science fiction Archives - Page 3 of 9

Foundation – Isaac Asimov

Published on May 30, 2010

Cover of Foundation

Foundation
Isaac Asimov
189 pages
published in 1951

If you’ve ever been in the Netherlands on 30th April than you know we celebrate Queensday (the queen’s birthday party, held on the birthday of the previous queen but don’t ask) by holding massive flea markets/car boot sales. Ideal opportunities to pick up a lot of books fast and cheap. This year it included a lot of Asimov books, from a guy selling off his science fiction collection, including all the good Foundation series books: Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. These were orginally written as short stories in the forties, then reworked into novels in the early fifties, among the first science fiction novels to be sold as such. Much much later Asimov would write new sequels to these three books, but those were .. not good.

The originals though were, if not the first Galactic Empire stories, the ones who popularised it and set the pattern for a flood of imitators (see for example Brian Aldiss’ two anthologies, Galactic Empires volume I and volume 2). Influenced by Edward Gibbons History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Asimov basically transplanted the Roman Empire to Outer Space and had it rule the Galaxy, a Galaxy devoid of any other intelligent life and in which it was axiomatic that humanity should be united under one emperor and ruled from one planet and anything else would be barbarism. Yes, these are all utterly clichéd and wornout concepts now, but don’t forget that this was first published in 1951 and based on stories from the forties, in other words, this is some seventy years old. You may therefore wonder if Foundation is worth reading for anything but historical value. Certainly Asimov’s reputation as a not very good writer doesn’t help — you don’t read his stories for his sparkling turn of phrase.

Black Man – Richard Morgan

Published on April 3, 2010

Cover of Black Man

Black Man
Richard Morgan
630 pages
published in 2007

This was too much of a rerun for me. Black Man (published in the US as Thirteen for obvious reasons) has much the same plot as Morgan’s first novel Altered Carbon. A worldweary, cynical but ubercompetent mercenary is blackmailed into going after a murderer and in the process uncovers a far greater and more horrible truth than he suspected existed or his employers necessarily wanted him to find out. As with every Morgan novel I’ve read so far it’s an edge of your seat thriller, keeps you engaged to the bitter end, but five minutes later you’re thinking “that’s all“? I got the feeling Morgan was going through the motions, his heart not in it and it just seemed too slight to be worth a Clarke Award.

One big reason for the discomfort I felt was the silly worldbuilding. Morgan is excellent at creating a “realistic” sounding world, using infodumps, incluing and jargon to create an image in his readers’ heads, but it doesn’t work when he bases his future on the infamous Jesusland map. Remember 2006, after Bush had started his second (stolen) term and before the Congressional midterm elections, and how many of the liberal leaning blogs were despairing of their country? How it really seemed for a moment the US was split in two, with progressive coasts and an ignorant flyover country? Yeah? Remember also how fast that changed once the Democrats actually won an election? Well, it’s this that Morgan bases his future on: the Jesusland maps and books like Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas. It was already dated when he was writing it, now just feels hopelessly silly. It makes it hard to take the world Morgan created seriously.

Altered Carbon – Richard Morgan

Published on March 9, 2010

Cover of Altered Carbon

Altered Carbon
Richard Morgan
534 pages
published in 2002

Altered Carbon is Richard Morgan’s first novel. It made a strong impression, winning the Philip K. Dick Prize for best novel in 2003, as well as being optioned by Joel Silver, the sale of the movie rights enabling Morgan to become a fulltime writer. Since then Morgan has written several more novels, part of the same generation of British science fiction writers as Alastair Reynolds, Neal Asher and Jon Courtenay Grimwood. I knew of him, but had not read anything of his until last year, when I read Broken Angels and was sucked in from the first page. So not for the first time I started a series in the wrong way, as that was actually the sequel to this book — not that it mattered, as all they shared was the hero, Takeshi Kovacs.

Whereas Broken Angels was a Dirty Dozen type war romp with the cynicsm turned up to eleven, Altered Carbon is more of a Chandleresque film noir story. It starts with Takeshi as amercenary on Harlan’s World being caught and killed in a police dragnet, to wake up on Earth minus one partner and forced to solve the murder of Laurens Bancroft, which everybody but the murder victim in question thinks is suicide. If Takeshi refuses to cooperate or fails in his task he’ll go back in storage for the next couple of centuries or so.

Broken Angels – Richard Morgan

Published on March 7, 2010

Cover of Broken Angels

Broken Angels
Richard Morgan
490 pages
published in 2003

Richard Morgan is a British science fiction writer, who debuted in 2002 with Altered Carbon, to which Broken Angels is a sequel. It can however be easily read on its own, considering I just did that with no trouble at all. The only thing it has in common with the earlier novel is the protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs. I’d been aware of Morgan as a hot new writer, but hadn’t sampled him yet. Reviews of his work had been mixed and I hadn’t been interested enough to seek his books out. Which may have been a mistake, judging from Broken Angels.

From the reviews I’d read and the remarks made by friends who had read his novels I had gotten the impression that Morgan let his leftwing politics overwhelm his stories, while he was also accused of having a lot of unnecessary violence in his stories. I found neither of these allegations to be true in this case. There is a political undertone to Broken Angels, but certainly no dozen page rants; there’s violence, but it’s not at all reveled in the way John Barnes sometimes does. It reminded me in fact of Neal Asher, another author often accused of excessive use of violence, in that neither shy away from showing the consequences of violence, that being shot hurts and what it exactly does to a body. But where Asher’s descriptions are very organic, dripping with ichor and blood and bodily fluids, Morgan’s is very clean, sharp, bright and clinical but not at all detached. His characters feel their pain. And they get plenty of opportunities to feel this pain.

Buy Jupiter – Isaac Asimov

Published on November 14, 2009

Cover of Buy Jupiter

Buy Jupiter
Isaac Asimov
238 pages
published in 1975

It’s hard to know for sure at this late date, but Buy Jupiter, together with I, Robot, was probably the first science fiction book I’ve ever read. one of the. I must have been seven or eight years old or so and this and the few other adult science fiction books the local library had in its childrens section instilled a lifelong love of the genre. It was therefore with some sense of nostalgia that I reread this book for the first time in years — these stories were like old friends to me. Nostalgia can be a dangerous guide of course, as so many books can turn out to have been visited by the suck fairy since you last time you’ve read them, not to mention the racism or sexism fairy. Luckily none of them have been busy on Buy Jupiter, the stories were just as good as I remembered.

This despite the fact that Buy Jupiter is a bit of a strange collection, filled with twentyfive years of leftover stories. There isn’t any classic in this, no one story you would put in a Best of Asimov collection but this might actually its strength. Because it’s a filler collection, because most of the stories are short or very short, you get a huge variation of stories and subjects, a smorgasbord of Asimov’s fiction. A good introduction to science fiction as well, though even at the time I first read those stories they were already dated — you don’t pick up on that as a child anyway.