Our reads May 2020

Hope you are all able to do at least some reading.in these extraordinary times.Take care!

Dusty's TBR for May.
Philip Wylie - When Worlds Collide ✔
Donald A Wollheim - Secrets of Saturn's Rings✔
Theodore Sturgeon - Venus Plus X
Catherine Fisher - Obsidian Mirror
Gary Paulsen - Hatchet
Diana Xarissa - The Appleton Case✔
Sue Coe -X ✔

Intended to finish When Worlds Collide and Secrets of Saturn's Rings for a challenge but it all went pearshaped. My nephew got very ill with Covid 19,an ex neighbour died of it 2 weeks ago,and I lost my brother in law to this horrific killer disease two days ago. Reading is low priority right now :0(

>3 dustydigger: I'm sorry for your losses. I hope that your reading brings you distraction, if not comfort.

I finished Like a boss which was a really good read. While the plot and setting are totally different, something about it made me think of K. B. Wagers' space operas. Both series have the same kind of touch but thoughtful heroine who is thrown into a situation out of her depth and forced to form alliances and use her smarts to save herself and the world. The Windswept books are much smaller scale, being based on just one planet, but the blend of humour and action is similar.

Now I've started Escaping Exodus, which is space opera set within the body of a giant space-faring beast.

>3 dustydigger: My condolences for your losses. You are getting it bad.

Beginning a re-read of Ursula le Guin's The Dispossessed for my SF&F book group. Haven't read it in years so looking forward to seeing how it stands the test of time.

>3 dustydigger: I am so sorry to hear of your loss. Take care.

>3 dustydigger: I am so sorry for your losses. I hope your nephew recovers and nothing else befalls you.

Still reading Docile by K. M. Szpara. Not sure how much longer I'll stick with it because nothing seems to be happening though it looks like something might.

>9 seitherin: ...nothing seems to be happening though it looks like something might.

Yea! That is a hope that brought me to the end of several disappointing books. I hope your expectation is met.

Happy weekend.

>3 dustydigger: Thinking of you. Take care.

>3 dustydigger:
Sorry to hear about your COVID losses. Hatchet might be the best choice on your list, right now: a great story of survival in adverse circumstances -- and being YA, perhaps less complex or challenging.

Continuing with my re-read of the Chanur books. I had meant to spread them out with other things between, but I'd forgotten that #s 2,3 & 4 run directly into each other, to the extent of ending with "continued in _____" messages at the end. I'm finding them as enjoyable as before, though.

>3 dustydigger: That is terrible news. I'm so sorry to hear it. Strength to you & yours.

>3 dustydigger: Damn, that's tough. Be careful not to minimize the toll this is taking on you. Physical distance but don't social distance in times like this.

Pulled the plug on Docile. It wasn't going anywhere fast and there really wasn't much to like about it or the characters. Going back to fantasy with Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay.

So much for "herd immunity:" very sorry to hear about your losses.

As for my genre reading this month much will depend on what e-book holds come through. Rosewater Insurrection, Icehenge and Galactic Empires are likely candidates though.

>3 dustydigger: So sorry to hear this! My thoughts are with you and your family.

Finished The Collapsing Empire and Furious Gulf, neither of which I cared for, halfway through The Road to Corlay (with Piper at the start), which I'm enjoying.

Reading Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett....

I am almost finished with Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, I guess I am late to the game on this one.. 200 pages in and so far a fun, light read.

Finished The Dispossessed and it stands up well 40-odd yrs later. No shoot-em-ups or wild chases, but meticulous world-building to slowly uncover the strains and contradicitions of two different societies. The sere planet of Annares is built on an egalitarian anarchist world view, but of course contradictions crop up and it is sometimes inflexible and constricting. The lush capitalist world if Urras is prejudiced and unequal but allows scope for the privileged few to develop and share ideas fully.
This is thoughtful, adult SF that wears it's age lightly.

>23 SChant: I recently read and loved The Dispossessed and I agree that it's thoughtful and worth reading... but I absolutely don't think that it would depict sexism or sexual assault in the same way if it were published now. The portrayal of Urras's trappings of gender as erotic was ... a choice, and it was very jarring to have the protagonist's sexual assault serve as the plot's main turning point. I don't think these aspects are irredeemable or anything -- there's some subtlety there, if the reader wants to engage with it -- but they absolutely scream 70's sci fi.

>24 Kanarthi: I agree with your point, and I think Le Guin would have agreed with it too - she certainly reviewed her own mindset at the time in later analysis of The Left Hand of Darkness, but the essence of The Dispossessed is to change and grow with every experience, not to stagnate into one set of assumptions, and I think that is what Shevek is doing. That one experience is a culmination of a whole set of experiences that made him understand the realites of Urras and his complicity with it.

>24 Kanarthi: & >25 SChant:
I read The Dispossessed when it was published, a long time ago, and need to read it again. I was not very enamoured with it at the time but I believe my more mature state of mind (I am much older) may help me see things in the story that I missed during my earlier reading. Your posts have urged me to push this book a bit further up Mount TBR.

>26 pgmcc: Are you much older now than when The Dispossessed was published? Good grief, man, what happened?

Regarding The Dispossessed, here is a video featuring two of my favorite authors... Mark W. Tiedemann interviews Ursula K. Le Guin discussing The Dispossessed. It's a bit long, and the audio is rather low but it's a worthwhile watch for anyone interested in analyzing the book.

EtA: YouTube Link

>3 dustydigger: First of all, let me add my condolences to all the others here for your losses and rough times.

While I don't read very much science fiction these days, I do enjoy following along this thread to see what others are reading and listening in on the conversations. About five years ago, I read and very much enjoyed Hardwired the first book in Walter Jon Williams' series of the same name. I finally decided to read the series' second book, Solip: System but thought I'd better go back and reread Hardwired first. I just finished that reread and will say that I enjoyed it the second go-round almost as much. There is one review here on LT that points out that while the book and writing were fresh and original at the time of first publication, by now many of the plot points and characterizations have become standard fare in the genre (sub-genre?). Anyway, since I hardly read any cyberpunk, I didn't have that issue. I'm looking forward to continuing with the series with Solip: System and then onward, hopefully more often than once every five years! The following paragraph is excerpted from my original comments from five years ago:

I did find one thing amusing. The book was written in 1986, and imagines all sorts of cyber-based technology, including human-technological interactions, but there are no cell phones and the characters often pull up at public phones in order to speak with each other with minimized chance of being traced. I mean, Maxwell Smart was making phone calls into his shoe in the 1960s, so it's not like the idea hadn't already been thought of. But, look, I'm just saying this was amusing to me, not calling attention to something I found to be a flaw in the story. If Williams didn't foresee the ubiquitous nature of cell phones in what for him at that point was the near future, so be it. I couldn't have imagined any of the rest of it, let alone have written any of it.

>29 rocketjk: Sometimes, the story transcends the absence of tech that happened after the book was written; sometimes it doesn't. I read Connie Willis' Doomsday Book, an although it was written before we had mobiles but set in about five years' time (from now), there's a flu pandemic in locked-down Oxford and no-one can get a phone line out, or contact someone on a fishing trip in the Scottish Highlands because they're away from a fixed phone line. But now - well, in lockdown we might well find the mobile network swamped and locked up, and someone on a Highland fishing trip may well be off-grid even if they have their mobile with them.

But Greg Bear's Forge of God, written in the late 1980s and set in the mid/late 1990s, has a few people with brick telephones and almost no Internet. The shortcoming is all the more obvious because Bear was unlucky enough to be writing on the very cusp of technological change and his setting is not so far ahead that the new tech would have been out-dated by the time of the story. At one point, a character has to go out and buy a digital copy of the Library of Congress, and it costs thousands of dollars and comes on a few hundred computer disks. Ultimately, it doesn't spoil the story (an end-of-the-world tale) but the reader stumbles over these things nonetheless.

>25 SChant: Yeah, it's definitely an element that makes more sense if you reflect on it a bit, and I don't think it makes the novel weaker, but it definitely makes it of its time. Anyway, everyone should go read The Dispossessed. No one can match Le Guin for cultures that feel so sociologically realistic.

>28 ScoLgo: I'm not able to see the link? I love Le Guin's depiction of Annares which I found subtle and realistic, but in contrast I found Urras to be a blunt allegory, aside from some commentary on academic life, so an interview on the book could be interesting to reveal layers I overlooked.

Meanwhile I just finished Severance, a pandemic book that I picked up for predictable reasons. I don't think it's especially good as a science fiction novel, but it's not a bad literary novel. I especially liked its focus on routines and memories, which certainly jives with my experience right now in shelter-in-place. And its depiction of a deserted New York was eerie and plausible.

I managed to find an ebook copy of Ancillary Justice available at my library so I am currently reading that. A bit confusing at first but at about a quarter of the way through, I am enjoying it a lot (while still trying to figure out exactly what/who the main character is!).

>31 Kanarthi: Sorry! I just added the link to the post. I got so busy checking touchstones that I forgot to include the link (*facepalm*).

Finished The Road to Corlay and started Conscience Interplanetary.

>27 anglemark: I have been trying to work that out. You have seen me. I still look like a child. (Or is that "behave like..."?)

I hope you are both keeping well.

>22 davisfamily: I just finished reading that book as well but I never even considered it to be science fiction. Interesting!

>3 dustydigger: That is a lot to handle and I'm not surprised your reading suffered. I feel very fortunate that the virus has not touched anyone I know and that I live in a place that seems to be flattening the curve quite well. Non-essential businesses opened up this week or at least they have permission to open. Some have not done so yet because of shortages of PPE and cleaning products. Sadly our libraries are still closed so I am reading what I have on hand.

>35 pgmcc: We are in good health. I hope you are doing OK as well!

>36 gypsysmom: I agree. It's more code breaking, technology and the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, but I enjoyed reading it.

Currently reading Raising the Stones, which is a bit more Vance-like than Grass. Annoyingly, the SG Gateway Kindle edition has mangled the text somewhat around page 200 and there are several paragraphs missing, perhaps even whole pages.

Adding The Last Emperox by John Scalzi to my reading rotation.

>40 iansales: How annoying!

I loved Ancillary Justice and dove straight into Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy!

>40 iansales: I have a hardcover here of Raising the Stones and am willing to scan you any missing pages. PM me if I can be of any assistance.

>44 ScoLgo: Thanks. Might take you up on that, since it's an important info-dump that's one of the mangled bits.

>38 anglemark: Glad to hear you are well. We are well too. Eight weeks working from home. Today I get to go to one of our facilities for a workshop. A micro-miracle has happened; my clothes still fit despite the COVID Kilos.

>45 iansales: Be happy to oblige. I have a flat-bed scanner but no OCR software so... I can do images or PDF, whichever you prefer. Send an e-mail to scolgo at gmail dot com with the section you are looking for, (page numbers may not match up), and I will reply with attachment.

Finished The Rosewater Insurrection yesterday evening and had a more satisfying time with it than the first book; less time spent with a jerk POV character, less use of flashback, and some answers as to how Thompson intends to manage a scenario which was, if you want to be blunt, just "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" set in a future Nigeria.

>30 RobertDay:

Not true about Doomsday Book being written before mobile phones. It was published in 1992, and I guess written the year before. Analogue mobile phones (1G) had been around for quite a few years by that time. Digital cellular phones (2G) using GSM had been introduced in some European countries in 1991. The UK's first service was from Vodaphone and also in 1991 but we kept using analogue a bit longer than Europe.

I have to assume the mobile phone thing (and the problems with landlines) is a Connie Willis thing. Her aversion to mobile phones (in her fiction) is quite well known.

I have just finished reading The Book of Koli by Mike Carey. This is a post-apocalyptic story set in the Upper Calder Valley. Also the first part of a trilogy.

>49 andyl: Well, there you are. I'd just assumed it was a historical thing.

In other news, I've finished Titus Groan, and after an interlude with some aviation history, I'm going to read Exceptions and Deceptions by Cliff Burns, a name that may be known to some (many?) of you.

Finished Conscience Interplanetary (ugh) and started Walton's Starlings.

Currently reading Circe (which I'm really liking) and Vita Nostra (which I'm becoming increasingly dubious about).

Enjoying Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Diving Into the Wreck - uncomplicated space-opera.

I gave up on Elizabeth Hand's Waking the Moon. I gave it well past halfway through before tapping out. Was not engaging with the writing style, the characters, or the shifting viewpoints, (first-person to third-person omniscient). The gory violence also didn't help my enjoyment as it just came across as overly gratuitous.

Having similar engagement issues with Doris Lessing's Shikasta at the moment - but I'm only about 10% into it. This one is not violent and has not shifted perspectives yet but... it's very dry and, so far, seems to be mostly a huge infodump. We'll see how it goes...

Also making progress on The Steerswoman's Road, a 2-book omnibus. The first volume took a while to draw me in but it picked up toward the end. Hoping volume 2, The Outskirter's Secret does the same.

Next up? Probably KSR's 2312, for which I am currently in the Overdrive hold line. It will be my first KSR and I'm looking forward to finally sampling his catalog.

>55 ScoLgo:
I read a couple of those Doris Lessing books back then, and found them so boring I've never gone back.

>55 ScoLgo:, >56 rshart3: I've not read most of them since they came out; they certainly aren't science fiction as we know it. But I do have a particularly soft spot for The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, which (apart from being quite short) is a fairly self-contained story, inspired by tales of heroically failed polar expeditions. It informed a lot of my thinking about the nature of representative democracy, which is not the sort of thing I've taken away from a lot of other SF books. Philip Glass also turned it into an opera.

>55 ScoLgo: I had a go at Shikasta years ago, and it was like being beaten about the head by a Le Guin novel. I've got all five of the books - signed first editions too, but currently in storage - and have always wanted to give them a go.

The Steerswoman books are great. The whole series is one great puzzle. Unfortunately, the final book has yet to appear, and may not do so for many years.

>56 rshart3: I read one of them at universiy and I'm still asleep snoring. But to be honest, me at 56 isn't the same person as me at 22, so I should probably give them another chance.

>56 rshart3: Me, at 66 is still finding them a hard slog. When I was younger I was interested in their links to Sufi philosophy particularly the works of Idries Shah who she studied with. My ex-wife went to a few of their study groups.

I may eventually get around to those books. I did read Lessing's Briefing for a Descent into Hell, and liked it quite a bit. It did have some sfnal elements.

Speaking of fantastic fiction with literary aspirations I basically finished with Vita Nostra yesterday evening. While the novel initially has atmosphere going for it I had to go to other sources for an explanation of just what happened. I need to mull over the last fifty or so pages a bit more but I'm pretty sure that the authors aren't as profound as they think they are. To give them credit they're trying to give a serious representation of a personal and spiritual transformation that would be almost incomprehensible; maybe it read better in the original Russian.

I might add that I read some Lessing back in the day, but that day was decades ago. What I recall doesn't make me want to revisit the experience.

Regarding my current read of Shikasta... it's over. Abandoned at about 1/3 of the way in. This makes two DNF's in a row... unusual for me as I generally finish most books I begin.

Going to focus on finishing The Outskirter's Secret. Not sure what DTB I'll be picking up after.

>64 ScoLgo: I have read and enjoyed other books by Lessing. Not just the sf. The Golden Notebook is a stone cold classic and worth reading.

>65 iansales: Thanks. I generally give authors more than one chance and will keep an eye out for The Golden Notebook. Appreciate the recommendation.

EtA: Looks like the e-book is available via Overdrive. Have added to my Wish List.

Finished Starlings, started A Dream of Kinship.

Finished Circe yesterday evening and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Next up is Omega Point, a bit of cyberpunk fluff which I've picked up and put down a number of times in the past.

I'm about to start reading The doomed city.

Now reading The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman

Hi folks,I'm back.Pretty rotten few weeks,losing loved ones to the virus.Thanks for all the kind comments.
Mr Dusty was much affected,he looked upon my brother in law as a true brother and friend,and he has been very depressed and needed lots of support.
The funeral at the cremotorium was pretty dire,though as one of the shielding I didnt attend. Sealed coffin,masks,only 10 attendees. They had to arrive in different vehicles unless sharing accommodation. We are at the height of the virus in our area,the deaths just stubbornly refuse to go down. Our service was the 14th of the day,at 4 pm,with four more still to go . All the seats have been removed,and people had to stand and social distance.Awful.
Anyway,we are pulling ourselves together to carry on.
I actually finished a book! It took 3 weeks but When Worlds Collide was very enjoyable. If thats the right word for a book about the total destruction of earth when two wandering planet come and destroy the moon and then the earth. Very dated,clunky stilted dialogue,and quite laden with musings on ethics,morality,religion and the purpose of man,but the descriptions of the earth's last days as men build spaceships to leave amid the destruction were quite exciting.
All the terrible death and destruction certainly put our real time woes into some sort of perspective,but I think I will avoid that field of SF for a while! :0)
Next up will be Theodore Sturgeon Venus Plus XHmm,feeling a little uneasy about this one. The blurb makes it seem a bit hippy-ish (written 1960,so perhaps that tag isnt right.) I get some of the vibes I got from Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land which I hated,so here's hoping I like it better than that! lol.
Anyway,I usually find enough in any Sturgeon novel to carry me through. Love his humanity and love of nature,so we'll see.

Even "When Worlds Collide" seems to have a sequel, so there's always hope. Sorry to hear that you've lost loved ones to Covid-19.

Here the libraries are opening again! Nothing's the same as before, though. The library is now one large one-way street, so we have to go out through the emergency exit. But we can check books in and check books out and who needs more than that?

>71 dustydigger: Stranger in a Strange Land was adopted by 1960s counter-culture, but I always got a 1940s vibe from the book. Yes, there were drugs and orgies in it, all very 1960s, but Valentine Michael Smith is really little different to a sideshow freak from one of those travelling carnivals of a few decades earlier.

This is a book I should probably look at again, having read it as a teen in the 1970s, but not until after I read some more of the recent biographical studies of Heinlein. That is to say; when did Heinlein become a crank again?

>73 iansales:

The forties sideshow element is a deliberate inclusion; Heinlein was significantly influenced by Nightmare Alley.

>74 Shrike58: That is to say; when did Heinlein become a crank again?

In Heinlein's later novels, from 1980 on, he was effectively released from editorial controls, and this definitely had some negative effects on his craft. This same consequence was inflicted posthumously on Stranger in a Strange Land when the so-called "original, uncut" edition was issued 30 years after the actual first edition, reverting to the author's first submitted draft and disposing of Heinlein's own constructive edits.

Edited to add: As far as unusual political opinions and axe-grinding are concerned, these are evident in virtually all of his novels, save for a few "juveniles" of his earliest post-pulp period.

>73 iansales: That reminds me of Ted Sturgeon's intriguing The Dreaming Jewels set in a carnival with a freak show.Damn,but that man could write. He can get under your skin,frighten you,look at the world from odd angles,and just give you high entertainment melded with serious food for thought.

At the moment I am doing an ''X''challenge in my Alphabet challengeand am nostalgically revisiting a early Stan Lee graphic, X Men Pretty brutalist artwork,dark and heavy.,but enjoyable.

Added The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2019 and Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 160 to my reading rotation.

Currently reading Bridge 108, which seems very familiar, probably because the opening seems to be the novella The Enclave, which I read a couple of years ago.

Finished up Omega Point (B) this morning and have a better sense of why I had a hard time sticking to this book and wrapping it up; splitting the party always works out so well. Particularly when much of the charm comes from the main characters interacting with each other. Still, the author does stick the landing and I'd read another story set in this milieu.

Just finished one of Iain Banks' mainstream novels The Steep Approach to Garbadale; next up is Stephenson's Snow Crash. (Yes, my TBR pile IS that big!)

>81 RobertDay: Is this your first time reading Snow Crash?

>82 pgmcc: Yes, though I've already read The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon.

>83 RobertDay: I have yet to read The Diamond Age.

Enjoy Snow Crash.

I'm finally reading All systems red, better late than never! It's good fun so far. And I've also started Ingathering The complete people stories by Zenna Henderson.

I'm reading Parable of the Talents for the first time, after completing a reread of Parable of the Sower. Whoa, how did I not read this before. Talents seems to be the better book, and uncannily timely.

I like to refer to my TBR "pile" as the Maginot Line; particularly since it includes a lot of large books devoted to military, naval and aviation hardware (that really should be up on shelves)!

The series does get more complicated as time goes on, then sort of goes off the rails.

Finished Killing Gravity and started Light of Impossible Stars. I am liking this one better than the first two so far.

>83 RobertDay: Snowcrash is hands down the best of all those works IMOHO - got me interested again in SF years ago.

>83 RobertDay: Snowcrash is hands down the best of all those works IMOHO - got me interested again in SF years ago.

Someone mentioned The Last Emperox from the Scalzi series above. I know I have read at least one in the series and enjoyed that. Have some "down time" coming up will check on availability at local libraries.

Finished The Last Emperox by John Scalzi. Enjoyed it. Added The Book of Koli by M. R. Carey to my rotation.

Started a fantasy for my SF&F reading group - The Killing Moon by N. K. Jemisin, and an SF novella for me - To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers.