Category: Science Fiction

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I had a hard time getting into this story, but halfway into it I couldn’t put it down. The main problem for me was the protagonist, who isn’t very likeable and isn’t someone I felt like rooting for. But once the Games begin the pages begin to turn very quickly. This is a gut-wrenching story …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2013/10/10/the-hunger-games-by-suzanne-collins/

Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez

This book offers a story relevant to current political issues as well as a peek into what the warfare of the future may look like. Americans are by now used to drone warfare; that is, drone warfare conducted by US. But what happens when the United States government is no longer the sole operator of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2013/06/18/kill-decision-by-daniel-suarez/

The Dervish House by Ian McDonald

“What do I think about the legacy of Atatürk, General? Let it go. I don’t care. The age of Atatürk is over.” Guests stiffen around the table, breath subtly indrawn; social gasps. This is heresy. People have been shot down in the streets of Istanbul for less. Adnan commands every eye. “Atatürk was father of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2011/10/23/the-dervish-house-by-ian-mcdonald/

Neuromancer by William Gibson

This book came highly recommended, but it left me cold. Gibson’s vision is of a future in which there is more of the artificial than the natural, in which reality is effortlessly constructed by ubiquitous technology, and in which what you perceive is much of the time what some powerful person wants you to perceive. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2011/07/28/neuromancer-by-william-gibson/

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

The premise of this story is simple and intriguing: what would a man do if no one could see him doing it? Wells’ answer is rather disturbing. For a man of science, Wells seems to have had a rather pessimistic view of the consequences of scientific progress, but this story is told with Wells’ usual …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/09/16/the-invisible-man-by-h-g-wells/

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

This is a wonderful work of imagination on Wells’ part, but it is interesting to me for two reasons that are tangential to the story. The first is that it was written before the close of the nineteenth century, when Britain was thought of as the most powerful nation on earth, so it made sense …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2008/11/12/the-war-of-the-worlds-by-h-g-wells/

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/

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/

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/

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/