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This got kind of long. Oops? If you only read one thing in this post, read me gushing about Y: the Last Man.
Contact (Carl Sagan): Reread. Alien message, alien machine, human field trip. Surprising how books will imprint on you in ways you don't notice until you come back ten years later, and well. There you are.
If I had to summarize the themes, I'd say it's science and religion balanced on a fulcrum of faith. Or maybe love. It's interesting to reflect on the ways time's changed the book in large and small ways. Apparently no one saw the fall of the USSR coming, but the slow creep of women into hard science continues to drag. No one's done us the favor of a TV ad auto-mute, or low Earth orbit habitats, or a female President. But the characters' reactions to events ring true, or at least ring compellingly. Who wouldn't dream of a world where a giant project encouraged humanity to rise to the challenge and strive to our best, instead of sinking to our worst.
( Quotes to entertain and challenge. )
The Last Colony (John Scalzi): Third in the "Old Man's War" series. Two ex-soldiers and their daughter are recruited for a human push for a new colony planet. Life gets a little more complicated than getting the crops in before winter. ( Spoilers, spoilers, and what's this? Spoilers! )
The story's playing with tropes I know, which makes it a soothing read, but doesn't make it particularly good. Take, say, characterization: ( Space cut. No spoilers here! ) I know what I'm getting when I pick up an OMW-verse book, which is soothing when I'm stressed, and less entertaining the rest of the time.
Tomorrow, When the War Began (John Marsden): YA. Seven teens return from a backcountry trip to find their homes deserted and their families captured by an invading army. Epistolary format, which I usually find awkward, but for a plot that could only be improved by an invading army from space, I will cope. Marsden is an Australian writer, and it shows in the slang, the grammar and the familiar approach to the landscape. (See also previous comments about Midwest Man vs grandchild of India.) This rocks my Americentric little world more than it should.
The Demon in the Freezer (Richard Preston): Smallpox, anthrax, and bioweapons. Narrated in a dramatic or even thriller style, but the essentials seem to be nonfiction: smallpox is bad news, but was annihilated in the wild by an epic World Health Organization campaign. Anthrax is scary, but less scary than smallpox. Biowarfare is not as hard as counterterrorism people would like it to be. Easy, fun read.
A Companion to Wolves (Elizabeth Bear/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala & Sarah Monette/truepenny): Fantasy. Njall the jarl's son is taken for the wolfheall tithe and bonds a queen trellwolf. ( It's like an earn-your-R-rating version of animal bonding fantasy. With wolves. Cut for space, no major spoilers. )
Final note: I liked this, but I also read it right after pop sci nonfiction on smallpox and traumatizing postapocalyptic fiction, so this may not be as harmless I think. I also watched the last episodes of Farscape before writing down my thoughts on the novel, (John: "I can't believe it - I left a nuclear bomb in an elevator." Chiana: "Hey - you've done worse." Sadly, he has) so I may be really skewed on appropriate sapient interactions.
All-of-a-Kind Family (Sydney Taylor): Children's book based on the author's experiences as part of an immigrant family in New York City's lower east side. I consistently file this next to Cheaper by the Dozen in my mind, and forget which one I've read. (Possibly both.)
Y: the Last Man: 1 - 8: Unmanned, Cycles, One Small Step, Safeword, Ring of Truth, Girl on Girl, Paper Dolls, Kimono Dragons (Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra): It's like Vaughan sat in on the feminists of LJ ranting about the treatment of women and minorities in fiction and took notes. Yorik Brown and his capuchin monkey Ampersand are the sole male survivors of a mysterious event that strikes down every mammal, fetus and sperm with a Y chromosome. In the first graphic novel he travels to Washington, DC, and Boston, teaming up with a federal secret agent and a biomedical researcher to find out why he and Ampersand survived. In later editions they travel across the country to Dr. Allison Mann's West Coast backup lab, getting a roadside view of America after the men.
( So, so good. Let's go down the checklist of likes and watch the series light up every button. )
The series is lighter than it could be, but also violent, messy and prone to killing minor characters. Other than the 3 billion (less one) men who died in the first issue. This is a story that could be the ceaseless pornographic romps of The Last Man on Earth, and in the first three graphic novels - the first 17 issues of sixty - Yorik gets it on with... well, he kissed two girls. Maybe two? See, there's this girl, who he was proposing to when the world ended... right.
I don't just rec Y, I will actively push it on unsuspecting people. This is your only warning. Speaking of warnings, I have 11 issues / 2 collections left to read, and if you spoil me past the end of Kimono Dragons, I will hurt you.
Contact (Carl Sagan): Reread. Alien message, alien machine, human field trip. Surprising how books will imprint on you in ways you don't notice until you come back ten years later, and well. There you are.
If I had to summarize the themes, I'd say it's science and religion balanced on a fulcrum of faith. Or maybe love. It's interesting to reflect on the ways time's changed the book in large and small ways. Apparently no one saw the fall of the USSR coming, but the slow creep of women into hard science continues to drag. No one's done us the favor of a TV ad auto-mute, or low Earth orbit habitats, or a female President. But the characters' reactions to events ring true, or at least ring compellingly. Who wouldn't dream of a world where a giant project encouraged humanity to rise to the challenge and strive to our best, instead of sinking to our worst.
( Quotes to entertain and challenge. )
The Last Colony (John Scalzi): Third in the "Old Man's War" series. Two ex-soldiers and their daughter are recruited for a human push for a new colony planet. Life gets a little more complicated than getting the crops in before winter. ( Spoilers, spoilers, and what's this? Spoilers! )
The story's playing with tropes I know, which makes it a soothing read, but doesn't make it particularly good. Take, say, characterization: ( Space cut. No spoilers here! ) I know what I'm getting when I pick up an OMW-verse book, which is soothing when I'm stressed, and less entertaining the rest of the time.
Tomorrow, When the War Began (John Marsden): YA. Seven teens return from a backcountry trip to find their homes deserted and their families captured by an invading army. Epistolary format, which I usually find awkward, but for a plot that could only be improved by an invading army from space, I will cope. Marsden is an Australian writer, and it shows in the slang, the grammar and the familiar approach to the landscape. (See also previous comments about Midwest Man vs grandchild of India.) This rocks my Americentric little world more than it should.
The Demon in the Freezer (Richard Preston): Smallpox, anthrax, and bioweapons. Narrated in a dramatic or even thriller style, but the essentials seem to be nonfiction: smallpox is bad news, but was annihilated in the wild by an epic World Health Organization campaign. Anthrax is scary, but less scary than smallpox. Biowarfare is not as hard as counterterrorism people would like it to be. Easy, fun read.
A Companion to Wolves (Elizabeth Bear/
matociquala & Sarah Monette/truepenny): Fantasy. Njall the jarl's son is taken for the wolfheall tithe and bonds a queen trellwolf. ( It's like an earn-your-R-rating version of animal bonding fantasy. With wolves. Cut for space, no major spoilers. )Final note: I liked this, but I also read it right after pop sci nonfiction on smallpox and traumatizing postapocalyptic fiction, so this may not be as harmless I think. I also watched the last episodes of Farscape before writing down my thoughts on the novel, (John: "I can't believe it - I left a nuclear bomb in an elevator." Chiana: "Hey - you've done worse." Sadly, he has) so I may be really skewed on appropriate sapient interactions.
All-of-a-Kind Family (Sydney Taylor): Children's book based on the author's experiences as part of an immigrant family in New York City's lower east side. I consistently file this next to Cheaper by the Dozen in my mind, and forget which one I've read. (Possibly both.)
Y: the Last Man: 1 - 8: Unmanned, Cycles, One Small Step, Safeword, Ring of Truth, Girl on Girl, Paper Dolls, Kimono Dragons (Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra): It's like Vaughan sat in on the feminists of LJ ranting about the treatment of women and minorities in fiction and took notes. Yorik Brown and his capuchin monkey Ampersand are the sole male survivors of a mysterious event that strikes down every mammal, fetus and sperm with a Y chromosome. In the first graphic novel he travels to Washington, DC, and Boston, teaming up with a federal secret agent and a biomedical researcher to find out why he and Ampersand survived. In later editions they travel across the country to Dr. Allison Mann's West Coast backup lab, getting a roadside view of America after the men.
( So, so good. Let's go down the checklist of likes and watch the series light up every button. )
The series is lighter than it could be, but also violent, messy and prone to killing minor characters. Other than the 3 billion (less one) men who died in the first issue. This is a story that could be the ceaseless pornographic romps of The Last Man on Earth, and in the first three graphic novels - the first 17 issues of sixty - Yorik gets it on with... well, he kissed two girls. Maybe two? See, there's this girl, who he was proposing to when the world ended... right.
I don't just rec Y, I will actively push it on unsuspecting people. This is your only warning. Speaking of warnings, I have 11 issues / 2 collections left to read, and if you spoil me past the end of Kimono Dragons, I will hurt you.
