Last update: 19-Dec-2007 at 01:55 AM
This is a list of some of the books and articles I have recently finished reading or re-reading. See also my Reading List for a list of those books and articles still in the queue.
This was really very useful; I learned a lot about Promela I had not picked up from the SPIN documentation. I will need to come back to this again later.
This was a pretty interesting read, although the presentation is a bit dry. I originally picked it up to obtain some more context for the history of computing for the survey course I teach, but I think I probably got more out of it for myself, than ever made it into my course.
Subtitled "A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right", this book drew legal fire from the Fox News Channel, which tried to assert ownership of the label "Fair and Balanced." Fortunately for Mr. Franken and the rest of us, the courts in this country still know the definition of "humour". While I wouldn't say Mr. Franken was especially balanced in his presentation, this book was at various times hilarious and frightening, and at all times thought-provoking.
A particularly good feature of this book is that Franken shares both his basic assumptions and his background sources with the reader. Even if you don't wind up agreeing with his points, you will learn a lot by reading them. I got some especially good laughs out of his smackdown of the much-overrated Bill O'Reilly. (Also, check out Terry Gross's interview with Bill O'Reilly on "Fresh Air", October 8th, 2003).
Mr. Stephenson has outdone himself in prolixity, but make no mistake -- this was a very enjoyable book from cover to cover. I feel as if Quicksilver is the herald of a new genre of what might be called "Sci-Hi", comprising an unusual blend of science fiction and historical fiction. These are two of my favourite genres independently, and I find the combination of the two quite exciting! As always, Mr. Stephenson has a lot of interesting insights to share (including his usual playful tendency to tease the reader with the origins of modern cultural, linguistic, and mathematical ideas).
This is not a book you should plan to burn through in a couple of marathon reading sessions; if you do, you will miss out on a lot of intriguing details, and may well wind up deeply confused (though, to be fair, that is good practise for its successor, The Confusion). I digested this one slowly over a few weeks. Once you do read The Confusion, you might want to come back and re-read Quicksilver, since many of its involutions are easier to understand a second time through.
Where is the line between divine inspiration and sheer madness? Faced with a choice between a glorious world full of struggle and reward, and the waning doldrums of old age and the yoke of all that is pedestrian about the world, who could not -- even if only for a moment -- imagine choosing the life of the dreamer as Don Quixote de la Mancha has done? Who among us has not endured the mockery of his peers for his devotion to a dream?
Mr. Rutherford's translation is quite smooth and enjoyable, and although I cannot read the original Spanish myself, I found a great deal of subtlety and care in the language, which I appreciated a great deal.
At the time I read this, I had recently been elected Chairman of the governing board for an organization of which I was a long-standing member. As such, I thought it prudent to brush up on my parliamentary procedure. Robert's Rules of Order is not a rollicking page-turner, but it is full of sound and useful insights into the democratic process.
This is a collection of stories, many of which are known to have influenced J. R. R. Tolkien, and some of which simply share a strong kinship with his own style. Douglas Anderson has done a very respectable job of choosing stories, and it was fascinating to get some insight into Tolkien's own background. His own stories went much deeper than most of the tales represented in this collection, but you can definitely see the roots of their style represented here.
This was as diverse and enjoyable a collection of early 20th Century fantasy as you will find.
If Tom Clancy and Louis L'Amour met in a back alley, and decided to write a tribute to Umberto Eco's masterful Foucault's Pendulum, you might well get a novel like The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown's writing is good, and the story is entertaining, but it also feels somewhat like the literary equivalent of the "fan art" graphic novellists sometimes receive. It gives its tribute to the dark, tortuous conspiracy theories of Eco and the historical paintbrush of L'Amour from the safety of a well-appointed hobbit hole, and like Clancy, Mr. Brown seems to be a little heavy with the ham-handed presentation of carefully researched facts, at times.
That said, this would be a great book to read on a long trip, since it is engaging and entertaining, without requiring total absorption (in contrast to, for instance, House of Leaves, which demands focus and a certain amount of horrified fascination).
Although I had never read this book before, it had a profound impact on my life, a fact I never realized before. Many years ago, one of my first experiences using a computer was writing in LOGO on one of Commodore's first microcomputers, the PET, and the man who taught me the rules of the language had quite clearly (in retrospect) followed Seymour Papert's writings.
Papert's ideas about the education of children are bold and compelling. Following and expanding upon the ideas of Jean Piaget, he argues that the difficulty many young people have with learning mathematical problem solving is not due to an intrinsic difficulty, or to the difference between being "mathematically minded" versus having some other "intellectual orientation". Rather, it arises because we are not born with adequate mental models for such reasoning, and current pedagogical practise does not provide them. His thesis: Given a powerful tool such as a computer, and a simple and expressive language for programming it, virtually all children both can and will develop deep, intuitive models for abstract reasoning; and that this process has the potential to dramatically improve our educational process -- not only in mathematics and the sciences, but also in reading, in writing, and in the arts. His experimental results are quite encouraging. By tapping into a child's native curiosity, rationality, and linguistic ability, it seems possible to bypass much of the traditional struggle school-children have taking ownership of their own learning process.
Under a variety of pen-names, Paul Linebarger wrote a series of intriguing far-future science fiction stories that sketch the outlines of a vast and strange universe, overseen by the mysterious but very human Lords of the Instrumentality of Man. Like many authors who might similarly be considered "marginal" with respect to the main stream of science fiction writing, Smith's stories have an odd flavour, and the technology he describes is pretty wild (the complete personality matrix of a ship's navigator, imprinted upon the brain of a mouse encased in a solid cube, for instance?).
I'd definitely recommend these for any hard core science-fiction fan, though if you only dabble in the genre, you might be better off starting with something a little closer to the centre. Similar advice applies to the writings of Stanislaw Lem (e.g., Tales of Pirx the Pilot), for more or less the same reasons.
I first discovered this translation in February, when I was in Camden, ME for the wedding of my friends Evan and Ema. It was sitting on the shelf at the inn where we stayed, and lacking any other pressing responsibilities, I took it down and read it. It is a smooth and insightful translation, and the book includes both the original tales published by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, as well as some older revisions of tales that the Grimms collected, but which were omitted from their collection.
This is an excellent edition of the tales, capturing both the surface simplicity and the dark, involute depths of these often peculiar old stories.
A very enjoyable light read, combining the best elements of time travel, science fiction, and mediæval adventure. It goes by quickly, and would be a good choice for a weekend afternoon.
This was an amusing read, though it was most definitely not Mr. Stephenson's finest hour as a writer. His propensity to get weird near the end of his novels, and to write somewhat lame and unsatisfying endings, was even stronger in this, his first novel. But there was definitely enough humour to make it worth the time.
These essays are amusing and thought-provoking; they occasionally made me laugh out loud. Eco is a serious scholar, but he doesn't take himself too seriously in these essays, and neither does he permit his subjects to do so. At times, I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks (How to Replace a Driver's License), and at other times, I shouted out loud with disagreement (On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map). But at no time was I ever bored, reading this collection.
A really enjoyable read, smooth, approachable, and interesting. The Chosen is quite a fascinating insight into the manifold complexities of Jewish society and culture. The protagonists are quite likeable, so it is easy for the reader to feel comfortable watching over their shoulders as the story unfolds. While the structure of the plot is not too hard to see and predict, the details of its unfolding are well worth staying around for the end of the telling.
Mr. Stephenson is in superb form, following up Quicksilver with a sequel of continuing complexity and interest. The involute depth of these books should not be under-estimated; I find, now that I have read The Confusion, that many of the scenes I treated as passing moments in the first novel have come back into their own. I recommend that the ambitious reader go back and re-read Volume 1 after finishing this one.
This series does not grab you by the scruff of the neck from Page 1, at least not to the same degree that (for example) Snow Crash did. However, the reward for the patient reader is a world of intriguing intricacy, many excellent challenges of speculation, and far less of the "random chaos" that ordinarily leads up to the endings of Stephenson's books. (I wonder if perhaps he will resolve his difficulty writing good endings by the simple expedient of never having one -- I don't think I would object. I'd far and away prefer to read a twelve-book series from his pen than that of Robert Jordan).
I first read this novel many years ago, probably around 1984 or 1985, and I think I was a little too young to fully appreciate it at the time. There is a great deal of depth and complexity in it, that goes beyond the mere intricacies of plot and action.
That said, I continue to appreciate Ms. Bradley's insightful and engaging take on the Arthurian legends. She herself acknowledges the essentially speculative nature of her novel -- but at all times, she worked in a careful and respectful balance between telling a good tale, explaining legends in a plausible way, and keeping the whole business interesting and exciting. Anyone who loves the idealism of the Arthurian romances will find both challenge and enjoyment here, and a worthy read over all.
A superb conclusion to the series begun with Quicksilver and continued in The Confusion. The only down side to this book is that it's the end of the series -- I could easily and happily read another half-dozen volumes from Mr. Stephenson, written along the same lines.
The many fibers carded up in the first volume, and twisted into threads in the second, were spun together artfully into an excellent cloth in this, the third and concluding volume of the series. The reader is well-rewarded for patiently exploring all the mazes and byways the tale presents, with intriguing philosophical speculations, exquisite moments of suspense and surprise, and, in the end, a deep insight into the complex nature of truth.
I have been seeing this book on the shelves of bookstores for many years now, and I'd always intended to read it, but never did, until now. It is a strange, stone-skipping traverse through the consequences of nuclear holocaust, but instead of assuming the cockroaches will inherit the Earth, Miller assumes Mankind lives, and has to face the consequences of his actions.
Although riddled with Latin liturgy (for which the three years of Latin I studied came in handy), and freighted with Miller's own somewhat preacherly views on the nature of consequence and responsibility, this was a worthy read. It is not for the faint of heart or the incurious passenger of science fiction, however. The characters were not very well developed, and that was somewhat frustrating in a book which, unlike (say) a Harry Harrison novel, was not driven purely by plot and action. Still, the future vision was engaging, and a very clear argument that plus ca change, plus c'est la même chose. If you take it in the context of when it was written, during the height of the Cold War, it gains additional appeal.
Continuing in the tradition of the previous four Harry Potter novels, Order of the Phoenix was a quick and enjoyable read. The events of this one are darker and more complex, befitting Harry's increasing maturity and involvement in the adult world. I could relate all too well to the kind of discomfort Harry faces in his nascent love life, too (although unlike Harry, I didn't have the benefit of being able to work magic, when I was a geeky teenage boy). If you enjoyed the previous Potter novels, I think you will find this one a worthy successor, as I did.
This is a really excellent collection of short stories; whether or not you are a fan of her other writings, this collection is well worth reading.
This is another example of a book I first read when I was too young to properly appreciate it. Nevertheless, it is justifiably considered one of the classics of science fiction, and an excellent example of Ursula LeGuin's writing. The Left Hand of Darkness should be required reading for anybody who thinks too much in absolutes of morality, conduct, culture, gender, sexuality, race, and nationality -- which is almost any of us, at one time or another.
The miscellaneous adventures of Lazarus Long throughout time and space. I always feel I ought to hate Lazarus, and I imagine I would be frustrated if I had to work with him, but I admire how practical his character is, and how little he admits to self-deception. This is not really a single novel, but more an accumulation of stories, aphorisms, and sayings; and yet for all that, it's still a good read.
This is an enjoyable tale of fantasy heroism, with a thoroughly sympathetic and resourceful heroine. The book is short and fast paced, but tells Aerin's tale without getting insipid. There is the usual "fantasy naming problem," where the author invents a bunch of odd names with no linguistic connexion to each other and tries to pass them off as culture, but here it's not so bad, and unlike some authors (dark glances in the direction of Robert Jordan), McKinley does not rely upon them for mystique.
I'd forgotten just how enjoyable these stories were. I read them as a child, but it would be a mistake to think of them as stories only for children. True, they are written in a style that is clear and open, lacking the tedious subtlety of so much adult fantasy, and the dramatis personae are young enough to be called children. But the stories Lewis tells are human stories, and are not limited in their appeal by age.
The powerful Christianity (or should I say Aslanity) that runs through these stories is no deterrent to their worth as tales, and indeed, if Christianity were more alike in practise to how Lewis makes it out in Narnia, I think it would be a much more appealing philosophy.
What would happen if a small group of people figured out how to select reliably for long life? How would the rest of us react? Would the "short-lifers" be relegated to a moribund future, while the long-lived ruled the galaxy, or would both sides have substantial contributions to the cause of humanity?
In his usual way, Heinlein manages to tell a tale wrapped up in a set of philosophical questions like these, without getting lost in the moral of the story and losing the reader's interest.
This is justifiably considered one of the classics of its genre. The movie version bears very little resemblance to the book, and the book is much better (in contrast to The Minority Report, in which I actually preferred the film version to the original P. K. Dick story). It is said by some that adaptations to film are "based on the back cover of the novel," but in this case, I'd say the movie was based upon a third-hand account of the back cover of The Bourne Identity.
One of my advisors lent me this book, to make sure I had some idea of what I'm getting myself into by getting a Ph.D. and going off to teach at a university. Although it was published almost a half century ago, the results are still surprisingly accurate in the modern academic world. But I still want to teach. Call me an idealist.
I continue to love the exquisite darkness of Gaiman's writing. Although Coraline is ostensibly a "children's" story, it is not soft and simpleminded like many in that genre. This is a modern fairy tale, complete with apprehension and the unknown, but with a heroine who is more believable to the youth of the modern age than the typical genre girl.
These are fun, lighthearted fantasy stories, set in a realm where the truisms of fairy-tales are the stuff of daily life. The heroine, Cimorene, is smart, savvy, and strong-willed, yet quite comfortable with her sex. I would happily give these books to any young person -- for whom they would provide both entertainment and a good role-model; but I also enjoyed them quite well on their own, quite independent of their pedagogical utility.
This was a welcome homecoming to an old Earthsea lover, coming home across the windswept seas after many years away. In fact, I think I enjoyed these stories even more than the original stories of Ged and his trials, because they cut across the Archipelago sort of laterally, giving us a deeper insight into the peoples and language and history of the world.
Then again, I've always been a sucker for that kind of depth, as witness my abiding love of J. R. R. Tolkien. Nevertheless, Tales from Earthsea was a real treat.
I think that these might just be the most remarkable books I have read in many, many years. Dark, subtle, and penetrating, Pullman's writing is captivating and engaging and motive. I find it remarkable that anybody thinks these books are for children. Not that they are in any way inappropriate for children, but they are only stylistically children's writing, in a sense I think C. S. Lewis would approve of. Also, Pullman just blows the doors off of Milton for an architecture of the cosmos.
A friend of mine described Ender's Shadow to me as, "Like Ender's Game, but turned inside-out." While that is a fairly accurate synopsis of the story, it doesn't do the book much justice. It isn't just the same old story told from Bean's perspective; if anything, it makes the original story into a wire-frame for a much wider view of the world than we got by following Ender Wiggin -- and I am a lot more impressed with Bean as a character, now that I've had the world from his angle.
Forget everything you thought you knew about the magical land of Oz: Gregory Maguire has given the world of Oz a depth of political and social geography of remarkable complexity and interest. None of your ill-motivated snaggletoothed old crones here -- the Witch is a being of insight, sexuality, and great tension, and the appellation of "wicked" is not quite so obviously hers as you'd imagine from the original story.
It's rare for a book that comes so highly recommended to actually live up to its promise, but Wicked definitely delivers.
A heroic story about the nature of life and love, created and beautifully illustrated by Doug Chiang, with text by Orson Scott Card. Doug Chiang's paintings and drawings are lovely and captivating, and may look familiar to some -- his artwork also served as the inspiration for many of the visuals in Episodes I and II of the "Star Wars" movies, for which he was Director of Art and Design.
The integration of text and illustrations makes this story flow smoothly, like a science-fiction fairy-tale, but the characters are not as wooden as is typical of fairy-tale heroes. All in all, Robota was an hour of my life very well-spent. Highly recommended!
Usually, when a new author attempts to write stories using the characters of some old author, the result is unsatisfying at best; witness the new novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson set in the universe of Frank Herbert's classic Dune. But I can guarantee you will not be disappointed by The Beekeeper's Apprentice, even though it is built around the life and times of A. C. Doyle's master sleuth, Sherlock Holmes.
Rather than being a straight-up rehash, or a casual pre-emption of Doyle's work, The Beekeeper's Apprentice is a bold new direction, bringing in the bright and engaging character of Mary Russell (the apprentice) whose own voice is sustaining in its own right, against the backdrop of what Holmes provides. All in all, this is quite possibly the single best novel of this kind that I have read.
I liked Maguire's Wicked, but Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is even better. Following a recipe that has worked surprisingly well, Maguire retells the story of Cinderella from the inside out, giving the viewpoint of one of her less attractive and so-called "evil" stepsisters. Far from a simple plot twist, Maguire makes us confront the real human complexity that lurks beneath the black and white stories we often tell.
I was impressed enough with Ender's Shadow that I wanted to read this one too. Luckily, we found a hardcover edition in very good condition at Mr. B's Bookery in Kingston, Washington for only five dollars. Hard to beat that! If anything, I'd say that Shadow of the Hegemon was even better than Ender's Shadow, though both were excellent in any case.
This story was good, but it has the weird feel of a book that was translated from Portuguese. Since it is a book that was translated from Portuguese, this is not entirely unwarranted, but it remains that the whole thing left me feeling very peculiar. Let's just say that I'll never think of of Virgin Mary's role in the Christian pantheon in quite the same way again.
Reading this book, I learned a lot about the state of life origins research I had never realized before. In short, it turns out there have been a lot of fascinating explorations into how self-replicating life might have arisen from the so-called "primordial soup." While much of the research has raised more questions than it has answered, Dr. Hazen's book combines the right level of excitement and scientific skepticism about the subject to convey it meaningfully to a lay reader such as myself.
I have reached two conclusions from my second reading of this book. Actually, make that three. The first is that our understanding of genetics has come a long way since this book was written. The second is that I really did not understand what was happening in the book the first time I read it, sometime around 1984, at the age of 12. The third is that, the first two notwithtstanding, The White Plague remains a scary story in a lot of ways.
In fact, if anything, its premise has become even more plausible as the state of the art in modern genetics has advanced. While Herbert's specific conception of how O'Neill's plague might work is somewhat naïve, it's not too farfetched to suppose someone might come up with something more sophisticated to have the same effect. That said, however, what really weirds me out about the book isn't even the plague itself, but the resulting impact on society it produces in the end.
There is a certain class of book that appears in the children's section of the bookstore of which I am irrationally suspicious. Frances Hardinge's Fly by Night, however, is one of those rare volumes in this section that conveys pleasant surprise. This, her first novel, proves her to be an offbeat and quirky writer with an excellent sense of a good story, and a world that is deeper than paper thin.
Although this is not a challenging read, I enjoyed it very much, and I look forward to reading more by Ms. Hardinge in the future. If only some of the authors of so-called "adult" fantasy could produce worlds with as engaging an intricacy as this, I think the genre would finally come into its own.
One of the things I've always admired about Heinlein is his ability to state what might be considered a radical point of view without spoiling a good yarn. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a superb example of his ability in this regard.
In my opinion, just about anybody who lives in a democracy, or imagines they do, or wishes they could, should read this book. Heck, everybody should read it -- it's just a great story.
This is actually a series of stories bound together in a single volume. It was first brought to our attention in a somewhat unlikely way: When we were getting ready to move to Cambridge, a man named Tim came from the moving company to appraise the cost of packing and shifting our possessions. In the course of conversing with him, it turned out that he is retired from the moving business except in an advisory capacity, and instead spends his time buying and selling books.
As will often happen when book people discover kindred souls, we sat around for a while talking about some of our favourite authors. One of Tim's favourites is T. A. Barron, whom neither Sara or I had read. A couple of days later, we found a copy of The Lost Years of Merlin left on our doorstep, courtesy of Tim.
The premise of these stories is to fill in the "back story" of the character of Merlin from Arthurian legend. In doing so, Barron draws lightly upon the events and characters of Celtic mythology (notably the Welsh Mabinogion) and Arthurian legend. The resulting stories work out to be a fairly straightforward coming-of-age epic, and in that respect it is not particularly noteworthy. The book does hold itself together fairly well, despite feeling somewhat trite in spots, though I was not especially inspired by it. Nevertheless, it was good enough to be worth finishing, which is more than I can say for Jordan's "Wheel of Time" books.
Once again, Ms. Wreade has brought us a charming and compelling collection of stories, some set in the same world as her Enchanted Forest Chronicles, others standing on their own. Her brand of thoughtful and well-balanced feminism is a smooth complement to a set of enjoyable stories.
If technology can pervade the human world, then why not the fairy world as well? One of the things I love about Mr. de Lint's stories, especially his Newford novels, is the seamless and sympathetic way he melds fairy-stories with the modern world, without lapsing into the silliness of Terry Pratchett, or the excessive melodramatics of Patricia Kennealy. Plus, he tells a good story, and I like his characters.
What if a marvel of engineering technology permitted a deep-space exploratory ship to sustain the lives of its crew for generation after generation, even after the original crew and their knowledge of its original mission are long dead? Radioactive leaks drive mutations in some survivors, and the discipline of maintenance has devolved into near-religion among the rest.
One of the best things about Heinlein's advice to "refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order" is that he did not go back and try to revise his novels once the world changed around them. So here, we get a beautiful taste of how people felt about the ways and means and politics of travelling to the moon -- but before we had managed to do it!
Otherwise, Rocket Ship Galileo is a fairly typical Heinlein young men's coming-of-age story, although this one has an interesting twist for the villain.
I suppose it has become less common, these days, for writers to attempt a straightforward Utopian fantasy like this, but Heinlein had the stones to pull it off. His rhetorical style is brazen and forthright, and he doesn't lay out his assumptions all neatly for a rebuttal -- you must sift carefully through his story for them.
This novel reveals much more of the "Heinlein voice" than I think you hear beneath other of his novels, although you can still hear its echoes in stories like Glory Road. In any case, he left me feeling wistful that human nature really does not work as it would need to for his scenarios to play out.
Some science fiction is all science, and very little fiction. Such stories do not wear well with time, since the science either comes out differently than expected, or withers without context. Other science fiction is all fiction, and very little science; they may be perfectly good novels, but lack the exciting twist that comes of exploring future magic. Vernor Vinge writes a good balance of both, however -- and for me as a computer scientist, his future vision is especially interesting in that it does not postulate some magical moment at which computers suddenly become sentient; rather, they grow and evolve over centuries as their software is patched and extended.
I also love the mild anthropological flavour of his alien races. Like Ursula LeGuin, he makes you think about the consequences of alien modes of thought, culture, and environments, but unlike LeGuin, this does not feel like the sole purpose of the story, and it does not take on a lecturing air.
I recently re-read Vinge's award winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep, and I found I liked it even better the second time around. This was my first read of A Deepness in the Sky, but I think I might like it even better than its predecessor.
This novel is, in some narrow sense, a prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, set much earlier in time. Though it moves somewhat slowly in places, I really enjoyed the careful and insightful discursiveness of the story. As always, Vinge manages to raise hard questions without making you feel as if you are in class.
Shogun belongs to a growing class of novels that I read a long time ago, and which, upon re-reading, I have discovered I really wasn't old enough to fully appreciate the first time around. Set in the early years of the 17th Century in Japan, it tells the thoroughly immersive and fascinating story of the delicate balance of power between the samurai at the head of the feudal Japanese caste system, traditional Imperial rule, the Christian church and Western trade that arrived from Portugal.
Tracing the adventures of English pilot John Blackthorne (a palimpsest of the historical William Adams), Shogun paints an incredible and sympathetic picture of the ways and ideas of feudal (and thus pre-Westernization) Japan.
Okay, let's leave aside for the moment the fact that Mr. Steele has not really got the first clue how computer software works. If you can disregard his misguided attempt to explain how it happens, the rest of his premise is fun and engaging. In a time when the government of the United States is encroaching ever more upon the civil liberties of her citizens, this SF mystery combo touches just the right nerve.
Whether it's earthquakes in St. Louis or hurricanes in New Orleans, it doesn't take much to knock us off our high horse. Cascadian fans will get a cheer out of developments in the Pacific Northwest.
A respectable first effort for a young new author. Unfortunately, Eragon does display Mr. Paolini's inexperience -- while the writing is competent and the tone and flow of the presentation are reasonably smooth, it is also full of many recapitulated tropes from the post-Tolkien fantasy genre. This in itself is not damning, but since he does not add anything particularly new to the genre, it also does not earn fine praises.
This book is worth a read, but it is not destined to become a classic of great literature. I hope, however, that once Mr. Paolini is done with this series, he will continue to write; I feel he could easily become an excellent fantasy writer as he matures.
See my comments on Eragon. The primary contribution of this second volume is an additional 704 pages of text. Not bad, despite some rather flaccid efforts at romantic tension, but still needs some time in the pot before it becomes soup.
I finished this novel feeling a little bit stunned. It's masterful, and thoroughly engaging, but it is also a very dark and unpleasant look at the realities of war on the ground. Set in the waning months of World War II, King Rat tells the story of the men of a Japanese-run POW camp on Singapore Island, as they tried desperately to hold onto their lives and some sense of their former selves.
The bitterness of the Pacific campaign is limned starkly. In the end, it's not clear whether rescue would be better or worse for the poor buggers, than simply increasing their food and medicine and letting them live out the rest of their lives. I read that Clavell himself had some experience as a POW, which only lends more credibility to his vision of it all. You should read this book; but not to smile.
This collection of short stories is strange in the way that only Ursula Le Guin can be strange. There is a very grey-skied Russian sensibility to the tales in this collection -- captivating, but also sobering. There is no unalloyed joy, or victory, or conclusion to be found here; on the other hand, also much more moderate is Ms. Le Guin's usually heavy-handed preachiness. All in all, a good collection.
The same quirky style that made Dune so compelling is also found here, in a shorter and more focussed tale. As with some of his other stories (a notable example being The White Plague), there is a set of moral questions and perspective twists here that will leave you thinking. But that is all to the good -- and indeed, one might argue, the hallmark of good science fiction.
Space Cadet has always been one of my favourite among Heinlein's so-called "juvenile" novels. His vision of the Patrol and its role among the bickering nations of the world is nothing short of inspiring, despite -- or perhaps because of -- its grimly realist view of what such a task entails. The heroes do not survive through the deus ex machina, but are forced to confront their problems as they come -- a good lesson for all of us, I think.
An excellent and engaging story. Highly recommended.
Gregory Benford, Greg Bear and David Brin -- the "killer B's" -- were commissioned by the estate of Isaac Asimov to write three new novels set in the far future universe of Asimov's own popular Foundation series of stories. Despite their well-deserved good reputations as authors, I was initially quite skeptical about this idea.
However, after completing Foundation's Fear, I found my fears completely allayed. Dr. Benford and company have managed to write a thoroughly enjoyable trio of new stories that "play nicely" with Asimov's own creation, without turning into a pallid wax-museum recap of the old master's ideas (cf. the new "Dune" novels being churned out like sausages by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson). Benford in particular has managed to keep Asimov's sense of "voice" while exploring ideas I suspect the master himself would never have considered.
In many ways, these three novels are better than some of Asimov's own later Foundation novels, in which he tried to tie together the world of his positronic robot stories with the far-flung future Empire of the Foundation trilogy. Benford, Bear, and Brin did what I think was a masterful job of hacking in around the canon, without disturbing any of the fertile ideas to be found there.