Science Fiction

A few years ago, in the spring, I started keeping a log of the books I read, and I ended up posting it when it hit a year's worth of books, and I did it again a year later. This year I decided to align my log with the calendar year to make it easier for me to go through, so there's some overlap with my last post.

I try not to divulge anything that isn't printed on the dust jacket or that happens after the first chapter.

We Are Legion (Bobiverse book 1), Taylor

• A contemporary programmer dies in an accident and is revived as a digital image running on a computer 100+ years later. The story follows him and copies of him on various adventures. Heavy stuff happens, but it's a fun, lighthearted book. Not especially deep, and it suffers a bit from following so many storylines, with an end that feels abrupt. That's possibly just to set up the sequels though.

Waking Gods, Neuvel

• Sequel to Sleeping Giants (The Themis Files series). A bunch of the same kind of giant robot shows up on earth and the team has to figure out what to do. If you liked the first, you'll probably like the second, but it's shorter on the wonder of discovery and longer on the solving of a global problem.

Only Human, Neuvel

• Third in The Themis Files series (potentially the last). Rose, Vincent, the general, and Eva spend 9+ years on the planet where the giants were created, and get caught up in turmoil there before returning to turmoil on earth. Pretty satisfying conclusion, the whole series is enjoyable.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, Paoloni

• Kira, a xenobiologist in 2257, accidentally uncovers and gets merged with an ancient alien entity. An alien race starts attacking human settlements in the galaxy and Kira ends up in the middle of everything. There's an awful lot going on in this book, enough for multiple books - it manages to be both epic and fast paced. Very engrossing, I really enjoyed it.

Some Desperate Glory, Tesh

• A seventeen year old girl, the best of those trained since birth to be obiedient soldiers protecting the dregs of humanity fifty, years after the earth is destroyed in an alien war, leaves her assignment to save her brother from a suicide mission. Along the way she learns that things are not what she had been taught to believe. Good story, with an interesting development of the main character.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein

• A revolution is taking place on Luna (the moon), which is used as a penal colony by earth and ruled by an earth agency to ensure cheap labor and food shipments. The revolution is helped by a sentient computer that runs almost everything on Luna. Lots of political commentary. Published in 1966, there are lots of liberal ideals for its time, but it's also sprinkled with racial and gender stereotypes of the time. Great story.

Living Next Door to the God of Love, Robson

• I write these blurbs so as to avoid spoilers, but I hadn't read the first book when I wrote the following and now that I have I realize even the most basic description of the second book will contain spoilers for the first book. Skip this one if you haven't read Natural History.

• A loose sequel to Natural History, which I haven't read, taking place some thirty years later. Humans have encountered “Stuff," alien technology that is able to create whole worlds based on desires, and to reshape people themselves. They also encounter Unity, the alien sentience that can absorb living things that are then added to it and live on within it. In this story, several characters are trying to understand who they really are and how they're shaped by their world. That includes Jalaeka, who isn't human, but isn't quite Unity either. This is an oddly wonderful book that took me a bit by surprise somehow. I will for sure go back and read the first novel.

Made Things, Tchaikovsky

• A novella, and the first fantasy story I've read by Thcaikovsky, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Set in a place where a few people are Magelords that have a lot of magic, many people have a little magic, and some have none. A young orphan girl with a little magic and a knack for making puppets scrapes by with petty theft and the help of a couple tiny living dolls. A fun, quick read.

The Book of Koli, Carey

• Set hundreds of years after global ecological disasters and wars in the mid-21st century obliterated most of humanity. The remnants are clustered in small, scattered villages, scraping by with the help of the bits of technology that have survived and still function and are treated almost religiously. Koli is a teenager from one such village who makes some decisions for love and for status that prove to be very good and very bad.

Natural History, Robson

• A few hundred years in the future, the variety of the people of earth include the Forged, whose bodies (and to some extent, minds) were developed for specific purposes, including as ships. There's somewhat of a caste system, with the Forged lower down. A Forged exploration vessel/person encounters alien technology and an uninhabited alien world in deep space, and hopes to use both the technology and the world to help the Forged create a new home. I like the second book better, but read this one first if you intend to read Living Next Door to the God of Love.

Planetfall, Newman

• Suh is a woman who awakens from a coma with the coordinates for a planet in her head that she's certain are god calling her to go there. She convinces 1000 people to go with her, where they indeed find an alien structure they call the City of God. The story mainly takes place 20 years later, after Suh's death, and is told from the perspective of Ren, a woman who is a genius engineer, and who was in love with Suh. Ren has secrets and issues, and so do others. Very well worth reading, though the ending seems somehow slapped on.

Iron Council, Mieville

• Third in the Perdido Street Station series. Like the others, set in a sort of Victorian steampunk world with magic and a number of alien races. This one focuses on rebel factions fighting against the imperialist, militant leadership of the city. The story is told from three different viewpoints: Judah Low, who learns to animate lifeless materials into golems, and who becomes entwined with the people of a steam train, forging across the continent; Cutter, a friend and sometimes lover of Judah, trying to find him and protect him from the government militia; and Ori, who wants to fight against the government, but feels the various factions aren't doing enough. Like the first two in the series, this is an excellently written and crafted story/world, but also like them it's far from uplifting. There were times I picked up the book to escape the anxiety induced by reading the news, only to find myself more anxious by the story.

The Uplift War, Brin

• Third in the Uplift series, taking place about the same time as the prior book, Startide Rising. Humans have been granted lease to Garth, a world that was nearly destroyed fifty thousand years earlier, when a recently uplifted race started wiping out all life on the planet, starting with the largest, before they were stopped. The humans and their uplifted chimp clients/partners are working to restore ecological balance. With a number of galactic races pursuing the dolphin ship Streaker of the prior novel, an Avian race decides to capture and hold Garth hostage to get the humans to capitulate. Most of the humans are rounded up, and the remaining chimps on Garth have to defend their world against the much more powerful aliens, with a little help from a few humans and friendly aliens. This is a really great book, heartily recommended.

**Ammonite, Griffith **

• A planet has been discovered that has the remnants of a ship that landed there a couple hundred years prior. The powerful earth-based corporation that controls many things and is just called The Company had previously sent a ship of military and teachers down, but a virus killed all of the men and some of the women, so the remnants are quarantined. Into this, an anthropologist goes down, being paid to test a new vaccine, but personally wanting to study the completely female culture, and find out how they've continued to have kids for 200 years. I really enjoyed this book. It's interesting that I didn't find myself thinking about gender roles at all in a book where every character is female. I didn't think of it as a lesbian novel, even though there are love stories within it. It's just a story about cultures and people, some finding their way in new situations.

The Ministry for the Future, Stanley Robinson

• Starting about current day and moving forward, it's the story of the world on the heading towards complete ecological disaster, and efforts of a newly-created international ministry to reverse the problems. This is an unusually told story. Much of it is told third person from the perspective of Mary, the head of the ministry, and Frank, a survivor of a devastating heat wave that kills everyone in his town but him, which radicalizes him. But interleaving their chapters are various first person accounts from people who are never named and generally never reappear. For instance, one chapter is from the perspective of a woman kayaking the LA basin, helping to rescue people after an unprecedented flood. We never get her name nor hear more of her story, just that event. There's something odd about these one-off chapters being first person, which makes them seem more intimate, while the recurring characters are third person and less intimate. There's a lot of hard science here, mostly on ecological issues and geo engineering, and I kept feeling like it's an important book, but it also felt strangely unemotional, even when characters were experiencing traumatic events.

Six Wakes, Lafferty

• A generation starship with 2500 stored human cargo is on a 400 year journey, crewed by six clones. They are slated to live consecutive lives, being put into new bodies when one dies, until their destination is reached. They do this to get new starts, because each is a criminal, convicted of past crimes over their prior couple hundred years. The story begins as the six all become conscious in newly cloned bodies, while the murdered corpses of their prior bodies float around them, and they have no memories since the ship set sail. This is a murder mystery and a psychological thriller. It's entertaining and kept me turning the pages, though some of the medical technology seems strangely primitive given some of the advanced tech.

Blood Music, Bear

• A brilliant but reckless scientist creates intelligent cells and ends up injecting himself with them to sneak them out of the lab where he works. It doesn't go as planned. Written in 1985, I originally read it a few years later, and it's stuck with me since. It definitely gets weirder than I had expected when I first started it, but it's wonderfully imaginative - managing to be both apocalyptic and hopeful. Great book.

Autonomous, Newitz

• Set in the mid 2100s, human equivalent robots, and actual humans, can be owned as property. A newly activated military bot working for the Intellectual Property Coalition (IPC) and its human partner are sent to stop a woman who reverse engineers popular drugs and makes them available for cheap on the black market. She has learned that a popular drug that she's been selling was illegally designed to be highly addictive, and it's killing people. Interesting story, but I didn't find it especially engrossing (full disclosure: possibly because of distractions in my personal life). Some of the characters seemed a little superficially drawn, and there's a romance between a human and a bot that I think we're supposed to find romantic but to me just seemed creepy. Still, lots of interesting ideas, and there's a lot of commentary on property and the patent system.

Embassytown, Mieville

• On the planet Arieka, the native alien race speaks a language (only called Language) that requires two voices with one mind to speak it. They are incapable of understanding anything else - in fact, they don't recognize anything else as even being language. A city of humans lives adjacent to one of their cities, and the humans have created specially trained and augmented twins, called Ambassadors, who are capable of speaking Language, and have negotiated important trade with the native population. Now a new Ambassador is arriving from off-planet who will change everything. China Mieville has a knack for creating strange cities populated by various alien races that infuse his stories, and this one is no exception. I found it pretty interesting, but this is one of those books that I wouldn't recommend broadly. There are dense passages about the nature of communication, and most of the action is in the form of ideas more than events.

Spin, Wilson

• Tyler is an adolescent boy with his two friends, twin brother and sister, when the stars all go out and, soon after, all the satellites fall out of the sky. The earth has been surrounded by a black membrane, and time runs differently inside of it. The three of them deal with the impacts and uncertainties of this in different ways as they grow older and humanity adjusts to the ramifications, but their lives remain intertwined. This is a great book with an unusual premise. It's full of flawed characters, but it recognizes that flaws are just part of being human. Unlike the prior book, I would recommend this one broadly - I very much enjoyed it.

Brightness Reef, Brin

• This is the first book in the second Uplift trilogy (Uplift Storm). For a few hundred years, members of six galactic races (including humans) have made a somewhat primitive society on one small piece of Jijo, a planet designated to remain fallow for a millennia. Being on the planet is illegal, and word of it could have ramifications for each race in the broader galactic society, so there is lots of anxiety when a starship lands. But what race is on the ship, and what do they want? Excellent story. Unlike the prior books, this one does not stand alone. Apparently this trilogy is one long story with no gaps in the timeline. It would also be useful to have read the prior trilogy.

In Ascension, MacInnes

• A marine biologist participates on an expedition to a newly discovered thermal vent in the ocean with unusual properties, and it alters the arc of her life in profound ways. Her difficult childhood and relationships with her family permeates the story. This is an odd book, slowly paced, that feels like a melancholy dream. There are wondrous things happening, but they often feel like they're happening offstage, even when the characters are in the thick of them.

Infinity’s Shore, Brin

• Book two of the Uplift Storm trilogy. As mentioned in the notes for Brightness Reef, this trilogy is basically one long story with no time gaps between them. Enjoyed it, but the story is just two thirds done. Will read the final book next.

Heaven's Reach, Brin

• Final book of the Uplift Storm trilogy. If you've read any of the prior books in the series, and enjoyed them, you should read to this conclusion. There's really a lot to love here. Taken as one long story, I highly recommend it. Even with richly described villains and real angst, there's a hopefulness in Brin’s stories that I appreciate. That said, there were elements of this final book that I didn't care for as much, including all of the chapters set in “E Space," which felt contrived to me. The end is also not completely satisfying as it doesn't answer several of the questions that the series creates - not by a long shot - but maybe Brin is leaving them for further books in the Uplift universe.

Walking to Aldebaran, Tchaikovsky

• A giant alien artifact is discovered out past Pluto, and an astronaut from an expedition to it finds himself lost in its endless passageways. This novella is really interesting, and also fairly disturbing.

Dark Matter, Crouch

• Sixteen years ago, a physicist gave up a promising career to get married and raise a son, instead becoming a physics professor. One night, walking back home to his comfortable life, he's abducted, beaten, and drugged. When he wakes up, he's a famous physicist who never married or has a son. This is a great book that delves into the road not taken, and what makes us who we are.

The Space Between Worlds, Johnson

• A method is invented for a person to travel to alternate versions of earth, but only versions that they aren't alive in. Cara is valuable because she's died or been killed in most of them, so her job is to go to alternate earths and collect data on what's happening in them. This book really engrossed me. It has a lot to say about how we're shaped by our circumstances and by our choices. I believe it's Micaiah Johnson’s first novel, and I hope there are lots more to come.

Axis, Wilson

• Sequel to Spin. A gigantic arch over the sea connects the earth to another earth-like planet light-years away. A few decades after the end of the prior story, a woman's quest to find what happened to her father, who disappeared in this new world when she was a teenager, takes her on a strange journey. I really enjoyed Spin, and if anything I think I enjoyed this sequel even more. There are a number of characters who think and care about things in different ways, but they all think and care.

Anathem, Stephenson

• Set on Arbre, an earth-like world with a civilization many thousands of years older than ours, but one that has suffered through “rebirths” multiple times by world wars, genocides, and “terrible events” that were so devastating that most records from the time have been lost. To protect from repeats, scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers live secluded from society like monks. They can’t interact with regular folks and they can’t use most technology, so their work is highly theoretical. The story is told from the point of view of a 19-year-old raised in one of these monasteries, thrust into events that may lead to another societal rebirth. Most of the main characters are theoretical scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers, and they have very long discussions on those topics - it’s a long book. For some people, that will sound like torture. I personally enjoyed it quite a lot, but I enjoy reading interesting philosophical discussions. The only thing that left me a little flat is that the main romance of the story just felt thin and the characters lacked chemistry with each other. There are many other relationships that seemed a lot richer, but for some reason I just didn’t find the main romance very compelling.

Artemis, Weir

• Brilliant but wayward young woman living on a colony on the moon takes a shady job for money and gets herself and others into deep problems. Structured kind of like a heist story set on the moon. Enjoyable page turner with likable characters. The workings of a moon colony are very well thought out, but the explanations of it never feel excessive.

Singularity Sky, Stross

• The story takes place on the New Republic, a repressive human settlement on two planets that forbids technology and is patterned after industrial age Soviet Union. They are visited by “The Festival," a non-human collection of entities that collects information and gives anything in return, and the people go crazy with it. The New Republic prepares to go to war with The Festival. Pulled into the mix are an ambassador from earth, tasked with making sure no rules set by a godlike AI are violated, and a warship engineer hired as a private contractor, who has some covert assignment. This is Stross’s first novel, and the pacing isn't as polished as his later books. Lots of interesting commentary on rapid technological change, imperialist governments, revolution, etc. I enjoyed it.

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