Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

This is actually an incomplete list, as I've not been tracking the re-reads (which have included a pile of Jennifer Crusie and Daniel Keys Moran's Continuing Time novels), nor the books borrowed and read whilst staying at friends - saffronrose's book room is especially good!)

So I'm go for another year where I've beaten the 50 book challenge with several months still on the clock...

Asprin, Robert	Myth-nomers and Im-pervections
Anon.	Star Trek Fotonovels: The Trouble with Tribbles
Various	Turn the Other Chick
Rennison, Nick	100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels
Lovegrove, James	Binary: "Leningrad Nights", "How the Other Half Lives"
Rowling, J. K.	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Selden, George	The Cricket In Times Square
Duane, Diane	Wizards at War
Mann, George	The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction 2007
Gilliam, Richard	Confederacy of the Dead
Davidson, MaryJanice	Undead and Unpopular
Rowland, Laura Joh	The Dragon King's Palace
Hiaasen, Carl	Native Tongue
Scalzi, John	The Ghost Brigades
Newman, Kim	The Man from the Diogenes Club
Baker, Kage	The Children of the Company
Baker, Kage	In the Garden of Iden: A Novel of the Company
Davidson, MaryJanice	Drop Dead, Gorgeous!
Baker, Kage	Rude Mechanicals
Barnes, John	The Armies of Memory
Davidson, MaryJanice	Hello, Gorgeous!
McDevitt, Jack	Seeker
Williams, Sean	Saturn Returns
Varley, John	Red Lightning
Fowler, Christopher	The Water Room
Williams, Sean	Geodesica: Descent
Birmingham, John	Designated Targets
Rowland, Laura Joh	The Perfumed Sleeve
Fforde, Jasper	The Big Over Easy
Jansson, Tove	Moomin: Book One
Birmingham, John	Weapons of Choice
Coupland, Douglas	All Families Are Psychotic
Gould, Stephen	Reflex
Modesitt, L. E.	The Green Progression
Talbot, Bryan	Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment
McCloud, Scott	Zot! Book 3
McCloud, Scott	Zot! Book 2
McCloud, Scott	Zot: Book 1
Niven, Larry	The Mote in God's Eye
Baker, Kage	The Graveyard Game
Simmons, Dan	Olympos
Simmons, Dan	Hard as Nails
Hiaasen, Carl	Skinny Dip
Fowler, Christopher	Ten Second Staircase
Green, Simon R.	Haven of Lost Souls
Powers, Tim	Drawing of the Dark
Ward, James M.	Midshipwizard Halcyon Blithe
Stross, Charles	Glasshouse
Powers, Tim	Last Call
Andrews, Donna	Delete All Suspects
Nesbit, Edith	Book of Dragons
Zahn, Timothy	Night Train to Rigel
Roberts, Adam	Doctor Whom
Weber, David	Bolo!
Bear, Elizabeth	Blood and Iron: A Novel of the Promethean Age
Williams, Sean	The Devoured Earth
Pratchett, Terry	Thud!
Baker, Kage	Mendoza in Hollywood

All links are to LibraryThing.

I've just finished reading a couple of Sean Williams' recent novels, Geodesica: Descent (written with Shane Dix) and the first part of his new Astropolis trilogy Saturn Returns. Both of the books were, as always from Williams, excellent reads. There's an interesting underlying theme to Williams' SF, which I can only describe as an investigation into the post-human condition, wrapped up in the shape of convincing, intelligent post-human space opera. That's a rare thing in SF, where a strand of small "c" conservative humanism often delivers is to static distant futures where nothing is truly different from today (Jack McDevitt's Seeker is a prime example of this - an excellent book and a powerful story of misguided idealism that could easily be set here and now, not thousands of years in the future).

Take the Geodesica books as an example. Most of the viewpoint characters are significantly modified from the human norm - even to the point of being completely alien. They respond to situations in ways we wouldn't, and make choices that we would never consider. As the story evolves a key baseline human (if you can call her that) makes choices to change herself, and ends up becoming something very much of the other. Meanwhile, an engineered guardian discovers how to manipulate hardcoded drives to his own advantage, while another posthuman explores the reasons for his choice in stepping away from the baseline. There's a Darwinian drive to the next in Williams' universes that pushes both the story and the world to change and grow. His worlds may be empty of the alien, but the diversity of his human cultures gives us much that is peculiar.

Astropolis is an ambitious work. Put aside the character who speaks in Numan lyrics, and you find yourself in a far future, millenia down the line. This is an old future that's run down and torn apart, where the transcendent post humans that guided a galaxy-spanning humanity (in all its modified forms) have been murdered. A near-baseline human main character is resurrected on the edge of the galaxy, and heads inward to find out just why he was killed and why. In a mix of space opera and Japanese samurai film he meets up with old compatriots only to discover that a different version of himself has betrayed them all, in different ways - and may be involved with the event that killed the transcendents. Williams has also thrown away the convenience of FTL, leaving us with a universe where events take millenia to unfold, and characters can dial their subjective clock rates up and down. Overclocking, modding - this is a crisply gothic world where the LAN party culture would be at home...

Both novels are excellent reads, that take the wide screen baroque of space opera and give us something that is unique and different, worlds that explore what it means to be human while looking through the eyes of our unfamiliar children.

A good trip for reading, which was surprising considering all the driving I did (around about 1500 miles), and all the meetings we had at both CES and in Silicon Valley...

Transcendent. Stephen Baxter
The final volume of the Destiny's Children sequence wraps up the story in a loop of time. Baxter links the bottlenecked near-future of a warming-threatened world with the far-distant tomorrow of the Commonwealth, a human-dominated galaxy where the Xeelee wars are long over, and a nascent transcendent overmind struggles to break through its own bottleneck. But is sorrow and redemption enough to build a new future? Baxter mixes the stories of two societies pondering their roads to their separate futures, and finds a road for today and tomorrow to finally collaborate. A fine end to a space opera that mixes philosophy and world-shattering revelations.

Carnival. Elizabeth Bear
One correspondence I've yet to see mentioned in reviews of Carnival is Ursula Le Guin. There are echoes of The Left Hand Of Darkness all through this story, a dark tale that explores gender issues and revolutionary politics through a diplomatic visit to a matriarchal world. A fragmented diaspora (the result of a machine-driven winnowing of humanity) has left a depopulated, expansionist Earth struggling to control its many colony worlds. Diplomatic methods conceal subversion and military actions, and two such diplomats arrive on New Amazonia to return stolen art. Separated many years ago, the two men were lovers, and their reunion reveals their true allegiances - and at the same time brings political differences on New Amazonia to a head. Bear juggles plots and counterplots in a Machiavellian skein of shifting alliances, tossing in a long awaited first contact to sweeten the brew. An excellent read, with compelling characters and a story that grabs the reader on page one and doesn't let go...

The Resurrected Man. Sean Williams
It's not every SF mystery that starts with a quote from Daniel Dennet's introduction to The Mind's I, a collection of the best readings on AI and intelligence. However, Dennet's musings on the philosophical ramifications of a duplicating teleportation device provide the backbone of Williams' story. What does it mean when the killer may be a duplicate of the detective, and when his dismembered and tortured victims are still very much alive? The search for the Twinmaker killer takes us from orbital towers to a future Australia, exploring the society that results from cheap and easy teleportation, and showing what such a tool could mean to a serial killer freed to indulge his fantasies. A fascinating, compelling read, this is a book that breaks new ground and sets the scene for the rest of the author's career.

The Emerald Sea. John Ringo
Oh dear. I should have stopped reading this at the point at which the dragon-carrier crew managed to reinvent fifty years of carrier operations lessons in one afternoon. Post the fall of a post-scarcity civilisation a rag tag bag of re-enactors battles a bad guy armed with people-changing machines fallen straight out of a Jack L. Chalker novel. The result? A mediocre piece of military SF that fails to engage or entertain. The idea was good - a dragon carrier defending merpeople from the bad guy's demon rays (and a kraken) - but even the set-pieces - dragons fighting orca, the merpeople's sea cave nursery - seemed to be there as plot coupons rather than as part of the story. A pity, as Ringo's earlier Posleen war stories had shown some promise.

The Frost-Haired Vixen. John Zakour
The latest Zach Johnson PI pastiche is enjoyable fluff, just like the rest of the series. Zakour's humour is an easy ride, and Zach's trials and tribulations push our hero to a solution. This time, Zach is sent to the North Pole to solve the murder of two elves (yes Virginia, in New Frisco there is a Santana Clausa...). Mutant geeks, super-powers, killer robots and obsequious elves litter the plot, while Zakour scatters enough clues to help the reader work out whodunnit just as Zach finds himself at the wrong end of a laser... An enjoyable light read.

Pushing Ice. Alastair Reynolds
Pushing Ice is Reynolds take on Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. One of Saturn's moons turns out to to be an alien spacecraft - and it's leaving the solar system at speed. Only one ship can explore the moon before it leaves the system, and it's an ice miner that really should be heading home. Things are complicated by corporate politics, a high-speed Chinese mission, the possibility that there's not enough fuel to get home, and the alien vessel/moon's mysterious propulsion scheme. Reynolds manages to deliver his own take on the space opera "big dumb object" trope, exploring the human response to the alien, and the effects of politics and survival on friendship and working relationships. It's a story that mixes the wide screen with the human scale - to great effect. Reynolds' best book to date.

The postman woke me this morning with a delivery from Galaxy Bookshop. Yes, it was my much anticipated copy of Sean Williams' The Devoured Earth (along with The Resurrected Man). I can now happily finish The Hanging Mountains without having to travel to the southern hemisphere to track down the final volume of The Books Of The Cataclysm. Now all I need is a copy of Metal Fatigue...

Meanwhile marypcb has introduced me to Kerry Greenwood's Corrina Chapman mysteries, which are proving most enjoyable. Corrina is a baker living in a Melbourne apartment block shaped (and named) after a Roman insula. A mixed bag of neighbours lead to interesting mysteries, and a lot of cooking. Side references to Buffy, Babylon 5, and Blakes 7 slash (along with touches of Dorothy L. Sayers) add to the enjoyment. Perhaps not as geeky as Donna Andrews' Meg Langslow books, but definitely a charming and an engaging read.

Recommended so far: Heavenly Pleasures (sabotage at a chocolate shop and the collapse of the Megatherium trust) and Devil's Food (mad monks, a missing father, and an incompetent herbalist).

I suspect I will be starting on Greenwood's other series, the Phryne Fisher books (mysteries set in a 1920's Melbourne) soon - as marypcb is reading chunks of them out to me with similar relish to her discovery of Jennifer Cruisie...

I've been reading a lot of Walter Jon Williams recently, going back to his early novels to trace my way through his writing from the lost colony epic (with a twist in the tale) of Ambassador of Progress to the dark space opera of Dread Empire's Fall.

Most of Williams' writing is tightly focussed on one or two characters - Cowboy and Sarah in Hardwired, Ubu Roy and Beautiful Maria in Angel Station, Drake Majistraal in the Divertimenti. It's a pattern that continues on until we get to his later works, where the screen opens out, and more characters take the stage, owning more of the story. But there was a discontinuity in my reading, a rift between the structures of Metropolitan and The Praxis.

The answer had been sat on my to-be-read bookcase for nearly seven years.

It's in 1999's The Rift where we see Willliams' take his first steps onto a new path, using the classic wide angle of a disaster novel, with a rebounding, spiralling cast of victims and survivors. We get the usual Williams' duality in the main viewpoint voices, two characters trying to survive in a world that's suddenly become hostile, as a boy with a telescope joins forces with an unemployed engineer struggling to find his estranged family. Meanwhile the world falls apart, ripped into shreds by a massive earthquake under the Mississippi valley, the New Madrid fault shrugging itself after nearly two centuries of sleep.

Other storylines ebb and flow in the aftershocks, a stock trader who loses everything, a klansman who rediscovers the concentration camp, an apocalyptic preacher suddenly delivered the answer to his prayers, and a military engineer trying to put it all back together again. Everything spirals round, an eddy in the wild river, while Williams moves to explore the real rift - man's inability to see the other as truly human.

There's a sense of experimentation here, as Williams steps outside his usual genre, and his usual structures, and tries to do something different. Perhaps it's even freedom - an opening out from tight structures and reader expectations. Whatever it is, it's a brave effort, and a powerful novel that sets the scene for a new direction in Williams' career. Ignore the trappings of the airport disaster novel and see it for what it is: a writer experimenting and delighting in the results of his experiments.

Perhaps the world of SF should be grateful that it wasn't a huge hit, as the lessons learnt went to help with the construction of one of the more considered of the recent re-workings of space opera.

Recommended, for more than just the Walter Jon Williams completists out there.

One thing about spending a couple of days ill in bed, you get plenty of time to read stuff, in this case another six books (with a couple more well under way)...

As usual, this is an export from Readerware, with my usual star rating - from * (thrown at the wall), to ***** (why haven't you read this one yet?).

( Recent virally induced readings )

Books read so far this year (not counting books borrowed from marypcb and saffronrose or technical books read for work), using an export of everything entered from 01 January 2006 from my Readerware database (it's older than my Librarything, but kept up to date in parallel).

I've used my usual star rating - from * (thrown at the wall), to ***** (why haven't you read this one yet?).

( Table behind the cut, but I'm ahead of the 50 book challenge... )

Taken from various folk (including gummitch and peake), and cut due to length: a list of award winning SF and fantasy, with the volumes I've read in bold.

( The Reading List )

Several of the unreads are on my to-be-read bookcase...

Interesting to note that things thin out a bit when we get to the end of the list. Also to note that the books get bigger...

(It took me a while to remember that "...and call me Conrad" was an alternate title for "This Immortal")

Read:

Vernor Vinge Rainbows End.
This is the novel length follow up to the Hugo-winning "Fast Times At Fairmont High", which expands on the short Vinge had published in IEEE Spectrum a couple of years ago. I suspect that this is set to be among the best SF novels of 2006. Vinge uses his home city of San Diego as the background for a meditation on continuing education, life-long learning, and identity. A fascinating book that touches on recurring themes in many of Vinge's work. If you know about my research projects of old (which have remained continuing interests), then you'll not be surprised that I loved a book that expanded on so many of them. There's a lot in it about ubiquitous networks, reputation management, context, digital collaboration, co-presence, affinity hierarchies, and the meaning of identity in a highly networked world - one major character's identity is being spoofed three ways. And it's all wrapped up a cracking SF story.

Charles Stross The Family Trade and The Hidden Family.
Charlie takes on the alternate worlds/alternate history pack with a story that throws a business journalist into a world of feuding families, mercantile economics, and intellectual property trade. Two books that are best thought of as one in two parts. Miriam is a sparky heroine, with a unique take on the opportunities and perils of suddenly finding herself part of a family of world-walking merchant adventurers. An interesting spin on an old theme. The rest of the series will be worth watching.

Jennifer Cruisie Charlie All Night.
An early Cruisie book, this is one of her Riverside books (but set in another town). A radio producer finds herself with an annoying new presenter to train, while her ex-lover tries to make it on his own. The story takes in small town corruption, blackmail and a touch of medical marijuana. A fun, quick read, like all of Cruisie's books.

Reading:
C. J. Cherryh Cloud's Rider.
Neal Stephenson The System Of The World.