{"id":1066,"date":"2004-04-20T16:31:02","date_gmt":"2004-04-20T21:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=1066"},"modified":"2009-04-05T23:21:31","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T04:21:31","slug":"recently-read-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2004\/04\/20\/recently-read-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Recently Read"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nYendi – Steven Brust<\/a>
\n209 pages, published in 1984\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nEntertaining if slight fantasy adventure, Vlad Taltos is a smartass. Recommended if you like first person smartass narration.\n<\/p>\n

\nZodiac – Neal Stephenson<\/a>
\n308 pages, published in 1988\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nWhy do I think of Stephenson of a science fiction writer when most of his novels, like this, are not science fiction? Zodiac<\/cite> is an ecological technothriller, starring a typical Stephenson protagonist, somewhat geeky, bit of a badass when cornered, not the brightest when it comes to women. Doesn’t feel dated at all though written in 1988. Recommended to anyone if only to show y’all he could write a complete novel in less than 500 pages, with an ending.\n<\/p>\n

\nDamnation Alley – Roger Zelazny<\/a>
\n157 pages, published in 1969\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nSome time after World War III, “Hell” Tanner is the last remaining Hell’s Angel in California and is drafted to deliver anti-Plague serum to Boston –straight through the most hellish, radioactive densely
\npopulated with mutated monsters barren wasteland most of North America has become. Zelazny goes pulp. I have it on good authority that one should avoid the film that was made of this, but read the book. Later also turned into a Judge Dredd storyline…\n<\/p>\n

\nBones of the Earth – Michael Swanwick<\/a>
\n383 pages, published in 2002\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nCouldn’t get into Swanwick’s early novels, but this combined two of my great interests, timetravel and dinosaurs, so I thought I’d give it a try. Glad I did. Best novel of the bunch I’ve reviewed here. Sometime in the 21st century, timetravel is invented, nobody quite knows when, and from 2010 on to about 2100 paleontologists are recruited, first in secret, later openly when the secret breaks, to go back to the Ages of Dinosaurs and study them. Swanwick clearly loves his dinosaurs as he
\ninfodumps all these neat facts about them throughout the book. Costarring one of the more original theories for why the dinosaurs largely (apart from the birds!) died out.\n<\/p>\n

\nAppleseed – John Clute<\/a>
\n337 pages, published in 2001\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nThis is either an incredible tour de force or an incredibly pretentious misheap. Possibly both. The story itself is bog standard space opera, but Clute has hidden it under a fecund compressed crust of baroque
\nvocabulary; never a decent Anglosaxon word where a compound noun borrowed from German will do. I like wordage, I do, but there is something vaguely irritating about Clute’s wordplay.\n<\/p>\n

\nRecommended if you want your prejudices against critics confirmed.\n<\/p>\n

\nMore complete reviews are or will be published at my Booklog<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yendi – Steven Brust 209 pages, published in 1984 Entertaining if slight fantasy adventure, Vlad Taltos is a smartass. Recommended if you like first person smartass narration. Zodiac – Neal Stephenson 308 pages, published in 1988 Why do I think of Stephenson of a science fiction writer when most of his novels, like this, are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,27],"tags":[2443,2444],"class_list":["post-1066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-posts-interesting-only-to-me","tag-book-review","tag-posts-interesting-only-to-me"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1067,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions\/1067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}