Technical nonfiction and spec fiction. She/her. Melbourne, Australia. Generation X. Admin of Outside of a Dog. BDFL of Hometown (Mastodon) instance Old Mermaid Town (@futzle@old.mermaid.town). Avatar image is of a book that my dog tried to put on their inside.
My rating scale: ★ = I didn't care for it and probably didn't finish it; ★★ = It didn't inspire but I might have finished it anyway; ★★★ = It was fine; ★★★★ = I enjoyed it; ★★★★★ = I couldn't put it down.
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Critics have compared the engrossing space operas of Peter F. Hamilton to the classic sagas of such sf giants as …
A most peculiar story, if you can call it that. It’s more a series of vignettes about some quite dysfunctional people. Coupland lets slip ever so quietly that he knows a great deal about technology. I suspect more than I do.
I know Doug Coupland from his earlier nonfiction work such as Souvenir of Canada. Guess I’m about to find out what his fiction is like.
The Mimicking of Known Successes presents a cozy Holmesian murder mystery and sapphic romance, set on Jupiter, by Malka Older, …
Content warning Plot elements
I’ll come right out and say it: blackface is a central part of this story. This novel is from 1934 when white people didn’t blink at blacking up and performing music as “n****r minstrels”. There’s simply no way to edit this story to exclude this fact without greatly changing the story.
I’ve only read Jeeves short stories to now; this is the first novel (and Wodehouse’s first Jeeves novel too). It hangs together, the plot is clever and of course Jeeves saves the day. Satisfying, but hold your nose.
Oh my, this appears to be an edition with the n-word in it intact; wasn’t expecting that at all.
It’s not grabbing me. The Lena character is insufferable and shallow and irritating. The diary excerpts are especially cringeworthy.
I don’t know if it’s Palmer trying to write women or something else, because there’s only one other woman in the book and she is a very minor character.
Putting it down.
Psychopaths, at one extreme, process reality in a way that is denuded of emotional content; often, killer psychopaths admit they don't really feel emotion, but instead "act" emotion. Great novelists, by contrast, process reality by a process of self-glorifying self-fictification. Computer geeks, by further contrast, break down their lives into a series of tasks and challenges; it gives them huge self-confidence, but little emotional competence.
— Debatable Space by Philip Palmer (Page 81)
The first person in this part of the book is, herself, something of a psychopath.
Only got five pages in before bad light stopped play. Reading by candlelight is not recommended.
Some sf from the 1950s holds up today. This ... does not. It's from a time when women were inconsequential and invisible, that being gay was a character flaw, that rugged male individuals were the solution to any bureaucracy. I did not finish this book and I will make a note to never touch or recommend anything by this author again.
Content warning Homophobia in a 1959 book
Ok I'm done with Next of Kin. I got about halfway through, managed to grit my teeth that every single character in it (even the aliens) is male, but once the protagonist started using his gaydar on other characters, I knew I couldn't finish it. Disposing of this book in the recycling.
“Hasn’t aged a bit” says the endorsement on the cover by Jack Chalker, 1944–2005. Au contraire, Jack, upon finishing the first chapter, which contains no women at all, this novella from 1959 has aged a fuckton. I will probably need to hateread it in order to finish this supposed comic horror story.
