Short (near) Daily Science Fiction Book and Story Review

<shrug> Why not?

I'll try to post as often as possible. Given work conditions now, it won't even approach "daily" for a while. But eventually I hope to. I won't include every book and story I've ever read (some are really bad, others are merely forgettable), but a great many. While I've read a lot of SF books, I've read relatively few authors; so that may get a bit repetitive. There won't be an index, as I am utterly incapable of keeping one (i.e. I'm lazy). There may be a few minimal spoilers, duly alerted, but I won't use spoiler tags to hide them (yep, still lazy...)

Let's start with my all-time favorite work:

The End of Eternity
by Isaac Asimov.

This is a surprisingly short novel, less than 200 page in paperback in fact, when you consider all that goes into it: a complex social system, commentary on it, the development of one main character and two secondary ones (or three?), a novel and, as far as I know, unique means of time travel, all told in a non-linear way and with plenty of flashbacks, not to mention lots of novel terms and full internal consistency.

So what's it about? Well, there's this non-place existing in non-time, sort of, called Eternity (because there is no end to it). Sparing all the double-talk (really Dr. Asimov! <w>), the people in Eternity can affect events through time without suffering any effects themselves. This is the novel means of time travel. The Eternals, as they call themselves, employ advanced technology and sophisticated science to care for all human society from the 24th Century on to, well, all the sections they can as yet manage. A section is equivalent to a Century, and there are at least tens of thousands of sections.

To do this, Eternals effect something they call Reality Change. In short, a small action taken, say, in 657th Century changes history tot he pint that drug addiction rates are not excessive in the 662nd Century. You see things like misplacing a container in a spaceship, or jamming a clutch in a car, which have all manner of consequences as the years run by. Remarkably this was written decades before the development of chaos theory in math. Eternals, living outside of time, see the changes instantly from their point of view.

This all seems ideal (not to me), but there are flaws. One of the three big ones is that Eternals sever all contact with the rest of human society, except for impersonal observations and actions necessary to do their work. The second is that all Eternals are men. It's explained that few women qualify for Eternity. not because of their abilities, but because extracting a woman from Reality causes more Changes than extracting a man. Therefore no women, except in a few rare cases and only temporarily. The third one is that meddling in events and manipulating and changing people is not a nice thing to do. So in a way Eternals are always working against themselves.

Into this background we get to know a man named Andrew Harlan, with the rank of Technician, whose work it is to effect Reality Change. That is, he goes bodily into Time and misplaces containers or jams clutches. He prevents wars and controls addictions. He also, as a side effect, destroys things, changes people and their personalities, and is universally disliked in Eternity (along with all other Technicians).

He's an austere and abstemious man, in the full sense of both terms, fully devoted to his job. And also a man who represses his feelings nearly full time. He escapes the frustration and bitterness of his station in life by studying "Primitive History." That is, the time before the 24th Century when Eternity was first set up.

And then something happens to him that leads him to look at Eternity in a new way. A way that will lead him to contemplate finding an end to Eternity.

What happens to him? The short answer: He finds happiness. The long answer: read the novel.


Well, that wasn't so brief. I hope it was interesting.

Tomorrow I'll tackle my favorite Arthur C. Clarke novel (Hint: there's no number in the title)

The Fountains of Paradise
by Arthur C. Clarke.

The story seems simple enough. An ambitious engineer named Morgan, builder of the longest bridge on Earth, wants to build a space elevator. Unfortunately the only suitable place for the Earth end of it is a mountain top in the island of Taprobane (this is a fictional location, rigorously based on Sri Lanka), which is currently occupied by a Buddhist monastery. Morgan doesn't need to evict the monks, nor does he want to, but he needs their permission. And they think a space elevator in their front yard would be too much of a nuisance.

Parallel to this story, Clarke interweaves scenes from the life of King Kalidassa, an ancient ruler of Taprobane given to grandiose artistic and architectural projects and, naturally, conquests. One such project is a set of magnificent fountains (hence the title). I've no idea if the fountains have a real counterpart, but another grandiose art-work does. Read the novel and find out. These scenes are interesting in their own right, but they also help explain some of the events in the actual story.

There are also some fragments of information about an alien probe that flew-by the Solar System before the novel opens. While even more interesting, they are not really needed in the story.

Morgan doesn't just design a space elevator, he has to do all that's necessary to build it. That includes securing the location, obtaining the financing, managing the build, dealing with public opinion, etc. Morgan does it all.

As with many of Clarke's works, Fountains suffers from a lack of focus. At the beginning we are introduced to a diplomat Morgan turns to for help in approaching the Buddhist monks, but then he vanishes for most of the novel until near the ending. It's worth mentioning the ending seems detached from the rest of the story, and it seems forced and gimmicky. But for all that, it provides a bit of adventure.

Next up, when I find the time and energy, Larry Niven's signature work.

It's worth adding that Asimov's "The End of Eternity" began life as a novelette. It was also packed too tightly, so an editor at a magazine advised him to expand it to a novel. He did so, improving it a lot in the process, but also packing it even more tightly with background.

The original novelette is available in the book "Alternate Asimovs." It also includes a lesser version of his first published novel "Pebble in the Sky," and a more Asimovian, yet less satisfying, ending to a short story about levitation (I forget the title).

BTW, when dealing with trilogies, series, and book-length non-novels, I'll deal with them on a csae by case basis. That is, some will be presented as one work, others as more than one, depending on how much I decide to avoid spoilers.

Very interesting stories. What do you consider SF? Is it stories set somewhere that doesnt exist in real life? Im specifically thinking of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenent by Stephen R Donaldson.

Quote: boopsahoy

Very interesting stories. What do you consider SF? Is it stories set somewhere that doesnt exist in real life? Im specifically thinking of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenent by Stephen R Donaldson.

Well, not necessarily. So far the non-existent locales are a mere coincidence. But SF is specualtive, so it would involve places, objects, even kinds of people that do not exist. It differs from fantasy in that all these things have a basis in science, however tenuous. Of course, some authors are more rigoruos than others. Clarke, for example, rarely employed faster than ligth travel (and never in his latter works).

I'm not familair with Donaldson. About 80% of all my reading consists of Asimov, Clarke and Niven.

Ringworld
By Larry Niven.

I'll break my pattern. I don't particualrly care for Ringworld as a story, but it is Niven's defining work. His pecialty is creating odd, fantastic settings and placing a story in them. Sometimes the story lives up to the setting, sometimes not. In Ringworld I judge it almost does.

The Ringworld is a construct. It's a ring 150 million kilometers in radius, about 100 milion miles, in orbit around a Sun-like star. The ring spins fast enough to produce 1 gee in centripetal force to mimic gravity (meaning it has a tensile strength completely beyond any amterial ever known, but that's another matter). Walls along both rims keep the air mostly inside. The surface area is many thousands of times that of the Earth.

Fantastic settings indeed.

Ringworld is a "Known Space" story. That's a larger background developed by niven over the years, populated with certain aliens and certain human institutions. Knowledge of the background helps a bit, but it's not essential. At most you'll miss an odd reference or two. The aliens which appear as central characters, a Kzin and a Pierson's Puppeteer, come with explanations about them.

The story is about a small expedition, launched by the Puppeteers, to the Ringworld. One Puppeteer named Nessus recruits his crew on Earth. It is amde up of two humans and a Kzin. The humans are a man over 150 years old named Louis and a woman in her twenties named Teela. The Kzin is a minor diplomat's aide stationed on Earth, known by his title Speaker to Animals (nice guys the Kzinti, but not very diplomatic).

Minor Spoiler Alert. Proceed at your own risk!

The expedition manages to run afoul of something while overflying the Ringworld, and they find themselves stranded on this magnificent, very, very, very large unkown world. The rest of the novel is how they find their way off it and back home. We get a travelogue while the expedition tries to hold together.

Now, I don't know quite what I expected when I first read it, but I know I didn't get it. After all, they find no high-tech civilization, they never find who built the Ringworld or why, and they see onlya tiny portion of it. But the means Louis finds for getting back home is remarkable. And there are revelations about itnerstellar relations and one character that do change the tenor of the mission.

There are two ro three sequels to Ringworld, which asnwer many of these questions. I've read them, but found them lacking as well. As I've not re-read any of them, I wont' be posting reviews.

Tomorrow, or later, I go back on pattern: The very best of Babylon 5

Did I say tomorrow?

So, Babylon 5.

The Technomage Trilogy
by Jeanne Cavelos

I'll do this in two parts.

I forget the titles of the trhee bokos. That's fortunate, because the trilogy has a subtitle that spoils the ending a bit. Still, Ms Cavelos, working under guidelines set by B5's creator J.M. Stracinzky himself, does a great work fleshing out the Technomages. She does this by focusing on the two (2) mages who were on TV: Galen, from the spinoff series CRusade, and Elric from one episode of Babylon 5.

The first book starts in a simple enough fashion. Galen is Elric's apprentice and he is to be initiated as full Technomage ina few days, when all the mages gather at Elric's home in the planet Soom for the Convoation. This is an event that takes place every three years. Mages get together for seminars, fellowship and learing. New apprentices are introduced to the craft. And such apprentices old enough are initiated.

We learn most of what makes a Mage in this book, both technologically and philosophically. I won't get into the technology, though it's interesting, but the philosophy is intriguing. for one thing they center their order on The Code. This is not a code, properly speaking, but a list of seven words. If memory serves, and in no particular order: magic, science, knoweldge, solidarity, secrecy, good, and I'm missing one word.

A code is a set of principles, not a set of words. This anturally gives the rulers of the order a lot fo flexibility in how they rule. The rulers are five mages, all of them rather elderly and highly regarded, who form a body known as the Circle (they rate a mention in the Crusade innaugural movie-episode).

We learn, too, how mages control the technology that produces their "powers." Each mage develops a "spell language" particualr to himself or herself, and the "tech" implants adapt to obey their commands. Galen's peculiar spell language plays a role in the plot. He uses equations on an imaginary screen, which seems a cumbersome and limiting way of doing things, but it proves to be something else as the story develops.

Better make it three parts.

We´re told a story about the mages' "tech" as well. We're told an extinct species known as the Taratimude invented the "tech" a little voer 1,000 years ago. That it's not known how it works, but that the Circle has the ability to replicate it. This, to me, seemed more than a bit fishy. Later we learn also the Circle forbids investigating the "tech." This is puzzling, as one principle of the Mages is "to know all that can be known." We also learn the mages can mate existing technology to the "tech" in several ways.

Anyway, in the Convocation Galen gets reacquainted with the other apprentices in his stage of development. One, who missed the previous Convocation, catches his eye. Her name is Isabelle. For those who remember anything about Crusade, Isabelle's first word to Galen is indeed "Hello." They hit it off rather nicely.

Another apprentice, Elizar, whom Galen has been in frequent contact with, and who is apprenticed to the most senior member of the Circle, Kell, is a different story. He speaks of conspiracies, secrets and threats, and grave and great concerns. But his actions fail to match his words. This leads to a rather violent confrontation that threatens Galen's initiation, and sets him off on a path he shouldn't be taking yet.

Meanwhile, Isabelle's teacher, Burell, who is disliked by many mages and the Circle, comes to Elric with her grave concerns. She has seen evidence that the Shadows may be returning to our part of the Galaxy. If you'll recall from the one B5 ep with the mages, Elric then stated they are fleeing from the approaching darkness. In the show this served to develop the Shadows' story line. But it's used to good effect in the book.

Burell is very ill, but no one knows why. She's weak, frail and seems to be on the verge of death. She has not allowed any other mages to attempt to heal her, and has not expained why not. Together with her known forbidden research into the "tech," this has made her a kind of half-outcast from the order.

All this happens less than halfway through the first book.

Saying anythign more would be a spoiler. if you remmeber Crusade, you know already what will happen to Isabelle and Galen, but not precisely where and how, or why. Likewise discussing the next two books would spoil the stroy too much. That's a frequent trouble with trilogies.

I would suggest these books are a must for any serious B5 fan, and great for any non-serious B5 fan. For the non-B5 fan, the books are a god read. The story is interesting, well-told, with smart villains, conflict between the heroes, and plenty of action and drama. But if you're unfamiliar with B5, you'll find a lot fo the backstory missing. Things such as the Shadows, the Narn, the Centauri, the Vorlons and even the purpose of B5. Some of it gets explained, but most of it is assumed to be already known.

I would not recommend the other two B5 trilogies much to non-B5 fans. One is about the Psi Corps, the other is about what happened in Centauri Prime with Londo and Vir after the end of the series. But the technomages stories are a great read any which way.

Next up, Asimov's best known work.

Most people who've heard of Asimov, and even some of his fans, know either or both of two things he's "famous" for: the robot stories and the Foundation series. Let's tackle the latter:

The Foundation Series
by Isaac Asimov

Asimov first wrote a series of related short stories about the Foundation while still a young man in the 1940s, mostly during WWII. These appeared in Astounding SF, John Campbell's pulp science fiction amgazine. At the time that was how most SF was published, and Asimov thought that was that. Eventually, and sparing a lot of backstory, these were collected and printed in book form in three volumes, known as "Foundation," "Foundation and Empire," and "Second Foundation." But they are a series of related short stories, not a trilogy per se.

By the early 80s, Asimov was persuaded to continue the stories. To this end he published a novel, this time for real, called "Foundation's Edge," and later a sequel called "Foundation and Earth." Afterwards he preempted George Lucas and published two prequels "Prelude to Foundation" and "Forward the Foundation." The last was published just a few months before his untimely death.

I'll be tackling the series in the published order. Later. For now I'll just state the gist of the theme: the fall of the Galactic Empire, and the Rise of the Foundation as the dominant power in the galaxy. Asimov said he modeled the story, roughly, on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

I'm reading a rather large H. Beam Piper anthology, which includes short stories and novelettes.

Some of his 50s and 60s era stories are based on ideas similar to those of other authors of the period. One, ABC-Null, poses widespread illiteracy, complete with schools for the illiterate (a mere few pages, which are nonetheless intriguing). It's a bit reminescent, in premise only, of Asimov's The Feeling of Power, about a human galaxy where arithmetic (but not math!) has been forgotten. Otherwise both sotries are entirely different.

A really good story is the short novel "Little Fuzzy." It's about a colony world where small, furry sapient beings are found decades after humans settle to live there. This creates problems for the company chartered to exploit the planet, as it has a charter for an uninhabitted world (uninhabitted by spaient natives, that is), and will likely lose the charter if, after all, sapient beings live there.

What's fascinating is the glimpse of the company officials who rather quickly, and rather easily, contemplate genocide as a means to solve their problem. That's chilling. Further we get to see the first timid steps in that direction.

In other works he uses some conventional SF devices, like time-loops, lost civilizations, and the like. He uses parallel timelines in multiple universes in his Paratime Police stories, including the very interesting story of a timeline where reincarnation is proven scientific fact. That deserves a post of its own. I'll do that when I'm finished (I'm two weeks intot he book already; it's big).