So let's get on with it, eh? 😀
Just Finished
"I've been focusing on the books of Margaret Millar this month as I had four unread ones on my bookshelf. I've enjoyed each book I've read, Millar is a wonderful mystery writer and story-teller. The Fiend, published in 1964, is another excellent example of her writing skill. (NB. The title is at the same time somewhat misleading and also perfect)
Jessie is a 9-year old girl living in San Modesto CA. We see her playing in the park with her best friend Mary Martha. Charles Gowen sits in his car watching them. Jessie burns her hands playing on the monkey bars and the playground monitor sends them home. What do we learn about them and others in the next pages? Charles Gowen lives with his brother Ben and was once in trouble for something involving young girl(s). Mary Martha lives with her mother, who is separated from her husband, Sheridan, and fears that he is stalking them. She sees Charles's green car and fears that it is Sheridan. Jessie lives down the road with her parents, the Brants. They seem a normal family. Their neighbors, the Harringtons, are childless and Victoria spends an inordinate time and money on Jessie, to the chagrin of Jessie's mom and of Victoria's dad.
Charles thinks Jessie lives in Mary Martha's house and he sends an anonymous letter to Mary's mom Kate Oakley, advising her to take better care of her daughter, that the girl is reckless and might get hurt. This starts a chain of events and actions that make for a fascinating story. We get to delve into the lives of this group of people and learn their problems and weaknesses. When the unthinkable happens (I'll let you find out for yourself), their lives will be placed under a microscopic examination and I think you'll be surprised at the results.
As always, strong story-telling, great, fascinating, fully developed characters. It wasn't perfect and maybe not as complete as others of her stories, but still an entertaining, tense story. (4 stars)"
Currently Reading
"At 8.30pm on the evening of October 13th, Robert Osborne left his ranch house to look for his dog. When he failed to return by 9.30pm, his wife roused the foreman of the ranch and a search was organised. It was the first of many searches covering a period of many months and an area of hundreds of square miles.
Evidence proved beyond all reasonable doubt that Robert Osborne was killed by a band of itinerant Mexican laborers - but the solution to the mystery was not quite so straightforward..."
New Books
"Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains.
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world — and a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now."
"History happens all around you. And, occasionally, to you.
‘I could have been a bomb-disposal expert, or a volunteer for the Mars mission, or a firefighter, something safe and sensible. But, no, I had to be an historian.’
It began well. A successful assignment to 17th century Cambridge to meet Isaac Newton, and another to witness the historic events at The Gates of Grief. So far so good.
But then came the long-awaited jump to the Trojan War that changed everything. And for Max, nothing will ever be the same again.
With the bloody Battle of Agincourt playing out around her, Max risks everything on one last desperate gamble to save a life – and learns the true meaning of a second chance."
"This was to be melodrama. All the ingredients were there. There was Dominick Hadden, America's leading actor, and all his theatrical family - his beautiful sister, Terreta, film-star idol of millions; his dim brother, Tony; his talented daughter, Serena; and finally his tall half-sister, Catherine Hadden, Cinderella of the family, who ran the Victorian enormity which was home to all of them.
In this bizarre stone setting the Haddens knew how to come in cattily on a cue, pump passion into a scene, or exit effectively through the massive doors. You forgive the scepticism of Bill Farland, private detective, when Catherine came to him with her hints of poison and violence; you could understand her own doubts. And you will understand the horror when suddenly murder is real and bloody with the grease-paint off."
The Science Fiction Novel - Newbies Part 2
I looked at four newbies (to me) in a previous post on this topic (See this link). I became interested in trying their books when I did a series of posts on award winning authors a couple of years ago. This is my second list of 4 new authors.
 |
| Lois McMaster Bujold |
"Discharged from the Barrarayan academy after flunking the physical, a discouraged Miles Vorkosigan takes possession of a jumpship and becomes the leader of a mercenary force that expands to a fleet of treasonous proportions."
 |
| Joe Haldeman |
"The Peace and War Omnibus is a science fiction series that contains three books, The Forever War (1974), Forever Peace (1997) and Forever Free (1999) by Joe Haldeman. The Forever War and Forever Peace are basically sequels and Forever Free is described as 'a kind of sequel, though, examining some of The Forever War's problems from an angle that didn't exist twenty years ago (when The Forever War came out)."
The first two books follow the same main character, William Mandela, a space soldier who spends the first book, training in space and then fighting an unknown alien race, the Taurons. Throughout this book, he travels back to Earth, arriving hundreds of years in the future and discovering the great changes that took place while he was gone. He goes back to war a few times, regularly with the woman who will become his wife, trying to deal with life as a soldier and with a changing earth's values and lives. It's an interesting story, interesting concepts on living and fighting in space. (It's kind of a Battle Cry or Vietnam War, but set in space. (3.5 stars)
The second book, Forever Free, finds Mandela and his wife. Marygay, and children, now living on the planet Middlefinger, peopled with many other veterans, people of the new human species, 'Man' (basically a combined mind) and Taurons. They chose to live on Middlefinger (MF) because life on Earth was now too strange. However they now feel a desire to leave MF, by traveling in space, out 20 years (their time, but many years more in MF time) and returning to see what changes the future has wrought. Problems happen, forcing them to return to MF, and discovering a fantastic disaster has occurred. They then head to Earth. The story becomes an interesting discussion about whether there is a God, and if so, trying to answer the question, why is he treating us in such a shitty manner. (3.5 stars)
Forever Peace is set on Earth. The Alliance (the US and 'allies') are at war with enemies in Central, South America and Africa. They fight with 'soldier boys' an interesting concept, basically machine robots controlled by soldiers who 'jack' into the machines and fight while remaining in cells back at home base. Julian, a 'soldier boy mechanic' also teaches physics at university in Dallas. A series of events turn his life and those of his friends head over heels. They work on the Jupiter Project, an attempt to create a super collider on Jupiter's moons so they can test their theories on the Big Bang Theory. As they discover the dangers that might result from this test, they must begin a race against time, both to stop the wars on Earth and also the Jupiter Project itself, while being chased and threatened by enemies on Earth, a fanatic religious organization, The Hand of God. (4 stars)
All three stories are quite interesting. The concepts explored make you think. While the stories move slowly at times, as you get into them, they draw you in and hold your interest. Definitely worth the effort to keep with the books. I think that Forever Peace was my favorite, especially the last half (tense and action-filled) and it could safely be read on its own. The other stories should be read together; the second, Forever Peace is the best of the two but the first provides great background leading into it. Glad I tried them. (4 stars)"
 |
| John Scalzi |
"John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army.
The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-- and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.
Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.
John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine--and what he will become is far stranger."
"The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF's toughest operations. They’re young, they’re fast and strong, and they’re totally without normal human qualms.
The universe is a dangerous place for humanity—and it's about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion into space. Their linchpin: the turncoat military scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDF’s biggest military secrets. To prevail, the CDF must find out why Boutin did what he did.
Jared Dirac is the only human who can provide answers -- a superhuman hybrid, created from Boutin's DNA, Jared’s brain should be able to access Boutin's electronic memories. But when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given to the Ghost Brigades.
At first, Jared is a perfect soldier, but as Boutin’s memories slowly surface, Jared begins to intuit the reason’s for Boutin’s betrayal. As Jared desperately hunts for his "father," he must also come to grips with his own choices. Time is running out: The alliance is preparing its offensive, and some of them plan worse things than humanity’s mere military defeat…"
 |
| Vernor Vinge |
"Robert Gu is a recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties through a cure developed during the years of his near-fatal decline, he discovers that the world has changed and so has his place in it. He was a world-renowned poet. Now he is seventy-five years old, though by a medical miracle he looks much younger, and he’s starting over, for the first time unsure of his poetic gifts. Living with his son’s family, he has no choice but to learn how to cope with a new information age in which the virtual and the real are a seamless continuum, layers of reality built on digital views seen by a single person or millions, depending on your choice. But the consensus reality of the digital world is available only if, like his thirteen-year-old granddaughter Miri, you know how to wear your wireless access—through nodes designed into smart clothes—and to see the digital context—through smart contact lenses.
With knowledge comes risk. When Robert begins to re-train at Fairmont High, learning with other older people what is second nature to Miri and other teens at school, he unwittingly becomes part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to use technology as a tool for world domination.
In a world where every computer chip has Homeland Security built-in, this conspiracy is something that baffles even the most sophisticated security analysts, including Robert’s son and daughter-in law, two top people in the U.S. military. And even Miri, in her attempts to protect her grandfather, may be entangled in the plot.
As Robert becomes more deeply involved in conspiracy, he is shocked to learn of a radical change planned for the UCSD Geisel Library; all the books there, and worldwide, would cease to physically exist. He and his fellow re-trainees feel compelled to join protests against the change. With forces around the world converging on San Diego, both the conspiracy and the protest climax in a spectacular moment as unique and satisfying as it is unexpected."
So there you go, a busy post this time. Enjoy the rest of your week!
No comments:
Post a Comment