Artemis is about a smuggler named Jasmine Bashar who gets in over her head when a wealthy man wants to take over a mining company on the moon and she gets caught in the middle of a power grab of who controls the resources on the moon. It's a really interesting story and totally different story then the Martian. Andy Weir has a new book coming out called Project Hail Mary that's also going to be made into a film with Ryan Gosling playing an astronaut on a space mission that has to save the day.
So What Are you Reading?: Generations
- Thread starter captcalhoun
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Ooh... they both sound interesting!
The Martian is probably one of THE greatest sci-fi novels of all time. The film doesn't do it justice.
Started on The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST by Sabine C Bauer
I wanted a female-written bit of SF, couldn’t quite reach the ones I most fancied without dismantling half the room…. And wish I’d settled for male-written SF or female-written non-SF.
So, this is a Stargate SG-1 tie-in, there are good bits of action, and a potential for a reasonable mystery to solve, as well as lots of guilt and betrayal among the characters.
Unfortunately it’s all arse-backwards, with all the mysteries answered to the audience before being asked by or of the characters. The action involves a lot of bumping against walls in tunnels, and the continuity is a bizarre mix of named trivia thrown at us, then actual important guest stars and plot bits introduced in deliberately obfucatory ways [e.g., Maybourne being introduced with a gap in hist teeth supplied instead of a name.] And then there’s the POV and characterisation.
Some characters are truer than others, which is fair enough of any tie-in, but…. OK there are usually three ways of giving us POV character pieces- train-of-thought, showing us them feel or react to stuff, and just telling us what they think and feel. Any one of them can work. Two you might get away with. This gives us all three for every thought and character moment, each repeating what we just got from the last, over and over again.
This may be the most-in-need-of-an-edit book I’ve read in a long while – there is a fun story in here, but it’s 370 pages of teensy print, of which about 150 pages are a decent brief tie-in novel, and the other 220 pages are pure repetitve, dragging, padding. And I hate saying, cos I remember my tie-in flaws – some of this reads as if someone took the worst bits of my style [notably characters pausing to have a sandwich, which I did so dubiously as to get quite well parodied for it] and then drags it out about four times as long. [In the sandwich cases, she keep coming back to them, to discuss the bread and the best outlets, and for amost every character at some point.]
It’s been about a week and it’s so padded and slow that I feel like I’ve been reading it for the whole three months of lockdown.
I wanted a female-written bit of SF, couldn’t quite reach the ones I most fancied without dismantling half the room…. And wish I’d settled for male-written SF or female-written non-SF.
So, this is a Stargate SG-1 tie-in, there are good bits of action, and a potential for a reasonable mystery to solve, as well as lots of guilt and betrayal among the characters.
Unfortunately it’s all arse-backwards, with all the mysteries answered to the audience before being asked by or of the characters. The action involves a lot of bumping against walls in tunnels, and the continuity is a bizarre mix of named trivia thrown at us, then actual important guest stars and plot bits introduced in deliberately obfucatory ways [e.g., Maybourne being introduced with a gap in hist teeth supplied instead of a name.] And then there’s the POV and characterisation.
Some characters are truer than others, which is fair enough of any tie-in, but…. OK there are usually three ways of giving us POV character pieces- train-of-thought, showing us them feel or react to stuff, and just telling us what they think and feel. Any one of them can work. Two you might get away with. This gives us all three for every thought and character moment, each repeating what we just got from the last, over and over again.
This may be the most-in-need-of-an-edit book I’ve read in a long while – there is a fun story in here, but it’s 370 pages of teensy print, of which about 150 pages are a decent brief tie-in novel, and the other 220 pages are pure repetitve, dragging, padding. And I hate saying, cos I remember my tie-in flaws – some of this reads as if someone took the worst bits of my style [notably characters pausing to have a sandwich, which I did so dubiously as to get quite well parodied for it] and then drags it out about four times as long. [In the sandwich cases, she keep coming back to them, to discuss the bread and the best outlets, and for amost every character at some point.]
It’s been about a week and it’s so padded and slow that I feel like I’ve been reading it for the whole three months of lockdown.
I have started reading Christopher's newest novel and so far it's a good read.
Also I have started reading "Mission to Horatius". I picked up a first edition copy at an antique store a few years back. I believe I read somewhere it's geared toward young adults. But it's the only original novel written during the series run.
Also I have started reading "Mission to Horatius". I picked up a first edition copy at an antique store a few years back. I believe I read somewhere it's geared toward young adults. But it's the only original novel written during the series run.
i'm doing my first re-read of the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy by David Mack, since it released.
Nice.
I only have a reprint.
OTOH, I do have a first edition of Killing Time and a copy of A Never Ending Sacrifice (which I picked up in a job-lot online).
I'm re-reading a biography, one for which I paid through the nose for a hardcover (but alas, not Smyth-sewn; at least it's on acid-free paper) University Microfilm off-print, because the publisher edition is extremely rare: E. Power Biggs, Concert Organist, by Barbara Owen.
Now reading The Children of Hamlin (TNG book #3)
It did cost $8, which I'd usually shy away from on a used book, but I figured it was a first edition copy of the very first Star Trek novel so I decided what the hell.
I also managed to find a used copy of the first release of Killing Time online of all places. In a way I actually found it disappointing. I had heard that it had a number of slash (or slash-lite at least) references in it. I'm not into K/S slash fiction (I always saw them as brothers, best friends, not secretly desiring one another), but I was expecting a scandalous book. It really wasn't all that much. I thought the "Phoenix" novels were much more slash-like than KT. If I read this edition of KT without knowing a thing about it, I probably wouldn't have picked up on it. Overall the story itself was ok--I like alternate universe types of stories usually. It does rely on that time travel trope that if we don't fix it the universe is going to die plot devices. I think I said it might have been an average book overall. Maybe fair. Not terrible, but it won't knock your socks off.
I had created a post about it where I posted some comments as I was reading it, since it's such a 'scandalous' book. But honestly, if not for the forced revisions I doubt this book would have been remembered all that much compared to the others of that area.
Oh, and be sure to read Greg's 3rd Khan book, "To Reign in Hell", which takes place between "Space Seed" and TWOK (if you haven't already). I loved that book and plug it every chance I get.
It's a great story and it addresses one of the weaknesses I thought of TWOK---why is Khan obsessed with vengeance to the exclusion of all else. After reading the novel you start to understand how that can happen--how Khan became insane with vengeance. It didn't happen overnight. It festered and built until he was the man we saw in the movie. The film doesn't quite give us the full taste of how hellish an existence it was after the disaster--the book puts it in grim detail. And there are other little tidbits that bridge the gap between the two.
Yeah.
I felt the same.
Maybe because it's a different time now. What seemed scandalous once is now run-of-the-mill.
I intend to but wanted to take a short break from it by reading a TNG book.
One thing I took away from the books is how the whole line of Gary 7 was a big missed opportunity.
I know he appears in a couple of other books but would have been great to have a whole series of books based on their adventures.
That's part of it, but largely it was just an overreaction on Roddenberry's part. If he hadn't been offended by a few minor passages and demanded that they be changed, nobody else would've thought they were that big a deal. By ordering a molehill bulldozed, he turned it into a mountain in people's minds.
Yeah, my feeling as well. The Phoenix novels were much more overt and obvious I thought.
"Killing Time" was a bit unusual, but honestly it did feel overblown. I was just reading about KT and it did note this book was cited as the start of Arnold's greater interference with tie-in fiction, in Roddenberry's name. I read that there were supposed to be edits done before the book was ever released but due to a change of editors at the time at Pocketbooks they kind of got lost and the book was released in it's 'unedited' form.
But yes, by calling attention to it they actually created the book's mystique. Had they just let it be then Killing Time probably would have been a forgettable book from that era. It doesn't rise to the level of some of the great books during that time, but it's not horrible enough to be remembered as, well a horrible book.
I do wonder if Roddenberry objected to this book, what did he think of "The Price of the Phoenix" which was much more obvious. I read that book before reading any comments and I picked up on the slash elements right away.
I think he just wasn't paying as much attention to the books at that point.
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