Sci Fi Experience 2015

It's here.  The 2015 Sci-Fi Experience, hosted by the warm and kind Carl Anderson over at Stainless Steel Droppings.   This challenge runs from Dec 1 2014 to Jan 31, 2015.
                                                

                     
Yes, I'm going to sign up.  I will read at least one science fiction novel between now and the end of January!  Yes, I am only committing to one, because of my dismal finishing of books since Oct 22 (still at 2 books read since then).  I have a whole stack of SF books, and if it weren't so late, I'd take a photo, so maybe tomorrow or the next day for an Advent Calendar treat. 

I have three  SF novels I really want to buy for Christmas: 
Points of Hope, A Novel of Astrieant by Melissa Scott -  just reviewed by Cath over at Read-Warbler, a lovely review. 
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane, one of Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2014
ok, four
A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias, another of Publisher's Weekly Best Books of 2014

Carl has also just reviewed DA by Connie Willis,which I happen to own and can't remember the ending too, so maybe I can read 2 books for the sci-fi challenge!  DA is a novella, too, so well within my reach (for these days). 

This is a sad state I am in, isn't it?  I hope my mind starts to settle soon.  I miss reading for long stretches of time.  I can do it occasionally, once a week or so now. 

I do really enjoy this challenge. I have read some wonderful books for it in past years.  Here's hoping it can help me slip back into more reading. Thanks for hosting it again, Carl! 

Reading while I recovered

      I am almost all healed, and am heading back to work on Monday.  I'll see how I do riding the buses - I take six buses every day, so I'm curious/anxious/worried about how my stitches will feel by Thursday or Friday.  I am sad my two weeks off are over, but very happy with how successful it was:
  I had a superb two weeks of reading after I got out of the hospital.  I read 6 books in total! A quick summary of each follows:

Blood on the Tongue - Stephen Booth - Number 3  in the DS Ben Cooper/DI Diane Fry series, set in the Peak dales in the UK.  Very atmospheric, the murder is entwined with a crashed plane that went down WW2 in the Peaks, and a granddaughter's search for what happened to her grandfather after the crash.  I really like this series.  A feel for the location, the townspeople, and especially the weather and the landscape, looms over all the action in this series.  4.5/5

Wide Open - Deborah Coates - I saw this title first over at Lesa's Book Critiques in the round up of her favourites from last year.  I had to get this book as soon as I saw her review, and fortunately the library had in their system so I could request it before the Double dare started!  This is a debut mystery, and is it ever good.  Sergeant Hallie Michaels is on duty in the Middle East - Afghanistan, and is granted 10 days personal leave to come home for her sister's funeral.  Dell's ghost is waiting for her at the airport.  Is her death suicide and everyone thinks, or murder?  Hallie investigates, along the way discovering that she is drawing the ghosts of other dead people to her as well.  Very well done, set in the American state of South Dakota, in the wide open spaces of horse and farming country, as well as Hallie learning what wide open means for her. I loved this mystery.  She is practical, no-nonsense, and has to deal with the ghosts and it's done so well, that the story is believable, despite the slight hitch of the magic that might be involved - not for Hallie, she has one. There is no witch here,  non of the usual lightness or sweetness about it. People die, and the novel is gritty and bittersweet.  Highly recommended.  4.7/5

The Annotated Persuasion - ed Robert Morrison - linked to my last post, which is the review. 5/5
                               

                   
The Vampire Tapestry - Suzy McKee Charnas - read for Women of Genre Challenge, link here.  and Carl's Science Fiction Experience.  This is my second book read for this challenge. I have heard about this novel for years and years, and during my recovery, felt like reading a horror novel.  Luckily I've had this for about a year, and I happily read it last week.  It is as good as anything you will read about vampires.  One note: the book is set up as a series of short stories, 5 in total, linked together by the vampire in question, Dr Edward Weyland. This novel was published in 1980, before the vampire craze was started by Anne Rice (or about the same time as).  I'm a huge fan of Lestat etc by Rice.  It's lush and vivid and creepy and a bit scary, just like the swamps of Louisiana are.  The Vampire Tapestry is different.  It's set in New England, New York City, and Arizona.  How Dr Weyland is discovered to be a vampire, how he exists as a vampire, and what the people do to him who discover his secret, makes for a gripping, tense read.  How does he survive?  What is it like to look human, but not be one, and to have to live off of them?  You will never look at vampires again after reading this novel.  He's like an anti-hero hero.  I want him to live, even though I am horrified because he is a vampire.  The Unicorn Tapestry, which is the middle story, won the Nebula award for novellas.  It  will leave an impression on you, as the novel does, long after finishing it. It's smart, clever, and in comparison with Lestat - Lestat is still grand, and passionate, but Weyland is believable, and that makes him much more frightening a figure to my mind. You will never forget that we are prey, after reading this book.  Excellent vampire reading.  4.8/5

Gift From the Sea - Anne Morrow Lindbergh  I love this novel.  I have read it at least twice before in my life, and lost every copy I had. I recently picked up the hardcover (recently being sometime in the past two years or so), and in the midst of all my fiction reading, I suddenly wanted to read this.  It spoke to me as someone who is about to turn 50, and as someone who is examining her life and deciding what I want to do for the next 40 odd years (everything willing.....) left.  How do I want to live?  What do I want to do?  The funny thing I found reading Gift From the Sea, is how much I have learned about love, and marriage, and life, in the intervening 15 years or so since I last read this.  I understood what Anne was talking about, when she talks about the shell for first love/early marriage,  the double-sunrise shell, where everything is about the two people in love, staring at one another.  Soon enough it changes, to the oyster shell, which is all the changes that the couple go through as they live and work and build a life together, as they have children and make a life that is them, looking outward from the same space.  Then, is the empty nest shell, the argonauta, where if successful, the woman - the couple - can leave behind all the work they have done, and start over again for themselves.  They can't go back to the double-sunrise, that is for first love.  The argonauta is left to each to shape for themselves, as they give themselves space to discover new things.  Isn't that a lovely series of shells to describe life with?

She begins with the Moon shell, talking about the woman in particular, because life is about the self first, before love and marriage can come.  In this section, she describes why she needs to get away from her five children and her husband, for a week break at a cottage all by herself: she is suffering from  Zerrissenheit - a German word meaning "torn-to-pieces-hood".  I suddenly knew exactly what this word means, sitting in my kitchen reading this book, because this is how I felt and have been feeling for some time in my life.  It's not that I don't love my live, I do!  I love my family, I am so happy to be back with my husband, I love my home and my garden and my cats and my books and my friends.  What I don't like is my job.  There, I'm saying it out loud. I don't like the work that I do, I'm bored, and I've been trying for some time to change my job without success. I don't fit the work that my job has changed into over the last 6 years, and it has taken a deep toll on my health. I've never been sick or hospitalized like I have been these past 7 years, and I don't like it.  So I am searching for a way to change my job, or looking into the possibility of taking early retirement, and if that is possible.  The two weeks here in my house recovering from the surgery, I took the opportunity to be as still as possible.   I feel much less torn to pieces hood now - of course, we'll see how long that survives, once I return to work on Monday! It is very hard to do work at the maximum output all the time, with no quiet time or respite allowed on the job.

 Gift From the Sea allowed me to look at my time at home and pretend I was away from it all, that I was at a cottage somewhere, alone during the day.  I had silence each day - no music, no tv, no radio - I needed to rest, and to heal.  This book is a lovely reminder of how easy it is to get pulled from the center, and how it is our work to return to the center, so we can hold our lives together and not be pulled apart.  It is also important that we learn how to find that quiet center in our day, each day, even for 1 or 15 minutes.  This is a wonderful book, and highly recommended. 5/5
 
                                                 
Leviathan Wakes - James S. A Corey - Read for Carl's Sci-Fi Experience.   I discovered this book through Locus Magazine, which had the annual best books of 2012 waiting for me the day I had my surgery, Feb 14.  How awesome to come home to this issue!  Last weekend I was finally ready to look through it, and I circled so many books to get, as well as happy to see I already own some (not read yet, waiting for Once Upon a Time to start): Hide Me Among the Graves by Tim Powers, Some Kind of  Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce, and then others are on the list like Brides of Roll Rock Island by Margo Lanagan, Wide Open by Deborah Coates (because of the ghosts and the hint of magic),  Whispers Underground by Ben Aaronovitch (Book 3,must read the second one before this, on my shelf), Boneland by Alan Garner (we can't get it here in Canada!),  And Blue Skies From Pain by Stina Leicht (Book 2, I have book one to read on my shelf!), etc, just to give you a hint of how awesome this year's recommended list is.  The list is comprehensive, covering young adult, and short stories and novellas also.  Here is the link to their site and the list, which you can get online as well.

 Leviathan Wakes is the first in a series; the second book, Caliban's War, is the one published last year, that made it onto the recommended reading list.  Leviathan's Wake was on the 2011 reading list, somehow I missed reading that it had a creepy Lovecraftian like monster thing too.  Sold!  I rushed out to Chapters (luckily close to the one event I went to while out, my sister's birthday party) and grabbed a copy, and started reading it the next day.  It was so much fun.  It's a huge book, at 561 pages, chock full of adventures in space.  Man has gone to Mars, and colonized it, and the planets in and around the asteroid belt between the inner and outer planets. Ceres is colonized at the outer edge, as are several asteroids with science stations on them.  The story covers two main characters:  Detective Miller, hired to look into a missing girl whose parents want her to return to the fold; Jim Holden who is XO of a ice miner going to the asteroid belt for ice and bringing back the ice for water supplies to different planets.  He is called to investigate an sos signal. while on a return journey, and what he discovers puts him at the heart of a deadly race that has the survival of the known galaxy at stake.  How their paths intersect and how they try to prevent an all-out war, is fun.  The creeping Lovecraftian monster? Awesome and creepy and it will give you visionary nightmares after.  Satisfying fun space romp, with good characters, tight plotting, and and ending that is a proper ending to these characters, but not to the galaxy. Great fun!  4.7/5

The Burning - Jane Casey  The first in the DC Maeve Kerrigan series.  My husband had brought this back from England two years ago, and it took me this long to read it.  Bad me!  this was a very good mystery.  I did guess who dunnit before the character did, but this was not a flaw for me in this book - the challenge was seeing if I guessed right, and my reasoning was sound, which it was. That made it very satisfying to read!  The mystery itself is well done:  4 women's bodies have been found murdered and burned in different parks, over a series of weeks, in London.  The police are at a standstill.  No clues.  Then a fifth woman's body is found, also murdered and burned, in a park.  Maeve is not sure it is the same murderer, as there are some minute differences,and she is pulled from the big investigation to prove or disprove if it is the serial killer's work.

This books sounds gruesome, however not a lot of time is spent with the bodies.  Most of it is with the investigations, with following Maeve as she pursues the one case, especially after it is revealed a different killer is at work.  Now they have two killers to find.....  It is well written, and I enjoyed it very much.  It isn't a perfect debut, the killer does something uncharacteristic at the end, yet it doesn't detract from the book.  4.5/5, and recommended.

Whew!  Apparently I did have a lot to say!

                                                  

And this brings me to the 2013 Science Fiction Experience Wrap-up

I read 7 books in total for the science fiction experience.  I enjoyed all of them so very much.  Thank you Carl for hosting it! I am really enjoying increasing the books I am reading each year in this area.  Here is the list:

One Second After - William Forschten
Cat's Eye - Andre Norton
Mars - Ben Bova
Timescape - Gregory Benford
Wide Open - Deborah Coates (this also counts as a mystery read, for me!
The Vampire Tapestry - Suzy McKee Charnas
Leviathan Wakes - James SA Corey

Even more amazing, is that I have reviewed them all except for Mars, which is coming shortly. 

 My only problem now is that reading 6 books in two weeks, has left me not able to settle down to anything for a couple of days now.  I'm even happier to report that other than Leviathan Wakes, I am still in the Double Dog Dare Challenge.  I'm feeling very proud of myself that I have kept to reading books I owned on my shelf since Jan 1.  One month to go!

Timescape by Gregory Benford - book review

                       
   Timescape by Gregory Benford is a nebula-award-winning science fiction novel, written in 1979.  When it is set is important, because the novel is split between two different time periods:  1998, when the world environment is in near-collapse after the oceans start dying, and 1963.  1963 is when a message sent by the scientific team in 1998, a team of nuclear physicists, work with tachyons to send back a message in time.  They pick 1963 because scientists then are just beginning to work in the field around tachyons, without knowing they exist. The first experiments with working with nuclear resonance equipment, which allows the messages from the tachyon beams to go back to 1963 to be received - is why 1963 is picked.  Timescape is about the world as Benford foresaw in 1998, and looked back on in 1963, from his position in 1979, when he was writing it.  We, as the reader, now look back on all of it as all in the past, and so this novel should feel dated, but it doesn't.  Even though 1998 is 15 years ago now, I read it from the perspective of Benford, from 1980, and so looking ahead to one possible future of earth in 1998, and back on the past that was in 1963.

This sounds all complicated, like listening to the Doctor try to explain time business in Dr Who -
'Timeywimey"  is a word I like now and hope to see in the dictionary one day.  "A big bowl of wibbly wobbley timey wimey stuff," is  how he describes it to Sally Sparrow in the first weeping angel episode. Of course, she's writing it from the future back to him in the past in an event that hasn't happened yet either, or is happening now and that she has to send back to make sure it happens in that way so they survive.  In Timescape, the 1998 team are trying to get a message back to 1963 earth to not create - or use - a certain type of chemical that when it gets into the food chain, the molecule works as a virus and mutates within the food organisms so they become inedible. 

All this in itself is cool.  It's fascinating to watch the one team sending the message back in time, running the program, beaming it when they know the earth is in that position in the sky in 1963.  Seeing how physics, astronomy, and chemistry are all needed to solve this riddle in 1963, where Gordon Bernstein is running the nuclear resonance experiment, and picking up the coded message that sounds like intereference in his experiment.  He ends up going to chemists for the molecular code sent back, to astronomers for the latitude and longtitude delineations that he realizes gives a star in space - and a time period when the earth is there. The lives of all the scientists are explored, which gives a  human grounding to the messiness that is time travel story.  This also lets us see the inner lives of the scientists, especially Gordon, and John Renfrew from the 1998 team, who has to keep the message going back and wonders how they will know it is received, when the 1963 team can't send any message to the future. He wonders, if the world - the future - is changed by the 1963 team acting on the message received, how will they know in 1998?  How do you experience the world changing?  Will they be able to stop the diodom bloom in the oceans?  Save the environment? 

I won't give all the answers here, as how this is resolved is done in a very interesting manner.  It involves an event everyone knows, so that the reader - you and I - are involved in imagining what if this happened?  it's part of our history too.  Very interesting, and very well done. And, the future is involved too, in a very cool way.

I really liked this book. I loved seeing how the scientists work out their problems - and they really are 'head in their clouds', distant, constantly trying to work it through while going through their daily lives.  Like artists, creators,writers, they are involved in their minds working through data, especially when working through new experiments.  How does a scientist win a prize?  what does it take to be a scientist?  what's it like to run with ideas while in the midst of doing something else?  This is probably the best book on the inner workings of a scientific mind.  It's highly readable.  Trust me.  I am not a scientist, and Benford wrote the physics in such a way that I don't feel like an idiot because I don't understand, but made me feel smart because I could understand the theories behind tachyons, planets in space and time, and how a message might be sent back in time.  Brillliant, clever writing that makes the reader feel smart. 

And it might just be possible to send a message back in time.....though it is still kind of timey-wimey at it's heart, too.  Time travel is that.

Read for Carl's Sci-fi Experience, it is a really well-written, and one of the best books on how at least a message through time could  be done.  

Vintage Reads and Women of Genre: CATSEYE by Andre Norton

                                              

    CATSEYE by Andre Norton is the first book by her that I've read.  It is the first one in the Women of Genre challenge for me, my January read. It is also a vintage science fiction novel my first read for the Vintage Science Fiction reading month.  
 
                                              
Catseye was published in 1961.  Look at this fun cover - I really like it.

It was the cover title, how it was printed, that convinced me to buy it - that 60's illustration is irresistible to me.

Catseye was fun.  It is set in the future, far in the future, on a planet named Korwar, which is a pleasure planet for the rich of the Planetary Council.  The Confederation is the other galactic power.   Earth is part of the known galaxy,  though it is known as Terra and is not important any more. Nor is the world of Norden, that Troy Horan is from.  He is the main character of Catseye, a young man who is from the Dipple, the ghetto place on Korwar where the poor and dispossessed gather, live, and die if they are unable to find work outside of their ghetto. Troy has been looking for work for a long time, until one day as this novel opens, his credentials - being from Norden, and having knowledge of animals, is part of a want ad someone has posted.  It's a pet store, but not any pet store.  All the different animals from different worlds are bought and sold here.  Among the rich of the Planetary Council, having a pet no one else has is a rare and valuable trophy.  Troy goes for a day's work, as the store is expecting a shipment of animals.  When their flyer is attacked bringing home the animals and the other main man in charge of the animals, Zul, is hurt, Troy is hired to cover his work. 

    I wanted to read this book because I wanted to know what cats had to do with it.  And right from the beginning, cats are a big part of this book.  We are not told what kind of cats are brought in, but rare cats from Terra are what Troy and Zul pick up that first day.  And from the moment he is near hte cage, Troy has the odd sense that the minds of one of the cats is touching his.  Later, Troy is sent to help calm a monkey-like creature who is found at the scene of a murder, pawing through the dead man's papers. And then finally two rare foxes are also brought to the pet store.  And Troy is drawn to help them, for they all share the same thing: they are able to touch his mind, he is able to communicate directly with them.  These animals are part of a genetic experiment to breed animals to communicate telepathically with men.  However, this is a secret project, that is now being used by members who want to get the Planetary Council off Kolwar.  However, if this happens, then the planet will not be deemed a pleasure planet, and the sanctity of the forest reserve, which has one of the few wild places left in the galaxy, will be destroyed in a development. 

The mystery and battle for the planet are all secondary in this novel to the real story, which is the developing closeness between Troy and the animals.  When they are forced to flee together, they must learn to rely on each other to survive, although Troy is always aware that at any time, the animals could choose to leave him.  There is a critical moment at the end of the book where Troy is offered the chance to go back to Norden as a Range Master, which his father was before him there, before they were forced to leave for Kolwar.  The deal though, includes Troy giving up the animals to those who want to destroy them to hide any trace of the conspiracy to get rid of the Council. I won't give away what Troy decides to do, though I will admit that my heart was in my mouth.  I had come to care about the animals, and Troy even. 

 I often find futuristic novels full of the science of imagining new things in the future, and not on characters or story so much.  This one had some of that, mostly to describe a world and a culture we have never seen, but rescues the story with Troy and his concern and care for the animals.  It turned into an interesting world, especially where Troy ends up, and I find myself wanting to know what happened to him next.  The animals were very realistic, and their language skills were not complex, they were basic, like the images animals must indeed come to know the world with.  Since I also enjoy reading about telepathy and psychic abilities, I enjoyed this novel for these elements too.  They occur only with Troy and the few animals, though he does have an ability to work with all animals, that he has inherited from his father.  

All in all, this was an enjoyable vintage science fiction read.  A good way to start off the Women in Genre challenge.  It does make me want to read Witchworld,  Andre Norton's most famous novel,  at some point.

This was my second book for Carl's Sci-fi Experience, also. 

science fiction galore featuring Women in SF challenge!

                                                       

   I have to thank Andrea at Andrea's Book Nook, who commented in my last post about a new challenge: the Dystopian 2013 challenge, found here at Bookish Ardour.


It fits along with Carl's Science Fiction Experience, which officially began yesterday.
                                                    
  The Dystopian challenge runs all year.  Carl's lasts for 2 months, until the end of February.  There is also the Vintage Science Fiction not a challenge over at the Little Red Reviewer, which is a reading experience that lasts through the month of January.

 This is for science fiction whose publishing date is 1979 or earlier.

I am joining all of these.  I am excited, and I was surprised by how excited I was to be reading science fiction - after all I only read 9 last year - and then I realized, I'm excited because there are good books and good writing going on in science fiction, and I have a whole world of it waiting to catch up in. Carl says January makes him think of science fiction. I didn't associate it with winter particularly - I used to read it in the summer long ago - but now, I find myself settling in to books about 'out there', and I think it's a way to help me focus on something other than our long, long winters here in Ottawa. I like the idea of exploring, and I can do it safely from the comfort of my own home, reading in the light, while characters explore all the wondrous worlds and planets out there for me.  There are also the aliens amongst us, of course, and the terrors lurking in dystopian reality here.  Despite the piling snow and bitter cold outside, I can escape to far away planets,  alternate worlds, fly among the stars in between the pages of my books.

So some of the books I will be reading for these various challenges, and they will all be cross-challenged if they fit, are:

Vintage science fiction:
Man Plus - Frederick Pohl
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K LeGuin
They Shall Have Stars - James Blish
Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey
The Winds Twelve Quarters - Ursula K Le Guin
Witch World - Andre Norton
Catseye - Andre Norton
Sunburst - Phyllis Gotlieb
Farmer in the Sky - Robert A Heinlein

some dystopian science fiction:
The Clewiston Test - Kate Wilhelm
Directive 51 - John Barnes
Clay's Ark - Octavia Butler
The Postman - David Brin
I Am Legend -  Richard Matheson
 *more will come, these are on my shelves now.  I would like to get the sequel to Stephen Baxter's Flood,  the second book in the Hunger Games Trilogy, and I have one on request at the library.  Plus Insurgent, the sequel to Divergent by Veronica Roth. 

And then, the general (and excellent) science fiction books that I started collecting for the Worlds Without End challenge last year, which I failed at, for Carl's experience:

Timescape - Gregory Benford
Debris - Jo Anderton
Fool's War - Sarah Zettel
This Alien Shore - C.S. Friedman
A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
Mars - Ben Bova
All Clear - Connie Willis
The Dervish House - Ian McDonald
The Empress of Mars - Kage Baker
The Engines of God - Jack McDevitt
Catspaw - Joan D. Vinge

 I see now that at Worlds Without End they have a genre challenge going this year - and many thanks to Carl for his post today  about it.
 
                                                   

 The Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge it's called.  And it looks fabulous. 12 female authors, one post a month, one book read by each author.  Reviews posted to the site will get you entered into a draw to win gift certificates from Amazon.

6 books I  listed above for Carl's sci fi challenge experience, are by women writers!  Plus in the other groupings......Oh yes.  They all are on the women writers list for the women of genre challenge! It's an awesome list.  Go look, and see if you think you can do this challenge.  I bet you could, easily.  With Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Sarah Waters, and everyone you could possibly think of as a science fiction female writer, all the wonderful female writers are there.  Who are your favourites?  Who have you been wanting to read for the past while?

For just a few minutes, I forgot about the snow (we have had over 2 feet of snow in the past two weeks) and the cold (it is below -23c as I write this tonight).  I was all warm and happy, writing about books and science fiction.  My biggest challenge at the moment is deciding which one to read (and to stay warm).

What does January make you think of, Gentle Reader?  Which kind of books do you reach for in this, the darkest and coldest days of winter still stretching ahead?  What is your favourite winter reading?

Carl's Sci fi experience and February books

Carl's Sci Fi Experience is over.  It was quite an experience for me this year.  As you know, I have reacquainted myself with my long lost nerdy love, and he has swooped in and taken over a corner of my reading life.  It will never be quite the same again!

For the challenge experience, I read a total of 8 books in total, one short story, and watched Fringe, Babylon 5, and X-Files for tv shows. I've been watching X-Files Season 1 as I ride my exercise bike in the mornings. I am almost done the first season.  I am surprised by how much I remember in the episodes, and how very good they still are, too.  Classic sci-fi creepy horror stuff, and most wonderful way to start the day!  I am getting Season 2 of Babylon 5 shortly, and have Firefly, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well as Chuck and Fringe, to take me through into the spring.

I read 5 books only in February, which is very low for me. I think the virus we all had affected me more than I realized. I slept alot for one week, and am still going to bed early.  I am disappointed however, I usually try to read 8, and am aiming  for 10 books per month this year, to try to reach my 100 books goal.  Right, so I am going to have to read, read, read, in March!

February Book totals
1. Dragonsinger - Anne McCaffrey
2. Dragondrums - ''          ''
3. Moving Mars - Greg Bear
4. The Harper's Quine - Pat McIntosh
5. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang - Kate Wilhelm

I enjoyed them all very much, though I think Moving Mars will be my favourite of the month.  The Harper Hall Trilogy are really close behind, though.

That said, I am finding I am longing for some Jane Austen and other classics, to read The Morville Hours, to read my library books - especially Connie Willis.  Then yesterday I went to Chapters and discovered they have a buy 3, get one free deal going on all their books.  So, naturally, I found some!

Books bought  last night:
Directive 51 - John Barnes
The Man on the Balcony - Maj Sjowall/Per Wahloo (#3 in the series)
Sworn to Silence - Linda Castillo (Amish murder mystery, looks fascinating)
Raising Stony Mayhall - Daryl Gregory (zombies!!!  looks very good)

This looks like my reading history for the last year, with mystery, science fiction, and horror making the major total of what I read. I really want to read Raising Stony Mayhall, it sounds so interesting too. For someone who has nightmares about zombies, I seem to be reading my fair share of their fiction recently (and really enjoying it. They still give me the creeps, absolutely, though).

Things I'm thinking of doing:
 This is a book blog, and yet I have been failing spectacularly at reviewing the books I'm reading. This is never because I don't like the books, it's because I just don't get around to reviewing them.  I've decided that I am going to start a random post called Books I Should Have Reviewed.  This will give me the freedom to look at the books that I've read recently and not reviewed, as well as go through my blog history and pick books from previous years that I haven't reviewed yet.  I also hope it will get me posting more regularly again.

So how was your February reading?  Are you pleased with it, or did life sneak in, as it often does?

Moving Mars - Greg Bear - Final thoughts

I loved Moving Mars.  It's a gripping science fiction novel, about the settlers on Mars, and how they grow up and break away from Earth.  It's much more than that, though. I posted earlier about my first thoughts while reading it, and I've had over a week to let it settle in my mind.  Moving Mars is about the people who settle there, and how Mars changes them. It's much like how settlers here in North America or Australia must have felt - and their descendants.  Because the settlement on Mars is 70 years old, when they face the stuggle they have with examining if they should stay with earth, and what right they have to be a world in their own right, it's like remembering our history - how the US colonists fought to not pay extra tax to England, about 150 years after the first settlers arrived.  When does a colony become a self-sufficient country or world?  In Moving Mars, we get to experience first hand the changes that Mars goes through, through the eyes of Casseia Majumdar, and through all the characters around her, especially Charles Franklin, who makes the scientific breakthrough in thinking and physics, that leads Earth to struggle with Mars for control of that power.  It was unputdownable. 

I loved how Casseia travels back to Earth early on, so we get to see how Earth has changed.  I was fascinated by the way Bear shows that economics and the hidden few that control the economic system, eventually paved the way for the different continents to come together in a power base, so there were several groupings that decided how the world would function as a unit as man moved into space - first the moon, and then Mars, were colonized.  People are the same, though how they connect has been changed by social networking - there is a very cool party scene that Casseia experiences while on Earth, that I could see the new generation coming up, wanting to create between their social plug-ins and desire to connect with as many people as possible, in many different ways.  It was fascinating.

I enjoyed the advances in science and technology that Bear explains made moving into space possible, and how life was possible on Mars - the physical contraints, and why they tunneled into Mars to live, rather than just living on the surface.  Most of all though, I enjoyed the idea of the thinkers, the super computers that eventually evolve to having a personality made when a person joins with them - goes into them, in a sense. The blending of human creativity with all that is known to exist, makes for an interesting way to see one possible future for the computers and internet and the vast possible ways we could interface together.  What do we do with knowledge?  Where can we go with it?  In Moving Mars, it eventually becomes possible to break down the smallest particle, to its essence, with thought - the space in the center of the smallest photon, is empty, surrounded by the energy charge that makes it positive or negative.  Out of this, the photon moves towards or from the photons surrounding it, and so we have the physical structure of life.  Once Charles is able to think his way to that structure, and with the help of a Thinker, join his mind to moving the photon, then moving in space becomes possible. I won't say any more, because I don't want to give away what he does, and why, though I will say that it was powerful to read, and very thought-provoking.  I also have to apologize if I got any of the science wrong, I'm sure I got a term in there wrong somewhere!

I read this for Carl's Sci Fi Experience, and also as part of my personal challenge to read more Hugo and Nebula winning science fiction. Moving Mars won the Nebula Award, and deservedly so.

We have 3 days left, and I have two more books to review for Carl's Sci Fi challenge.  If I'm lucky, I will have another one to add in time.  However, I am going to be continuing my science fiction reading this year.  I am participating in the Grandmaster Challenge at World's End blog, and I am having a ball finding new books and authors to read. 

I also am finding I am piling up other books to read very soon - The Morville Hours, and finish reading some books I started before Christmas, like The Most Beautiful Villages in England, and The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.  And, of course, Carl's Once Upon a Time Challenge will be starting very soon (I hope!), and I have several books out from the library already that fall into this fantasy/dark fantasy area. 

Finally, for a brief time:
Plus, I finally broke down and requested a book from our library, that it not currently being published and no copies are floating around:  The Winds of Marble Arch, the collected short stories of Connie Willis.  It finally came into my house yesterday.  I have it for a maximum of three renewals, and then I have to let this dear book (I already love it) out of my hands again.  I won't read it all in time for Carl's challenge, but it will fit into the Grandmaster reading challenge.  I love it because I have read a few short stories by Connie, and I know fabulous ideas await me.  Of course the very best news would be that Subterranean Press finally announces they are publishing the announced but never seen soft cover edition of Winds of Marble Arch.  Not yet. Sometimes, despite all our advances, other things get in the way of getting a book published.

I hope you have a week filled with good reading ahead also!

thoughts on a new/old love affair with science fiction

I am finding myself in a puzzling place. Puzzling because I feel like I've been caught up in a love affair, except it's not with a person, but with books.  Specifically, I mean science fiction.  It's kind of like the nerdy guy who you were afraid to like in high school in case you got typecast along with him (and sorry, we all know this happens, high school is a terrifying place for being anything other than cool).  You flirted with him, read some Heinlein and Asimov so you could share some conversation, partake of little jokes, but in the end your heart wasn't in it because the science was too far above what you could imagine at the time.  So you said good bye to the cute, intelligent guy, a little sadly.  Zoom ahead 30 years.  All of a sudden, life on earth seems limited.  Is this all there is?  you ask yourself once more.  And suddenly, there he is, now an established professor/director of dark star studies/renowned physicist:  even if you still don't quite understand everything he says, suddenly he is COOL.  The beauties in high school had it wrong.  Jocks are now plump and have head traumas, so they can't always talk clearly (just joking, kind of, sporty guys.).  Now, the misfit chess club guy who loved maths is the one who has lots to talk about. He is the epitome of everything that could be, that is fun, that is exciting, that is out there and not limited by gravity.  Welcome to my new crush, the science fiction novel.

How badly do I have it?  This is what I brought home from the library on Thursday:

I had gone in for the Bond Girl book, and look what I came out with:  all science fiction novels.
The Collapsium - Will McCarthy - (in the future, death is unlocked.  But, even without death, rivals remain, and two rivals in spacetime exploration must put aside to save the universe from destruction)
Lear's Daughters - Marjorie B. Kellogg - (environmental disaster on earth, a planet in the universe that might hold the key to earth's survival, only the race that is indigenous to the planet claims twin goddesses rule and the planet is their battlefield.  It's more interesting than this, trust me!!!)
Terraforming Earth - Jack Williamson - for my Grandmaster Challenge author this month.  After a meteor crashes into earth, one space ship flees to the moon.  After generations pass, they return to Earth when it is ready again for life.  But how have they changed?  sounds very interesting)
Rainbow's End - Vernor Vinge -  (A look at the future of the web, and featuring Mr Rabbit, a mysterious friend of the character's granddaughter. who could resist this?)
Bond Girl- Erin Duffy (I requested this from the library, a brand new novel about the stock market crash in 2008, from the point of view of a woman who starts from the bottom.  Fluffy and fun, though not sure if she can muscle her way through all these science fiction heavy thinkers)

 No deal is too good to resist:
But that's not all.  Last night I went to Chapters to see what their two-for-one deal consisted of.  ALL pocketbooks qualified, mass market size.  I had the whole store to range through, and this is what I picked: 

Red Bones - Ann Cleeves (I read book one, Raven Black,  over Christmas, have yet to do my review,  and have broken down and bought this one because I can't find book 2, White Nights, anywhere.  Excellent first book in the series set in Shetland, featuring Jimmy Perez)

The Day Watch - Sergei Lukyanenko (I read book one, Day Watch, last year from the library, based on Memory's review.  I really enjoyed it, vampires in modern Russia, with magic and sorcerers.  So cool!  I can't find book one to buy, so finally bought book two to continue the series)
The Atrocity Files - Charles Stross (Bride of the Book God brought this author to my attention, but my real attention got hooked on the description:  office clerk fights Lovecraft monsters in the cubicles.  Hey, this could be my office on some days!  Must read it)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - NK Jemisin -on everyone's best of fantasy lists last year.  A first novel) - nominated for a World Fantasy Award last year.
A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge (for my Grandmasters challenge, but also, this story looks fabulous:" two children are survivors of a crash on a world with a medieval, lupine race."  This book had me at lupine.) Hugo winner
The Engines of God - Jack McDevitt - (first in the Priscilla Hutchins series.  Chindi, third in this series, is considered among the best among recent scifi novels.  I wanted to begin with the first one, also considered highly.  It keeps coming with references to Rendezvous with Rama quotes, so good thing I bought Rendezvous already.  Plus: a female pilot, star of a series that has won the Hugo.  Science fiction has come a long way, baby!)
And then, just because I came across it on the Worlds Without End listings,
The Vampire Tapestry - Suzy McKee Charnas - a vampire novel that I haven't read!  one that was nominated for a Nebula!!  When I saw it on the shelf, I grabbed it, and it might be the only thing that might lure me away from the pure science guy.  Temporarily at least).
3 science fiction, 1 mystery, 1 fantasy, 1 horror.  Um, see the trend?  Am I hooked?

I am reading Moving Mars right now.  It's by Greg Bear, and won the Nebula Award.  It's set in the future, in 2160, 2170, and future decades (I'm only 1/3 into the book, and Casseia is writing looking back on her life, so I don't know how far we go ahead yet). Earth has colonized the moon, and Mars, now.  Moon has folded back into earth's control, but Mars, Mars is fighting.  I think that Mars is so fixed in our psychology as the God of War, that any book or tv show that features it, by nature makes Mars fiesty and rebellious, wanting to be set free from Earth's control.  In Moving Mars, Mars has only been a colony for 100 years.  It takes 8 months to journey back to earth by space ship.  Bear carefully explains how all this is possible. I'm sure someone who understands how rocket fuel works, the physicality of life on Mars (with less gravity than earth and completely inhospitable) and about distances between stars and time, could figure out the care he's taken to get that part right.  What I am interested in, is the people.  Who went there to colonize?  How do they develop?  What happens when Earth wants something Mars has?  Which in this case, Mars does, and Mars and Earth are fighting over control of Mars and Mars's development. We see these events through the eyes of Casseia Majumbar, daughter of one of the founding families, who are called Binding Multiples, as the colony as it developed necessarily had different areas settled in, and no coherent government at first, just the heads of each family.  Mars still doesn't have a central government authority, and so when Earth tries to control Mars, the BM's are facing either takeover or fighting back.  Casseia's uncle is one of the men who steps forward to negotiate temporarily, and Casseia wins a place alongside him as an assistant.

So far I have been completely swept up in life on Mars, in the underground cities that have developed, in the warrens they name each of their main colony areas, and how Bear describes Mars, the alien desolate surface of Mars, where only water and extinct life forms are found.  It is thoroughly thought out and imagined, and I can almost feel the sense of growing up in unnatural daylight, because much of Mars' colonial life takes place under the surface. Casseia gets involved as the novel opens with the first university protests by the students when the university president takes away their right to attend school and closes the university temporarily, all because the Mars leader is afraid that any revolt to the proposed earth control of Mars will lead to revolt. She ironically creates the very situation she is afraid of.  Casseia is very young, 17 Earth years old, and  it is through her naivety and innocence that we initially see Mars, the revolution, Earth, and her first love, Charles Franklin, who takes another route to the future - he is a physicist, and wants to be a Thinker, which is learning how to think so far ahead, to perceive reality and time, that you can see the future and the past at once.  If you think of someone who might eventually end up living entirely in his mind and linking to a computer, you would have an idea of what the Mars colony wants to do, though Charles hasn't thought ahead enough to know what he would be giving up.  Such abilities are very rare, and highly prized, and Earth wants control of anything Mars develops in this area too.  Mars doesn't want to share, since Earth won't share their thinkers. And so, Casseia and her uncle fly, along with a little less than 100 others (because it is beyond expensive to fly from Mars to Earth, few can afford it) back to Earth, to hold off the coming changes Earth is going to try to force on the colony.

There are so many fascinating ideas in Moving Mars:  people have become Therapied, and those that did try to correct themselves, found themselves in control of the world's wealth, and those that did not choose to correct themselves, end up on the poor side of the economy.  Which is most of the population.  There are vids, and sims, where people can escape into almost alteranate reality without leaving their bodies.  There are enhancements, of beauty, intelligence, physical features, so that those who choose so, are no longer 'real' and imperfect, but unrealistically beautiful.  Casseia comments that no matter how enhanced someone is, it is no replacement for experience, and I think this is such a wise comment.  It applies to our world now, as well as the world of the future. We always want to be better, and one of the fun things about Moving Mars is, so far there has been no limits on fake experience - through Orianna, an enhanced Earth girl (Terran, called terrie for short), we see the extent to which the enhancements have taken Orianna far from any kind of normal life.  She has experienced simulated sex since she was 10.  She is beautiful, and smart, and physically perfect,
 gifted to learn any language possible (which is all the rage on Earth in the 2170s), and she has travelled both slowly by bike across parts of the world, as well as as far as her mind can take her.  It all seems unreal, both to Casseia and to us the reader, because life on Mars is much slower, cautious, and in realtime. With all our focus on the internet, video games, and looking ahead to how these could be used and expanded in the future, Greg Bear has made many astute guesses to how people will try to escape the limits of their life, as well as pointing out that nothing, but nothing, is better than experiencing it for real.  Real life, real pairings, real face-to-face relationships, are hard, though it is the only way people really grow. I find this so very interesting and certainly it's something I agree with, personally.  MSN, email, facebook - I look at them as quick ways to connect with someone, but the real connection, the satisfying soul connections we make, that we get from seeing someone's face and hearing the inflections in their speech, from occupying a space next to them, from being present and sharing that space and time - that's where we really are.  Where life is made, where we learn with the part of us that hungers for intimacy and connection. Casseia is so bad at this,but even at her young age she knows that no simulation (read msn conversation or online dating for our world now) is better than the real experience.  This really makes Moving Mars such a deeply felt and wise book for me,with these ideas and extrapolations about our future development set against the very real human need to touch, to feel, to kiss, to be near whom they love. 

So, I'm in love.  Excuse me, I have a journey from Mars to Earth to go join......

Lucifer's Hammer - disaster sci-fi novel

Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle was published in 1977.  I say this because it is the only explanation I can give for missing reading this novel before.  I  would have been 13, and living outside of Canada (on a sailboat in Central America, so no access to new books.  Really!).  Because otherwise, I surely would have heard of this book long before now!  I LOVE novels about disaster, and movies about them too.  So when I was looking through the Worlds Without End site for nominated science fiction books to read, when I saw the worlds 'gigantic comet' 'earth' and 'survivors', I was hooked. I HAD to read it, especially as it was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1978.  So it had to be good, right, if it was nominated?

It was.  It is.  It's fun to read a book that is 35 years old, have it set in 1977, and be jolted back to what life was like back then.  Specifically, to life when there was us, and them.  In this book, Russia is still the USSR, and the divide is still up, and they are on the wrong side for being communist.  I mention this not because politics enter into this book - it doesn't, not really, but because that strangeness from beyond the Iron Curtain is part of the space program that does play a part in this book. It was like a flashback time for me, because I was old enough to remember life in the 1970s, the aftereffects of the Cold War and the nuclear power problem.

But all of that is only a little tiny part of the book, background that sets up the real story:  the discovery of a comet that is going to pass near earth, only the trajectory changes, and part of the comet's tail pass through earth.  It is the end of the world, literally, as everything we know (expect from movies we've seen, etc) about the end of the world comes to pass: earthquakes, tidal waves, fires, power loss......and then the resulting ash cloud and rain.  I love the disaster part, the cataloguing of what happens when a meteor hits the earth (in this case, several make it through the atmosphere to land).  It is provided in satisfying detail in Lucifer's Hammer.

The best part though, are the people. It is delightful to read a disaster story where the characters are real, where their struggle to survive, and to find a safe haven to survive the coming first winter (the hardest), makes the book gripping.  I literally couldn't put it down.  I read it in one weekend, staying up very late one night, reading through meals with my family, ignoring housework, just happily engrossed in this wonderful story about the end of the world as we know it, and what happens after.

I even found myself laughing at some parts, and crying at others. It is about as realistic a look as I've seen.  And it's good.   The dialogue is good and strong.  It's a fabulous, fun story, and I think it's one of the best post-apocalyptic disaster novels I've read. It's also realistic. Most of the characters who survive are totally unprepared for the end of the world.

Best of all, books feature in this book. One very wise character does something with books that is so unexpected, and so practical, and it's a reminder of all the wisdom and knowledge found in books.

On a personal note, diabetes also features in this book, and it was very interesting reading about one character, who is on insulin when the meteor crashes, and what happens to him. 

 This was read for Carl's Sci-fi experience, and also as part of my personal challenge to read more nominated and winning Hugo and Nebula award novels.

Among Others and some science fiction thoughts on reading science fiction

Among Others by Jo Walton is an extraordinary novel about a Welsh teenage girl who is sent to a boarding school in England after she runs away from home.  Her twin sister is dead as the result of a car accident which has left Morwenna crippled, able to walk, but never to run or move freely again.  Her mother is.......strange, her grandfather had a stroke, and the courts have deemed that Morwenna is better off with the father who abandoned the father shortly after the girls' birth, rather than force her back to live with her mother.  You would think this would make the book a downer to read, heavily depressing, but it doesn't.  Most of it is because Morwenna is so matter-of-fact about everything.  At one point while reading it I found myself dissatisfied with the lack of emotion she shows. Why isn't she grieving over the loss of her twin?  Why isn't she furious with her mother, who caused the accident that killed her sister? I realized that Morwenna is simply trying to survive the best way she knows how.  And her way is the same way I did, when I was a teenager and my life was in complete shambles - books.  Morwenna reads voraciously, almost anything she can find, and most particularly science fiction.  Morwenna reads to escape her life, of course, however she also reads  to explore different ideas - she's captured by what could be, by changing things, by possibility.  And this sense of discovery is what I love about science fiction so much.  Along the way of reading this novel, watching her discussing the books she was reading, I rediscovered something I had forgotten growing up:  how much I enjoy science fiction. In Among Others, Morwenna finds a book club at her local library, where they discuss science fiction.  One of the questions they ask each other one meeting is, Which would you rather meet, an elf or a Plutonion? I'll ask that now of you, Gentle Reader, and at the end of my post I'll tell you what Morwenna thinks it means, and what my answer was. 

. Among Others is much more than just a discourse on science fiction.  Plato, Mary Renault, and Susan Cooper (yes! The Dark is Rising is mentioned!) are some of the other books Morwenna reads. Elves feature, and they are imagined in a way that I really like.  I am happy that  fantasy feature here in this novel. It's not quite as large of course, because other than Lord Dunsany, Tolkein, Anne McCaffrey,  The Earthsea Trilogy by LeGuin, and  CS Lewis (all of whom Morwenna reads), there was no fantasy being written before1979, the year this book takes place in. It's significant that it's this year, since it's just before the 80's and the explosion of fantasy and science fiction as a viable genre of literature, with all the conventions and book tours and famous authors coming into the public sphere. During the novel Morwenna hears about conventions in the US, and that there is going to be one in Glasgow the next summer, and she plans to go. Her discovery of other people who read science fiction, and the chance to meet science fiction authors, blows her mind in the novel.  It's kind of refreshing to read about a character who is excited about the possibilities of the world, instead of the jaded youth who have seen and done it all that people our YA novels right now.  The fantasy element is important, because Morwenna can see elves.  It's part of her family, and something that interestingly is part of her nature, and not something that she fights against, as you would normally expect in a teen coming of age novel.  Instead, Morwenna must think her way through the repercussions of using magic, using her intelligence and reasoning.  She is very perceptive, which is why the period when I wondered if she was crazy, was so distressing - though it made sense, especially given that no one else can see the elves.  She is alone, among others.

I really enjoyed Among Others, very much.  It's well-written, well-researched historically (walkmans are just coming on the market in 1979 in the book), and despite the reserve of Morwenna, there are times when it is extremely moving as well.  The ending is particularly good, as Morwenna faces what she fears most.  I haven't written about the idea of her mother being a witch, which Morwenna talks about through the book, and how she thinks she is like her mother, because it seemed an odd fit to me.  At one point I wondered if Morwenna herself was crazy and had imagined everything in her past. I didn't want Morwenna to be an unreliable narrator because that would have been too easy to do.  I'm happy to report that she isn't crazy.  I don't want to say any more, because the ending and what she does is truly remarkable and powerful, and I really liked it. Walton has made fantasy and science fiction fit together, and that's remarkable also..  I love the use of books to illustrate what Morwenna is going through, and how she uses books to find her way to her own future.  I love that her love of books brings her together with her father, her grandfather, her new friends at the bookclub, and eventually her first boyfriend.

The novel is set in Wales and in England.  For anyone who knows anything of these two countries, Wales is not and never will be English.  Morwenna (and her twin sister Morganna) are the product of a mixed heritage, Welsh, English, and eventually she discovers other cultures in her background.  Her boarding school is in England, so Morwenna goes from her childhood idyll in Wales, running free among the hills, to being tightly monitored in an English boarding school, where she faces racism for being from a poor family and not from England. Among Others is a layered title, playing on science fiction idea of being a stranger in a strange land, of being not like those around you, of being Welsh when everyone around you is English, of having your mother crazy but no one protecting you, of losing a sibling, one who knows you better than most, and that sense of aloneness that comes with all these things. Morwenna has no one to talk to, no one she trusts, in this strange new place, so the novel is told from a diary perspective over one year. Among Others is also about how Morwenna has to learn to live among others without her twin, the person who finished her thoughts, and discovering that she and her twin were not the same person and she would have to live her own life after all. It's quite a clever novel, and I liked it.

By the way, to Morwenna's question:  would I rather meet an elf or a Plutonion?  I would rather, always, meet an elf.  Especially an elf like in Lord of the Rings. I always wanted to sail away with them at the end of LotR.  I thought and always have thought, they were beautiful and powerful and courageous, like the very best we could aspire to be. Not the faerie, who are completely different, and frightening (and should be), just the LotR elves.  The point of the question is, to meet an elf or to meet a Plutonion is to meet the past or embrace the future.  Maybe the Plutonion is wandering around here already on earth, among us.....that wouldn't be so bad, right? And this sense of discovery is what I love about science fiction so much.  Along the way of reading this novel, watching her discussing the books she was reading, I rediscovered something I had forgotten growing up:  how much I enjoy science fiction.

Reading science fiction leads to.....
So, on to my science fiction thoughts: reading Among Others awoke those memories of possibility in me, that I remember from the science fiction conventions I went to in the 1980's, from the authors I heard talk, from the buzz of so many people coming together to discuss books and ideas and what they loved.  It reminded me that the reason I join Carl's Sci fi experience very year is to read science fiction more often.  I always pick fantasy first out of a choice of fantasy and science fiction, because I find myths and fantasy easier to relate to imaginatively......but I am a person of contradictions, as we all are, and I have always looked up at the stars and wondered what's out there.  I desperately wanted to be an astronomer but couldn't do the math. You, my Gentle Reader, know of my love for so many things science fiction - Dr Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, Fringe, X-files, Firefly, etc.  Reading science fiction though, has sort of lurked at the corner of my life for the past several years (ok, truthfully, at least a decade), the neglected genre that I mostly read for Connie Willis.  I think that over the years, because I couldn't keep up with the science end of things, I let my enjoyment of science fiction slide until I was barely reading any at all.  I felt like an imposter when I talked about science fiction because I couldn't understand the truth of the science behind it, when realistically, I never read it for the science, I read it to know what was possible for us to do as people of earth.  That's what I miss, imagining the future that is possible, that fantasy doesn't give me.   Lately I've been wandering through the science fiction and fantasy aisles, looking for something new to read.  I have been trying to find a copy of Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space to buy for well over a year, and it's not available (not out of print, just not available).  It's one of the classics of the new space opera science fiction story that I find interesting.

 So when Carl posted earlier this week about a new science fiction challenge, on Worlds Without End blog, I read it through curiously.  On the blog, laid out in easy to use format, is a booktracker program where you can input all the science fiction, horror, and fantasy you have ever read, and see how you are doing on reading the best of (or all anyone has written) in science fiction, fantasy and horror. Well, it was like a light bulb lit up for me!  I did the book tracker and realized that I have read a little of everything, but not lots of any one thing.  I'm pleased to note I have read some Hugo and Nebula winners, which I do try to keep track of.

So......*takes deep breath*

I have decided to join the Grand Masters Challenge, and read one classic science fiction novel by one of the Grand Masters, every month for a year. I'm excited.  I want to go back now and rediscover what's good and the best of it again.  Here's my chance to reconnect with the roots of science fiction, and  to read the best, and see if I can find some new favourites.

The Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award reads like a who's who of science fiction:  Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K LeGuin, Anne McCaffrey, Connie Willis, Jack Williamson, L Sprague De Camp, Fritz Leiber, Andre Norton, Alfred Bester, Ray Bradbury, Arther C Clarke, Clifford D Simak, Lester Del Rey, Frederick Pohl, Damon Knight, A. E Van Vogt, Jack Vance, Hal Clement, Brian Aldiss, Philip Jose Farmer, Poul Anderson, Joe Haldeman, Harry Harrison, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, James E. Gunn

So far I've signed up to read -
-yes, Connie Willis was my first choice!  Luckily I have one new one to read, All Clear  :-)  because I've read everything else by her.
- Robert Silverberg (and Cath just reviewed a book by him on her blog, that was quite interesting),
- Ursula K LeGuin - at last! I can't believe I haven't read The Earthsea Trilogy yet.
- Isaac Asimov (who I grew up reading) - I honestly can't remember how many of the foundation books I've read, so I need to reread the first one and I, Robot (which I recall really liking when I first read it as a teenager), just to start catching up
- Anne McCaffrey (I have Dragonsinger sitting right here on my shelf.  Again, an unread classic...)
- Alfred Bester (if I can find it, The Stars My Destination is a classic)
-Poul Anderson (happily, I just picked up two by him, Hrolf Kroki's Saga and The Midsummer Tempest. Though technically these might qualify as fantasy, so I need to look more into what he's written)
- Arthur C Clarke (I want Rendezvous with Rama!  there must be something we can do to get these classics back in print)
- Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land is a possibility, though I want The Moon is A Harsh Mistress, I think)

By the way, I'm under the challenge on the site as bookgirl if you want to look at how I'm doing on the challenge.  I was still on painkillers for my knee and thus couldn't think  of a name when I signed up.  I think I  like it anyway!  I will keep you posted through here too, as we have to write 6 posts through the year on 6 of the 12 books we are reading. I'm feeling excited and a little challenged, since I haven't read most of the authors, and it's a feeling of discovery all over again.   So I'm eager to find what's new - and old and good - in science fiction again.

Even though it's counted as fantasy in my book section at Chapters bookstore here, I'm counting Among Others as science fiction because so much of the books it covers is science fiction literature up to 1979.  So this is my first book for Carl's Sci fi experience.

Among Others showed me, reminded me, that science fiction is about ideas.  People need connection and emotion to make that journey into the future possible.  How can we create the best possible future for future generations, if we can't imagine what it would be like? what kind of future do we want?  Where will we go?  Where could we go?  I loved Star Trek for that possibility, and I love Among Others for reminding me that science fiction literature is the home of the future for us.   This genre is a way we have of exploring what the human race is capable of, what we imagine we could do if we were freed to explore, and what we bring along with us everywhere in the galaxy we go.

Surgery and home again, and Babylon 5

Hello, everyone!  I have been home recuperating since early Monday evening, from my surgery on Monday afternoon.  Everything went very well.  My knee hasn't swollen up too badly, and most importantly, it can bear my weight, so I don't have to use my crutches around the house. The surgery went as well as it could, and the torn cartilage was removed without any problem.  Already I can feel a difference in my knee, in spite of the pain from the stitches and bone and flesh healing.

I had planned to write every day here, but I'm on morphine as that is one of the few painkillers I am allowed to take (kidney weakness). This makes me unable to be coherent for an extended period of time - I feel great, whee! however constructing careful deep thoughts about anything just doesn't happen while under this medication.

I am able to read sometimes, near the end of each dose, and have managed to read half of Among Others, although much of this was at the hospital in the waiting room before my surgery.  I was lucky, I got to keep my book with me and read right up until they wheeled me to outside the operating room.

I haven't been able to read since,  until late yesterday evening, and I'm finding the same thing already this morning.

So, I have been watching tv.  I have been in the mood for Babylon 5 every since Becky reviewed this book last week on her blog.  I watched Babylon 5 religiously when it was on in the 1990's.  My eldest son Duncan and I (I was a single parent at the time) would watch this every week.  He was 5 when the show began, and we watched all 5 seasons together.  There was a spin-off in 1999 when the show ended, but at the time I was going through many changes in my life, and I didn't follow the spin-off in the same way as I followed the original series. The book Becky reviewed is about the shadows, and Z'ha'dum, which is one of my favourite parts of the series.  I only own Season 1 at this time (something I realized to my horror yesterday when looking for it to watch), though luckily this included one of the best Babylon 5 episodes, "Signs and Portents". So, for my first official Sci-fi experience this year, I watched "Signs and Portents" yesterday afternoon.

In this epidode, we are treated the the mysterious arrival of Mr Morden, who goes around asking the various ambassadors 'what they want'.  This question really intrigued me when I first heard it 19 years ago (oh my, it can't be 19 years ago that this aired, can it????) and ended up helping me with my own writing.  I thought it was a powerful question in general, one that people in real life have problems answering, and here on this tv episode, the reactions of the various ambassadors lay the ground-work for the following 4 seasons and the eventual war with the Shadows to come.  Now, the shadows are slowly revealed to the viewer over the next season, as many-legged dark creatures that resemble huge spiders, minus the eyes. They are creepy and sinister and horrifying, just as they are to the peoples of Babylon 5's world. In this episode, though, they are only referred to by the seer and by Delenn as "the shadows are come".

The seer also fortells the fall of Babylon 5, although she cannot say when, just that it is in the future.  She  tells Commander Sinclair (commander of the station) that it is not written in stone, that the future is always changing depending on the actions today.  It is a possible future, she says. And that's how the episode ends.

There is also the ongoing rivalry between two of the ambassadors (which eventually becomes key to the series), the revelation that the Minbari chose Sinclair to be commander of the station, and that Delenn herself is more than she seems.

Babylon 5 is about power, and hope, about life in space, the ordinary people who work on it as well as the heroes and villains who come through.  I've always thought it was well-written, well-directed, and even though a few of the sets seem a bit sparse in comparison to what we can do now visually on sets, the story holds up as well as it did then. 

Because of Babylon 5, I have always wanted to write my own space station story, and the show introduced me to space opera, the kind of science fiction story I most enjoy - people exploring space.

I love looking at the stars, and wondering what life is out there.  I like imagining voyaging among the stars, and the many wonders and beauties out there. As well as danger, and the unknown.  Babylon 5 hangs out there in space, close enough to be monitored by earth, but far enough away that it is the last outpost between civilized space and the unknown. To me, any story could be told on a station like that, and Babylon 5 manages to tell many different ones. It was a fascinating show that explored all the ways it is to be human, and how we could recognize ourselves in strangers (aliens) if we let ourselves be open and honest. I love the psi corps, the group of psychics that are harnessed by the government on earth to ferret out secrets and make sure various contracts and meetings and councils are on the up and up. Of course there is a secret agenda behind the psi corps....this is the role that Walter Koenig also became known as, Bester the twisted psi corps cop, who had an agenda all his own. He was great in his role, sinister and bad, though he is revealed to have his own reasons for his darkness.

I can't do justice to the many layers of storytelling on Babylon 5, to the wonder of Michael York guest-starring as a man tortured by his past, who caused the war between the Minbari and Humans (which ended 10 years before Babylon 5 starts), and how he seeks forgiveness. It's haunting, and beautiful, and involves a sword and a lady.

I could go on and on. I think it's the morphine in me too!  I'm going to go put my leg up, and watch some more until I can read again.  If you've ever watched Babylon 5, you will know how good it was.  If you haven't, then I hope one day you give it a try.  It's science fiction, and it's fun, and it's good.

two challenges for 2012

Well, Carl's Sci fi Experience doesn't count as a challenge so much as an experience, though it's the same: to read some science fiction sometime between now and the end of February.  I join this challenge every year, and this year I am happy to say I plan on reading at least one of the books I'd like to read in science fiction this year!

The books  and tv shows I am considering are among, and this is by no means final list:
All Clear - Connie Willis
The New Space Opera - edited by Gardner Dozois
Revelation Space - Alistair Reynolds - if I can get my hands on a copy in time!
Boneshaker - Cherie Priest
Charles Stross - something
among Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury,
watching some Babylon 5
watching some X-Files - currently going through Season 1 (post to come shortly)


The other challenge I am joining is the Tea and Book's Reading Challenge, hosted by Brigit at The Book Garden.
 
I am determined to read some chunksters this year!  I did read The Passage by Justin Cronin and Under the Dome by Stephen King last year, so I am not slouching in this department, I want to read more.  Luckily I have more just waiting to be read.  I am going for level Earl Grey Aficianado, six chunksters.
I will be choosing among the following, although this is subject to change:

London, The Biography - Peter Ackroyd
Ship of Magic - Robin Hobb
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
The Brontes - Juliet Barker
Ulysses - James Joyce
Drood - Dan Simmons
Wizards First Rule - Terry Goodkind
Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy