Well, I'm always somewhat out of touch, of course. I don't even know what's going on with my life anymore. Not that anything actually is, but, I just feel adrift disconnected from time and space.
Which also means lately I've completely fallen down on wishing people on my flist happy birthdays. If I missed yours, my apologies. And today, happy birthday
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redlantern2051!
But if I don't have a world of my own, at least I have worlds of fiction, at least somewhat. Legend of Korra season 3 starts Friday... apparently some of the epsiodes were leaked and I guess they rushed it to air to minimize the damage. But I won't complain, I like the show (even if it's still nowhere as good as Avatar).
Game of Thrones is over for the year, and it was pretty good, although now there's kind of a gap until Doctor Who, which is in August, which might as well be the new fall season. I guess there's Defiance, which is okay (some of the old Farscape feel there)... Falling Skies, which was never great, so disappointed me with the S4 premiere that I'm almost done with the show. And I still haven't tried The Last Ship or Penny Dreadful, but I want to, eventually, just for curiosity's sake. And S2 of Orphan Black I also need to get to (along with S3 of Continuum... Canada's really kind of doing well with SFTV, let's keep that up).
I don't have anything to say about movies, because I haven't really watched any. I've been playing the Batman Arkham Games over the last few weeks... Asylum and City, not Origins, I don't have that one, but I got the Game of the Year version of the other two off a Humble Bundle some time back and I'm finally getting around to them. They're fun... Asylum had a story that made more sense, but City has better gameplay options (especially when you have the options to play Catwoman, Robin, and Nightwing, as I do... if only they included Cassandra Cain). I actually got 100% completion on Arkham Asylum, every achievement, and completed the main game on City and... well, I'm still having fun on some of the associated challenges... I doubt I'll go 100% for it, but I'm ejoying it. And it's been eating my brain a little.
Fan Expo's been adding to its guest list, and apparently we're getting Matt Smith (the Eleventh Doctor), and Nathan Fillion, who was here last year... a few Walking Dead people, Arrow from Arrow, Patrick Stewart, Stan Lee, Shatner... but right now, although I'm a little tempted with Matt Smith, there's really nobody that will draw me out from my hermit tendencies and make me make the trek to a con and the inevitable tiredness and depression that follow. So, right now, I may be skipping this year. We'll see. Maybe they'll add somebody extra cool, or maybe I'll just be in a mood to go.
And books. Speaking of, although I've largely avoided reddit, I have been drawn a little to one community that discusses print SF (it's r/printSF), which at least satisfies some small amount of my yearnings for social interaction. Anyway, book foo! As usual, most of my thoughts are cut and pasted from Goodreads. Since last time, I've...
Finished: Voice of the Whirlwind, by Walter Jon Williams
Steward's memories are fifteen years out of date, because, even though he had clone insurance when he died, he hadn't updated the memory backup ever since he got out of training as a mercenary soldier. In those intervening years, the brutal corporate wars in space that he was recruited for ended after long years of conflict when an alien race made contact with Earth. Steward himself, aside from making difficult decisions in those wars, also got divorced twice... oh, and was murdered on a distant planet. His clone is somewhat adrift, driven by a desire to get back into space and find answers, but there are bigger games going on.
Voice of the Whirlwind is in the cyberpunk subgenre, a world of hi-tech implants and gritty street-level characters, film noir mixed with SF, often dealing with themes of government breakdown and corporate domination that are surprisingly relevant today. But it is a book of it's time... granted, a very good book.
( Read more... ) If you like Cyberpunk, this is a book to try, if you haven't already. If not... well, it still might be worth a look.
Finished: Only Superhuman, by Christopher L. Bennett
Mankind has spread out through the solar system, living in habitats in the asteroid belt, among other exotic places. And such exotic places have lead to exotic people... while highly restricted on Earth, elsewhere, mods that alter the human form and potential are common. Some of them have banded together and deliberately taken on the trappings of superheroes, to defend others and help foster acceptance of their differences. One of these is Emerald Blaze, a new Troubleshooter with a checkered past... but after her mentor dies and the team decides to get more proactive, she's drawn in the middle of a conflict between multiple factions and must decide where her loyalties lie.
This book was described as a "hard SF superhero story", which seemed like an intriguing idea, particularly for one like me who likes both SF and comics. I picked the book up on a whim seeing it on sale in a bookstore that was closing, so how could I lose?
Unfortunately, the book doesn't really live up to the promise, or it does too well, depending on your point of view. The hard SF aspect is pretty good, actually. And the basics of the superhero plot, while not especially novel, is solid. Combining the two should be a natural fit.
The problem is, I think, he also threw in a bunch of the worst parts of superhero comics... the kind of things that, by fusing it with hard SF, I was hoping to avoid.
( Read more... )Finished: The Living Dead 2 (short story collection)
Another collection of zombie tales, from a variety of authors.
I think I liked this one a little more than its immediate predecessor, The Living Dead,
( Read more... ) So, on the whole, this volume satisfied me more, and similarly might satisfy those who are fans more of The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later than horror fans in general.
Finished: The Year's Best Sf 16 (short story collection)
A collection of some of the best stories of the year 2010, in the opinions of the editors, at least. As usual, sometimes they really hit on my tastes, and sometimes are wide off the mark.
( Read more... )But overall, as these things usually go, it's a fairly pleasant anthology.
Finished: The Halcyon Drift, by Brian Stableford (reread)
I've reviewed this several times in this journal over the years, so I'll just cut the whole thing.
( Read more... )Finished: Redshirts, by John Scalzi
Redshirts tells the story of a young ensign and his friends assigned to the flagship ship of a Star Trek-like galactic civilization. At first he's excited, but then comes to realize how often people die on away missions. Everybody except the Captain, Science Officer, Chief Engineer, and one particular lieutenant are at risk for sudden gory inexplicable death. And the rest of the ship's crew seems to know it, too, always contriving to be somewhere else when somebody's needed for a mission. And that's not the only weird thing going on, there's plenty that just doesn't make sense.
It's hard to talk much about the book without 'spoiling' it, if it's even a spoiler, because I knew it in advance and think even if I didn't, I would have figured it out in the first few pages. The book's about what happens when Star Trek-style redshirts
( Read more... )I honestly can't see this as being worthy of the Hugo award or the praise it received. It's not awful. It's an okay book that might particularly resonate with SF fans in a pleasant way (although partly due to it pandering to them). It does some mildly clever things from time to time. It's not a particularly GOOD book. And if it really was the best SF novel of the year it came out, then it must have been a very poor year.
Finished: Rhapsody in Black, by Brian Stableford (reread)
Again, part of one of my favorite series, reviewed here several times, so, cut.
( Read more... )Finished: The Risen Empire, by Scott Westerfield
The Rix, a cult of machine-augmented humans who want to propagate planet-scale AIs throughout the galaxy, have just launched a major operation on the planet Legis XV, a world part of the Risen Empire, and the current location of the Emperor's little sister. If Captain Laurent Zai doesn't get her back, not only is a major war likely, but he'll be expected to sacrifice his life for his failure. This is how it is in the Empire, a society long on traditions established by the immortal leader, who discovered the secret to granting eternal life, though death, to himself and others, and using that knowledge to establish a perpetual rule over eighty worlds.
This is an ambitious space opera with loads of imaginative ideas, both in terms of technology and the social policy consequences of it. It has the seeds of being one of the great space operas that the genre remembers for decades, if not forever. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite live up to them.
( Read more... )I'd give it three stars. It's a high three stars, though, and I will be reading the sequel, The Killing of Worlds, when I find it. Hopefully that one will improve on it.
Finished: Promised Land, by Brian Stableford (reread)
( Read more... )Finished: The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com (short story collection, ebook)
This is a huge collection of about 150 stories that have appeared over the last five years on Tor's website, that I've been reading in dribs and drabs on my phone over the past year or so.
( Read more... )But because of the high proportion of stories that did not interest me, I can only give the collection two stars... it was okay.
Finished: Memory, by Linda Nagata
On Jubilee's world, there is the silver, that rises on some nights over the land, covering everything not specially protected. For structures and tools, the silver sometimes leaves them alone, sometimes wipes them away, and sometimes returns buildings or items from the distant past. For living things, though, being swallowed by the silver is a death sentence. Jubilee's brother Jolly was taken by the silver as a youth, in front of her eyes. Years later, she meets somebody who can survive the silver... someone who claims her brother is still alive.
This is one of those books that are a curious blend between SF and Fantasy.
( Read more... )A decent outing, with some really imaginative ideas but ultimately not what I was hoping for, although others might like it more.
Finished: The Paradise Game, by Brian Stableford (reread)
( Read more... )Finished: The Killing of Worlds, by Scott Westerfield
This is the sequel to The Risen Empire, but really it's the second half of a longer work that was split in two to meet retailer demands. (as such, much of the review itself is spoilery for the first book, and I'll cut it entirely: short version... disappointing on a plot level)
( Read more... )Started: The Apex Book of World SF (short story collection, ebook)
Started: The Fenris Device, by Brian Stableford
Started: The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters
That's it, I guess, probably all I have to say for another few months. But despite my relative silence, I have been reading every post on my friends list (though sometimes up to a week or so late), so if you're like me sometimes wondering, yes, people are out there reading!
PS: Seriously, LJ? You still haven't fixed the bug where if you hit the "post" button on the My-LJ page, it takes you to the more options page, and if you hit the "More options" it just posts what you've got? Anyway, fixed the half-completed post.
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