I loved the Pantheon series and seeing as I’ve never read any of Ken Liu’s original fiction, I thought I’d check out the collection of short stories it came from. In fact, only three of the stories in this collection form the basis of the television series and the written form is very different. The rest are a mixed bag. Some explore alternative versions of similar ideas. Others are purely fantasy stories. My favorites are when he explores questions about identity in which the speculative fiction elements are almost incidental. There’s no real central theme to this collection however so it must have been composed of whatever work Liu had that was available and I have to say that on the whole, it isn’t a particularly brilliant book.
After the ordeal of finishing Pale, I thought I’d opt for something easier and more familiar next. I think the last time I read a Stephen King book must have been at least twenty years ago. His early horror novels were formative for me but I never cared for his forays into fantasy. I’d read that he considers Pet Sematary to be by far the scariest novel to himself and since I never really find novels to be scary, I thought I’d give this a go. As many other readers have discovered for themselves, this book reads very differently as an adult who has experienced the death of loved ones rather than as a child. I am very glad I read this at my age and I do declare this to be a very scary horror novel indeed.
It took way, way longer than I expected and I actually fell behind in other reading to do this, but I finally managed to complete Wildbow’s latest web serial Pale. It is his longest work to date and that seems to have surprised Wildbow himself because he explicitly set out to write an investigative procedural story with a less ambitious scope. I do think it’s his best writing to date and I love both the characters and the setting. That said, it is far, far too long. Too many conflicts devolve to physical combat when other forms of resolution are narratively more interesting. Wildbow is insistent on providing a backstory on every single character who shows up, no matter how minor. The whole world is just unnecessarily big. As much I enjoyed the main narrative and the protagonists, I found this to be a real slog to get through at times. I’m both happy to have read this but also relieved that I’m finally done, if that makes sense.
Greg Bear has been one of those science-fiction greats whose work I’ve always put off reading and I felt vaguely guilty about it when he passed away in 2022. I only got around to it when I saw Blood Music being listed among the greatest novels in the genre ever written. My first impression here is that Bear certainly is an author who knows a lot about biology and even though this was written in 1985, it still feels up to date and modern. However I’m not sure I care much for the plot, such as it were. I was amused when I checked the Wikipedia entry for this book and saw someone comparing the ending to Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End because that was where my mind went to as well.
After last month’s hefty non-fiction book, I thought I’d go with something lighter. It’s an expansion of an award-winning short story about climate change to novella form. Some have complained that it doesn’t add that much to the already great original story but since I’ve never read it, this works well for me. I actually think that it could stand to be expanded even more as it is set entirely in one particular part of Vancouver Island and characters appear in media res with no introduction. Since the geography and ecology of the area are so important, it was tough for someone like me who has never even been to Canada to get into. I had to read up information on the setting but it absolutely is a beautiful and moving story about the slow-moving climate catastrophe.
For something a little different, this month I’ve been reading this bestselling non-fiction book about health and longevity. This book has made enough of an impact that it’s doing the rounds within the rationalist community that I frequent and my wife has been obsessed with health and fitness lately so I thought I should read this myself. It has won major kudos for being scientifically rigorous and up to date and indeed the back of the book is crammed with references. It’s probably possible to read up on all this for free elsewhere but it is valuable to have all this knowledge compiled in one place. As the book itself states however, its aim is to equip the reader with the knowledge and the tools needed to make meaningful health decisions, but as there can be no single plan that works for everyone, this book may disappoint those looking for an easily actionable list of things to do. Indeed if you’re someone in generally good health and already getting all of the fundamentals right, this book remains interesting but it doesn’t all that much.
Greg Egan is continuing to produce a fair amount new writing. I bought this book because it’s been a while since I last sat down with a good collection of short science-fiction stories and they’re how I first encountered Egan’s work. Unfortunately while many of the ideas in the stories here can be interesting and thought provoking, they’re also very small in scale. So small that they might rate a short blurb or a blog post but struggle under the weight and expectations of even a short story. Combined with Egan’s penchant for writing plain and straightforward stories with no dramatic twists, I’m left wondering: okay, so that happened, is that it?
