Tag: sci fi

Book Review: TERRAFORMERS is worth a read

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, ReviewsLeave a comment

I’m coming late to this review, having finished The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz a few weeks ago.

I think a slim part of the reason why it took me so long to review this novel is because I’m still not entirely sure how I felt about it.

As a world-building experiment complete with planet-sized terraforming projects, centuries-long urban planning policies, and biomechanical creatures of varying sentience and form, I found this book thoroughly enjoyable.

However, I think I struggled with the structure of the novel, even as I came to understand Newitz’s attempts to emphasize that monumental societal change does not necessarily happen overnight. Sometimes it takes generations, even when those generations live for centuries, rather than decades.

And so, this book is split into three novella-sized plots, each one taking place several hundred years after its predecessor. Again, while I appreciate the author’s notion that The Revolution is not always instantaneous, this three-part structure made it difficult to connect with any character in particular.

Scratch that, By the time I had connected with Destry of the Environmental Rescue Team – an ecological engineer purpose-designed for her job – the first plot was finished, and I was thrust seven (?) hundred years into the future, with characters who reference Destry as a hero, but who do not land as well as the first plot.

The overall plot between the three timeframes worked, I think. I just found it jarring.

I think Newitz did an excellent job of taking big, messy ideas, like bioengineered limits on intelligence based on one’s role in society, or the Personhood of creatures other than hominids, and including some biomechanical beings, or the concept of a society where people have mastered ecological balance as a form of control (and profit)… Newitz takes these grandiose ideas, and then allows little microcosms of character dialogue talk debate, challenge, and advocate for them in very accessible ways.

The world was incredibly well thought-out and felt lived in. The characters sounded unique and fully realized with their own motives and flaws, and the plot was cohesive and nuanced, even across multiple large time jumps.

This book is worth reading for those reasons, even if its structure feels a little forced.

Steve D

Book Review: STAR WARS: I, JEDI is a solid story, but not for me

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, ReviewsLeave a comment

Star Wars: I, Jedi by Michael A. Stackpole is the first novel I’ve read from the “Legends” canon of the Star Wars universe.

I’m not sure I’m the target audience for this novel. While there were parts of this story I greatly enjoyed, there were a few parts that bugged me.

Corran Horn is arrogant and presumptuous as a protagonist. He constantly assumes that he’s the only person who could possibly have the correct solution to any given dilemma. Even when he expresses self-awareness over his own ego, he continues to act as if he’s the only person capable of anything. This is perplexing given his backstory as a pilot of Rogue Squadron. Presumably, he could have asked for help is rescuing his wife much earlier, and ends up being backed up by a few friends anyway.

This story is laced with Star Wars Easter eggs to the point that I just ignored whatever random characters or planets were name-dropped in every chapter. I’m not deep enough into Star Wars lore to get all the references, and they didn’t add anything to the story. Novelty appearances of Han, Leia, and Wedge (of original trilogy fame) also seemed to serve little purpose but to build up Corran’s chops as an in-universe person-of-interest.

Luke was an interesting character who helped drive some of the narrative, and I’m thinking I should read some of the Luke-centric Legends novels.

The plot is winding and overflowing with context about Corran’s past, his time served as a pilot, also a detective, and his relationship with his wife Mirax. Unfortunately, these experiences are only touched on through exposition, and Mirax is fridged until the final chapter.

I consider myself a more-than-average Star Wars fan, but perhaps this particular story just wasn’t for me. I think I just struggled to connect with Corran, and in an in-depth first-person narrative, that’s an issue for the reader. I don’t regret reading this, and I’m interested in exploring other parts of the Legends canon.

Steve D

Book Review: THE LONG WAY TO A SMALL, ANGRY PLANET

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, ReviewsLeave a comment

I recently listened to the audiobook version of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, a story I found delightful in its character-building, and intriguing in its world-building.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet presents a vivid galaxy of unique species governed by the Galactic Commons. Humans in this story are among the least powerful species, their Exodans having survived the destruction of Earth (at human hands) and only recently invited as a GC member species. The Galactic Commons includes a diverse array of non-human species, each with their own cultures, histories, and perceptions about their galaxy and the other peoples within it.

Chambers is very deliberate the language she uses to describe each species and individual. While their physical traits and cultural norms may differ, all GC member species are People, and all are referred to as Sapient. Specific individuals are also male, female, or non-binary, with standard pronouns that appear to be widely accepted across the story for such designations. This helps acclimate the reader to each character’s voice and perspective, while making it seem plausible that they speak a common language (called Clip) and have relatable mannerisms and colloquial speech patterns.

Within this setting, Chambers explores a rich tapestry of relationships, inter-species politics, and grounded character struggles aboard a long-haul ship. Rosemary Harper, a human from the Mars settlement, is the lead protagonist, but she does not necessarily drive the narrative.

As the newest member of the Wayfarer crew, a long-haul tunneling ship which bores holes through the fabric of spacetime to create tunnels through which ships can jump light-years across the galaxy, Rosemary is an observer who becomes a more and more prominent member of the crew. She develops her own relationships with her crewmates and shows how her clerical and research skills can help their ship.

But Rosemary’s outsider status as a spacer means that her perspective is a suitable entry point for the reader into this world.

Chambers’s writing is funny and poignant, with realistic dialogue and good escalation amid more tense moments and scenes. Her character development would work in any setting, but the fact that she couples this with believable sci-fi world-building elevates the story into a compelling narrative.

This was a book I couldn’t put down, and would gladly read again.

I would likely purchase and read a hard copy, because the audiobook’s narrator made some interesting inflection and pronunciation choices that took me out of the story for scattered moments.

Steve D

Book Review: STAR WARS: TARKIN sheds light on enigmatic character

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, ReviewsLeave a comment

I listened to the audiobook version of Star Wars: Tarkin by James Luceno, a story of one of Tarkin’s endeavors in the early years of the Empire that helped him rise to prominence. This is essentially his backstory for the opening of A New Hope, and it was a solid read about an otherwise enigmatic character in Star Wars lore.

I’ve never read any novel in this universe, and this seemed like a relatively innocuous place to start — a bit in the middle in terms of timeline, but likely not explicitly connected to any other stories, aside from the obvious background/lore pieces.

Tarkin effectively follows Moff Tarkin as he oversees a secret project for the emperor and tries to track down suspicious attacks across the galaxy. Simultaneously, the reader is introduced to Tarkin’s upbringing that made him the ruthless, calculating strategist that he is.

Darth Vader plays a surprisingly prominent role throughout the story, effectively teaming up with Tarkin to track down the “dissidents”, and I found their relationship highly engaging, as Tarkin tries to understand Vader, whose identify he believes he knows, and Vader largely remains a mysterious personality.

As a first-time reader of the Star Wars canon, this was a solid entry point. There were references to things about the universe I’m unaware of, but they did not stand in the way of the main plot, which had a clear trajectory for Tarkin and the growth of the Empire at large.

This book has me interested enough to continue reading Star Wars lore. I’m just not sure which direction I’ll go next: back to the High Republic, or these interwar years.

Steve D

Book Review: Spectacular World-Building in CHILDREN OF TIME

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, ReviewsLeave a comment

I got Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky as a gift from my brother-in-law, who thought I might enjoy it. I had heard of Tchaikovsky before in passing, but was otherwise unfamiliar with his work.

The description of this book certainly piqued my interest, and I didn’t want it to languish on my to-be-read shelf for ages, so I dug in.

Children of Time is a fantastic read that encapsulates both the awe-inspiring technological dreams of epic science fiction and the remarkably grounded perspectives and emotional weight of human stories.

This story is described as “evolutionary world-building”, and it takes place over literal millennia as a ship of human survivors of a destroyed Earth search for and try to claim a terraformed Earth-like world as their own. Only a select few humans aboard this ship are awakened at various intervals to deal with the potentially-catastrophic problems that can befall any deep-space mission. Simultaneously, a new race of beings are evolving on the terraformed world at a super-charged pace, thanks to a bioengineered nanovirus to accelerate their advancement in preparation for their human-creators’ arrival.

This brilliantly “symbiotic” narrative alternates over nearly incomprehensible lurches in time. One human aboard the ark ship is awakened from cryo-sleep several times over the course of millennia, facing new challenges or threats each time in what to him feels like only weeks. On the terraformed world, the narrative follows successive generations of characters as they advance and reach for the stars in their own right.

The first portion of the story is a little jarring, perhaps intentionally so, and the reader is flung from one moment in time to the next, separated by centuries or more. Once the reader figures out this rhythm, though, it is quite enjoyable to see how the dueling plots advance over such inhuman time spans.

Much of the world-building focuses on how such a world could be terraformed, how a massive ark ship carrying the remnants of human civilization survives for millennia, and how a nanovirus can advance a civilization. This is all endlessly fascinating, toeing the line between believability and awe.

The story, however, is an entirely human one, focused on the very existence of one civilization or another. This book delves into what it means to be both the first and the last of a great civilization, to survive and continue living as the world appears to be collapsing around you, and to harness or reject the breakneck pace of social and technological advancement.

I loved this book, and there appear to be two more in this series already. I will absolutely be picking up the next installment, Children of Ruin, in the near future.

Steve D

Book Review: Diving into H.P. Lovecraft

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Reviews, Writers - Steve D'Adamo3 Comments

Back in December I started a 23-hour collection of H.P. Lovecraft’s prose work on Audible. This seemed like a not-crazy idea at the time because I had a forty-minute commute home from work every day.

I’ve been working from home for over two months, which means far less designated audiobook listening time. Anyway, I finally finished this collection last week. This review is not about the work of Lovecraft himself, but more about how this collection was put together and narrated, and what I’ve taken from it as my first true introduction to Lovecraft’s work. Continue reading “Book Review: Diving into H.P. Lovecraft” →