Last year i got a kindle for Christmas. This is a review of all the science-fiction books it contains at this moment, with the exception of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Joe Haldeman’s Forever War (This post is already way too long and these are pretty well known books). For each book/series I’ll try and give a very short description followed by my thoughts.
The TLDR; these books provide a balanced diet ;-).
If you only have time to read one book, read Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice.
Not just the TLDR
These are the books I have read in no particular order:
Someone (not humans) has built a space elevator in Darwin Australia. After some years a disease either kills or turns everyone into zombies except in a safe zone around the space elevator.
The dire earth cycle is a quick read, and an entertaining one. It was way better then I expected. Sometimes it goes into these very long and meaningless action sequences; you can safely skim those.
The story follows an AI fragment from the Radch starship Justice of Toren‍. This fragment is all that is left after the starship was destroyed. While Justice of Toren plans revenge on its destructor, we get flashbacks to its previous life as a ship AI in service of the Radch.
I do not have enough positive things to say about this book. The main character is extremely well written. The pace is good. I’m really looking forward to the third book in the series. If you are going to read it, do not read about the book first, it might spoil some parts which it is worth not to have spoiled.
Not as good as the first book, but still great.
We follow the first 100 colonists of Mars as they colonize and attempt to terraform mars.
Of all the books on this list, this series really stands out as different. Most of the time the book follows the everyday work of the 100 colonists as they work, scheme, and daydream. There is no good and evil here. While the political views of the author shines through it never feels like preaching. On the negative side the book has travel descriptions that makes the travel descriptions in Lord of the Rings feel like short strolls. Still the series is one of my favourites.
Someone made a huge monument on pluto, why?
Set in the same universe as the Mars Trilogy. It follows some of the same style, but the pace was a bit faster. The story has a lot of references to the Mars Trilogy, so it might be better to read that first.
We follow the master of ‘Holywelkins Orchestra’ on its tour from the outer to the inner solar system. On the way it becomes clear that the orchestra is immensely powerful. And also some cult controls Mercury and therefore the power distribution to the rest of the solar system.
That probably made no sense. The book seemed to make sense (and was enjoyable) for the first half, then it stopped making sense. Too weird for me.
In the future humanity figures out a way to suspend time in bobbles (allowing time travel to the future). The main character is unwillingly suspended and returns to a worlds where human civilisation is gone and only a few humans (bobblers from varying degrees of civilisation) are left, including his suspender.
Vernor Vinge does a very good job with his concepts. He introduces the rules of his universe and then follows them. This book is short and to the point. No infinite traveling on Mars; no zombies. A very enjoyable read.
In this book we follow the world just after the bobbles (see previous book) were invented, and are discovered to be finite stasis fields.
I enjoyed Marooned in realtime more, but it is well worth reading.
Our galaxy is divided in zones that allow different sorts of intelligence and technology to arise and be used. We follow humanity which has traveled to the Beyond where AI and FTL travel is possible ( Earth is located in the Slow zone where these things are not possible). The outer zone is called the Transcend, where the beings are basically gods. Trying to enter the Transcend from the Beyond, some humans fall into a trap and release a being which threatens all life in the beyond. A ship escapes the trap with information on how to counter the being, but strands on a world with wolf like creatures with group-minds.
Very interesting concepts and quite well executed. A lot of the book is written from the perspective of packs which are group-minds of several individual wolfs. For me these chapters were initially hard to follow, since I do not think it was explicitly explained that these were group-minds.
This book takes place in the Slow zone (no FTL). Two human space traveling civilisations discover a world which orbits around a star that is only active for one year every 250 years. On this world lives a species of spiders which will soon reach space. The two human civilisations clash over the right to trade with/enslave this species. The clash leaves them both crippled though, and they need to cooperate while waiting for the star to wake and get new resources from the Spiders.
I liked this book more then A fire upon the deep. There are some parts about layered complex software growing over time (they have very old software on their spaceships, like if glibc would be used several thousand years in the future), which to an enterprise programmer almost feels way too believable.
Arik must figure out artificial photosynthesis, or his not yet born child will cause the colony he belongs to on Venus to eventually run out of of oxygen.
I was really surprised by this book. It has some great plot twists, and was very difficult to put down. I am currently in the process of reading the sequel Equinox. These books both has very brief encounters with zombies. Thankfully very short, but they would be better without.
Alien archeologists come to earth to excavate after humanity is long gone.
Short and very enjoyable read. Just read it.
Humanity has reached space and has settled several planets, but it is in conflict with several alien species over territory. This conflict is handled by the CDF (Colonial Defense Forces) who is in constant need of new soldier on a very deadly battlefield. These soldiers are recruited from an overpopulated Earth where the CDF controls the only access point to space. To keep the stream of soldiers the CDF largely keeps Earth in the dark of their technology and stategies. The series explores the conflicts with the alien and the political struggles resulting from this situation from the perspective of the soldiers and political figures caught in it.
The overall quality of this series is great. If you liked Starship Troopers you will most likely like this. I do not think any single book of the series is as good as Ancillary Justice, but I read every new book in the series.
Conclusion
If you only have time to read one book, you can not go wrong with Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice.
Polar bears, not zombies!
