June 2015 reading

Today I'm starting The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein.

I'm re-reading The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi by Mark Hodder before I move on to The Return of the Discontinued Man

Karen Memory Elizabeth Bear & Skin Game Jim Butcher. Also working my way through the Hugo-nominated graphics ... Ms. Marvel Vol.1

After finishing Neal Stephenson 's Seveneves, I am off to Bacigalupi 's The Water Knife

I've started Tabula Rasa by Kristen Lippert-Martin.

About five chapters into A Fighting Man of Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs). Started out uncharacteristically slow but is picking up steam now.

In the second story of the anthology Old Venus.

Finished The Many-Coloured Land. I last read this back in the mid-1980s and had fond memories of it. Not any more. Review to go up on SF Mistressworks tomorrow.

Now reading Adam Robots.

Started listening to the audio download of Ancillary Justice - so far pretty good.

>8 iansales: That's a shame, I really liked the series when it came out.

>8 iansales: I know I tried to read The Many Coloured Land back in the 80s. I think I just got bored. But my attention span was, and still is, pretty short.

>8 iansales: I tried revisiting it a couple of years ago (after positive reads in the 90s) and also found it had lost its sparkle. Shame. I loved those books! I wonder if the Milieu books have suffered in the same way - Rogi always had more charm as a narrator than any of the Pliocene Exile protagonists.

>8 iansales: I remember reading them when they came out, and really enjoying the prologue to the first volume, set in the Mileu with all these people queuing up to go off to the exciting new world of the distant past. The thing was that I didn't take to many of the characters in the beginning, so I spent a joyous chapter of Schadenfreudlisch anticipation at their plans being about to fall to dust. Once they got there, it all seemed to go into what seemed to me bog-standard fantasy with elf and dwarf lookalikes, a Wild Hunt and nothing much else of interest.

About the only thing I remember about the rest of the four volumes is that somewhere in volume three, one of the Firvulag waxes lyrical about the excellence of sausages.

>6 artturnerjr: You may of have mentioned this but are you finding copies of the series with interesting covers? I would like some 1950's paperback editions in good shape, wondering if they are expensive.

>14 DugsBooks:

Actually, I finally broke down and purchased a Kindle in January, so, with the exception of A Princess of Mars (which I reread last year), I've read them all in eBook format, mostly in a collection entitled John Carter: Barsoom Series, which collects the first seven ERB Mars novels. Super-convenient (also, with Kindle's dictionary function, great for looking up all those archaic words that Burroughs was so fond of), but the "cover" is... well, here's the cover:



Basically a straight rip of the John Carter movie poster. Ugh. Gimme Frank Frazetta or Michael Whelan any day.

Just knocked off Whispers Underground (A); I don't have a lot profound to say about this book but the series continues to be entertaining.

HerHe's my review of The Many-Coloured Land - https://sfmistressworks.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/the-many-coloured-land-julian-m...

Reading Magic Steps by Tamora Pierce...

Now reading Clade by Mark Budz

I am starting Drowned World by Ballard and just finished Dial H for Hero by China Mieville. Dial H for Hero was pretty awful. So disappointed....

Seveneves. 20% into the story and I'm liking it but not loving it so far. It's sort of The Martian in orbit right now. I still love his writing style and characters though!

Finished

The Devil And Deep Space by Susan Matthews and Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds.

>22 andyl: I'm a fan of Matthews' novels. It's a shame she got dropped.

I've been in more fantasy climes recently, but about to revisit The Steel Remains, which is nominally secondary world SF - I figured I should revisit the first two novels (it's been a while) before finally finishing the trilogy.

Reading Street Magic by Tamora Pierce...

Just finished Mother Of Eden by Chris Beckett (it was a nice day so I could spend an hour in the sun reading). Not quite as good as Dark Eden but still a pretty good read.

finished Karen Memory ... recommended; didn't finish Skin Game ... seemed like I had read it before ... several times.

Picked up The Girl With All the Gifts from the library and am enjoying it (although a bit creeped out) and will start The Goblin Emperor this week.

Just re-read Cordelia's Honor, and once again enjoyed this start to the Vorkosigan books.

A little off topic but I liked this quote:

"So long... and thanks for all the fish!" Italy's first female astronaut wrote on Twitter before starting the journey home, using a quote from Douglas Adams' cult science fiction novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Cristoforetti, 38, breaking the record for the longest single stay by a woman in space.

http://news.yahoo.com/delayed-astronauts-leave-international-space-station-earth...

Reading Gary Gibson's The Thousand Emperors.

Just started Ancillary Sword.

I guess it's throwback June -- finished Gather, Darkness! and midway through A Fall of Moondust.

Thoroughly enjoyed revisiting The Steel Remains, so straight on to The Cold Commands.

Enjoyed All that outer space allows by Ian Sales and Authority by Jeff VanderMeer. Starting Europe in autumn by David Hutchins.

Reading Cold Fire by Tamora Pierce

Currently reading All that outer space allows by Ian Sales, the final novella in a series of four.

>36 Petroglyph: It's actually a short novel (ie, over 40,000 words) :-)

>37 iansales:
I'd noticed it isn't as quick a read as the others, yeah :) I'll update my tags once I finish the book.

Just finished: A Fighting Man of Mars. I actually thought this was one of the strongest books in the Barsoom series thus far, and possibly the one that would be most appealing to modern readers.

Up next: taking a break from SF (and fiction in general) with Robert Christgau's Going into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man, and then back to Burroughs with Swords of Mars.

Read The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North earlier this month. Currently reading C. J. Cherryh's Wave without a Shore which is interestingly strange.

Also read Marie Brennan's The Tropic of Serpents, which is fantasy, but a very sfnal sort of fantasy. Widowed female naturalist in pseudo-Victorian pseudo-England takes a trip to a pseudo-African country to investigate its draconian wildlife. Sequel to the first book, which took her to the pseudo-Balkans.

I just started a re-read of Lafferty's The Devil Is Dead, which I last read some 30 years ago. I loved it then, and I'm in a far better position to appreciate it now.

Finished up Flex (B-) yesterday evening; while perfectly acceptable for a first novel I'm coming to the conclusion that magic as a metaphor for illegal drug trafficking just doesn't appeal to me. Could be that I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for a book that reminds a bit of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil."

Finished Clarke's A Fall of Moondust. A gripping, hard sf read. If someone has a first edition or galley, I'd be interested to hear if the original novel contained the following text (chapter 31, para 1 & 2):
"I still don't think those flags are a good idea," said Pat as the cruiser pulled away from Port Roris. "They look so phony, when you know they're in vacuum."
...pennants draped around the Embarkation Building were shining and fluttering in a non-existent breeze. It was all done by springs and electric motors, and would be very confusing to the viewers back on Earth.

Now reading some Sturgeon stories, for a few days.

That text is in my edition. It's not dated and certainly isn't a first edition; based on the list of Clarke's books inside, which includes 2001 (1968) but not Rendezvous with Rama (1972), it probably postdates the first lunar landing but not by much, which is presumably what you're asking about.

>44 lorax: Thanks, lorax!

Just finished a pair of collections: The Lady of Situations by Australian writer Stephen Dedman (a good collection, must look out for more by the author); and The Zanzibar Cat by Joanna Russ (the early stuff is a bit iffy, but there's also some classic sf in here).

After hearing an interview with her, I'm trying out Elizabeth Hand's Generation Loss in the hopes some subtle weirdness creeps in what's presented as a mystery novel.

>47 RandyStafford: It's a very good novel. Lovely, crisp prose, an interesting protagonist, and some great atmospheric writing. Enjoy!

I just started reading A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg. I have never read Silverberg before and was told to read his novels during his prolific period from the late 1960's to the mid 1970's.

>47 RandyStafford: Finished Generation Loss and on to its sequel, Available Dark. Both have a sufficiently satisfying quota of the weird.

I'm finishing up A Land Fit For Heroes with The Dark Defiles. First time I've read this volume, so eager to find out where Morgan takes it - I've got my hunches, but I'll enjoy the ride regardless.

Hoping to read some tales of honor books

>49 Kammbia1: As a Silverberg fan, I'm wondering how you like A Time of Changes. Most of his work in this period is excellent, but my favorites are Dying Inside and the very different Up the Line.

The Cass Neary books by Elizabeth Hand were quite satisfying (I'll post reviews this week), and I'm on to The London Project.

Finished The Zanzibar Cat by Joanna Russ - review to go up on SF Mistressworks tomorrow. Now reading Luminous by Greg Egan. Not sure why, but I seem to be reading mostly collections at the moment...

Reading Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson...

>53 lansingsexton::

I'm about halfway through A Time of Changes and I'm liking it so far. Silverberg is a good storyteller. I'm surprise how much narrative he has packed in the novel even though it's only 215 pages. I went ahead and bought Tower of Glass, Downward To The Earth, & Shadrach in the Furnace from that same prolific period of 1967-1976. I plan to read these over the summer as well.

I will post a full review when I'm finished with A Time of Changes.

>57 Kammbia1: I love Tower of Glass. I've heard that the original publisher cut the text, but it was an excellent book. I always think of Downward to the Earth as Silverberg's Conrad novel. For some reason I've never read Shadrach. Please let us know how you like these as you go. So many of his books from this period are outstanding in ambition and accomplishment. Besides my favorites' listed before and those mentioned here' I'd also recommend The Masks of Time, Nightwings and The World Inside. All very good and all completely different, from the days when SF writer's were proud of coming up with a new idea for each novel. After he came back from his retirement, he changed his mind about that along with most other SF writers.

>55 iansales: "Reasons to be Cheerful" is one of my all-time favorite SF stories.

>58 lansingsexton: I don't think your touchstone is what you intend.

>59 justifiedsinner: Thanks

Zipped right through We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and enthusiastically join with the favored that have already read and recommend the book. Now reading Fowler's WisCon co-founder Pat Murphy's The Falling Woman.

(Edited to add): Reserving extra time this month for reading so I can read both Murphy's book and finally take down my copy of Tower of Glass and read that next.

Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson was all over the place while the latest from Paul McAuley, Something coming through is excellent so far..

bounced off of The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin Anderson ... finished the first two books in Marko Kloos's space opera/milsf trilogy ... Terms of Enlistment and Lines of Departure which I liked ok (enough that I immediately purchased the third book) despite some quibbles.

next up is Ancillary Sword along with V-S Day by Allen Steele and A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan.

I am currently reading The Just City by Jo Walton. Unfortunately the version I'm reading (the Corsair kindle edition) has been prepared rather shockingly. Far too many words have embedded spaces in them where they should not be - for example re nais sance and im mense.

Received an ARC of Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman a couple of days ago and started it. I'm squeezing it in between two other books so I'm hoping for a chapter a day as my pace.

Finished The Devil Is Dead and started Terminal Cafe.

Finally checking out Partials by Dan Wells. Set in the future after half-human cyborgs kill off most of humanity with a virus. Interesting so far.

I've been reading all my science fiction in comics and manga form for the last few months but I just picked up Brasyl by Ian McDonald from the library. I've started it before and put it down but maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind - it's definitely my kind of book.

>58 lansingsexton:

I have finished reading A Time of Changes and found it interesting and thought-provoking. One of my favorite reads in 2015. Here's my review: http://marion-hill.com/book-review-67-a-time-of-changes-by-robert-silverberg/

I just did an InterLibrary Loan on the The Masks of Time today. I plan to read Tower of Glass next.

>68 EnidaV:

I think Brasyl is the only one of McDonald's "New World Order" books I haven't read. His book I'm reading now (Terminal Cafe, a.k.a. Necroville) isn't part of that sequence, but definitely has a lot of the same feel to it.

Read The Three while I was at Archipelacon. It was meh. Bought A Voice Out of Ramah and Strange Bedfellows, among other books, at the con, and read them during the trip home. The first is actually pretty good, and I'll be reviewing it for SF Mistressworks. The latter is one of the crappiest anthologies I've come across.

Just finished up The Lives of Tao (A) over break. Don't know why I bounced off this tale of secret history and Mittyesque comedy when I first bought it but now I'm looking forward to the follow-on books in the series.

Just started Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson.

I'm in a dystopian alt present with The Godless Boys - an ultra-religious UK has banished members of the Secular Movement to a remote northern island.

>71 iansales:

one of the crappiest anthologies I've come across

Gotta love the cheeseball Marilyn Monroe in Playboy ripoff cover, though! :D

Trying to finish City of Bohane before Greece defaults. Great read, highly recommended.

>75 artturnerjr: Sex may have survived the space age, but the anthology is no "sci-fi classic".

>57 Kammbia1: I don't consider myself a Robert Silverberg fan, but I do have a soft spot for Tower Of Glass, although I'm unsure why that is. Maybe it's best not to analyse these things too much.

July thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/192766