The SCIFI Reader

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers My rating: 4 of 5 stars Well, I liked this one but nowhere near as much as the first two. My first impression was that there was too much going on. Book two switched perspective in each subsequent chapter, back and forth between two of the main characters. This story switches around between five or six perspectives and sometimes pretty quickly at the start. I honestly couldn't keep up. I think it eventually stepped down to three main stories but I have to admit that I was still a little lost. So, you'll find some of my review to be fairly vague, and perhaps even mistaken on some of the details. One of the threads seems to follow Captain Ashby's family, they hear the news of his previously told misadventures (from book one) but past their introduction that isn't really an important part of their story. There's another thread about a couple of youngsters trying to get laid. And then anoth...

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers My rating: 5 of 5 stars As it turns out, all of the positive criticisms that you've heard about this book are true. I enthusiastically enjoy reading book reviews but I generally expect to have a very different experience than others readers report having. In this case there were many moments in the story which exactly fit with what I'd heard before starting. Firstly, the generally positive outlook stays firm even through the dire situations that this crew face. I loved that. It's not necessarily that I'm tired of dreary, miserable narratives (unlike many other readers who appear to have had quite enough of that), it was more that it seemed like a fresh and welcome perspective to me. I had also read that this series has much in common with Star Trek and I found that to be delightfully true. In particular many of the social issues presented reminded me of Star Trek and especially ...

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers My rating: 5 of 5 stars This story is just wonderful. The dialogue and the internal monologues contained loads of relatable content as we journeyed with both an AI and a recently freed slave gaining their independence. After the next quote, I'm going to SPOIL the end of book #1 and the first few chapters of this story, you have been warned ⚠️ turn back now if you want to avoid those. "Life is terrifying. None of us have a rule book. None of us know what we’re doing here. So, the easiest way to stare reality in the face and not utterly lose your shit is to believe that you have control over it." At the end of book one Lovey experiences a system reboot to the default operating settings; her personality is lost along with her memories and the biggest casualty is her relationship with Jenks. Since one of the two threads in this book will follow what happens to Lovey after that change, you might e...

The Game of Rat and Dragon by Cordwainer Smith My rating: 3 of 5 stars I'm a dog person, so cats are instinctively the enemy. I tend to avoid stories (and jokes and memes and puns and etc...) about cats. Hence, this is decidedly a bad place for me to start reading Cordwainer Smith. I liked this set up, despite the cats, but I still thought the narrative was plain. Apparently, there's much more to this short story than I would have noticed on my own. Which is one of my favourite things about our Science Fiction Book Club. I enjoyed reading what others got out of this story more than I enjoyed the story. For me, it felt like reading a description about this story was near enough to the same experience as reading the story. Perhaps I'd have enjoyed it more, then, if I hadn't read anything it before starting. Too late now for me, but perhaps not for you, which is why this review says practically nothing of worth. It seems that this story ...

The Institute by Stephen King My rating: 4 of 5 stars Not bad at all. This is only my second King read and it was much better than the first, which was 'Cycle of the Werewolf', (hey, even when I was into horror and vampires I never really got into werewolves). The blurb is apt, so you should read that for the general idea. Here's my short review: 0 - 10%: Boring 10 - 50%: Interesting 50 - 90%: A captivating thrill ride 90 - 100%: Late exposition, which would have worked much better if it came before the climax. Here's the longer version: At the start we meet a bloke called Tim and we follow him around while he kicks some asses in a little country town somewhere in the US. He's a cool dude, a real smooth cat, but I couldn't figure out his connection to the main story. He'll reappear much later, so I guess it was nice to meet him before the shit hit the fan. "Her name was Marjorie Kellerman, and she ran the Brunswick li...

A Good Heretic by Becky Chambers My rating: 5 of 5 stars Mas has a few heretical questions for her mother, thankfully they are happy to answer, but they warn not to ask such questions at school and especially not around the priests. I think none of the info covered here is new to the series and you can consider this short story a series introduction, however I'm starting here so I can't confirm that. At a certain age Mas' people, the Sianat, are infected, a process in which they become plural by taking on a host, called a Whisperer, and in doing so they acquire a mathematical prowess that allows them to understand the fundamental nature of the universe. Or something like that View all my reviews

Lightspeed Magazine: Issue 143, April 2022 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is a super short review for the super short story 'Advice from the Civil Temporal Defense League' by Sandra McDonald, which I read for book club, SFBC on fb. This was mostly just silly. A list of DOs and DONTs and a few things to watch out for when encountering temporal bandits. Apparently full of references that I missed, I found it to be a rather bland read overall. I listened to this on the Lightning Speed podcast and the narration by Judy Young was pretty good though. View all my reviews

Trouble on Titan and two more stories by Henry Kuttner My rating: 4 of 5 stars I thought this was pretty great. Unexpectedly thoughtful, even though it had a few very pulpy ideas innit. The solar system appears to be filled with a variety of alien species. Some of those we hear about are the Zonals, living on Titan and referred to as sub-human. Another director, Udell, has managed to produce a smash hit tv story with the Zonals as the stars, but unfortunately the director is killed in an accident before the filming is completed. Enter Quaid, whom the fine folks at Nine Planets Films enlist to complete the project. The story moves along very quickly and is full of fascinatingly alien descriptions. Overall, I loved this. It's a simple plot with a pretty transparent twist, but a lot of care has gone into making this a very alien adventure. The dialogue certainly shows the age of the story, originally published in 1947 but I didn't pick up on any...

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky My rating: 4 of 5 stars Ok. I liked this story a lot. I may have let it sit for too long after reading it before putting this review together, but I've got plenty of notes so here we go. In parts this is very much an atmospheric horror story. It can be claustrophobic at times and if you're afraid of the dark you might find yourself struggling with some of the journey. As an example of this, at one point the protagonist, Artyom, travels for kilometres from one city (station) to the next without a torch, through the pitch black metro tunnels. He gets freaked out by sounds which he can't determine as his own footsteps or someone else's and even I wasn't sure what was real at this point. Then after switching directions too many times while he hesitated about whether to continue or retreat, he loses completely his sense of direction. Seriously. Imagine it. I've got no problem with the dark, but I do ...

Gateway by Frederik Pohl My rating: 4 of 5 stars This was an excellent story and I really liked the protagonist, Rob, all apart from his attitude towards females which was a major disappointment. There's one particularly unfortunate scenario which I'll comment on briefly below. The story is told in two parts which the narrative flips between. One part is the story of Rob's involvement with Gateway, the other part follows Rob's therapy sessions later in life. The chapters also contain a variety of randomly placed info-dump snippets; things like instruction manuals, classified ads, news reports, and other everyday tidbits of life in this imagined future. I'm not usually a big fan of split narratives, nor of breaking up a narrative with little snippets like this BUT I have to admit that sometimes it works really well and that I think it does so in this story. "Him and his dumb questions. He acts so wise and subjective but what d...

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin My rating: 4 of 5 stars I loved the writing which struck me as profoundly genuine at some points and was never once too shiny or polished but still naturally beautiful. I'm not sure how I feel about the overall direction of the story, I'm not even sure if the main message is anything other than to be careful what you wish for, but I certainly enjoyed the read which explored many themes along the way. Orr believes that when he dreams the world changes so that when he wakes up reality suddenly matches whatever he had dreamed. Paranoid of causing more harm and guilt-ridden for changes that he believes he has inadvertently brought about Orr had been abusing sleep/dream suppressant drugs until he was busted by the authorities and sent to therapy. "Orr had a tendency to assume that people knew what they were doing, perhaps because he generally assumed that he did not." I liked this bit about trying...

Passengers by Robert Silverberg My rating: 3 of 5 stars Imagine if there were aliens that could control at will the bodies and actions of unwilling humans... how would this affect society? How would this change our behaviours and interactions? How would your life plans change if you knew that you could be personally hijacked and manipulated at any time, without warning? These are fairly interesting questions and it's probably a pretty good metaphor for something that went over my head. But instead this story is actually a bit of a love at first sight, or rather, it's a love-after-a-3-day-sex-binge narrative... which is generally not a gripping storyline anyway, but is decidedly a terrible focus for a short (short) story. Well, the other main let down for me is that this doesn't need to be a scifi and given the extremely basic narrative it could as easily have been a fantasy story. Replace the alien passengers, with demonic possessions, or...