The Weird Colonial Boy (1993)
(Weak)
written by Paul Voermans
Synopsis: TWCB is the story of a young Australian boy who enters a parallel Earth that’s much harsher than our own, at least from the perspective of the young world jumper. After some nasty living there and the attempt to change things for the better he returns to our world.
Forcing your main character through some nasty experiences to make him learn to appreciate even the small things in life seems a bit overkill, this is a book that doesn’t give you cuddly feelings while reading it. The alternate Earth is a nasty one, most parts are backward compared to our own world, not only in the technological department but also the social norms (on the other hand our own world is only more advanced if you pretend not to look at the nasty things that happen everywhere but aren’t daily news, one could say that the alternate world of TWCB is openly nasty, while our own at least looks better on the surface). Overall, TWCB just wasn’t my cup if tea. To make me interested in alternate histories I prefer more action and cinematic qualities, or if a writer goes the realistic route I’ll need more than just a boy who learns about life’s lessons through hardships.
Agent to the Stars (1997)
(Good)
written by John Scalzi
can be read online
Synopsis: The Yherajk, peaceful aliens that look unfortunately like slimy blobs, hire an agent to introduce them to humanity, since they fear humanity might be scared if they just drop out of the sky.
When I saw the cover and the title I expected to get something cheesy, which I did. What I didn’t expected was to get sucked into the story from the first chapter and not let go until I reached the end. AttS could be called fluff, but even fluff has to be well written to draw people in and make them read it, which Scalzi accomplished with seemingly ease. AttS is, even more so than his other SF books, the supreme gateway drug for SF. I takes place in the here and now, most characters are easy to relate to, it’s funny and doesn’t take itself too serious. The story may have been too smooth at times, some problems were too easily solved and the ending felt like a contrived Hollywood Happy Ending, but maybe that was intentional, after all it’s about Hollywood and movies. Overall AttS has a high huggability ratio, is one of those novels that can make you feel good if you allow yourself to get into a sentimental mood.
Extremis (2006)
by Warren Ellis, Art by Adi Granov
collects Iron Man: Extremis 1-6
Synopsis: Iron Man has to take out a hillbilly extremist who got his hands on technology that makes humans into unstoppable super soldiers, and used it on himself.
I always liked the concept of Iron Man, but I’ve never found many stories that made me look for more of his comics. He was always the guy in a high tech battle suit, his personal angle for doing the superhero thing seemed a bit vague. What Ellis did with Extremis feels like some sort of re imagining of Iron Man without doing a complete overhaul. This is the first time I thought Iron Man wasn’t just this guy with an armor, but someone whose motivations made for the first time sense. Ellis’s Tony Stark is someone who wants to create the future through building new technology and testing it himself. He’s also driven to better the world since some of his past success comes from having developed weapon technology that killed around the world, and while he used this to build technology with peaceful applications, he’s still haunted by it.
While often using similar tropes, the superhero and the SF genre are opposites, one is about preserving the status quo and the other about change and progress. Despite all the future technology and all the aliens that pop up in superhero comics, the world always remains the same. And there lies the crux, while Extremis is excellent, if other writers would want to go further in Ellis direction, they had to make Iron Man into an SF comic, and I can’t see this happen. So the next thing is probably that all the abilities he got in Extremis will slowly vanish (or already have, I’m not up to date in comic things).
Rating: 5/5
The Ghost Brigades (2006)
(Great)
written by John Scalzi
2nd Colonial Defense Forces novel
Synopsis: A human scientist has gone rogue and suddenly three alien races have allied to destroy the human race. The only thing that may save the humans is a mind backup of the scientist who has gone rogue, and to get at the knowledge hidden inside they have to bring the rogue scientist back.
I already pondered in Old Man’s War whether there’s malevolence or incompetence behind the whole colonial system, and while we don’t find out for sure in this book, it’s clear that one seed for the whole crisis is a lack of transparency and the tendency to secrecy in the colonial system. Normal soldiers don’t trust the Ghost Brigades soldiers, and vice versa, because they don’t work together much. People make the wrong choices because they don’t know enough to make better ones. Which connects to the core of the book, the ability to make choices. But if you don’t even know that you have a choice or which choices are available to you, you’re bound to make bad ones because you don’t know better. Like his predecessor TGB is written in a very clear, concise style that never becomes tedious, Scalzi can write about the most mundane things and make them interesting. I also like Scalzi’s ability to make complex ideas look simple, he seems like the opposite of some hard SF writers, bend on making even the last reader understand what he’s talking about. Overall a very enjoyable book.
Sky Hammer (2005)
made by Bernie . (Download Demo)
Sky Hammer has enough content to make playing it worthwhile, even if it isn’t complete. You’ll get classic platformer action with a hero who is an insolent brat (the dialogue with NPCs is often quite charming to read) and has to work his way through a fantasy world populated with nice red orcs, standard humans and many different monsters (including some nice boss monsters). Your weapon of choice is a hammer, who is, apart from being able to destroy monsters, useful for floating through the air. The graphics are excellent and the levels are varied and just fun to play. Pity that the game was discontinued.
Rating: 5/5
Deo Dorant (2007)
made by Majs . (Download)
Nice, short platformer whose mood is inspired by the Commander Keen games of times past. You have to open a door in each level to get to the next, while trying to avoid meeting your death at the hands of spiders and other deadly obstacles. It’s a bit on the short side and easy to beat (which might be not too bad, because after some levels the gameplay gets a bit repetitive, and it’s a bit too easy). Overall it’s a fun little diversion, and if you played some old Apogee games it might make you feel like playing something like them again. The one thing Deo Dorant is really missing is something of a proper ending, it stops too suddenly without providing anything in the sense of closure.
Rating: 4/5
The Ramayana (1976)
retold in prose by Willi Meinck
no english translation / original title “Das Ramayana” (GDR)
Synopsis: Prince Ramayana’s wife gets stolen by the demon king Ravana and he attempts to get her back.
I haven’t read any complete translation of the original six (or seven) book epic (or any other version of the Ramayana), so I don’t know whether some of the weaknesses of this version come from the original epic or from the retelling process. Not everyone likes retellings, they cut away many details (after all this is cut down from many books to one of only 230 pages), they’ll try to modernize the style which may be something some people dislike. Still, they cut to the core plot, and if you don’t want to plow through a complete translation, yet want to get a good idea of an epic like this, retellings are the way to go. The strength of the book is that it is like a window into another culture, the texture of this world is interesting and has many elements you’ll seldom see in most contemporary fantasy. What doesn’t work are the characters, they are either white or black, the good guys are completely, perfectly good, beautiful, strong, invincible and the evil guys are ugly and always loose to the good guys. You’ll never get the feeling that there could be a different outcome than Ramayana winning his wife back and defeating Ravana. Still, it made me interested in reading a complete translation.
Complete English translation of the Ramayana by Ralph T.H. Griffith (1870-74)
Abridged English translation of the Ramayana by Romesh Chunder Dutt (1899)
Starfish (1999)
(Great)
written by Peter Watts
1st novel of the Rifters series / can be read online
Synopsis: Lenie Clark works at Beebe Station, a station at the bottom of the ocean at the Juan de Fuca Ridge. Soon she realizes why she is down there, why the grid authority allows people like Lenie to work at the bottom of the ocean. She and others like her have a mental makeup that some would call crazy, but exactly this makes them ideal workers in the extreme environment under the sea. At least until you want to get rid of them.
The main virtue of Starfish is the evocation of how it must feel to live deep down in the ocean. The book takes you to a strange, dark place where everything is under pressure, where everything is different from above. And yet some people not only live and survive there, they thrive and learn that it’s something they never had above the ocean, a place to call home, where they belong. These characters are, as the someone in the book describes them, bent but not completely broken, so they can fit where normal people couldn’t live. Watts is very adept at making these bent people into characters you care for. Another strength of the book is how Watts slowly but steadily increases the pace, as if he has worked a narrative equivalent to increasing water pressure into the plot. A small detail about his future here, a plot twist there, until it all comes together into an apocalyptic showdown where the good guys survival is a bad thing, and the bad guys actions the last hope for humanity. For a first novel this is an impressive book, full of neat science fictional ideas combined with excellent characterization and great plotting.
The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977)
(Great)
written by John Varley
1st Eight Worlds novel
Synopsis: After humans have been evicted from Earth by mysterious whale and dolphin loving aliens, they settle eight other worlds inside the solar system, helped by technology taken from a seemingly free information downlink from Ophiuchi. But then comes the bill together with some unsettling information regarding the future of humanity.
My experience with SF over the years has been that it dates faster than every other form of fiction, so when you read something that could have been published yesterday and feels fresh and invigorating, and realize that it’s written thirty years ago, you’ll feel like you discovered a diamond among the rubble. Varley does many clever things with TOH. Alternating between the POVs of different clones of the same person, you never feel that this fragments the flow of the story, because all these clones feel the same and as a reader you get the feeling of a continuous narrative stream. Reading TOH made me realize how much it seems to be a predecessor to Sterling’s Schismatrix, or since there’s not that much time between the two, how similar they seem. While the whole stage is smaller than most galaxy spanning SF, they both create a solar system whose multifaceted civilization feels much bigger and denser in detail than many of the galaxy spanning variant. Both are about inevitable changes to the human body itself, and the need to define or create a concept of what humanity entails beyond the mere human body. Both have an ambivalent ending that can either spell doom for the human race, or show the first steps into a future rich in possibilities. Both are excellent reads, books that opened new veins in the ideaspace of SF and yet are entertaining to read in their own right.
Old Man’s War (2005)
(Great)
written by John Scalzi
1st Colonial Defense Forces novel
Synopsis: John Perry enlists in the Colonial Defense Force, which means he’s at least 75 years old, and he has to leave everything behind, his possession, his friends and his home world forever. In return he gets a brand new body that can do things he couldn’t have done with his normal human body even when he was young and in top form. But soon he realizes that he really needs every physical advantage he can get. Humanity doesn’t live in the friendliest galactic neighborhood, it’s a dog eat dog world.
Clearly written in the same vain as Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, Scalzi’s book still falls somewhere in the middle of a scale defined by Heinlein’s book on one side and Haldeman’s Forever War on the other. Like the Heinlein book it’s immensely readable and pulls you in from the get go, but Scalzi never hides how fucked up the whole situation really is. You never get the feeling that the book has an agenda either way, at its core it’s just an enthralling story about a man who believes he has nothing left to lose and who learns that this isn’t entirely true. In some ways OMW is a science fiction book that can be enjoyed by people who aren’t entrenched much or at all into SF lingua. Despite happening in a future where mankind has gone to the stars, most characters come from very mundane backgrounds (technology is very unevenly distributed in Scalzi’s future), when they are confronted with all the new tech gadgets they react how you expect everyday people today would react.
Concerning the unevenly distributed technology, you’ll have to wonder if humanity wouldn’t have a much better stand if technology were more evenly distributed between the human worlds, and that points to either malevolence or incompetence on the part of the whole colonial system.
