What Are You Reading? Third Quarter, 2023

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Other way round. He wanted two separate books, his publishers said 'Neal Stephenson books must be long, these are too short' so he mashed them together. 

Aren't two books better than one? More sales, non?

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I confess I mostly quite like Seveneves, the first part comes off like an oversized The Martian and the second is a cool SF adventure with some neat ideas. But the transition between them doesn't work great for me and the second part was undercooked.

Hey, you at least got through it. I bought it, got a few dozen pages into it, and gave it to someone else, because I just could not get into it. Hell, I own Termination Shock, and have yet to read it, because every time I read the first page I wonder "What the fuck happened to the guy who wrote Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon? When he did he turn into the stepchild of Greg Bear and John Updike?"

[polishgenius]

tbf I think to a large extent he's always been like that, it just depends how you vibe with the subject matter. I bailed on Cryptonomicon precisely because it kept going, over and over, into technical encryption stuff I wasn't invested enough in to chew on. 

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

tbf I think to a large extent he's always been like that, it just depends how you vibe with the subject matter. I bailed on Cryptonomicon precisely because it kept going, over and over, into technical encryption stuff I wasn't invested enough in to chew on. 

It made it worthwhile due to also having a wicked sense of humour, a reasonable amount of silliness, and good prose. He did openly say he was trying to write a Tom Wolfe style novel, which makes sense if you compare Wolfe's prose to that of Cryptonomicon. But nothing he's written since has been as playful and entertaining with the exception of Anathem. 

[VigoTheCarpathian]

Finished:

Blade of Dream by Abraham.  Loved it, it kickstarted me going back to the library after a lot of summer craziness.  Immediately wanted to go back and read the first Kithamar book, to see what I likely missed (I feel like i didn’t pick up the detail/subtle stuff that i probably filed under “worldbuilding” in my first read)

Wind/Pinball by Murikami.  Fast reads, plenty of pathos and interesting details.  I wish I found these books instead of Catcher in the Rye or bukowski during formative late high school years.

The Round House by Erdrich.  I really loved this book, highly recommend. The voice and characters, the violence and heartbreak and humor on a reservation - unique and “true”.

Just started:  Antkind by Kaufman.  The neuroses and humor - my god, I can tell this book is hilarious 50 pages in and have no idea where it will go.

[ser naes yennet]

finishing up the 2nd in the Illborn series......enjoying it very much.

before that did the first 2 in The Empire of the Wolf series.....also a good read.

[Iskaral Pust]

On 9/10/2023 at 5:29 AM, IlyaP said:

It made it worthwhile due to also having a wicked sense of humour, a reasonable amount of silliness, and good prose. He did openly say he was trying to write a Tom Wolfe style novel, which makes sense if you compare Wolfe's prose to that of Cryptonomicon. But nothing he's written since has been as playful and entertaining with the exception of Anathem. 

I enjoyed both of those and The Baroque Cycle too, although it was really dragging on in the final volume.

[hauberk]

Just started Go For Broke by C Douglas Sterner. It’s about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during WWII.  The 442nd was made up of Nisei volunteers and performed some amazing heroics. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

Trying to build a better foundation in some older sci-fi, I've requested Samuel R Delany's Dhalgren from the library.  

[Wilbur]

I took the advice from this thread and earlier iterations to try Adrian Tchaikovsky's Dogs of War and Guns of the Dawn.  Both are well-written stories, but maybe not for me.

Dogs of War was read by an ensemble cast, which I don't generally prefer, but in this case the director managed to smooth out the transitions nicely, and it was effective.  The characters in this book are probably the sharpest and most empathetic of any that I have read from Tchaikovsky, and the story was interesting.  For the latter portion of the book, there was a whiff of a Wild Cards about the mis en scene, but I thought he handled the transition of the barbell plot fairly well.

Guns of the Dawn was read by Emma Newman, who does a good job.  This story has slightly less intensity in its presentation of the failure of truth in a time of war and emancipation than Dogs of War, and it is perhaps aimed at a younger reading audience.  The characters are also both closer to a reality we would recognize, but at the same time possessed less depth.

I found both books to suffer from the Harry Potter Problem, in that they tell a neat story, but it isn't a new story or a new setting or particularly revelatory unless you are a pre-teen.  Tchaikovsky is a better technical writer in these books than JK Rowling was in her first effort, which was pretty ropey in spots.  But the Harry Potter Problem was that although my young niece loved Harry Potter, my girls had read other books about wizards and boarding schools and coming of age, so they didn't have the strong reaction to it that my niece did.  One HP was enough for them, and they had no strong interest in reading more of it.

Thus for me, Dogs of War is interesting, but I have already read Shardik and The Plague Dogs and stacks of other SciFi where accelerated beasts emancipate themselves.  Every other issue of Analog in the 1990s had such a story in it.  Likewise, Guns of the Dawn is good stuff, but I have similarly read Little Women and the novels of Jane Austen and a book or two about WWI.  The story in the Tchaikovsky books is good and well-written, but it isn't gripping enough to keep my hindbrain from doing a running comparo with other stories I have read previously.

I probably need to give one of his fantasy novels a shot, as they also receive high marks.

[Zorral]

Long time thoughtful sf/f reviewer and writer of critical / think pieces around such related context, Abigail Nussbaum, weighs in on one of the latest subject de jour, tech billionaires -- and Neal Stephenson also.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/09/a-political-history-of-the-future-the-tech-billionaire

.... Home / a political history of the future / A Political History of the Future: The Tech Billionaire
A Political History of the Future: The Tech Billionaire
BY ABIGAIL NUSSBAUM / ON SEPTEMBER 13, 2023 / AT 11:32 AM / 

Quote

 

Welcome back, after a long hiatus, to A Political History of the Future, our series about how science fiction intersects with politics, economics, sociology, and the hot-button issues of the day. I have several essays planned for the rest of the year, but they’re going to be a bit different from previous installments. Instead of talking about a specific work in each one, we’re going to discuss a range of different works to examine how they approach a common theme. Starting with a topic that I’ve been thinking about for more than a year, the by-now common figure of the tech billionaire.

In his 2008 novel Anathem, a story that is fundamentally about the tropes and stereotypes that lie at the heart of civilization and which shape—and are shaped by—the convolutions of history, Neal Stephenson lays out the various “iconographies”—the images that permeate the popular imagination—that have accumulated around scientists (apologies for the neologism-heavy text; this, too, is part of the point of the novel):

The Muncostran Iconography: eccentric, lovable, disheveled theorician, absent-minded, means well. The Pendarthan: fraas as high-strung, nervous, meddling know-it-alls who simply don’t understand the realities; lacking physical courage, they always lose out to more masculine Sæculars. The Klevan Iconography: theor as an awesomely wise elder statesman who can solve all the problems of the Sæcular world. The Baudan Iconography: we are grossly cynical frauds living in luxury at the expense of common man. The Penthabrian: we are guardians of ancient mystical secrets of the universe handed down to us by Cnoüs himself, and all our talk about theorics is just a smoke-screen to hide our true power from the unwashed multitude.

Absent from this list—either because it just wasn’t as common in the mid-2000s, or because Stephenson (who has subsequently written novels where such figures are the heroes) wasn’t as interested in poking fun at it—is what Erik has just recently referred to as the entrepreneur-inventor. The man (and they are usually men) who not only creates technological innovations that meaningfully affect our everyday lives, but who leverages those innovations into a business career and a position as a public figure—a prophet of technology. He is a man who changes the world by giving us a new way to live; new tools, gadgets, and toys that we weren’t even aware we needed. And along the way, he makes a lot of money. ....

 

 

[TheLastWolf]

Plato's Republic. I can see why it had a tremendous impact on subsequent thinkers but the window into their era, "civilized" with a heavy dose of tribal vestiges offers inferences to our primal biases like Socrates never did

[Wilbur]

22 hours ago, Zorral said:

...the entrepreneur-inventor. The man (and they are usually men) who not only creates technological innovations that meaningfully affect our everyday lives, but who leverages those innovations into a business career and a position as a public figure—a prophet of technology. He is a man who changes the world by giving us a new way to live; new tools, gadgets, and toys that we weren’t even aware we needed. And along the way, he makes a lot of money...

 

I have already read everything Robert Heinlein wrote. 

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Wilbur said:

I have already read everything Robert Heinlein wrote

So, it seems you approve of those who are subject to Dunning-Kruger effect running our world according to sf/f competence fantasy porn?

[Wilbur]

33 minutes ago, Zorral said:

So, it seems you approve of those who are subject to Dunning-Kruger effect running our world according to sf/f competence fantasy porn?

No, it just seemed ironic how closely the author was describing the protagonist of every other story Heinlein ever wrote.

What was once a sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy has now become reality, unfortunately.

[Wilbur]

I was looking for something with some gristle to it for this past week, so I picked up Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City.  The thin veneer of fantasy over an historical fiction of the siege of Constantinople seemed to be exactly what was wanted, and Tom Holt is rarely ever a bad choice.

Ray Sawyer is a terrific reader, so the audiobook was top-notch.  The first-person unreliable narrator works well for the story of an engineer in the Roman army who is not actually a Roman and gets stuck with the defense of the city, and the writing gets down almost to the gritty levels of Glen Cook's Black Company without actually falling into the muck and rolling in it.  The character revelations are handled with skill, and it is generally what you would want and expect from Holt writing Eastern Empire historical fiction.  Very enjoyable, if not indispensable, reading.

Edited September 18, 2023 by Wilbur
cain't spel

[Peadar]

Re-reading Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer for the first time since I was about 15. Enjoying it a lot, I have to say.

[Slurktan]

Did I like Warlord Chronicles by Cornwall.  Yes.   Did I think they were great?  No.  Derfel is too bland and magic being a thing in third book all of a sudden I really didn't like.  Also no point to Derfel writing "the story" down, no payoff to that thread.

On to Children of Ash and Elm!

[maarsen]

On 9/13/2023 at 8:29 AM, Larry of the Lawn said:

Trying to build a better foundation in some older sci-fi, I've requested Samuel R Delany's Dhalgren from the library.  

Interesting choice. Have you tried any of his earlier stuff? If you like Dhalgren try Triton next.

[Larry of the Lawn]

19 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Interesting choice. Have you tried any of his earlier stuff? If you like Dhalgren try Triton next.

I haven't- a friend recommended it so giving it a shot, and I tend to like reading door stoppers.  Enjoying it so far

[Zorral]

23 hours ago, Slurktan said:

Derfel is too bland and magic being a thing in third book all of a sudden I really didn't like.  Also no point to Derfel writing "the story" down, no payoff to that thread.

Sadly, then, you missed a very great deal, particularly regarding the bolded, not to mention one of the primary themes that runs through the entire of the trilogy.