Stuffilike.net

Empress of Forever, by Max Gladstone January 21, 2020

Empress of Forever, by Max Gladstone, read by Natalie Naudus is a delightful romp mostly because of the voice acting. Oh, the story is pretty good, too: tech billionaire becomes fugitive hunted by Empress of the Galaxy. Good enough for my twelve-year-old mind, certainly. But Natalie Naudus’ voice acting puts smarm and sarcasm into the character Zange (audiobook, so I don’t know the spelling), naivete into the voice of a hungry god, humility in the voice of a monk (Buddhist-derived, not Catholic) and chilling viciousness into the voice of the Empress. There’s reasonably-paced action and breathless hyperbole in descriptions[0] and an overarching gestalt of a galaxy composed partly of a computational cloud which gifts everyone with special abilities[1]…except our heroine, who is only[2] human.
Available on Amazon (no, really?) and at sfpl.org.

[0] Fun all by itself, if you are into that sort of thing.
[1] Dangerous abilities.
[2] By which I mean, merely.

Exhalation, by Ted Chiang October 2, 2019

A most exhilarating collection of short stories by Mr. Chiang, Exhalation has several completely captivating stories, both in concepts and characters. In one, an archeologist/paleontologist in a Biblically-literal world discovers that their Earth is not the center of the universe, throwing her into a crisis of confidence of, yes, Biblical proportions. In another, a father’s memory is supplemented with electronics and allows him to review his relationship with his daughter, throwing him into a crisis of conscience. In a third, quantum mechanics/many worlds dopplegangers find ways to communicate with highly mixed results.

There are more, but this should be enough to whet your appetite. Link above goes to Amazon, but sfpl.org has it also.

Semiosis, by Sue Burke April 10, 2019

Semiosis, by Sue Burke is a lovely tale of space colonists dedicated to living in harmony with Nature.

Nature has some ideas about that, however.

Specifically, the plants on the colonists’ new world are intelligent in varying degrees, depending on size, longevity and, uh, temperament (sort of like humans).  The interaction of humans with their new acquaintances forms the whole of the book, and especially the humans interacting with each other in response.  It’s a complex, multigenerational tale and has some wonderful and horrible things like dictatorship enforced by lies, murder and rape (fertile females being too valuable to a small colony to kill outright), war with another race of space colonists, psychopathy and madness and gratuitous democracy.  It’s well told and competently read by Caitlin Davies (the female narrator), Daniel Thomas May (male narrator) in about equal parts, as they tell the story from the point of view of several different characters, including a perspicacious bamboo plant.

The very best of this is, of course, the idea of a sentient plant (plants, really; there are several intelligent species in the story) and the thoughts and feelings they express…and do not express.

A must read for science fiction readers, I recommend this one highly. Available at Amazon and sfpl.org.

Homework:  Aino Kalske et al, Insect Herbivory Selects for Volatile-Mediated Plant-Plant Communication, Current Biology (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.08.011

Where Have I Been (for the past 2 years)? January 30, 2019

Busy, that’s where. A huge list of Things I Did or Thangs Wot Happen’d would allow Google/Facebook/CIA/NSA/FBI/The Illuminati/Mom to know everything I’m up to, so that’s not happening. Instead, I want to talk about my audiobook adventures.

I had some; I’m going to add a few here in list form and expand them as Words Come To Mind, but don’t hold your breath. As always, this space is usually filled with musings which crystallize during my lunch hour and find their way to you by the miracle of a series of tubes, to almost quote an abysmally ignorant Senator[0]. Given that my lunch hour must also accommodate actual lunch and a walk, this may take a while.

The latest book in my head is the second in the Sleepless series by Nancy Kress. Beggars and Choosers is  better even than the first novel, Beggars in Spain, following the frightening changes to law, society and humanity after genetic engineering of humans  results in a two-class[1] society.  The first book is pretty good, too, but this one has better character development and an edge of terror the first book lacked. Available at Amazon and sfpl.org. I wonder if she has a third book in this series (the ending doesn’t seem to suggest that).

EXCITING UPDATE: there seems to be an additional book: Beggar’s Ride.  I must hunt it down and hear it.

Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman is another mythology-related audiobook, this one hewing more closely to the original stories than American Gods (I’ll review this another time; I’ve been busy, damn it). It’s his take on the various Norse myths and charmingly read by him in his wry sort of way. I admit I know nothing about my own heritage in this regard whatsoever, so it was a fun commute for a while.  I recommend this one highly.

I also listened to Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, also read by him.[2] That one is even more strange, and wonderful in its complexity and texture. The estranged sons of Anansi (a trickster god) meet up when Anansi dies (?), and one ruins the life of the other hilariously and tragically. Also highly recommended.

More later. I did just lose my draft of this blog post, plus my notes on all the books I read in the last two years, so there will be a little bit of time before I can finish this up…if ever.

I am currently listening to The Themis Files (apparently also a trilogy) by Sylvain Neuval and enjoying them very much.  Told in the style of interview transcripts, it’s the story of alien robots left scattered around the world millennia ago, and the trials and tribulations of finding and using them..and, of course, what to use them for. The audiobooks are specially nice since the characters are pretty well drawn and their reactions to their parts in the story are largely, uh, memorable.  Yeah, memorable; I’m going with that.

There is some screaming as well. Well acted by a bunch of different voice actors, they seemed to have lost one between book two and book three (Puerto Rican girl replaced by New York Puerto Rican girl). The author is listed as one of the voices, and there is a suspiciously Quebecois guy who is trying really hard to pretend he isn’t the author, so that must be him.  Good books for all that.

Some other titles to be fleshed out (all enjoyable enough to finish listening to):  Defy the Worlds, Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray[3] (this series culminates with Defy the Fates eventually), Crossing Over by Anna Kendall, everything by William Gibson (I think that’s somewhere north of twenty novels…I drive a lot), [edit: nearly] everything by Scott Westerfeld[4], Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, some Brandon Sanderson stuff (“Alcatraz versus” several novels, but these were not audiobooks except Perfect State), Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente, I am Princess X, by Cherie Priest, All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders, Noir, a Novel, by Christopher Moore, Bellwether by Connie Willis[5], Head On by John Scalzi, The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, Brainwave by Poul Anderson, Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon stuff, The Gospel of Loki, by Joanne M. Harris, The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy, and others I have completely forgotten[6].

[0] Christ, where do they find these guys?

[1] Well three, but one of them seems pretty much outside of society for reasons which should be very clear at the end of the book [edit: series].

[2] I do feel that an author ought to be able to read the books they write with the delivery they intend in the writing, but I understand that not every writer is a good reader…mores the pity.

[3] featuring the line ’and stop smelling the robot boy’ delivered breathlessly by the narratrix

[4] see also “I drive a lot”, above–also, I found out I haven’t yet read everything of his.  Oh, boy.

[5] featuring the most evil character in all of English-language literature, Flip

[6] Two years is a long time, even for your nearly immortal correspondent.

The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi July 17, 2016

The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi, is one scary piece of fiction featuring all the violence, desperation and hopelessness that any person should ever be exposed to in fiction.  This tale of the possible future (not actually science fiction, I hasten to point out, just speculating on what happens with the logical extension of our attitude towards water, land, money and each other) where the Colorado continues to dry up and states fight for water rights—to the point of excluding US citizens from moving from one state to another (using guns.  Did I mention the guns?) is pure Bacigalupi in its stark descriptions of privation, threats, torture and murder for profit on a large scale.  Very much not safe for children, as there are gruesome depictions of torture, murder and fairly explicit depictions of sex…and foul language.

That said, the characters are detailed and believable, the action scenes are briskly paced, the villains are monsters and a lot of people fall into the gray areas of morality, mostly driven by fear.  Fear is the main character in this book, touching the lives of everyone except the worst monster (no spoilers).

I like and recommend The Water Knife.  It’s gripping, if you can stand the horror of the world Paolo Bacigalupi creates.  More terrible than The Windup Girl for sure, but no less fascinating.

Link above goes to Amazon, but it should be in your local library or borrowable therefrom by inter-library loan (ask your librarian).

The Red, by Linda Nagata July 7, 2016

The Red, by Linda Nagata held my interest well enough that I also listened to The Trials, the concluding (?) book in this story. Of the two, I think I liked The Red better, since the story arc seemed more complete and satisfying in and of itself.

Lieutenant James Shelley, US Army is part of a Linked Combat Squad which is just what it sounds like: an Army unit with excellent communications in three forms: a radio linkage to each other (GenCom), a video linkage to an overhead drone (an Angel), and a linkage to a handler (Control).  The individual soldier is also equipped with armor and an exoskeleton (either referred to as “armor and bones” or “dead sister”) and an “emotional prosthesis”, a skullcap which keeps mood swings in check.

Nice killing machines, you think? Not so much.  Our hero and his squaddies seem to be nice folks, just regular Joes (and Janes) in a rough business. There’s a bit of backstory for our hero but much less for the other characters, which does keep the narrative as tight as it needs to be, since this is an action tale after all.

This is probably interesting enough setup for several novels-worth of tales, but this particular one deals with a third sci-fi trope that is really interesting.  Shelley is infrequently given to having strong feelings in tactical situations that seem entirely incongruous with known operational parameters—he has hunches, and plays them. 

And they are always right. 

The source of these hunches are the crux of this novel. I must say I found the idea which explains it in the book is the most whimsical possibility I could have imagined, and brings me great delight when I think of it.

Good action, fair character development and a breezy pace (considering) make a good audiobook, competently read.

Exciting update: This is part of a trilogy. Great; now I have to listen to another one.