Books shelved under “Science Fiction”

Anthologies by a single author offer an opportunity to reflect upon that author’s particular areas of focus. Most authors tend to return time and again to the same motifs and themes. Nano Comes to Clifford Falls is a menagerie of Nancy Kress stories that involve nanotechnology, genetics, posthuman evolution, and very interesting meditations upon how aliens might visit Earth. Each story is unique, but put side by side, the similarities are clear, each story delivering…

Full disclosure: I received a copy of this story free from its author. Loves me the free short stories.

At the time I write this, I have 196 followers on Twitter. I’m pretty sure most of them are bots of one kind or another, because that number seems rather inflated. I have 147 Facebook friends. I have 97 followers on Goodreads, though again, many of those may be automated people attempting to profile me or…

One of science fiction’s most enduring traits is its ability to ruminate upon the ways in which science and technology allow us to manipulate and re-engineer society. In this sense, the distinction between soft and hard science fiction disappears—all science fiction is inherently social, for no matter how much detail goes into describing the technological advances that populate possible futures, the meat of the story is always the effect these technologies have on the people…

I wish I could give Use of Weapons more stars and the appreciation some people are able to heap upon it. I understand where they’re coming from, but I just wasn’t able to focus enough on some of the details of this novel to grasp it. I need to read it again—and probably try reading the Roman numeral chapters backwards, since I didn’t realize they were chronologically reversed—to appreciate it more. For now, though, all…

This is a very odd book. It’s the kind of love-child that might result from someone distilling Umberto Eco and Kurt Vonnegut. Adam Roberts takes on the spectre of Soviet Russia and, at the same time, explores how science fiction shapes and is shaped by the issues at work in the society of its time. Yellow Blue Tibia is not your typical work of alternative history.

At the end of World War II, Stalin gathers…

Much like Diaspora, Incandescence is more of a fictional treatise on esoteric ideas than it is a novel. A loosely convergent tale of two plots, Incandescence is a showcase of Greg Egan's ability to think big--really, hugely, mindbogglingly big. Once again, Egan sidesteps the traditional boundaries of consciousness and identity. There is nary a human to be seen in this book--personalities descended from DNA, yes, but nothing we could call humanity. Incandescence is posthuman…

Immediately after finishing Shards of Honour, I jumped into Barrayar with gusto. I’d say this is the payoff to Shards of Honour, but that might give you the wrong idea. Both novels are good—but this is where it gets really interesting. Cordelia has married Aral Vorkosigan and left everything she knows behind to live with him on Barrayar, capital planet of the interstellar empire of the same name. Things are complicated: she’s pregnant…

The Vorkosigan Saga is one of those series I’ve been meaning to read for a while. And, in fact, I read Cryoburn last year for the Hugo Awards voting. Going back to the beginning and reading the series in order has been a task long overdue, so let’s get this party started.

I love space opera. Technically speaking, Shards of Honour and its sequel, Barrayar, which I read in omnibus form, is probably more…

Empire State is a frenetic concoction of noir mystery, Prohibition-era gangster-style criminal conspiracy, and Golden Age superhero fiction. Reading it is like sitting in a bare room, concrete walls and a single steel table with an uncomfortable chair, as the clock above the door ticks steadily towards 3 AM. It’s minimalist and rough, sometimes surreal and always uncomfortable. Just when I thought I had it figured out, Adam Christopher changes gears and leaves me in…

The robot apocalypse pops up all the time in science fiction, and with good reason. Humans are generally bad at getting along with each other; sharing this planet with intelligent life of an entirely different variety would probably not go down well. Isaac Asimov, of course, famously developed three laws of robotics that were designed to avoid android armageddon. All of them were designed to sanctify human life, to make it inviolable in the eyes…

Thanks to the Internet, it’s very easy to transmit information around the world much faster than it used to be. It’s also easy to spread misinformation. “Democratization” of the Web and media aside, we still rely on authorities and experts for our news—and often their job, even if they are doing it properly, is made much more difficult by secretive and uncooperative governments and organizations trying to obscure what’s really happening on the ground. It’s…

I didn’t quite manage to read all the library books I borrowed before leaving the country. In the Thunder Bay airport, prior to boarding the plane to Pearson, I renewed my library books online so my dad wouldn’t be obligated to take them back until it was convenient for him. However, I made it a priority to finish Fuzzy Nation before venturing across the Atlantic—not because it would prepare me better for Britain or anything,…

Time travel poses a host of complications, no matter which set of rules one follows. Plus, I mean, as cool as it might be to pop back to ancient Egypt or Rome or Tudor England for afternoon tea, I wouldn’t want to live there. Hello, indoor plumbing much? Flush toilets and high speed Internet? I like my “modern” conveniences, and I can understand why the first employees of the Company didn’t enjoy their duties much.…

Emissaries from the Dead hits a lot of sweet spots for me. First, of course, there’s AI. Second, it’s a mystery novel. Third, the protagonist is essentially a government agent with diplomatic immunity (though not in this case). Fourth, she’s messed up but not too messed up. The resulting cocktail is a heady mix indeed. Although I found it slow going at first, Emissaries from the Dead quickly grew on me; by the end, Adam-Troy…

You know Alien ends with Ripley getting into the shuttle with Jones, fighting off the alien one last time, and consigning herself and Jones to a lonely trip home in stasis? And then in the sequel, she’s essentially drafted into accompanying another team back to the planet where they found the Alien eggs, and almost everyone dies again? No? Well, sorry for spoiling Alien and Aliens.

Anyway, Children of God is kind of…

So what if someone set us up the bomb, or several bombs, and instead of nuclear winter and all the survivors dying of cancer, they got fused to each other and bits of glass and animals and broken doll heads? Pure is a horror story about atomic detonations gone wrong. Yeah—if that isn’t a terrifying thought, I don’t know what is. Julianna Baggott postulates a post-apocalyptic world that is the fevered vision of a…

Full disclosure: I received this book as a gift from the author. Yes, authors, you heard that right: you can ask to send me your book, and I will read and review it.

So here we are again. The Epic series had kind of fallen off my radar for a while. I read the previous book, Hero way back in 2009! So it has been quite some time since I last hung out with…

I’ve doubtless read many works of fiction that have passed through Gardner Dozois’ hands as an editor. Until now, however, I don’t recall reading any of his own fiction. I’ve remedied this by snatching When the Great Days Come from the New Books shelf at my library. I like anthologies, I really do, but as a novel lover first and foremost, I always find myself overcoming a certain prejudice towards shorter fiction. Fortunately, Dozois makes…

The Ghost Brigades is set a few years after Old Man’s War. Scalzi fleshes out this universe a little more, introducing us to a few more species and providing some more hints at interstellar politics beyond the Colonial Union. Like the first book, though, this is a story of the soldiers on the ground rather than the bigwigs in some legislature. The closest we get to that are the conversations between Generals Mattson and…

I want to give this book five stars. I want to give this book one star. It’s amazing. It’s terrible.

Keeping Earth habitable is a pressing concern today. Even if we manage to avoid eco-catastrophe (and I’m optimistic on this), that’s only a small hurdle in the grand scheme of the cosmos. We only have about a billion years left before the Sun swells so much that it cooks the atmosphere. A few billion years…