The SCIFI Reader

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams My rating: 5 of 5 stars I'll never not love this book. I have listened to the author-narrated audiobook several times now, and this time I started it simply because I was struggling with another book, the end of a trilogy, and I needed something delightful to bring me joy. Unfortunately, this book brings me so much joy that I couldn't bring myself to return and finish the other. Oh, well. I'm not about to properly review this one today, but I'll note that I had forgotten that we don't actually meet Dirk directly in this book for about the first dozen chapters. Actually, now that I've been reading quite a bit, compared with the first few times that I read this story, I'll add that the way this is structured would usually frustrate me but for some reason it doesn't. I mean the way Adams drops very vague hints right at the end of a chapter before switching to a ...

Ghost Spin by Chris Moriarty My rating: 0 of 5 stars This will be the first book that I DNF in a very long time. I'm usually pretty strict about it, and I generally wont review a book if I didn't get to "The End." Therefore, this is not a review. I did enjoy books one and two, but I realised while reading this last installment that I hadn't paid enough attention to the details and that by this point I was not at all impressed enough. And this is sincerely not a fault of the books. I'm a little distracted and over-committed at the moment and I do plan to come back and give the whole trilogy a proper run. But with that said, this story wasn't grabbing me enough to push on through. I'm quitting so that I can get back to my reading plan for now. View all my reviews

Spin Control by Chris Moriarty My rating: 3 of 5 stars The future-y universe that this trilogy inhabits is absolutely fascinating. It's a time of post-human space colonies, populated with robots, AIs and "constructs." Humans still exist and generally maintain the arrogance of believing themselves the superior species in our local galaxy. However, despite the accompanying loss of "status" there are humans who opt to become "constructs." Constructs are essentially augmented humans. They're people who have been able to afford and acquire non-natural enhancements to their bodies. The way this is achieved is often novel and interesting... picture viruses that are designed to implement changes at the cellular level, to reinforce your skeleton for an example. You've probably noticed the similarity with the Borg "nanobots" on Star Trek, but the idea behind those is far more general, those nanobots seem to w...

Spin State by Chris Moriarty My rating: 4 of 5 stars I've left it too long and forgotten most of what I should say here, but I'm nearing the end of book 2 and as I collect my thoughts about that one, it reminded me of a few things about this one. I think this was written rather well, if you'll excuse a few boldly stated philosophically shaky sentiments. The characters felt real and appealing, their motivations were interesting and the main investigation of the plot is engagingly unravelled. The book took a serious change of pace and style at about two thirds of the way through it. It had felt like a nearly complete story, but after somewhere around that point it carried on with a much more personal series of events. The love story and the details of how all the half-lies and mistrust have worked to shape the eventual outcome. I didn't really get anything out of the quantum vibe. But I think I wasn't really listening properly to th...