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newnumber6Been a while, since I haven't been having regular long bus rides in a while. But:
Finished: Moving Mars, by Greg Bear
Started: Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delany
Thoughts, minor spoilery comments behind cut tag.
Moving Mars I liked quite a bit more than I expected. Although Mars was the setting, it wasn't a traditional 'Mars' story, which has a lot of Mars related action and politics. Most of the politics were revolving around Mars, but the 'big idea' of the novel was something else entirely. The big technological leap was fun to mentally play around with, even if some of how it ended up was predictable.
I was a bit hesitant to start Babel-17. I've tried Delany in smaller doses and not been terribly impressed, he struck me as one of the 'style over substance' types in the few stories I'd read of his.
So far though, this book is turning out fairly interesting. The plot is so far about a poet hired to decipher a code being used in an interstellar war. She's a natural talent for codes and languages, to the point of near telepathy from reading body-language, and she discovers quickly that it's not a code at all, but a language in itself.
Finished: Moving Mars, by Greg Bear
Started: Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delany
Thoughts, minor spoilery comments behind cut tag.
Moving Mars I liked quite a bit more than I expected. Although Mars was the setting, it wasn't a traditional 'Mars' story, which has a lot of Mars related action and politics. Most of the politics were revolving around Mars, but the 'big idea' of the novel was something else entirely. The big technological leap was fun to mentally play around with, even if some of how it ended up was predictable.
I was a bit hesitant to start Babel-17. I've tried Delany in smaller doses and not been terribly impressed, he struck me as one of the 'style over substance' types in the few stories I'd read of his.
So far though, this book is turning out fairly interesting. The plot is so far about a poet hired to decipher a code being used in an interstellar war. She's a natural talent for codes and languages, to the point of near telepathy from reading body-language, and she discovers quickly that it's not a code at all, but a language in itself.
