Bookworm 2012: Oh So Quiet

Most of you will not like Paul McAuley’s The Quiet War, and probably shouldn’t even try to read it. I am not aiming for condescension, but simply the mindset when I say there is a lot of science in his fiction and most of it well and truly fictional. This opinion is borne out by [...]

Bookworm 2012: Aztecs in Space

With Captive Universe Harry Harrison proved that even when you squish together two awesome concepts you can still end up with a mediocre novel that aged like an avocado – suddenly and terribly. Exploring the generation ship trope, when I stumbled upon the synopsis it seemed like a surefire hit – interstellar Aztec colonists on [...]

Bookworm 2012: Out of All Worlds

Some books require you to drop acid to fully ride their flow, with others it is enough that the writer did so – such is the case with Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness. In many ways it is a rehash of his Lord of Light in a different setting – a heroic god-man [...]

Bookworm 2012: Oui Stop

What started as an excursion into generation-starship waters became a full blown binge. Despite this being one of my favourite tropes, I missed quite a few of the classics, and so decided to do some archaeology. I started from what most sources agreed was the definitive (though not first) lost generation ship novel, Brian W. [...]

Bookworm 2012: Hope Without Sun

Dark Eden byChris Beckett starts off as a hybrid tale of an interstellar crash-landing on a sunless, alien world with a biosphere fueled by geothermal energy and a bunch of tropes familiar from the lost generation ship subgenre, with inbred tribes clinging to half-remembered bits of lore and history descending into legend. However, as it progresses, [...]