Category: Books

— Wombat-socho

Apologies for the lack of Live At Five this morning, or even the token offering of In The Mailbox, but after being up since 0300 in order to make my 6 AM flight to Las Vegas, I was in no position to give either of those posts their due justice. However, before I saunter down Fremont Street to my doom at the Heart Attack Grill, I thought I should at least mention a few books that are worth your attention – or maybe not.

Matthew Harrington is probably best known for his contributions to various Man-Kzin War anthologies, and for his collaboration with Larry Niven, The Goliath Stone, which is an amusing story about nanobots, human evolution, space exploration, and a few other things. He has an anthology out, The Original Uncut SOUL SURVIVOR: and other stories in which he displays not just the quirky humor in evidence from his other works, but tenderness, passion, and a few other things you might not have expected if all you’d seen were the aforementioned stories about Kzin and mad scientists. Most anthologies, I’m happy if half the stories are good; this one runs considerably higher than that, and is a steal for $4 on the Kindle. Buy it now before he or his agent recover their senses! Better yet, borrow it first from the Amazon Prime Lending Library, and then buy it so he gets a double dip of royalties. 😉

In David Drake’s most recent RCN novel, The Sea Without a Shore, Adele Mundy moves beyond being the Deadliest Librarian in the Universe and develops her aristocratic/diplomatic talents to solve what at first seems like an impossible set of tasks, even for the Unstoppable Force of Daniel Leary and his signals officer. If Drake ever stops writing these, I may have to start reading the Aubrey/Maturin novels, which I understand they’re modeled on.

Also worth your time is an oldie but goodie, Steven Brust’s Brokedown Palace (no relation to the drug movie of the same name) which is an offshoot of his Vlad Taltos novels, which I started reading and then stopped for no good reason I can remember. Anyhow, it’s an interesting fantasy about four princes living in a decaying palace in an out-of-the-way kingdom, and well worth your time.

And then there’s Robert Conroy’s 1920: America’s Great War. This account of a German/Mexican invasion of California and Texas gets 4/5 from Amazon reviewers, but it left me cold; individually, each of the factors that leads to the book’s conclusion are plausible, but when you lump them all together, it blew out the suspension on my disbelief. Too many things go right at just the right time, and even the things that go wrong turn out not to be so bad in the end.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with a Single Bypass Burger, or maybe two. Pictures will be posted in the burger post later this week. 🙂

— compiled by Wombat-socho

…which I guess could be construed as sort of a spoiler for John Barnes’ disappointing The Last President, which is the last of the Daybreak novels. I hated this novel for at least a dozen reasons, not the least of which is that Barnes pulls a diavolo ex machina out of his hat which (for me) just completely ruined the whole trilogy. Not that there weren’t enough other things in the plot to tick me off, mind you. Anyhow, if you enjoyed the first couple of Daybreak novels (Directive 51 and Daybreak Zero) you may or may not like the third one; if not, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Charles Gannon’s Fire with Fire got nominated for a Nebula Award by the SFWA but didn’t win; I refuse to speculate on whether this was because it’s a Baen product or whether it’s because Mr. Gannon is a white cismale oppressor. (Just kidding! Sort of.) Anyway, Gannon’s novel reads like a cross between technothriller and first contact novel, with coldsleep complicating the protagonist’s life and a shaky confederation of aliens ready to explode when humans show up on the galactic scene. Not a bad read; lives up to the standard set by his earlier collaboration with Eric Flint, 1635: The Papal Stakes. Gannon and Flint have a couple of other collaborations out, The Aethers of Mars being the more interesting to me with its echoes of Frank Chadwick’s Space 1889 RPG.

Speaking of the “Ring of Fire” novels, Flint and David Carrico’s 1636: The Devil’s Opera is a pretty good read, mixing a police procedural with opera and power politics in the suddenly-unstable United States of Europe.

Finally, I’m going to have to pick up a copy of the new Delta Green fiction anthology, Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies.

— by Wombat-socho

Literally and figuratively, this is the plot of John Barnes’ Daybreak novels, which start with Directive 51 and continue on through Daybreak Zero and The Last President. These have a very weird feel to them; the basic plot, in which ecosaboteurs spread genetically engineered plastic- and gasoline-eating bacteria along with nanobots designed to wreck electronics, is very reminiscent of both S. M. Stirling’s Change novels (Dies the Fire) and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, while also containing elements of Barnes’ previous apocalyptic novel, the nightmarish Kaleidoscope Century. The Daybreak novels give you a front-row ringside seat for the collapse of global civilization as scattered, seemingly anarchic ecoterrorists, religious nutjobs, and hippie fruitcakes plunge the America into bloody chaos, exacerbated by a split of the Federal government into Provisional and Temporary factions over the issue of who’s in charge and whether Daybreak is a conventional enemy that needs to be crushed by military force or a memetic weapon that needs to be countered by other means. I’ve finished the first two novels, am going back for the third today, and can attest that these are some good -if occasionally squicky- reading. Barnes makes a powerful argument in these books for the power of ideas, and also recognizes that there’s times when nothing but brute force will do.
Recommended.

This is shaping up to be a busy year for John C. Wright. Not only has he (courteously and with cold logic) shaken the dust of the SFWA from his sandals, he is concluding the crazy, wildly inventive, millennium-spanning series of evolutionary novels started in Count to a Trillion with The Judge of Ages, not only has he had the massive cojones to write sequels to William Hodgson’s half-forgotten “The Night Land” (Awake in the Night Land) , he’s also put together a collection of essays: Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth which I have seen excerpts of. I don’t know if Mr. Wright is the best SF author out there, but in these sad times when it seems every competent tale slinger is surrounded by packs of dull-witted, unhousebroken PC puppies with not a tenth of his talent, he’s definitely in my top ten. Go read his stuff. You’ll thank me later.

Speaking of the whole SFWA and Hugos kerfluffle, Vox Day’s Hugo-nominated “Opera Vita Aeterna” is one of the three stories in The Last Witchking, which I snapped up when it was offered for free last month. All three stories are set in the universe of Day’s A Throne of Bones, and are definitely not your usual elf & dwarf crap. I thought they were all pretty good, with the nominee story the best, but they’ve accomplished their main goal, which is to get me to read -and maybe buy- more of Vox’s stuff.

I hardly need that prodding to read Sarah Hoyt’s writing. On the contrary, I was frustrated that it took me as long as it did to pick up A Few Good Men. However, I haven’t read much of her fantasy, so I thought I’d try out Where Horse And Hero Fell, a short story involving a computer geek suddenly thrust into a leadership role in a wizards’ guild. It was a fun read, but I’m not sure it’s worth $1.99; stories like this are a good reason to have Amazon Prime, so you can borrow them for free.

Finally, I have to admit the trailers for Edge of Tomorrow are looking very interesting, if for no other reason than the protagonist’s cycle of death/rebirth/combat/death/rebirth/etc. reminds me of the undeservedly obscure On My Way to Paradise by Dave Wolverton. I’m giving serious thought to picking up the movie’s source novel, All You Need Is Kill, though I may pick up the manga instead.

So…what’s on your summer reading list?

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— by Wombat-socho

I did manage to sneak in some reading before getting buried under the deluge of work that is the Death March to April 15, and they’re very different kinds of books. Leaving aside all the various subgenres of science fiction, it strikes me that there are two basic attitudes expressed in SF: the view advocated by John W. Campbell Jr., who echoed Protagoras’ claim that “Man is the measure of all things”. In this view, humanity can and will overcome whatever a hostile universe throws at it, or die trying, because we’re clever monkey boys and girls who always come up with new tricks with which to befuddle the old dogs of Galactic civilization, if there is one. The other view stems from the horror of H.P. Lovecraft, which was rooted in the opinion that the universe is just too big for us to get our heads around, much less dominate, and there’s stuff out there that could wipe us all out if it could be bothered to notice that we even exist. Christopher Nuttall’s The Nelson Touch, sequel to his rather decent Ark Royal, is firmly in the first camp. Once again, the seemingly obsolete armored carrier goes to war against Earth’s alien enemies, leading a multinational force of newer ships along with transports full of Marines to land on an alien colony world. Admiral Ted Smith gets kicked upstairs to fleet command and the headaches of making his little fleet work together, while his former flag captain Fitzwilliam takes command of the Ark Royal. Lots of action, some VERY interesting subplots, and lots of loose plot threads that seem to promise a sequel. Recommended.

And on the other hand, you have Dennis Detwiller’s Delta Green novel Denied to the Enemy, a grim tale of Nazi experiments with the occult, contacts with Things That Should Not Be, and worse, all set against the backdrop of World War II. If you’re unfamiliar with the Delta Green RPG rules, which began as an offshoot of the Call of Cthulhu system, you should probably read this for a little background; to describe it as The X-Files“> meets the Cthulhu Mythos is more than a little misleading. Suffice it to say that the world of Delta Green is a dark and lonely place which makes Charles’ Stross Laundry novels read like Winnie the Pooh in their cheerful optimism. Detwiller has also written a second Delta Green novel, Through a Glass, Darkly, which is somewhat less depressing but no less dark and bloody than its World War II predecessor. If you like your horror in smaller doses, the anthologies Alien Intelligence and Dark Theatres may be more to your liking. I recommend all of these to those folks who are interested in the Mythos, the Laundry novels, or the X-Files; well worth your time.

In other news, for those of you still interested in the Hugo Awards, Larry Correia announces that a blow has been struck against Puppy Related Sadness.

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— by Wombat-socho

Just about everybody familiar with the combat SF subgenre knows about Keith Laumer’s Bolos, which evolved over a number of short stories from moderately advanced main battle tanks into cybernetic war machines utterly loyal to their human commanders and their comrades of the Dinochrome Brigade. Whether in the era of the Concordiat or Jame Retief’s Corps Diplmatique Terrestrienne, Bolos could be found on the front line against any alien menace, cybernetic knights sans peur et sans reproche.

What if the Bolos had been created by a less worthy humanity, one that cared little for their AI-driven mercenaries and used them to commit atrocities not only against aliens, but also against humans of the wrong religion or political stripe? What if the commanders of these war machines had been unworthy of their charges, throwing them away in stupid and pointless actions, and treating them with the same lack of respect you or I might show the malfunctioning Mr. Coffee in our kitchen? Tom Kratman explores those questions in Big Boys Don’t Cry, a novella that sometimes seems nightmarish in its inversion of all the honorable and glorious tropes that made the Bolo stories what they were. Let Colonel Kratman introduce you to Maggie, a Ratha reviewing her long career shortly before its end…or a new beginning.

Big Boys Don’t Cry is on sale at $0.99 for the next twelve hours. It’s an outstanding deal. Go buy it and read it.