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Libbum

Libbum@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 6 months ago

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Kim Stanley Robinson, Kim Stanley Robinson: Blue Mars (Hardcover, 1996, HarperCollins) 5 stars

Review of 'Blue Mars' on 'GoodReads'

5 stars

What an absolute powerhouse! I was continuously in awe of the depth and breadth of this master-work. Not only that, but how KSR finally managed to hit his stride with the tone of these novels. Rarely any dry spots, and characters developed to deep, complicated people. Threads of the story masterfully unresolved yet perhaps with some closure and perhaps still very murky - who's to say. The Science in the fiction masterfully written in a manner that for the most part will age gracefully (until, perhaps, we actually manage to build our own Martian colony). Some exceptionally realistic scenarios or at least stories stemming from some of the most interesting scientific conjecture in a whole swath of fields I was certainly not expecting to read about in such a book - but they of course fit the mold.

Nnedi Okorafor: Binti (EBook, 2015, Tor.com) 4 stars

For the first time in hardcover, the winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula …

Review of 'Binti' on 'GoodReads'

3 stars

I've been putting off reading this solely because it's a novella. They need to be written in a very specific way, otherwise they end up being not enough. I think that's ultimately what happens with Binti. The story is great, the ideas put forward are unique & interesting, and the writing is nuanced & engaging.

But then what? There are a number of really cool things to explore here, but instead you get precisely one line about them.

- Living ship, designed to have breathing bladders
- The concept of harmonisation
- The specifics of Himba culture


Are just a few pieces you'd want to know more about, but can't due to this format. Perhaps these things will be explored in the following two novellas - but there in lies my point. Why is this three novellas and not three parts to an actual story? If it's not self contained …

Kim Stanley Robinson, Kim Stanley Robinson: Green mars (1994, Bantam Books) 4 stars

In the Nebula Award winning Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson began his critically acclaimed epic …

Review of 'Green mars' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

As the series moves along, Robinson hunkers down and gets in the muck of how he sees the martian society & biospheres grow. Sometimes this is extremely dry prose, but in general this writing style is either growing on me, or Robinson is getting better at it. When it's obvious that the story is coming from the interactions of one of the first 100, the story flows far better than the time when narration is a bit more spread out - scattered is perhaps a better word.

This was certainly not what I expected these books to be. My assumption was that they would be more scientific utopia more than conflict central, but that is unfortunately a more realistic future. For that alone Robinson has made me a stronger fan of this epic. Can't wait to see what he makes of all this in the final instalment.

Martha Wells: Exit Strategy (2018) 4 stars

"Martha Wells's Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling …

Review of 'Exit Strategy' on 'GoodReads'

5 stars

Really quite happy how this all turned out. Also very excited we'll be seeing a complete novel at some stage in 2020. This one really got deep into the conflicts Murderbot has with his new choices, whilst shoring up some of the definite positions he has about humanity and how he interacts & relates to this concept. Truly fantastic writing.

Martha Wells: Rogue Protocol (2018) 4 stars

SciFi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is again on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris …

Review of 'Rogue Protocol' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

These are just great. Such an interesting technology set, none of which seems odd or out of place in this time. Everything just meshes so nice. Very funny & enjoyable. That shouldn't be the case when most of the story is life or death - mostly death.

Martha Wells: Artificial Condition (2018) 4 stars

It has a dark past - one in which a number of humans were killed. …

Review of 'Artificial Condition' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

These novellas are really quite enticing. I really love the way that you know Murderbot is a construct, that he has these conflicting views of what humanity is and how he fits into that. As a consequence the feelings and expectations you have for him and how you want him to fit in, but have to keep reminding yourself that he is indeed a construct. This friction really makes the story enticing and interesting.

This story was probably a bit better than All Systems Red, but perhaps that's just because we now understand Murderbot quite a bit more than we did initially. It's somewhat a pity that these are just novellas an not a fully fledged book, but we know #4 is coming and we'll at least be able to finish the story in a larger and deeper scape that it deserves.

Isaac Asimov: Foundation and Earth (Paperback, 2004, Spectra) 4 stars

Golan Trevize, Janov Pelorat, Bliss go looking for earth.

Review of 'Foundation and Earth' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

The final instalment!

I'm happy the way things wrapped up, it was good to come full circle. Now that I've finished reading the books in story-temporal order, I can see why there are suggestions to move the two preludes to the end of the story—it would add some suspense and mystery to Seldon that you don't get when you know everything about his work before you even get to Foundation.

All in all, even though I didn't like some of the books in the universe at all, and some only mildly; I really appreciate the scale and complexity of such a future—especially since some of this work was written in the mid 40's.

As for this book itself: it was quite enjoyable in many ways, but also somewhat lacking in others. The amount of groundbreaking discoveries the team continuously made was quite high, but only once was there even the …

Isaac Asimov: Foundations Edge (Foundation) (Paperback, 1994, Hunter Publishing+inc) 4 stars

After the defeat of the Mule by the Second Foundation, Terminus enjoys a period of …

Review of 'Foundations Edge (Foundation)' on 'GoodReads'

5 stars

This one was great! With all the backing of Robots, Empire and Foundation Asimov throws the galaxy into a three way standoff between the first and second foundations and some third initially unknown player.

The time line does not jump generation to generation, so all characters are explored far better than those of the foundation trilogy, and since there are a number of double agents - sometimes even unknown to themselves - characters have a lot of intreague.

Even as a standalone story outside of the time line, this book stands up to scrutiny. Everything that happens is interesting and in general is a fine penultimate volume - setting up the climax to be huge!

Isaac Asimov: Second Foundation (Paperback, 1964, Granada) 4 stars

After years of struggle, the Foundation lay in ruins -- destroyed by the mutant mind …

Review of 'Second Foundation' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

If you take the Foundation trilogy on its own, this is probably the best book. It really rounds off the series quite well in that sense - makes the other two fit a little better than they otherwise would have.

Perhaps not as dramatic as the second one - there's no massive defeat lurking or anything. Mostly it follows the same trend as the previous book, but now it's not the Mule hunting the second foundation, it's the first foundation. Perhaps my only gripe with this one is whilst we ultimately find out where the second foundation is, there are two places revealed as suspects at the climax, and whilst the characters may have been fooled - it was quite obvious that neither place could possibly be the true location.

All in all, a great end to the original trilogy. It will be exciting to see how the galaxy fairs …

Isaac Asimov: Foundation (Paperback, 2004, Bantam Books) 4 stars

One of the great masterworks of science fiction, the Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are …

Review of 'Foundation' on 'GoodReads'

3 stars

I don't know. Since I've been reading Asimov's books up to Foundation in story order, actually arriving at this cult classic has really felt lacklustre.

To me, this book is something akin to Rogue One. If you consider it within the lore then it's enjoyable, fun, interesting, makes sense. But take the lore away and it's just a bunch of things you don't care about happening to faceless people.

You have to gauge Foundation like this, since for all intents and purposes, this was the ONLY book in the series to begin with. From that reference point, I don't know what the fuss is all about.

Foundation is ultimately book 11 of 15 in the series if you're reading in story order. I'm committed to finishing, and perhaps will appreciate it more once I know the rest of the story.

Isaac Asimov: Forward the Foundation (Paperback, 1994, Bantam Books) 4 stars

Here, from a grand master of science fiction, is the long awaited final novel of …

Review of 'Forward the foundation' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

I'm excited for Foundation now. Forward was perhaps not as intriguing as Prelude, but it was quite a story. There were some points at the start that irked me a little - coming directly from the end of Prelude when Dors quite explicitly agreed she was a robot to the start of Forward where Hari is confused about her nature. Thankfully that's only a few paragraphs.

Asimov has managed to capture the complexities of following a person's life long ambition exceptionally well. There are no overly complex day to day explorations of specifics like say, Stevenson does in Seven Eves. However you do get the joy, dispare, hopelessness, pride, depression and confidence that Hari goes through.

Quite a nice read.

Isaac Asimov: Pebble in the Sky (1991) 4 stars

Pebble in the Sky is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, published …

Review of 'Pebble in the Sky' on 'GoodReads'

3 stars

By far the best in the Empire series, yet still a little lackluster. I would have enjoyed hearing about more than three planets with a focus on only one in a book about an empire encompassing the entire galaxy.

The standard Asimov ruductionism is at play throughout, but at least here some of the characters actually fail to deduce reality correctly, and are consequently puzzled by the missing facts. This has seldom happened in the Asimov I've read so far - it seems that if you use logic and are intelligent then absolutely everything can be deduced by the wind and a toothpick in the Empire.

The obligatory romance has again aged terribly. But this should be of no suprise if you've read the first two books in the series.

Story wise, it was quite fine. I think the whole time travel idea didn't need to happen. That character could …

Friedman discusses how the key to understanding the 21st century is understanding that the planet's …

Review of 'Thank you for being late' on 'GoodReads'

2 stars

Perhaps I'm not the target audience for this book. Although I'm unsure which audience would be ok with it either. If you're someone who keeps an ear to the ground in science and tech news, nothing in this book is new to you. If that's the case you'll be cringing everytime the author tells you you've never heard of Qualcomm or Github or uses the term Supernova when he's talking about the cloud where he really just means the Internet.

Aslo, it seems like getting to the point is a bit difficult - the book could have been a third of the size and gave you all the same information. The information in it however is interesting of course. It does talk about many important factors of our modern life, but I don't see it adding to the conversation at all. It's fine to discuss common knowledge if you have …

Martha Wells: All Systems Red (EBook, 2017, Tordotcom) 4 stars

"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, …

Review of 'All Systems Red' on 'GoodReads'

3 stars

I don't read too many novellas because the format is really hard to do well. This book isn't an exception. It's good, sure; but I really want a novel length version of exactly the same story.

The characters are thrust into a situation that is mostly out of their control, and for most of the time they have no idea of the motivations behind the actors causing all the problems they are facing. We only get two sentences ourselves to explain the entire story - it's just not that satisfying in this format.

Perhaps the rest of the series will be able to explore parts of Murder-bots character in more depth. This novella is at least interesting enough to warrant reading the rest, so hopefully I can come back to this review and alter it once I've finished the other parts.