Looking for More Books to Read?

I know all too well that it's very difficult for a voracious reader to get enough books. I grew up in a small town where the nearest bookstore was an hour's drive away and the public library had all of 800 volumes, including reference materials. Next week I'm going to be participating in an exciting new literary event. Until then, I wanted everyone to know about a cool compilation of free and 99-cent books available online.

New Reviews Now Up at the Billion Light-Year Bookshelf

I just put up six new reviews over at The Billion Light-year Bookshelf. These include one on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which I look at how humorous works, even excellent ones, are often passed over for awards because "not serious" is seen as evidence of a lightweight.

On a darker note, I also look at Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic with an eye to the authors' treatment of the alien visitation as fundamentally unknowable and incomprehensible to humanity.

There are also books by Robert J. Sawyer, Octavia E. Butler, and Marie Brennan, as well as a collaboration by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes which is arguably a technothriller, but is treated as science fiction because it deals with space travel.

1636: The Vatican Sanction by Eric Flint
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This volume completes the sub-series that began with 1634: The Galileo Affair. Frank Stone and his new family were rescued in the last volume, 1635: The Papal Stakes. However, Pope Urban VIII still has business to conduct. In particular, he has become convinced that Grantville and the future it represents is a warning of what will come to pass if the various branches of Christianity, and of Judaism, are not able to make peace with one another.

In this volume he sets forward to create an ecumenical council that will bring together representatives of the various Protestant sects and of the Orthodox autocephalous churches, as well as representatives of Judaism. There's a pretty strong hint that he's becoming concerned about averting future Islamic extremism, although it could also be interpreted as concern about the present power of the Ottoman Empire.

However, his enemies continue to be active, sending agents to kill him and disrupt the council. In the end, it's almost a comedy of errors, except that it turns out tragic. A series of want-of-a-nail single-point failures, including a man who ignored a wound too long and the stubborn pride of an old man who just wants to take a leak in private -- but the book ends with the hope that from this martyrdom will come a greater determination to create a lasting legacy, rather like the Kennedy assassination was a big driver to the lunar landings.

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Days of Futures Past

Old Venus by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I grew up with the stories of the old Solar System from before the first interplanetary probes destroyed the dreams of finding new life and new civilizations right in our astronomical backyard. The worlds where Mars was home to an older and wiser civilization, where Venus was a swampy world of monsters and beautiful people. Where action and adventure was only a few weeks or months away, rather than a centuries-long journey to another star. In our small-town library, books stayed on the shelves until they began to disintegrate, so the classics of SF didn't disappear simply because they had become dated.

And this anthology was like going back down memory lane. I really loved the story that was openly set in the world of CL Moore's Northwest Smith stories, which have fallen into the public domain because of the rules at the time about renewal of copyright. There were other stories that had the flavor of various major authors, from Heinlein's First Future History version of Venus to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Carson of Venus novels, without actually using any copyrighted IP. Other stories gave a nod to the New Venus. In one story, the protagonist travels not only through space, but also through time to a past when Venus was still a lush and dangerous water world. In another, the characters live in a far future when Venus has been terraformed, rather like David Drake's Seas of Venus novels. And the final one seemed to be a retelling of the old action-adventure stories of travel to distant and exotic lands, the sort that are now condemned as Orientalizing and exoticizing -- but since Venusians manifestly do not exist, it's able to fly under the watchful eye of the SJW moral watchdogs.

There was only one story I truly Did Not Like. That's the Bernie Wooster pastiche, which grated on my nerves. By the time I got through it, I was thoroughly sick of all the "right ho" and "what ho" and quite glad to be done with it. However, that's probably more of a personal taste thing, and someone who's a Bernie Wooster fan and also loves stories of the Old Solar System of the pre-spaceflight pulps would probably get a real kick out of it.

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I Never Expected to Like a Political Soap Opera

Emergence by C.J. Cherryh

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This novel is pretty much a direct continuation of Convergence, as Bren facilitates the arrival of Cajeiri's three human associates in Mospheria, the island set aside for humans on the atevi Earth. Meanwhile, things are getting interesting for Cajeiri at his great-uncle's estate as rival claimants of the Ajuri lordship make nuisances of themselves.

When I was waiting for the second meeting with the kyo, I remember how frustrated I was with what felt like book after book of political soap opera among the atevi. I even wondered if Ms. Cherryh had lost her way, if she literally had no idea how to deal with the kyo at the depth it would take, and was just spinning out all these books to try to hold off the inevitable.

But now, with the kyo having made it clear that they want to be good neighbors but no, they do not wish to make themselves fortunate three with humans and atevi, there's no longer that sense of frustrated anticipation. There is the possibility of an unpleasant encounter with the mysterious hostile fourth species (unfortunate four, which is ill-omened to the atevi, although perhaps not in the same way as it is in Japan, whose traditional culture they remind me of), but it's a dark cloud on the distant horizon, just menacing enough that we're happy to keep it far away. This series is a story of communication and learning about the Other, and I'm afraid that having those aliens actually come calling would make it something more on the order of a military science fiction story.

Not to say that CJ Cherryh can't write military sf, because she has done quite a good job with her Company Wars series in the Union-Alliance universe. But it's just too much of a change of tone from what has gone before for me to be really comfortable with the idea of her taking it in that direction.



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"Phoenix Dreams" Now Available as a Standalone E-book

Starship Cat Press is proud to reprint "Phoenix Dreams," which was originally published in Lazarus Risen, an anthology of transhumanist speculative fiction.



Phoenix Dreams by Leigh Kimmel

In Greek myth, the phoenix is a bird that rises from its own ashes. Growing up in the city named for it, Toni knew the story well, and her experience with computer games made her comfortable with the idea of death being negotiable. So when she found a cache of old space memorabilia in her grandfather's attic, she never guessed that her eagerness to right a historic wrong would meet with such ferocious opposition.

But it only made her more determined to give this man his spaceflight, even a century late. She would learn the skills, develop the code, and do whatever it took

More cool new books

Last week there was a vignette prompt at Sarah Hoyt's blog, but no book promo. This week it seems the vignette prompt has gone astray, but there are two new books you might want to look into, as well as a humorous tale of obstacles overcome.

 Also, I just wanted to remind everyone about Joseph T Major's new novel. I'm hoping to start reading it shortly.

 

 The Motherland Knows by Joseph T Major They thought he could help. The First Man in Space was under pressure. He had to regain his flight status. A friend had died for him. And from all over the Soviet Union, workers and other proletarians wrote him begging for help. Sometimes he could help And now, he was beginning to think, the Soviet Union was going the wrong way, a very wrong way. They might decide to solve some matters. A dead hero can't disagree with the authorities. So he reached out, to someone he had met, someone who was known, someone he thought he could trust. Then, on a cold and clear Christmas night, he took the most daring step -- and the world changed. In a tale of space flight, spying, and politics, people who thought they would never get into that sort of thing now found themselves propelled into it. A turbulent and tumultuous world is shaken into a different path, as leaders react to embarrassment with a desire for prestige, where the wish of a pilot is brought closer to coming through, and famous men are brought together, to find that enemies are more like them than they had imagined.

 ****

Crossposted at my LiveJournal, The Starship Cat

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