A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of those classics of science-fiction that has long entered the public consciousness. It’s so well-known as a staple of post-apocalyptic fiction that I’d somehow thought that I’d already read it. It’s embarrassing to realize that in fact I haven’t and reading it for the first time over the past month, I’m blown away by how powerful it is as an expression of the cyclical nature of history and the enduring faith of religious calling in persisting on a mission that spans thousands of years. This is a book that has not aged at all and feels just as relevant today as it did when it was published in 1959.
I read Vernor Vinge’s two Zones of Thought novels so long ago that no record of them exists on this blog. They’re fantastically good space opera stories and the fresh ideas in them inspired many other works including the Mass Effect games. The Children of the Sky was a sequel that was published much later and was more of a miss than a hit. It made so little impact that I wasn’t even aware it existed for a long time. I added it to my reading list around the time that Vinge passed away because I wanted to know how the series actually ends. Unfortunately it really is as underwhelming as most make it out to be and doesn’t even feel complete as an ending.
Like no doubt many others, I never even heard of this novel until the film adaptation of it was heavily promoted earlier this year. This still wouldn’t be a book I’d ordinarily read but I heard good things about it on Broken Forum and I am trying to read more outside of genre fiction so here I am. One huge difference is that while the trailers for the film make it out like some sort of cute children’s movie, this book is not that at all. The sheep are intelligent but they are also often wrong because they don’t understand humans at all. It’s funny but it’s also genuinely dark and not at all a book that is suitable for children.
This trilogy is so long that it became a bit of a slog towards the end but I’ve finally reached the end. This is my least favorite of the three books as there are entire plotlines that I feel are ultimately pointless such as Louise and Genevieve’s adventures on Earth and the Skibbows’ vendetta against Kiera. On the other hand, there are also some spectacular setpieces. We get to visit the true homeworlds of the Kiint, and there are multiple first contact scenarios with alien civilizations both more and less advanced than humanity. As the title suggests, the crisis is resolved by a literal deus ex machina. That’s never great but it’s especially egregious here as one hero singlehandedly flips the table for everyone.
I’ve known about James Blish’s Cities in Flight setting for ages but never got around to reading any of the books, save a couple of short stories collected in anthologies. But it was this 1958 novel that won him a Hugo Award. It’s a very short book and unfortunately very much a product of its time in its depiction of the state of society and fears of nuclear weapons. But at its heart is a crisis of faith in Catholicism, arriving at a conclusion that is mind-blowing. This truly is one of the more unique pieces of science-fiction out there and deserves its place in the sci-fi Hall of Fame.
As promised, I’m on the second book of Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy and with the entire Confederation now aware of the crisis, it’s action-packed right from the start. I’d complained earlier that my main issue with the first book was the character of Joshua Calvert being set up as the stereotypical action hero. He does get a little less of the limelight but unfortunately we also get another copy of him? While still very entertaining, I like this somewhat less than the first book, partly because the Confederation is rather smart about containing the possessed, so they don’t turn out to be as large-scale a threat as they initially seemed. Plus, I strongly dislike the new possessed leader characters such as Al Capone. I mean, really?
The Reality Dysfunction was a hefty read and so I wanted lighter and different in between the volumes of the massive trilogy. I picked Marcus Aurelius’ famous Meditations both because it’s definitely different from my usual reading material and because I’m getting of constantly seeing references to it and not knowing what it’s about. It is prominently featured in The Holdovers for example. Unfortunately it was largely a waste of my time. This is basically a self-help book and a very repetitive one at that. It’s impressive that it was so far ahead of its time for its genre and was written by an actual emperor of the Roman Empire but that’s about it.
