Don't Forget to Read a Book!

Hello, Stranger. Let's talk about David Brin's  Startide Rising. The Short of It Plot:  Things quickly get out of hand when a ship crewed by humans, dolphins, and a chimp stumble upon a massive armada of abandoned spaceships, escalating to galactic-level drama. Page Count:  498 Award: 1984 Hugo, 1984 Nebula, 1984 Locus SF  Worth a read : All aboard the hype train! Toot toot! Primary Driver:  ( Plot, World, or Character ) Bechdel Test : Pass Technobabble:  Moderate. Review:  Sweet kittens and milk is this thing excellent. It's not a perfect book - characters can be hard to keep track of, relationships can be forced, some parts drag, and the machina has a whole bunch of deus. But there are so many good ideas in here. Uplift is brought to the fore: that a species needs another to bring it to the galactic scene. But what does that mean? How do we recreate other species in our own image? What debts do we owe each other? What if attempts to he...

Hello, Stranger. Let's talk about David Brin's  Sundiver. The Short of It Plot: Somehow, the Galactics missed a species - sentient creatures living at the edge of the Sun. It's up to humanity to investigate. Page Count: 340 Award:  Book 1 of the Uplift Trilogy - Books 2 and 3 won awards. Worth a read : Skip this one but read the next two. Primary Driver:  (Plot,  World , or Character) Bechdel Test : Fail Technobabble:  Frequent. Review:  At the core of this book is a great theme: to join the broader galaxy of enlightened species, populations must be "Uplifted" - brought into the fold via a sponsor, and civilized. There's a key question - which race Uplifted humans? All of this is fun, and well done. It is also still at the heart of the sequel, which is a much better book. The plot of this is... fine. Characters are bland, interactions are stilted, relationships unbelievable. This isn't exactly a bad book - but it has nothing on the sequel, and is ...

Hello, Stranger. Let's talk about Michael Bishop's  No Enemy But Time. The Short of It Plot:  If you think hard enough, you get to the past!  Page Count:  397 Award:  1982 Nebula Worth a read : This is one of the worst books I've ever read. Primary Driver:  (Plot,  World , or Character) Bechdel Test : Fail(?) Technobabble:  Moderate. Review:  Look, he uses his chance to go back in time to have sex with proto-humans. And yes, the pacing is awful, but at least the prose is terrible. I have nothing positive to say about this one, except that I've never seen the word "beshat" in a book. This is one of the very few I've encountered with an African American man as the lead - and holy guacamole is it an insulting portrayal. The Medium and Long of It, Because This Book Is Terrible Spoilers, but, who cares? Among chimpanzees the females develop cumbersome sexual swellings to signal their readiness to mate (“pink ladies,” Jane Goodall once ca...

Hello, Stranger. Let's talk about Julian May's  The Many-Colored Land. The Short of It Plot: There's a portal that goes back six million years into the past and it only gets wackier from there. Page Count:  433 Award:  1982 Locus Worth a read : Yes Primary Driver:  (Plot,  World , or Character) Bechdel Test : Pass Technobabble:  Moderate. Review:  This book is delightful. The premise is ridiculous, the explanations of "science" to explain what happened are pretty much nonexistent... but it's just so fun. Every opportunity where this book could go off the rails it does so. The characters are fun, though shallow. This book is what happens when you throw a sack of different world-building related nouns into a blender and say, "Sure!" Are the rules consistent? Yes, in that there are none. I was regularly surprised by things to the point where I was laughing out loud.  The Medium of It Spoiler Free! Wow. This book. What a trip. Just look at t...

Hello, Stranger. Let's talk about Joan D. Vinge's  The Snow Queen. The Short of It Plot: The backwater planet of Tiamat has been under the control of the Snow Queen for 150 years. Summer is coming. Page Count:  448 Award:  1981 Hugo Worth a read : Yes Primary Driver:  (Plot,  World , or  Character ) Bechdel Test : Pass Technobabble:  Minimal. Review:  A delightful mix of fantasy tropes with science fiction twists. Tiamat itself feels solidly fantasy; the ageless Snow Queen, The Lady who gives some people visions and helps them, the separate regimes of Summer and Winter. Yet it is but one planet - and the rest are technologically developed. It's a remarkable balance that works surprisingly well. Side characters are great; distinct justifications, backstories, history together. Protagonists are... fine. The driving motivation being, once again, cousins in love... not great. They're also quite passive, which gets tiresome.  The Medium of It...

Hello, Stranger. Let's talk about Gregory Benford's  Timescape. The Short of It Plot:  The only way to stop environmental and societal collapse is to contact the past to stop it from happening. Page Count: 499 Award:  1981 Nebula Worth a read : Oof. Somewhat? Primary Driver:  (Plot,  World , or  Character ) Bechdel Test : Pass Technobabble:  To the max. Review:  I cannot figure out why I enjoyed this book, but I did... until the truly interminable final 20%. Interesting applications of paradoxes, time loops, determinism, and everything else that fits in a good time-based story. That said, it's unbelievably slow. The majority of drama and action is about academic clashes, but I was somehow invested nonetheless. Some excellent character work; this does not apply to the women, who are all philandering, repressed, nymphomaniac arm-candy for the men involved. I hope you like the word "Tachyon" because you're going to see it a lot. The Medium of It...

Hello, Stranger. Let's talk about Robert Silverberg's  Lord Valentine's Castle. The Short of It Plot:  An amnesiac wanderer goes on an epic quest to reclaim his identity.  Page Count:  506 Award:  1981 Locus Worth a read : Yes Primary Driver:  (Plot,  World , or  Character ) Bechdel Test : Pass Technobabble:  Minimal. Review:  Despite it's sluggish pace and constant meanders there is something absolutely engrossing about this book. Tap dances right on the border of SF and Fantasy - and successfully balances both. Character interaction and conversations are solid throughout. Remarkable establishment of side-character personalities - including minor characters having their own arcs. Excellent use of power crawl and believable evolution of Valentine from passive to active protagonist. Got pretty tired of reading about juggling. The Medium of It Spoiler Free! I dreaded reading this. It's quite the hefty tome - and my only other Silverbe...

Hello, Stranger. Let's talk about C. J. Cherryh's  Downbelow Station. The Short of It Plot:  It's politics! In... SPACE! Page Count:  526 Award:  1982 Hugo Worth a read : No. Primary Driver:  (Plot,  World , or Character) Bechdel Test : ...I'm not sure.  Technobabble:  Moderate. Review:  The fact that I did not out and out die of boredom while reading this is all of the proof I needed to confirm that I have, in fact, been dead the whole time. It's an epic space opera with emphasis on the opera portion (for length and pacing, that is). A hefty cast of forgettable and interchangeable characters existing in a generic SF setting coupled with truly glacial pacing made this an absolute chore to read. Even scenes that should be exciting manage to be completely bland due to style choices. A smattering of neat ideas (clever uses of mind wipes in particular) are nowhere near enough to redeem this dud. The Medium of It Spoiler Free! There are some ...

Hello, Stranger. Let's talk about Isaac Asimov's  Foundation's Edge. The Short of It Plot: Did you want another story set in the Foundation universe? You got one. It's a hunt for the Second Foundation, controlling things from behind the curtain.  Page Count: 450 Award:  1983 Locus SF and 1983 Hugo  Worth a read : Please don't kill me, but No Primary Driver:  (Plot,  World , or Character) Bechdel Test : Fail Technobabble:  Moderate to high. Review: Some interesting moments mixed with some truly bizarre choices. Plot seems to constantly be a scene where one character says, "Ah, I knew he would do that, and instead..." and then the next says, "Ah, I knew you would counter that, so I..." and on we go. I did not enjoy the conclusion of this; in a universe with a number of interesting concepts, throwing in another in Act III of another book is an odd move. I hypothesize that this won because the previous three did not. Does not add anything interes...

Hello, Stranger. Let's talk about Isaac Asimov's  Foundation. The Short of It Plot: Psychohistory: The use of mathematics and psychology to predict the course of human events.  Page Count:  - Foundation: 244 - Foundation and Empire: 256 - Second Foundation: 279 Award: Hugo for Best All-Time Series. Book 4 (next post!) won a Hugo and Nebula. Worth a read : Yes Primary Driver:  (Plot,  World , or Character) Bechdel Test : Fail Technobabble:  High but plot relevant. Review:  A set of nine interconnected stories that demonstrate the power and pitfalls of Psychohistory. Generally good writing and clever twists keep things engaging. A whole lot of exposition dumps. Characters are all flat. Concept is excellent, and each story highlights a different aspect. Feels like each segment successfully treads new ground, as opposed to rehashing. Some diminishing returns by the end, but absolutely worth a read as a whole. And the stories have aged astoundingl...