If this is really the last Wayfarers book, (and I hope to Crom it isn't) it's a very sweet story to bow out on. The premise is straightforward: three If this is really the last Wayfarers book, (and I hope to Crom it isn't) it's a very sweet story to bow out on. The premise is straightforward: three aliens land at an intergalactic truck stop, run by another alien and her child. They're only meant to be there for a handful of hours, but because of a cosmic mishap, they get stranded there for days.
In the hands of another writer, this would have been the opening of a horror story, a murder mystery, or a classic Doctor Who base-under-siege adventure. Chambers, on the other hand, uses the situation as a framework for a meditation on kindness and mutual understanding. Sure, there's conflict - internal and external - but instead of setting the pot on "fast boil," Chambers lets her characters gently simmer as they open to each other and let their cultures blend.
Chamber's previous book, Record of a Spaceborn Few, focused solely on the human exiles in the galaxy, with a weave of separate stories that never quite came together. In this one, the humans are completely off-stage, and yet "humanity" shows through in each of the alien characters. The "ground within" the galaxy, Chambers seems to say, is the common ground between all living beings. If anything, that sums up the whole Wayfarers series. (Fingers crossed that she changes her mind and comes back to this universe one day.)...more
Grendel is one of my all-time favorite series, and I've been really excited to read this new volume. I was even more enthused that Wagner was once agaGrendel is one of my all-time favorite series, and I've been really excited to read this new volume. I was even more enthused that Wagner was once again taking the story forward. The last few entries have all been tales of Hunter Rose, the original Grendel, but what drew me to the series in the first place was the far-future wasteland of War Child and Grendel Tales. I was also happy that Wagner was taking the story in a whole new direction. Grendel's dystopian future has often mixed Mad Max violence with supernatural horror, but this time Wagner throws all that out the window to serve up a full-on space opera.
The result, however, doesn't actually feel like a Grendel comic. Instead, it's more like a mix of Star Trek and Fear Agent, with Grendel Prime going from planet to planet, having short, little allegorical adventures in which he encounters alien civilizations and bludgeons his way through them. Since Grendel Prime is basically invincible, and the side characters never lasted for more than an issue or two, this series lacked the emotional punch that Grendel delivers at its best.
Nevertheless, the artwork is fantastic, the setting is a welcome change of pace, and the conclusion was just as grim as a Grendel story needs to be. This whole book felt like Wagner getting his Grendel groove back again, and the Devil's Crucible series that will hopefully come soon looks like it will bring back the nightmare fuel that might kick Grendel comics back into high gear....more
Ah, the Fifties, when Real Men and Real Women would crash on alien planets, civilize the savage natives, teach them to speak English, and help in the Ah, the Fifties, when Real Men and Real Women would crash on alien planets, civilize the savage natives, teach them to speak English, and help in the fight against International Communism!
Actually, this book really wasn't all that bad, despite a clunky opening, a cop-out ending, and Edgar Pangborn's difficulty letting the reader know which character is speaking a third of the time. The story does assume that "civilizing savages" is an inherently good thing if done properly (which is why I almost quit a quarter of the way in) but the middle section of the novel is particularly strong, especially when the small nation of natives that the human settlers have made contact with come under attack from a much larger, warlike nation, and it seems as if the colonists' chances of survival will drop to zero. There is also an examination of how attempting to impose human beliefs and mores on another culture can go horribly wrong. However, that final conflict is short-circuited by a very conveniently timed deus ex machina, and in the end Pangborn veers into a pointless political screed that hasn't aged well at all, instead of finding a proper ending for his story....more
Anyone remember those flip-book SF paperbacks where you get two novellas for the price of one? Adams & Northcott's Welcome to Outback Station retains Anyone remember those flip-book SF paperbacks where you get two novellas for the price of one? Adams & Northcott's Welcome to Outback Station retains that old-school SF flavor, except in this case both stories are set in the same milieu: Paradise (Outcast) Station on the edge of civilized space. Jeanne Adams handles the space station itself with a tale of a mystery outbreak of plague and the specialized sleuth-doctors who tackle it. Nancy Northcott lays claim to the planet below with the story of the new cop in town taking on a murder investigation that the barely-competent chief marshal would rather sweep under the rug.
Both stories do an excellent job of setting up the world of Outcast Station and the wider universe beyond. The Accidental Plague is somewhat of a slow burn until the plague sets in, and then the it becomes a fast-paced cross between an episode of House and James White's classic "Sector General" stories. The New Badge is a fun police procedural with a heavy emphasis on the "wild frontier" feel of the planet and its environs. Taken together, Outcast Station promises to be a great setting for even more stories in the future....more
Oh, brother... The conclusion to Liu Cixin's "Three Body" trilogy doesn't disappoint in terms of huge, mind-bending SFnal concepts, but it fails utterOh, brother... The conclusion to Liu Cixin's "Three Body" trilogy doesn't disappoint in terms of huge, mind-bending SFnal concepts, but it fails utterly in the execution of the story. It starts off so well, too - with a gripping tale of Constantinople under siege by the Ottomans while a fragment of four-dimensional spacetime drifts through the city. Once the action shifts back to the future, though, the novel grinds to a painful halt and stays in "first gear" for most of the remainder of the (excruciatingly dry) text.
The good: Liu has fantastic concepts, and he ups the ante from the previous two books by several orders of magnitude. When The Dark Forest left off, humanity had been saved from imminent destruction by entering into a Cold War-style pact of mutually assured destruction with the alien invaders. Death's End picks up with that precarious balance in place, and then gets darker... and darker... and darker. Liu hinted at the universe being a scary place in the first two books, but in this one he explores just how bad it could be to live in the shadow of god-like alien entities at war with each other. I described The Three-Body Problem as something that John Cambell Jr. would have admired, but Death's End dives into existential terror in a way that would make H.P. Lovecraft say daaaamn.
But...
Liu has so many huge SF ideas that he's desperate to explain in such minute detail that 90% of the book reads like a technical manual. Liu refuses to use any shortcuts to move the story along - he insists on laying out every bit of physics as much as he can, even for things he shouldn't have to. I mean, come on... anyone who's enough of an SF junkie to survive the first few chapters should already know that you can spin space stations to produce artificial gravity. Do we really need a whole, interminable chapter laying out all the different spinning station designs Liu could think up?
Once in a while Liu remembers that novels have scenes and he'll write one, but every single conversation gets interrupted by characters explaining science to each other. The book's protagonist (if it has one at all) is much like the main character of the first novel - a complete Mary Sue whose only purpose in the story is to stand there so other characters can explain the plot to her.
After The Dark Forest I was heartily recommending this series to people. After this book, I'm not sure that I can any more, unless they're hardcore physics junkies. Four Stars for the science, Zero for the fiction....more
Wow. It's rare that the middle part of a trilogy is stronger than the first, but The Dark Forest is a much better book than the more famous Three-BWow. It's rare that the middle part of a trilogy is stronger than the first, but The Dark Forest is a much better book than the more famous Three-Body Problem. In my review of that volume, I lamented that the protagonist was an ineffectual fly on the wall and wished for more proactive main characters. The Dark Forest delivers several times over.
Like the first book, this one feels distinctly Chinese and now I think I can put my finger on why. With much of the science out of the way (scientific advancement being frozen by the godlike invaders), the story turns to sociology and how to manage a society that now lives under a centuries-long doomsday clock. There is much discussion of how to introduce and manage ideology on a global scale, and I think Liu Cixin takes the subject more seriously than a Western author would. In the West, ideologies and "-isms" are viewed with cynicism or as empty slogans for the masses to rally behind. In Liu's novel, they are ideas to be taken and debated seriously.
The three ideologies under consideration are Escapism (the belief that humanity should flee into space before the invaders arrive), Defeatism (the belief that humanity is doomed), and Triumphalism (the belief that humanity will win). Even more central to the novel, I believe, is the theme of Individualism vs. Collectivism, and the power of mere individuals to shape the course of history. As revealed in The Three-Body Problem, the invading Trisolarans can eavesdrop on every human communication, even though their ships are still light-years away. Therefore, the only way to defeat them is to select individuals who will formulate strategies, not reveal them to anyone, and have near-dictatorial powers in order to implement their plans.
As Benjamin Franklin once said, "Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead."
Four "Wallfacers" are selected for this task. Three are great leaders and influencers of society, while the fourth - an inconsequential Chinese sociologist named Luo Ji, is anything but. Luo Ji is unique solely in the fact that he is the one human on Earth that the Trisolarans want killed. Meanwhile, a political officer in the Chinese space force named Zhang Beihei turns himself into a secret, unofficial Wallfacer and puts his own plans into motion. The character who ties this novel back to the first is the cop Shi Qiang, who - like a Chinese Joe Don Baker - grounds the high-minded philosophizing with simple, down-to-earth street smarts.
One more reason I love this novel: It presents a similar pessimistic view of contact with alien races to the cold "kill 'em all" logic in Pellegrino & Zebrowski's The Killing Star. My reaction to the ideas in that novel was viscerally negative, which is why that book has stuck with me. Liu Cixin presents a similar argument in The Dark Forest, but his feels better reasoned and he comes to a much more surprising, humane, and human solution to the threat of total destruction....more
In The Night Masquerade, the Binti trilogy comes to a satisfying and often surprising conclusion. Binti's od"When elephants fight, the grass suffers."
In The Night Masquerade, the Binti trilogy comes to a satisfying and often surprising conclusion. Binti's odyssey of self-discovery that brimmed over with new revelations in Home gets interrupted when the truce between the Meduse, the alien race with which Binti has become bonded, and the Khoush, the dominant Human culture who view Binti's people as little more than animals, comes to a sudden, bloody end. Binti's home gets caught in the middle, and she forces herself into the role of peacemaker without the support of anyone in her home tribe. The cost is high and the results are, let's say, not what you'd see coming.
I hear that, unsurprisingly, the trilogy is going to be reissued in a single, novel-length edition. It fully deserves that treatment, just as this series deserves its rightful place both as a modern classic and a high point in the rising surge of Afro-futurism....more
"You can never go home again," is a saying so old it's boring, but in "Home" Nnedi Okorafor shows how far "not going home again" can really go. The st"You can never go home again," is a saying so old it's boring, but in "Home" Nnedi Okorafor shows how far "not going home again" can really go. The story picks up a year after the events in Binti, but instead of taking the trendy Harry Potter route and tell a story about all the cool things she does at university, "Home" takes the title character back to Earth, to reconnect with her people and go on a pilgrimage that is expected of all the women of her tribe.
The problem is that Binti is alien now, thanks to her encounter with the Meduse (she's even bringing one home with her). Her "home" life is thrown into even more turmoil when some previously unspoken family history reveals that her heritage is stranger than she'd known. She'd hoped to be able to once again ground herself by returning to her homeland, and instead finds herself pulled in three different directions.
"Home" is a slower, more contemplative story than the nail-biter that was Binti, but it ends on a cliffhanger. Bring on The Night Masquerade!...more
I love that novellas are a thing now, and not just in anthologies and SF mags that not many people read. I love the efficiency of worldbuilding, charaI love that novellas are a thing now, and not just in anthologies and SF mags that not many people read. I love the efficiency of worldbuilding, characterization, and storytelling that you get when the author only gives themselves 100 pages or so. And I love being able to read a whole book in a day and feel good about it.
Binti is some excellent science fiction. Because the story is so tight I don't want to give any surprises away. Suffice it to say that it's set in the far, far future, yet the title character is from a community and culture that is very recognizably African. She's the first of her community to be accepted into the most prestigious university in the galaxy, yet she has to run away from home and abandon her family in order to attend. On the space voyage to her new home, she falls into an alien contact scenario that takes all of her wits and uniqueness as an individual to survive.
There you have it. Any hype you may have heard is deserved. Go read it....more