I'm pretty sure I like this series more than LOTR, etc.
I'm a fan of moral ambiguity, and LOTR is a wonderful epic, but not philosophically very provocI'm pretty sure I like this series more than LOTR, etc.
I'm a fan of moral ambiguity, and LOTR is a wonderful epic, but not philosophically very provocative.
Maybe the Silmarillion goes deeper? Was Sauron ever someone consider rooting for, or always just a Hitler kinda villain?
The world-building here is awesome, no doubt, but even two books in, we aren't quite sure whether our heroes are hanging out with the right crowd. Probably? But the other team has made some pretty good pitches, too....more
Staggeringly innovative world-building, compelling characters and plot � can't put it down.Staggeringly innovative world-building, compelling characters and plot � can't put it down....more
This was primarily a tribute to the author's father, who did have an amazing life. Having started as an aA mostly wonderful book, but somewhat uneven.
This was primarily a tribute to the author's father, who did have an amazing life. Having started as an aristocrat in pre-war eastern Germany, he was one of the daring pilots (on the losing German side) in World War One. Because Germany lost, his estate ended up in Poland� and then back in Germany during World War II, only to end up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain after WWII.
That stripped away the wealth of his aristocracy, and he became a scientists� of sorts. That is one of the themes of the book, ultimately. What he did was science when he started, but as more was learned, science itself evolved, and his passion became sidelined and lost a lot of respect. And he spent his last decades as an embittered and somewhat impoverished loner.
Our author struggles with that, since he still saw the value in what his father had pursued, but at the same time was quite the modern scientist himself. The last chapters of the book delve into his sometimes tortured thinking about that. I think that was a weak way of ending the book; ideally, this should have been worked into the meat of the story, not left to become a rather pedantic and long postscript.
The author’s own life is an entwined albeit secondary, story. His adventures as a child and a teenager were magical, and are amazing to read. (The closest book to this I've read is William O. Douglas� autobiographical Of Men and Mountains.)
Incredibly inventive and fun. I like it a tiny, tiny bit more than his Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. The extravagance here is more coherent � Incredibly inventive and fun. I like it a tiny, tiny bit more than his Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. The extravagance here is more coherent � at least as magical, but it doesn’t scribble outside the lines quite as� er, non-linearly, if that’s a word. I guess I mean that Penumbra could more easily be described as scifi-fantasy. Sloan sticks to scifi-fantastical here, which pleases perhaps-too-rational brain....more
I was somewhat surprised that this wasn't an espionage novel, but a detective novel. A very good one, though — we don't have a magically instinctive sI was somewhat surprised that this wasn't an espionage novel, but a detective novel. A very good one, though — we don't have a magically instinctive savant who instantly recognizes the significance of every unexplained detail. Refreshing after gritting my teeth through a Hercule Poirot story....more
Five stars for quality; but it loses one because it progresses soooo slowly. Of course, that’s a good deal of the story: it takes a staggering amount of quiet pondering for Smiley to do his thing, and our author demands that we be patient while he elliptically dabs in those details....more
1296 pages and no ebook version available? Wow, gonna have to go old-school for this one. Hefting a 3½ pound book is soooo 1970s.
I’m catching up on on1296 pages and no ebook version available? Wow, gonna have to go old-school for this one. Hefting a 3½ pound book is soooo 1970s.
I’m catching up on one of my favorite podcasts (hosted by one of the best voices ever), and an celebrating this book had the always-amusing (and increasingly amazing) Conan O’Brien as a fan, and the hosts are even doing a ‘club� series of podcasts to delve in deeper: .
In my failed attempted to find that ebook version, my wanderings stumbled upon these two links I want to memorialize:
� Even though the book was published in 1974, in 2015 The Guardian was still so impressed they decided it needed a review:
� Back in the day, the New Yorker had a four-part response to Caro’s book, and it offended the subject, who wrote a 23-page response. The four-parter is behind the New Yorker’s paywall, but at least Moses� response is (I suspect it will read as rather petulant, but I’ll read it after reading the book itself.) More on the brou·ha·ha ....more
I feel a little bad about the four stars, instead of five.
I mostly blame myself: I’ve blasted through all of these so quickly that details don’t stickI feel a little bad about the four stars, instead of five.
I mostly blame myself: I’ve blasted through all of these so quickly that details don’t stick too well. If I’d read this one just after binging all the previous books in the series, I suspect I’d have rated it five?
But it has been a few years, and only gradually did some of the character names start to click in. Some plot details left me somewhere between bewildered and annoyed. I remembered who ART was, but not what those letters stood for. And I’d more or less forgotten the existence of “Three� and “Murderbot 2.0�. Darn it, me? Should I just go back and re-read the whole series?
If you end up in circumstances akin to mine, there is a resource beyond Wikipedia. Check out the fan wiki at and poke around.
I’ll also say I can’t give this an enthusiastic five stars because my brain keeps asking questions about plausibility. A big one in a lot of science fiction stories is how easily they all go from point A to point B, with effectively no time passing and without any concern for fuel. Another is just ‘fuel� in general. Murderbot gets run down to the point that an involuntary shutdown is a worry, but apparently a reboot will magically recharge all those batteries? And also size?� ART-Drone is depicted as big enough a human in an environmental suit could ‘ride� it from the ground up to a shuttle, but later is small enough can be carried by two injured humans and strapped into a chair? Er, what?
Anyway, the series is still a magnificent hoot. Read it....more
I’ve restarted reading this from one a year ago, after stalling out at doing much of any reading for some time. I’ve done a little scifi/faDelightful!
I’ve restarted reading this from one a year ago, after stalling out at doing much of any reading for some time. I’ve done a little scifi/fantasy trash reading to get back into the habit, but I want to get back into deeper stuff, and ravens have always been fascinating.
I once fantasized about living deep in the mountains where ravens are common, and creating a feeding station that required the cleverness of a covid, but the weight of a raven (no blue jays!). And then gently training them to squawk whenever anyone but me is nearby, thus an avian intruder alarm, albeit a somewhat untrustworthy one.
I could collect discarded raven feathers and sew them into a cloak, and go into town for supplies are that freaky raven guy, ideally with an eye patch and a raven on each shoulder.
Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen.
But if I ever own property where ravens might come by and no neighbors would object to me feeding them, I hope I get around to playing Amicus corvorum....more
Pretty much just reminds us who Murderbot was, and that it was a moral creature, albeit irritable at that compulsion, even before theVery, very short.
Pretty much just reminds us who Murderbot was, and that it was a moral creature, albeit irritable at that compulsion, even before the action of the first book took place.
Apparently available for free in the archives of Wired magazine, but folks on Reddit concluded that there were slightly significant alterations, so I spent the 99¢ on Amazon to buy the ebook. Hated doing so on Amazon, but the other options weren’t realistic. In retrospect, I don’t think those changes were likely to be significant, so maybe go ? I wish I knew how much of the money Martha Wells gets, and how much enriches Ebeneezer Bezos....more
I'm adding this to my ‘maybe� shelf after reading . That included the new-to-me jargon “Bespoke Realities�,I'm adding this to my ‘maybe� shelf after reading . That included the new-to-me jargon “Bespoke Realities�, which I recognized as a tighter neologism that might help folks understand the current and growing crises of social epistemology. So I read , which then led to (by this book’s author), who uses the phrase “a dissensus of bespoke pseudo-realities� before switching to “bespoke realities� later.
The author tells us this crisis began when, about twenty years ago, the internet allowed the “cost to publish� drop towards zero. Personally, I think it began earlier, in 1987, with the repeal of the F.C.C.’s Fairness Doctrine because it interfered with broadcasters� First Amendment right to spout nonsense.
The world is facing critical problems: the climate crisis is the most obvious, but the creeping growth of the appeal of nationalist authoritarianism is also critical. Both of those could, potentially, be solved. (There are others, of course — artificial intelligence, for example.)
But the problem of our multiplying and mutually antagonistic “bespoke realities� has no apparent solution, and will exacerbate those existential twin crises, with feedback loops between all three of them.
I’m not optimistic. There’s a pretty convincing argument that humans are, by nature, not good at logical reasoning. A good introduction to this was presented by Elizabeth Kolbert in the 2017 article . If you aren’t already familiar with that idea, you probably will be hard to persuade � that is, of course, part of the problem.
I started following human irrationality when I stumbled on game theory back in the late 1980s. I was thrilled when I found the Wikipedia page for the back in 2004. (It was pretty primitive then; . It got much better in when each item received a short explanation.)
But the scope of human miscognition just kept expanding. I don’t think there’s much hope....more
Of the short stores Snyder tucked into the series, this was the only one that is potentially integral to the series, since it provides the introductioOf the short stores Snyder tucked into the series, this was the only one that is potentially integral to the series, since it provides the introduction of several major characters, but does so in a way that somewhat provides spoilers if read before finishing the whole series.
Of the short stores Snyder tucked into the series, I think this is the weakest.
The strongest is Diaper Study (which stars Janco!) — but shouldn't be rOf the short stores Snyder tucked into the series, I think this is the weakest.
The strongest is Diaper Study (which stars Janco!) — but shouldn't be read until consumption of the entire series, due to spoilers.
Loading...
