SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases discussion

here discuss this 2021 release

I've just finished it and loved it! I was meh about it at first due to its portrayal of amnesia. The way his regained memories return to him in chronological order and just like movies of "first this happened, then she said that" is very unrealistic: that's not how that works. BUT since it's due to SF technology, I can suspend disbelief anyway, and due to the rest of the book just getting better and better and even better with every exhilarating page, I didn't care. It was awesome and I adored Rocky in particular. And that last scene!! 🥰

Great to hear that, Eva!

OK, I am starting today.

Kateblue wrote: "OK, I am starting today."

I'll start tomorrow

Have fun, guys! Hope you'll love it as much as I did.

I'll start in a few days. I thought I could finish my current audiobook today ... but that was before I realised I had to re-write my whole pedagogical concept which I have to submit tomorrow ^^' (yeah for just-in-time workings ... NOT ^^')

I started it and wow, I like it from the start. Yes, amnesia thing is a cliche and it doesn't work that way, but the rest is just my flavor of SF - more about wanders than social issues

I am finally tired of all the blah blah. It's the opening the air lock description of about a billion words that has me fed up. Until then, I was ok because I knew from you guys it got better.

Is it getting better soon? I hope.

I have liked books with the cliched "amnesia" tactic before. But this is not one that I like as it is only a mechanism for feeding in the worldbuilding and past, and a poor one at that

But I shall persevere

I now started as well and I like the self deprecating voice of the narrator, which indeed reminds me of Adrian Tchaikovsky's writing. I also dig the the sciency stuff. Finally SF with S :D.

Every time he explains how something works it's always because that becomes important later on. So at least you can rest assured that he never explains stuff if it isn't story-relevant and important for the reader to understand. That said, it is hard SF so it does have a lot of science content. :-)

I'm at the discussions of neutrinos and weather. It has gotten much better

I do like the voice of the protagonist. It's one of the main reasons I am having a good time

Kateblue wrote: "I do like the voice of the protagonist. It's one of the main reasons I am having a good time"

I agree that the protagonist's glee about science is great!

Yup, same here. The flashbacks are sometimes a bit too long/dry for my taste, but as a whole I'm totally enjoying finally some hard SF by a current author.

I have skipped paragraphs some, but it's because I want to know what happens instead of wanting to be done. But it has been kind of a slog and is taking longer than I wanted.

Kateblue wrote: " is taking longer than I wanted."

Other authors I guess would have made a trilogy out of this, and while yes it is sometimes heavy on technical details, on audio it is ok

@@Oleksandr: I've listened to it as well and the narrator does such a good job with the voice of the MC (Grace?). I loved listening to it and I loved the fact that it somehow turned out to be a cute hard SF - I'm not sure I've ever read this combination before. a
And it works so well.

Yes!! Exactly, it has an enormous cute and adorable factor (especially towards the ending), but without ever being twee, nor does it achieve this by adding pink, fluffy sparkles. It's genuinely cute just by itself.

I should be done today. I am getting impatient with the details. The plot needs to move along a little more. But I still like it pretty well

So, the only person I have seen with a rating is Eva. How are the rest of you rating it?

I think I will give it 4 stars. I hold back on my ratings cause I always hope I manage to write a review ^^'.

I finished it, will write a review in a few days and possibly 5*

Yay! Happy we've found something that Oleksandr liked, as well! :-)

I had it on library hold but I’m leaving town for a few days and decided to buy it at Costco. I must have good karma, as they neglected to charge me for it. I have no qualms about this, they have more than made their money off me, $200 price of admission for all the crap I buy there.

Yeah, definitely good karma :)

a review with critiques from Mary Robinette Kowal: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

It will be a MOVIE starring Ryan Gosling?!!! 🤩🥰🎉✨ He's perfect for the role, it will be so funny. Can't wait to see it.

I came across this xenolinguistics discussion around Project Hail Mary. It's quite fascinating and very well written but does have some spoilers in it, so don't read until you've finished the book ;-)

That is a great discussion! Thank you for the link, Khira! I have to re-read children of ruin now, cause there communication is front and centre, and - as far as I remember - more realistically done.

I think it should be a good one, And I am excited to see Rocky

Started it last night. Its very Trad (which is something I don't read a lot of these days), a Competent Man With A Problem story. I agree with the rest of you on loving the glee about science - this is something Weir does well. I'm interested in seeing where this goes.

Finished. And yes, I had plenty of refrigerator moments. But I enjoyed it anyway.

Excellent book.

A couple questions:

Why didn't Grace just send the beetles off straightaway after starting to head back to Earth? They can accelerate faster, so they would get there faster, right? (I don't understand relativity math but still...) It says in Chapter 26 that he wanted to increase the chances they arrive safely, but time would surely be enough of a priority to send at least one off straightaway, I would think.

Regarding communication between Grace and Rocky - Grace speaks English, and Rocky speaks his own language, right? Then why is Rocky's speech rendered in grammatically poor English? Of course his own language's grammar would be different but you would think Grace would translate it correctly. Additionally, at the end, Grace's speech is italicized: "Are you sure? Like, [Eridian number 100] percent certainty?" Does this imply he was using a machine to produce the sounds here?

I thought about that beetle send off thing also

Ryan wrote: "Why didn't Grace just send the beetles off straightaway after starting to head back to Earth? They can accelerate faster, so they would get there faster, right? ."

You are correct. His problem was that each additional day he can get more info to add to beetles, while their arrival at home is measured in years, so a delay for a day won't be crucial.

Ryan wrote: "Grace speaks English, and Rocky speaks his own language, right? Then why is Rocky's speech rendered in grammatically poor English? "

Because natural languages don't always follow rules or have a complicated set of rules. They formed a simpler version, and to show that Rocky isn't fluent. For example omit articles, -s in third person verbs and use 'be' instead of am/are/is - you get an understanding was was said but in much simpler language

Re: beetles - was he still adding data at that point? He had already proven that the Taumoeba were viable in the Venusian atmosphere. He had prepped them with the data up to that point and the farms. What more was there to add?

Re: language - Rocky is fluent in his own language. He may have been simplifying his language for Grace's benefit, but still, why wouldn't Grace have interpreted it in grammatically correct English? Also, Grace's English to Rocky is rarely incorrect.

Ryan wrote: "why wouldn't Grace have interpreted it in grammatically correct English?."

I guess just to show an alien nature of Rocky. After all the language in Epilogue is more natural

Ryan wrote: " What more was there to add?"

Say he find out that cosmic radiation kills Taumoeba and thus he need to make a protection... I guess the main point was that if beetles will be in Sol system in 10 years, it is not paramount to send them now or in a month

Just finished it myself, and I really enjoyed it! It was similar to The Martian in problem and structure, but it felt like a bigger story experience.

I got this the day before yesterday and finished this yesterday. It was fun; I totally devoured the book, couldn't set it down. Weir is really good writing these kinds of books. This had The Martian vibe, except I'd say this book had much better pacing than The Martian. Weir has definitely improved.

That said, this was also a very naive book. The discussion about linguistics that Khira linked above sums up many of my grumbles about the book. Come on, it was totally unrealistic that a human and an alien could learn to communicate that fast and that fluently! In reality, you'd expect years or decades of hard work from giant teams of experts until you even get the basics right, and even then full communication might be impossible - after all, they are aliens. If their psychology is different enough, we might never be able to communicate very much.

I could let that go, however. After all, realistic portrayal or first contact would've been a disaster for the story. Weir wanted to write a story like Enemy Mine, where a human and an alien work together to solve problems, and to do that he had to borrow a page from Star Trek and just assume that humans and aliens can communicate without trouble. I can grumble, but I can also accept this solution.

The other totally unrealistic thing was Stratt's authority. Once again I understand that Weir needed to wave his hands like crazy to make his plot happen, but come on. There is no way in Hell that the governments of Earth would (or, indeed, could - there are such things as "constitutions", you know) give one person unlimited authority to do what ever she needed to do. Yes, even if that was necessary to save Earth. Every time Stratt simply ordered the governments to do something wild it broke my suspension of disbelief even worse than the Star Trek linguistics.

I totally agree with you, Antti. This has to be taken as a light, fun story with a lot of suspense of disbelieve for it to work. I took it as such and enjoyed it.

Great points Antti!

I've noticed that hard sci-fi novels will often fall into one of two camps according to the author's affiliation: the physics/engineering group (The Martian, Project Hail Mary) or the human sciences group (Arrival, Solaris). It's interesting that similar division into camps exists in the scientific community as well, often with many disputes about each other's relevance and validity of findings.

Although, Ted Chiang and Andy Weir both started in computer science, so maybe it's more a question of authors' personal interests.

Khira wrote: "Although, Ted Chiang and Andy Weir both started in computer science, so maybe it's more a question of authors' personal interests."

Or it could represent two different ways to get interested about computer science: you could be interested in the linguistics aspects of programming languages or the mathematics aspects of algorithms &c.

(I'm sure there are many other paths to computer science besides these two, as well.)

Yes, that's very true. Computer science sits at the intersection of different fields.

Khira wrote: "hard sci-fi novels will often fall into one of two camps according to the author's affiliation ... the human sciences group (Arrival, Solaris)."

Solaris is more like a part of SF from socialist bloc after 1950 - they are mostly social including a hidden critique of the regime

True, but in terms of the scientific focus, it's very much on psychology/sociology. I've read some of Stanislaw Lem's essays on technological developments and the main analytical lens is also around social implications of broad trends, rather than engineering.

Khira wrote: "Stanislaw Lem's essays ... social implications of broad trends, rather than engineering"

Yes, agreed

I haven’t read through all your comments, just a few from a month ago, to avoid spoilers, but I’m liking this so far. I’m maybe a quarter of the way through. Loving the science and sweet demeanor of Grace. I really like Stratt as well, she get shit done and quickly. I love competence! 😂 I’m not bothered by the rambling and really like the experiments he runs in “his” lab.