Reviews and Comments

Jon PENNYCOOK

jonpsp@ramblingreaders.org

Joined 1 year, 9 months ago

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science #scifi #scienceFiction

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The seas are rising. At first global warming is blamed, but as London, then New …

Review of 'Flood' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Interesting story - imagine some source of large amounts of water buried under the crust which, fo reasons no one understands, suddenly bursts through to the surface and floods the Earth under about a kilometer of water. People get together, countries break down, oligarchs build special ships, and other people build rafts.
Some parts were too fantastic to be believable. In London, they only worry about sewage pollution when Greenwich flood barrier is overwhelmed, whereas we in the real UK suffer from sewage pollution after light rain due to lack of investment. I also thought the Middle East would be nuked long before it happens in the book, as each religion fights over Jerusalem.

John Brunner: Interstellar Empire (Paperback, 1987, Arrow Books Limited) 2 stars

Review of 'Interstellar Empire' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

More like a fantasy collection, with spaceships replacing horses or ships. Some of the swords are replaced with energy weapons, but not all of them. I read the first story, started the second, then gave up. People somehow live in mid-2nd millennium conditions after the collapse of a galactic empire but still have spaceships left over by an alien civilisation.

Review of 'Speed of Sound : Breaking the Barriers Between Music and Technology' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

More of a 90s dotcom boom memoir than one about a pop artist. I wanted to know how Thomas Dolby ended up working with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Akiko Yano, but I don't remember them being mentioned at all. I also wanted to know more about the Camera Club. The book galloped past that period. There was plenty of detail about his adventures in tech in San Francisco and whilst working with Netscape and Nokia.