This fun, goofy chapter book is the latest (after a ten-year hiatus) in the Franny K. Stein: Mad Scientist series. Franny decides to learn about the strangest, craziest thing she knows of: her mother. This results in several adventures involving powerful, shape-shifting, and self-aware hair.
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Review: Semiosis by Sue Burke
Given a billion more years of evolution, what would plants evolve into? Given that life on Earth went from single-celled organisms to us in a billion years, an intelligent plant evolving in the same period of time seems not only plausible, but likely.
21 Best Political Science Fiction Books
If you’ve got two humans in a room, you’ve got politics. Politics is about governing, which relies on someone being of a higher status, and as social creatures, we are intensely aware of both our status and others’.
If there’s any consistent direction in the past ten thousand years of human civilization, it’s that our societies are getting more and more complex. More complexity leads to more politics, so as we barrel down the razor-blade-lined Slip-n-Slide of time into the future, politics is only going to become a larger influencer in everyone’s lives. Bleah.
Review: Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward
While the extreme physics of the story may be accurate, Dragon’s Egg contains some of the most stilted dialogue I’ve come across in a long time, especially in the beginning. I found myself thinking that author Robert L. Forward must have talked to a human woman at some point in his life, but if so, that knowledge did not find its way to his book.
However, this is not a story you read for its character development. Dragon’s Egg is all about examining an alien race evolving on a sphere with a gravity of 67 billion Gs, and living at a million times the speed of humans. The story is most believable when it’s dealing with aliens, and it’s still a fun ride.
Recommendation: Get it at the library. Power through the first chapter and you’ll be fine.
Review: House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds
Summer 2019 Science Fiction Reading List
Science fiction summer: dipping your toes in a pool of hypermercury while basking in the golden daytime aurora, and watching two ringed planets collide into each other like a pair of cymbals.
Here are some books to read on days like this.
Review: The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. is brilliant, fast-paced, and will give you sore wrists because it’s a thick, heavy book, but you will not want to put it down.
An expert in ancient languages is hired by a mysterious government agency to translate some documents that suggest that magic actually once existed in the world. But the advance of science caused magic to disappear in 1851. However, the existence of a two-hundred-year-old witch and some fancy technology allow a limited amount of magic to occur in this world, and soon the language expert and others are being sent back in time to repair history. And, if they’re lucky, bring magic back to the world. Continue reading
Review: The Breach by Patrick Lee
The Breach is a fast-paced thriller, a firehose of plot unburdened with character development. A lone hiker in Alaska comes across a downed airliner with the dead bodies of the American First Lady and several others, along with an empty box that suggests a strange missing item. Continue reading
Review: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The alternate history Never Let Me Go follows the lives of several children who grew up in a strange, special school. It’s very well written (the author is the guy who wrote The Remains of the Day and won the Nobel Prize for Literature), but the real focus of the book is not really about the characters, but about the slow reveal of why the school and the children were special. Continue reading
11 One-hit Wonder Science Fiction Books
“One-hit wonder” has an insult buried in the compliment, but it’s hard enough to write a good science fiction novel, much less get it published and then have it become popular and enduring. So even having a one-hit wonder is an impressive achievement, and the books on this list should be appreciated for their merits, instead of their authors being lightly mocked for not doing more.
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