science fiction

The Time Traders — Andre Norton

Published on January 7, 2014Leave a comment

Cover of The Time Traders

The Time Traders
Andre Norton
191 pages
published in 1958

If it wasn’t for Project Gutenberg I might’ve never read this novel. Though Andre Norton was one of the most prolific US science fiction writer, mostly writing what we’d now call young adult novels, she never was translated into Dutch much so was missing when I went through my personal Golden Age. It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve started to catch up with her, in no small part thanks to Gutenberg’s collection of her works. Because until roughly the seventies, American copyright was only valid for a limited time and had to be explicitly renewed, a lot of science fiction pulp and early paperback stories entered the public domain. In this case, the copyright on the original 1958 hardcover publication of The Time Traders was never renewed, making it fair game for Gutenberg.

I picked this out of the available Nortons for two reasons: it was the first book in a series and more importantly, it was a time travel story. It had been a while since I’d last read a good, old fashioned time travel story and this seemed to fit the bill perfectly. After all, it has time agents who have to travel undercover through prehistoric times to find the ancient civilisation from which the Soviets are getting sophisticated weaponry and technology they couldn’t have possibly produced themselves.

We will make it to the ships

Published on January 6, 2014Leave a comment

Those are my people and this is the attitude C.S. Lewis warned against in That Hideous Strength because his grubby little provincial mind could not understand it, other than as blasphemy born out of hubris. It’s the attitude that led generations of fans to set up slan shacks or Ozark breeding camps, led us to try out every kook idea that offered a shortcut to the stars, from the Dean drive to Velikovskism, but it’s also what drives hundreds upon thousands of scientists and engineers to dedicate their lives to building, guiding and following unmanned probes to the far reaches of our Solar System, on missions that seem to mock our own aspirations to ever get there ourselves as they reveal how hostile even our benign corner of the universe is and how big.

Remnant Population — Elizabeth Moon

Published on December 30, 2013Leave a comment

Cover of Remnant Population

Remnant Population
Elizabeth Moon
360 pages
published in 1996

Elizabeth Moon is a writer I didn’t pay much attention to until a year or two ago. I’d read one or two of her books and they were competently written military science fiction, better written than those of a David Weber or John Ringo, but nowhere near as good as Lois McMaster Bujold’s. When I decided I needed to read more female science fiction writers, Moon was one of the writers I was giving a second chance. Since then I’ve read roughly half a dozen or so of her novels and my initial impression of her has remained roughly the same. She’s a better writer than she needs to be to sell the sort of stories she usually writes and there’s a bit of hidden depth in her mil-sf stories that’s missing from many of her colleagues, that hint at a greater potential. Yet she seems content to keep on writing the same sort of adventure science fiction and fantasy.

Not always though. On two occasions Moon has attempted to write something else than military science fiction, something more ambitious. The most well known of these two novels is of course her Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke winning 2002 novel, Speed of Dark. The other one is Remnant Population, which is a novel about First Contact, between the hitherto unknown indigenous population of an alien planet and the last remaining inhabitant of a failed human colony. As such, it’s a good case study of Moon’s strengths and weaknesses.

Crashcourse — Wilhelmina Baird

Published on December 27, 2013Leave a comment

Cover of Crashcourse

Crashcourse
Wilhelmina Baird
277 pages
published in 1993

Wilhelmina Baird is an interesting writer: wrote some short science fiction at the dawn of the New Wave (as Kathleen James), then returned in 1993 with this, a cyberpunk inspired novel with overtones of the sort of fifties satirical sf Pohl and Kornbluth wrote. She wrote three more novels, two sequels to this, then disappeared. She’s obscure enough not to even have a Wikipedia entry, so it’s unclear if she stopped writing or just couldn’t get published anymore. I vaguely remember that her second novel, Clipjoint, was hailed as a minor classic when it came out, but that’s all I knew of her writing when I first got this.

In the world of Crashcourse the population is divided in a small ruling class of Aris, slightly more Techs and Arts to serve and entertain them, with the vast mass of people being unemployed umps. Cass, Moke and Dosh are three of them, trying to earn enough (illicit) money to get off Earth, Cass as thief, Moke as artist and Dosh as whore. Caught up in a love triangle, with Cass loving Dosh who loves Moke who loves Cass, only wanting to leave if all three of them can leave together. That is, until Dosh is roughed up once too many by one of his clients and temptation comes calling in the form of an Aris with a film proposal.

Wednesday Women Writers: year’s roundup

Published on December 4, 20131 Comment

So yeah, I didn’t really keep up with this series, did I? But now that I finally remembered to do this on a Wednesday, I would like to look back on the past year and give a shout out to a few of the new female science fiction writers I first read this year. My science fiction reading has been majority female this year and I’ve set out to try and find more new female writers, if only to balance out my gender stats at LibraryThing. The results so far have been good; the occasional dud, but the majority of writers I tried, I liked.

The discovery of the year for me was Elizabeth Bear, who has been writing for a long time but who I only started reading this May. Everything I’ve read of her so far has been excellent and I especially liked Hammered and sequels, especially the humanity of its protagonist:

while the setting might be cyberpunk, Jenny Casey’s life lacks the glamour a heroine in a Gibson story would’ve had. Her metal arm suffers from phantom pains, fucks up her shoulder and back where it attaches to the rest of her and while her artificial eye is an advantage in a low light situation, it’s a pain most of the rest of the time. She has had to live with her cybernetic implants, not just the arm and eye but also the enhanced nervous system that can make her reaction speed inhumanly fast when needed, for some twentyfive years and now that she’s pushing fifty, she’s suffering for it.

Another veteran writer was Linda Nagata, whose Vast I’ve just reviewed. Brenda Cooper, who I only knew from a collaboration with Larry Niven is another one; her The Silver Ship and the Sea was another good read.

Of newer writers, Kameron Hurley impressed me even though God’s War had serious flaws. I still bought the sequels. Other new writers that impressed me were M. J. Locke, whose Up Against it was old fashioned hard science fiction and Ann Leckie, with Ancillary Justice, far future space opera.

Finally there was also Margaret Atwood, who’s not a science fiction writer, but could’ve fooled me with The Handmaid’s Tale, which was much better than I expected.

So that’s half a dozen new, impressive female sf writers found so far this year. Any suggestions for next year?