Our reads in September 2019

Another month,another pile of books. Share your reading plans for September.

Dusty's TBR for September

SF/F
Chad Oliver - Unearthly Neighbors ✔
Cherie Priest - Boneshaker
Raymond F Jones - Planet of Light ✔
Ted Sturgeon - More Than Human ✔
Robert Sheckley - Immortality, inc ✔
John Scalzi - The Collapsing Empire ✔
Thomas Watson - The Courage to Accept✔
Charles Stross - The Fuller Memorandum ✔
D F Jones - Denver is Missing! ✔

from other genres
Hugh Lofting - Doctor Dolittle's Post Office ✔
Patricia Wentworth - The Case is Closed ✔
Patricia Wentworth - Lonesome Road ✔
T S Eliot - The Waste Land ✔
P L Travers - Mary Poppins Comes Back ✔

my classic picture books
Chris Allsburg - Jumanji✔
Jane Hissey - Old Bear ✔
Helen Cooper - Pumpkin Soup ✔

Currently reading Longer. Blumlein has been a favourite writer for a couple of decades. He seems to have bounced back from his cancer and his more productive than he was before. I also like the fact he's doing a Paul Park style self referentiality in this book.

I have in hand Willy Ley, The City of Lost Fortunes (this month's book group read) and The Dreaming Stars; anything else will depend on the Library Hold Fairy.

Must write my review of Friday Black. Quite liked it. Exhalation: Stories hasn't been anything like as successful a read, but apart from the first story, they're all solid and respectable reads.

Still working on In Hero Years... I'm Dead by Michael A. Stackpole.

I'm reading The city in the middle of the night. So far I like it a lot better than All the birds in the sky, but am having problems visualising some of the world.

Finished Psion, Catspaw, and Jack of Eagles. Almost done with Pursuit of the Screamer.

I am almost done with The Atlantis Gene and have started The Last Dog on Earth. I have Fleet of Knives and Within the Sanctuary of Wings on top of the TBR pile. Also would like to read Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds, if I can dig it out.

I'm one reading session away from completing The obelisk gate by N. K. Jemisin. While not as good as the first instalment, I'm thoroughly enjoying it!

Finished a very enjoyable Winston Classic Raymond F Jones Planet of Light.A much more thoughtful and serious take on contact with alien civilisations than we usually find in this light and enjoyable 50s juvenile series.Interesting'
I am part way through Immortality, inc,More than Human and Simon R Green'sDrinking Midnight Wine,and suddenly all three of them have been reserved by other readers and I have only till the 9th Sept to finish them before they will wink out on me. Not amused! :0)

Currently finishing up The Book of Dreams by Jack Vance, the final book in the Demon Princes series....

Just started Heirs of Empire, which I bought on a whim. A dozen pages in and the tine-eared dialogue is already starting to annoy. As is the superpowers-masquerading-as-space-opera-tech. We'll see how it pans out. My expectations are not high...

Finished a re-read of Annihilation for my SF&F book group - enjoyed it a lot more this time. The descriptions of the natural world and the dream-like atmosphere drew me in.
Now starting Frances Hardynge's Cuckoo Song.

Finished Robert Sheckley's debut novel,Immortality, inc. The mind of a 1958 man is snatched from his body seconds before death in a car crash,and he awakes to find himself transplanted into a new body 150 years in the future.He was to be part of an ad campaign of a company that has the technology to make a template of a mind and either,for a huge fee put it into a brain dead but healthy body,so that the rich can live on,or store the mind template so that after death it can be released into a sort of limbo,waiting room,The Threshold,perhaps to be transplanted in the future,orto go into an unknown afterlife.
Sheckley has great exuberant fun exploring the ramifications to a society once there is scientific proof of an. there is a life after death. Certainly not subtle,but it rattles along at a great pace,with numerous twists and turns,humour.satire and plenty of ruminations on our attitudes to death,and what would happen if the fear of a judgmental afterlife was removed....not pretty,folks!.....
. Some flaws,to be expected in a debut novel,but a Hugo nomination is not to be sniffed at.And all in 250 pages! I have plodded through 95 pages of Abaddon's Gate,and still have no less than 450 pages to go....(sigh).....
Having finished my marathon trek through the Hugos and Nebulas,I have retreated to the 50s and 60s and am having a great time.The Sentinel,Shadows in the Sun,Immortality, inc.and even some Andre Norton juveniles have all been enjoyable reads in the last few weeks.
Would'nt exactly class Sturgeon's More Than Human as a pleasure,its sad and harrowing at times,but still enormously impressive 6 decades later. About 60 pages left there,more on it later when I have finished it.

This novel is not improving. As I posted in Facebook earlier... In this book, an aircraft launches kinetic missiles travelling Mach 20 from 200 miles away. They hit Mach 28 at some point. According to the narrative, they cover the distance in "the blink of an eye". Well, no. Mach 20 is over 15,000 mph, so it will take about 50 seconds to cover 200 miles. And if they hit Mach 28 about halfway, then they'll be pulling over 40,000 G acceleration. Do writers not check this stuff? Just because it's space opera, you can't just make up numbers, FFS.

>16 iansales: You should be ashamed. You made me go look at the author, and I can only say one thing. You can't fix stupid. I got up late, and was just drinking my first cup of coffee. He has an account over on Goodreads, and has carefully rated all his books. Why do authors *do* that? It's just so dumb.

I even spruced up his author page, adding his web site, and Facebook account.

You're a tough one. I hope reading this book doesn't cause any long term damage.

The Hanging Stranger was a satisfactory early-PKD read, and a TV episode loosely inspired by the story rounded out my experience of how a tormented mind's solidly crafted crumbling structure can enlighten the more fortunate, less troubled, sheeple of the world.

I think any SF fans should consider subscribing to SciFi Hub on YouTube for free audiobooks of SF stories. I'm not much of an ear-reader, but this was a good listening experience, and this guy's narration actually gives me a sense of what y'all like about audiobooks.

>18 richardderus:. Thanks for the heads up about SciFi Hub.

Currently, I am reading short stories from Three Moments of an Explosion while waiting for The Testaments to show up in my mailbox. Not bad stories- the one called Polynia was particularly intriguing so far.

Ted Sturgeon's More Than Human has held up well for being 67 years old.Not an easy read,either in style or in content,but it is tense, gripping and thought provoking.I tend to think of Sturgeon as Clfford Simak with a harder,sharper edge.
Now on to Abaddon's Gate

Finished In Hero Years... I'm Dead by Michael A. Stackpole. Enjoyed it. Superheroes. Supervillains. Plots within plots.

Finished Once a Hero , The Naked God and just started Finder.

Also in the stack: Waking Gods, Foundryside and The Event

Tackling a strange one, Adolfo Bioy Casares' The Invention of Morel. All I know going in, he was a protégé to Jorge Borges and this 1940 novelette is a kind of variant of Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau.

I just finished reading Kline's Swordsman of Mars, to fill in a gap in my sword-and-planet catalog. My review is posted. It seems that when the eventual publishers of the Flash Gordon comics couldn't get the rights to ERB's Barsoom, they hired a writer to emulate Kline's story.

I finished Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang and I wasn't interested more than three stars'-worth in any of them. I must be at fault, I admit it, please don't hurt me. I simply don't care for or about the stories or the collection.

I also finished Recursion by Blake Crouch and again I liked it exactly three stars'-worth. I liked Dark Matter a whole lot better and felt that, in this iteration of the man-unmoored-by-events trope, the angsty Harry-bloody-Dresden-ness was overwhelming my give-a-damn meter.

Reading Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett, about at the halfway point. The characters are engaging, especially the protagonist and the sigil-magic interesting with it's own new rules of behavior, etc. I'm liking this work thus far, more a superhero origin story than anything, with a fantasy setting (a bit cyberpunkish)...

Looking forward to getting into this; I adored Bennett's "Divine Cities" trilogy.

Two chapters into Elizabeth Bear's Ancestral Night.... still getting used to character's language transitions....

Once again I thoroughly enjoyed our own Thomas Watson's The Courage to Accept.Only in the later stages of book 4 in the series am I getting some inkling what the title is about! lol
Sympathetic characters ,an unfolding sometimes surprising reveal of some puzzles of the plot,the whole Star Trek universe sort of vibe with many alien species working and living together. Oh,and a rather creepy alien menace,the Faceless,an implacable,mysterious and terrifying enemy indeed,with absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever.Great stuff.Military SF isnt normally my cup of tea,but Thomas cleverly interweaves the action with warm interludes with all our favourite characters. One more to go in the series,Setha'im Prosh.

Added a reread of Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald to my reading rotation.

Just started a re-read of The Player of Games.

I am listending to Kindred by Olivia E. Butler and I'm loving it. How have I missed reading it? It was first published 40 years ago!

>29 dustydigger: Thanks for mentioning Thomas Watson's War of the Second Iteration series. I really need to find time to continue with those. I've read and liked the first two novels plus a couple of short stories set in the same 'verse.

>32 gypsysmom: Kindred is my favorite Octavia Butler book. It's actually one of my favorite books, period. Glad you are finding it to be a good read!

>32 gypsysmom: Synchronicity: I just bought a copy today.

Added The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction November/December 2018 to my reading rotation.

Hi there! My name is Leslie and I have just found this group. I have currently been rereading the Liaden books by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, adding in a few of the short stories I missed first time around. I'm up to I Dare at the moment...

I tend to like both sci fi and fantasy - given the group name, might I enquire whether talk of fantasy is discouraged? For sci fi, my favorite authors (subject to whim!) include Isaac Asimov, Lois McMaster Bujold, Robert Heinlein, David Brin ... For fantasy, there is J.R.R. Tolkein (whose books I loved for decades before the popular movies came out and have been read and reread since I was a teen), Ursula K. LeGuin (for me, she could be either sci fi or fantasy depending on the book), Terry Pratchett, Anne McCaffery (another author of whom I am not sure is sci fi or fantasy).... I am sure I could think of more but that is what come to my mind now.

>36 leslie.98: Welcome. Many people read both, but if you want a more Fantasy-slanted thread it is here : http://www.librarything.com/topic/310795.

The FantasyFans (where that other thread resides) and Green Dragon groups may be of interest to you.

Thanks >37 Jarandel:. When I come up for air after my immersion in the Liaden Universe, I will check those out.

Hi Leslie,good to see a fellow Read It,Track It member turning up here!:0)
Most of us here are either SF readers with a minor in reading Fantasy,or Fantasy readers with a minor in SF,most of us are not totally exclusive,(there is so much overlap between the genres anyway these days)so you are very welcome to discuss SF AND Fantasy.There will always be somebody who has read whatever you are reading!
I havent got around to Lee and Miller yet,so will be happy to hear about them.Mind you,I quail a bit at the thought of a series with well over 20 books in it,so it may be a while before I take a peek:0)

Leslie, this thread asks the question "What are you reading this month?" and answers which aren't SF are quite acceptable, because we know that to be a knowledgeable reader of SF, we have to read widely, both outside genre and in other genres.

My sister once accused me of only reading SF & Fantasy, until I did a count-up in my LT library and found 250 non-genre works of fiction in it! (And that was a couple of years ago...)

Currently reading Splintered Suns.

Reading Margaret atwood's The Testaments. While I enjoyed the enhancement of Aunt Lydia's story and the subtlety of the forms of resistance to tyranny, the rest is a bit ho-hum for me. Compared to the The Handmaid's Tale I'm not engaged by the other characters in the story and the plot is less gripping.

Thanks for the welcome >39 dustydigger:, >40 RobertDay:!

Continuing on my Liaden obsession, I have finished up I Dare and Fledgling and Saltation; next up is a short novella (or maybe a long short story) Skyblaze which is one I haven't read before...

>16 iansales: That's sad. The cover looks so cute too.

Finished Pursuit of the Screamer (far better than the title and cover suggest) and nearing the end of The Highest Frontier. For whatever reason, more women authors for the foreseeable future, with three books by Jo Walton (2 and 3 in the Thessaly sequence) and Among Others, and Joan Vinge's Dreamfall.

>44 SFF1928-1973: well, you know about judging a book by its cover...

Saw an interesting looking alternative history, wonder if anyone has read it Mirage . I have read a few of his books (Set This House in Order is one of my favorite mind bending book about schizophrenia) Wondered if anyone has read Mirage, and had any thoughts on it.

ETA just noticed he has a new book coming out next year - 88 Names. As a former DM something tells me I will really like it!

At the start of the month I mentioned Willy Ley: Prophet of the Space Age (B+) as one of my reads but it has rather less to say about the man's connections to the SF field than I might have expected. Or, to put it another way, there are implications that the author does not seem to be aware of, apart from being mostly interested in the man as an impresario and cheerleader for science. At one point Ley signed an exclusive deal to work with Fred Pohl's "Galaxy" and one wonders if John Campbell's turn to pseudo-science (which Ley would have loathed) had anything to do with that. Buss was probably working on this book long enough that it's just possible that he could have talked to Pohl before he passed on.

I have finished Skyblaze and then breezed through Ghost Ship and Necessity's Child. I am now about to start Dragon Ship...

And I have just noticed >2 dustydigger: has a Miss Silver book in the other book category for this month's reads -- I am also a fan of Miss Silver! I have read almost all of the books in the series before (back in the 1980s and 90s) and have recently been rereading a few and trying to find and read those I had missed before.

Greetings, all. I don't read that much science fiction these days, but I do enjoy following along with this thread. I'm just popping in to say that I recently read the 6th and 7th books in Jasper Fforde's highly entertaining and hilarious Thursday Next series, One of Our Thursdays is Missing and The Woman Who Died a Lot. Fforde provides an alternate universe with a very impressive level of invention, including lots of wordplay and literary references. (The heroine often goes into books to solve crimes. In the series' first book, The Eyre Affair, there's an arch villain hiding inside Jane Eyre and causing all sorts of havoc.)

>49 leslie.98: I have recently located a great source of Patricia Wentworth books,a nice little website called Faded Pages,quite a small site with less than 5000 books,but there are some intriguing things there for readers of old authors.There are no less than 31 Miss Silver titles there,with only #4 missing from the 32 titles. check out - https://www.fadedpage.com/csearch.php?author=Elles,%20Dora%20Amy
I have been filling in the gaps of my Ngaio Marsh novels,and have only one left to finish the whole Roderick Alleyn series,and about 2 of Margery Allingham's Albert Campions,so I thought I would start in on Patricia Wentworth as my next Golden Age female detective writer.Wentworth seems almost forgotten today,while she was a major popular writer during the reign of Agatha Christie. Not as ingenious as Christie but her characters seem more psychologically interesting,a little more complex.

>51 dustydigger: Aha! Many thanks for the link. I am also a fan of Ngaio Marsh (whose books I have also recently been rereading) and Margery Allingham. Wentworth was indeed somewhat of a "forgotten" author - I started reading her books as a teen dipping into my mother's collection of 1950s & 60s paperbacks stored in our basement; as an adult trying to find her books in the 1980s, I found that they were out of print and took to scouring the used book stores - thus my somewhat erratic first experience of the series! I find that her plots tend to follow more of a stereotype than Christie, not in the mystery but in that there is always a romantic angle involving a young couple that Miss Silver helps to come together. Since I tend to like that aspect (hence my liking for another author Mary Stewart), it doesn't bother me but does tend to come up in reviews and criticism...

I'm just starting The Testaments.

>54 Unreachableshelf: I just finished it a few days ago. It's a very quick read!

Currently reading Moonwar by Ben Bova....

Basically finished The City of Lost Fortunes (B) yesterday evening. Has its virtues but the narrative as a whole feels a bit clunky; still liked it enough to read the next book set in the sequence.

I've started The light brigade by Kameron Hurley. So far I like it a lot more than The stars are legion but less than God's war. It's intriguing though.

Fiished Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald, Liked it better than my first read through.

I finally reviewed Kate Heartfield's second alt-history novella, Alice Payne Rides. I likeded it four whole stars'-worth.

Well, I have finally finished the Liaden series with my ARC of Accepting the Lance and several misc. short stories from the series that I have accumulated in the form of Baen's Free Stories books.

Next, after a short break to read some other genres, I think that I will read The Obelisk Gate... I read the first book, The Fifth Season back in July so it really is time to get back to this!

>47 cindydavid4: I've read a few books by Matt Ruff, but not Mirage -- yet. It's on the (near-infinite) TBR list though. Bad Monkeys was entertaining and Lovecraft Country was good but much more serious. Let us know what you thought of it?

>50 rocketjk: Those Thursday Next books are a lot of fun! Are you going to read them all, now?

I'll get to Atwood's The Testaments eventually, but there are a couple hundred people in the library queue ahead of me. Should I reread The Handmaid's tale first? I'm thinking not.

I finished Richard Powers' The overstory this week. Damn, he's a good writer. It's only very subtly genre; mostly, it's set in our universe, with lots of facts about trees.

Now reading City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett - so far quite good....

Really enjoyed my reread of The Fuller Memorandum,which is probably my favourite in the Laundry Files series.Next up,to complete all my rereads or missed titles will be The Apocalypse Codex and The Rhesus Chart.Then there will be a long wait for the latest book,The Labyrinth Index,where apparently the new prime minister is actually possessed by Cthulhu's mate,Nyalathotep! lol.
For fun in October I am going to reread all the Nyarlathotep stories of Lovecraft to get ready for Labyrinth Index.Looks like a whole new plot arc,which will be fun. :0)Poor old Laundry,dismantled and destroyed,and Bob has to work for the Black Pharaoh.
I am now reading Chad Oliver's Unearthly Neighbors and John Scalzi's The Collapsing Empire.I read and enjoyed abot a dozen Scalzi novelsbut I am struggling a bit with this one.If I could really like the characters more I would enjoy it more,but this book as the least sympathetic cast I have seen in any of his books. Oh well,maybe it will improve and the story will take off?Hope so.

>62 karenb: I didn't have any trouble picking up The Testaments without having read The Handmaid's Tale in several years, so if you feel like it there's no reason not to, but you don't need to.

>62 karenb: "Those Thursday Next books are a lot of fun! Are you going to read them all, now?"

The Woman Who Died a Lot is the seventh and, so far, last book in the series, so at this point I am all caught up. At the end of this book, though, there is the promise of at least one more. I've got my fingers crossed that it will be sooner rather than later.

>63 johnnyapollo: Cool. The Divine Cities trilogy was a highlight read for me this year. Each book resolves nicely by itself, features a different protagonist, (you will meet them all in book 1), and are also each part of a mostly satisfying overall story arc. I thought it was nicely done all around. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

I'm starting Gideon the Ninth.

Finished my review of Friday Black: Stories...the best are excellent, the least aren't. But on balance, I'm a very, very satisfied customer.

When I found out that John Boorman once published a novelization of his movie Zardoz (a film I cannot but class as "feel-good"), I simply had to read it. I kind of wish I hadn't now: its clumsy pretention and not-quite-sensical pseudo-philosophy just aren't as entertaining without the visuals.

>70 Petroglyph: It can't be as bad as Ken Russell's sf novel...

>71 iansales:
Would that be Mike and Gaby's Space Gospel? From the description, that does look awful...

>72 Petroglyph: Yup

>71 iansales:, >72 Petroglyph: It *was* pretty funny, just for all the wrong reasons.

Woq! yet another winner from Chad Oliver,Unearthly Neighbors about the huge difficulties and dangers of first contact between humans and apparently primitive humanoids who have no sort of tools whatsover.There are tragedies yet in typical 60s style,there is hope that any intelligent entities can come to accomodation and understanding.And all in 144 pages! I hope I can find more of Oliver's works in the future.
I intend to finish The Collapsing Empire this week,about 100 pages left. It took a lot of work to get involved in this book,which is very unusual when I read Scalzi. I am also reading Boneshaker but finding it very slow going,may put it aside,as I really must concentrate on finishing my WWEnd Pick N' Mix,still got 15 books to read there,and about another 15 titles for my Century of Books challenge. EEK!

I have been sorting out some creepy stufffor October. Unfortunately there are 3 people ahead of me at the library,so no hope of rereading A Night in the Lonesome October. Thought perhaps to enjoy Terry Pratchett's Mort I love Death,WHO ALWAYS TALKS LIKE THIS.
That made me think of Ingmar Bergman's classic The Seventh Seal and I rooted it out,intending to watch only the classic chess match at the start of the film. Bad mistake,because I was pulled into that strange mesmeric film,and ended up watching the whole thing,95 minutes..lol.Its just a marvel,and every time I watch it I see more in it. A total masterpiece,wth the most stunning black and white photography. I still personally prefer black and white films to those in colour which my family find very odd. ..... Going into second childhood,perhaps? I first saw the Seventh Seal on TV probably around 1964,and became a fan of it then,and finally got my own copy.As brilliant now as 60 years ago!

>75 dustydigger: I did not get on well with Boneshaker. I was initially looking forward to reading it since the setting is Seattle, (where I live), but the YA-tropes and zombies, (ugh), effectively derailed the book for me. I didn't fully hate it but I also did not continue with the series.

I have begun my Halloween-month reading early this year by cracking open House of Leaves. I think I like it so far; certainly have read nothing like it before, which makes for an intriguing beginning. I'm a bit hesitant about the length, (nearly 700 pages!). Especially after having just completed Ash, a Secret History, which turned out to be a real slog at over 1,300 pages. Somewhere in there was an exceptional alternate history/parallel universe tale doing its best to get out - but the extra cruft and mediocre dialog weighed things down to a less-than-average 2-star read for me.

Hoping for a bit of a palate-cleanser with Walter Jon Williams' Angel Station, which is my next e-book that I will read on the go while thumbing through my print edition of House of Leaves during these lengthening autumn evenings.

I finished Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan to finish the Lady Trent series. Dragons are pretty awesome, so I liked these books. I also finished The Last Dog on Earth by Adrian Walker. I was ok - I think I am getting tired of dystopian fiction. Loved the dog, though. Also finished Stephen King's latest, The Institute and a mystery (Kindness Goes Unpunished).

I am starting Fleet of Knives next. I am hoping to read A Night in the Lonesome October before Halloween. I didn't quite get to it last year. Anyone have any other suggestions for Halloween reading?

>78 daxxh: Non-genre but... Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle or The Haunting of Hill House are both decent Halloween reads. Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree is a fun kid's (of all ages) story. His Something Wicked This Way Comes is another good one for this time of year.

A Night in the Lonesome October has become an annual tradition for me. I do the one-chapter-per-evening thing, which is fun and allows plenty of time for other reading at the same time.

>77 ScoLgo: When I read House of Leaves I used three bookmarks to keep track of where I was.

>79 ScoLgo: Just saw an adaptation of We Have Always Lived in the Castle on Netflix. Not too shabby.

A Night in the Lonesome October is fun, but my favorite Hallowe'en read is Liggotti's "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World."

>82 paradoxosalpha: I loved The Shadow at the Bottom of the World.

>80 pgmcc: I can see the need for that!

>81 justifiedsinner: Good to hear. That one is on my watchlist. Will likely get to it within the next couple of weeks.

>83 pgmcc: Thanks. I see my library has that tale in a collection called Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe. Onto the Overdrive Wishlist it goes...

>84 ScoLgo:
You're welcome!

:-)

P.S. I think >82 paradoxosalpha: deserves some of the credit too. He reminded me of it.

>85 pgmcc: Oops! You're right. I had meant that comment for >82 paradoxosalpha: but... PEBCAK, I guess...? o_O

I alluded to being at the mercy of the Library Hold Fairy at the start of the month, well, I finished up one of those books in the form of The Black Tides of Heaven (B). In a word it was interesting, but only interesting. I don't know whether I really needed a somewhat gender-bent take on Chinese fantasy conventions but that's not my main issue, what leaves me a little underwhelmed is that the evil overlord mother of the protagonists didn't strike me as being much more than a prop to goad them into action.

Loved City of Stairs - taking a break with the latest Honor Harrington book then will return to City of Knives...

Read a fun pulpy D F Jones (best known for writing Colossus) novel,Denver is Missing!.People surveying the sea bed for oil accidently hit on a huge pocket of nitrogen which soon causes havoc diluting the oxygen in high altitudes,killing millions.The emptying pocket collapses causing enormous tidal waves. A small band escape across the Pacific on a small boat,battling storms and tsunamis. Bit of an oddity,but a nice fluffy relaxer.
Also completed Scalzi's Collapsing Empire.Interesting premise about the Flow,a sort of tide in space that ships can enter for FTL travel. It is now disappearing,or changing directions which will have catastrophic consequences for space habitats which will become isolated.
I didnt like this as much as other Scalzi books,wasnt keen on the characters,and absolutely hated the constant stream of bad language. If I got a quid for each swear word I could have funded a very nice tropical holiday!.I will continue the series if I see the books on the library shelf,but wont search them out.
In comtrast I've read several vintage SF novels lately - Sheckley,Simak,Sturgeon and Chad Oliver among them. Not a swear word in sight! Bliss.
Yep.I know I am hopelessly old fashioned,but my tastes were fixed young,certainly pre 1980 and strong language is a constant irritant when I am reading.(particularly when its women) So sue me! ;0)

As for Scalzi if the strong language is a problem you're sooo not going to like the next two books! I personally liked the second book a lot better than the first, as it provided some context that I felt like I was missing from the first.

>89 dustydigger:: "Read a fun pulpy D F Jones... a nice fluffy relaxer...." but "which soon causes havoc ... killing millions." All depends on your definition of "fun", I suppose.

And on Scalzi: "...the Flow, a sort of tide in space that ships can enter for FTL travel." So, like the luminiferous ether, then? There are very few truly new ideas, even in sf.

The light brigade was pretty good. It used the tropes of MilSF to undermine the gung-ho stereotypes of the genre. The non-linear episodes were confusing to keep track of but overall it was a satisfying read.

Meanwhile, in other news, I'm back from a break from sf spent trying to read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow which I was recommended by some of my colleagues in the software testing community. I really struggled with it, in part because it seemed very old-fashioned and partly because the publishers had dumbed it down a bit.

So last night I started on Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief and have romped throughthe first few chapters, much to my relief.

Picked up, and was utterly sucked into, ELYSIUM by Jennifer Marie Brissett. Am really loving this twisty tale.

Started a re-read of China Mieville's The Last Days of New Paris for my SF&F book group, and it's just as bizarre, brilliant and imaginative the second time around.

>91 RobertDay: Lol! Ah Robert,there's nothing like a good old catastrophe to warm the hearts of old SF readers.Coldhearted bunch,aren't we?Probably we would have been at the Roman circus,giving a thumbs down

And on Scalzi: "...the Flow, a sort of tide in space that ships can enter for FTL travel." So, like the luminiferous ether, then? There are very few truly new ideas, even in sf.

Good old luminiferous aether (notice dinosaur Dusty still sticking to the ancient spelling!)
I had to assume that the Flow idea was what attracted the attention of the Locus Award people,(and wasnt it a Hugo nominee too?) Otherwise though a pleasant enough read in the usual Scalzi manner (apart from my language objections)how did it become award stuff?
Co-incidentally,I had very recently rewatched my recording of Jim Al-Khalili's series ''Light and Dark''on BBC which dicusses the history of light,which so enjoyably explains the fascinating topic in language that even a totally scientifically ignorant person like me can understand at least at a basic level after several viewings.
I am a major fan of Jim's interesting science topics.Between them,Jim and Brian Cox have promoted a renewed interest in the physical sciences in UK.Brian is credited with having a major effect with a 20% rise in physics undergrads . Brian however tends to be a little more light weight in my eyes,probably because I am always looking around to see where he put his college scarf and his rucksack of books he is on his way to return to the college library.He cant be 51!
I have a sneaky feeling that he has a portrait in his attic a la Dorian Grey! :0)

>94 richardderus: I liked that too. If you've not tried it, I can recommend Necessary Ill, also published by Aqueduct Press.

Reading Uncompromising Honor by David Weber. Perhaps it's just me but the exposition includes a lot of tired dialog. About a quarter way through and looking for the battle action sequences I liked so much in the earlier books...

>97 iansales: I.L.L. requested, and isn't Aqueduct a treasure of a press? Life was one of theirs, and a very good read indeed.

Finished The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction November/December 2018 edited by C. C. Finlay. Overall, I enjoyed this issue.

>96 dustydigger: Don't forget, it was Brian Aldiss who coined the term "cosy British catastrophe"... :-)

I have those Scalzis on my TBR pile. I recently read Redshirts and was not impressed (I felt it was a one-trick pony of a book) but loved Lock In. So I'm wondering if he's going to turn out to be a writer who blows hot and cold for me. Watch this space...

I was impressed with Jim Al-Khalili's recent series on inventions that changed the world, as much for its James Burke-esque attention to unlikely connections as anything else. His R4 series, 'The Life Scientific' is also a pleasure; just hearing him talking to other scientists about - well ,the title says it all. As for Brian Cox, I know some people find his delivery irritating; but his recent re-working of 'The Planets' worked reasonably well for me. Though my other half does wonder quite how well he does when he goes to conferences - "Published much recently, Brian? In the running for the Nobel this year, Brian? Oh, what a shame..."

From Amatka by Karin Tidbeck, p21:

Vanja fetched a cup and plate and looked out the window. It still wasn't raining. In the frying pan she found the leftovers from yesterday's dinner; the pot contained coffee, so strong it was almost brown. Vanja let the grounds sink and tasted it. It tasted unfamiliar, spicy and both sour and sweet, made from some mushroom unknown in Essre.

This book is set in Hell.

>99 richardderus: Duchamp's Marq'ssan Cycle is excellent too. I have a number of books from Aqueduct.

>101 RobertDay: Ah,dear old James Burke. Actually I remember watching Tomorrow's World,way back in 1965 or 66.He was already a sort of Oxford geek,never having the Brian Cox charisma,more into tweed and wooly jumpers and leather elbow patches on his jackets,but so solid and authoratative even then. Naturally he was a mainstay in UK TV coverage of the moon landing. I watched it all,in black and white,on a blurred 14 inch screen,which I occasionally had to thump on the top to stop the screen rolling! lol He provided the staid but informative ballast to Patrick Moore's flamboyant rather eccentric quickfire bursts of excited information.
I too enjoyed Jim's inventions that revolutionized the world series. Interesting to compare his list with Jeremy Clarkson;s 2004 programme with a similar remit.though more lighthearted and fun orientated.
2004 revollutionary inventions -1. The Gun(!!!) 2. The Aeroplane 3. The Computer 4. The Phone 5. The Television
2019 Jim's inventions that changed our world - 1. Aeroplane 2. The Car 3. The Rocket 4. The Smartphone 5. The Telescope 6. The Robot.
Interesting that the computer,the phone and the TV are now all subsumed under the Smartphone! :0)

>97 iansales:, >102 richardderus: You've both hit me with book bullets, for Necessary ill and Amatka. Please stop before I go into overdraft!

>104 dustydigger: And odd that Clarkson didn't list the car!

>105 Sakerfalcon: So Claire! Did I tell you about this coming Tuesday's hot-off-the-press SFnal goodie? Trinity Sight...well, read for yourself:

Is the Earth planning her rebirth—or her revenge? Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens to find herself in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Empty vehicles litter the road. Everyone has disappeared—or almost everyone. Calliope, heavy-bellied with the twins she carries inside her, must make her way across this dangerous landscape with a group of fellow survivors, confronting violent inhabitants, in search of answers. Long-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles and splits, and monsters come to ominous life. The impossible suddenly real, Calliope will be forced to reconcile the geological record with the heritage she once denied if she wants to survive and deliver her unborn babies into this uncertain new world.

I myownself just can.not.wait! for it to come into my library system! I'm #1 on the holds list.

:-)

To relax my brain after the strenuous Surrealist workout of The Last Days of New Paris I'm now reading the Firely novel Big Damn Hero by James Lovegrove. I don't usually read tie-ins but he seems to have got the character voices and tone of the TV series pretty well.

I suppose that this sounds better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick...but talk about slathering it on thick! :)

Where's Jack Chalker when you need him?

Last day of the month, so last review posted: Deep Roots by Cthulhu-Mythos monadnock Ruthanna Emrys.

And isn't it, well, interesting that calling it the Lovecraft Mythos is more objectionable than referring to a squid-faced soul-withering personalization of the utter indifference of the Universe...how are the mighty fallen, Howie ol' boy.

Out of fidelity to derided old Grandpa himself, I prefer to call it Yog-Sothothery. I find "mythos" to be an unhappy byproduct of theologizing from August Derleth and/or AD&D (i.e. Deities & Demigods). But I've enjoyed the Emrys story The Litany of Earth, and I'm looking forward to Winter Tide and Deep Roots.

>111 paradoxosalpha: I prefer to call it Yog-Sothothery

I won't be joining you in spreading that yclepture, but I got a huge chuckle out of it!

>112 richardderus: It's Lovecraft's term, not paradoxosalpha's.

>107 richardderus: I saw something about Trinity sight somewhere else, maybe on tor.com. It does look good. I'll wait for your review.