Got a load of books from the SF book club recently. So I'll do a few quicky book reviews.
First up is Charles Stross, Saturn's Children. This is a rollicking space opera that's half depraved Isaac Asimov, half warped Robert Heinlein, and half deranged Charles Stross. Think Robert Heinlein's sex-crazed Friday if she were one of Isaac Asimov's robots from I, Robot incarnated as a sexbot, combined with Charles Stross's big-picture space opera and an espionage plot that aims to bring back the slavemasters who've died out -- the human race.
I wouldn't call it a significant book. But it's rollicking good fun if you have the background in science fiction to know what novel by which author he's riffing off of at any given time (Friday is the main one of course, but he riffs off of other "classic" science fiction novels too). And oh, there is a riff on one of Robert Heinlein's favorite statements, the one where he said that a human being ought to be able to do this, that, and the other... and his lead character (the sexbot) says "but why would I need to do any of that, when I can get someone else to do it in exchange for sex?" Heh. Look for it. Also look for Stross's other space operas, most of which are better than this one, though not as much fun.
Next up... having read one space opera, I went back to my bookshelf and got one of my favorites out, C.J. Cherryh's Cyteen. I re-read this every few years and always enjoy it every time. It's a big brick of a book with a fascinating lead character who is reincarnated via cloning after she dies -- or is she? What does it mean to be "human", anyhow? As usual, I enjoyed this novel immensely, perhaps because it is more a sociological / psychological novel than a space opera even though it's set in one of her space opera universes in a space-going civilization. The only thing I'm really dissatisfied with is the ending -- her "father" who raised her for many years tries to kill her, and we never are told why. There are other issues that are never resolved too, such as who killed Ari 1.0 (or was it an accident?), and the beginning of the book (which shows Ari 1.0 as a real bitch who frankly I would have been tempted to murder too) is way too flabby, we get pounded over the head by Ari 1.0 being a bitch over and over again (okay, Carolyn, we got it the first time!). But once Ari 2.0 is birthed from her vat, all is forgiven. I wouldn't say this is a "classic" of the field, but the fact that I re-read it every few years -- which is not true of very many books -- means it tweaks something in my psyche. And maybe in yours. It didn't win the Hugo Award because it was lousy. Oh, there's a sequel coming out in January. I'll be looking for it...
And that's today's literary drive-by shootings. Tomorrow, I have a couple of real stinkers. Hint: What happens when you have right wing writers write politics into their novels instead of sticking to traditional space opera with space battles and stuff? It ain't pretty...
-- Badtux the Literary Penguin
What happens when you have right wing writers write politics into their novels instead of sticking to traditional space opera with space battles and stuff?
ReplyDeleteAnd when one of them does it with "religion" in their novels, it becomes Scientology! Is the one you're talking about THAT bad?
FWIW, the book I just started reading (having finally finished "For the Term of His Natural Life," a classic Aussie novel about the horrors of prison life in the early 1800s) is "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbons. May dad had a two-volume hardback edition published in 1932, and when I was back in the U.S. last year for his funeral, I took it while cleaning out his office. I'm reading it to see the portents for the American Empire.
And I'm not disappointed. On the first page, there are these lines about Rome in its heyday:
"The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence; the Roman Senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of the government..."
IMAGE of a constitution... APPEARED to possess authority... What does THAT sound like, huh?
And did you know at its apogee, the Roman legions bumped up against the Pathans but could not defeat them, so they stopped their eastward expansion there. Those would be the ancestors of the same Pathans the AmeroRoman Empire is now having trouble with. (As did the RussoRoman and the BrittoRoman empires prior.)
Tamerlane had the right idea -- a pyramid of 20,000 skulls outside the walls of Herat. If your moral stomach is not prepared to go to that length to subdue the Afghans, your empire has no business being there.
Tux, have you read Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series?
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