| |
|
Ilario, Mary Gentle. The lead character is a hermaphrodite, it's set in the same alternate history as Ash, and it's quite readable, although probably too light-hearted at times, and it leaves quite a few story-threads unresolved. It does start to take things a little more seriously by the end, which is a relief after the "oh deary me, I'm a slave again" tone of the beginning.
Shattered Sword, Parshall and Tully. A meticulously researched account of the battle of Midway, told largely from the Japanese point of view and using Japanese sources, which debunks most of the commonly held myths as to the events and importance of Kido Butai's demise. Interesting, if at times a little dry.
Eon, Greg Bear. Not hugely inspiring, although the premise (giant inhabited wormhole tube of twisted spacetime) is fairly bizarre.
Non-Stop, Brian Aldiss. Fun and games on a Generation Ship gone to pot. Fairly downbeat.
Gateway, Frederik Pohl. The narrative is split chapter by chapter between the lead character's flashback memories of a disastrous foray in an alien spacecraft, and his conversation with an electronic psychiatrist. Until the last sentence of the book, I was sick to the teeth of said robot shrink, but I guess it turned out alright after all.
The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Gene Wolfe. Postcolonial SF, good book. Three stories set on a pair of remote planets which may (or may not) have seen several waves of colonisation and massacre. Liked it.
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester. It took me until halfway into this book about a psionic policeman to twig the author's name... it's a fairly frenetic tale, although the solipsistic (is that a word?) resolution is a little too grandiose for me.
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes. Mouse meets Boy. Mouse and Boy meet Mad Scientists who expand their brains! Boy meets Girls, Boy loses Brains, lots of musings on the meaning of it all. Good book.
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman. Starship Troopers fight Viet Nam. Pretty cynical stuff.
Reading through all these SF Masterworks titles, I could almost begin to believe that some SF writers were a wee bit obsessed with psychology and/or psychiatry; you could almost copy and paste the themes from one book onto the next.
Tripwire, Lee Child. Oh bugger. Reacher. There was a copy lying around and I couldn't stop. Now I'll have to buy the rest. |
|
|
