. I didn’t see the appeal of the Trisolaran culture as depicted in the game. In fact, I found it repugnant. So I couldn’t really understand its appeal to the characters.
A lot of this book relied on tell-don’t-show, flashback, and...
December 16, 2015
Armada
Armada by Ernest Cline
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Giganimous nerd-gasm wish fulfillment fantasy, shamelessly to the end. There is a twist that threads through the story that keeps you reading and makes it not completely predictable. Fun to read.
Filed under: aliens, books, solar system
December 13, 2015
Aurora
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
spoilers – A typical KSR tour de force, with melodious and long-winded digressions into science, engineering, philosophy, sociology, and most particularly of course, geology and meteorology. But ultimately this is a depressing novel and when you finally realize what the main pessimistic message of it is you wonder why he bothered writing those voluminous poetic descriptions of Tau Ceti and interstellar space at all.
I should have known th...
