Sci-Fi Sequel: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (1998)

Cover of 1998 Bantam Books paperback edition. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To Say Nothing of the Dog is the sequel to the time-travel novel, The Doomsday Book, but they really couldn’t be any different in tone or style. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a short, comic time-travel romp into Victoriana. I particularly liked the Golden Age mystery references, the romance, the humor and the dog. I don’t feel this book had the heft of the first in the series, but it was definitely a fun read.

The book’s title is inspired by the subtitle of an 1889 classic work, Three Men in a Boat. To Say Nothing of the Dog borrows much of its comic style, including the long chapter titles and the premise of a river adventure on the Thames, from Three Men in a Boat. If you liked one, you will most likely enjoy the other.

Worth Reading: Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis

Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis (2010)

Cover of Blackout

If you have read any previous entries in Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel series – The Doomsday Book or To Say Nothing of the Dog – you will be familiar with the premise. In the near future, time travel is possible, and historians from Oxford University frequently travel back in to time to observe first-hand important events. In these two books, three characters go back to slightly different areas of England during the first year of World War II, and then find themselves stranded there.

Blackout is the first part of a two-parter, and ends on a cliffhanger. All Clear is the second part of the two-part novel, and it’s worth reading immediately after Blackout so you don’t forget anything.

Blackout is a bit talky at first, and also somewhat confusing as the three characters’ separate timelines are narrated. I enjoyed the historical setting and the level of historical detail given about life during the war is terrific, especially for an Anglophile like me. I also got caught up in the big mystery of why these three had been stranded in the past and whether they had unwittingly affected the outcome of the war. To be honest, these two books could have used some serious editing. There is a lot of repetition, and a good editor could have cut them down to the size of one novel. But I guess that would mean half the sales.

These are a fun couple of books, if you enjoy World War II fiction, but they can be a bit overlong and repetitious.

Sci-Fi Classic: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Rendezvous with Rama (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (1972)

Rendezvous with Rama is a big-idea book in the classic tradition of hard science fiction. Rama is a gigantic space station, seemingly dead for hundreds of thousands of years, that enters our solar system in a future when humankind has colonized all of the habitable moons and planets. There is a brief window when the crew of the nearby spaceship Endeavour can explore this technical marvel before it passes too close to the Sun. Most of the story details the exploration and what is found inside.

The structure of the huge spacecraft is fascinating. But there isn’t a lot of plot here and the characters are fairly one-dimensional. (A hint of a sex scene toward the end seems both out-of-place and superfluous.) The novel ends on something of a cliffhanger, but the sequels were not written by Clarke and are said to be sub-standard, so I probably won’t read them. (Co-author Gentry Lee did the writing, while Clarke contributed editing suggestions.) I was left a little frustrated, wanting more.

I have noticed a similar theme in Clarke’s novels. He envisions aliens as so technologically advanced that they are god-like. They visit us either to ignore us completely or to manipulate us, but always they seem remote, impassive, uninterested in our petty concerns, again like gods. Having recognized this pattern, I don’t feel all that eager to read another Arthur C. Clarke novel.

Sci-Fi Sequel: Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederik Pohl

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederik Pohl (1980)

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon is the sequel to Gateway, reviewed previously.

A family of space explorers discover an ancient alien artifact — a space station that can make food out of comets — which leads them to another space station where those aliens might still be living.

I’m not sure which novel in this series I liked better, Gateway or its sequel, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon. Gateway was a stranger, more philosophical and probably more innovative novel. This novel had a more plot-driven and straightforward story that wasn’t quite as murky as the first in the series. It could easily stand alone, as the key plot points of Gateway are re-introduced. However, it does truly end on a cliffhanger, and a baffling one, at that. This series about ancient aliens and deep space travel is still holding my interest, so I expect I’ll plow ahead and read the third book in the series.

Sci-fi Sequel: Children of God by Mary Doria Russell

Children of God by Mary Doria Russell (1998)

Cover of Children of God: A Novel

Children of God is the sequel to The Sparrow, reviewed previously.

This book might very well turn you into a vegetarian. I was seriously contemplating giving up meat again while reading it.

The sequel is not quite as good as its predecessor, The Sparrow, but it does hold its own. Like The Sparrow, it is a bit slow to get started, but once the action moves to the alien planet of Rakhat, it picks up a lot of momentum. Russell takes on the added challenge of incorporating different timespans due to the relativity effects of traveling at near light speed. Years pass on Rakhat and Earth, for instance, while only months go by for the major characters moving between the two planets. As a result, the narrative jumps around a lot in time and space, and many events are related via flashback, which sometimes get confusing for the reader. But I admire Russell for not only acknowledging the time effects, but for making it a central theme of the novel.

The main reason I felt that Children of God fell short of The Sparrow was because the spiritual questions seemed less open-ended in the sequel. The question of whether a God could exist in a universe where such horrors could occur, and what kind of God he could be, seemed to be answered mainly in the positive. The story is indeed wrapped up mostly satisfactorily, but at a loss of some of the metaphysical punch that The Sparrow had. Still, I was glad to spend more time on Rakhat, which is a fascinating world.

My Reading Life: All Tomorrow’s Parties by William Gibson

All Tomorrow’s Parties by William Gibson (1999)

Cover of All Tomorrow’s Parties

One-sentence summary: This is the final installment in a trilogy that depicts a near-future society where virtual reality is commonplace and an entire society of squatters lives on the Golden Gate Bridge.

My rating: between 3 and 4 stars

When read: March 2002

Why read: I assume it’s because I had read the previous two books in the trilogy, although I honestly can’t remember them. But why else would I have bought the book?

Impressions: I’m not going to claim that I understood every last thing in this novel, but I did thoroughly enjoy every word. In his trademark sparse prose, Gibson has created an entirely believable world, a cast of characters who are vivid and real, a storyline that is both satisfyingly complex and yet exciting enough to sweep you along toward an explosive yet rather ambiguous ending (I like the ambiguity). Like the intricacies of the plot, the book is impossible to describe in a few sentences – you have to experience it yourself.

Current status: Gave it away.

Fun facts:

• The title comes from a song by Velvet Underground.

If you liked this book, the you might also like: 

• Neuromancer by William Gibson
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
  
• Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
• Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

My Reading Life: Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (1959)

Starship Troopers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One-sentence summary: A young soldier joins the war against the Bugs, an alien species.

My rating: 

When read: November 2010

Why read: It is a classic of science fiction.

Impressions: Yes, Starship Troopers is a fun, fast read, especially if you like endless details of military structure. But the characters are pretty flat and are often used as soapboxes for Heinlein’s own ideas on how military and government should function, which I don’t particularly agree with (although I enjoyed reading and thinking about them). Also, the glorification of endless war I find more than a little ghoulish. So let’s just say I have mixed feelings about this book and leave it at that.

Current status: I believe my husband has our copy in his library. I will not reread this.

If you liked this book, you might also like:

• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
  
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
• Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Sci-Fi Sequel: Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman (1997)

Cover of Forever Peace

Well, if you read The Forever War, you might as well go ahead and read Forever Peace, right? (Actually, I read them in the opposite order.) Forever Peace is a thematic sequel to The Forever War. Unlike a straightforward sequel, it doesn’t continue the events of the previous book or follow the same characters. Instead, it takes place on Earth in the near future and presents an alternate view of never-ending war and our response to it.

In the future world of Forever Peace, the United States possesses nanoforge technology, which can create pretty much anything out of raw materials. The U.S. is also in a perpetual war with most of the countries in the Southern hemisphere, which don’t have the nanoforge. U.S. military fights the war virtually via robots called “soldierboys,” which are controlled by soldiers who are “jacked in” to the killing machines hundreds of miles away.

Julian is one of those soldiers, but when a mission goes horribly wrong, he can no longer bring himself to fight. When his lover, Amelia, discovers that a planned physics experiment will destroy the universe, creating a doomsday device that anyone with a nanoforge and enough raw materials can build, Julian realizes that mankind can no longer afford our warlike nature. Then another scientist friend reveals a solution, one that may either enhance our humanity or remove it altogether.

This was a very entertaining book, with a lot of interesting ideas. I particularly like the way the experience of jacking, not such a new concept in science fiction, is explored. However, after a very long build-up and way too much exposition, I found the end to be unsatisfactorily abrupt and too cut-and-dried. It does seem like eliminating our warlike tendencies is the right course of action to take, but how ethical is it to do so against peoples’ will? No character really takes a stand on this or offers an alternative viewpoint for the rather sticky ethical question raised. The only opposition are grotesque nutjobs who will do literally anything to bring about the apocalypse so that of course the protagonists seem very sane by comparison.

So even though I really enjoyed Forever Peace, I ended up wishing for a bit more depth to it.

Sci-Fi Classic: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (1974)

The Forever War (Photo credit: woordenaar)

A soldier fighting in the interstellar war between humans and an alien species must deal with the time dilation effects of space travel as well as the unending warfare.

I have to wonder why it’s Starship Troopers and not this book that is the must-read military science fiction novel. The Forever War is much better written and more entertaining, and I appreciated its anti-war message more than Heinlein’s jingoism.

I also enjoyed that the novel made relativity an important part of the plot, so that the book spans an incredibly long period of time, incorporating many technological changes and cultural revolutions, while still keeping the same main character. Many novels with light-speed travel seem to forget about relativity. At first, I was put off that the beginning of the book takes place so close to the present day — it didn’t seem realistic — but once I realized how much time the story was going to cover, I forgave that discrepancy.

All in all, this is an entertaining read that deserves to be a science fiction classic.

My Reading Life: Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card

Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card (1999)

Cover of Ender’s Shadow

One-sentence summary: Ender’s Shadow is a companion novel to Ender’s Game told from the point of view of the character Bean, the hyper-intelligent young boy slated to be Ender’s backup in leading the war against the Buggers.

My rating: 

When read: September 2011

Why read: I had heard good things about this particular entry in the Ender series. I had previously only read Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead.

Impressions: It had been a while since I read Ender’s Game, and I didn’t really remember who Bean was, so it was nice to rediscover the character and essentially reread a favorite novel in a different form. However, Bean is not nearly as compelling a character as Ender is, and this story lacks the surprises or philosophical musings that I enjoyed in Ender’s Game. Still, it’s an enjoyable read, particularly if you’re already a fan of the series.

Current status: I don’t own a copy of the book, and I don’t plan to reread it. Ender’s Shadow is the first of a new series of Shadow books, but I don’t plan to read any of them either. I think I’m pretty much done with the Ender books, although I am excited about the movie coming out soon.

If you liked this book, then you might also like:

• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (although you probably should read this one first)
• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman