Space Chronicles

My first experience with Neil deGrasse Tyson was watching him talk about his book, Death by Black Hole, on Jon Stewart's Daily Show.  I was enamored with the concept, rushed out, bought the book, and enjoyed it immensely.  A few years later, I happened to be watching the Daily Show and again saw Tyson.  This time he was promoting a new book, Space Chronicles.  I put that on my to-get list but as a collection of his former works didn't sound as interesting as his answering of space questions like Death by Black Hole.  When I finally got it, I was right, however the book still has some interesting points.

The primary problem with the book is that, since it is a collection of his other works, he makes the same points over and over again.  Even someone who supports the space program, as I do, found the repetitiveness of some of the points exceedingly wearying.  This book would probably have more enjoyable read over the span of several months rather than a week so that the repetition would be less obvious.

However, despite this problem, the articles are all quite interesting individually.  Tyson's ability to take complicated interstellar concepts and render them easy to understand by the layperson remains undiminished over the years making it an easy and yet educational read.  The book is also interspersed with tweets from him; some of which are funny, all of which are informative.

Some of the parts I found most interesting were when he talked about the political climate during the space race (and contrasting it with today's).  I was a big fan of space race history when I was younger, I knew all about von Braun and Aldrin and Shepard and all the rest, and reading about it as an adult was a fun return to nostalgia.

I think the thing that I will remember the longest from this book is something that Tyson only makes allusions to, however the allusions he made were enough to convince me to look it up myself.  It was the story of Robert Wilson and what he said when asked about how the particle accelerator that was planned in Batavia, Illinois would contribute to national defense.  He said "In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending." (http://history.fnal.gov/testimony.html).  I love this sentiment.

Overall, I would give this book an 87%.

Out of this World: An Anthology of Fantasy

I recently inherited all of my late grandmother's books.  After finishing The Thorn Birds, I chose a book at random from a box that came from her collection.  The one that I pulled was this one.  Generally speaking, I like fantasy and so the title sounded interesting.  Plus, this collection has some surprisingly famous authors in its pages.  The most surprising was probably Jack London, who I know from his books like White Fang and The Call of the Wild, both of which I read as a child.  In this collection, his contribution is dark, post-apocalyptic story, which is very different from the brand of wilderness adventure that I am used to seeing from him.

This is my copy, the lines are some sort of plastic cover that has developed linear bubbles.

This is not really fantasy in the modern sense. There isn't any unicorns or centaurs or really magic. This is an older definition of fantasy. In addition to the story about the world trying to recover from an apocalyptic plague, there is, for example, a story about people who live in department stores and their feud with the night watchman. All of the stories could be described as “fantastical” if someone tried to convince you that they actually happened, but would not be what you would expect from the fantasy section of your local book store.

Some other famous contributors were H.G. Welles with his vision of the last judgment and Oscar Wilde and his story about a British ghost that becomes exasperated with Americans. H.G. Welles’s story has his same biting style of cynical commentary as many of his other works but it is much more humorous than some of his other stories and Oscar Wilde's story shows how America (and really the world) has moved beyond tradition ghosts in horror.

The story behind this book was that it was compiled by a Sergeant named Julius Fast during World War II of the soldiers favorite short stories read. It is sort of interesting to imagine a different generation reading these stories in their makeshift quarters somewhere in Europe or the Pacific while I am sitting reading these over a hot meal in my comfortable apartment.

I think the thing about this book that I will talk about the most later on is Robert Arthur's "The Devil and Sam Shay" which is about a man winning a bet with devil, and the devil, furious, curses him with never being able to win another bet again and the story explores the aftermath. The character behaves rationally and does exactly what I would have done in the situation. It is great example of making the best of a bad situation.

Overall, I would give this book a 91%.

The Birthday of the World and Other Stories

Ursula Le Guin is somewhat a shame of mine.  I consider myself a big fan of sci-fi and fantasy and yet I have read almost none of her books.  My mother recommended this short story collection to me, saying that I had to read the final story.  It seemed silly to only read one part of a short story collection, so I read the whole thing.  The recommendation was correct: the novella at the end was what made it worth reading, but there were some other good parts as well. 

Perhaps this collection would have been more enjoyable for me if I had read more of the author's work.  Since most of her stories take place in the same universe the shorter ones might have benefited from some context.  None of them were incomprehensible or even close to it, I just wonder if I could have liked them more.

Having never read much Le Guin before, I was surprised at the degree that (especially of the earlier stories) were concerned with sex.  There was a lot of interesting gender roles or changes from our world but it was just interesting how much they revolved around sex.

In my opinion, the best two stories, the title story and the novella, occupied the last third of the book.  The title story is about a primitive culture being exposed to the larger world around them.  It is a science fiction-y look at conquistadors from those being conquist-ed, with a twist.  I liked the stories naive viewpoint.

The novella, called Paradises Lost,  is a very interesting take on what would happen on a generation ship.  Without giving too much away, it has to do with a religion being formed around the concept of the journey and how the ship completely cares for them.  It comes across as completely plausible (while at the same time reminding me of Battlestar Galactica in some ways).  The characters are believable and interesting and I have difficulty coming up with another story that looks at life aboard a generation ship like this.

The theme of the collection is societies different than those found on today's Earth and in that it certainly does a good job of showing off a variety of different societies in the Ekumen universe.  There are some interesting thought experiments contained within the pages of this book but none so good as the final novella.

Overall, I would give this book a 90%.

The Short Novels of John Steinbeck

This book was a Christmas gift, from the same Christmas that Gravity's Rainbow came from.  Luckily, this book was much more enjoyable.  The book (as the title implies) is a collection of some of Steinbeck's novellas, none of which are more than ~100 pages.  There are six novels in the book and, because I love to order things, I ranked them in amount I liked them from most to least.

1. The Moon Is Down

2. Cannery Row

3. Tortilla Flat

4. Of Mice and Men

5. The Pearl

6. The Red Pony

Since this book is really six novels, I will do a mini review of each one in the order that they are in the book (which is the order they were published in, not they order they were written in).

Tortilla Flat - I started this book with a little trepidation.  Every time I start reading a book by a famous author, I feel slightly worried that I won't like it.  How can I consider myself a good reader if I don't like famous author X?  However, I was gratified when I liked this story.  It is divided up into 17 bite sized chapters and they chronicle the adventures of a group of friends in the town of Tortilla Flat.  It was an enjoyable read and the way the characters were written it seemed a little like br'er rabbit but with people.

The Red Pony - This book was really five short books.  They all had the same characters but they wee relatively unrelated.  It follows the adventures of a young boy on his family's farm.  When I started it, I had hoped it would be similar to Shane.  However, there was no such luck.  None of the stories have the boy coming out very much the winner and that, combined with the less than happy ending of Tortilla Flat made me wonder if no Steinbeck story was going to end on a positive note.  The end of Tortilla Flat was passable because it was one part of the whole story but The Red Pony just threw repeated trials and pains at the kid and it just kept getting worse for him.  While it is certainly well written, it is hard to enjoy something where the main character's life just keeps going downhill.

Of Mice and Men - This is arguably the Steinbeck novel, either this or The Grapes of Wrath (which I haven't read yet).  I was surprised at how short it was, clocking in at less than 60 pages.  Perhaps that just shows how little space he needs to make his ideas known.  The story was interesting and unique, certainly an artifact of its time.  The lifestyle of his characters is uncommon in modern society.  However, after reading the previous two stories immediately before it, the ending tone the ending was going to take was apparent from early on. I will admit that the ending was slightly spoiled by 11/22/63where they put on a play version of the novel.  Despite this, the ending still had its surprises.

The Moon Is Down - In my opinion, this was the stand out novel in the collection.  To be fair, this is the closest to the genre I normally read of any in the book.  It is a story about a small town that gets invaded.  The exact sides are kept obscured, though from some clues in the story (and the time it was written) it seems like it is a German invasion of a French town.  The conversion of a normal people to guerrillas a bit at a time is fascinating to watch.  In this story, the end is at least marginally more positive.

Cannery Row - This story is the majority of the book, pages-wise.  It follows the inhabitants of a part of a town and their day to day trials and experiences.  He makes the metaphor of the stories being like a flatworm crawling into a scientist's collection plate.  They do add up to a coherent narrative, though there are some offshoots that don't really add anything. Because this story has so many characters, there are some likable characters for everyone.  This novel closes out with for the most part, positive feelings, a first for this book.  I am sure I will read the sequel, Sweet Thursday, at some point in the near future.

The Pearl - The final novel of the book felt a little like a letdown.  After the (relatively) lengthy epic that was Cannery Row this shorter story that was very tight and concise had a very different tone and feel.  As I prefer lengthy epics, this was somewhat less enjoyable.  In addition, I found the characters and their situation somewhat hard to emphasize with, which always detracts from my enjoyment.

The book as a whole was very enjoyable.  The two that I liked the least (The Pearl and The Red Pony) took up only about 20% of the book.  However, the book would have been worth it even it was only those two stories and The Moon Is Down, which was superb.  One complaint I had with the formatting of this book was that each page contained two justified columns of text rather than the normal full page.  This was not really a problem it just made physically reading it slightly more awkward.

In the back of my copy of this book (which was from a used bookstore), there is a quote from Steinbeck, followed by "2:18:58".  I don't know what the numbers mean.  I considered date started or finished (the book came out in 1953) and also time started or finished but both of those seemed silly.  Another option could have been the quotes location in the book but the quote is from another of Steinbeck's works and is not even found within the pages of this book let alone at 58 words into the 18th line of the second novel.  The most logical choice seems to be time spent reading the book.  It would be an interesting idea to time myself while I read but I feel like there are too many variables to get any meaningful data out of it.

Overall, I would give this book an 89%.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

Having gobbled up Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell I decided to read Ms. Clarke's other work that takes place in a similar world.  The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories is a collection of short stories that are all written in the same style as her previous book.  Some of them it is unclear if they take place in the same world while others directly involve some of the characters from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Like many short collections the quality is somewhat variable.  I most enjoyed the first and last stories, the ones in between I thought fell a little short.  Throughout the book there were glimmers of the stuff that made the other book so good, but I think that part of made that so good was the length of the book really let her flesh out the characters, the world, and the plot and her short stories really cannot do that in the same way.

If you liked Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, this book will probably interest you.  However, I would not really recommend reading it first.  While the size of the other book is a little daunting, it is a much more interesting journey than this one.

Overall, I would give this book an 81%.

Sucker's Portfolio

There are certain authors that I know that I will enjoy basically anything they write.  As a consequence, I do not buy books by these authors very often because books by them are sold in basically every bookstore, no matter how small.  That way if I underpack books for a vacation or some other similar circumstance, I can find books to read.  Kurt Vonnegut is one of these authors.  His latest book, Sucker's Portfolio, was on sale so I snatched it up.  Since it was a collection of short stories, it seemed like a nice thing to read during the hectic end of semester weeks.



Since this is the third collection published after his death, I was a little worried that they would be scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to include.  However, some of the stories were very enjoyable.  I thought that the first one was particularly interesting and was kind of a corollary to a Connie Willis book I like a lot, Passage.

In addition to the short stories the book also included an "unfinished" science fiction story.  I was interested to read this because, well, I like science fiction and I like Kurt Vonnegut.  This was sort of a surprise because the story is clearly building up and then it abruptly ends in mid-sentence.  Most of the time when unfinished work is published, it at least ends on a period but perhaps Mr. Vonnegut needed to go to the bathroom urgently or something.

One of the problems that I had with these stories were that none are particularly happy.  In his full length books, Vonnegut can generally offset this with humor but in these stories that is somewhat lacking.  They are still enjoyable, just do not expect to have a smile on your face when you finish them.

In summary, these are some stories that a Vonnegut fan would definitely enjoy.  His style of writing shines through and it is a nice quick read.  However, I can definitely see why these remained unpublished for so long.  Someone who is new to Vonnegut would probably enjoy one of his other books more (Slaughterhouse-Five is a particular favorite of mine).

Overall, I would give this book an 85%.

Agent of Byzantium

Agent of Byzantium is a collection of short stories that take place in an alternate timeline where the Byzantine Empire did not fall.  The book takes place around 1300 AD and follows one particular citizen who works as sort of a James Bond-esque character for the government.  The stories are certainly interesting and definitely left me wanting more.

The book starts with an introduction by Isaac Asimov where he discusses his love of alternate history stories.  He talks about how he would like to see one where Einstein's letter to Roosevelt arrived a day later.  This would put its arrival on Pearl Harbor Day when a response probably would have been delayed or lost in the shuffle.  I thought that that was a really interesting idea and it was nice to read Asimov's reasoning behind "presenting" this book.

The part of history that is changed so that the Empire never fell is that Mohammed, instead of founding Islam, converted to Christianity and became a Christian saint.  With this change, the Muslims never become a significant military force and never pressure the Empire.  In addition, this means that the Persian Empire never fell either.  This means that, throughout the book, Byzantium and Persia are engaged in a cold war.  This matters more in some of the stories than others.

Each of the stories basically has a gimmick, some (more) modern invention that is discovered by the protagonist that shapes the story.  In one, he finds a telescope and another has him finding a printing press, among several other stories.  I understand that that was a nice gimmick that allowed even someone without a strong grasp of history to be involved in the story because they could recognize the modern inventions.  However, I cannot help but feel that this at least somewhat implies that technology would have progressed faster without Islam, which is not a sentiment that I like as much.

It was interesting to read this so close to the end of the Mongoliad because they take place in similar time frames and it was exciting to see some of the similar things between the stories (though Mongoliad had much better combat).  In this book, the protagonist spends some time living among the mongols which resembled some of Gansukh's chapters in Mongoliad.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the stories in this book.  The biggest problem is that there are only five.  I wish that the book had been either a full novel rather than short stories or at least a lead in to a larger exploration to this alternate timeline.  Sadly, Mr. Turtledove has not done any such thing (at least not yet).

Overall, I would give this book an 87%.

Some Remarks

Reading this blog, it becomes readily apparent that I am a big fan of Neal Stephenson.  I have read the majority of his books and am eagerly awaiting his next novel, whatever that may be.  I ordered his book, Some Remarks, because I thought it would make for interesting, light reading on my holiday travels.  Some Remarks, was billed as a collection of Neal Stephenson's shorter works that were generally not reprinted.  I was interested to read a series of works from him from across his career. 

The first thing that surprised me about the book was how small it was.  I am used to my Neal Stephenson books easily breaking the 500 page mark.  Coming in at just over 300 pages, this was noticably physically smaller than all of my other books by him.  However, it is a collection of short pieces and so I am not sure that he has another 200 pages of short work laying around.

Most of the pieces have been previous published in some medium or other with two exceptions. However, unless you devotedly snap up literally everything Stephenson writes, this will probably be mostly new material.  As someone who has read most of Stephenson's novels, I had a fun time seeing how he got ideas for parts of them in some of the articles.

The longest article in the book, by a wide margin, is called "Mother Earth, Mother Board".  At almost 120 pages, it takes up more than a third of the book.  This is a piece on laying an international cable from Europe to Asia and how the author went and visited various places that it went through or was in the process of going through.  This was clearly an inspiration for a lot of the modern day shenanigans in the modern part of Cryptonomicon.  However, it is really, really long for being about the subject that it is about.  Honestly, I think the book would have been improved if he had abridged it, and I am rarely for abridgement.

There are a number of other pieces in the book with topics ranging from treadmill desks to space travel.  There are also a few interviews where he discusses his opinions and also some of his works, depending on the times that the interviews took place.  Lastly, there are a couple of pieces of fiction which are interesting, one of which could be considered a connection between the end of Cryptonomicon and the beginning of Snow Crash which I enjoyed immensely because of my love of interconnected stories and cohesive canons.

While this is definitely Neal Stephenson's style, the short article or story format doesn't give him the time to set up that often makes his stories so worthwhile and good.  While the long cable laying article was interesting, undersea cable has never been one of my major interests and unfortunately that piece failed to inspire me to make it one.  That being said, the man is knowledgeable on a wide variety of topics, making this book an interesting read and, because he is such a good author, an enjoyable one as well.



Overall, I would give this book an 84%.

The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge

When I started reading Across Realtime, I knew that I wanted to read the story that fell in between the two books contained within (see my review of Across Realtime for more info) so I grabbed this short story collection on my Kindle.  As I mentioned before, Vernor Vinge has some fantastic ideas and so I was a little worried that the short story format would not give him time to explore each idea to the fullest.  There were definitely some ideas that I felt could have held up whole novels, but it was definitely a good read, especially for fans of his other work.   As one would expect from a short story collection there were many good stories and a few bad ones.

Each of the stories had an introduction by him and some of them had a post script as well.  It made the collection have a much more personal feel than it otherwise would have.  I wish that other short story collections would do the same.  It also helped to explain the background of some of the stories that were part of his larger work collections.

This was a nice little collection.  My biggest problem with it is that, when you read all of his short stories, some of which are set in the same (or at least very similar) worlds as his novels, it becomes apparent that he does not place nearly as much value on a cohesive canon as I do.  Perhaps that is unfair.  What I mean to say is that some of the stories that take place in (supposedly) the same universe as some of his other stories are so different from the novel based stories in those universes as to necessitate serious explanation as to how the characters reached that point.

However, that is more of a personal problem than any one with the book.  Overall, I would give this book an 86%.

Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories

The Lost Tribe of the Sith stories were released as free eBooks to promote Del Rey's publishing of other Star Wars works.  They were written by John Jackson Miller who is a history nerd and tries to weave all of the history knowledge bottled up in his head into science fiction, making for quite the enjoyable tale.  If you can ever hear him talk about what influenced him to write basically any plot point, it is sure to be interesting and probably have some grounding in world history.

The eBooks became quite popular and so Del Rey decided to publish them together in a collection as well as with a novella that followed after the last story and wrapped up the open ending of the last story.  The novella takes up about 3/8ths of the book, while the other 8 short stories take up the rest. 

The stories cover over 2000 years, so the reader can really watch the society evolve and change over time.  There are basically three trilogies with the novella making up the third part of the last trilogy.  The basic premise is that this group (tribe) of Sith crash lands on an unknown (lost) planet and must support themselves without killing each other, a tall order for Sith.

Each of the stories has a pretty clear protagonist and it is sort of interesting to think that the guy that you are rooting for could easily have been the villain in a variety of other tales.  Also, seeing a large group of ego-centric people try to get along is pretty humorous.

An issue with this is that (if you haven't done the math) not all of the characters get the same amount of screen time.  The final part in the time line takes up about half of the book.  While I didn't have a problem with this, I could easily see how someone could be miffed that they were stuck with characters they didn't like as much as those the author introduced 1000 years ago.

No one from the movies shows up in this story and it requires no real knowledge of the Star Wars universe to enjoy.  The book presents a unique perspective on Star Wars and while the marooned on an alien planet is sort of a sci-fi trope, I can't think of another story that follows the growth of the marooned civilization like this one does.

Overall, I would give this collection a 82%.

Sherlock Holmes

The characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson have endured in the public mind for over a century, most recently appearing in a feature film and a BBC television show. Over the past year or so, I have been working my way through all of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. This comprises a total of 4 novellas and 5 short story collections. I have to say, while they are sometimes slightly repetitive and predictable if you take them all in at once, they are enjoyable reads. The short stories make excellent little things to read before you go to sleep or while you are waiting for the bus. The first two novellas, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four (which has a boat chase!) could be considered complete books, one a sequel for the other but the second two novels, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear, are basically just longer versions of the short stories.

Instead of detailing my thoughts about all of the stories and novellas, I am just going to discuss my favorite in each of the categories in this post.  Perhaps I will come back to others at a later date.

My favorite of the novellas was The Study in Scarlet. This was the first story published and the characters of Holmes and Watson get some fleshing out that they do not get very much of in the later stories. However, what really made this novel shine for me was, unlike most of the other Sherlock Holmes stories, which are generally narrated by Watson in the first person, this one has an entire section on the criminal's background in the third person. This section could make a compelling, if short, western by itself and was a surprising bonus.

My favorite of the short stories was The Adventure of the Illustrious Client. This came from The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, which is widely declared to be the worst of the short story collections; however, I did not find it bad at all. In the Adventure of the Illustrious Client, like in so many other Sherlock Holmes stories, Watson is used as a distraction while Holmes does something else. Unlike those other stories, in this one Watson knows he is a distraction and has time to prepare for the role. Also, unlike many other Sherlock Holmes stories, in this one Holmes is not out to solve a mystery but to influence an opinion.

Overall, while there are some repetitive themes in the stories (Watson being a distraction, people believed dead being still alive, among others) each story brings something unique to the table and I am glad that I read them all, rather than just a selection of them.

While some of  the stories are good and others are bad (which is completely understandable considering the sheer volume of stories Doyle wrote) I would give the overall series an 80% with certain stories being all the way up to a 95% and some down to 70%.