Posts Tagged ‘science fiction’

The Complete Robot brings together most of Isaac Asimov’s short stories from the Robot series. It goes on from his early stories and some which are unrelated to the Robot series as it were, while still being about robots. As the book goes on, Asimov builds up the universe that will eventually become the backbone of his science fiction writing.

The short story format works really well for me as I can read a bit, finish a story, then come back to the book later. As a consequence, even though it was almost 700 pages long, it did not feel like a chore to get through.

Some of it is deeply philosophical. Can a robot love? Can it have rights? If you have a pet robot dog, it is less real than having an organic robot dog? How much can you bend the three laws of robotics?

The stories at the beginning were interesting and gave a nice side from everything being in the same universe, but the fiction really comes into its own as the world around it develops. Next I am going to read the Robot novels and continue on to gradually fill in the gap between this and Foundation.

Snow Crash is a science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson. The description announced Stephenson had “burst onto the scene” or something similar, which immediately put me off because who uses language like that. However, he does have a cool beard, so I decided to push on anyway.

It tells the story of the central character, aptly named Hiro Protagonist, who works as a pizza deliverer for the Mafia. As you do.

All set in a world where the government has crumbled and everything has been privatised. The police, the libraries, the roads, the whole lot. It’s GabrielÄ—’s liberation paradise come true.

Indeed it’s very similar to Jennifer Government, though pre-dates it by 11 years.

The plot is interesting enough. It explores themes of viruses, memes, religion, virtual reality and linguistics, on top of the political backdrop. Some of it felt a little like a formulaic essay of explanations, which I tuned out a little, but fore the most part it presented engaging ideas.

Galápagos is a Kurt Vonnegut novel and there are some mild spoilers below.

Told from a million years in the future, it is narrated by a ghost who has watched humanity evolve from the big-brained creatures we are today into a species similar to seals that spend all day in the sun, eating and mating.

Elina promised me she could tell me all this because you get it all at the start of the novel. However, you don’t. You only find out he is a ghost halfway through. Maybe I could have worked it out, but it’s hard to say given I already knew that was the case.

I’m coming to the conclusion that I am not a fan of Vonnegut’s work. As with Slaughterhouse Five, nothing is ever particularly clear, he just slowly drip-feeds you information throughout the story. Good concept, and an interesting story, but I found reading it quite hard work.

Imagine walking up on the surface of Mars, to find that the rest of your crew had left you for dead and set off back to Earth. You have few supplies and no way to contact anyone.

I know what I would do. Crawl up in a ball and die. That is possibly why ESA are unlikely to select me for a manned mission to Mars. This question is the one put to protagonist Mark Watney. When we walks up on the surface of Mars, to find that the rest of the crew have gone…

Oh, and there are some spoilers in this article.

It is told from two perspectives. First of which is the log entries of Mark, which sometimes moves into a 3rd person description. The second is a third person narrative of what is going on back on Earth.

This is a little odd to go between the different forms, and also gives the lot away to some point. If Dr Hassall had not already ruined the ending for me, I suspect the fact that there was a separate thread based on Earth would have lead me to guess the eventual outcome.

In some ways, certainly in the first half the book, it would have been better to solely tell the story from Watney’s log entries. If you had to have a strand based on Earth you could have put the entire thing as a part 2 at the end of the book. Joe Berlinger wanted to do something similar when filming Book of Shadows.

However, as time went on I settled down into the format.

I enjoyed it throughout. The humour was quite dark and very geeky in places. There was a lot of science, though nothing that a lay person such as myself would struggle to comprehend (I think). Plus, as Mark points out, in some ways it is a story about a space pirate. An actual space pirate. That’s pretty cool.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel Margaret Atwood. It describes a near-future dystopian world in which democracy has been replaced by a fundamentalist Christian military government and re-structured society.

In said society women are divided into functions for men. The protagonist, Offred, is a handmaid. She is used for breeding purposes only. Still, better than being a Martha, or shipped off to the colonies…

The final piece of the puzzle of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series (a trilogy in seven parts). Forward the Foundation follows Hari Seldon from the time he decides to work on psychohistory (at the end of Prelude to Foundation) and the founding of the First Foundation on Terminus.

Once you have read all the other books, you pretty much know what is going to happen. However, it is still an entertaining read. Everything slots in and completes the story.

What a literary feast of science fiction. Isaac Asimov delivers a superb 6th instalment to his Foundation series.

This article contains spoilers.

Prelude to Foundation follows the adventures of the young Hari Seldon from when he first arrives on Trantor. He soon finds himself exploring the various different cultures and sectors of the planet.

It has a wonderful ending. At the back of my mind, there was something wrong with Chetter Hummin as a character. If he was a mere news reporter, how would he have so much power and influence? How could he go so un-noticed? Then, when he turned out to be Eto Demerzel, it all clicked into place beautifully!

If that wasn’t enough, there is then the whole extra layer of him turning out to be Daneel Olivaw as well, who we learned about in Foundation and Earth! A great ending to a great book.

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is a masterpiece of science fiction writing. After many years it was followed up by Foundation’s Edge, which was so-so. Then, the year I was born, it was added to with Foundation and Earth, following Golan Trevize’s quest to find the planet from which all live originally came from.

It was heavy on the philosophy. Discussions of morality, ethics, whether robots are human and whether the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. This makes it slow going at the start by picks up as the book moves on.

There is a certain excitement generated on being in on the answer as it were. Obviously, being actually from Earth, and having a basic knowledge of our galaxy, you can feel the rush when you realise that Trevize is getting closer and closer.

The end is quite a nice twist too. It doesn’t throw everything on its head but provides something satisfying different. If you enjoyed the series so far, this is well worth a read.

Dune. Arrakis. Desert planet.

Dune is a 1965 novel by Frank Herbert. It is gripping. I usually make it through a novel. It’s rare when I actively seek out extra time to get in reading. However, this was one of those novels. Intricate and interesting, yet not overpoweringly complicated.

It has also aged very well. Despite being 50 years old, it did not sound out-dated. Herbert died in 1986, coincidentally the same year as follow science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard.

It does mean however, that I now have five sequels to add to my reading list.

I saw Lawrence Krauss speaking at QED last year and decided he was definitely worth reading. When I looked up his books, I found he has one entitled “The Physics of Star Trek”. Win.

It is pretty much what you expect. He looks at various aspects of the technology featured in Star Trek and talks about how possible they would be in the real world. It turns out that Gene Roddenberry put quite a lot of thought into this, especially as Trekkers kept asking difficult questions.

It was written in 1995 and is now starting to show its age. It was, for example, written well before we successfully build a cloaking device. Krauss writes in an engaging style that is on my wavelength.

Maybe there will one day be a sequel. As the author himself suggests, he could do The Physics of Star Trek 2: Wrath of Krauss.