Saturday, March 1, 2014

Kage Baker Mendoza in Hollywood.

OK Book. Formulaic time travel piece. Does not have solid plot line. More like episodes.

Joe Haldeman Marsbound

Good Book. Too many ideas for one book though. Colonist go to Mars. Discover Aliens. And lots more.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Iain M Banks Surface Detail

Interesting concept but a bit confused.
A war erupts in the Universe between pro Hell and anti hell factions. Hells are virtual worlds created by some cultures to hold the mind state of dead beings. Hells being virtual worlds where these mind states are tortured.

The story proceeds apace with some interesting concepts but I did not like this one as well as some of the others like "Player of Worlds". This one was highly confusing with the machivellian machinations of the Culture lost to me. Esentially it came down to a great big shoot up where the good guys "Culture" won.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Saturns Chilren by Charles Stross

Story:-
The humans are dead and have been replaced by a society of slaves and aristocratic robots. Someone is attempting to bring back a real human. This will upset the current order.

Stars: 5 stars. Great story. Funny, fast paced.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Books to find

New scientist readers list their best.
http://www.newscientist.com/commenting/browse?id=dn14478

Find this book

Slow Train To Arcturus
Thu Oct 02 09:02:12 BST 2008 by Baboon
Slow Train to Arcturus - Eric Flint and Dave Freer. In the tradition of Clarke, Clement, and Heinlein's 'Universe' rather than the later FTL stories, this takes the line of colonising space (not planets) with a slower-than-light generation ship that never slows down,(thereby reducing travel time to multiple star systems) dropping modules at each star. The internally layered modules (to increase surface area and carrying capacity) are isolated from each other giving environmental redundancy, and societal redundancy. With echoes of Clarke's Rendezvoux with Rama, the ship is spotted and visited by Aliens after 300 years of travel from earth. While it is an adventure story through a series of environments and social systems which have endured the long journey (with a strong element of social satire) it is also solid, near-future plausible science, written in an easy accessible style.

Book to find

Contact
Thu Oct 02 00:58:47 BST 2008 by Adam Vs
Contact has inspired so many of us and is worthy of a vote. Written by Carl Sagan this novel clearly is iconoclastic and cuts a deep edge. Utilizing his scientific background, experience and beliefs, a tantalizing story is told about a long scientific search and the reception of a message from outside earth. Geeky but with the all scrapes of scientific reality, the search turns up a signal that ruptures into a voyage of discovery with a healthy mix of skeptical inquiry and science fiction. For me Contact is a great novel, even if SETI doesn't produce in my lifetime.