Tag: science fiction

  • Waking Gods: Themis Files #2 by Sylvain Neuvel

    Flawless followup. The best thing about the second book in a trilogy is that you don’t have to worry about answering questions. Just raise the stakes. And Neuvel does it perfectly here. Just blockbuster fun. I could not put it down. The format sings, the action scenes are executed perfectly, and there are tons of…

  • Sleeping Giants: Themis Files #1 by Sylvain Neuvel

    Picked this up on the reco of my local used bookstore owner. The guy knows my taste, it seems. This is fun as hell. A lot of the first half felt very much like a throwback to 60s sci-fi, but the politics and ideas in the second half of the book are current and well…

  • Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

    Just astonishing. This book is the most ambitious and layered thing I’ve read in a long, long time. The style of writing is kind of like Rachel Cusk, meditative and conversational, kind of highbrow, but often shockingly direct. It’s full of ideas about history, politics and art, identity, relationships, and a whole lot more. At…

  • Infomocracy by Malka Older

    This sure isn’t for everyone but it absolutely was for me. This book is like a collaboration between William Gibson and John King (the CNN election map guy). It’s really tough to get into – Older has effectively imitated Gibson’s sink-or-swim narrative style. The subject matter is incredibly current, and I kept wondering how the…

  • The Deluge by Stephen Markley

    This book stressed me out more than any fiction I’ve read in recent memory. It’s ambitious, bold and frankly genius. The book is confusing for a long time – not only are there a half-dozen different stories being told in alternating chapters, there are news collages and magazine articles included. Markley does an incredible job…

  • Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

    This seems like the book that Stephen King has been trying to write for 50 years. It’s a short book, but it packs heat. And the ending is super satisfying. The writing is so beautiful I read most of the book out loud to myself. Will’s dad’s speech in the library is one of those…

  • The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

    This ranks with A Canticle for Liebowitz for me – bold and philosophical in a way that is kind of immune to time. In the same way that lots of people think that Fahrenheit 451 would have made a better short story, many of these stories were strong enough to build a whole world around. Just brilliant.…

  • A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller Jr.

    That was absolutely stunning. It wasn’t an easy read, but it was a rewarding one. It’s a classic for a reason. Big themes and big ideas here, and until the third part of the book it didn’t read like it was written more than 60 years ago. It’s definitely going to be a book I…

  • Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

    <i>Jurassic Park</i> but <i>Guardians of the Galaxy</i>, I guess. This was fun and fast, the perfect thing to get me through a round of covid. It’s silly and action-packed and very of-the-moment, and I laughed out loud several times reading it. Highly recommended breath of fresh movie-monster air.

  • Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

    I read this in school more than 20 years ago, and it blew me away then. This book is so engaging and rich with ideas about class, sex, gender, violence and the nature of humanity. Absolutely timeless and just perfect.