Saving this science-fiction classic until now was unexpectedly fortuitous because I have better idea of its influence having watched films such as Vesper and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind that were clearly inspired by it. Right off the bat, it blew me away with its depiction of a far future Earth in which what remains of humanity must eke out a precarious existence against the plant-life that predominates. The amoral perspective, since there is no room for anything other than survival, is sobering and this is pretty much purely a survey of the ecosystem of the era. My interest did fall off somewhat once it establishes a pattern of its characters being continually forced to confront unfamiliar environments due to a series of misadventures, rather than staying in one particular biome to explore it in-depth. But it remains one of most eye-opening and original science-fiction books I’ve ever read.
I hated The Poppy War but Babel is such a big deal in the speculative fiction genre that I feel obligated to read. Plus, I’ve had numerous people point out to me that it’s a very different book. This does actually cover some of the same ground and shares similar themes but it really is a much better book and I’d attribute that to Kuang’s writing skill having greatly improved since then. The characters this time around are much more convincing and it’s exhilarating how this is at once a love letter to Oxford and a condemnation of what the British Empire did to be able to afford to build the place. Even so, it has too many flaws for me to consider it a great book. It fails particularly towards the end as the climax is so obvious and made possible only because the great and mighty of the Empire act so dumbly.
As a big fan of the Wandering Inn, naturally I want to read every story written by Pirateaba that takes place in it. However the overall story now spans more than just the original web serial, encompassing a graphic novel and now this separate story published on the new Yonder platform. Many fans complained about the latter in particular and it seems that Pirateba does have some gripes about the global availability of the service. I don’t begrudge her trying to make some money off what is now an extremely popular web serial so I downloaded the app to read it. In the event, this method of monetizing web fiction is annoying but it doesn’t really cost much to read the whole thing on Yonder. What is a problem is that this is nowhere as good as the Wandering Inn itself and that makes it difficult to recommend to others.
Going through the greatest classics of science-fiction proves to be as rewarding as ever and this one even features dogs! For a person who loves dogs as much as I do, this is very appealing! This book brings together a series of short stories originally published between 1944 and 1951 about a world in which human civilization has fallen and humanity is remembered only by their heirs, the dogs. Each story is accompanied by a foreword that helps connect the whole. The work is very much a product of its time. Author Clifford Simak’s guesses about the implications of technological development feel mistaken to us and the obsession about psionic powers isn’t something that shows up in modern science-fiction any longer. Even so as an exercise of pure imagination to remind us that mankind may not necessarily be the inheritors of some far future Earth, I’d rate this as a masterful and emotionally affecting work.
I bought this largely because it’s a meme book and I was curious what the fuss was all about. This was originally published in 2019 and won some awards. But it only went viral earlier this year due to a tweet and shot straight up to the top of the bestseller charts. It’s a science-fiction romance story written in an epistolary format by its two co-authors, so really not something that I usually read. The pattern of the correspondence felt obvious and repetitive to me early and there’s really only one way a story like this can end. Still, the quality of the prose and the intensity of the emotions it evokes just about won me over towards the climax.
I’ve been a fan of Alexander Wales for ages since his fanfiction days. He dropped off my radar for a bit but since I finished the grimdark epic Worth the Candle I’ve been catching up on his other works. From what I understand he set out to write this less serious piece to decompress. There are adventurers and dungeon delving in it but as he puts it, this is mostly meant to be slice-of-life. It’s set in a pleasant, near utopia of a world and one of the main themes is that some characters feel that their world is so safe and so well understood that there are no mysteries and places to discover left. Anyway, Wales delivers exactly what he promised here. It’s not really about the worldbuilding or grand plots but about getting to know and fall in love with the cast of characters. It’s great comfort food and I really enjoyed it.
Continuing on my tour of the greatest science-fiction novels ever written, here is Norstrilia, the only novel published by Cordwainer Smith. Smith is genuinely one of the greats of science-fiction and is mainly known for his short stories. His real life is arguably as fascinating as his fiction, being an East Asian scholar who called Sun Yat-Sen his godfather and an expert in psychological warfare who worked for the CIA. I found this book to be an impressive example of building a complete fictional future history setting and a incisive dissection of what it means to be human. Due to its characters and moral sensibility, I can’t say that I enjoyed it very much. It’s yet another book that really is a product of its time.
