A^3's Cube

1. An Inheritance of Magic by Benedict Jacka
2. Felix Castor 1: The Devil You Know by Mike Carey
3. Felix Castor 2: Vicious Circle by Mike Carey
4. Felix Castor 3: Dead Men's Boots by Mike Carey
5. Felix Castor 4: Thicker than Water by Mike Carey
6. Felix Castor 5: The Naming of the Beasts by Mike Carey
7. Felix Castor 6: The Ghost in Bone by Mike Carey
8. Murderbot Diaries 1: All Systems Red by Martha Wells
9. Murderbot Diaries 2: Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
10. Murderbot Diaries 3: Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
11. Murderbot Diaries 4: Exit Stragegy by Martha Wells
12. Murderbot Diaries 5: Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
13. Murderbot Diaries 6: Network Effect by Martha Wells
14. Murderbot Diaries 7: System Collapse by Martha Wells
15. The Stranger Times 4: Relight My Fire by C. K. McDonnell
16. Mossa and Pleiti 1: The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older
17. Mossa and Pleiti 2: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older
18. The Midsolar Murders 2: Chaos Terminal by Mur Lafferty
19. The Warden by Daniel M. Ford
20. Rogues of the Republic 1: The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes
21. Rogues of the Republic 2: The Prophecy Con by Patrick Weekes
22. Rogues of the Republic 3: The Paladin Caper by Patrick Weekes
23. Kingdom of Grit 1: The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn
24. Kingdom of Grit 2: The Shattered Realm of Ardor Benn
25. Kingdom of Grit 3: The Last Lies of Ardor Benn
26. The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
27. A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark
28. Wicked Problems by Max Gladstone
29. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
30. The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
31. Grief of Stone by Katherine Addison (also connected short Lora Selezh)
32. Melusine by Katherine Addison
33. The Virtu by Katherine Addison
34. The Mirador by Katherine Addison
35. Corambis by Katherine Addison
36. Witch King by Martha Wells
37. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
38. A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
39. A Desoation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
40. Rose House by Arkady Martine
41. The Element of Fire by Martha Wells
42. Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells
43. The Wizard Hunters by Martha Wells
44. City of Bones by Martha Wells
45. The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
46. Finder by Suzanne Palmer
47. Driving the Deep by Suzanne Palmer
48. The Scavenger Door by Suzanne Palmer
49. Ghostdrift by Suzanne Palmer
50. Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman
51. Starter Villain by John Scalzi (also un-related novella The Dispatcher)
52. Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
53. Throne of The Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
54. The Prefect aka Aurora Rising by Alastair Reynolds (re-read) (also un-related Novella The Thousandth Night, connected to House of Suns)
55. Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds (also Open and Shut related short story)
56. Machine Vendetta by Alastair Reynolds
57. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
58. Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo

There are many science fiction stories published each year with wild speculation, and usually few details. It’s not unusual, therefore, just by the law of averages, for sometimes the SF to be followed by the  a discovery of (somewhat) matching science. An interesting piece on anti-agathic (delaying or removing the effects of ageing) work I saw today reminded me of a piece in a Heinlein novel. In “Methuselah’s Children” where a secret bunch of families with naturally bred longevity flee the Earth in an early spaceship because of the threat of a pogrom and/or being the subject of vivisection to discover the secret of their longevity. Returning to Earth after some interstellar adventures and with time dilation having kept them even younger than ever, they find that their existence spurred Earth to invest in anti-agathic research and discover a “blood cleaning” process which seriously reduces ageing. Not a novel idea, actually, as this Guardian article points out, the idea was proposed by Libavius in 1615. It’s looking like it might have potential, though. The work of Wyss-Coray on the effects of young mouse blood on old mouse brains (and vice versa) shows that transfusion of young blood into an old mouse causes a revival of neuron birth, while old blood in young mice retards such development.

There’s a horror story in here about, say, the Chinese communist party using both sides of this – harvesting young blood to keep their gerontcratic leaders healthy, while deliberately transfusing older blood into younger dissidents to dumb them down.

As that very good Guardian article mentions (it’s an in-depth and very well-written science piece, a rarity in modern journalism) though, it’s not just the idea of transfusions – we can hardly keep up with other demands for blood for transfusions in most societies. The idea that we could track the protein components of blood plasma as we age and filter out the ones which contribute to ageing and synthesise and add back the ones which promote health and youth, are interesting. Of course there’s also the idea that’s been used by a number of SF authors where by tinkering with ageing and encouraging bodily regeneration, we “use up” our body’s ability to regenerate and instead of gaining (near)immortality we die quicker (sometimes very quickly) though with amazing powers of regeneration in the (usually short) time. Again, this is perhaps a worry with these real science ideas.

Almost a year since my last blog post. Very bad of me. The last one was a report that I’d finished Kiki’s Delivery Service Book 2. It’s taken me ten months to finish books 3 and 4, but I’ve now done so. I’m just over half-way through Book 5 (which I’m racing through, having read the first 150 pages of 280 in just over two weeks). I’ve also now seen the recent live action Kiki movie. This is definitely derived from the first book, rather than from the Ghibli animation. In some ways it sticks closer to the book. For instance Kiki cannot accept money in return for her magic services. It’s never quite explicit in the book, and the “economics” of this are somewhat glossed over in terms of how she manages daily existence if she can’t earn money (or possibly can’t even deal with money directly). There’s something of an implication of receiving services in “barter” for her own and she can certainly accept gifts in kind in exchange for her services. Although this bit is closer to the book, and some of the scenes/sequences in the movie are heavily inspired by chapters in the book, it’s still quite a departure from the book in many terms. In the book there’s a sequence with a girl asking her to deliver a black envelope to another girl, which it turns out is an old tale of witches cursing people. In the book this is dealt with on the small scale of the girls involved only, whereas in the movie it’s part of the plot whereby after this incident people start distrusting Kiki and even returning things she’s delivered to them, back to Kiki instead of back to the sender.

I watched the movie in Japanese (no choice – there doesn’t seem to be an English subtitle version available – but I wanted to do that anyway). Since I know the story pretty well and it’s a kids/teen movie, I was able to follow much of the dialogue well enough, but I certainly wasn’t understanding every sentence in detail. Harder than the book, of course, since spoken word is harder to follow because of speed and difficulty to re-tread (I was watching it with $DAUGHTER so could hardly stop every thirty seconds and re-play to get the dialogue, though I may do some of this later to try to improve my Japanese listening).

Current Mood:  accomplished

Many may know of Studio Ghibli’s movie “Kiki’s delivery service”. What many may not know is that this is based on a series of books by a Japanese author (although set in a fictional Eastern European country [one with a coastline]). The books are really sets of short stories rather than novels per se, or so $WIFE tells me. Having watched Kiki (in Japanese 魔女の宅急便 or Witch’s Home Delivery Service) too many times lately due to $DAUGHTER, and having had $WIFE explain that the author had finally finished the series of books of tales with a finale in which Kiki’s daughter (by Tombo) heads off for her “year away” at 13, I asked $WIFE to get the books for me. It seemed to me that I should be up to reading teen literature in Japanese. She picked up the first book earlier this week and I’ve now started reading it, which is quite hard going but so far just about feasible for me. I’m reminded of an experience in the mid-90s though. A friend of mine was a nurse in London at the time and I used to visit her whenever I was there. At first she was staying in the nurses’ accommodation – multiple occupancy apartments owned by the hospital, and quite nearby (in this case right next door). She had a roommate who was a fairly nice guy but not really the intellectual type. My friend is an SF reader, though not an active fan. She told me on one visit that her flatmate had borrowed one of the early Terry Pratchett Discworld books from her and finally returned it a month later saying he’d really enjoyed it. it wasn’t that he’d taken a month to get around to reading it. He’d taken a month to read it. Being both heavy readers my friend and I found this rather alien. We figured he must be having to read every word as an individual word and then figure out the meaning of each sentence before moving on to the next. I’m feeling a bit like this with starting to try to read Japanese for “pleasure”, though of course part of the purpose is to improve my Japanese, but I’m also reading it because I want to know the story. I think I may be already ahead of friend’s flatmate’s English reading ability, though.

Current Mood:  accomplished

Yet another Harry Dresden installment. Having recovered from being dead (hey, this is a fantasy novel after all) Harry is plunged into his role as the Winter Knight withhout much in the way or mercy (well, what did you expect from the Winter Court). He’s also thrust into a wider world of magic in which a bunch of the previous threads going all the way back to Book 1 are either explained, or even have their apparent original explanations yanked away and a deeper truth revealed. It’s pretty skillfully done, though, so I think quite a lot of the stuff here was in Butcher’s mind from way back (not necessarily all the gory details but the general thrust of things at least). There’s some nice twists in this tale and a brilliant sense of impending doom, only slightly averted by the denouement here. Lots of excretory intersections with air moving devices still to come from this and doubtless further threads to be explored. IMHO Butcher is doing a pretty good job with the levelling up issue and isn’t shying away from the character implications for both his hero and the supporting characters.

Current Mood:  accomplished

A one-off collaboration between Steven Brust and Megan Lindholm. A mixture of police procedural in Lakota, Ohio and Gypsy/Celtic mythology. Written well before the modern trend for urban fantasy, though after De Lint’s Jack the Giant Killer and Drink Down the Moon. An interesting set of authorial voices (a both Burst and Linholm tend to create) combine with a deep twisting of European folklore in a lovely little tale of murder, good, evil, temptation and redemption.

This is one of those books that’s sat on my shelf unread for many years and I’m glad I finally got round to it.

Current Mood:  accomplished

Another Simon R. Green romp, this time the latest in his Bond-ish (in title at least) urban fantasy about the Droods,  the secret agents with sufficiently advanced technology (strange matter) help that they look like magical creatures. The titles are drawn from Bond but are sometimes little really to do with the actual subject matter. This latest one sees Eddie Drood recoving from being dead (hmm, shades of Butcher’s Ghost Story, there – pun intended) and taking on a cthulhish cult. More excellent modern urban pulp fantasy churned out by the bucketload by Green who hit his stride with Something from the Nightside and has been running along nicely since.

Current Mood:  refreshed

The front cover has a quote from “The Denver Post” (that well-known literary reviewing journal) that this “succeds on making cyberpunk fun again.” I wasn’t aware that it had stopped being fun when it was well done. Unfortunately, for me at least, this one isn’t well done. It read very much like a first novel, althoughit’s the author’s sixth published novel. There’s a decent plotline underlying it with an interesting idea, though i’m not sure it’s really cyberpunk. It seems to teeter on the edge of being parody/humour without reaching into being funny, but with the bizarre edge ruining thenormal suspension of disbelief. For me, humour like Surfing Samurai Robots or Aprin’s Phule series (review to come soon, I read them this year but haven’t reviewed them yet) allows for a greater suspension of disbelief since things are meant to be absurd. When you approach this line without being funny, the absurdity breaks the disbelief.

It isn’t the main plot that’s the problem for me, but the characters. They all seem like they’re out of central casting, with their requisite background of craziness. ex-cop, former mental patient, spritualist, antiques thief with Asperger’s Syndrome, abusive criminal boyfriend, conspiracy theorist waiter and on and on. The constant sexual undertones of the main character’s interactions with the females in the book would be spot on in a hard bioled detective parody, but this isn’t such a pardoy, or if it is, it doesn’t parody hard enough.

Current Mood:  cynical

Last one today, I promise (for those whose friends-list is filling up with my book blogging). I’m determined to catch up on a Cherryh kick I went through a few months ago but didn’t get around to blogging.

Yet another of her Alliance/Union books, this is one of the Merchanter-based ones, though it also includes the Fleet. It’s a fairly late on in the post-Company Wars era, so still directly linked to the events of Downbelow Station rather than much further down the timeline.

This is the coming-of-age story of a young man whose upbringing has been screwed up royally by his screwed up mother and her complacent self-satisfied family, on a classic Merchanter family trading ship. Conceived in a rape but as we eventually find out one which while the victim didn’t deserve (no one ever does) the victim was hardly a sensible and sane woman to start with.

We get Cherryh’s over-the-shoulder third person trademark on multiple characters in this story and as with a number of her other books she remarkably manageds to make some really screwed up and nasty people really work as main characters. It helps that the main character Joh Bowe Hawkins is as sane and positive a character as he can be given his background. His coming-of-age is the main point of the book, behind which is an explanation of some of what happened to the Earth Company Fleet after Downbelow Station. Wonderfully ethically-grey as much of Cherryh’s writing is, this explores some of the darker sides of the human character and comes out with a message that even the most screwed around can posibly find somewhere to fit in.

A nice addition to the Merchanter set and one of my favourites of that subsqeuence, along with Rimrunners.

Current Mood:  calm

What to say about this Hugo Award Winner? It was a masterpiece at the time and remains a classic of the genre. Some elements of it have not dated well, unfortunately, in particular the terminology surrounding the compters. The constant mention of Tapes is slightly dated even for 1989 and the lack of graphical interfaces likewise. These niggles aside, though the strengths of the book in protraying  a monstrous main character as sympathetic, in two “incarnations” while weaving politics, psychgology, sociology, economics and personal vendettas together is absolutely wonderful. Her trademark alienation is more overt in some ways here as she explains Union’s “Specials” as people with a vision of something int he universe that only they can see, but that is important to humanity for them to articulate in a way that will eventually allow others to comprehend their vision and assimilate it fully. Perhaps even more relevant today as the pace of technological change continues to increase while the social fabric struggles to cope with those changes.

I remember being in one of Cherryh’s GoH programme items at Bucconeer where she was asked about if and when she’d write the sequel to Cyteen (it was clearly crying out for a sequel and written with one in mind). Her response was that she’d write it as soon s a publisher was willing to pay her for it to be written (as a pro, she wrote to contract and it was on offer but no one was picking it up, at least not for what she was willing to accept for it [my subtext]). I found this bizarre at the time that no publisher would pick up the contract for the sequel to a Hugo Winner (by a multiple winner of the Hugo for best novel). Luckily, eventually someone did pick it up.

If you haven’t read this and have even a vague liking for science fiction, go read it now!

Current Mood:  calm