Against Nothingness

Clarke, Arthur C. Childhood’s End . Random House, 1954 (1990). The Overlords have come. They have ended war, ended hunger, and unified the world. But who are they? And what are they really after? And will humanity succumb to a growing malaise and lack of creative striving in the face of this newly given peace? These are the questions which begin this great sci-fi novel. I don’t normally review sci-fi books on here. I read plenty of them, being my genre of choice when it comes to fiction, but they are typically akin to the martial arts movies I enjoy: Briefly enjoyable and suited to my tastes, but nothing to write home about.  Still, in every genre, no matter how specific, there are hidden gems. Here is one of them. What you will find in this book is, of course, Clarke’s creative vision of a specific future. Yet embedded within are also ideas about humanity, religion, science, purpose, and the meaning of life. And while you may or may not agree with Clarke’s ideas...

Ed. Bart R. Leib. Subversion: Science Fiction & Fantasy tales of challenging the norm . Crossed Genres Publishing, 2011. 172 pgs.  Traitor or Revolutionary? Hero or Villain? Don't these titles mean the same thing, just from a different side? History, as they say, is written by the victors, but what would it be like to get a look before those histories were written? Here, you will find stories which explore these themes and more.  Subversion is a collection of short stories around the theme of, you guessed it, subversion. Each author has his or her own take, and each story holds forth a different facet of dealing with change.  As a book of short stories, I can't tell you everything about this book. It was a very enjoyable collection, with stories ranging from 3 to 5 stars. Some of the authors were indeed very creative in dealing with the idea of subversion, others merely wrote a good yarn. Of course, that isn't really an easy thing to do, and so merely is...

Tony Ballantyne, Recursion , New York: Spectra Publishing, 2006, 432 pgs. Gotta love awesome little cover descriptions on books right? Personally, regardless of the quality of the book, I always get a kick out of how these things are written out. Designed to tantalize, effected to entice, and constructed to captivate, these phrases leap from the front, and back, of book covers in all their cheese covered glory. Thankfully it is usually the editors, I presume, who write these things rather than the author. So, what is this book? Well, you won't get a very good idea from reading the back, thats for sure. Not that I was entirely disappointed, but it was not what I expected. The problem is that it is hard to tell you what the book is really about without ruining the ending. So, instead, let me tell you how it is constructed. The book is made up of 3 stories, all in different time periods, and all radically different. There is the story of a woman living in a society where lite...

Robert J. Sawyer, Wake , Viking Canada, 2009. 356 pgs. Here we have one of Canada's most successful authors. Sawyer has written 19 novels, and numerous short stories. He has won over 40 awards for his writing, including all three of the top SF awards available (Hugo, Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award). He is the author of FlashForward which is now a popular TV series in its first season. Personally, I have read and enjoyed quite a few of his books, beginning with Calculating God and moving on from there. Wake is the first book in a planned trilogy (which I didn't find out until after I had started the book... I normally hate to read series before they are completed, because I tend to get into them and then they require patience; and while I am an incredibly patient person, I hate waiting! It's so frustrating!) which explore consciousness and being. This particular novel follows four story-lines (though the first two take up the majority of the novel): ...

Adam Roberts, Yellow Blue Tibia: Konstantin Skvorecky's memoir of the alien invasion of 1986. London: Gollancz, 2009. 326 pgs. Adam Roberts writes strange and interesting books. I have read his work before, and enjoyed it. So, when I saw this on the shelf in the public library, I picked it up. And I am very glad I did. This book joins a very elite club, becoming the 3rd book that has ever made me laugh out loud while reading it. The first was the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide series. The second was Stephen Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. This is the third. Normally, when I am reading, all of my emotional reactions stay pretty contained. After all, reading is largely an exercise in imagination, and so the process is almost wholly internal to begin with. Negatively, only one book has ever shocked me enough to extract a gasp (Iain M. Banks! so good...). Otherwise, the 'best' negative result that usually comes about is that I put the book down...