Review: Ready Player Two

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My first question about this book was, did all the people who wrote bad reviews about this book actually read it? Okay, Ernie Cline is not the best writer ever, I doubt there will college courses taught on his works. However, with Ready Player One, he struck a cord, the story worked and he redefined the Cyberpunk genre for a generation. His second book Armada, fell very flat and was more or less a re-enactment of The Last Star Fighter. However, with Ready Player Two, he did regain most of his footing.

The weakest part of the book was the beginning, where Wade Watts is bringing us up to speed with what gas been happening over the last 3 years. This is fine, but way too much time was spent on it and it turns into a bit of slog as it is a lot like reading a Wikipeadia page at times. Cline could have easily compressed this down to maybe 6 pages and dropped anything else the reader needed along the way as it became necessary to know, instead it encompasses the first quarter of the book.

After that the story starts to pick up speed. We become engrossed by the new contest, a couple of the challenges are glossed over a bit, but several of them are quit fun to read. I was especially enjoyed the arena fight with the 7 aspects of the Purple One, Cline very obviously had fun writing this scene and I had a lot of fun reading it.

Over all, a good read, and a solid follow up to Ready Player One. If you are on the fence about reading it, I would say ignore the haters and go for it.

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Review: The Sparrow #1

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Sparrow is a somewhat difficult book to enjoy. This is not to say it is a bad book, it is in fact a very well written book with a very interesting first contact story. The reason it is difficult to enjoy is because some very terrible things happen to the primary character Emillio Sandoz. I am sure the author's intent was to write a modern day Book of Job. Father Emillio Sandoz is a Jesuit priest blessed with many friends and a happy successful career, serving God. When one of his friends detects radio transmission from space, this sets Father Sandoz on his path to destruction, where his friends, his freedom and his purpose in life are all stripped from him as he slips into slavery and degradation. Father Sandoz's faith is tested to the very limits.

The Sparrow is a story of how NOT to send people 4 light years to make first contact with an alien race. I get it, the idea that an organization like the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), has the resources and the ability to make a unilateral decision to send 8 people into space and make it happen, is an interesting one. The author explores this idea pretty well and makes it abundantly clear how bad of an idea it really is. None of these people were truly equipped to deal with cultural differences and their doom was inevitable, because they simply did not understand what was happening around them and why. Missionaries have historically always been on the leading edge of exploration, after all, bringing the word of God to heathens is part of the very DNA of almost all religions. This, however, does not make them the best candidates for such things.

From the point of view of speculative fiction, this is a really interesting book, from the view point of an empathetic human being, this book is rather depressing and it is difficult not to put the book down as the fate of the crew unfolds. At this point I have not decided if I am going to read the second book or not.

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Review: Far-Seer by Robert Sawyer

Far-Seer by Robert J. Sawyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Far-Seer is a very good book. The story explores the the affects of science on society as old beliefs and faith are replaced by and with scientific discovery. On earth this took centuries and in many ways still goes on today. In Far-Seer, the reptilian race of the Quintaglio must make this journey in decades rather than centuries. The writing is smooth for the most part, there are some rough spots, but nothing that interrupted the flow of the story for me. The characters were a tad on the shallow side, but this is often true of books that are intended as series instead of stand alone books. What the author really excelled at in my opinion is world building. I really liked the culture of the Quintaglio, he did a very good job of laying out the political structure, the religion of the Quintaglio and the world they lived on. If you are looking for something different and enjoyable, this is the book for you.

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Review: Wool by Hugh Howey

Wool by Hugh Howey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wool is a short story, normally I would have blown through this story in a single sitting, but I actually stopped reading another book to pick this one up, then I went back to the other book and finished it. This probably says something about both stories. However Wool is actually a good read, in just 58 pages the author built an interesting setting, constructed an interesting leading character, and walked us through a compelling story.

I have two problems with this story, first I think this was the authors first work or he did not have a good editor, there were some rough spots that a good editor and another draft probably would have fixed. The second is the primary focus of the story does not really make much sense. I don't think I am giving much away by saying, this is a post apocalyptic society living underground, their only connection to the surface world is cameras that give them a view of the blighted landscape. Periodically the lenses of these cameras need to be cleaned, but instead of sending out trained professionals to do maintenance on sensitive equipment, they send criminals and dissidents out with a rag and Windex on a one way trip. While this makes for an interesting personal story for the main character, it is really kind of silly.

Wool is a good story, well worth the read in spite of the rather minor problems I found.


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The Hacker Files

From August 1992 to July 1993 DC Comics published a comic book entitled The Hacker Files. The story was about a computer hacker named Jack Marshall who exists in the DC Universe. The 12 issue mini series contained 4 story arcs touching on different real world historical events of the time; the spread of computer virus's, FBI cracking down on computer crime, the Tiananmen Square protests and the rise of artificial intelligence. The series was not well received at the time and pretty much dropped off virtually everyone's radar even before the end of the series. The series has never been reprinted or even discussed much.

The reason I am bringing up this little known comic book from the early 90's, is DC is about to publish a new graphic novel The Oracle Code, a book about Barbra Gordon's (Batgirl) time as the computer hacker Oracle. For those of you not in the know, In the aftermath of Batman: The Killing Joke, Barbra Gordon was left paralyzed from the waist down when she was shot by the Joker. She would later regain her mobility, but while she was in a wheelchair, she acted as an intelligence collector and an operational overwatch for many heroes and was the leader of The Birds of Prey. Barbra Gordon was one of the hackers picked up by the FBI when they began cracking down on cybercrime, and appeared in The Hacker Files briefly and the two have encountered each other.

I realize The Oracle Code has already been written and the art is probably all but done at this point, however I think this would have been a great opportunity to revisit Jack Marshall in the modern post New 52 DC Universe. While he failed a lead in his own book, I think Jack would make a great backup character or perhaps as a replacement for Barbra as Oracle, though I have to admit, I am not terribly warm to that idea. I think he would be better suited as one of those normal people that superheroes goto to get things done. He is a middle aged, balding, overly serious and grumpy man, a great foil to the young, pretty and energetic Batgirl. I would love to see a scene where no one is taking him seriously, until he starts using everyone's first names, showing that none of their secret identities is safe from his skill.

Review: All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) Red by Martha Wells

All Systems Red by Martha Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a really fun read. The main character, Murderbot, is a true slacker in all the best ways and I identified with him almost immediately. His character development was brilliant and subtle, the story was fun and sublimely funny. Though I do not like all of her stuff, Martha Wells is a really great writer, with a smooth and almost lyrical writing style, not quite on Ursula Le Guin's level, but close. I recommend this one for anyone who is looking for a fun and intelligent romp. My only complaint with this book was it is WAY too short, I immediately bought and downloaded the sequel.

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Review: Crusade by David Weber

Crusade by David Weber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The author, David Weber is also the author of the Honor Harrington series of books. If you are familiar with those books, the writing style will be instantly recognizable. He is also the author of the Safehold series. The Safehold series is by far Weber's best work and unfortunately this story does not live up to the Safehold series and is more at the level of the Harrington books.

So don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this book just fine, I also enjoyed the Harrington books I read as well. However, this book is simply not Weber's best work. I am not sure which book was written first, this one or Off Armageddon Reef, the first book of the Safehold series. The plot of the two books are very much the same, although the characters involved are different and handle the events differently. This is a solid book, with good writing and decent characterizations, it flows well from scene to scene, giving a good view of both sides of the conflict.

I liked the book, but I did not love it. While it is a decent enough book, it is standard fair military scifi, and does not do anything new nor does it stretch any tropes into interesting shapes. If you like military scifi, then yeah, go a head and have a read, you will not hate it and if you really like the Honor Harrington books, you will probably really like these as well.

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Review: Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Oryx and Crake is a dark book, the story does not describe child prostitution/pornography in detail, but does reference it as part of the background of the Oryx character, so if this offends you, this is not the book for you. In spite of the darkness, it is a very good book, well worth the read.

Snowman, the primary character, is sort of an Everyman who was thrust into the unlikely role of holy man to a new race of humans genetically spliced together by his mad genius best friend. The story is two fold, first is the story of Snowman as he is in this post apocalyptic world and his journey to find more supplies. The second takes the form of Snowman remembering his life before the plague and the events leading up to it, including who Oryx and Crake are and why they are important to him.

The writing is excellent, the plot develops in interesting ways and the characterizations where believable and compelling. The story does plod along at first, but picks up steam as it moves along. The description of Oryx's early life will make you uncomfortable and her acceptance of what has happened to her is even more uncomfortable, as is the society that is almost tolerant of it and allowed it to happen.

Over all, a really good read, I would recommend it to nearly anyone, I will be reading the other two books in the trilogy later in the year.

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Review: Station Eleven

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of those books I knew I was going to love in the first chapter. Most post apocalyptic stories these day tend to be dark and grim, even when the hero wins all they have done is survive another day. This book, in spite of the "End of the World" story line, is pretty up beat, it is not just about people trying to not die, it is about people who are genuinely trying to make the world a better place. Not through defeating some evil villain or by trying to bring back the old world in some grand gesture style quest. But rather these people are doing small things, like going from town to town playing music and performing theater, or building a museum in an airport terminal. Don't get me wrong, there is some action adventure going on and there is plenty of grittiness, it is just not the overall theme of the book. I am 100% sure I will eventually read this book again.


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Review: Ralph Bakshi's Wizards

Ralph Bakshi's Wizards is one of my favorite movies. It is a classic heroes journey tale told by a 1970's stoner. The movies detractors complain that the animation is awful, the story is uneven, silly characters and it is terribly dated. I agree with only one of these things, the movie did not age well at all. However, I do not think this is a bad thing. Many movies made decades ago are now dated, but still considered classics. The animation of this movies was and is actually very good, it has bright colors and made good use of the tertiary color schemes. The retroscoping was definitely a low point, but really only because it was so different from the rest of the movie.

The story on its surface was simply about good versus evil, two brothers hashing out their differences. However under the surface, we see a world that has been devastated by war, pollution and excesses of greed. A world which is once again on the brink of destruction. While much of the movie is in fact a bit goofy, but there are many iconic scenes that pointed to deeper issues. For instance the scene where Blackwolfs army goes to the church and asks the priests to take the prisoners of war, the priests say "Patience. We must first observe sundown and pray." and then promptly danced and prayed for hours before the soldiers finally killed the prisoners. This draws attention to how often religion does nothing in the face adversity, preferring instead to pray and let god sort it out, rather than taking action. The classic "They killed Fritz" scene is another good example, it is a satirical look at soldiers dying from friendly fire. The whole movie is a commentary on the dangers of war and unrestrained industrialization.

While I am talking about iconic things, many of the characters are very iconic. Avatar, the wise cracking, cigar smoking hero. Weehawk, the brave and fierce elven warrior. Blackwolf, the most evil man in the world. Necron 99/Peace, the assassin turned good guy. Then of course there was Elinore, I am pretty sure Elinore played a big part in my life during puberty. I can remember at least one conversation at the time about how sexy Princess Leia was and my comment was, "Yeah, I'd do Princess Leia, but I would be thinking about Elinore.".

In spite of what anyone says Wizards is a great movie, every time I watch it, I see something new and laugh at gags I have seen a dozen times, because they are still funny.

Review: Feed

Feed by M.T. Anderson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Feed was a really tough read for me. It starts out depressing and steadily gets more depressing. I get that it is supposed to be an extension of smartphones and the "People as products" business model of Facebook and Google, but that is really what is depressing about it. I am also not the type of person who needs a happy ending to a book, but when people die, I like there to be a reason for it, I like there to be meaningful in some way. Violets death did not change anything, it did not even change the main character in any way, he ultimately made the same bad choices at the end of the book that he was making at the beginning. While I found the slang language used by the teenagers to be kind of distracting, I do have to say though the descent into the pit of despair was subtle and well written.


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Review: The Tripod Trilogy

The White Mountains by John Christopher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Tripod series is three books; The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead and The Pool of Fire. The books were written decades ago by John Christopher, who is a tier two, possibly tier three science fiction writer, he did the bulk of his work in the 50's, 60's and 70's, and was a reasonably prolific writer. Reading his Wikipedia entry, I think he was popular primarily in the U.K..

To start with, the things I did not like about the books. First off, these books did not age terribly well. They aged better than your average Heinlein book, but they still come off as very dated. The writing itself is pretty good, its just that the books were obviously written with 14 year old boys in mind, with no thought to appealing to any other demographic, which was pretty standard procedure back then. Remember this was at a time when women science fiction writers had to pretend to be men in order to get published. The story reads a bit like Huckleberry Finn, where a couple of kids go off on a grand adventure and do things no 14 year old boy could realistically do, the characters instead rely on luck to survive. By modern writing standards this falls under the category of seriously Mary Sue writing, however at the time of the writing, this was an accepted story telling mechanic.

Now the things I did like. Reading these books from the prospective of the 14 year old boy that lives inside my head, these books were a lot of fun to read. I mean who didn't want to be the young hero who always got the upper hand on the adults and the super advanced alien race in the story. There were quit a few just straight up fun scenes in the books and what the boys lacked in skill, they more than made up for in chutzpah. They were able to do things simply because no one ever told them they couldn't. The books show the true innocents of the time and the generally optimistic view of the world that many science fiction writers had at the time. The author also wisely skipped much of the potentially boring stuff, like the process of coming up with a plans to defeat the aliens, instead, this was left up to the adults to do off screen, while the boys only had to deal with the fun and cools things.

Overall, this series is well worth the read, I wish I had read them when I was in High School, before adulthood ruined my sense of wonder and my need for adventure. All three books are pretty short and easy to read, I had a lot on my mind in November and December, so it took me way longer to read then it normally would have. I am pretty sure an average reader could get through them in a week or two.

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Review: The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Admittedly, this was a slow read for me, mostly because of how dense it is with information about the world and its inhabitants. The story was written at the height of the Cold War between the United States and Russia, but unfortunately much of it is very relevant today, we have a trade war with China brewing and we have a mad king of our own who wants to build a wall between us and our neighbors.

One of the things Le Guin does best is world building and she does not disappoint here. As I was reading about this cold world locked in an ice age, I was reminded of my own childhood growing up in Montana and shivering.

The dual gendered people of this world was an interesting idea that the author put to good use to build interesting characters and highlight the differences between the two races without making them TOO different. I also think this might have been an nuanced way of talking about homosexuality without offending the readers of the time it was written and published. I admit though I may be mistaken, perhaps someone smarter than me can chime in on this subject.

Of course the most interesting character in the book I thought was Estraven, not just for his fall from grace story, but because at the beginning of the book, he almost seems like a throw away character, someone who was present in the first few pages simply to set the stage and I was pleasantly surprised when later in the book he become central to the story.

Overall, good read, although now I have to go back and read the other books in this series, as I did not realize this was #6 in a series when I started it.


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The original Internet quote

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. --William Gibson, Neuromancer

Review: The Fresco by Sheri Tepper

The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was recommended to me by a friend, her first comment about it being "I wouldn’t recommend it to most guys – or to anybody conservative", and of course my first though was, "Oh this is going to be fun!". About a quarter of the way through I knew why she was not inclined to recommend it to most guys. Let me get this straight right off the bat, this book is not anti men, but the book does depict a certain types of men in a bad light and if you happen to identify with those archetypes, you are not going to like this book much. If you are not of fan of irony and poetic justice, I would not suggest reading this book. In fact, lets just come right out and say it, if you oppose abortion, you will not be amused by this book.

The story is about earths first contact with aliens, instead of landing on the White House lawn or in Central Park, the aliens contact a rather unremarkable person, Benita Alvarez-Shipton. Benita is married to an alcoholic deadbeat husband who beats her, in spite of this she has worked hard all of her life and tried to support her family in spite of the the hardships imposed by her husband. Benita is a unique character among fictional female protagonists. Most female protagonists in science fiction tend to fall into a couple of categories, women who are thinly veiled men, oversexed killing machines and ice queens. Benita has no special ops training, she is described as mildly good looking and does not seem to have much of a sex life. She is literally from the bottom rung of society, no one cares about her and society often places her husbands well being over hers. She is the epitome of unlikely heroes. What Benita brings to the table is a wisdom born out of having lived a rough life, an intelligence that only someone who has been on the edge of the abyss all of their lives could have. She clever and competent, but not unrealistically so. In the beginning of the book she is shown to be out of her depth, but by the end, she grows into her role.

The plot of the book is a bit off the beaten path as well, when the aliens, the Pistach, come to earth, they are not here as an invasion army, but rather to guide earth into the interstellar community and help them become good neighbors. The aliens start solving problems and making earth a better place, some of the things they do are very colorful and the thought process of the aliens is interesting to read. Of course the Pistach are not the only race with interest in the earth, there is also a group of predators who want to make earth their hunting grounds. These predators have no trouble finding human allies who would rather things stayed the way they are, even if it means sacrificing human beings in the process.

Overall, this is a good read, I enjoyed it start to finish. Yes, the book has a liberal bend to it, but it is no worse than the conservative bend you might find in the John Ringo or Larry Correia book. The book has a solid plot, the storyline is tight, it is well written, and the primary characters are interesting. My only complaint about the book is the author does over use some archetypes, and hits us over the head with those characterizations, but this not a show stopper and certainly does not detract from story. I recommend it to anyone who is tired of standard fair science fiction, and are looking for something different, it even has a happy ending.


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I wish this were a real thing

Sense8

If you have not seen Sense8 yet, I suggest you put it on your list of shows to watch. This was some of the best TV I have seen in years. It is well scripted and acted, the story is engaging and the whole thing is very sexy.

Before I go any further, let me say, if you are a cynic who does not want to believe that love conquers all or you do not believe that diversity makes us stronger or you don't like hot sweaty beautiful sex, then this show is not for you, go back to watching Fox News or listening to Rush Limbaugh or whatever it is that makes you feel better about the world, you will not enjoy this show.

For the rest of you, this show is about 8 people who are spiritually and psychically connected and share their lives with each other. It is surprisingly emotional and intimate. Like many Netflix series, the show is full of nudity and sex that spans the full spectrum of human sexuality, I found the orgy scenes to be be especially arousing. Over the two season of episodes, the story explores how each of these people reacts to the situation and adjusts to having complete strangers with access to their most private moments and how this affects their lives and their loved ones. There is also a big bad leading an international conspiracy, but this is really just a side line to the relationship stories that are played out on screen.

This is probably the best TV show since Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, it is innovative both is characterization and in story telling and it is one of the very few TV shows I consider must watch. So put aside a weekend, get naked and binge watch this show, you will not regret it.