The Big Downtown by Jack McDevitt

Oooh!

Murder and mayhem in the wake of a hurricane make for a compelling mystery.

To be honest, this story barely qualifies as SF, not that it's a bad thing, but if you take away the flying cars and holograms you've simply got a straight-up mystery here.

It was a good mystery too.  The author kept the plot moving along with some complicated relationships and motivations.

I liked this one very much.

Jack McDevitt's website - https://www.jackmcdevitt.com/

Jack McDevitt

Camouflage by Robert Reed

This was a 61-page story, by page 28 I had had enough.

It was a slow-moving affair set on a gigantic ark ship.

The story dragged on with seemingly endless exposition and descriptions of alien species. Every time Reed brought me someplace interesting, like a giant library or scene of a crime, he’d move back into explaining things to me.

I found it tedious so I left the story unfinished.

It’s funny how I find it a personal failing when I give up on a book or story, but life is short, and not every story will connect.

On we go!

Rober Reed's website - https://www.robertreedwriter.com/

Robert Reed

The City of Cries by Catherine Asaro

I'd describe this as a professional fish out of water situation.  A private investigator is hired anonymously for an exorbitant fee.  The money is so good that she accepts the job and is quickly whisked away to learn that she'd been hired by royalty to track down a missing prince.

The case is on her homeworld, where she grew up on the streets.  She relies on previous relationships to investigate the case.  Old flames are fanned, debts are repaid and new relationships are formed.

I really liked this story, it was gritty and real; the settings lived up to the title of the collection - Dark Spaceways indeed.

I was very happy to learn that there is much, much more to discover in this world.

Her bibliography is here - http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1911

Catherine Asaro's Wiki page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Asaro

Catherine Asaro

In the Quake Zone by David Gerrold

Oh my goodness, what a wholly original take on time travel.

We are often told time travel stories that reimagine history; what if Hitler was never in power?  That kind of thing.

But in this story, there is a team of time specialists who travel up and down the stream on behalf of people willing to pay for the service.  What often happens is that small players, who have no bearing on history, are helped to avoid tragedies or bad luck.  Victims of accidents are prevented from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Our protagonist, Mike, is an operative for the Harris Agency which specializes in small cases.  He is sent back to the 1950s to unravel a number of missing person cases, which is thought to be the work of a serial killer.

While he investigates, by following the victims, he becomes entangled in the life of one of them.

I found the story confusing in the first quarter as it refused to settle into a narrative but once it did, I was hooked.  Gerrold can write compelling characters and situations that are just a small twist away from being comfortable.  I liked that.

In the last quarter, the story takes a big leap to one side, this was frustrating and yet welcomed at the same time.  It was like being interrupted by a commercial right at a crucial time.  I guess that was the point.

It was terrific fun and explored underground societies in a compelling way.

Stick with it because it is worth every page.

David Gerrold's website - https://www.gerrold.com/

David Gerrold

Guardian Angel by Mike Resnick

A "concerned" mother hires Jake Masters, private investigator, to find her son who has run away with the circus.  A space circus - so that makes it science fiction.

I joke, but a traveling circus is a big part of the story here.  The story was written as a straight up detective story, which I appreciated.  There is something engaging when the problems we deal with today are the same in the future.  Only the scenery changes.  And the FTL travel too.

One aspect of this future society that I found particularly interesting, sad but interesting, was the segregation of aliens from humans.  It was a bitter example of history repeating itself.  Even though it had nothing to do with the case it added atmosphere to the whole world Resnick created.

It was a well told story, with double crosses, shady deals and shifting loyalties.

It was a good opening entry in a collection of SF mysteries.

Mike Resnick's website - http://mikeresnick.com/

Mike Resnick

The Eagle Has Landed by Robert J Sawyer

A cute story about an alien observing the Earth from the moon for decades.

It was a nice way to showcase how we’ve lost our drive for space exploration.

I’ve said it many times before; I am exceedingly disappointed by this post-Apollo era.

It’s sad to think that we only advance when we’re trying hard to kill each other.

Robert J Sawyer's website - https://www.sfwriter.com/

Identity Theft by Robert J Sawyer

Oh boy!  This is the stuff.

Sawyer uses all the good science fiction ideas and it’s makes them part of the background, no big deal.

Alexander Lomax is a private eye - on Mars no less.  His client is a lovely woman who is looking for her lost husband.  She’s a robot by the way.  A transfer as they are called in the story.  The technology exists where one can transfer his or her consciousness to an artificial body and continue on living indefinitely.

What a great idea!  It’s just an everyday thing here.  Love that.

Somewhere along the line somebody did something illegal to the husband and Lomax takes over where the police stopped caring.

The story is pretty much a straight-up mystery but the uniqueness of the setting keeps coming up to add flavour to the drama.

The dialogue was clean and crisp.  Any exposition needed was dealt with in the plot.  To me, this is the real trick of writing fiction; not allowing any kind of explanation to take away from the story.  How do you show instead of tell?  Sawyer is a master of this.

It’s a story of people being people, even if they are in robot bodies.

Excellent stuff!  Highly recommended.

Robert J. Sawyer's website - https://www.sfwriter.com/

Originally published in this book.

Robert J Sawyer

Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson - Book Report #189

Steven Johnson the master of seeing what is underneath things and how they are connected.  Here he takes on the notion that pop culture is bad and making people dumb.

He makes a compelling case for the benefits of video games.  Not only do they improve the obvious, hand-eye coordination, but, especially with the first-person and simulator games, critical thinking and observational skills are exercised to a greater degree than people give credit.

He also takes on television, where the popular notion is that TV is just getting dumber and dumber.  The explosion of "reality" shows is often held as an example of this.  But there is something else happening in scripted television where plots are much more complex and demand a commitment from the viewer to keep up and to engage in a greater degree that the average sit-com demands.

And people are eager for this kind of engagement.  Console games are nothing like the coin-fed arcade games I grew up with.  The immersion is much deeper and this activates parts of the brain that benefit the gamer in other aspects of real life.

The book may be over a decade old but it is still relevant even if its references are a bit dated.  But those references, Lost and The Sopranos, are still being enjoyed today.  So there is something to be said about the quality of these shows.

Like anything Steven Johnson writes I come away feeling like I understand the world just a little bit better.

Recommended indeed.

Steven Johnson's website - https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/

Steven Johnson

Mazer in Prison by Orson Scott Card

I don't really know what I think about this story.

On one side, it's an interesting take on suspended animation. Instead of freezing an individual he is put on a ship and sent out on a long journey at near-light speed.  This is to take advantage of the space/time effect that Einstein discovered. 

Then it is also a critique of military decision making and authority structure. 

There was a story of sorts in there, but I was not captured by it. 

It was a miss for me.

It should be noted that this takes place int the Enders Game series and this may be why it did not work for me.  I have not read the books.  As a matter of fact, this was my first story by Card.

Orson Scott Card - http://www.hatrack.com/

Orson Scott Card

Powersat by Ben Bova - Book Review #154

06/15/2016

This is the kind of stuff I like.  Plausible SF without aliens or FTL.

Bova has been delivering this kind of fiction for decades and I really enjoyed this audio book.

That's not to say it was perfect, to be honest I found his love scenes to be ham-fisted and the women were depicted in an antiquated way; only ONE woman was not driven by love.  That's not to say they were not strong or smart, each one was, but the underlying driver was that they were in love with the main character Dan Randolph.

Randolph himself was irrationally in love with a senator to the point that his proclamations of love to her grated on me.  I found myself saying, "Really??" a lot.

Okay, many of the characters were just a bit off, but one must remember that Bova has been writing this kind of thing right from the tail end if the pulps and for the entire life of the paperback thriller era.  His plotting was excellent, his villains were diabolical and Randolph's competitors were formidable.

I kept thinking that this was very close to what Elon Musk and SpaceX must have felt like when they were getting started.  Without the body count.  That's not to say the book is very violent.  The industrial espionage within was believable and the action sequences were thrilling and cinematic.

All in all, none of it felt impossible and I found myself wishing SpaceX would take up the challenge of developing space based power generation.  Randolph and Musk share the same vision, they want to make the world a better place and are willing to take fantastic risks to get it done. They are men of vision.

Perhaps that is what makes this book work for me; there is a real life Dan Randolph, and Tony Stark rolled into one and he is Elon Musk.

Go SpaceX!

Go Ben Bova!

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Death in Winter by Michael Jan Friedman- Book Report #132

One of my reading goals is to read most of the post-Nemesis novels in the Star Trek universe.  This is quite the challenge, not only because there are so many books but also because the plots have become so intermixed and complex that I need a flow chart just to keep track of it.

Luckily there are two sources that offer such charts.  My favourite is from Jim's Books where he has taken the time and effort to create a beautiful map using the cover art of each book.

http://www.shastrix.com/books/star-trek-reading-order.php

The other is provided by the Trek Collective and takes on the monumental task of charting all the books that fall outside The Original Series.  It's quite the head-scratcher, but also a lot of fun.

http://www.thetrekcollective.com/p/trek-lit-reading-order.html

------------------------

Death in Winter begins by explaining how Picard's genetic material was gathered in order to create Shizon from the movie Nemesis.

Crusher is on a mission to save a race of people who are suffering a plague while also suffering under Romulan occupation.  This is a covert operation that finds her held captive by the Romulans.  Call in Picard and two men from his past to rescue her.

The reason this book exists is to finally have Picard admit to Crusher that he loves her.  It is also the first treatment of the Star Trek universe free from the limitations placed upon authors of a TV or movie series that is still in production.  Death in Winter's job is to set up this new environment.  By doing so Friedman tells many important stories.  There is firstly the story of Picard and Crusher, which was the dullest of the plot lines that the whole book relies on to expose the other sub-plots.

Picard's two friends, from his days on the Stargazer,  Pug and Greyhorse, are re-introduced into the time line.  Tasha Yar's evil Romulan "twin", Sela also makes a welcomed appearance.  And the power vacuum in the Romulan Empire, that was created by the events in the movie Nemesis, is explored with yet more characters dredged up from the TV series.

The story of Picard rescuing Crusher was the least entertaining as it was used as a device to add exposition.  For the most part Picard and company spend a lot of time walking through snow storms and tunnels to avoid Romualn patrols.  While hiding, there was plenty of time to think about the past.

In the end, although I was disappointed with the Picard / Crusher thread, I was happy with the rest of it.  I was given a greater understanding of the bigger picture that is the Star Trek Universe.

Michael Jan Friedman's website is:
http://www.k8cooke.org/michaeljanfriedman/

Michael Jan Friedman

Book Report #56 - Dutch Uncle by Peter Pavia

This book sure started out feeling like an Elmore Leonard novel. It had all the elements; south Florida local, lots of drugs, a couple murders, cops, low-lifes and three or four loosely related plot lines. Unfortunately all the separate stories ran out of anything interesting to tell.

195 pages in and I kept wondering when the author was going to bring all these plot lines in for some kind of conclusion.

Interestingly, the dangling plot points ended abruptly, giving the book a rather low-keyed yet believable conclusion. The denouement was interesting in that you don't get that type of ending too often in crime fiction.

A satisfying end, however, did not make up for a book that spent most of its time in the doldrums.

Book Report #38 - San Francisco's Powell Street Cable Cars

Images of Rail

San Francisco's Powell Street Cable Cars

By

Emiliano Echeverria and Walter Rice

In preparation for my trip to San Francisco I bought this book for some insight into the famous cable cars.

The book itself is dedicated mostly to archival photos with lots of informative captions. What narrative there is in the book is used mostly to explain the differing eras of the system.

I had no idea their history would be so colourful. The system was always under threat of closure; it was first saved by the citizens of SF in a 1947 vote; then the system itself was designated a national historic landmark in January, 1964. From 1982 to 1984 the entire system was shut down and essentially replaced and rebuilt.

The book was wonderful; full of interesting stories. I'm glad I read it and I can't wait to step on to one. Considering what I now know about them, a ride will be very special to me.

Home is the Sailor by Day Keen

Home is the Sailor by Day Keene first published in 1952 and re-printed, by my favorite publisher, Hard Case Crime in 2005.

It's the story of a sailor who retires and wants to settle down.  He meets a nice woman who then gets him to do things he would never have been capable of in the past.

I kept wondering just when he would wake up and see what was going on.

A pretty good read.