Kim Miller
Put a bunch of people together under a weird pretext and it won't be long before they start killing each other. This book gets likened to Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None', but it's more than a murder mystery. PKD leads us down one blind alley after another, scattering a few bodies along the way, and all the while he's laughing at us for following the wrong clues.
Fourteen members of an interplanetary mission set up a base station and find themselves isolated. They come from disparate areas of like, almost as if PKD wanted to put one of each of several tropes together - the economist, the doctor, the psychologist, the scientist and his angry wife, the seductive blond, the youthful thug, just the normal bunch of circus clowns who would soon be at each other's throats.
But then he mixes in a weird religion made for space travel where prayers are sent by radio to planets with a god-consciousness. And strange things are found on this isolated planet that don't make sense, including a building that each person sees the identifying sign on the door as something different.
The danger increases, the bodies pile up, some people disappear, and as things get more and more frantic it looks like we can see what is lying underneath the whole thing. But then he pulls another PKD trick on us, and then another one, before we realise how well we've been hoodwinked.
Put a bunch of people together under a weird pretext and it won't be long before they start killing each other. This book gets likened to Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None', but it's more than a murder mystery. PKD leads us down one blind alley after another, scattering a few bodies along the way, and all the while he's laughing at us for following the wrong clues.
Fourteen members of an interplanetary mission set up a base station and find themselves isolated. They come from disparate areas of like, almost as if PKD wanted to put one of each of several tropes together - the economist, the doctor, the psychologist, the scientist and his angry wife, the seductive blond, the youthful thug, just the normal bunch of circus clowns who would soon be at each other's throats.
But then he mixes in a weird religion made for space travel where prayers are sent by radio to planets with a god-consciousness. And strange things are found on this isolated planet that don't make sense, including a building that each person sees the identifying sign on the door as something different.
The danger increases, the bodies pile up, some people disappear, and as things get more and more frantic it looks like we can see what is lying underneath the whole thing. But then he pulls another PKD trick on us, and then another one, before we realise how well we've been hoodwinked.
A scientist is sent to a conference to discuss how people see the future shaping up. There's a riot, he's wounded, he ends up in a world of weirdness. The book is a somewhat rollicking satire that boils over into absurdity and ends like some kid just rang your doorbell and ran away.
Lem has put together a book full of pretend words strung together with the skill of a carpet weaver in the Middle East. The drug addled world that he builds upon an embattled political landscape is layer on layer of misdirection to the point where everyone is totally blind to their own reality.
A scientist is sent to a conference to discuss how people see the future shaping up. There's a riot, he's wounded, he ends up in a world of weirdness. The book is a somewhat rollicking satire that boils over into absurdity and ends like some kid just rang your doorbell and ran away.
Lem has put together a book full of pretend words strung together with the skill of a carpet weaver in the Middle East. The drug addled world that he builds upon an embattled political landscape is layer on layer of misdirection to the point where everyone is totally blind to their own reality.
Mix Oliver Twist and Fagin in with an adolescent crew from Ocean's Eleven and put them into a canal city like pre-medieval Venice and have them set up a series of sophisticated heists. Pepper the story with the most imaginative swearing and cursing, black humour as they wound and main their enemies, and hide it all under the guise of a temple priest with his altar boys taking donations with which to help the poor and needy.
I've only recently heard of this twenty year old novel. It's a hoot and so well told that the author took me into places in my head that meant there were days I needed recovery time.
Locke starts out as a five year old waif in a den of child thieves. Two years later he's so good at planning heists that his master has to sell him on as he can't keep him under control. With his new master he learns to be a 'Genlteman Bastard', a surprisingly well educated con artist, and alongside his three companions they take aim at relieving the gentry of their wealth. But a new name is heard in the city as a powerful adversary slowly emerges from secrecy and many crime families fall to his will.
Locke and his friends are faced with impossible choices as disaster falls upon their shared lives. The new enemy rises and old alliances fall, but it's not until Locke finds out what this enemy has planned that he realises the danger he is in.
Mix Oliver Twist and Fagin in with an adolescent crew from Ocean's Eleven and put them into a canal city like pre-medieval Venice and have them set up a series of sophisticated heists. Pepper the story with the most imaginative swearing and cursing, black humour as they wound and main their enemies, and hide it all under the guise of a temple priest with his altar boys taking donations with which to help the poor and needy.
I've only recently heard of this twenty year old novel. It's a hoot and so well told that the author took me into places in my head that meant there were days I needed recovery time.
Locke starts out as a five year old waif in a den of child thieves. Two years later he's so good at planning heists that his master has to sell him on as he can't keep him under control. With his new master he learns to be a 'Genlteman Bastard', a surprisingly well educated con artist, and alongside his three companions they take aim at relieving the gentry of their wealth. But a new name is heard in the city as a powerful adversary slowly emerges from secrecy and many crime families fall to his will.
Locke and his friends are faced with impossible choices as disaster falls upon their shared lives. The new enemy rises and old alliances fall, but it's not until Locke finds out what this enemy has planned that he realises the danger he is in.
This is book 2 of the Bobiverse.
In Bk1 Bob was cryofrozen and awoke to find his mind has been scanned and he's now in a computer. He gets put into a spaceship as its controlling AI and he sets out into the unknown.
Bk 2 sees him as merely the first of many replications, all Bobs, who are flying spaceships around the close galaxy regions. Any Bob can duplicate himself and his ship. New Bobs take a different name, Bob has become a generic type. In this book there are first contact stories, human colonies on other planets, and some serious battles. The chapters are short and bounce around the various planets with different narrators, each with a different name but all with the Bob voice. The first half of the book is a bit of a travelogue and it takes a while for higher stakes to build up.
Cliffhanger warning - it left me wanting to read Bk 3.
This is book 2 of the Bobiverse.
In Bk1 Bob was cryofrozen and awoke to find his mind has been scanned and he's now in a computer. He gets put into a spaceship as its controlling AI and he sets out into the unknown.
Bk 2 sees him as merely the first of many replications, all Bobs, who are flying spaceships around the close galaxy regions. Any Bob can duplicate himself and his ship. New Bobs take a different name, Bob has become a generic type. In this book there are first contact stories, human colonies on other planets, and some serious battles. The chapters are short and bounce around the various planets with different narrators, each with a different name but all with the Bob voice. The first half of the book is a bit of a travelogue and it takes a while for higher stakes to build up.
Cliffhanger warning - it left me wanting to read Bk 3.
Four residents of a senior living village decide they want to investigate unsolved murders. Luckily they represent a range of backgrounds and abilities that seem to fit together like a Tetris game. With a bit of manipulation they recruit the community liaison Police officer who comes to teach them to lock their doors at night. And the game is on.
This is a 'cosy detective story' in the tradition of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency series by MCall Smith. The people are delightful, if somewhat one dimensional. The police vacillate between dismissive and accommodating. The murders are many and varied and the investigation is highly intuitive but ultimately successful. And the amateur sleuths retain secrets at the end that the police won't uncover.
Osman has a way of story telling that is engaging and funny. We start out loving the characters and we still love them when their flaws are revealed. However, I was left with the feeling that murder is OK as long as the victim deserved it.
Four residents of a senior living village decide they want to investigate unsolved murders. Luckily they represent a range of backgrounds and abilities that seem to fit together like a Tetris game. With a bit of manipulation they recruit the community liaison Police officer who comes to teach them to lock their doors at night. And the game is on.
This is a 'cosy detective story' in the tradition of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency series by MCall Smith. The people are delightful, if somewhat one dimensional. The police vacillate between dismissive and accommodating. The murders are many and varied and the investigation is highly intuitive but ultimately successful. And the amateur sleuths retain secrets at the end that the police won't uncover.
Osman has a way of story telling that is engaging and funny. We start out loving the characters and we still love them when their flaws are revealed. However, I was left with the feeling that murder is OK as long as the victim deserved it.
Updated a reading goal:
Read 75 books in 2024
Progress so far: 64 / 75 85%
The Wayfarer is a worm-hole building spaceship. That's right, they build those things. And there's a crew. So next time you are driving past a road building team with stop/go guy, leaning on shovel guy, digger driver guy, roller driver guy, think your way into the future about traveling through a worm hole to a distant planet. Somebody made that super fast interplanetary motorway called a worm hole.
The Wayfarer crew has a captain, a pilot, a navigator, a repair/techie, a computer guy, an office manager, a doctor/cook, a fuel guy, and a sentient AI that controls the ship. Three of them are human, the others are aliens of different species, and they have different levels of affection or antipathy to each other. It's a small operation doing mainly 'local roads', until a major job appears. Along the way various crises occur, each impacting one or other of the characters and causing shifts in their relationships.
The book is strong on character development and world building but Chambers' prose doesn't get the most from those strengths. I'd just come from reading Christopher Ruocchio whose prose is extraordinary, so Chambers had a challenge from the start. However, the book was short listed for the Arthur C Clarke award, so maybe I'm being a bit tough on her.
The bulk of the story is about 'the long way' but towards the end of the book we find out where this worm hole is taking them. And that's where everything hits the fan.
The Wayfarer is a worm-hole building spaceship. That's right, they build those things. And there's a crew. So next time you are driving past a road building team with stop/go guy, leaning on shovel guy, digger driver guy, roller driver guy, think your way into the future about traveling through a worm hole to a distant planet. Somebody made that super fast interplanetary motorway called a worm hole.
The Wayfarer crew has a captain, a pilot, a navigator, a repair/techie, a computer guy, an office manager, a doctor/cook, a fuel guy, and a sentient AI that controls the ship. Three of them are human, the others are aliens of different species, and they have different levels of affection or antipathy to each other. It's a small operation doing mainly 'local roads', until a major job appears. Along the way various crises occur, each impacting one or other of the characters and causing shifts in their relationships.
The book is strong on character development and world building but Chambers' prose doesn't get the most from those strengths. I'd just come from reading Christopher Ruocchio whose prose is extraordinary, so Chambers had a challenge from the start. However, the book was short listed for the Arthur C Clarke award, so maybe I'm being a bit tough on her.
The bulk of the story is about 'the long way' but towards the end of the book we find out where this worm hole is taking them. And that's where everything hits the fan.
Two satirical darkly comedic sci fi stories of hating the stranger and the political ideology of fascism.
I R.U.R. a company makes robots to replace human workers. It does not work out well and the robots grow to superiority and revolt against the humans. It is blended with a melodromatic love story between a robot engineer and a woman who starts out trying to liberate the enslaved robots.
War of the Newts is a series of stories about the discovery of sentient water lizards in Sumatra. They are exploited by Europeans, they grow in numbers in Europe, committees seek ways to use them politically, and in the end there is a war. Capek uses the allegorical nature of the book to mirror how fascism invades the exploits other nations and peoples, or to scapegoat ethnic populations.
Both of the book are tiresome in language and structure, probably suffering the twin disadvantages of being translated from the Czech and the time difference from the original writing, 1920 and 1936.
Two satirical darkly comedic sci fi stories of hating the stranger and the political ideology of fascism.
I R.U.R. a company makes robots to replace human workers. It does not work out well and the robots grow to superiority and revolt against the humans. It is blended with a melodromatic love story between a robot engineer and a woman who starts out trying to liberate the enslaved robots.
War of the Newts is a series of stories about the discovery of sentient water lizards in Sumatra. They are exploited by Europeans, they grow in numbers in Europe, committees seek ways to use them politically, and in the end there is a war. Capek uses the allegorical nature of the book to mirror how fascism invades the exploits other nations and peoples, or to scapegoat ethnic populations.
Both of the book are tiresome in language and structure, probably suffering the twin disadvantages of being translated from the Czech and the time difference from the original writing, 1920 and 1936.