New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson (2017) 624 pages @@@@@ (5 out of 5) Finalist for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novel What will life on Earth be like a century from now once the oceans have risen fifty feet or more? This is the central question the acclaimed science fiction writer Kim Stanley […]
Continue readingCompany Town by Madeline Ashby (2016) 288 pages @@@½ (3½ out of 5) This strange sci-fi novel got a lot of attention from critics, earning nominations for several awards (among them, finalist for the 2017 Locus Award for a Science Fiction Novel). It’s easy to see why. Unlike so much science fiction, Company Town was […]
Continue readingApex (Nexus Trilogy #3) by Ramez Naam (2015) 608 pages @@@@ (4 out of 5) In this brilliant sci-fi trilogy, a new post-human species emerges—and what happens isn’t pretty. Demonstrating intimate knowledge of science in a brilliant sci-fi trilogy The Nexus Trilogy is especially intriguing because Naam is both an accomplished computer scientist and a science […]
Continue readingA Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2) by Becky Chambers (2016) 384 pages @@@@ (4 out of 5) Finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel Becky Chambers has written three books in her Wayfarers series to date. The first, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, appeared in 2015 and met immediate and […]
Continue readingBrothers in Arms (Vorkosigan Saga #8) by Lois McMaster Bujold (2011) 338 pages @@@@ (4 out of 5) Lois McMaster Bujold has won numerous awards for her long-running Vorkosigan Saga. Given the light touch of her writing, the series might well be renamed Miles Vorkosigan’s Excellent Adventures in the Galaxy. In the eighth book in […]
Continue readingProject HALFSHEEP: Or How the CIA’s Alien Got High by Susan Hasler (2015) 399 pages @@@@ (4 out of 5) In 1953, the fledgling CIA under Director Allen Dulles launched a mind-control program called MKUltra. The project was an experiment on human subjects with drugs that included LSD years before Timothy Leary turned on and dropped […]
Continue readingEthan of Athos (Vorkosigan Saga #7) by Lois McMaster Bujold (2011) 224 pages @@@@ (4 out of 5) The title character and protagonist in Ethan of Athos is Dr. Ethan Urquhart, a physician who works at one of the many Rep (Reproductive) Centers on Athos, a planet inhabited only by men. Athos had been founded […]
Continue readingSix Wakes by Mur Lafferty (2017) 400 pages @@ (2 out of 5) Finalist for the 2018 Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel If you’re an Agatha Christie fan and can at least tolerate science fiction, you might enjoy Mur Lafferty’s Nebula-Award nominee Six Wakes. I didn’t. This sci-fi mystery illustrates the worst of […]
Continue readingCrux (Nexus Trilogy #2) by Namez Raam (2015) 624 pages @@@@@ (5 out of 5) There are a lot of moving parts to this novel. We enter the thoughts of ten principal characters, by my count. The action unfolds in tiny chapters, switching from one character to another; few of these chapters are more than […]
Continue readingWired (Wired #1 of 2) by Douglas E. Richards (2012) 358 pages @@ (2 out of 5) Amazon boasts that this book was the #1 bestseller for an entire year in both technothrillers and science fiction. I don’t think this speaks well for the reading taste of Amazon’s customers. Wired is the first of two […]
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