Tag: SF
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The Drowned World
Review: A very good book. Very good. Short, dark, nervous, sweltering. Reminiscent of Conrad. Think Heart of Darkness or Almayer’s Folly. The atmosphere is oppressive, like in a swamp on the hottest of days. The real joy in this book comes from the feelings and mood, rather than the action. The action is quite attenuated,… Read more
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Mash Up: Stories Inspired by Famous First Lines
Review: What a great, unique concept. Take a famous first line from a classic novel and base an SF story on it. Some great authors and some great submissions. Some. Not all. Gardner Dozois is one of the finest editors of anthologies ever, but in any collection you’re going to get a range of material.… Read more
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The Flight of the Horse
Review: A collection of time travel themed short stories. I don’t really dig time travel stories and yet… these were no exception. It’s all been done, the paradoxes explored and presented in more ways than an obi clue in a crossword. But. The last two novellas were not time travel and were excellent. “Flash Crowd”… Read more
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The Preserving Machine
Review: My first exposure to Philip K. Dick, which is weird considering how much I like Dicks. A dark journey into time, post-apocalyptic futures, and paranoid obsessive realism. Read the story that Total Recall was based on. Both are excellent, the story and the movie. I can see now why there is award called the… Read more
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Ice World
Review: What a nice light, concise effort. Originally published serially in a 1950s pulp mag, you can see by the ending that the editors likely told him to wrap it up. Very science based and no laser fights back then. They were pioneering the genre, and like Bradbury or Asimov, it holds up well over… Read more
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The Fabulous Riverboat
Review: A wild ride down the amazing river of Riverworld. Thought provoking and disturbing in some aspects. Suspension of disbelief taken way too far. Imagine a resurrected Mark Twain going from stone age capabilities to full industrial manufacturing and 20th century technology in about 5 years. Nope. Good but not great, worth reading, but I… Read more
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Pattern Recognition
Review: This is a book that has not aged well. Set in the present, which is 2003, it struggles to appear futuristic with the technology of the time. I lived in that time, and I prophesied that we were getting there, but not there yet. CD-ROMS, limited to what a CD could hold, and a… Read more
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Ender’s Game
Review: Challenging. I can see why this book is in all the top 10 lists. But… it’s got issues. The children think and act like experienced men and women. No way. Too much of a stretch for this to really work for me. The adults are also way too cut and paste, the scheming bureaucrat,… Read more
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Stranger in a Strange Land
Review: Fabulous concept! Human born on Mars, raised to an adult with Martian ideals and ways of thinking about time, space, sex, family, property, etc. Written in 1961, it shows its age more than some others from the period, but less than some. Women are not potted plant, but do tend to be fanny wiggling… Read more
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The Deep Range
Review: Written in 1956, it stands up well today. Great concept, spot on science and technical details. This is my first A.C. Clarke read and it won’t be my last. Ending was a little contrived, characters a little too heroic, but this was the standard for SF in the golden age. Particularly in its treatment… Read more