Book Reviews

Bulter, Octavia E.

Heinlein, Robert

The first chapter is amazing. The rest? Not so much.

]]> It's better than the movie, but that should go without saying (could it be worse than the movie?). Unfortunately much of the book is taken up with a boringly detailed explanation of how Rico goes through training and becomes an officer and then the politics of soldiering and volunteering for war. I realize that's supposed to be more of what the book is about, but please. It's boring.

If the rest of the book had been written like that first chapter, or even a third of the book, it'd be way better. As is you only get two chapters like that, and the second one ends rather abruptly (though I suppose that's what happens in war, so I shouldn't complain that it's realistic).

The writing is great, I just wish it had a plot worth reading.

Card, Orson Scott

550+ pages and no climax?!

]]> The fact that I got through the book at all tells you it's at least well written. But there's hardly any plot. A couple times something actually happens, but the rest of the book is just talking and thinking and talking some more. The ending isn't even an ending and way too many things are left unfinished. No climax. Bleh.

Card, Orson Scott

Interesting read. Not nearly as good as Ender's Game, but still some good stuff going on.

Clarke, Arthur C.

I haven't seen the movie before, but I assumed it was all about Hal.

]]> At least in the book, Hal is a minor subplot. I'm not even sure what the point of Hal was in the book. I'm eager to watch the movie now and see if that becomes more clear, since apparently the book and the movie were created at the same time.

Overall it was a pretty good book, I just found it bothersome that the climactic action with Hal wasn't central to the overall plot.

Aldrin, Buzz and Barnes, John

Interesting story, but about 150 pages too long.

]]> The novel was pretty forward thinking anticipating terrorism before 9/11 and disaster for the Shuttle Columbia before it actually happened (in one eerie moment they discussed the actual problem that led to the Columbia disaster in real life).

But for all the interesting moments there was just way too much sluggish set up. Press conferences and legal cases just aren't as interesting as space travel.

Heinlein, Robert

I read this a while ago and had to reread it. Just as good as I remembered.

]]> I enjoyed the mix of action and politics. Sometimes the politics and high-level governmental organization scheming gets to be a bit much, but this one has a nice mix. Plenty of science fiction action and a nice political plot centered around a revolution on the moon.

My favorite part of the book is the weapon of the Loonies--throwing rocks at earth. Amazing how potentially devastating that could be.

Asimov, Isaac

The lack of consistent central characters and a continuing plot got kind of old.

]]> There are consistent characters in the sense that people keep remembering the characters who have been dead for centuries, and the plot is really the mile high view of this branch of society, but it doesn't make for the best story.

I'm also a little surprised nuclear power seems to be the answer for how everything works. Ooh, look, we miniaturized nuclear reactors to make all sorts of useful things. I would think that several millennia in the future they'd have something better than nuclear power.

Lewis, C.S.

I wasn't very impressed.

]]> It is a trilogy, so maybe there's hope in the upcoming volumes, but I wasn't that impressed. It doesn't help that it's written in 1938 and his ideas of space travel are definitely on the fiction side. The whole idea of space being warm and full of sunlight is intriguing (Why isn't it bright and shiny on the International Space Station? I suppose it has to do with the lack of atmosphere, but still, it seems like the sun should appear just as large when you're orbiting earth as when you're on earth.), but certainly not true. I also couldn't get over the idea that the first manned space flight (well, technically the second) was two guys and a kidnapped third blasting off from the English countryside without anyone noticing.

As it got down to the end it felt like too much veiled theology. It wasn't really a story, it was an excuse to play with some theological and mythological ideas.

Heinlein, Robert

It started out interestingly enough, but it just didn't go anywhere.

]]> The first half had non-stop adventure, with an interesting mystery set up. But the pay off never came as the mystery just got more and more bizarre and you started to lose hope that they'd ever actually explain anything. The second half dissolves into a mess of time travel and plot cheats to the point that the original mystery is completely forgotten (and explained away in a few minutes by a convenient investigation conducted with the aid of time travel).

Clarke, Arthur C.

Burgess, Anthony

McCarthy, Cormac

You don't read many post-apocalyptic wasteland novels that win the Pulitzer and are featured on Oprah.

]]> I suppose Oprah was suckered in because the story centers around a father and his son. That's easy enough to see. It is a pretty powerful read though. Like many post-apocalyptic stories it delves into issues of humanity and such, though you have to draw a lot of your own conclusions.

I enjoyed the story, though I wanted to know more about the world and how it came to be so post-apocalyptic. With seemingly no new plant life growing, it seems like any hope of survival is limited. Those two things kept bugging me through the story, but there weren't any answers. Apparently that's not the point (though it's still worth addressing).

I also found the lack of quote marks and apostrophes disturbing. Damn post-moderns.

Card, Orson Scott

Not really sci-fi as billed.

]]> More of a political thriller. It had a decent enough story of a potential second American civil war and was interesting simply as a story of how a society could evolve from what we currently have to a distopian type authoritarian government. You don't see those stories very often (at least I haven't).

The politics seemed a bit overblown as well. I find it hard to believe that a rebel force would take over a major city and it wouldn't lead to all out war. I can understand the explanation of why that didn't happen, but I just didn't buy it. The author's sermon on the right vs. the left is an interesting warning, but again it seems overwrought. Maybe I'm just missing the boat, but I'm not sure I see extremists being successful at plotting such far-reaching revolutions. Blowing up a building is one thing, taking over the government is another.

Card, Orson Scott

It's really more military strategy and psychology than science fiction, but yeah, aliens and space and stuff. It was interesting to see how much psychology and teacher-like training was in there. How they tried to push Ender and get him to learn and grow without quite realizing what was going on.