Lowly’s Book Blog

Two hundred fifty years from now what is the Earth going to be like? How and where are humans going to live? These are just some of the questions addressed by McAuley in this thought provoking scifi novel.

Earth has been ravaged by climate change and the people remaining hold onto a pre-industrial idealistic ‘religion’ based on Gaia. Those people who left the Earth during the disruption have colonised the solar system and created incredible new technologies to manage the various environments. The colonists are also very dependent on genetic manipulation to develop various flora and fauna to share their new worlds. Inevitably these two philosophies come into conflict.

Set on several of the moons of Saturn, this novel looks at the lives of a few different characters – a young woman who escaped a prison city on Earth, a spy posing as a diplomat, and any number of talented scientists. Through the eyes of these various people the conflict is explained and when war comes all of them are critical to the eventual outcome.

Generally I loved the book, although many readers would find the pace too slow. This is not your typical space opera action adventure. There will never be a film made of this. This novel will challenge the reader to think, not only because of the scientific terminology and biological concepts, but also because a good portion of the novel examines the political strategies that happen in the background during the lead-up to war.

I would rank The Quiet War with some of the best scifi that I have ever read.

I read this book about a year ago. I wasn’t inspired to review it then, and even less so now. 

Set in the distant future, Earth is facing imminent disaster. The only solution is to pack up all of humanity and move to a new planet. All goes well, until it is discovered that the ship carrying all pet dogs has gone missing. An entrepreneur makes millions selling robotic dogs, but they are not the same. So the Clark children head off to find their beloved pet…

This book is the basis for an award winning animated television series. I can see the scope for a superb adventure series. But reading the book is a bit like watching Saturday morning television. Time has been wasted and nothing gained.

Don’t believe the cover of this book. The cover and blurb certainly indicate a gothic horror. The media release calls it a gothic fairytale. But once you have moved past the first segment of the book it is very clear that this is actually a scifi set just a few years ago.

Doctor Victor Hoppe grew up in a small village near the border of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. After many years away working in research at a university in Bonn, he suddenly returns home with three children, identical triplets. He hires a retired kinder teacher to look after the boys while he works from home as a GP. The woman, Charlotte, grows to love the boys, but is taken from them suddenly. From there the narrative moves between exposition of Victor’s childhood and the origins of the three boys.

I have called this scifi, simply because there is a great deal of science content. As you might guess in the first few pages, the boys are all clones of the father, complete with the harelip that caused Victor’s mother to send him away. Once the explanations begin in section 2, the science starts getting fairly heavy. If you plan to make sense of this bit, make sure you brush up on your first year embryology first. And the technobabble is relentless right to the end.

In spite of that, I thought this was a very good book. It certainly raised a lot of ethical questions, one of the strengths of good scifi. The characters were nicely rounded, and stayed consistent right to the end, especially Victor. And yet, unusually for scifi, there is strong religious content. Some of it is blamed for Victor’s antisocial behavior, but at times religious faith offers him the only possible hope. I haven’t yet worked out why the three borders were so important to the story, but on a second reading that might become clear.

I certainly approve of any book that makes me think, and this one certainly does.

Years ago I read another scifi novel by Greg Bear. So when this book arrived, I knew it was going to be another quality book to read. But I also knew that it would not be a light, easy read purely for entertainment. Bear was going to challenge my thinking. And he did.

What is humanity going to be like at the very end of existence? Or for that matter, how is existence going to end? What would it be like to be a part of that process? What is going to cause the end of everything? Like I said big questions.

The blurb promotes this book as an adventure tale. Three modern humans are guarding stones that seem to have mystical powers. Two of these humans dream about another person living far in the future. In the future, these two humans are disturbed by the occasional voices in their mind, voices they have named their visitor. Confused yet? Well there is more…

Kalpa, the city of the title, is slowing being destroyed by Chaos. It’s binding force is weakening and it will not be long before Chaos consumes the city. But what is the future for the humans that live there? That depends on Tiadba and Jebrassy and their mysterious visitors. 

I liked the idea of the book, and as it reached the climax, everything made sense. However, I will admit that I found the book very difficult to read and I blame it’s structure. The book is 467 pages long with 129 chapters. That averages a little over 3 pages a chapter. Each chapter takes another character’s point of view, and at the start of the book there are 6 different points of view. I’m sorry, but I got dizzy changing point of view so often.

It seems like it has been a long time since I have read some ‘real’ scifi. Recent reviews have been as much ’social commentary’ as scifi. But House of Suns is classic space opera.

The story takes place literally millions of years in the future and hundreds of years in time. In this imaginary future, several wealthy individuals have long since created hundreds of cloned personalities. Each of these groups of clones is referred to as a House or Line. Our story concerns the 1000 clones of the Gentian Line, and more specifically two members of this Line, Campion and Purslane. Once every circuit (of the Milky Way) the Gentian Line gathers for a meeting, to exchange memories and learning, before they each set off on another circuit. But this time Campion and Purslane are late, very late. As they approach the planet designated for the meeting, they pick up a distress message that tells them that the planet was under attack and likely to be utterly destroyed within days, along with the vast majority of the Gentian Line. Campion and Purslane together rescue a few survivors and escape to the emergency gathering point where they find only 40 or so other survivors. 

The gathering allows guests, and a few of the guests also survived, including three members of the Machine People race. The action is centred on these Machine People and their response to the Gentians.

I could easily go on. That’s the thing about a space opera, vast time, vast space and lots of action. This book is a real page-turner, especially for fans of this genre. Planets are destroyed, Gods are challenged, ships blown out of the sky, kidnapping and murder abound.

However, as with a lot of the spacy scifi, action and adventure are so thick and fast that there is little or no time for character development. Admittedly the reader gets to know Campion and Purslane well because each of them narrate alternate chapters. But the whole sidebar about Abigail Gentian? A waste of space.

I did like the fact that this tale included robots, but this time robots without the programming that includes Asimov’s Three Laws. At times it seems that Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are the foundation of every single robot and android in science fiction since the 50s. House of Suns could easily be seen as a cautionary tale for those who choose to ignore the established wisdom.

I was very much looking forward to reading this book when I unpacked it last April. But I know that James Morrow was going to make me stop and think, and that I would need some serious time to read this book and evaluate it fairly. So even though this isn’t really a new release anymore, ask your favourite bookseller. They probably still have a few copies hanging around.

Mason Ambrose is a student of philosophy, his qualification is Ph D (ABD) (all but dissertation). This book opens as Mason is preparing for his oral examination in support of his Ph D dissertation on Ethics from the Earth, a new development of Darwinist philosophy. Unfortunately one of the examiners takes a personal dislike and the interview is a disaster. Immediately after this failure, Mason receives a job offer. Please fly to an island in the Florida Keys in order to offer private tuition in ethics to a young adolescent recovering from injury. Accepting this offer consumes Mason’s life from then on.

This is a book that defies a genre tag. It is science fiction, complete with mad scientists, secret laboratories and human experimentation. It is an adventure novel filled with murder, deception and escape. It is a morality tale that examines closely the social issues of abortion and social justice with a keen and critical eye. And it is also a love story about a man who truly dedicates his life to the woman he knows best. Admittedly that is the best thing about scifi. All that can be done by a master of the genre.

And I was right about needing time to think as you read this book. Be warned this is not a beach read, when you want to simply turn the brain into neutral and let the book entertain. Your values as a human will be questioned, your prejudices will be exposed. Be prepared.

I was very happy to receive a review copy of this very popular novel. Certainly the library copy has proven very popular with the senior girls, and I was curious about what all the excitement was about. The girls all told me it was different from the Twilight series, but just as good.

The plot is certainly not original. SciFi fans, especially those familiar with the popular Stargate TV series will know exactly what I mean when I say the subtitle could easily be ‘from Goa’uld to Tok’ra. For those non-scifi fans, let me explain.

Wanderer is a member of a parasitic race referred to as ’soul’. Physically he resembles a complex wormlike being that directly attaches to the brainstem of the victim and replaces the personality. These aliens have made a practice of moving through the universe taking the places of the ruling species, be it plant or animal, on each planet. However, Mel, the human Wanderer has taken will not go away. Her fighting spirit keeps her in Wanderer’s head and influences Wanderer’s response to this world. Mel forces Wanderer to find Mel’s lover and brother who are both still living free. Gradually Mel and Wanderer learn to co-exist, each appreciating the best qualities of the other.

This book is really examining the philosophical question trying to identify the critical element that sets humans apart from all other species. This is a common theme in scifi literature, and in many ways The Host is simply a minor contribution to that vast library. However, I believe this is an important contribution simply because of Meyer’s fan base. It is a very rare thing for a girl of any age to be seen reading scifi. If this book serves to introduce the ‘Gossip Girl’ fans to speculative fiction, I can only cheer.

However, hard-core scifi readers be warned. I found the book incredibly slow and boring for about 100 pages. About the time that Wanderer became Wanda, suddenly I was involved. And there were still over 500 pages to enjoy.

This book was a bit of fun. A graphic novel set on a space station sometime in the future. The story centres on a rocketboard race, kind of like a skateboard race, but different. There is also a solid sub-plot about the dangers of gambling. Well done in a tiny book of only about 60 pages.

I attended the book launch for this book, and the whole idea seemed fascinating at the time. I quickly got it added to my ‘work’ reading list and even managed an immediate deadline for completion. And I am glat that I did.

This is the most unusual scifi book that I have read in a very long time. It is written for kids, but it is certainly not written down. I spent the whole time reading this book wishing that I remembered more of my Philosophy 101 course from my university days. I understood the story alright, but I think the whole book was could be read at a whole different level. It turns out I was right.

Anyway, the plot… The book opens in the distant future. The action takes place during a doctoral interview. How unusual is that? This young student has made her specialty the life of one of the founders of their new society. He was a young man of independence who had great skill in solving problems creatively. The story moves back and forth between the interview and the events of Adam’s life as retold by this student. Does this sound boring? Be honest.

Beckett’s artistry is in keeping this story riveting. Very quickly we like this young student and are cheering for her success. She claims to have made new discoveries, and found new interpretations, and we are with her all the way. She has to succeed. And every reader will want to be like Adam, proud and independent with the strength and determination to do what he believes is right, regardless of others. If that’s not enough, let me assure you that there is a twist at the end that caught me.

As soon as I had finished, I handed the book on to the philosophy teacher. Her enthusiasm convinced me that Beckett really had added many more complex layers that I, and many readers, will simply miss. Might I suggest that you keep a copy of Philosophy for Beginners at hand as you read this book. You will truly enjoy the story even more.

I love this reviewing job. Every now and then I find a new author with a tempting backlist. Someday I’ll even have the time to do all the reading. Not likely for this author who has been writing scifi for 25 years.

The Margarets is set in the not-too-distant future, like the late 21st century. Earth has been badly over-populated, all animals and plants gone and water is scarce. Other intelligent life forms have found Earth and ‘helping’ with the survival of humanitiy either by assisting humans to set up colonies elsewhere in the galaxy or enslaving the ‘excess’ humans as a workforce to support their own economies. Margaret’s parents are part of a scientific research party working to release the water from the Martian ice caps for use by humans on earth. As a result she grows up as the only human child around. Like many children, she invents secret friends, a queen, a healer, a warrior, etc. Together they provide her with a rich and varied friendship group. Then when Margaret is 12 the research project is closed down and the family is forced to return to Earth.

What follows is an incredibly intricate and involved story where each of the imaginary friends takes form and becomes real and each one moves to a different human colony. Years later the seven Margarets come together and humanity has a new beginning.

I once read a definition of science fiction that said that the best scifi had a very believable world view with one science fact twisted to fiction. In The Margarets the whole idea of subdividing Margaret takes a leap of faith. Tepper guides the reader through this impossibility gently and each Margaret becomes very real. Also this book could easily have become very disjointed, however Tepper’s invention of the ghrym parasite links all the different characters.

Tepper also sticks with known mythical characters in telling her stories. As the reader discovers the identity of Gardener, Mr Weathereye and Lady Badness suddenly the novel makes sense. Regular readers of this column will know how much I like that in speculative fiction writing.