Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

One month down in 2022 already.

It feels slightly like being served dessert when you haven't quite finished your main meal. Or is that just me?☺

No, it's not just you!

So, those who have gotten to know me now, will be aware that due to circumstances, I have a self imposed moratorium on new book purchases. (I made an exception for KG's book, because I promised to read it). Anyway, today's stroke of luck... I suddenly remembered a book I was gifted in a Secret Santa back when I had a day job and never got around to starting. Better yet, I could actually remember what I did with it. Which is a long winded way of saying, that I am now reading, 'The Fifth Season,' by N.K. Jemisin


The Fifth Season

Whew! That certainly was long-winded!

I started a book last night by a new-to-me author, and for whatever reason, I'm finding it mesmerizing: Tuyo. I think it's the writing style. Very good so far!

Starting off the month by continuing my Dune re-read with Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

Completed:
text:

==========================================
Authors:
Katherine Addison, Angeline Boulley, Sarah Gailey, Yuri Herrera, Megan Hunter, Emme Lund, Scott Lynch, Sylvain Neuvel, Claire North, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Rebecca Ross, John Scalzi, Art Spiegelman, Nghi Vo
Translators:
Lisa Dillman

Binti: The Complete Trilogy (sci fi)
The False Prince (pseudo-fantasy)
In a Holidaze (fluffy)
Clap When You Land (family drama)

Just finished reading Warship by Joshua Dalzelle. Really good old fashioned military scifi. Can't wait to read the sequel.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

A coffee shop in Tokyo lets people time travel to the past....but there are strict rules.

Engaging and quirky book. 3.5 stars

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Hmm, intriguing.

The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe by Matthew Gabriele and David M Perry

I finished Leviathan Falls, concluding the Expanse series. I am now starting Fugitive Telemetry, to keep current with the Murderbot series.

Reading SciFi/thriller Recursion by Blake Crouch.

Garyjn wrote: "Reading SciFi/thriller Recursion by Blake Crouch."

Good story. Very imaginative.

Finished Children of Dune, this wasn't that big a book but took some time to read :)

Also finished Cummings' Brigands of the Moon, nothing special, and one big giant gaping hole in the science where the moon is portrayed correctly but apparently you can dump your ship's passengers on a passing asteroid that has air/a forest/etc...that asteroid must have been the size of a small planet!! :D

So that means two new books to start on:

Robot Visions by Isaac Asimov -I'm already on page 404 after one evening! That's because aside from three stories all the others were already in The Complete Robot. I do have about 100 pages of articles and essays at the end to enjoy.

The Fire People - by Ray Cummings on my eReader

Finished Robot Visions. Some of his little articles at the end (and I mean little many were only 2-3 pages long, probably the speculative non-fiction articles that are included in SF magazines) just made me laugh so hard. They weren't meant to be funny (though one was about jokes) but how he was predicting technology, particularly robotics and AI would evolve, and how much of it we already have or even surpassed. I mean he was predicting a "remote teaching device" that was kind of like a TV that would connect to satellites to display information customized to a particular user, and allow access to libraries and other stores of knowledge, and where people up upload information back to it. And that the teaching device would learn how the user learns and guide them appropriately.

He just invented the internet there, along with a little bit of AI software that changes itself to meet the user's needs, only he got the size wrong, he expected it to be no smaller than a TV but we can do all that on our phones these days :)

The thing he missed was the bit where people upload their own content resulting in the source of information being full of junk and misinformation, ah well. He also missed online learning with a live teacher (he was worried not enough teachers in the world) can teach a class of a thousand remotely.

Next up is book 2 in the Ender series - Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

Brimstone Angels

Going Ballistic by Dorothy Grant

Had Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse on my to read list and was in the mood for some fantasy so when I saw it in my library I picked it up. Didn't realize, although I should have being fantasy, that it was book 1 of a trilogy. So if I like it I'll have to wait (book 2 is scheduled for April) which I don't like to do, but I started it, so I'll keep going and if I like it I'll wait.

Yeah, it's really hard to find a stand-alone fantasy novel these days, and it's getting that way with sci-fi as well, although there are still more stand-alone sci-fi novels than fantasy novels.

Tony wrote: "Yeah, it's really hard to find a stand-alone fantasy novel these days, and it's getting that way with sci-fi as well, although there are still more stand-alone sci-fi novels than fantasy novels."

Agreed. I get tired of it. Many wear the subject out, doing the same thing over & over. It can be worse when they add spin-off series. I'm also not fond of it when authors suddenly decide to turn a perfectly good trilogy into a series by adding books decades later, either. Usually their style has changed enough that they lose what I liked about it. Most also get wordier, often by padding & repetition.

Marketers love series and really push authors to turn original standalones into series.

Jim wrote: "I'm also not fond of it when authors suddenly decide to turn a perfectly good trilogy into a series by adding books decades later, either. Usually their style has changed enough that they lose what I liked about it. Most also get wordier, often by padding & repetition"

That was very noticeable in my reread of Asimov's future history series - on the whole, the books he wrote in the 50s were superior (and much shorter) than the additions he made in the 80s.

Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind, Asimov & Heinlein both did that - tried to turn many old standalones into part of a single universe with long, rambling bricks. Yuck.

I never read the additional books LeGuin wrote to her Wizard of Earthsea trilogy nor did I care much for those Madeleine L'Engle wrote after A Wrinkle in Time. She published the second one a decade or more after the first in the early 60s & the last in the late 80s. McCaffery just wore Pern out. It's usually especially bad when other authors take over a series after the original author died.

I loved Robin Hobb's first six books of the Farseer trilogy; every now and again I re-read them. Twenty-ish years later she continued with a third trilogy and I loathed it. I was tripping over filler! Now I just pretend as if those last three had never been written.

I finished Fugitive Telemetry. Since it is a novella it took me less time to read it than for a full novel. I now want to switch from sci-fi to fantasy. After some searching in my long to-read bookshelf I settled on Theft of Swords, the first book in the Riyria series. Let's see how this will go.

Pierre wrote: "I finished Fugitive Telemetry. Since it is a novella it took me less time to read it than for a full novel. I now want to switch from sci-fi to fantasy. After some searching in my l..."

Oh, Pierre, Riyria books are a lot of fun!! I've read them several times.

I love Theft of Swords; it's just so fun.

I just got an ARC from Michaelbrent Collings, "Future Tense." Not in the database yet.

Tony wrote: "That was very noticeable in my reread of Asimov's future history series - on the whole, the books he wrote in the 50s were superior (and much shorter) than the additions he made in the 80s."

In the intro to Robot Visions, Asimov agrees with you... :)

And yeah, these massive series are a challenge. I started Dune, The Robot books (which extend into Foundation and then Empire), and the Ender books (which spawned several related sub series, some which merge at the end with the most recent book he published last year)

A few years back I did a Pern read, everything including the books by the kids, short stories...I couldn't find a copy of the Choose Your Own adventure book though (I do have the Amber equivalent though!)

Just between those three series I'm filling up a big chunk of my year. If I do the full Ender, plus Foundation/Empire, I'll probably read nothing else but those 3 authors with a handful of standalone other things squeezed in :) :) :) Like the two books I just got from Goodreads giveaway! (Both are mystery/thriller, but one involves Area 51 so I'll mention it here when I start it, close enough to SF I guess, hehe)

Hope Robots and Empire doesn't require having read Foundation/Empire first....

Blood, Oil and Love by Dorothy Grant

Andrea wrote: "Hope Robots and Empire doesn't require having read Foundation/Empire first..."

It doesn't. The reading order is:

Robot short stories;
4 Robot novels;
3 Galactic Empire novels;
2 Foundation prequel novels;
5 Foundation novels.

Michelle wrote: "Oh, Pierre, Riyria books are a lot of fun!! I've read them several times.."

Thanks Michelle! Indeed, the beginning looks very promising and I am already enjoying it.

Riyria was fun for the first batch. I ARC read 6 of the first 7, but bowed out after that. I haven't felt like reading much fiction lately. For the past couple of years, I've been reading more nonfiction. Seems modern science has caught up to & sometimes surpassed the SF I used to love & there are a lot of good history books available. Fascinating stuff.

A Curious History of Sex by Kate Lister was fun & interesting. It was nice to get the feminist side even if she did go a bit far at times. I gave it a 4 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I thought A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species by Rob Dunn would be great since I really liked another of his books, but it was a bust. It got a 1 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Tony wrote: "It doesn't. The reading order is:

Robot short stories;
4 Robot novels;
3 Galactic Empire novels;
2 Foundation prequel novels;
5 Foundation novels."

I would not read the prequels before Foundation unless you really don't mind spoilers, because they spoil a lot of what happens in the 5 other books. For a first read it's better to use the publishing order.

I'm usually a publishing order type of person, except for Bujold since her books were reprinted in pairs so I go with whatever order those came in. Ok, good to know about Robots and Empire since I didn't get around to checking publishing dates yet. I did check them for the Ender books so even though Ender's Shadow takes place at the same time as Ender's Game, I'm finishing off two other books first.

And that said, I finished The Speaker for the Dead...I said that Ender's Game was pretty brutal, and this one is too, except while in the first it was to break someone down, this one was to heal. Card writes very powerful character driven stories indeed, and manages to toss in very interesting worldbuilding around that too.

Next up, one of my Goodreads Giveaway wins - Diablo Mesa by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. This was the one with a touch of SF in it, where an archaeologist is asked to dig up Area 51 and they find...we'll I'll have to read it to see. I'm not actually expecting aliens but we'll see if they choose to leave the readers wondering :)

A Perfect Day, With Explosions by Dorothy Grant

I'm reading the second in Ben Kane's Eagles of Rome series, Hunting the Eagles, and it is very, very good!

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert

Journalist Kolbert discusses the damage we humans have done to the planet and some proposed fixes. The Earth is in trouble folks! 😨

Important and readable book. 4.5 stars

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

White Plume Mountain



Digging the 'Justicar and 'Cinders the undead hide of a Hellhound .... Unique Characters so far. Fight scenes are a bit disjointed. World building is unabashedly fantastic, as it most certainly spawns from the foundations of D&D. .

When I first read Ender's Shadow, I read it back to back with Ender's Game, which was very interesting because some scenes' meaning shifted with the POV. Card was a big student of anthropology, and it shows in Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide.

I just began reading #5 in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Tales, The Burning Land.

C.A. wrote: "[World building is unabashedly fantastic, as it most certainly spawns from the foundations of D&D. ."

White Plume Mountain is a classic D&D adventure from the early 80s and the novel is based on the adventure. It's set in the world of Greyhawk, which is Gary Gygax's original world setting for D&D.

Andrea wrote: "I'm usually a publishing order type of person, except for Bujold since her books were reprinted in pairs so I go with whatever order those came in. Ok, good to know about Robots and Empire since I ..."

I liked Speaker for the Dead better than Ender's Game... Card is one of the best at developing characters...and that world is just so cool!

Andrea, you should also check out Mary Doria Russell's two book series, "The Sparrow" and "Children of God"

Finished Diablo Mesa, a bit like a mix of Kathy Reichs and James Rollins (since those are the ones I'm familiar with in that genre) and found I liked it quite a bit, I'd read more from Preston & Child.

And while that was light and quick read, easily hitting 100 pages a day, I'm now back to Dune with God Emperor of Dune where I'm lucky if I hit 50. Not because it's bad or boring, but because you have to pay attention when you read...and the font size is microscopic...it's a 600 page book trying to squeeze into 400 pages...

I'm reading "The Black Pharaohs: Egypt's Nubian Rulers" (Robert G. Morkot) at the same time as Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring."

Morgan Barod by Moe Lane

I have finished The Land Leviathan: A New Scientific Romance, the second book in the Oswald Bastable trilogy. Not as good as the first.

I have started Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

How Science Shapes Science Fiction by Charles L. Adler is one of the Great Courses & was a real pleasure to listen to. I gave it a 5 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...