Rating: 4/5 Neal Stephenson, Anathem (New York, NY: William Morrow, 2008). This is a book that’s all about the journey. It’s quite long (almost a thousand pages), and I’d certainly classify it as a “slow burn.” The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world (but not your run-of-the-mill post-apocalypse) in which...
Rating: 4/5 Robert Charles Wilson, Spin (New York: Tor Books, 2005). I managed to squeeze in at least one new book this summer. Wilson’s Spin is a sci-fi novel that follows two families (three main protagonists) as the world tries to figure out what happened to the suddenly invisible stars. The narrative alternates...
Rating: 5/5 Hugh Howey, Wool (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013). What a pleasant surprise! I just kept hearing about this book from all sorts of different people, so I finally checked it out from the library. I’m so glad I did! When it comes to speculative fiction, authors are faced with the very difficult challenge of...
Rating: 3/5 Peter F. Hamilton, Pandora’s Star, Commonwealth Saga #1 (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004). This thousand-page tome is the first of two novels in the Commonwealth Saga. It’s apparently popular in Calgary because I had to keep returning it to the library because of holds. It took me three attempts, but I...
Rating: 3/5 Robert Silverberg (ed.), Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume One, 1929–1964 (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1970). I typically really enjoy historic science fiction, and I was really looking forward to reading this collection. I wasn’t totally disappointed. About half the stories were really enjoyable,...
Rating: 4/5 Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996). There was a lull in the flow of books from the library, so I picked something off my shelf to re-read. I hadn’t read this story for many years. I had forgotten how great it was! Philip K. Dick was as much a philosopher...
Rating: 4/5 Alastair Reynolds, Zima Blue (London: Gollancz, 2009). I had forgotten how much I enjoy Alastair Reynolds’s writing. He is an expert in the “space opera” genre. Short stories give authors a great opportunity to distill a story down to its very essence. Reynolds does not waste words. I really enjoyed this...
Rating: 4/5 Ernest Cline, Ready Player One (New York: Crown Publishers, 2011). Well the book was a fun read, but saccharine. Like the best Disney and Pixar films, Ready Player One is targetted to younger readers but cannot be fully appreciated except by older ones. Unfortunately, unlike movies like Wall-E (my...
Rating: 3/5 Iain M. Banks, Against a Dark Background (London: Orbit, 1995). Well I’m afraid this is it for me and Iain M. Banks. It’s so frustrating! The first two thirds were the best I’ve read of him yet. I loved the characters, the humour was effective, and the action was awesome. He uses flashbacks very effectively...
Rating: 3/5 Iain M. Banks, The State of the Art (London: Orbit, 1991). Well this book is more of a novella. It’s grouped with a number of short stories, not of all of which take place in the Culture universe. They do sort of belong together, though. The main story “The State of the Art” is a recounting of the Culture’s...