Two SF Greats Reiewed at SFFWorld: Brin and Heinlein

A day late since the book I review this week took a tad bit longer to read (a good thing as I feel a more deliberate read allowed me to enjoy it more) and the weekend was extremely busy to the point that I didn’t have the opportunity to even open up the laptop Saturday or Sunday for an extended amount of time. Meanwhile, Mark continues his trek through the genre’s past.


Most readers of this blog are familiar with David Brin. He’s a giant of the SF field despite not having published a novel in over a decade. Well, Existience is his (ready for the cliché) triumphant return to the form and before I leap to the cover and review excerpt, has me eager to read more from him. Here’s part of what I thought about Existience:

The novel begins about a half a century in the future in a world not too dissimilar to our own, save for a slightly changed US, and a world hit with a destructive nuclear event. The Mesh, which is one of the many internets us viewable all times with special glasses like Google Glasses and AI is an every day fact of life. Although the world has suffered catastrophes, like the aforementioned war and a melting of polar ice caps, and changed drastically, Existence is not a dystopian novel even if it is set in a somewhat post-apocalyptic environment. Early on, one of the points Brin makes through his characters and the world-building is that people survive and persevere. Though bad things have happened, people will continue on and adjust. It is both a novel of ends and beginnings, a novel of first contact and a novel that approaches an answer to the question partially framed by the Fermi Paradox “Are we alone in the universe?”
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Part of this world-building is achieved through snippets cushioning each relatively short chapter. These snippet chapters range in content from debates about the artifact between two prominent figures, journalistic entries from Tor, and other such passages to give an authentic feel to the world. For my reading sensibilities, this structure worked well to impart authenticity and keep the pace of the novel at a nice level. The structural element that was a bit jarring was the abrupt leap in time in some sections, particularly from the first ¾ or so of the novel to the chapters that conclude the novel.

Mark, the resident genre historian SFFWorld has been reading through his Heinlein Virginia Edition and his latest revisiting of an old Heinlein tale is Sixth Column

  

This one is what they call ‘a fixup’, originally being in three parts in the January, February and March editions of Astounding Magazine, under the editorial tuition of John W. Campbell. It became a slightly revised novel in 1949, with the author’s real name rather than his pseudonym, and a little tidying up.

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It’s hard for me to decide whether this tale is a tribute or a criticism of L. Ron Hubbard, who both Heinlein and Campbell knew well. Campbell was an interested party in Hubbard’s development of Dianetics, and the idea of a religion being created to cover up other activities does sound like a veiled criticism that could be equally applied by its decriers to Scientology. It has been suggested by some critics that Calhoun, the stiff and rather disliked scientist who eventually ends up insane, believing himself to be an incantation of the god Mota, is at least partly based on Campbell himself.

Whilst Campbell’s version emphasised the race aspect, Heinlein’s tried to make it more scientific and using the so-called ‘soft sciences’ such as psychology and sociology to make the tale work. It is no accident that Whitey has a civilian background in advertising.

Hexed in City with Hearne and Simak

Two reviews this week at SFFWorld, one from me and one from Hobbit/Mark Yon.

My review is of the second book in Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles - Hexed

In Hexed, Hearne further fleshes out the supporting cast introduced in Hounded, including Atticus’s new Druid-in-training Granuaile MacTiernan; his elderly neighbor Mrs. MacDonagh; the vampire and werewolf attorneys, and of course Oberon the Irish Wolfhound. Hearne does a great balancing act between moving the plot along briskly while also fleshing out those characters, introducing further complications into Atticus’s life, and keeping a cohesive and logical link of consequences to the actions previous volume. As I indicated in my review of Hounded, I adored the relationship between Oberon and Atticus and more backstory is provided between man and canine, as well as the continuing doses of humor and emotion.

The Iron Druid Chronicles is turning into a truly entertaining series with the first two volumes, one of my reading highlights of 2011. Hammered, the third volume, is (thus far) the final installment slated to be published, but I’m really hoping to see more of Atticus in Oberon in the future.

Mark is continuing his trek through the classics of SF with Clifford Simak’s saga City:

Clifford/Cliff Simak is an author I first came to when I was a teenager in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. At first I wasn’t sure – it wasn’t spaceships and action, but instead a much more subtle and gentle SF. (Mark Charan Newton has since referred to it as ‘rural SF’, which sorta works.) Instead of Star Wars bang-whizz action, we have pastoral introspection, Waltons-style homily and self-depreciating humour.
And in City in particular we have robots, ants and dogs.

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Simply, it is a set of eight interconnected stories (or in some cases, nine, with an extra tale, Epilog, written in 1973 and added in the 1980’s. Here it is not included, sadly).

Used Book Pr0n and Sully

So, after a sizeable number mass market paperbacks have been sitting in my house unread (and/or with no intention of being read), I finally packed up a bunch and headed to the closest used book store, Half Price books. The pile above is what I brought home because my to-read pile isn’t big enough. The dog, Sully who turned a year old last week, seems non-plussed by the stack.

Here’s the rundown, from top to bottom:

The King’s Peace by Jo Walton – This is her debut novel and after being entranced by her latest Among Others (review forthcoming), I wanted to give another book by her a try. In part, she's to blame for this trip because the book is very much an homage to SF and books the character read throughout the novel, which takes place in 1979/1980.

Necroscope by Brian Lumley – I’d been wanting to read this book for a while, seems an interesting take on Vampires and among other people, a former colleague kept urging me to read it.

Hell Hath No Fury by David Weber & Linda Evans – As I may have recounted in previous posts, I’m becoming a fan of David Weber. Liviu at Fantasy Book Critic indicated this was a good book, I like the premise (a mix of fantasy and science fiction) so here it sits on the pile. Coincidentally, I started On Basilisk Station, the first of Weber’s Honor Harrington novels.

Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson – I’d been wanting to read some older foundational SF for a while. Dickson is a writer whose work seems to fit the bill.

The Giants Novels by James P. Hogan – This is an omnibus of Hogan’s first three Giants novels - Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, and Giants' Star. This is sense-of-wonder SF and a series of books that have been on my radar since Hogan’s passing recently and is exactly the type of SF I’ve been wanting to read for a while. This book specifically is very tough to find.

The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson – I’ve read a few of Anderson’s fantasy novels, Three Hearts and Three Lions, The Broken Sword, and The High Crusade and I’ve been wanting to read some of his SF for a while. Though one of his later works, it has an interesting premise and was nominated for the Nebula

The Speed of the Dark by Elizabeth Moon – Though I’ve only read one book by Moon (Oath of Fealty) I was impressed enough that I’m searching out her backlist. This was a Nebula Winner and Mark Yon liked it when he read it a couple of years ago

Trading in Danger and Moving Target by Elizabeth Moon – The first two books in Elizabeth’s recent Vatta’s War sequence. Again, I’ve a growing pile of her books to read.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller – When thinking of classics of SF, particularly Apocalyptic SF, it doesn’t get much more foundational than this one. Since I thoroughly enjoy the subgenre of Apocalyptic fiction, I’m somewhat embarrassed to not have read this book yet.