Category: Science Fiction

Sep 17 2008

In the Days of the Comet by H.G. Wells

Wells was not a religious man, yet somehow this strikes me as a deeply religious book. He seems to have had a profound conviction that the world we live in is a fallen world that has gone horribly wrong, and he seems to have been equally certain that nothing short of a deus ex machina …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2008/09/17/in-the-days-of-the-comet-by-h-g-wells/

Feb 09 2007

The Food of the Gods by H.G. Wells

Technically this book is science fiction, but in reality it is a brilliant social allegory, much in the same vein as *Gulliver’s Travels*. The Food of the Gods is a newly discovered chemical compound that makes animals and humans grow to huge proportions. But the subject of this book is not really bigness and big …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2007/02/09/the-food-of-the-gods-by-h-g-wells/

Sep 26 2006

Ringworld by Larry Niven

I hadn’t read Ringworld in at least a decade, and probably closer to two, when I picked it up again a couple of weeks back. Originally published in 1970, the book has held up terrifically. Not for Niven, one of those far-future societies that’s a replication of the author’s own era. The use of “men” …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/09/26/ringworld-by-larry-niven/

Nov 24 2005

The System of the World

Sorry, this is not a post proclaiming a political theory of everything. It’s a note saying “‘Tis done!” I picked up Neal Stephenson’s The System of the World sooner than I thought and finished it up right quick. Previous posts on the Baroque Cycle are here, here, here and here. The argument of the trilogy …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2005/11/24/the-system-of-the-world/

Oct 12 2005

The Con-fusion

I’m probably the last blogger still reading Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, and chances are good that I won’t take on the third part, The System of the World, immediately after finishing the second, The Confusion. Not because the books aren’t good, just that it is a lot to read consecutively. The good news is that …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2005/10/12/the-con-fusion/

Apr 11 2005

Slowsilver

Because I mentioned Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver a couple of times earlier this year, I will now add that I’ve finished reading it. The pace picks up a bit around page 800. To be slightly less unfair, I should say that a number of people have told me that the second and third books are better. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2005/04/11/slowsilver/

Feb 11 2005

Ray Bradbury

Through a series of stupidities, when I moved from Washington to Germany, I lost a fair number of books. Several hundred, I think, but it’s a little too sad to count them up. There was, and still may be, a list I made when packing. An indulgent winter evening’s thought is which one I would …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2005/02/11/ray-bradbury/

Feb 07 2005

A Note …

Upon Reading the First Ninth of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle It is a Frolick, a Cornucopia of interesting things, a narrative of the discovery of the calculus, scientific feuds, dissection, Religious Dissent, changing fashions in art, the return of comedy to the English stage, computation, coinage, banking and much, much more. One of the Leading …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2005/02/07/a-note/