This is another mainstream novel that I picked up because it has a somewhat science-fiction premise. It’s even new and was included in The Economist as one of their best books of the year. To me however this is another case of a mainstream book that isn’t really about the technology at its core at all but how its presence and its invention altered the lives of a group of people the novel chooses to follow. It’s also a stylistically clever book in which each chapter is drastically different, including one that is written entirely as text messages between characters. I was impressed by the quality of the writing and the complex psychological profiles of the many weird characters in it, but this was never intended to be science-fiction at all.

This is a science-fiction book that everyone will have heard of if only because of the vast number of adaptations inspired by it. I similarly have never read the book itself before this, thinking that I already knew all there was to know from the adaptations. Watching a discussion of the top science-fiction novels however made me realize that there still is a lot of value in revisiting the old classics because they are classics for good reasons. As such I’ll be adding some science-fiction classics into my reading rotation beginning with this one by H.G. Wells.

This is the third novella of the series and by now I know what to expect. It largely follows the same formula in having Murderbot unexpectedly run into a group of humans who are hopeless at protecting themselves and ends up saving them. A welcome twist is that most of the opposition here comes in the form of implacably hostile enemy combat bots, which ramps up the threat level to Murderbot considerably. This is still a very simple and straightforward young adult book. It amounts to little more than introducing all of the new characters and then throwing Murderbot right into the action. It’s a rollicking good read, being fast-paced and punctuated by Murderbot’s particular sense of humor, but it’s nothing very sophisticated.

The first novel by China Miéville that I read was Embassytown which I enjoyed but found that it wasn’t all that it was hyped up to be. I did love the book’s premise though and, if anything, that of this book is even more far out. The City and the City is first and foremost a police procedural but I’d say it counts as science-fiction as well as the entire book is really about its unique setting itself. In the end, I feel that Miéville still doesn’t fully justify how the city could possibly work as he describes it but damn if he hasn’t gone most of the way and thought up all kinds of possibilities that I’d never even imagined in fleshing out the physical reality of his city.

Last year, I mentioned how the popular Murderbot Diaries series seems to make for a fairly entertaining read but it would be too expensive to buy each novella one by one. Then I realized that the series is available for reading on Kindle Unlimited which is cheap to get so now I can finally get the whole story. This is the second of a total of four parts that I believe should round out what amounts to the first book if it were published in a more traditional format.

This is the third book of the Culture series and once again Iain M. Banks surprises me with how different it is from the previous two books. The first book showed the Culture from the perspective of its enemies. The second provided a look at a typical citizen of the Culture who is asked to help treat with another civilization. This one is again a story from the perspective of someone who is not born of the Culture and works for them as a sort of mercenary as part of their Special Circumstances organization. While there is a wider plot, the novel is largely a deep dive into the psyche of its protagonist. Personally while I commend the ambition and sophistication of this approach, I can’t say that I liked this novel terribly much as I don’t find examining the tortured minds of ex-soldiers that appealing and I question why the Culture needs to employ such people for their needs.

I try to read a diverse selection of science-fiction but one of the biggest holes in my reading are the works of Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. He is indisputably one of the greats of the genre and Andrei Tarkovsky’s adaptation of his Solaris is one of the greatest films of all time. I chose not to begin with that as it seems a little obvious and I have already watched two adaptations of the novel. The Invincible isn’t as well known but I have read about how it’s eerily prescient about some science-fiction tropes that would become commonplace only much later.