Moonrise by Ben Bova - Book Report #220

The thing I like about Bova's books are how the exploration and settlement of space are done by private companies.  Governments are usually a hinderance.

Masterson Aerospace is a conglomerate that builds clipper ships, vessels that can launch from earth to orbit and go beyond to the moon.  They also work on nanotechnology, build wall screens and run a moon base.  All of these things take money to run.  Some parts of the business are more profitable than others and some are hindered by world governments.

The novels centers itself on the precarious existence of Moonbase and its uncertain future.  Should the company close it or double down?  The conflict comes from the cold equations of the P&L sheet and the loftier goal of improving the future for humanity.

There are good guys and bad guys and Bova is not scared to kill anybody.  My only complaint, and this spans most of what I've read of his, is that his bad guys tend to be insane in some way.  I would find it much more compelling if the big drama came from a perfectly sane person working for his own interests.  Instead we get a bad guy with mommy issues who should have been in prison in the first part of the book.  Instead Bova keeps him around in a barely plausible way.

I've said this before; Bova comes from the pulp era of SF and I love that about him, it makes the stories super easy to get into.  But it makes his villains so cartoonish that the tension becomes cliché.

But, did the book do its job?  Was it entertaining?  Did I have a good time?  Did it make me wish for a future with spaceflight being as common as air travel?

Yes on all counts.  Which is why I read Bova.  He can still make you think about a future that should have happened if the Apollo program was not abandoned.

And for that reason, I believe he should be read.

If you find it in a second-hand bookstore, it's worth the five bucks to buy it.

Ben Bova

Past Blogs - February 25 to March 3

2017

2015

2015

2014

2014

2013

All of the People in Your Party Have Died by Robin Wasserman

This story was completely unexpected and touching.

It was much less about a computer game, although there is one, than about trust, and love.

I found myself completely taken by the story and enjoyed it very much.

Robin Wasserman's website - http://www.robinwasserman.com/about/

Robin Wasserman

Street Smart by Samuel L. Schwartz - Book Report #219

This is the kind of real-world stuff a enjoy.

City planning, traffic, pedestrian alternatives, mass transportation ...

These are the kinds of things that Samuel Schwartz dealt with as New York city's First Deputy Commissioner and Chief Engineer from 1986-1990.

He even coined the term Gridlock and is also known as Gridlock Sam.

I found his insights in traffic management completely fascinating and found the book compelling.  It made me look at my own city of Edmonton, Alberta with new eyes.

If there is one lesson proven throughout the book it is that traffic need not flow.  PEOPLE need space to walk and experience the environment outside of an automobile.  It is very good for business.

Recommended.

Samuel L Schwartz

Past Blogs - February 18 to February 24

What I Read - 2010

Reviewed in 2011

Reviewed in 2011

Reviewed in 2011

Reviewed in 2011

Reviewed in 2013

Reviewed in 2014

Reviewed in 2015

Reviewed in 2015

Reviewed in 2017

Roguelike by Marc Laidlaw

What at terrific romp!

We all know what it's like to work through a game hundreds of times to get to the end.  This was exactly that.

Here we read the results of many attempts of a first person shooter to save the emperor.  The game is actually a training simulator.

When the end is reached the reward is not what you'd expect.

Fun.

Marc Laidlaw's website - http://www.marclaidlaw.com/

Marc Laidlaw

Past Blogs - Week of February 11 to February 17

Reviewed in 2017

Reviewed in 2016

Reviewed in 2016

Reviewed in 2015

Reviewed in 2014

Reviewed in 2013

The Relive Box by T. C. Boyle

Oh, my. What a good story.

Not because it’s uplifting, it dives deeply into obsession and addiction. 

But it goes to illustrate how any kind of  addictive compulsion can destroy lives. 

A single father is trying to cope with his compulsive use of a technology that allows him to access past memories and relive any moment he chooses.  

The danger with the tech is that people can get sucked in to reliving the past to the exclusion of the here and now. 

The father is deplorable in his struggle with the tech. He was completely unlikeable but the story was so well written I could not put it down. 

Terrific, disturbing stuff. 

T.C. Boyle's website - https://www.tcboyle.com/

TC Boyle

Our Choice by Al Gore - Book Report #218

Finally.  A climate change book with actual hope for the future.

Don't get me wrong, I was still immensely depressed reading the thing.  But with every bad thing Gore talks about he also shows the way out.  The hardest thing to realise is just how entrenched our way of life is.  How our economy is based on extraction, destruction and pollution.

But it can all be fixed.  My god!  The opportunity to reinvent our way of life is right in front of us.  It is all low-hanging fruit.

The book opened my eyes to the difficulties of making change but I can still exert influence in the consumer choices I make every day.  As an example, if people start buying electric cars, manufacturers will begin to build them.   But what of the electricity from the coal-fired power plants?  Well that's another story altogether isn't it?  Those utilities have influence in the government and their profits are based on a pollution model.  That's where putting a price on pollution (a carbon tax) comes into play.  A big reason we pollute is because it is free to do so.

The amount of jobs we could create, building an economy that is in tune with our environment, is staggering to consider.

This was a wonderful book and I am very glad I had the opportunity to engage with it.

Al Gore's website - https://www.algore.com/

Al Gore

Past Blogs - Week of February 4 to February 10

The trouble with blogs is that older posts get buried as new ones are published.  In an effort to keep the reviews relevant I will dig into the past and provide quick links to those reviews that could be forgotten otherwise.  Just click the book covers to be taken to the reviews.

Reviewed in 2012

Reviewed in 2013

Reviewed in 2014

Reviewed in 2015

Reviewed in 2016

Save Me Plz by David Barr Kirtley

This was an alright story. A play on the theory that we are all living inside a simulation.

If that’s true then why should we remain in the “real” world full of dullness, poverty and pain. Why not live in a computer game filled with adventure, mystery and clarity?

Like I said, it was alright. It landed a bit flat but that’s okay too. 

David Barr Kirtley's website - https://davidbarrkirtley.com/

David Barr Kirtley

Alone Against the North by Adam Shoalts - Book Report #217

Oh my goodness, this is the kind of book an armchair traveler enjoys - one that explores lands the reader would never consider exploring.

I kept asking myself what the hell Shoalts was thinking. The crazy muskeg swamps of the James Bay watershed are unexplored for a reason - they are nearly uninhabitable. 

But that’s what makes the book so interesting, Adam Shoalts is driven by a desire to fill in the small parts of the map that are still blank. And God bless him for it. 

But, to be honest, I felt the man needed to get his head examined for all the chances he took by himself.  

I feared for his safety, even though he lived to write the book.   The chances he took could have made his biography end with the scentence, “... never to be seen again.”

It truly was a terrific book that I highly recommend. 

Thanks to Adam for taking the journey - so I don’t have to.

Adam Shoalts' website - http://adamshoalts.com/

Adam Shoalts

< end game > by Chris Avellone

I don't know what to think of this story.

I enjoyed the text-based game play of it.  It read as if the reader is playing the game, typing the commands into the computer.

It soon becomes a game-within-a-game story but somehow the end just was not satisfying for me.  There is something missing and I can't quite put my finger on it.

It was well done but just did not work for me.


Chris Avellone's Wiki page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Avellone

Chris Avellone

Trading In Danger by Elizabeth Moon - Book Report #216

Now this is what I am talking about!

Humans, in space, trying to make a living, making mistakes, dealing with competitors, bureaucrats, the outbreak of war, ship repairs, mercenaries, mutinies, murder, running out of fuel, running out of money ...

Yup.  People being people.  In space.

Ky Vatta is the daughter of a vast family-run interstellar shipping company who breaks with family tradition and joins the military instead of the business.

She is thrown out of her unit and discharged under a cloud of controversy and dishonour.  The family takes her in and givers her a simple job to get out of the limelight and time to recover from the blow.

But the character traits that lead her into the military compel her to deviate from the plan of taking an old freighter to the scrap yard and she tries to use the opportunity to earn enough money to repair the ship and go into business for herself.

But the galaxy of other humans have plans of their own that conflict with hers.

It was terrific fun and I love this kind of SF, where being is space is no different to humans than being at sea. 

Elizabeth Moon has a terrific way of just making the character believable.  Ky Vatta makes all kinds of decisions that just make sense - they are logical.  I especially loved the moment in the book where Ky has an epiphany and decides that doing what is expected is exactly what got her into trouble (Other than the original decision to deviate from the flight path that is.) and starts making decisions instead of following orders from everybody who feels they have the right to tell her what to do.

Terrific.

Elizabeth Moon's website - http://www.elizabethmoon.com/

Elizabeth Moon

Outliers by Nicole Feldringer

I liked this story.

What happens when a smart, dedicated gamer plays a game meant to help crunch data to model global warming weather patterns?

When a flaw in the game is discovered we get to see how game design is affected by political desire.

I believe the story gives us a glimpse into the machinations of political influence of what we hear in the media about the Climate Change.

Nicole Feldringer's webpage - http://www.nicofeld.com/

Nicole Feldringer

PostCapitalism by Paul Mason - Book Report #215

I had a difficult time with this book.

It was mostly me, I just could not penetrate Mason's writing.  I found myself reading a passage and having to re-read it again to understand what he was saying.  It was like that for most of the book.

The subtitle was certainly a bit misleading - A Guide to Our Future it hardly was.  3/4 of the book was spent on describing capitalism's long history.  Over and over again the author would take us on a tour of the past.

Finally, in the last section, he began to apply theory to a new economic model.  It is interesting to contemplate the effect the digital realm is having on the economy.  It was also a challenge to imagine how a society would work without money.  Try it.  Every single aspect of our way of life relies on it.  It's like water.  We need it.

I found the book a difficult read but that has only spurred me on to wanting to learn more about it.  It is a curious notion to think that we are in the first decades of this very transformation.  Like everything else, I believe a solution will be found.  You have to believe that otherwise living is just too bleak.

I am not so sure I would recommend this book as I had such a difficult time with it.  But, without it, I wouldn't know where else to look to try to get a better understanding of a world without money.

I a search for more understanding on the subject I found The Postcapitalist Future website.  Try reading the manifesto first and see if that sparks any new insights.  -  http://postcapfuture.com/manifesto/

Paul Mason's website - http://www.paulmasonnews.com/

Paul Mason