It has been more than four decades since Larry Niven released what would become his seminal work, Ringworld. The novel and its titular creation has inspired storie in book, game and film format for decades and it remains a story that excites. I made my first foray into Ringworld back in 2009 and I tore through it in a day. Much of what Niven writes can be classified as “hard” science fiction and although Ringworld has its share of scientific exposition, it is in service to a good solid story. In discussing hard science fiction and my predilection towards less scientific fiction, I said of Ringworld in 2009:

“If a story is good, it is good, and even large amounts of scientific exposition, as are present in Ringworld, don’t get in the way of me enjoying a book. That said, I would be reluctant to recommend a book like this to someone who has any trepidation about “getting” science fiction. So much of what I read is more easily classified as “adventure in space”. While this is true of Ringworld, there is a great deal of scientific explanation as Niven builds this fascinating world. Please don’t misunderstand. This is not an intelligence thing, it is really just a preference thing”.

Three years removed I feel the same way. While I wouldn’t recommend Ringworld to new readers looking to explore science fiction, I might just recommend the first in a series of prequels to that novel, Fleet of Worlds. Set 200 years before the discovery of the Ringworld, Fleet of Worlds is a novel of space exploration filled with interesting science fictional concepts, an examination of human vs. alien cultures, and interesting political maneuvering, espionage, and intrigue.

Continue reading Fleet of Worlds ~Larry Niven, Edward M. Lerner →

(Cover for the two book omnibus that contains “Shards of Honor” and the Hugo award winning “Barrayar”)

Cordelia Naismith is captain of a Betan Survey Ship, exploring a recently discovered planet when she and her crew come under attack by a group of Barrayan soldiers led by Captain Lord Aral Vorkosigan. Captain Naismith is knocked unconscious and when she awakens she discovers that she has been abandoned along with one of her severely injured crew members. To make matters worse, she also discovers that she is a prisoner of Lord Vorkosigan. The two leaders, and their injured charge, become unlikely compatriots as they face a hostile planet in a journey towards a cache of supplies that may prove to be their only salvation.

Thus begins award-winning author Lois McMaster Bujold’s first novel in her long-running and popular Vorkosigan saga, a novel of feudal trappings set in a fully realized science fictional universe. Bujold’s series has been a popular topic of conversation during the time I’ve belonged to the Classic Science Fiction Book Club and I put this two-book collection on my wishlist last year and received it for a Christmas gift. I’ve been curious about reading it ever since and the chilly weather brought on a science fiction hunger that I chose to fill with a reading of the first book in the series, Shards of Honor. At 254 pages it is not an overly long series debut and proved to be a solid, if occasionally flawed, introduction to a world that has me curious to conduct further exploration.

Continue reading Shards of Honor ~Lois McMaster Bujold →

(Cover image: Tor Books)

Growing up you had a dream and the sky was the limit. Well, actually the sky wasn’t the limit, it was just the starting point. For you are a citizen of the Universal Union and your dream has come true. You are Ensign Andrew Dahl and you have been assigned to the Dub U’s flagship, the Intrepid. The universe has just opened to you and your future holds, among other things, exciting away missions on exotic planets lead by high ranking members of the Intrepid crew. Could life get any better?

You think not, until experience shows that a great many of the crew members die on these away missions, many in unimaginably unpleasant ways. You are tapped early on for inclusion on these all-too-frequent excursions and thus you have front row seats to the fickle finger of Fate. Beyond the ever-present danger, something seems not quite right about these away missions. And as you ponder this feeling you discover that the finger of Fate may not be so fickle. For her choosing seems to be anything but random, and her fashion sense leans to one lone member of the color wheel: Red.

Author John Scalzi’s latest book is many things, but mostly a riff on the implausibility present in all hour long weekly action adventure television shows, most notably the long-running series–Star Trek–and the well known joke at the show’s expense that can be summed up in one word: redshirts.

Continue reading Redshirts ~John Scalzi →

World Without End ~Joe Haldeman

–published February 1979
–Bantam Books
–148 pages
–6/10

Day one of vacation down and one book read! Yee-haw! (Now where in the world did that come from?)*

As I combed through the basement stacks looking for inspiration on what books I might choose to take along on our annual anniversary vacation (I always take far too many), my eyes lit upon this novel based on the original Star Trek television series. Haldeman is an author I have read and enjoyed before, and as a bonus he is one of the authors I had picked to read for the Grand Master Reading Challenge. It was a good choice.

In Haldeman’s second Star Trek novel he demonstrates a deft touch in capturing the essence of these characters while crafting an adventure more complex than what Roddenberry and company could manage in a one hour television show. The novel stumbles at times, mostly due to the attempt to combine intricacy in plot and brevity in novel length, but overall it is an entertaining volume in the lore of Captain Kirk and the starship Enterprise.

Continue reading World Without End ~Joe Haldeman →

“But there, just past the reaching point, was the memory of the past, still glowing in unrusted splendor, and burning with fire where the sun of Trantor caught it in gleaming highlights. She had been there once during the months since she had arrived on Trantor. She had climbed onto the smooth, unjointed pavement and ventured into the silent dust-streaked structures, where the light entered through the jags of broken walls and partions.

It had been solidified heartache. It had been blasphemy.”

And now we are done.

A small but intrepid group began 2012 with the first book in Isaac Asimov’s famed trilogy and now we are at the end. This is my second read through of the trilogy and I can honestly say that I got even more out of it this time. In fact, as I’ll discuss later, it was almost like reading an entirely new book as things were revealed in this read through that I wasn’t focused on during my first time.

It has been great fun reading through this trilogy, and at some point I look forward to continuing on with the books Asimov added to the canon years later. But for now let’s have our final discussion of this group read. Each and every one of these posts has contained spoilers for the uninitiated, and this will be no different.

Continue reading Second Foundation Group Read: The Conclusion →