The now irregularly returning Sci-fi book review

Following this post, this contains a review of the sci-fi books I have read lately in no particular order. Book explanations are very light on purpose, since I do not want to spoil the books.

The TLDR: The books I enjoyed the most of this batch, were Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem books. The last two books in the series are not an easy read, but they are worth it, and I enjoyed them despite inconsistent pacing, and huge differences in style and scope.

I also read The Expanse and Rendevouz with Rama, but they are both great, and well known to most, I do not really have anything to add.

Adrian Tchaikovsky – Children of time

The last humans leaving a dying Earth reach a terraformed planet with a spider civilisation which has been helped along by a human scientist. We follow the spiders as their society advances, and the humans as they struggle to survive.

The book was a quick read. I enjoyed the chapters following the Spiders quite a bit, and the humans as as much. The book reminded me quite a bit of Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky.

Martha Wells – The Murderbot Diaries

A security bot (an android overseeing a science expedition) has broken out of the system that constrains its behaviour. As a rogue bot it tries to keep to itself, but that becomes more and more difficult as the expedition makes some unexpected discoveries.

Very quick read. Mostly fine, but I feel like it resorts to breaking into systems as a quick fix for most problems encountered. This gets very predictable and feels too easy a lot of the time.

Ann Leckie – Provenance

A sci-fi mystery, set in the same universe as Ancillary Justice. It explores inheritance, culture collisions, and planetary and interplanetary power struggle from the perspective of a very small player Ingray who has taken a huge gamble to become heir to her adoptive mother.

I enjoyed this. A turn to local small scale politics compared to Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy and not as memorable as those books.

Alfred Bester – The stars My Destination

Interesting exploration of a society where teleportation (jaunting) to anywhere you can visualise within a certain distance is possible. It follows a man who was marooned on a spaceship, and who when saved goes after the crew of the ships that left him behind.

Well pulled off. In general I think abilities like jaunting are a bit too powerful, and typically lead to silly logical problems very easily. The Stars my Destination, probably has those, but they are not very apparent.

Alistair Reynolds – Revelation Space

Revelation space is a galactic scale space-opera where we follow the Lighthugger ship Nostalgia for Infinity, which Ultranaut crew is looking for someone to treat their captain from an illness. That someone is an archeologist studying the death of a long dead race called the Amarantin on the planet Resurgam.

Solid space-opera on a galactic scale. Contains an interesting explanation for the Fermi Paradox.

Yoon Ha Lee – Ninefox Gambit

Explores a universe where technology is based on populations following specific patterns. In the society we follow, their technology is based on the populations belief in the imperial calendar and the associated culture. Calendrical rot (heresy) must be avoided at all costs.

Very hard to follow initially, and sometimes very confusing, but I sort of enjoyed it. It was very hard to tell if it is consistent with itself, since the concepts are so foreign. I think I have to read it again to form a better opinion.

Kim Stanley Robinson – Aurora

Humanity has sent an expedition (generation ship) to a possibly habitable planet around Tau Ceti. The mission is to colonise this planet after traveling for more then a hundred years. We follow the humans and the ships AI as they struggle to survive on the way.

Robinson writes in his very (maybe overly) detailed style, with lots of details on environmental systems and specific challenges faced by the biomes on the ship. In some cases it works well, in others it feels a bit like the author researched this, and so it has been put in regardless if it fits or not.

Cixin Liu – Three Body Problem trilogy

It is hard to write anything about this book without spoiling too much. In the first book, we initially follow a Chinese police officer as he investigates the deaths of several scientists. These are connected to interstellar messages sent by a astrophysicist several years earlier.

The next two books follow up on the events of the first, but they are very different. The scope increases a lot as the books go on. The trilogy (especially book 2 and 3) is quite critical of human society, and explores how we fail to make good collective decisions as a species. It is mostly ok reasoned and well integrated in the story, so it never feels out of place.

The series is great, and I recommend it to everyone. Some parts are a bit slow and feel very obscure at first, but they are well worth the payoff.J

BitBreeds stand with the humans; we won’t let it slide.

Aliens

With the discovery of a possibly habitable planet around one of our closest stellar neighbours, it has become clear that sooner rather then later, there will be aliens and UFOs around.

A new hope

This summer, UFO Hunter, a simulator for waging war against UFOs was revived and released to the public.

Our consultant getting accustomed to the simulator
Our consultant getting accustomed to the simulator.

Since the future of humanity rests on the shoulders of this simulator andĀ spacex, we have called back one of our most important assets (a veteran from future wars carefully regrown from DNA retrieved in theĀ Artifact) to perform a thorough test of the simulator.

The force awakens

In the spirit ofĀ Shi Qiang, Lou Ji and Thomas Wade, we at BitBreeds haveĀ declared for the humans. Like our spacex and UFO Hunter friends, we have set our sight on the stars, and we are going for the goal.

What will you do?

Sci-fi book review

Last year i got a kindle for Christmas. This is a review of all the science-fiction books it contains at this moment, with the exception of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Joe Haldeman’s Forever War (This post is already way too long and these are pretty well known books). For each book/series I’ll try and give a very short description followed by my thoughts.

The TLDR; these books provide a balanced diet ;-).

If you only have time to read one book, read Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice.

Not just the TLDR

These are the books I have read in no particular order:

  • Jason M. Hough – The dire earth cycle

    Someone (not humans) has built a space elevator in Darwin Australia. After some years a disease either kills or turns everyone into zombies except in a safe zone around the space elevator.

    The dire earth cycle is a quick read, and an entertaining one. It was way better then I expected. Sometimes it goes into these very long and meaningless action sequences; you can safely skim those.

  • Ann Leckie – Ancillary Justice

    The story follows an AI fragment from the Radch starship Justice of Torenā€. This fragment is all that is left after the starship was destroyed. While Justice of Toren plans revenge on its destructor, we get flashbacks to its previous life as a ship AI in service of the Radch.

    I do not have enough positive things to say about this book. The main character is extremely well written. The pace is good. I’m really looking forward to the third book in the series. If you are going to read it, do not read about the book first, it might spoil some parts which it is worth not to have spoiled.

  • Ann Leckie – Ancillary Sword

    Not as good as the first book, but still great.

  • Kim Stanley Robinson – Mars trilogy

    We follow the first 100 colonists of Mars as they colonize and attempt to terraform mars.

    Of all the books on this list, this series really stands out as different. Most of the time the book follows the everyday work of the 100 colonists as they work, scheme, and daydream. There is no good and evil here. While the political views of the author shines through it never feels like preaching. On the negative side the book has travel descriptions that makes the travel descriptions in Lord of the Rings feel like short strolls. Still the series is one of my favourites.

  • Kim Stanley Robinson – Icehenge

    Someone made a huge monument on pluto, why?

    Set in the same universe as the Mars Trilogy. It follows some of the same style, but the pace was a bit faster. The story has a lot of references to the Mars Trilogy, so it might be better to read that first.

  • Kim Stanley Robinson – The Memory of Whiteness

    We follow the master of ‘Holywelkins Orchestra’ on its tour from the outer to the inner solar system. On the way it becomes clear that the orchestra is immensely powerful. And also some cult controls Mercury and therefore the power distribution to the rest of the solar system.

    That probably made no sense. The book seemed to make sense (and was enjoyable) for the first half, then it stopped making sense. Too weird for me.

  • Vernor Vinge – Marooned in Realtime

    In the future humanity figures out a way to suspend time in bobbles (allowing time travel to the future). The main character is unwillingly suspended and returns to a worlds where human civilisation is gone and only a few humans (bobblers from varying degrees of civilisation) are left, including his suspender.

    Vernor Vinge does a very good job with his concepts. He introduces the rules of his universe and then follows them. This book is short and to the point. No infinite traveling on Mars; no zombies. A very enjoyable read.

  • Vernor Vinge – The Peace War

    In this book we follow the world just after the bobbles (see previous book) were invented, and are discovered to be finite stasis fields.

    I enjoyed Marooned in realtime more, but it is well worth reading.

  • Vernor Vinge – A fire upon the deep

    Our galaxy is divided in zones that allow different sorts of intelligence and technology to arise and be used. We follow humanity which has traveled to the Beyond where AI and FTL travel is possible ( Earth is located in the Slow zone where these things are not possible). The outer zone is called the Transcend, where the beings are basically gods. Trying to enter the Transcend from the Beyond, some humans fall into a trap and release a being which threatens all life in the beyond. A ship escapes the trap with information on how to counter the being, but strands on a world with wolf like creatures with group-minds.

    Very interesting concepts and quite well executed. A lot of the book is written from the perspective of packs which are group-minds of several individual wolfs. For me these chapters were initially hard to follow, since I do not think it was explicitly explained that these were group-minds.

  • Vernor Vinge – A Deepness in the Sky

    This book takes place in the Slow zone (no FTL). Two human space traveling civilisations discover a world which orbits around a star that is only active for one year every 250 years. On this world lives a species of spiders which will soon reach space. The two human civilisations clash over the right to trade with/enslave this species. The clash leaves them both crippled though, and they need to cooperate while waiting for the star to wake and get new resources from the Spiders.

    I liked this book more then A fire upon the deep. There are some parts about layered complex software growing over time (they have very old software on their spaceships, like if glibc would be used several thousand years in the future), which to an enterprise programmer almost feels way too believable.

  • Christian Cantrell – Containment

    Arik must figure out artificial photosynthesis, or his not yet born child will cause the colony he belongs to on Venus to eventually run out of of oxygen.

    I was really surprised by this book. It has some great plot twists, and was very difficult to put down. I am currently in the process of reading the sequel Equinox. These books both has very brief encounters with zombies. Thankfully very short, but they would be better without.

  • Mike Resnick – Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge

    Alien archeologists come to earth to excavate after humanity is long gone.

    Short and very enjoyable read. Just read it.

  • Jon Scalzi – Old Man’s War universe

    Humanity has reached space and has settled several planets, but it is in conflict with several alien species over territory. This conflict is handled by the CDF (Colonial Defense Forces) who is in constant need of new soldier on a very deadly battlefield. These soldiers are recruited from an overpopulated Earth where the CDF controls the only access point to space. To keep the stream of soldiers the CDF largely keeps Earth in the dark of their technology and stategies. The series explores the conflicts with the alien and the political struggles resulting from this situation from the perspective of the soldiers and political figures caught in it.

    The overall quality of this series is great. If you liked Starship Troopers you will most likely like this. I do not think any single book of the series is as good as Ancillary Justice, but I read every new book in the series.

  • Conclusion

    If you only have time to read one book, you can not go wrong with Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice.

    Polar bears, not zombies!