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Recent Books I Read
Nov. 29th, 2014 07:25 pmI've read some good SF lately...
The Martian by Andy Weir, which is Robinson Crusoe on Mars, and which is the engineering porniest book ever. It is delightful. So much minute detail on the managing of food and water and oxygen and power and CO2 filtration cartridges and so on... I ate it up with a spoon.
Lock In by John Scalzi, which is Scalzi writing a Lije Bailey novel, basically. As with most of the stuff Scalzi writes, I can report that it is competent, enjoyable, and does not explode worlds. I liked the Chris Shane/Leslie Vann partnership, but I did not particularly like the way the story ended. I wanted it to dig deeper and resolve more complicatedly. Like the next book I read.
Mighty Good Road by Melissa Scott, which was magnificent. Immensely detailed, painstakingly paced, morality play/SF thriller, with an incredibly rich set of characters. I loved Heikki so much and the family she has built around herself on EP7. And I loved how uncertain the ending was, on so may different axes of uncertainty- Were Heikki's choices morally correct in the naive sense? Were they the best way to preserve moral hazard? Was this actually a resolution at all, or would Heikki and Marshallin and Galler and the rest need to keep watching their backs for corporate retribution? Probably, but all of these questions would just join the questions already weighing down on Heikki, the accumulation of a life well-lived. BASICALLY, HEIKKI IS AWESOME.
It's probably also worth noting, incidentally, that Mighty Good Road is one of those novels where the protagonist is incidentally a lesbian. It's not what the story is about, but it is handled well anyway.
The Martian by Andy Weir, which is Robinson Crusoe on Mars, and which is the engineering porniest book ever. It is delightful. So much minute detail on the managing of food and water and oxygen and power and CO2 filtration cartridges and so on... I ate it up with a spoon.
Lock In by John Scalzi, which is Scalzi writing a Lije Bailey novel, basically. As with most of the stuff Scalzi writes, I can report that it is competent, enjoyable, and does not explode worlds. I liked the Chris Shane/Leslie Vann partnership, but I did not particularly like the way the story ended. I wanted it to dig deeper and resolve more complicatedly. Like the next book I read.
Mighty Good Road by Melissa Scott, which was magnificent. Immensely detailed, painstakingly paced, morality play/SF thriller, with an incredibly rich set of characters. I loved Heikki so much and the family she has built around herself on EP7. And I loved how uncertain the ending was, on so may different axes of uncertainty- Were Heikki's choices morally correct in the naive sense? Were they the best way to preserve moral hazard? Was this actually a resolution at all, or would Heikki and Marshallin and Galler and the rest need to keep watching their backs for corporate retribution? Probably, but all of these questions would just join the questions already weighing down on Heikki, the accumulation of a life well-lived. BASICALLY, HEIKKI IS AWESOME.
It's probably also worth noting, incidentally, that Mighty Good Road is one of those novels where the protagonist is incidentally a lesbian. It's not what the story is about, but it is handled well anyway.