The SCIFI Reader

Writers of the Future, Vol 34 by L. Ron Hubbard My rating: 3 of 5 stars Ugh... don't judge me. In fact, I'm here because I don't want to judge LRH's writing by my opinion of him. I hate cancel culture and today I decided to give LRH's scifi a try, based on a friend's suggestion. So for now, that's all I'm here to review, but the publication appears to be promoting new unpublished authors so I would like to read and review all of their stories at some point. 'The Death Flyer' by LRH. (3-stars) Well, this is not my typical fare. We have a story about a phantom train, not very original in concept but I must admit written quite nicely. Simple but very descriptive language. I haven't partaken of very much paranormal fiction since childhood but this didn't seem to have anything particularly surprising about it. I enjoyed the scene building at the start more than anything else, I think. Unfortunately this was ...

Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Atoners are an alien species that have taken up residence on our moon. They are recruiting humans as "witnesses" to travel out to new planets on their behalf. In her candidacy interview, Camilla O'Kane (Cam) asks two questions which the interviewers choose not to answer. Why send humans? And, what are y'all atoning for? Cool set up and I was very quickly hooked. Before long this is feeling pretty star trek, we have rules-guided first contact scenarios wrought with cultural misunderstandings that are simultaneously helped and hindered by translator limitations. Take for example, the following quoted internal monologue, as one of the aliens we meet considers our new friend Cam: "She gazed at him from those dark eyes that were Pulari and not Pulari, and Aveo suddenly saw that he would never understand her. Not if he studied her for a thousand years. He would never fol...

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers My rating: 4 of 5 stars “It doesn’t require pockets, it just fits in one.” The story picks up more or less exactly where the last dropped off. Our Monk pal, Dex, is taking their new robo-buddy, Mosscap, into town to meet the locals and, hopefully, get some proper answers to its questions. "Mosscap had come to meet humanity as a whole; that was who Dex had informed. It made sense, Dex supposed, that everyone had written back." After a little fanfare, Mosscap gets a chance to ask the locals, "What do you need?" Which is naturally met with some polite but bemused laughter from the crowd. Mosscap gets to helping humans with some of their trivial chores and makes it into an opportunity to learn what it can about us, while hitting the books in its downtime allows it to start pondering the nature of its own consciousness. "...complex intelligence and self-awareness arise out of an externa...

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the shortest book that ever took me all day to read. But that's my fault, I kept pressing start and then getting distracted and having to start again. I think the setting for this is great. Technology somehow woke up and shortly after decided to part ways with humanity. This leaves our philosophising monks firstly stumped as to how their calculators suddenly became conscious and secondly bewildered as to why the living tech would not want to partake in human society. So, in some fashion it is agreed that humans may have exactly half of the Earth to use while the remainder of species, including the fledgling tech, would remain unmolested on the other half. Wouldn't you love to see how that map was drawn up?! But it's not about the politics of that decision, it's about the maturity of it and of the respectful actions that followed it. We meet Dex serving as a G...

WWW: Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer My rating: 4 of 5 stars This review will SPOIL books one and two in the next paragraph. I loved book three and thought it was easily the best of the set. One of the things that I was reminded of at the start of the last book and again at the start of this book is just how little time has passed in the series so far. In the course of just a few weeks Caitlin gains sight, Webmind emerges, communication between the two is established, various international intelligence agencies monitor the interaction, Webmind reveals himself to the world and the US defence secretary runs an operation to terminate Webmind. Not to mention all of the events occurring on the peripheral. It's easy to think that months at least have passed but the speed of events is phenomenal and probably appropriate to the digital plot. I was enjoying the relationships and such in the first two books but I must admit that it was distracting me in this bo...

The Dimensioneers by Doris Piserchia My rating: 4 of 5 stars The blurb calls our protagonist "the orphan," so The Orphan it is. The blurb also describes that by mind linking with her mutated lion, (named Wyala), The Orphan can jump across worlds through a fourth dimension. We meet our new friends The Orphan and Wyala while they are being hunted by some Kriff who chase the pair through a dimension jump (referred to as a "skip") and the action is immediately cranked up to ten. The story is consistently fast paced and action packed, although the stakes vary from trouble at school to saving Earth. "In spite of my good intentions I didn’t remain a good little orphan for long. Perhaps if the weather had been decent; I don’t know" The Orphan is a feisty type. She's short, smart and has a biting attitude. We find out that she lives in an orphanage/boarding school arrangement and that skipping through the dimension pipes has ...

Around the World in 72 Days by Nellie Bly My rating: 4 of 5 stars Nellie Bly is exactly the kind of mighty woman that we all love. When she proposes her idea to her publishers she is hastily met with the rebuke that, if the trip were at all possible it would require a man to undertake it. To paraphrase her reply, she said: "Very well, you send a man today and I shall depart tomorrow for another newspaper and I shall still beat your man back." Apparently this can-do attitude was enough to eventually convince her superiors that she was up to the task and soon afterwards she was off and away on her ground breaking trip. The story of her trip is told with delightful humour. An early example is when Bly discusses how much sweeter sleep is when it threatens to make you miss an engagement. Just like Phileas, Nellie suffers delays and risks taking several detours yet still manages to eventually beat her ETA. On her journey she takes the opportunity...