en-US Sun, 01 Sep 2024 03:35:44 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review6808713660 Sun, 01 Sep 2024 03:35:44 -0700 /review/show/6808713660 Jimmy gave 3 stars to Cryptozoic (Paperback) by Brian W. Aldiss
The first half of this book is actually quite good but the second half descends into nonsense very quickly. It's possible, given the plot, that this was intentional and, if so, that's certainly a bold choice but nonsense is nonsense and it's preachy nonsense at that. I'm not sure if this was the first book that explored the idea of time travelling backwards but the first time I came across it was Red Dwarf with an episode appropriately named Backwards. If you've seen the episode or know the tone of the show then you probably have an idea but, and this is the big difference, Red Dwarf is a comedy that played the idea for laughs. Cryptozoic on the other hand is trying to be serious so it comes across like a conspiracy theorist who keeps on doubling down whilst, as the reader, I'm waiting for the inevitable "just kidding" which never arrives because now everyone is doubling down on dumb. Oh and the ending is complete bs.

So yeah, the first half is worth a read because the idea of mind travel is actually quite interesting and the reflective nature of time travel (initially at least) feels compelling but it quickly goes to boot with the second half. In a weird way the second half feels like a parody of the first but nobody is allowed to laugh so it comes across like a joke which fell flat on delivery but the teller keeps explaining and explaining to show how smart and funny they are. It's just not and the only thing worse than the twist is the double twist ending. ]]> Review6728699193 Sun, 04 Aug 2024 09:03:01 -0700 /review/show/6728699193 Jimmy gave 2 stars to Nova (Paperback) by Samuel R. Delany
Having finished Nova this morning I've been mulling how to sum up my experience but, as with many things, I don't think Douglas Adams can be topped in this regard. So, my opinion of Nova is Zaphod describing one of Fords plans:

"Okay. So, ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, huh?"

Had I read this book several decades ago or back when it first came out I might have been blown away but, in retrospect, I feel like much of that nostalgia boils down to "remember the holorecorder? That was so cooooool." Except, it wasn't. Not really anyway because, like so many other things in this book, it's style over substance. Oh and I hope you like writing gimmicks too because Delany really wants you to know that he studied classics.

You know how some languages are inflected (Latin for example) whilst others like English aren't? Well, Delany does and he's going to really make you wonder how, 1,000 years in the future, when they're cured the very concept of disease itself, colonised thousands of worlds and are able to fly spaceships through exploding stars mankind still hasn't conquered the ultimate challenge... translating inflected languages without screwing up the order of words.

Okay, if you don't know what I mean then here's a simple example; English is often described as an SVO language, that is, subject verb object, eg "the dog (subject) chases (verb) the cat (object)" and because English is positional, rather than inflected, the order of words matters which is why "the cat chases the dog" is a completely different sentence whilst "the dog, the cat, chases" is just nonsense.

Delany knows this and he wants you to know that he knows this and he wants you to know that you know that he knows this every bloody page with characters waffling on about inanities like:

"the cards, mysertious, they are"
"I fear, the future, for"
"Your reading, again, shall I take?"

It's completely insufferable and really comes across like a particularly tedious literary boffin gleefully explaining that you can never properly translate between languages because you always either need to add something or take something away. Yes, I know Delany, but there's a reason plot devices like the universal translater exist; having every freaking exchange garbled for realism is insufferable and completely... oh, back to the Zaphod quote again, style over substance.

Except it's not even stylish, it's just annoying. But then it would be unfair to pick on one particular aspect of the book as being annoying and style over substance when basically every single character is that; the Mouse (ostensibly our protagonist) is an author insert charcter who hasn't done a thing in his life but is somewhow always right, funny and handsome to boot. Prince (the antagonist) is a moustachio twirling villain dialling up the evil to Clarence Boddicker levels for no real reason other than "cus evil" whilst Lorq (our kind of protagonist but functions as the captain from Heart of Darkness) is more cliched than a first year sociology major waxing lyrical on Che Guevara.

Whoops, now I've done it, I've made a Heart of Darkness reference. Well, imagine Heart of Darkness without the morality play, depth of character and sublime character arc but with every other character, plot device and thing in the universe alluding to classical mythology for no real reason. I guess that's Nova but don't think about it, just move on to the next thing, and then the next thing and then oooooh, look, holorecorder, quick lets have another space tarrot session for no real reason, holorecorder another we have shall, look at the shiny, mooooore tarrot cards, give us a tune mouse, about some gimmicks we talk will, lets, have, more, space, tarroooooooot.... Wow, this book gets really obnoxious.

On that note, let's talk about what the book does well. It's creative and flashy and if you don't think about anything at all then it's kind of okay. Humanity is spread over lots of worlds split into three zones and hey, had you forgotten that Delany did classics? Because Illyrium is the new gold and Earth is essentially Rome whilst the emperor is literally called Prince.

Okay, fine, he's not really the emperor but he basically is. So we've got a Roman empire ruled by a nepotistic vainglorious despot who depends on centralised command and control economics to stay in power whilst everyone else gets shoved down the mine. I guess history doesn't repeat but it really does rhyme. Give us a tune Mouse on that holorecorder, sorry, Syrinx. Oh come on, another classical reference? Why not just rename Mouse to Patroclus, Lorq to Achilles and Prince to Hector. Throw in some scenes where everyone has a year 3,000 discotheque holorecorder rave, work in that creepy rapey subplot between Lorq and Ruby and then drop to a nova for the final chapter so that everyone elses sanity can melt into oblivion along with my own.

Hey, holorecorder though, 10/5 best book for the next 1,000 years.

Seriously though, it gets a 2/5 for some neat ideas but Delany really has to be one of the most obnoxiously insufferable authors I've ever read. This isn't Dhalgren levels of insufferable but then that book took seven years to refine, perfect and distill liquid insufferability into book form to tormet humanity forever over the course of 900 pages that are so painfully awful they make Golem 100 look like the Count of Monte Cristo. Comparatively, Nova is beginners level of insufferable but why bother? It has a holorecorder and the author wanted to write Heart of Darkness in space. Just go and read Heart of Darkness rather than this tosh. ]]> Review6633819601 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 23:53:14 -0700 /review/show/6633819601 Jimmy gave 3 stars to No Enemy But Time (Paperback) by Michael Bishop
Only a few chapters into this book and I felt sure that it was going to do an Affirmation on me; two distinct story strands, past, present and future blurring and disjointed chapters which probably make a lot more sense on repeat reading. Surprisingly though it doesn't do that which is actually my biggest issue with the book. There's a point around 85 - 90% of the way through that feels like the natural end and, if it had ended there I'd have been very satisfied and easily given it four stars. But instead it keeps on going for another 40 or 50 pages for seemingly no reason.

In brief; the story is about a guy who dreams of being in Africa 2,000,000 years ago and then gets the opportunity to actually travel back in time to his dreams. It teases you with blending both streams together for a long time and invites you to speculate if any of the past chapters are real or if the time travel itself is just an elaborate dream. Each chapter jumps between past and present; past chapters take place in chronological order whilst present chapters are disjointed - except for the final one or two. Very soon I was finding the present day chapters tedious and only really seemed to exist to pad out the meat and potatoes of the story which are the past chapters.

Events in the past feel more real and unfold in a logical sequence of events whereas present chapters don't which lend them a dreamlike quality. I was certain this would be resolved in a satisfying way but the book just never gets there so I finished reading it with a sense of disappointment. Imagine you've just finished the Affirmation only to find out there are another 50 pages in the postscript which spell out everything that happened whilst giving all the characters a "20 years later..." wrap-up. It felt like that finishing this book.

I'd still recommend it bit this book could have been really great if it weren't so determined to spell everything out at the end and, honestly, if you completely cut out the last 50 or so pages, it would be a better book. You don't gain anything by spoiling the mystery and that's what this feels like. Over 300 pages of setting up an interesting premise, recounting events, leading to a climax of events which are dramatically solved and then.... then we get 50 pages of deflating nothing which makes the rest of the book feel silly. ]]> Review6537582741 Mon, 27 May 2024 06:41:31 -0700 /review/show/6537582741 Jimmy gave 5 stars to Lord of Light (Paperback) by Roger Zelazny
Easily one of the best sci-fi books ever written. At heart it's a play on Clarke's third law; "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" but it's so much more than that. Like many Zelazny books it's non-linear, ambiguous and can be challenging to work out what's going on. And whilst, in some of his other works, that can appear a bit pretentious at times, in Lord of Light it works perfectly because it's a snythesis of religion, myth, legend and heroic tale told from different perspectives. At times it seems conflicting or confusing and the infusion of Hindu/Bhuddist names and culture can make it tricky to keep track of everything but it's so worth it.

In the postscript for my book it was mentioned that Zelazny was approached many times with increasingly sizable offers to write a sequel but he always refused. For him, the tale was complete and it was his magnum opus. Today you might read it and think it's confusing or dated but this book is simply one of kind and the only tragic thing about it is that, once read, you can never enjoy it again for the first time. The curse of the Bhuddha indeed. ]]> Review6482630273 Sun, 05 May 2024 12:05:27 -0700 /review/show/6482630273 Jimmy gave 2 stars to A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought, #1) by Vernor Vinge
I was pretty disappointed by this book because I feel like I should really like it and it's obviously an influential piece of literature that has inspired later sci-fi writers but... I just didn't have fun reading it. You know how sometimes you can start reading a book and then, before you know it, it's several hours later and you're 300 pages in? Yeah, this book is the complete opposite of that. I mean, for comparison, Peter F Hamiltons's Night's Dawn trilogy is over 3,000 pages and that didn't feel anywhere near as tedious as this 600 odd page slog.

I started reading the book and initial impressions were good, rogue genocidal AI unleashed, remaining survivors stranded on a primitive world populated by ridiculous telepathic dog things, last ditch rescue attempt mounted to save the survivors and secure the mcguffin to deaft the AI, cool. Lets go. Then, 350 pages later, nothing seems to have changed. The AI is kinda there doing AI stuff, the dog aliens are still some of the worst aliens I've ever seen depicted in a book and the rescue mission is still going. What has actually happened in the last 300 pages? I was struggling to remember what I'd just read because it felt like nothing was happening and events were terminally unfolding but never changing.

This book really tried my patience but the fact that it was in the same category as Revelation Space and had obviously impacted so many subsequent great works made me plough on. Oh boy, what a waste of time that was. It feels like 5% of this book is setup, 94% is futzing around and 1% is quickly summing up the rogue genocidal AI plot that gets completely sidelined by some obnoxiously tedious war on the dog planet that I don't give a monkies about. It's like, imagine reading Lord of the Rings and getting to the final chapter which just consists of "lol, Golem ate the ring and sailed off." That's the kind of screw you inflicted by this book when summing up all the events. Why did I waste my time reading so much to get such a pathetically perfunctory ending?

The best thing about this book is the setup. I mean, just read the first fifty pages or so, skip the next 500 and then read the last few chapters because you'll honestly get the same experience. Maybe I'm just jaded because it's hard not to compare this with Revelation Space and other much better space opera stories but, unfortunately, this book just isn't up to scratch. It's got an interesting premise which was explored in a more entertaining way in Alastair Reynold's Terminal World, it's got space opera that gets out classed in every way by Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy and characters that get outclassed by your average Saturday Night Live skit.

I mean, I could complain for a long time about this books problems but the characters are bad, really bad, like modern Marvel films bad. The characters are awful, none are relatable and I have no idea whom I'm meant to relate to; some kids captured by dogs, the dogs, plants in wheelbarrows, stupid fake pirate human, stupid female human or rogue genocidal AI. Scratch that, the genocidal AI is the most likable in this story. And it's such a shame because the ideas are great, the plot is setup perfectly, all the pieces are right there for an epic game of chess and a better writer could create something truly spectacular from it - you know, Revelation Space spectacular. Oh, this is Verner Vinge though so lets spend 500 pages trying to make us give a damn about some dogs.

You know what, on reflection and writing this, I'm giving this two stars and it's only because of the first 50 pages that it's getting that. The rest of this book sucks harder that the Dark Tower film adaptation. ]]> Review6347953863 Sat, 16 Mar 2024 03:57:39 -0700 /review/show/6347953863 Jimmy gave 4 stars to The Sea and Summer (Paperback) by George Turner
In most aspects the book is good; believable characters, interesting plot and a nicely interwoven blend of story threads that all come together. My main issue is that the world itself feels unbelievable with a frankly absurd 90% of people (deemed Swill) relegated to live in perpetual squalor whilst the remaining 10% (the Sweet) try to carry on as normal. Obviously this is an analogy with how people today (even back in 1987 when the book was written) carry on as normal in the face of climate breakdown but it feels too extreme. Climate change is something that you notice in terms of decades whereas seventy story concrete tower block atrocities housing 90% of people is in your face every single day and your desperate attempt to cling to your current standard of living revolves around the fear of falling into that group. It's so in your face that it becomes laughable and unbelievable.

Bar one all the characters we're introduced to are Sweet so we basically get a fall from grace novel revolving around the Conway's nuclear family (mum, dad, two boys) which gets flipped turned upside after the dad loses his job and sudokos rather than face destitution. Mum and kids move to not-quite-swilldom which is basically a sleepy suburb a bit closer to the tower blocks whilst elder son luckily has an out card and a free ticket to Sweetdom after a week or so of slumming it. Kid number two similarly finds a way out so, despite losing that Sweet life, both find a way back without too much effort. Meanwhile only the mum seems to have a proper character arc in that she falls in love with a Swill man who just luckily happens to be head honcho of the tower bloc so, despite being subjected to Swill life, none of the characters really have to live it.

John Wyndham wrote what was sometimes disparagingly termed "cozy catastrophe" novels in that he described apocalyptic scenarios but all the characters seemed to be having a pretty good time - you know, last man alive just happens to meet a single, hot and age appropriate woman who then shack up in a comfy cottage whilst everything else goes to pot. This book feels like a cozy climate catastrophe novel in that lots of bad stuff happens but all the main characters are fine and never really seem to be subjected to anything beyond having to drink slightly lower quality tea and stand slightly nearer some smellies.

Largely because of the focus on Sweet characters who never seem to suffer much the book presents a rather gaping hole in it's mid 21st century depiction of the world; the Swill. What do they do all day? How do they entertain themselves? Where do they get clothes, food and water? Why do they never leave their tower blocks? Why don't they complain? The book tries to answer these questions with glib notions like the army prevents them from leaving but I mean come on, it's suggested that 70,000 live in a single tower block with dozens of them in the immediate area alone. There is zero chance that a few thousand soldiers could, let alone be willing, to kill two million people if they decided to go for a wander.

The only answer I could think of for this glaring hole in the books plot is that it's deliberate. Framing the events of the 21st century are the Autumn People who are even further in the future and trying to work out why climate change was never addressed. A far future historian is attempting to work this out so pieces together fragments of how people lived (the main characters in the book) whilst making educated guesses about everyone else. Because the Swill had virtually nothing there was nothing to suggest how they lived so were deliberately non fleshed out. I guess this is a comparison with, for example, current historians knowing all the ins and outs of Roman emperors and senators whilst knowing almost nothing about faceless slave #27392334 who died at the age of 22 in a tin mine. Maybe that's smart, I guess, but it felt unnecessary and pulled me out of the world being created. Had the Swill felt real and the world more tangible I'd have given this five stars easily but, unfortunately, it was mostly there but not quite. ]]> Review6260085748 Tue, 13 Feb 2024 09:56:30 -0800 /review/show/6260085748 Jimmy gave 2 stars to Fools (Mass Market Paperback) by Pat Cadigan
My copy of this book immediately got me off to a bad start with an atrocious forward written by Tricia Sullivan (apparently a sci-fi writer but I'd never heard of her until now) which blabbed on about how Philip K Dick was over rated and how Pat Cadigan was an unsung genius largely ignored because of course sexism. Or maybe the book just isn't that good? And that's the fundamental problem with Fools; it's really not that good. It comes off like some Neuromancer/We Can Remember It for You Wholesale mashup dialled up to eleven on the confusing spectrum with plenty of 90's era hoopy future jive talk. It's fun for a bit but it's one note so expect plenty of:

...then I looked down
Groovy pants was shouting something at me.
Huh?
I musta screwed the pooch real nasty this time.
Whatever I did (or didn't do).... it must have made a real mess.
Is that cat in the mirror me?
Suddenly I blacked out again.

For three hundred tedious pages. I suppose one plus is that the insuferable stanza like writing makes the pages go faster so maybe it's really closer to 250. Of course, the real problem with this book is pacing; specifically in that the reader never gets time to recover from anything that's happened. It just throws more and more identical amnesia nonsense at you. Okay, I get it, memories can be bought and sold and the protagonist doesn't know who she is. Can we go somewhere with this? No, okay, let's rehash the above ad infinitum. Kind of reminds me of that god awful Mad Max remake from a few years back so I guess if you liked that tosh you'll like this. Then again I probably didn't like it cus sexism or something. ]]> Review6107957387 Mon, 01 Jan 2024 13:59:35 -0800 /review/show/6107957387 Jimmy gave 3 stars to Titanium Noir (Kindle Edition) by Nick Harkaway
It's fine but ultimately forgettable. Feels like a crime book written by somebody who's only read The Postman Always Rings Twice and decided to throw in token sci-fi elements. The frustrating thing is that by trying to blend two genres the result is something that feels flat in both regards; bland sci-fi and cliche crime. ]]>