Science Fiction Aficionados discussion
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I loved The Windup Girl as well, and I bought The Dervish House largely because I've heard they have a similar feel. At the very least they have similar cover illustrations.Finally finished The Lost World (disappointing) and started The Wise Man's Fear.
Lisa wrote: "I am reading The Future of Us by by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler. It's a young adult book recommended to me by my daughter. Sort of a time travel story, it's about two teenagers in the '90s who l..."OMG this sounds incredibly FUN to read!! How is it so far? :)
@Richard + @Maggie, Childhood's End has to have been one of the LEAST likeable books I've ever been forced to read. ((shudder)) Given you both liked it, immensely, I'm suspecting we have very different tastes and that's great -- it means I probably won't like other things you both agreed were just great. IOW, I should probably avoid Windup Girl (LOLZ) Thanks! :)
Marjorie wrote: "Childhood's End has to have been one of the LEAST likeable books I've ever been forced to read..."Wow isn't that interesting, how people can view the same thing so differently.
Considering that you really like The Fountains of Paradise and The City and the Stars, also by Clarke, the same as me I'm intrigued as to what it was about Childhood's End that you didn't like.
Was it the rather overt attack on religion, the blatant 1950's style gender roles, thin characterizations or the brutal way he imagined our final evolution.
The big idea transcending our own lives and the gentle, human, and simplistic even, storytelling style won me over against its many perceivable faults.
I wouldn't rule out The Windup Girl because of any differences between us over Childhood's End. I'm not sure Maggie has finished it yet, so please don't tar her with the same brush as me. I totally agree with your review of The City and the Stars, so we might not be as poles apart as one might think :-)
It really is a de gustibus world, isn't it? THE CITY AND THE STARS and CHILDHOOD'S END are my two very favorite AC Clarke novels. I'm not sure if I could deal with a novel-length work by Bacigalupi. His short stories are good but bleak, bleak, bleak. "The Pop Squad" - man, hug your kids, play with a kitten, do something to take your mind offa that story as soon as you finish it. But you may find, as I did, that it stays with you.
Ahhh, City And The Stars was my first-ever science fiction read and remains one of my fondest memories whereas Childhood's End was such a complete letdown of everything I came to expect from Clarke, I never wanted to read another Clarke again (they were read decades apart).Richard asked "Was it the rather overt attack on religion, the blatant 1950's style gender roles, thin characterizations or the brutal way he imagined our final evolution." to which I say, YES!!! (giggle) Okay, seriously? I don't even remember now. I'm 51. I read it (forcibly, in high school) at 16 or 17 and thought it was the single-worst piece of an excuse for writing I had seen in years. I remember vividly how I kept checking the cover because I kept thinking, This IS a Clarke book, right?. It just didn't measure up. At all.
Usually what I don't like about Clarke is how dry he is. The Rama books, forex, lost me after the first one. There just wasn't any action or meat on those descriptive bones. I don't like long descriptive passages (it's been the #1 complaint against my first book by my readers that I don't HAVE any long descriptive passages and instead, have long dialog-centered passages of action). I like it when things happen. I don't mind reading a narrated summary of events (Scalzi does that a lot and I enjoy the way he does it), so long as the long passage has events not just description. I mean, Clarke wasn't paid by the word Dickensian style, so what gives?
All right, Richard, at your urgings, I'll give Windup Girl a click to my TBR shelf but it'll be a while ;-)
-Friday
@phoenicianbooks
Just finished The Ice Owl. It is one of the Hugo nominees for best novella. I am trying gamely to finish all the required reading by July 31 to vote on the Hugos. The Ice Owl is a good story but not an award winner. Next will be another novella, Kiss Me Twice.
Book 1 of the Lost Fleet series. About halfway through. I think I like this Black Jack
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Karl wrote: "Book 1 of the Lost Fleet series. About halfway through. I think I like this Black Jack"Loved Black Jack as a character, battle scenes with time dilation are very cool and well conceived. enjoy :-)
I finished Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter yesterday. I really liked the first 2/3 but struggled through the end. I was really bored with that part.Now I'm reading I Suck at Girls. I thought his first book was hysterical. Good so far.
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I finished Childhood's End yesterday, and quite enjoyed it.
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it was a good book overall, and i enjoyed it as much as its predecessor. lots of great concepts to digest, and i'm still digging the basic idea behind the enemy threat of the Inhibitors. i also really liked reading about the Conjoiners, but then i'm a sucker for anything having to do with melding minds etc.
Reynolds still has his primary weakness: characterization. in the last book, his characters were one-dimensional and often Byronic or Apollonian figures with very little nuance or shades of gray. in this book, he is clearly trying harder. no one actually comes across as 'inhuman' as they did in the last book. unfortunately, i think his goals outsrip his talents (at least in this book; i presume he's improved in time). he spends a lot of time trying to make his characters three-dimensional (some of it works; some of it is, frankly, rather amateurish)... but then by the last quarter, it is almost like he gives up because he needs the characters to do certain things so that the plot can go a certain way... and then it's back to the same dire unreasonableness that all of his characters displayed in the first book. there was a last-minute decision by Captain Brannigan/the Ship Nostalgia for Infinity that was rather excruciatingly nonsensical.
ah well, can't win 'em all. the book is pretty successful in almost every other aspect. the goth appeal of the first novel is not as present, which makes it a bit less distinctive, but it more than makes up for that lack with a very involving and often tensely exciting narrative. besides the character meltdown i mentioned above for Brannigan, the idea of the transformed ship/captain was a source of endless fascination for me. and i also really liked the lead (Clavain) and a key supporting character (Felka) was a rather ingenious creation - and sympathetic too. the author did a particularly good job setting up the motivations & backstory for the novel's villain (Skade). watching her various permutations was a lot of fun.
i'm looking forward to the 3rd and last novel of the trilogy. Pattern Jugglers! the (presumable) return of messianic psychopath scientist Whatsisname. and more Conjoiners & Inhibitors!
mark wrote: "i finished Redemption Ark by alastair reynolds over the weekend. book 2 of his Revelation Space series (if that's what the series is even called).it was a good book overall, and i enjoyed it as m..."
Hi Mark. I read Revelation Space a number of years ago and enjoyed it, but can't remember anything else about it. I'd like to read Redemption Ark, do you think I need to reread Revelation Space first, or can I get away with going in cold?
Funny, I have the same recollection of really enjoying it and not being sure what it was about! House of Suns was different, though, still remember that clearly.
WRT to Reynolds's 'Inhibitor' books (that's how I think of them), they're worth reading but for me REVELATION SPACE was the most memorable and the only one I sought out for purchase after first getting them from the library. FWIW there's also CHASM CITY, which is a sort of "side street" story not fully connected to the Inhibitor narrative arc. I quite liked it, being a sucker for hard-boiled futuristic serie noir. My very favorite works by Reynolds are the short pieces ZIMA BLUE (that's the one with the cyborg artist, right?) and GALACTIC CENTER.
Very slowly reading this. Too much of my own writing to do. :)
What are you writing Julie? I'm also reading two books at the moment (BLood Siren by Michael Formichelli and A fire unto the Deep, but also trying to finalise my 3rd novel... Still, I think it helps to be reading SF when writing it, in moderation.
Barry wrote: "What are you writing Julie? I'm also reading two books at the moment (BLood Siren by Michael Formichelli and A fire unto the Deep, but also trying to finalise my 3rd novel... Still, I think it help..."I'm writing book two and three of my Lost Princess series. Lost Princess: The Journey Home
I love to read, the problem I found is that I was taking in all this information subconsciously and then writing something someone else already had. That's why I read in spurts like when I have writers block. :)
Congrats on your 3rd Novel! What's the name of the other two?
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instead of reading the whole thing over again, i would suggest reading a wikipedia synopsis and a bunch of GR reviews instead, and then read Redemption Ark.
mark wrote: "instead of reading the whole thing over again, i would suggest reading a wikipedia synopsis and a bunch of GR reviews instead, and then read Redemption Ark...."Cheers Mark, that's a good idea. I might just do that if I can ever get the time to get back to the series. Thanks.
I'm reading the Black Prism right now since I just got it on sale at Barnes and Nobles for about $6 in hardcover. I'm wanting to read this novel ever since I finished the Night Angel Trilogy last fall.
Julie wrote: "Barry wrote: "What are you writing Julie? I'm also reading two books at the moment (BLood Siren by Michael Formichelli and A fire unto the Deep, but also trying to finalise my 3rd novel... Still, I..."The Eden Paradox is book 1, Eden's Trial is the sequel, and now on book 3. They're on Amazon mainly, both doing okay, one selling in the hundreds, the other made it into 4 figures. Would have been better if the deal with Harper Collins hadn't gone South, LOL. Good luck with yours, and you're right about getting subconsciously influenced when you are reading a lot and writing a lot.
Barry
www.barrykirwan.com
I am currently reading Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, Ill Wind by Kevin J. Anderson and Into the Storm by Taylor Anderson.Almost 1600 pages in all and so brought down my target this year from 100 books to 80 which was 125 originally. :( (Seriously, what's the problem with the modern authors nowadays? Do they always have to write a book with more than 500 pages?)
"Leviathan Wakes" is a good space opera having police procedure of Science Fiction works.
I would advise to read "Ill Wind" only if there is more free time on your hands. The book's premise is one of the best actually (please follow the link above) but sadly the execution is not very good.
"Into the Storm" is an alternate world story in which our protagonist stumbles into a world where dinosaurs survived and the world as we know does not exist. I am not even halfway through it so it would be too soon to give an opinion but so far, so good.
Currently reading and very much impressed by Silently and Very Fast by Katherynne M. Valente. The prose makes me think of China Miéville and Ted Chiang which is pretty elite company.
Finished David Brin's Existence. Pretty disappointing. 500+ pages but very dense text so it was longer than a normal 500 page novel. Full of unresolved threads, uninteresting characters, characters that are built up and then dropped completely. In the next to last section he built my expectations up that it was leading to something good if not great but then that fizzled out too. Oh well, on to The Long Earth.
Thats a shame, I used to love Brin but have not read this one. We'll done for getting through it and giving us feedback.
Barry wrote: "Thats a shame, I used to love Brin but have not read this one. We'll done for getting through it and giving us feedback."Barry, same here. I loved the Uplift series and Kiln People and was looking forward to his return to fiction with this one. From what I've read on other reviews, my past experience with his blog and the notes in Existence, I think he took his blog topics plus several unrelated short stories and made a novel out of it. Which wouldn't have been a bad thing as long as it had been done better.
Oh well, hopefully he will get back on form soon :-)
I just got done Reading a Scanner Darkly. Loved the book, he described the characters well, especially Barris but I wanted a better ending. Now I have to decided which book to read next.
I'm reading the last two books in the Hunger Games Trilogy.
Finished The Long Earth last night. I enjoyed it but don't go into it expecting a defined ending. Hopefully they'll turn the next one around quickly.
The Golden Transcendence (Golden Age #3)- John C WrightCloud Atlas- David Mitchell
Caliphate- Tom Kratman
Enders Game(Enders #1)- Orson Scott Card
Sundiver(Uplift #1)- David Brin
I'm listening to Time Enough for Love by R A Heinlein. I have struggled with the typical Heinlein social preaching elements but the actual stories of Lazarus Longs long life are very entertaining and I have been extending my listening periods during those. Also reading Forever Free by John Scalzi after thoroughly enjoying The Forever War. Kinda waiting for this one to get going, am a third in and its a bit slow so far.
I'm on page 270. Some things about it I really love, some other things about it are kind of annoying. Mostly my problem with it is I feel the characters are kind of stupid and one-dimensional. But I really am interested in the plot and seeing where it all leads to.
I recently finished Ender's Shadow. I love the Ender Saga and plan on reading the entire series. Today I finished My Life As a White Trash Zombie. Not only is it a really fun book but the lead character Angel is so well written. I plan on reading the next in that series, Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues, too.I'm currently reading The Iliad and am listening to Anansi Boys.
Finished Prophets which turned out to be better than I thought it'd be. Started Caliban's War and enjoying it a lot.
Reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and also reading 1984 by Orwell
Finished Caliban's War. Easily one of the best books this year. I'm hoping they decide to extend it beyond a trilogy (the next book would be the last)
Beezlebug wrote: "Finished Caliban's War. Easily one of the best books this year. I'm hoping they decide to extend it beyond a trilogy (the next book would be the last)"I'm glad to hear it. I enjoyed the first one and was hoping the quality would continue.
Banner wrote: "Beezlebug wrote: "Finished Caliban's War. Easily one of the best books this year. I'm hoping they decide to extend it beyond a trilogy (the next book would be the last)"I'm glad to hear it. I enj..."
You won't be disappointed. Did you know there was a prequel novella? I ran across it on here when I accidentally clicked on the author(s). The Butcher of Anderson Station: A Story of The Expanse I'll have to read it too.
Really enjoying Retribution Falls. I don't know what took me so long to pick this up but I'm glad I did.
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Ok I downloaded the Kindle sample of Stand on Zanzibar. Not sure what's going on with this. There are just bits of information like listening to a radio and changing channels ever couple of minutes. Does the style ever shift to a narrative?
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I started Childhood's Endthis morning..."
Childhood's End is still one of my favourites. I hadn't read it for what must be over 20 years, but still had power to move me, and sometimes in surprisingly new places compared to my younger self.
Considering it was written in 1954 I hope you can enjoy it as much as I did reading it now.
Encouraging to hear you liked the Windup Girl, I think I'm going to like it as well from what I've read so far.