Kim Miller
This is book 2 of the Bobiverse.
In Bk1 Bob was cryofrozen and awoke to find his mind has been scanned and he's now in a computer. He gets put into a spaceship as its controlling AI and he sets out into the unknown.
Bk 2 sees him as merely the first of many replications, all Bobs, who are flying spaceships around the close galaxy regions. Any Bob can duplicate himself and his ship. New Bobs take a different name, Bob has become a generic type. In this book there are first contact stories, human colonies on other planets, and some serious battles. The chapters are short and bounce around the various planets with different narrators, each with a different name but all with the Bob voice. The first half of the book is a bit of a travelogue and it takes a while for higher stakes to build up.
Cliffhanger warning - it left me wanting to read Bk 3.
This is book 2 of the Bobiverse.
In Bk1 Bob was cryofrozen and awoke to find his mind has been scanned and he's now in a computer. He gets put into a spaceship as its controlling AI and he sets out into the unknown.
Bk 2 sees him as merely the first of many replications, all Bobs, who are flying spaceships around the close galaxy regions. Any Bob can duplicate himself and his ship. New Bobs take a different name, Bob has become a generic type. In this book there are first contact stories, human colonies on other planets, and some serious battles. The chapters are short and bounce around the various planets with different narrators, each with a different name but all with the Bob voice. The first half of the book is a bit of a travelogue and it takes a while for higher stakes to build up.
Cliffhanger warning - it left me wanting to read Bk 3.
Four residents of a senior living village decide they want to investigate unsolved murders. Luckily they represent a range of backgrounds and abilities that seem to fit together like a Tetris game. With a bit of manipulation they recruit the community liaison Police officer who comes to teach them to lock their doors at night. And the game is on.
This is a 'cosy detective story' in the tradition of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency series by MCall Smith. The people are delightful, if somewhat one dimensional. The police vacillate between dismissive and accommodating. The murders are many and varied and the investigation is highly intuitive but ultimately successful. And the amateur sleuths retain secrets at the end that the police won't uncover.
Osman has a way of story telling that is engaging and funny. We start out loving the characters and we still love them when their flaws are revealed. However, I was left with the feeling that murder is OK as long as the victim deserved it.
Four residents of a senior living village decide they want to investigate unsolved murders. Luckily they represent a range of backgrounds and abilities that seem to fit together like a Tetris game. With a bit of manipulation they recruit the community liaison Police officer who comes to teach them to lock their doors at night. And the game is on.
This is a 'cosy detective story' in the tradition of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency series by MCall Smith. The people are delightful, if somewhat one dimensional. The police vacillate between dismissive and accommodating. The murders are many and varied and the investigation is highly intuitive but ultimately successful. And the amateur sleuths retain secrets at the end that the police won't uncover.
Osman has a way of story telling that is engaging and funny. We start out loving the characters and we still love them when their flaws are revealed. However, I was left with the feeling that murder is OK as long as the victim deserved it.
Updated a reading goal:
Read 75 books in 2024
Progress so far: 64 / 75 85%
The Wayfarer is a worm-hole building spaceship. That's right, they build those things. And there's a crew. So next time you are driving past a road building team with stop/go guy, leaning on shovel guy, digger driver guy, roller driver guy, think your way into the future about traveling through a worm hole to a distant planet. Somebody made that super fast interplanetary motorway called a worm hole.
The Wayfarer crew has a captain, a pilot, a navigator, a repair/techie, a computer guy, an office manager, a doctor/cook, a fuel guy, and a sentient AI that controls the ship. Three of them are human, the others are aliens of different species, and they have different levels of affection or antipathy to each other. It's a small operation doing mainly 'local roads', until a major job appears. Along the way various crises occur, each impacting one or other of the characters and causing shifts in their relationships.
The book is strong on character development and world building but Chambers' prose doesn't get the most from those strengths. I'd just come from reading Christopher Ruocchio whose prose is extraordinary, so Chambers had a challenge from the start. However, the book was short listed for the Arthur C Clarke award, so maybe I'm being a bit tough on her.
The bulk of the story is about 'the long way' but towards the end of the book we find out where this worm hole is taking them. And that's where everything hits the fan.
The Wayfarer is a worm-hole building spaceship. That's right, they build those things. And there's a crew. So next time you are driving past a road building team with stop/go guy, leaning on shovel guy, digger driver guy, roller driver guy, think your way into the future about traveling through a worm hole to a distant planet. Somebody made that super fast interplanetary motorway called a worm hole.
The Wayfarer crew has a captain, a pilot, a navigator, a repair/techie, a computer guy, an office manager, a doctor/cook, a fuel guy, and a sentient AI that controls the ship. Three of them are human, the others are aliens of different species, and they have different levels of affection or antipathy to each other. It's a small operation doing mainly 'local roads', until a major job appears. Along the way various crises occur, each impacting one or other of the characters and causing shifts in their relationships.
The book is strong on character development and world building but Chambers' prose doesn't get the most from those strengths. I'd just come from reading Christopher Ruocchio whose prose is extraordinary, so Chambers had a challenge from the start. However, the book was short listed for the Arthur C Clarke award, so maybe I'm being a bit tough on her.
The bulk of the story is about 'the long way' but towards the end of the book we find out where this worm hole is taking them. And that's where everything hits the fan.
Two satirical darkly comedic sci fi stories of hating the stranger and the political ideology of fascism.
I R.U.R. a company makes robots to replace human workers. It does not work out well and the robots grow to superiority and revolt against the humans. It is blended with a melodromatic love story between a robot engineer and a woman who starts out trying to liberate the enslaved robots.
War of the Newts is a series of stories about the discovery of sentient water lizards in Sumatra. They are exploited by Europeans, they grow in numbers in Europe, committees seek ways to use them politically, and in the end there is a war. Capek uses the allegorical nature of the book to mirror how fascism invades the exploits other nations and peoples, or to scapegoat ethnic populations.
Both of the book are tiresome in language and structure, probably suffering the twin disadvantages of being translated from the Czech and the time difference from the original writing, 1920 and 1936.
Two satirical darkly comedic sci fi stories of hating the stranger and the political ideology of fascism.
I R.U.R. a company makes robots to replace human workers. It does not work out well and the robots grow to superiority and revolt against the humans. It is blended with a melodromatic love story between a robot engineer and a woman who starts out trying to liberate the enslaved robots.
War of the Newts is a series of stories about the discovery of sentient water lizards in Sumatra. They are exploited by Europeans, they grow in numbers in Europe, committees seek ways to use them politically, and in the end there is a war. Capek uses the allegorical nature of the book to mirror how fascism invades the exploits other nations and peoples, or to scapegoat ethnic populations.
Both of the book are tiresome in language and structure, probably suffering the twin disadvantages of being translated from the Czech and the time difference from the original writing, 1920 and 1936.
A piece of fantasmagorical absurdity with a savage twist.
Rod McBan lives on an off-world 'Old North Australia' and owns giant diseased sheep that produce a weird drug that makes him rich. He doesn't have the telepathy of others and faces dissolution, so he sets up a plan to increase his wealth and buy the whole Earth. He travels to Earth and finds things somewhat different from expectations.
The book is filled with weird characters, weird abilities, weird events, and then more weirdness as Smith fills out every nook and cranny of the story with the unexpected. The prose drags a bit in many places - who needs two pages for a single paragraph? - and is littered with poetry and songs as various characters put their motivations into words.
Overall it's a tongue in cheek broadside of Australian outback life, culture and idiom.
A piece of fantasmagorical absurdity with a savage twist.
Rod McBan lives on an off-world 'Old North Australia' and owns giant diseased sheep that produce a weird drug that makes him rich. He doesn't have the telepathy of others and faces dissolution, so he sets up a plan to increase his wealth and buy the whole Earth. He travels to Earth and finds things somewhat different from expectations.
The book is filled with weird characters, weird abilities, weird events, and then more weirdness as Smith fills out every nook and cranny of the story with the unexpected. The prose drags a bit in many places - who needs two pages for a single paragraph? - and is littered with poetry and songs as various characters put their motivations into words.
Overall it's a tongue in cheek broadside of Australian outback life, culture and idiom.
My first foray into the mind of Ted Chiang. What a fascinating time. A mix of stories that stepped back and forth over the border into science fiction.
A group of miners are recruited to dig into the vault over the Earth and into heaven at the top of the tower of Babel.
A man recovers from a catastrophic event and finds he has enhanced powers of intellect, sufficient for him to become a fascination to scientists and a threat to the govt.
A linguist is asked to help negotiate conversations with aliens, only to discover that she is having memories of things that have not yet happened. The movie Arrival is based on this story.
In an alternate, almost seampunk, history a team of developers make golems, clay automatons that are powered by cabbalistic names impressed upon them.
Imagine a world where angels make regular appearances in frightening events of power that leave some people dead or injured and others miraculously healed. Would you go chasing them?
And what if you could turn off the feature in your brain that makes some people look attractive so that you could then treat all people equally?
My first foray into the mind of Ted Chiang. What a fascinating time. A mix of stories that stepped back and forth over the border into science fiction.
A group of miners are recruited to dig into the vault over the Earth and into heaven at the top of the tower of Babel.
A man recovers from a catastrophic event and finds he has enhanced powers of intellect, sufficient for him to become a fascination to scientists and a threat to the govt.
A linguist is asked to help negotiate conversations with aliens, only to discover that she is having memories of things that have not yet happened. The movie Arrival is based on this story.
In an alternate, almost seampunk, history a team of developers make golems, clay automatons that are powered by cabbalistic names impressed upon them.
Imagine a world where angels make regular appearances in frightening events of power that leave some people dead or injured and others miraculously healed. Would you go chasing them?
And what if you could turn off the feature in your brain that makes some people look attractive so that you could then treat all people equally?