Here’s where the Ender saga got tough to get through. Granted Jane (the first artificially intelligent being) is cool and can do a lot, but the Chinese OCD people are a lot annoying and there is too much family drama for my taste. Still it’s Ender and he kicks ass, but this was much more difficult to get through.
Picking up 3000 years after Ender’s Game Ender becomes the Speaker for the Dead in penance for his destruction of the Buggers, another sentient species. He and his sister travel throughout the galaxy looking for a place to save the last Bugger Queen. In so doing they travel to a planet inhabited by Piggies, another sentient species that at the close of their second life turn into trees. The only trouble is the Starways Congress is going to destroy the planet because of a sentient virus.
Not as much of a must read as Ender’s Game, but still ok.
This is one of those books that you have to read, if you like Science Fiction or not. Ender’s Game is the story of what humanity is capable of, both good and bad, the destruction and creation.
This book was not supposed to as enjoyable as it was. I usually dont find this sort of humor humorous… I must be slipping? Although apparently there are 5 books in this trilogy, which i sort of find irritating when i guess this too is supposed to be humorous.
“…a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”
“Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.”
“Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff.”
This is our second bookgroup book for December or January or whenever we get around to it. I have little to say about it because 1) I haven’t read any other Vonnegut (at least not the fiction) so I am told he develops some of these things later but not here and I guess that would have been cooler 2) I guess I am just sick of this genre and while I accept and understand that this is very very well done I can’t get past knowing that it is presently over done.
I just wish I had read this fifty years ago (you know twenty some odd years before I was born).
I understand Neal Stephenson has a bit of a reputation by now for writing books and, er, not stopping. The three volumes of the Baroque Cycle, for instance, have never been read by human eyes, but they have been used successfully in several recent late-night muggings, as blunt weapons.
Zodiac is from before he developed this habit. It’s snappy, fun, full of golden Neal Stephenson wit, and just the right amount of confusing and plot-twisty. Sangamon Taylor is a typical Stephenson hero, a super nerd who makes you wonder why your super-nerdy life isn’t nearly as exciting as his. In this case, it involves zipping hither and thither in Boston Harbor on a crazy custom boat that gives the novel its name, fighting ecological bad guys straight out of “Captain Planet”, having sex and angst with hot, assertive, ultra-granola chicks, and continuing to be surprised at how he almost gets killed like every other chapter.
I don’t know nearly enough about the scientific details to know whether he’s totally getting the chemistry wrong in several places, but hey, the story about Randy doing unix and X11 programming in jail in Cryptonomicon was spot on, so for all I know it’s probably right.
The Second in the Abarat series this is another picture book adventure of Candy in the Land of Arabat. This one gets more into the secrets of Candy and her connection to the crazy place.
