« January, 2011 »
The Forever War 
by Joe Hadleman (1974)
read: 23 January 2011
rating: [+]
category: scifi & fantasy
A 1974 book about an inter-stellar war that goes on forever, with an enemy we don’t understand, fought by soldiers that were drafted, and led by officers that are idiots. Vietnam anybody? Anybody? This parable of the follies of war is as relevant today as it was in 1974. By taking the never ending war to a ridiculous extreme and by applying the paradox of near light speed travel to the protagonist, we get a hero who lives through the entire 1000 year war, while only aging a few years himself. The difficulties of integrating back into a culture that has gone through several generations while you aged two years also lets Hadleman say something about shell-shocked Vets that volunteered to go back to 'Nam 2 or 3 times. Tea Party sympathizers, if they can even get through an anti-war novel, will recoil in horror and how humanity solves its war problem. Everybody should read this book though, especially those that won’t get it.
Boneshaker
by Cherie Priest (2009)
read: 16 January 2011
rating: [+]
category: scifi & fantasy
It’s got zombies, in a steampunk world, in which the US Civil War is still raging after about 18 years. And it has pirates that fly blimps. It could be a really bad attempt to throw together a bunch of buzzwords, but in this case it’s one heck of a fun story.
Virtual Light
by William Gibson (1994)
read: 6 January 2011
rating: [0]
category: scifi & fantasy
Entertaining enough read, but the ending seemed to come out of nowhere. Gibson’s vision of a 2005 dystopian San Francisco, complete with huge homeless community squatting on the Golden Gate Bridge, is well developed. In fact, the big ideas in this book (SF and LA after the big one, a fractured USA, South American data havens, TV Christian cults,) are all really well developed. It’s the plot of the book that was a little thin.
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