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newnumber6So, last class was cancelled today (Prof was sick. He suggested we use sanitizer on our test papers if we received them already because he was probably infectious while handling them to post scores), so I got off early.
Which meant I got to sleep a little, though probably a little too much to be feeling quite right. Anyway, that's not about that, this is about...
Finished: The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber
Started: Man Plus, by Frederik Pohl
Thoughts, comments, minor spoilerish things behind the cut tag.
Wanderer wasn't bad. Not my favorite book by any means, and the 'too many viewpoints' carried on to the end (with the added annoyance that some of them never wound up connecting to any of the others), but for the main plot it got more interesting as time went on and I just tended to tune out the other ones a little bit. The reasoning behind the Wanderer was interesting, although I wish the resolution had a little more.. resolution to it. Still, I suppose it's really not that kind of book.
Some interesting things to note about the book (besides the Hot Human/Alien Sexx0r of the furry variety) is that the time period was pretty easy to pin down without really looking at it. While reading it I was under the impression it was from the late 50s. It felt like that, for the most part. But as it went on, a number of things, such as sexual references cropping up (which tends to be a lot harder to find in 50s SF, they were very puritanical), I eventually figured that it must have been from the early 60s instead, and upon checking, I realized that it was, in fact (1965 Hugo Winner).
Man Plus, however, is from the late 70s. It deals with a new space race, and the desire to surgically alter a man to live on Mars, so that a colony can be set up there. This surgical alteration turns the subject, appearance-wise, into a monster, with leathery skin, big bug eyes, even wings, and, although they promise they can turn him back once the mission is over, it's not altogether clear they'd ironed out all the bugs yet.
So far it's pretty interesting, although I have a little bit of trouble of the extent of some of the alterations, where it'd seem that rather than altering his existing body it might seem to be altogether easier to just transplant his brain into a body made to order. Still, so far, so good.
Which meant I got to sleep a little, though probably a little too much to be feeling quite right. Anyway, that's not about that, this is about...
Finished: The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber
Started: Man Plus, by Frederik Pohl
Thoughts, comments, minor spoilerish things behind the cut tag.
Wanderer wasn't bad. Not my favorite book by any means, and the 'too many viewpoints' carried on to the end (with the added annoyance that some of them never wound up connecting to any of the others), but for the main plot it got more interesting as time went on and I just tended to tune out the other ones a little bit. The reasoning behind the Wanderer was interesting, although I wish the resolution had a little more.. resolution to it. Still, I suppose it's really not that kind of book.
Some interesting things to note about the book (besides the Hot Human/Alien Sexx0r of the furry variety) is that the time period was pretty easy to pin down without really looking at it. While reading it I was under the impression it was from the late 50s. It felt like that, for the most part. But as it went on, a number of things, such as sexual references cropping up (which tends to be a lot harder to find in 50s SF, they were very puritanical), I eventually figured that it must have been from the early 60s instead, and upon checking, I realized that it was, in fact (1965 Hugo Winner).
Man Plus, however, is from the late 70s. It deals with a new space race, and the desire to surgically alter a man to live on Mars, so that a colony can be set up there. This surgical alteration turns the subject, appearance-wise, into a monster, with leathery skin, big bug eyes, even wings, and, although they promise they can turn him back once the mission is over, it's not altogether clear they'd ironed out all the bugs yet.
So far it's pretty interesting, although I have a little bit of trouble of the extent of some of the alterations, where it'd seem that rather than altering his existing body it might seem to be altogether easier to just transplant his brain into a body made to order. Still, so far, so good.
