Joe Haldeman: Marsbound
Martian colonies are an old subject for SF, and this novel is in some ways an old-fashioned treatment, with the traditional elements of young settler, contact with Martians, and an alien menace. The plot and characters are so well done, however, that the story is fresh. The flavor is Heinleinesque, but the heroine is no Podkayne of Mars. (*****)
Neal Stephenson: Anathem
If you have not a smidgen of interest in how Platonic philosophy relates to the "many worlds" version of quantum mechanics, you still may like this novel, though you'll probably wish that the characters talked less. Persevere. After a slow start, the story grows compelling, and the intellectual dialogues turn out not to be digressions. (*****)
Charles Stross: Halting State
A bank robbery inside an on-line RPG leads throws a misfit programmer and an introverted forensic accountant into a real life game, international intrigue and each other's arms. May be the first readable novel ever written in the second person singular. 2008 Hugo Award nominee. (****)
John Scalzi: The Last Colony
Space opera in a universe much like a computer game setting. The super-soldiers of Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades, now retired, find themselves at the focus of a galactic war. Helped by luck, enemy idiocy and aliens ex machina, mankind survives. 2008 Hugo Award nominee. (****)
Joe Haldeman: The Accidental Time Machine
Maybe all the variations on time travel are played out, but Joe Haldeman makes the old tropes enjoyable in this story of a down-on-his-luck grad student who invents a time machine without really trying. The resolution of the ensuing paradoxes comes very near to being credible. (****)
Ian McDonald: Brasyl
Three Brazils - past, present and future - twined together by a multiverse-wide conflict. The heroes are mostly antiheroic, and the milieu is more frenetic than credible, but it's no surprise that this novel is a 2008 Hugo Award nominee. I much preferred River of Gods and the author's other future-India tales. (***)
Connie Willis: All Seated on the Ground
Connie Willis's annual Christmas story; a comedy about alien visitors who act much like annoyed maiden aunts. Making contact is a twin triumph of civility and true love. The story is also a good test of your knowledge of Christmas carols. 2008 Best Novella Hugo Award nominee. (*****)
Robert Ferrigno: Sins of the Assassin
The middle volume of a trilogy about a near-future, Moslem-dominated U.S. Most of the action takes place in the independent "Bible Belt", where resistance to Islamic domination is sometimes heroic and sometimes pathological. More of a pure thriller than its predecessor but good on its own terms (****)
Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen's Union
I either mildly like or sharply detest this blend of hard-boiled detective story and alternate history; I'm not sure which. The setting is as grotesque as Gormenghast, the prose is as overwrought as Clark Ashton Smith's, and the hero cop makes Philip Marlowe look like a gentleman. The book oozes atmosphere, but maybe it's a little toxic. 2008 Hugo Award nominee. (***)
Mike Resnick: A Club in Montmartre: An Encounter with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Something different from this SF great's facile pen: An historical novel about Toulouse-Lautrec and the creation of his famous Moulin Rouge poster, seen from the point of view of a waif sheltered by the troubled artist. One in a series called Art Encounters, aimed at YA's but instructive and entertaining for anyone. (*****)
Connie Willis: D.A.
Connie Willis sends up overfamiliar "space academy" stories with this one about the only girl on Earth who has no desire to enroll. Then she is informed that her "application" has been accepted. Is it a weird mistake? A devious plot? Can she get out? Funny, though the moral is rather pat. (*****)
Kathleen Ann Goonan: In War Times
The author builds this multiple universes story around her father's World War II diary, which is at least as interesting as the energetic, but not wholly coherent, main plot. The ending is a JFK assassination theory with a Ron Paulian(!) twist. Also included is more than I wanted to read about the WWII jazz scene. Overall, a book I would have liked to like better and that others may enjoy vastly. (****)
Marie Phillips: Gods Behaving Badly: A Novel
Pagan gods lingering, with diminishing powers, into the modern world isn't a new idea, but this tale is a pretty good use of it. The personalities of Artemis, Apollo, Aphrodite et al. are deftly fitted into present day London. The humans in the story, a couple of shy underachievers, are a bit drippy, and the resolution to the gods' difficulties is one that would be highly unpleasant for us mortals. (***)
Alfred Duggan: Lord Geoffrey's Fancy
Perhaps the finest book of one of England's finest historical novelists. The setting is 13th Century Greece, where Crusaders fought each other and the shattered Byzantine Empire. The history is accurate, the writing graceful and the characters not merely modern people in fancy dress. (*****)
Clark Ashton Smith: The White Sybil and Other Stories
A slim, representative sampling of Ashton Smith's weird, richly worded fiction. The best pieces are highly readable today; the less good are at least entertaining and will enhance the reader's vocabulary. (****)
Robert J. Sawyer: Rollback
Life extension and first contact are the twin themes of Sawyer's latest novel. Intermixed is a good deal of thoughtful, though elementary, philosophical pondering. "Rollback" is a hugely expensive procedure for restoring youth. A benefactor offers it to the world's foremost SETI researcher after an alien culture replies to a message she sent 37 years ago. She will accept the gift only if her husband gets the treatment, too. Then things go wrong. High quality work by a first rate, if slightly didactic, writer. 2008 Hugo Award nominee. (****)
Michael Flynn: Eifelheim
A double narrative: the appearance of shipwrecked aliens in a 14th Century German village and the 21st Century discovery of the event. The interaction between a brilliant human theologian and rather ordinary denizens of an advanced civilization challenges chronologically based prejudices. 2007 Hugo Award nominee (*****)
Vernor Vinge: Rainbows End: A Novel With One Foot In The Future
In a near future in which every crank can deploy WMD's that make contemporary Islamofascists look like schoolboys, a poet who has lost his talent and his spunky granddaughter find themselves up against a conspiracy to solve the world's problems by eliminating free will. The careful extrapolation is mixed with some silly ideas and burdened with a sentimental Alzheimer's recovery story. 2007 Hugo Award nominee (****)
Charles Stross: Glasshouse
Set after the post-Singularity future of the author's other writings, this novel follows a hero who must lose his memory and change his sex to infiltrate a recreated 1950's world that may be central to a plot to set up a dictatorship based on computer viruses. 2007 Hugo Award nominee (*****)
Peter Watts: Blindsight
The exploration of a giant alien artifact twists that familiar subgenre with a plausible, though ultimately unconvincing, argument that human self-awareness is a deleterious evolutionary accident. Characters include a vampire, a linguist with multiple personalities, a couple of cyborgs and a narrator whose special skill is absence of empathy. 2007 Hugo Award nominee (****)
Naomi Novik: His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1)
Horatio Hornblower in the skies. In a fantasy parallel world exactly like the Europe of the Napoleonic Wars except for the addition of giant dragons, stalwart Englishmen and their draconian companions thwart Bonaparte's foul designs. Fun but lighter than air. 2007 Hugo Award nominee (***)
Tim Powers: Three Days to Never: A Novel
Time travel, ghosts, Albert Einstein's daughter, ancient conspiracies, a blind assassin, a Mossad agent who will die if he hears the telephone ring: With his customary bravura and skill, Tim Powers fashions a coherent and exciting story out of a strange assortment of materials. (*****)
Tobias S. Buckell: Crystal Rain
An inventive tale of a human colony isolated from galactic civilization, split between warring cultures and caught up in a vast conflict between alien races. Characters include an amnesiac ex-hero who wants to spend a peaceful retirement with his family, a quasi-human killing machine, a spy desperate to betray his masters, and a harried female dictator. Deserving of Hugo consideration. (****)
James Patrick Kelly: Burn
In a galaxy-spanning future, the planet Walden is a self-proclaimed "paradise" founded on simplicity and rejection of high technology. It also faces the problems of terrorism and disillusion, recounted through the story of a firefighter with a soul-corroding secret. A well-wrought picture of a distinctly odd society, with a plot whose moral dilemmas evade pat answers. Nominated for the Best Novella Hugo Award for 2006. (*****)
Rodney Bolt: History Play : The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe
A pseudo-history springing from the premise that Shakespeare's flashy predecessor survived the famous Deptford brawl and fled to the continent, where he secretly wrote almost all of the Bard's works. A clever, tongue-in-cheek reworking of literary history, with the bonus of vividly recreating the milieu shared by many real Elizabethan exiles. (****)
Robert Ferrigno: Prayers for the Assassin
A combination of suspense novel and a plausible vision of America after a Moslem takeover. It loses a star only because defeating the super-villain is just a trifle too easy. Review. (****)
Terry Pratchett: Thud!
After 30 books, one might fear that Discworld is in danger of fatigue. Au contraire, this witty, vigorous tale of the culmination of an ages-old conflict between dwarfs and trolls, with Sam Vimes and Ankh-Morpork in the middle, is one of the strongest volumes yet. (*****)
Neil Gaiman: Anansi Boys
Calling this comic novel a "sequel" to American Gods conveys the wrong impression. Anansi Boys is smaller in scope, funnier and more humane, though it likewise tells a story of dwindling gods adrift in the contemporary world. Anti-hero "Spider" steals the show and begs to be played by Will Smith in the movie version. (*****)
Stephen L. Antczak: Daydreams Undertaken
15 SF tales, mostly from "little" magazines, in which weird events affecting weird people are recounted as if they happened every day. This volume may be a high-priced cult item 20 years from now. (****)
Connie Willis: Inside Job
The editor of a paranormal-skeptic magazine and his beautiful assistant encounter a most unlikely ghost: ueber-skeptic H. L. Mencken. Connie Willis in her lightest, funniest vein. Nominated for the Best Novella Hugo Award for 2006. (*****)
Matthew Pearl: The Dante Club
Literary mystery involving Boston's post-Civil War intellectual elite in a series of atrocious murders inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy. Weak as a whodunit, strong on atmosphere. (****)
David Selbourne: The City of Light: The Hidden Journal of the Man Who Entered China Four Years Before Marco Polo
Supposedly the journal of Jewish merchant who visited China c. 1270, this historical novel uses an encounter between Judaism and medieval China as a springboard for a lightly disguised examination of contemporary political and moral issues. Since Selbourne is a fascinating thinker, his characters' thoughts are fascinating, too. (****)
Iain Pears: An Instance of the Fingerpost
Mystery set in Restoration England. The murder of an Oxford don is recounted from four widely different viewpoints. Heavy on period detail. Metamorphoses into theological fantasy at the end, which may displease some readers. (****)
Steven E. Plaut: The Scout
Short novel based on the true story of an Arab scout in Israeli service. (****)
John Derbyshire: Fire from the Sun
Three-decker novel about the contrasting, intersecting lives of a Chinese boy and girl, born in the same mainland village and brought to America by force of circumstances. Romantic and compelling. (****)
H. N. Turteltaub [Harry Turtledove]: The Sacred Land
Third volume in a series of seafaring adventures set in the Hellenistic era. Ill-matched merchant cousins Menedemos and Sostratos seek profit in exotic Tyre and Jerusalem. (*****)
Robert J. Sawyer: Humans (Neanderthal Parallax, vol. 2)
2004 Hugo Award nominee. Middle volume of a trilogy, and it shows. A novelette's worth of plot as man and woman from parallel worlds slowly and predictably fall in love. (***)
Terry Pratchett: A Hat Full of Sky
Ostensible children's book that will also appeal to adults. The education of a young witch — far more "realistic" than Harry Potter. (*****)
Lois McMaster Bujold: Paladin of Souls
2004 Hugo Award Best Novel. A middle-aged heroine and worked-out imaginary paganism set this book apart from run-of-the-sword medievalesque fantasy. Hinging the plot on the nuances of a made-up theology was less clever. Sequel to The Curse of Chalion, with different characters brought to the foreground. (****)
Jasper Fforde: The Well of Lost Plots
Thursday Next continues her hectic adventures in a universe where books come alive, literally. Newcomers should start with The Eyre Affair (****)
H. N. Turteltaub [Harry Turtledove]: Over the Wine-Dark Sea
First in a series of O'Brian-like nautical adventures set in the tumultuous times following the death of Alexander the Great. The Aubrey and Maturin are merchant cousins, devil-may-care Menedemos and intellectual Sostratos, who roam the Mediterranean looking for profit and girls, while avoiding storms, pirates and jealous husbands. Meandering plot but great fun. (*****)
Charles W. Chesnutt: Stories, Novels, and Essays (Library of America, 131)
Fiction and essays by a black American writer who deserves a wider audience. (****)
Dan Simmons: Ilium
2004 Hugo Award nominee. The Trojan War, high-tech deities, robots from the outer reaches of the Solar System and an Eloi-like Earth combine in typically weird Simmons fashion. Alas, much waits to be explicated in the sequel. (****)
Harry Turtledove: Gunpowder Empire
Debut of a juvenile series set in parallel worlds. 22nd century teen siblings, trapped without adult aid in a besieged city, must cope with the bizarre (to them) customs and prejudices of a never-fallen Roman Empire. [Rating is for 11-17 year olds; adults may find the book too didactic and unsubtle for their tastes.] (*****)
Terry Pratchett: Going Postal
A small-time con man must choose between death and the Ankh-Morpork post office - and takes the more dangerous option. Big business, fraud, low-tech hacking, young love and general hilarity. Pratchett's best novel since Pyramids. (*****)
E. Viollet-Le-Duc: Annals of a Fortress: Twenty-Two Centuries of Siege Warfare
This combined novel and treatise traces the history of an imaginary French fortress from the 4th Century B.C. through the Napoleonic Wars, featuring detailed accounts of seven sieges. (****)
To allow the stock market to tie into such a large pool of money is to me allowing the wolves into the chicken coop. Have we not seen what happened with all of the 401k's and retirement accounts a few years ago when the bubble of the 90's burst. Just imagine a few trillon evaporating the same way. Who's going to guarrantee all the years of contribution when suddenly the market devalues and we see the little that people expect to survive become even less. I believe this is a road to disaster and I hope there is someone in washington with the balls to see the truth. Sure, if a person who wants to speculate the market and can afford to lose whatever funds they have invested wants
to take their chances then it's their choice.
The stock market is not a perfect thing and
considering the various scandals that the
average american has forgotten (and I don't mean monica) the worst hands to put social security is in the hands of stockbrokers cause they will get paid either way.
GBUA
IMM
Posted by:Max234@hotmail.com | Sunday, January 09, 2005 at 01:30 PM