Recently in Science fiction Category
The last of the trilogy. With Mars terraformed, the few remaining first hundred and their native born successors are faced with more political challenges from an over crowded and envious earth, and fundamental decisions as to how to make the most of their independence when there are such a range of views amongst the martian communities.
Not as dry as it sounds - and I really enjoyed seeing the characters and situations evolving over a further century (thank heavens for the longevity treatment, even if it is an easy fix....). The only thread left dangling loose: what did happen to Hiroko?
Amazon.co.uk link: Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
Not as immediately gripping at Red Mars, but it only took one section for that to change.
We meet the second generation of the Mars settlers, the first generation to be true "martians", born and bred on Mars, and get to know some of the original settlers a bit better. The story takes us through the years from the unsuccessful revolution of 2061, to the successful uprising 60 or so years later, a period during which the temperature continues to rise and the vegetation thrives, turning red Mars green. On Earth, population growth continues, pressure on space and resources intensifies, and sea levels rise.
More marvellous "future history". Blue Mars already underway....
Amazon.co.uk link: Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
Excellent sci fi from Kim Stanley Robinson, and the first of his Mars trilogy.
Red Mars is about the colonisation of Mars, initially by a team of 100, the creme de la creme of science and engineering drawn from around the world (Earth!). Kim Stanley Robinson delves deep into the social and political developments that surround and affect the initial expedition, not just on Mars but back on Earth too. As events unfold over several decades we get to see both how people develop and the changes they make to Mars, together with those that are forced upon them.
Although there is plenty of technology and science, it isn't dry sci fi or robots taking over the world or galactic empires doing battle. It's a convincing account of what might happen, how people will behave and why - not just as individuals but as groups / organisations / businesses / governments - and (at many levels) of the new world they live in, all set in the early decades of the 21st century.
This review doesn't really do justice to the book, particularly the scale, the scope and the thinking that has gone into it. However, one Amazon review puts it beautifully:
""Red Mars" is so realistic that it almost reads like a work of narrative history documenting events that have taken place many years ago."
Amazon.co.uk: Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
An unexpected delight. I remembered thoroughly enjoying Cloud Atlas, and I'd not expected this earlier novel to use a simpler version of the linked stories theme, and I enjoyed it just as much.
Each chapter features a different genre, time and place, and largely separate characters - but there are just the occasional chance connections between people that link all of them together - although you probably don't realise the significance at the time. The result is a novel that illustrates the butterfly effect theory, although in this case it is hard to work out who is the butterfly and which (where?) is the tornado.
Amazon.co.uk link: Ghostwritten - David Mitchell
I decided that I needed a break from reading about Iran and faced with a "to read" shelf dominated by other travel books I turned to this chance purchase from Hereford Paperback Exchange's closing down sale.
A slim novel, with a few too many essential plot-related coincidences in the early chapters, The Cloud Walker takes the Luddite campaigns of the early 19th century British Industrial Revolution and positions them at the centre of a religious belief system, set in a future time when society has turned its back on machinery and invention not once but twice more - both times driven by man's use of the power of machinery to destroy.
Whilst not an alternate history in the strictest sense, the pre industrial setting, the power of the church and the conflict between the desire of established power to preserve the status quo and the human desire to invent, improve and explore makes this novel read more like a work of historical fiction than science fiction - such science as there is looks at the mechanics of building a means to fly with the rudimentary materials available in a mediaeval/early modern-equivalent era.
Oddly, having finished it I am reminded of Fattypuffs and Thinifers ....
Amazon.co.uk link: The Cloud Walker - Edmund Cooper
I picked this up in the second hand bookshop in Hereford, based on Matt Webb's recommendation (in response to a request on Haddock for recommended reads I think). It's taken me a while to get round to reading, but that says more about my inclination to read SciFi than it goes about Ursula LeGuin - I don't think I've found a novel of her's that I have not enjoyed.
And the same goes for The Left Hand of Darkness. Set in a remote planet, colonised by humans many millennia ago, the book tells the tale of Genly Ai, a lone envoy from a coalition of similarly settled planets and his encounters with inhabitants of the planet's two main countries as he seeks to persuade them not only to join the coalition but that he is an "alien" rather than a stooge of the other nation. As Genly Ai discovers there is mutual distrust between the people in power in Karhide and Orgoreyn, and nothing is as it first seems. (Forgive me is I also say that this set up reminded me somewhat of Andre Maurois' Fattypuff and Thinifers....)
The basic story is embellished with descriptions of the planet's arctic environment and the hermaphrodite nature of the native population, and with realistic 'human' touches such as their inability to pronounce the letter "l", turning Genly into Genry. Given that the novel was published in 1969, I was particularly struct by the reflections on man's impact on the environment.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula LeGuin
Too busy at work to make it to the library for a fresh stock of reading, so I reverted to the bookshelves .... Phil's in this case.
I enjoyed this Sci Fi collection, selected by Isaac Asimov and starting off with Weyr Search by Anne McCaffrey - I'll have to go back and re-read some of her other Dragonrider novels. There were some of the short stories that I could not complete - Philip Jos Farmer's work always seems to defeat me.
Buy it: Amazon link
A 20p gift from work colleague Michael who chanced upon it in Harrow library's "withdrawn from stock and approved for sale" selection after a chat we'd had on sci-fi, and very enjoyable and thought provoking both were too.
Ward Moore was writing in the 1950s, which is the present day setting for part of this novel (albeit "ancient history" for the 21st century reader), and unlike most sci-fi I've read the author conjures up an alternate history from the American Civil War to the then-present day, rather than imagining fantastic worlds in galaxies far, far away.
That in itself made for interesting reading, although I did feel that I missed much of significance due to knowing virtually no American Civil War history in any world/universe, but Ward Moore also throws in a whole different course of scientific development in his world, including a time machine.....
Buy it: Amazon link
Having enjoyed the science fiction elements of Cloud Atlas, and not finding anything appealing on the "Books to read" shelf, I turned my attentions to Phil's collection of William Gibson novels, and picked out Burning Chrome as one I'd not read before.
I'd not realised that it is a collection short stories, written by William Gibson (occasionally in collaboration with others) in the early years of his career. I'd also not realised - until I opened the book to start reading - that the first story is Johnny Mnemonic, the basis for the film of the same name starrring Keanu Reeves in a warm-up to his role in The Matrix.
An enjoyable collection, where you see William Gibson articulating concepts, scenarios and locations that are developed in his later novels. It strikes me that the stories are always told from the perpective of the underdog or the outsider - I can't think of an occasion where we see Gibson's vision of the future from the point of view of someone with power, or simply getting along with a "normal" humdrum life.
Hmmm. What next?
Buy it: Amazon link
Phil bought this for Christmas 2004.... and it has sat on the "Books to read" bookshelf ever since.... It's not that I didn't want to read Cloud Atlas, just that as a hefty hardback I knew that it would be awkward to read in bed, which is where I do most of my reading.
However, it turned out to be a classic "I've started so I'll finish", in the sense that I just kept having to turn the pages, to read "just one more chapter". I loved the way the book's structure and story set mirror a book's physical make up of each of the signatures (I've just had to look that up on Wikipedia), where you only get a continuous selection of text printed on the middle pair of pages.
I also really liked the way David Mitchell gradually revealed the connections between the stories and their narrators, and carried forward a narrative stretching from the 19th century to an unspeficied number of centuries in the future.
If you enjoy fiction in flavours raning from historical, to modern, to science, then read this novel!
Buy it: Amazon link
I admit defeat. I just can't face another chapter of this part sci-fi / part recent history novel covering the lives of 3 generations of an Indian family.
Buy it: Amazon link
Another rollicking good read from William Gibson. I'm glad Phil's bookshelves led me back to sci fi, and introduced me to this author.
The Amazon synopsis says it all really:
"Set in futuristic Tokyo, rebuilt after an earthquake, this is the story of a rock star who decides to marry a non-existent, virtual reality girl; the bemused American security consultant who has been sent to take care of him; and a teenage fan."
Buy it: Amazon link
Encouraged by Neuromancer, I selected another William Gibson SciFi from Phil's shelf. More accessible than the first, but just as enjoyable, with similar David and Goliath story (this time about a snaffled pair of wrap-around shades that reveal more than Reactorlight Rapides TM do) giving another none-too-enticing glimpse of the Western world's future.
Buy it: Amazon link
I borrowed this from Phil's bookshelf as a result of finishing Bookseller and having left Clapham Junction and the literary treasure-trove that is Battersea Public Library. Having not read and SciFi for a long time, it was a happy return and my first taste of William Gibson's world; one that looms on the not-too-distant horizon. Although some of the Neuromancer-speak and terminology eluded me, I understood enough to get me through to the end of this Matrix-like tale of a criminal gang with X-Men-esque powers crossing paths, "swords" and computer skills with a shadowy elite.
Buy it: Amazon link
I thoroughly enjoyed this historical novel meets SciFi/Fantasy - my two favourite fictional genres! A good borrow from Phil.
As the blurb on the back said, "Imagine a world without Europe...."
.... or more accurately a world where the population of Europe is almost entirely wiped out by the Plague in the Middle Ages. Focussing key people, eras and events, Kim Stanley Robinson describes the next 600 or so years (it's hard to keep track of where "we"'d got to in his timeline) and conducts a huge thought experiment over the course of 800 pages.
It would have been useful to know that "Extra continuity is given by a touch of fantasy as the Buddhist wheel of reincarnation brings back the same characters (coded by initials) again and again with varied roles, relations and sexes."
Buy it: Amazon link
If you think that genetic engineering, potatoes and market gardening had much of a place in 21st century fiction, you should read Tim Pears' novel! It's more high tech big business than Ambridge.
Buy it: Amazon link
I took Cait at her word and bought this to tide me over the festive season 'en famille' ...
Any complaints? Well, yes. I didn't by the complete trilogy, and this first volume only lasted me from Christmas Eve through to the end of the Queen's Speech.
The similarities between the world we live in and that of Lyra and the Gyptians are many, but it's the differences which lure you in, keep you hooked, then leave you thinking "what if...?" about a million and one facets of 20th/21st century life; from society and politics to evolution and morality.
I'm off to buy vols 2 and 3 tomorrow - Hereford Waterstone's permitting.