The moon blew up with no warning and with no apparent reason. That’s how Seveneves begins, and it pulled me right in. I stayed up until 3am last night to finish this 867-page hard science fiction novel, to the point that my eyes were watering and my cat was giving me the stinkeye for keeping …
Tag: Science Fiction
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/24/seveneves-by-neal-stephenson/
May 05 2015
On Basilisk Station by David Weber
Introduction The Honor Harrington series (the name of our heroine and main character in the series), also known as the Honorverse, is a Military Science Fiction series by author David Weber. On Basilisk Station, published in 1992, is the first book in the series, which already spans thirteen books and a few spin offs. Setting …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/05/on-basilisk-station-by-david-weber/
Apr 27 2015
The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate by Ted Chiang
This novelette won the Hugo in 2007. I picked it up as a standalone e-book that was part of the Humble Bundle mentioned here, and it’s the first work I’ve read by Ted Chiang. It won’t be the last! The story as a whole is broken into several parts, which nest and braid together in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/27/the-merchant-and-the-alchemists-gate-by-ted-chiang/
Apr 24 2015
The Martian by Andy Weir
The Martian starts with a soon-to-be-classic opening line: “I’m pretty much fucked.” One of humanity’s first manned missions to Mars has encountered a dust storm stronger than their base and their return vehicle can withstand. During the hasty evacuation, a freak accident incapacitates one of the crew of six; even more freakishly, it does not …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/24/the-martian-by-andy-weir/
Apr 21 2015
Muse of Fire by Dan Simmons
This was the book that made me wonder whether I just wasn’t enjoying reading books on the smartphone. Bridge of Birds would be terrific in any format, but I had had lukewarm or only just better than lukewarm reactions to two authors I normally quite like, Connie Willis and John Scalzi. Then I tried an …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/21/muse-of-fire-by-dan-simmons/
Feb 12 2015
What Makes This Book So Great by Jo Walton
Jo Walton answers the question posed by the title for a bit more than 100 books in this collection of brief reviews devoted to re-reading. As I read through, I enjoyed thinking of how the emphasis could fall on each of the words in the title, although the cover design clearly places it on the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/02/12/what-makes-this-book-so-great-by-jo-walton/
Feb 06 2015
Truth and Fear by Peter Higgins
People who were annoyed by the cliffhanger ending of Wolfhound Century should definitely wait the six weeks or so until Radiant State is published before reading Truth and Fear. Peter Higgins hasn’t solved the middle-book problem, but it’s clear that he conceived and wrote the three books of the Wolfhound Century tale as a single, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/02/06/truth-and-fear-by-peter-higgins/
Jan 28 2015
Vlast and Cool and Dangerously Sympathetic
I’m about a quarter of the way through Truth and Fear (concurrent with more Discworld, The Iliad – to see whether it captures me the way The Odyssey did, and in a modern translation since I bounced right off of Chapman’s, and probably some other things that rise to the surface of the to-be-read piles), …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/28/vlast-and-cool-and-dangerously-sympathetic/
Jan 20 2015
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
The protagonist of The Three-Body Problem is a Chinese woman named Ye Wenjie. She barely survived the Cultural Revolution in China, and is so disillusioned by her experiences that she takes the opportunity as a governmental scientist to hijack an official program that’s attempting to make contact with aliens. She succeeds in making this contact, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/20/the-three-body-problem-by-cixin-liu/
Jan 19 2015
Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins
Sometimes it’s nice to be squarely in the middle of the target audience. Although I am not sure whether anyone would have said ex ante that the audience for a police procedural set in an alternate history Russia with fantasy and science fiction elements was much more than just me. But Peter Higgins went and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/19/wolfhound-century-by-peter-higgins/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire