Ack wrote: ↑Wed Jan 15, 2025 12:29 pm
Do I have any criticisms? Yes, of course. The story takes a long time to properly get going; for the first hundred or so pages, I thought this was more like a series of vignettes than anything. It was only towards the middle that I realized how the beginning had set up everything. And the story takes its time with world building. Also, it was written in the 1980s, so while it's forward thinking in many respects, it's also often dated. But hey, the Soviet Union was a global player at the time of writing, so yeah, it makes sense why it comes up.
You never know. Maybe the USSR will make a comeback any day now...
What would you say are your top 3 cyberpunk novels?
1. When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger
2. Pegasus in Flight, by Anne McCaffrey
I never got into the Pern series, so my experience with McCaffrey's writing is several limited. As in, this is the first of her works I have ever read, which feels like a travesty considering she was a mainstay of sci-fi and fantasy. But, we have to start somewhere, and while it's technically the second book in a trilogy, Pegasus in Flight was an easy starting point. That's because the first book, To Ride Pegasus, is a collection of novellas and short stories, and the characters introduced here are new, so it's an easy place to jump in.
The book focuses on a futuristic world where humans with varying psychic abilities, known as Talents, have become mainstays of the global economy, law enforcement, government, and so on. Because of their abilities, they're generally held up by society but ensure they serve to keep the regular folks from becoming jealous and fearful of them. Unfortunately, it also makes them targets for abuse by the greedy and unscrupulous, particularly high ranking officials involved in constructing mankind's first orbital platform for launching missions into deep space.
And then the Talents discover two new young kids who were missed in their initial screenings: Peter, a quadriplegic with incredible telekinetic abilities, and Tirla, an illegally born child with empathic capabilities so powerful, she can learn any language and ghost in almost any situation. These two become key in serving the Talents to break up a massive child abduction conspiracy while most of the adults are stuck serving conscripted jobs building the space platform.
Overall, I enjoyed myself. McCaffrey's prose is easily readable, and many of her characters are extremely likable. The book takes some time focusing on world building at first, which kind of lost me, as you don't really get into the psychic stuff for a while, but around 50 pages in, I was wolfing it down in chunks. This is a story where the kids are far more mature than they would be, but also for very good reason, so I never took fault with any of their behavior; they felt fully realized.
I'm interested in one day seeking out more of McCaffrey's work as a result. Maybe not Pern, because that's massive, but some of her other one-offs sound like they could be interesting to check out. I'll let y'all know if I do.
The most recent Battletech book is following up on the single biggest plot thread still leftover from the Dark Age period: the still ongoing HPG Blackout which severed FTL communications across the Inner Sphere. This book is written to be a solid stand alone book and introduction to the universe's fiction; while you still probably want to know a bit of the nature of the setting, all the relevant plot developments for this book are covered in a very short introduction that covers the history of FTL communications in the setting.
The book starts with the protagonist, Kenja Rodriguez, a member of the Clan Sea Fox Watch (spies), beginning an infiltration to destroy the data farm of a corporation. There's an initial sneaky jump into the compound, a change into fancy clothes to mingle with the hoi polloi to lift a keycard, and then actually getting to the server farm to set the explosives. The security forces show up, her senior partner is killed, and she escapes by the skin of her teeth, setting off the explosives. If this sounds like the opening to Goldeneye, you're right; the book is heavily influenced by the various James Bond films and novels.
After this Bond-style in media res intro, Kenja is given a new mission; to find Tucker Howell, the one man who has ever restored an HPG station after the Blackout, and secure and assist him so that Clan Sea Fox can get the stations back online across the Sphere, restoring communications and putting the Clan in position to make a tidy profit through administering them. She'll first have to figure out where he is, then get him, then keep him safe from other elements who also are seeking him out.
Because of this focus, there is less general mech on mech action compared to your average Battletech book. More time is spent with various ground-level spy games and some time spent coming up with a plausible sounding explanation for the Blackout and solution thereof. Obviously it's all based around physics that doesn't actually exist, but the explanations hold together well enough. And having that plot thread wrapped up and giving us a path forward has a variety of implications for how the universe is going to evolve over the next in-universe decade.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
1- I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (8/10)
I would assume few of you guys have ever watched an episode of ICarly, but I grew up watching it (I'm 25). I'd been wanting to read this for a while because of that and found it for 10 cents at the goodwill bins luckily a few months ago.
It goes over her childhood, dealing with an absuive mom and being a child actor. While I'm not a child actor, I personally could relate to a lot of the stuff in the book; I've unfortunately dealt with some similar issues myself. If you had a rough childhood, this might be a good read for you. Otherwise, I'll admit, it got a little dull in parts for me personally. Might not be for you if you don't connect with it.
2- Tommy Chong's Unauthorized Autobiography (9/10)
Brother gave me this for Christmas, and I finished it at work last week. I've always liked him in that's 70s show, and I had seen Up In Smoke as a kid, but I was never super familiar with Cheech and Chong. The thing that surprised me the most was how connected these two were in Motown - playing with damn near every big name you could think of, including Jimi Hendrix. I knew they were musicians , but wow.
I'm a bit of a hippy myself, and I try to go my own way - this book was also quite relatable. Chong is a great writer and I might go read the I Chong book about his jail stay soon.
Hobie-wan wrote:Milk the banana for all it's worth.
The book that launched a media series, Melancholy sets up the world of the Haruhi Suzumiya series and serves as the "getting everyone together" and setting up the nature of the world, including directly showing some of Haruhi's latent power (even if she isn't aware of it). There's not a lot in the way of events, as it's all focused on introducing all the characters.
The Haruhi Suzumiya series follows Kyon, a normal high school student beginning his first year. On the first day he is introduced to his classmate Haruhi Suzumiya, who introduces herself to the class by stating "If any of you are aliens, time-travelers, or espers, please come see me. That is all." Through his interactions with her, he gives her the idea to start a club to find those sorts of people, and soon the club is filled with three more people in addition to Kyon and Haruhi. And as it turns out, they are an alien, a time-traveler, and an esper (though they don't let Haruhi know).
The main conceit of the series is that Haruhi Suzumiya has inherent reality-altering powers. The world adapts itself to her wishes. She is completely unaware of this power, but its effects can be felt by advanced entities. For example, the time-traveler's organization discovers a time quake in the past and discover it's linked to Haruhi; at some point she used her powers and did something that affected the time stream. The esper joins the club because Haruhi was musing that the club needed a mysterious transfer student, as mysterious transfer students always have something special going on. And a few days later the school has a new transfer student. The three characters who fit Haruhi's special person criteria are all in agreement that letting her know their true nature would likely have dire consequences for the world; what happens when God realizes they are God and start consciously remaking the world to suit their whims?
The chapters are divided to give focus to each new character, learn about their powers and what their goals are. The final chapter focuses on what part Kyon is playing in all this, given that he is just an ordinary student. And it ends with a "and this is the beginning of the insanity of my life" sort of thing. It's not terribly long in terms of pagecount and also reads fairly quickly, so you can blow through it in a couple of nights easily.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
The second Haruhi book follows the adventures of the SOS Brigade as they work on making a movie that Haruhi wants to show at the upcoming culture festival. This is the first book that really shows just how destabilizing Haruhi's abilities are, and how the other members must try and manage those complications.
Things start off ordinarily enough, outside of the insanity that is Haruhi's general mind, but as Haruhi keeps coming up with ideas for the movie, those ideas go from what would be a special effect to something real. And unfortunately, they usually involve some sort of weapon blast. The gang is barely able to manage to stay safe and keep Haruhi from realizing that she's wishing eye beams into reality.
It wraps up pretty cleanly by the end, and sets the stage for the sorts of complications that will come in further volumes.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
1. When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger
2. Pegasus in Flight, by Anne McCaffrey
3. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, by Addison E. Steele
This is a novelization of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV show feature length pilot. I admit, I found this years ago in a thrift store and was kinda hoping it was an original adventure, but that's ok. Upon looking up reviews, apparently most people who read this nowadays were fans of the show, so it's a nostalgic trip for them, and I can't criticize that. But it didn't work for me.
Why not? Grammar. While there was definitely an edit pass for spelling issues, and the story had to conform to the TV pilot, what didn't get tackled were things like the repetition of words. I often encountered the same word used twice in a sentence or three or more times in the same paragraph, and it made the reading experience feel clunky. And it happened over and over again. The result is that this became a chore to get through.
Steele went on to write a few other Buck Rogers books, and I'm curious if they're original stories or based on later episodes and story arcs. But I'm going to hold off if the prose is like the first, because it served as a nasty distraction.
Ack wrote: ↑Sun Feb 23, 2025 1:40 pm
Steele went on to write a few other Buck Rogers books, and I'm curious if they're original stories or based on later episodes and story arcs. But I'm going to hold off if the prose is like the first, because it served as a nasty distraction.
One of the many reasons a lot of the Star Trek books were successful was that they were written by good authors, even when they had to conform to TV episodes. James Blish was one notable Trek book author, and his works are generally well-regarded. Based on what you've shared, I'm not sure Steele's other adaptations will pan out, either.
