I'm a bookseller, consignment reviewer, and I run the SF reading group. Science fiction, obviously, not so much fantasy, mystery, science, history, and occasionally philosophy. I'm also a photographer, so I appreciate good visuals.
Genetics is the most personal and relevant of sciences. Walter Isaacson's biography of Jennifer Doudna, whose work in the field contributed to CRISPR and the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine, exemplifies the best of what science can do and who scientists are.
Nicola Griffith gives us an alternate take on the Percival myth cycle that surprises, enthralls, delights, and adds to the rich tapestry of Arthurian lore. Concise, rich, gender-bending, and wholly satisfying.
Cloning, fundamentalism, politics, and the clash of technological goals in a future that is rendered with fractal clarity and precision. The follow-up to The Sentient does not disappoint.
A study in technological narcissism, Echo Wife is a superbly-written study of murder, cloning, bad marriage, industrial espionage, and the limitations of ethical paradigms. Highly recommended!
Winner of the Nebula Award, this alternate history is a wonderful ride through a might-be Egypt with a police operative who combines the best of Miss Fisher, Indiana Jones, and Harbinder Kaur.
Time is something we all know, experience in common, and yet understanding almost nothing about. Carlo Rovelli comes as close as anyone to revealing Time's nature and then making us feel all right about not quite getting it.
These essays open doors. Science is often seen as a cold, forbidding realm of logic and fact-driven reality, but Rovelli has a gift for showing us the humanity in it all and fascinating us along the way.
Crowley is a master, especially at straddling the line between the real and the fantastic. In this, he revisits the history of Queen Elizabeth I and Ireland in great depth, adding a touch of magic, and creating a marvel.
Keynes is central to nearly every geopolitical issue of the last 80 years. In this excellent biography, Carter explains why, and along the way does a good job of illuminating the theory and practice of economic policies that have whipsawed us all since the Great Depression.
Jill Lepore gets into the hidden corners of history and shows us the context for our discontents. This small company, all but forgotten today, change the way elections worked and how policy is determined, and perhaps why things keep going where we don't want them to. Essential reading.
The movie was good, but the history is better. This is a remarkable story, not to be missed, and much more compelling as it really happened. It raises questions that need answering while showing the possibility of a saner future.
Tales of vanished civilizations make for fun fantasy, but the reality of such so-called "lost cities" is much more interesting---especially as for the most part they were never lost. This is an excellent place to start learning the real story of those places supposedly vanished and abandoned for presumably inexplicable reasons.
Miss Fisher is a delight and a new book is a welcome treat. Independent, competent, unapologetically sybaritic, she exhibits a keen intellect and a tenacious sense of justice. With her trusted companion Dot here she ventures to spa country and stumbles upon murder.
Intricate, abstract, surreal, compelling. Piranesi is trapped in a strange world of ancient constructs and shifting tides, with only partial memories, and a sense that some mysteries are more personal than others. Truly elegant.
Becky Chambers is quickly becoming one of the best of a new generation of science fiction writers. Here she gives us a world of depth and fascinating without space ships, battles, flashy tech, or cosmic struggles. The first of a new series, this is a remarkable and satisfying work.
Part memoir, part history, part scientific study, this story of one woman's fascination with the Red Planet leading to a career and the opportunity to participate in the exploration of Mars is compelling and enlightenment by turns.
Chiang was already well-known to readers before the film Arrival brought him to the attention of a much wider audience. This, his second collection of thoroughly impressive short stories, validates his reputation as one of the finest writers of short fiction---SF or otherwise---in the world.
Yes, there are resonances to the original Holmes and Watson stories, but O'Dell has struck out with a very original take and set her duo in an all-too-plausible near future that gives ample opportunity for the kinds of next-level investigations that will resonate with the socially and politically aware in unexpected ways. Plus, her Holmes and Watson are very much their own people. This could be the start of a very satisfying series,
Pirate pharma, sentient AI, a world turned upside down and yet, surprisingly, thriving, Annalee Newitz's first novel is a breakneck-paced adventure about the next possible tensions our ever-evolving civilization may take us. Seriously excellent science fiction.
In the most beautiful prose, MacFarlane delves into the world below---caves, the ocean, even the warrens of man-made subterranean mystery. A travelogue of some of the most overlooked vistas and marvels on---or rather below---the surface of the Earth.
Understanding reality at its fundamental level is the quest of modern physics. String theory, QED, the search for a Theory of Everything....and then there's Quantum Gravity, which is Rovelli's chief interest. He lays it all out elegantly and accessibly and demonstrates an ability to make sensible the truly strange.
One of the Big Books of 20th Century literature, the novel is the story of young Wyatt Gwyon who has a gift for art, in a world that values the skill but not the vision. Compromise, disillusion, fame---all of it blends into a portrait of abandoned truth trying to find purchase among those who only care about surfaces. Gaddis's first novel and a masterpiece.
A forest of a book, truly, by a master of language and image, this is the world of trees, people, roots, and systems, all discovering finally their interconnectedness and value. Lush, alien, welcoming, and shocking, sometimes all at once.
Pynchon's first novel follows Benny Profane as he charges into a future he cannot imagine. Around him, after the War, the world is becoming modern, searching for its next big thing, and turning strange, and all Benny---and everyone else---has is what they brought along from before it all began to transform. Establishing Pynchon's major themes, this is the place to start. Haunting, enigmatic, fascinating.
A disease sweeps the globe, bringing on the much-feared apocalypse, killing 90% of humanity. In the aftermath, the survivors and the children who come of age in this emptied landscape struggle to retain the best of what was wrought. A traveling theater troupe performs Shakespeare, binds communities, and inspires dreams. Tomorrow does come. Fine work.
Comic books, WWII, the Golem, and the American Dream as seen through the lives of mythic creators of superheroes, this is an homage to an America that almost was, might have been, came close to happening, but never faded, and left behind a legacy of hope and imagination and cosmic anticipation. One of Chabon's best.
Ann Leckie's Ancillary novels broke ground and swept up awards. Naturally, her fourth novel would have nothing to do with that universe. Instead, we are presented with a fantasy. But Leckie being Leckie, this is not an expected, cookie-cutter fantasy, but a work of subtle explorations concerning the workings of gods and humans in an ancient time. The power struggles, while familiar, take unexpected turns, and the portrayal of the gods are refreshingly distinct. These gods have limits, entropy and the conservation of energy clearly apply, and motives are refreshingly Other. The world in which they operate and the people involved possess the weight of reality in their imagining. The Raven Tower is a trip through a past might-have-been and according to a set of conditions seldom considered in popular fantasy. Well-realized and thoroughly enjoyable.
Yes, there are resonances to the original Holmes and Watson stories, but O'Dell has struck out with a very original take and set her duo in an all-too-plausible near future that gives ample opportunity for the kinds of next-level investigations that will resonate with the socially and politically aware in unexpected ways. Plus, her Holmes and Watson are very much their own people. This could be the start of a very satisfying series,
Short, sharp, succinct, Jill Lepore's challenge to the standard historical priorities of the last four decades offers a glimpse of what may have contributed to our current problems with regards to a resurgent Right, immigration, and the backlash against various globalization efforts. By failing to recognize the difference between a sense of nation and nationalism, which is a political perversion, we have ignored vital aspects of commonality, tradition, and identity which have been misused and twisted to the advantage who interests are based in power. Cogent and highly recommended.
A novel about origins, belonging, leaving, and returning, written with deep sympathy for character and fine grasp of how societies evolve. Third in Chambers' fascinating mosaic universe, but completely stand-alone. Surprising in so many ways.
A quiet community is shaken by a murder. In the aftermath of the Fall, Earth is more agrarian than at any time since the Middle Ages. Murder is almost unheard of along the Coast Road. Enid and Tomas, as investigators, must learn the truth, even as their very presence disrupts a community that sits on the edge of chaos. A well-drawn post-apocalypse reminiscent of Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow. Excellent.
Delany solidified his reputation as a masterfully unpredictable and uncategorizable science fiction writer with this fascinating study of myth and its residue in the far future. An abandoned Earth is resettled by aliens who becoming drawn to the ancient and contradictory myths that still seem to permeate the world and in their own way attempt to revive them, perhaps make them their own. Nebula Award winner.
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Bryant & May head up the Peculiar Crimes Unit, a special squad tasked with solving crimes that simply do not fit the usual parameters for London's metropolitan police, crimes with unexpected, borderline occult aspects. Now, the two partners refuse to retire and continue to rattle their higher-ups with their unconventional approach to some of the strangest crimes in London's precincts. No to be missed.
This is exceptional world-building and great storytelling. Anders portrays how the same characteristics that can make people exceptional are the same ones that can undo us. She seems to be warning us throughout that the danger going forward is in the assumptions we decide to bring with us and leave unquestioned.
Part a biography of Judy Garland, part the story of a dying man's obsession, and part the "true" story of Dorothy Gale, Geoff Ryman's WAS is one of most fascinating narratives I've encountered. Told with considerable sensitivity and with an eye for the telling detail throughout, WAS is a moving testament to the power of rewriting lives in defiance of life's unfulfilled potentials. This will give you a very different perspective on Mr. Baum's classic.
With that sentence, Heinlein begins one of his best novels. Humanity has solved its major problems, strive, poverty, war, and disease are in the past, things are going along swimmingly...and yet. In that "and yet" lies the heart of one of his most human examinations of the perverse nature of humanity and its civilized discontents. Heinlein here gives trouble in paradise, born of a combination of boredom, ambition, and a misplaced sense of rightness and destiny. - Mark
John Varley was once one of the sharpest voices in science fiction. His Eight Worlds stories were amazing. He has lost none of his humor, his wisdom, his appeal, and his imagination is as rich as ever, as displayed here. In a sort of end to the trilogy that began with Steel Beech, we return to the Eight Worlds with as stylish, noirish mystery that, being Varley and being very science fiction, ravels in unexpected and magnificent braids. Varley gives us a world as rich as any in literature, characters right out of Chandler, Macdonald, and Hammet, with a story that delights and triggers all those sense-of-wonder nodes good SF targets. - Mark
Like the last work of Greenblatt's I read (The Swerve) I was struck by his clear prose and narrative sense as well as his extensive historical knowledge and command of the interconnectedness of a wide range of elements. This work takes a look at one of the central myths of christianity, namely the story of Adam and Eve, and examines its staying power, how and why in spite of centuries of, essentially, debunking the story tenaciously clings to our collective psyche. As allegory, this is no mystery---it's a compelling story---but the fact that so many people still assert its factual reality leads us into the murkiness of our ability to deceive ourselves and ignore evidence. He also does a good job showing how that myth became the source of a millennia-long embrace of studied misogyny, begun primarily by St. Augustine, who somehow could not come to terms with his own erotic obsessions and his desire to become (in my view, not Greenblatt's) Other Than Human for the glory of his newfound faith after his dramatic conversion to Catholicism. The details Greenblatt offers give us ample evidence of someone who was working out personal issues at the expense of half the human population. There are surprising turns of history, of intellectual adventurism, of the human capacity to master the irrational and accept the changes demanded by reason and evidence combined into reconceptualizations of things thought long settled. And then there are the artists and, finally, Milton. Highly recommended. Mark's Staff Pick, November 2017
Annalee Newitz, cofounder and editor-in-chief of io9, has written a novel that has all the signs of being a major touchpoint in science fiction. Autonomous bases its meditations on questions of ownership and resource allocation in a future where both are matters of patent law. If this seems like improbable grounds in which to grow a gripping, nail-biting action plot, reconsider. Captain Jack Chen is a pirate with a personal submarine and a working knowledge of pharmacology. She “liberates” drugs and see them distributed through networks that get them to people who ordinarily can’t afford them. Autonomous is the kind of novel science fiction is most adept at producing—the thoughtful, philosophically-attuned thriller that leaves you with plenty to mull over once your adrenalin stops pumping.
A debut novel that evokes the best of old- fashioned science fiction adventure and adds smart elements of satire, humor, and social commentary. The crew of the Wayfarer, a bore ship that "punches" holes through subspace to connect distant locales in interstellar space via wormhole, is a collection of humans, aliens, alien humans, and an overseeing AI named Lovey. Rosemary, who is fleeing family and hiding a secret, joins them and quickly discovers a new life that is both demanding and accepting in ways she never before imagined. The dialogue alone sets this novel a cut above. The characters are all fully realized, smart, and revealing in ways that bring us into their curious family, matching a wide and crowded universe as distinctly imagined as any in the genre. An unexpected treat, built of equal parts intelligence, sensitivity, and an adult appreciation of the 12-year-old SF fan in all of us.
If H.P. Lovecraft and Saul Bellow had ever collaborated on a ghost story, the result might be very much like John Langan's debut novel House of Windows. Not so much in style, but in the way the two writers would temper each other and blend their signature motifs into something simultaneously more sinister and more sophisticated. Patiently, persistently, and with great skill, Langan has constructed a modern ghost story about nightmares and families and fouled hopes and expectations imposed and denied, with a caution at its heart, that no matter how many windows into the soul one has, if the curtains are drawn or we refuse to honestly look, we cannot truly know each other. Or ourselves.
Murderbot is one of the most unexpectedly fascinating characters in recent SF. A robot, designed for the purpose of providing security for contractors, he (she? it?) is supposed to be a superficial cache of tactical and risk assessment expertise that will put it all on the line to defend its clients. Except this one has hacked its governor module, so it is completely independent. What does a suddenly "free" murderbot do now that it doesn't have to follow orders to the letter? Why, download hundreds of hours of entertainment and tune out at every opportunity. Except again, it turns out that it still has a dedication to protecting its clients, a dedication that gradually becomes a commitment, which grows eventually into something of a cause when it becomes clear that there is something fundamentally broken with the way this universe operates, and...well, it's beginning to like its clients, which shouldn't happen, and Murderbot doesn't know how to deal with that. Fun, fascinating, fast-paced, and, underneath it all a grueling inquiry into casuistry, responsibility, and empowerment.
The Amazing Telemachus Family was once poised to thrill the world with its assortment of psychic skills. Until the day they were shamed and debunked very publicly and everything went to hell for them too quickly. And then the martriarch of the family dies, leaving her husband, Teddy, to care for a collection of frustrated exceptionals. Teddy, the con man. Teddy, the one among them who is really not psychic. Following the family from the early days of Teddy and Maureen meeting at the birth of a government program looking for psychics to combat the threat of Soviet psychics, up to a present which may or may not involve the apocalypse, Daryl Gregory deftly turns everything everyone "knows" about psychics and cons and secret government programs on its multifaceted head(s) and tells the story of a family coping with lost love, fame, innocence, the mob, old age, death, and the true nature of the universe. By turns laugh-out-loud funny, deeply affecting, and nail-bitingly tense, Spoonbenders is exactly not what you expect.
An astonishingly rich example of world building, N.K. Jemisin has created an experience replete with a history, an aesthetic, and a cast of characters both tortured and noble and sympathetic. It is easy to believe this is about some ancient Earth. it is just as easy to believe this is the Earth of some far future, where the history that concerns us has been long forgotten. And yet the familiarity of concern, of tragedy, of aspiration crosses all gulfs and draws the reader in with its inexorable truths.
The Show That Never Ends is the definitive story of the extraordinary rise and fall of progressive (“prog”) rock. Epitomized by such classic, chart-topping bands as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and Emerson Lake & Palmer, along with such successors as Rush, Marillion, Asia, Styx, and Porcupine Tree, prog sold hundreds of millions of records. It brought into the mainstream concept albums, spaced-out cover art, crazy time signatures, multitrack recording, and stagecraft so bombastic it was spoofed in the classic movie This Is Spinal Tap.
With a vast knowledge of what Rolling Stone has called “the deliciously decadent genre that the punks failed to kill,” access to key people who made the music, and the passion of a true enthusiast, Washington Post national reporter David Weigel tells the story of prog in all its pomp, creativity, and excess.
Weigel explains exactly what was “progressive” about prog rock and how its complexity and experimentalism arose from such precursors as the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. He traces prog’s popularity from the massive success of Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” and the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” in 1967. He reveals how prog’s best-selling, epochal albums were made, including The Dark Side of the Moon, Thick as a Brick, and Tubular Bells. And he explores the rise of new instruments into the prog mix, such as the synthesizer, flute, mellotron, and—famously—the double-neck guitar.
The Show That Never Ends is filled with the candid reminiscences of prog’s celebrated musicians. It also features memorable portraits of the vital contributions of producers, empresarios, and technicians such as Richard Branson, Brian Eno, Ahmet Ertegun, and Bob Moog.
Ultimately, Weigel defends prog from the enormous derision it has received for a generation, and he reveals the new critical respect and popularity it has achieved in its contemporary resurgence.
Ann Leckie's Raadch Universe is vast and will contain multitudes. With Provenance she has shown that it is not a shallow pool with interesting surface tension but a deep, deep sea of narrative potential. While not as anxiety-inducing as her Ancillary Trilogy, there is ample tension and a story pivoting adroitly on aspect of culture, human foible, and politics of dynasties that will leave you thinking for quite some time in the afterglow of a first-rate yarn well told. There's even a murder. While different in tone, this is a necessary facet in the jewel of her creation. Not to be missed.
(This book cannot be returned.)
James Tiptree Jr. was one of the best short form writers of science fiction in a field that once lived and died in the short story. "His" appearance on the scene in the late Sixties rumbled through the field. The stories were electric, unusual, insightful, unexpected. But just as interesting was the fact that no one knew who James Tiptree Jr. was. Speculation was rampant. When finally it was revealed that "he" was Alice Sheldon, daughter of world explorers, ground-floor (and former) member of the nascent CIA, the revelation stunned those convinced of her "ineluctible masculinity." In the hands of Julie Phillips, Sheldon's life is shown to be as spectacularly exotic as anything she put down in her fiction. This is one of the finest literary biographers ever crafted and Phillips' subject was one of the most interesting writers of the 20th Century.
Flipping paradigms on their heads is what science fiction is all about. Sometimes the paradigms so flipped are so obvious and yet so unlikely that the act requires a fine touch, a clear mind, and considerable talent. Naomi Alderman exemplifies this combination in The Power. The paradigm? The power relations between men and women. When women suddenly acquire the ability to generate and channel electrical charges, the dynamics of the world, of history itself, change, even as some things seem to remain obdurately the same. A disquieting yet satisfying exegesis about sexual politics, tradition, revolution, evolution, and the transformation of cultural givens.
Neal Stephenson writes great big discursive SF novels that run along like well-tuned motors. The Diamond Age is one of his earlier works yet displays all his strengths---well-reasoned extrapolation, Quixotic political radicalism, and a cast of memorable and unpredictable characters, all brought face to face with world-changing technology. In this instance, a craftsman is tasked to design a teaching tool for the child of a fabulously wealthy aristo late in the 21st Century, a wonderful book that is interactive, challenging, a subversively philosophical. If used properly it will train its user to be a first-rate thinker. He decides to make a copy---quite illegally---and give it to his daughter. Poor Nell grows into more than anyone might have expected and the world is never the same.
"His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god."
So begins Roger Zelazny's masterpiece, Lord of Light. The novel won the Hugo Award in 1968 for best novel and was nominated for the Nebula. Zelazny, a master craftsman, produced a marvel---a science fiction novel that can be read as easily as a fantasy---about the descendants of a crashed starship on a world where in order to survive turned toward technologies that gave some of them both immortality and the power of gods. But the culture has stagnated and things need to be shaken up. Sam plans to do just that.
Klang Smith shows herself to be a masterful juggler. There should be no way for all the components at play here to cohere, and yet they do. They do with a surprising and pleasurable grace and at times the writing is nearing transcendence. This is allegory, metaphor, and potboiler mingled artfully to make an elegant mockery of expectation and resolution. Who these people are and who they become as they spin around each other just as the dragons circle overhead suggests, finally, that superficiality requires substance to survive, and that try as some might to remain shallow, depths are there to fall into whether we like it or not.
Dhalgren challenges. Myth, dystopia, alternate history, a soul-wrenching examination of life within layered landscapes, this novel is the 'Ulysses' of science fiction. More than that, it is comprised of the ur-stuff from which modern imaginative dissonance is mined to create our new fictive discourse.
Nova burns blindingly in the history of science fiction. One part space opera, one part examination of myth, one part dynastic struggle, and one part quest novel, Delany gives us a tale as big as the galaxy and as personal as yesterday.
Let me get straight to the point: Mary Robinette Kowal’s new novel, The Calculating Stars, is one of the best alternate histories I have read since… It is 1952. Dewey is president. Elma York and her husband, Nathaniel, are on vacation in the Poconos. They both work for the newly-formed National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Nathaniel is the chief engineer and has a reputation for putting up America’s first satellites. Elma is a mathematician, a superb one. She is also a former WASP pilot, which fact figures prominently in all that follows. In the midst of their idyllic vacation, a meteor slams into the Atlantic just off the east coast. It destroys Washington D.C. and wreaks havoc up and down the seaboard. Elma and Nathaniel manage to get out and to her plane and west until a fighter squardon challenges them, learns who they are, and escorts them to Wright-Patterson Air Base, the only fully operational military base within range. There they learn the extent of the immediate losses. CalculatingStars_comp_v7_final-220x338 Quickly, the government scrambles to get up and running. The only surviving member of the Cabinet is the Secretary of Agriculture, who becomes Acting President until an election can be held. This, too, is very important. While the pieces are being picked up and some kind of order restored, Elma is asked to calculate the size of the meteor so her husband can go into the meetings with the paranoid military and convince them this was nothing to do with the Soviets. She crunches the numbers and discovers to her shock and dismay that this was an extinction-level event. In 50 or 60 years, the Earth will be too hot for survival. Kowal lays all this out meticulously. The science has the resonance of reality. So do the politics, the culture, the economics. In fact, this is a very well thought-out scenario. For Elma, Nathaniel, the Acting President it means one thing: humanity has got to get off the planet. Which kicks the space program into high gear in the early 1950s. The novel is soaked in telling details. And while it offers plenty of science and rocket-geek delight, it is also a story of challenging culture and social norms and overcoming personal difficulties in the face of all that the 1950s—our 1950s—was about to be. Kowal brings the culture into play with a seamless grace that produces a “well, of course that had to change” which occasionally leaves a residue of embarrassment. Embarrassment at how we know things were and even how they still are. We talk about Wake Up Calls when faced with growing or entrenched social problems, matters of injustice, the unexamined givens of the world. Kowal delivers the ultimate Wake Up Call. And then shows us just how resistant people can be to making absolutely necessary changes if they challenge how we believe the world ought to be. She puts ought to be on trial in a compelling narrative that seems to be all about building the future writers like Heinlein and Clarke expected. They neglected a few of the underlying pitfalls of trying to do so. As well, we are treated to a protagonist completely human, flawed and excellent in her abilities and craft and sensibilities. Elma York is composed of the stuff we want to cheer and she carries us along with a convincing humanity that includes a heart as large and full one could wish for. Her relationship with Nathaniel is wonderfully portrayed. But it is Elma’s constant checking of privilege as she works to bring women into the astronaut corps and has to face the fact that she had often been blind to things sometimes right in front of her. Living up to her own values becomes a process well worth following. This the first book in a new series. If it continues with the same verve and attention to detail and sheer passion, we may be looking at a landmark work.
Part biography, part science history, Charles Mann gives us the drama of the modern ecology movement embodied in two men who represent each side of what is often a seemingly unbridgeable divide. William Vogt and Norman Borlaug, the Prophet and the Wizard respectively, worked to solve the same problem---resources---but from very different expectations and ideologies. Sensitively-written, well-researched, and even-handed, this is an illuminating look at how we have arrived here and what some of the possibilities for the future.
Ian McDonald has the word-sense of a poet and uses it to produce some of the most interesting and delightful science fiction of the last three decades. This novella is a variation on the time travel theme by way of letters left in copies of an obscure book of poetry. It is a love story, speculative science, and a composite of periods bleeding into each other with the feel of a pastoral, set against WWII and the confusion of early 21st Century Britain. By turns charming, fascinating, grim, heart-breaking, and affirming.
Concise, well documented account of the history of immigration, it's social contexts, the changes in the law, and the creation of a problem that was never a problem. Every time you hear some politician complaining about "illegal" immigration, reach for this book, absorb a large dose of reality, and do what you can to lance the boil of misinformation, bigotry, and stop the shabby and cynical abuse of our institutions and sensibilities in the name of, basically, having an issue and keeping wages low.
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Science Fiction became a distinct genre in 1926 with the advent of Amazing Stories, published by Hugo Gernsback, but it did not become a distinctive form until John W. Campbell Jr. took over as editor of Astounding Science Fiction in 1938 and began shaping it into something to be reckoned with. It was Campbell who began publishing both Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, and discovered and nurtured many if not most of the writers who came to exemplify SF's Golden Age. After Campbell we have what we now recognize as modern science fiction. This biography tells Campbell's story, throwing light on the process and the personalities (including L. Rob Hubbard, who along with Heinlein and Asimov formed the Big Three who dominated the field for most of the 1940s), and giving us a history of origins and evolutions, showing us from whence the marvels of the form developed. Anyone interested in the history of the field will find this invaluable.
Mary Russell is one of the most successfully sustained conceits in literature. As the wife of Sherlock Holmes, Mary is an investigator in her own right, and King has traced their time together consecutively through more than a dozen novels, often incorporating historical characters as well as the occasional visit from a contemporary fictional character. In this outing, they must go to Venice to track down the "mad" aunt of one of Mary's best friends. The woman made good an escape from Bedlam in the company of a nurse. It's 1925 and Mussolini is in power and fascism is on the rise. King makes excellent use of the setting to tell her story, which includes Cole Porter (!) and other flamboyant personalities and along the way makes some pointed observations about the nature of prejudice, political opportunism, and the persistence of history. Excellent read.
The Reformation signaled the shift in Western Civilization from one dominated by orthodoxy and allowed for the intellectual and religious dis-integration that later gave rise to the secular West. Here in this extensive study of two of the primary movers, Luther and Erasmus, Michael Massing lays out the historical background with meticulous attention to detail, and draws telling comparisons between the major thinkers of early Christianity and how issues people like Augustine and Jerome grappled with reemerged in the early 16th Century, demanding answers, and causing the deep divisions latent with the Church to finally splinter what till then had appeared to be a homogeneous intellectual world. The personalities of the two men ultimately brought them into conflict, resulting in more splintering. Massing writers with skill and insight. Very accessible, recommended for anyone interested in how civilization, particularly ours, evolves.
A mission to another star and its collection of worlds, a crew of four who are the best and brightest and also close friends, and a time factor that carries them farther and farther from a recognizable Earth. The stuff of great science fiction. Chambers goes farther, though, by showing the delight of discovery, the pain of isolation from a larger community, the intricacies of intimate working relationships. As their world inexorably changes and the distances become insurmountable, the reactions of these explorers to what they find and what they lose and what they hope emerge in a surprising, subtle short novel that transcends genre. Chambers has been working the anthropological and sociological fields of science fiction in a remarkable series of books and this one advances her interest in the primary question behind the best SF: "How then shall we live?"
A remarkable achievement, elegantly and efficiently brought to life. The question is, how much of who and what we are depends on our memories, and to what degree? Bethany Morrow responds by positing the ability to "extract" a memory, manifesting it as a copy of the person, a living embodiment of the memory. Dolores #1, however, is unique---a Mem who becomes fully individualized, in possession of her own life. She becomes celebrated and then endangered because, being a Mem, she remains property, belonging to the woman from whom she was originally extracted. Morrow grapples with the moral, ethical, and legal questions implicit in such a circumstance, and the parallels to chattel bondage, while giving us a portrait of a remarkable character. Highly recommended.
Interstellar colonization is a mainstay of science fiction. Allen Steele gives us a saga that begins with a theft and continues through to humankind stepping onto the galactic stage. Well-thought-out and meticulously constructed, the Coyote stories are memorable.
What if Germany had developed space flight early on and Hitler had a chance to conquer space? How would we have met this threat? In this alternate history, Allen Steele gives as just that adventure.
Chiang was already well-known to readers before the film Arrival brought him to the attention of a much wider audience. This, his second collection of thoroughly impressive short stories, validates his reputation as one of the finest writers of short fiction---SF or otherwise---in the world.
Quirky, unexpected, absurd, fun, weirdly compelling---pretty much everything Daryl Gregory writes meets those criteria, and this is no exception. Gregory is a master of combining the most improbable ideas and making them work.
History is never as neat and clean as we might like, and Heather Cox Richardson is a master at showing how all the myriad threads of our ongoing experiment work to undermine are noblest dreams. In this she traces the social and political history of the unfinished Reconstruction and how we have come to today, dealing with issues we may have thought long settled.
Moonshine, monsters, and old-time religion combine in this understated study of hidden Americana. Set in the Smokey Mountains and covering the period of WWII, Daryl Gregory spins a yarn filled with creepiness, faith, and hidden truths. The hidden realities of professed beliefs inform this novel of that which passes unseen and unheard and therefore unexpected.
Crafty, part homage to Golden Age science fiction, but through a modern, savvy eye. Medical SF is rare---handled this well, it is very special. Part of a series of related novels, Bear delivers a story as good as Leckie, Cherryh, a handful of others.
Tastes very, but whether one likes Wagner or not makes no difference when assessing his impact and place in history. Alex Ross is unparalleled as conveying history through the music of its time, and this is a tour de force of cultural archaeology. The connections, the threads, the tendrils of Wagner surprise and enlighten. Excellent history, wonderful musicology, a startling story.
Thanks to the Apple tv series, interest is revived for this, one of the "foundational" texts of Science Fiction. When first published, these stories astounded readers. Asimov was one of the Big Three in the 1940s and 50s and this is one of the works that put him there. Perhaps slow and a bit too "light" by modern standards, the ideas shine through and reward attention. This is one of the seed beds of what came after.
In her usual marvelously accessible voice, Mary Roach reveals the hidden side of animal management and the nature of "natural" law. Through interviews with fish and game specialists, naturalists, and wildlife forensic scientists, we learn all the things about human/wildlife interaction we never knew we wanted to know.
A surprise for fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Spiner has concocted a plausible mystery and woven it through name-dropping, behind-the-scenes firsthand stage-setting as he, while working as Data on the series, must figure out who is threatening his life. Along the way there is great humor, romance, and plenty to sate the appetite of the True Fan.
A far future take on Alexander the Great. The source material does not intrude on the SF other than as historic resonance for those who are familiar with it. First of a trilogy, this is a nail-biting adventure filled with political intrigue, family rivalry, war, and the ever-present unknown. Gripping.
Nadia Afifi gives us a future that is both familiar and utterly strange. A cloning project is threatened by religious fundamentalist who may be in league with project insiders. The new researcher assigned to assist meets an intelligence operative who may not be operating strictly by the book and finds herself in a fight for the future against a past she'd thought she had escaped.
Benford is one of the best and this novel demonstrates that. After centuries of searching, humanity finds the voices from other civilizations it always knew were there, and the universe is opened up. Rachel, aspiring Librarian, finds the keys to joining that vast community--with amazing results.
Part literary, part science fiction, part alternate history, with beautiful dollops of science and psychology, and all love story---love of the world, of the universe, of hope in the face of infinity. One of the finest new novels and not to be missed.
The Seven Samurai meet The Expanse. Great characters, a noble cause, good writing, and some terrific subversiveness. Recommended.