Category: Aa

Spirey and the Queen — Alastair Reynolds

By 5t4n5

Spirey and the Queen -- Alastair ReynoldsYou’ll find this in the collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories.

It’s looking like all of Alastair’s early writings were short stories, and this is another one in the long list.   You certainly get to see how Alastair worked on his craft as a writer, cutting his teeth on these sci-fi ideas neatly wrapped up within a few hundred Kindle Loc Points.

Spirey and the Queen was written at a time when Alastair was just beginning Revelation Space and there’s certainly aspects of self aware machine vs human going on within this.   It’s a really good story, but, and it’s a big but, the beginning is all rather all over the place in terminology and nomenclature.   It’s like you’re thrown into this completely blurred out reality and slowly, over time, like in an opticians appointment, Alastair gradually finds the right lenses and all gradually becomes clear.

In Zima Blue and Other Stories, Alastair comments at the end of this story, that he’d like to come back to Spirey at some point in the future and explore what happened afterwards: which i would really look forward to reading.

So while i do feel this could have been better served had Alastair given it a novella length and explained things a lot more as we went along, i won’t throw the baby out with the bath water, it’s still, certainly, a good short story.

Coming next in the Alastair Reynolds reading list wil be Stroboscopic.

Alastair’s Page

#scifi #alastairreynolds

The Blue Zones, Second Edition — Dan Buettner

By 5t4n5

The Blue Zones, Second Edition -- Dan BuettnerThere’s a lot of interesting stuff contained within this book.   Good luck if you can find yourself in a situation where you have all the support and society around you that allows you to achieve these things.

Sadly, most of us simply don’t have the land available to farm our own organic vegetables and fruit for every meal, most people don’t live in places where they can drink pure water that isn’t some other town’s poorly-treated sewage dumped upstream into the river that fills the local reservoir, and most people don’t get to live in places free of all the traffic, and industrial, produced noise and air pollution.

Most people won’t ever be surrounded by family and friends their whole lives that would support, share and help them in achieving the same organic wholefood, stress free, pollution free, clean living lifestyle that is espoused in these stories.

I’d heard a lot of good things about this book and i really was looking forward to reading it.   Having read it, i just find most of it disingenuous, in that it is utterly ridiculous to suggest that most people could have a lifestyle like this even if they wanted to.   But hey, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, maybe you can find some things within to help you.

It’s even suggested at the end of the book that you build your own blue zone.   Good luck with that, i sincerely hope you can find yourself some space in this ever more overpopulated world that leaves less and less space free from air pollution, light pollution, noise, junk food, bad people, traffic, noise, industry, habitat destruction and all the rest of modern society’s garbage: because that’s what you need to do.   Maybe when Antarctica finally melts you’ll find some nice, free, unpolluted land, but i reckon the corporations will have beaten you to it with massive military, mining and construction projects.

My biggest gripe with this book is that there are far better ways for people to be thinking about improving their health and longevity in today’s modern societies.   This book suggests 10 extra years of healthy life, but consider, when it’s becoming more and more common that people are sick and diseased and reliant upon medication to survive in their 30’s and 40’s, is 10 extra years all you really want?   I want 40 or 50 years of extra healthy life and this book isn’t offering that at all.

Dan’s Page

#danbuettner

A Tale of Woe — P. Djèlí Clark

By 5t4n5

A Tale of Woe -- P. Djèlí ClarkYou can read this for free or buy the issue over at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

A wonderful short story following a Sister of the Order of Soothers as she attempts to get to the Grand Benevolence of the Holy City of Aurth.   Fantasy at its best.

And . . .

. . . it’s free to read as well: what more can you ever possibly desire?   Perhaps a super big mug of cocoa while you read it, made the way you really like it?

Next up in my P. Djèlí Clark reading journey is The Black God’s Drums.

P. Djèlí Clark’s Page

#fantasy #pdjeliclark

Byrd Land Six — Alastair Reynolds

By 5t4n5

Byrd Land Six -- Alastair ReynoldsYou’ll find this in the anthology, Deep Navigation.

In this short we’re off to an Antartic research station, in Marie Byrd Land: oh yeah, you get to learn about real stuff with Alastair.

Anyway, someone’s been playing with quantum entanglement and has totally messed all kinds of things up for the people at “Byrd Land Six”, and also on the Moon, where the other half of the entangled pair is residing.

Once again, super good sci-fi from a real physicist: we like!

Next up in the Alastair Reynolds timeline is Spirey and the Queen.

Alastair’s Page

#scifi #alastairreynolds

The Ringworld Engineers — Larry Niven

By 5t4n5

The Ringworld Engineers -- Larry NivenOnce again, we’re treated to more Seventies kitsch sci-fi with bizarre humanoids added to the mix of bizarre non-humanoids: there’s even vampires in this one.

On top of the bizarre creatures we are now treated to a never ending list of utterly unpronounceable names, obviously to make sure that you understand that this is real sci-fi, not some lame sci-fi with easy names that humans can pronounce.   To be honest Larry finds all kinds of ways to ruin a really good story and concept, and if it wasn’t for the fact that this is such a good story with such a good concept i would have stopped reading long ago.

But instead of stopping i’m going to carry on with the next book, The Ringworld Throne, just because it is such a good story, and i’m already bracing myself for even more jibbledy babbledy names and even more fucked up Seventies kitsch sci-fi creatures.

Ho hum, the trials and tribulations of the sci-fi reader.   To be honest, i’ll be glad when this Ringworld series thing is over and i won’t ever be reading Larry Niven ever again.

Larry’s Page

#scifi #larryniven

Ghost Marriage — P. Djèlí Clark

By 5t4n5

Ghost Marriage -- P. Djèlí ClarkYou can read this for free, or buy the issue, over at Apex Magazine.

So i’m continuing on my journey of Djèlí’s wonderfully refreshing fantasy.   In this story, Ayen’s husband has died and he won’t leave her, and as a poltergeist he causes her to be driven out of her tribe.   So off she goes in search of someone to help her exorcise his ghost from her mind.

But all is not as Ayen first believes it to be.

Really, really good.

Next up in the Djèlí timeline is A Tale of Woe, from 2018.

P. Djèlí Clark’s Page

#fantasy #pdjeliclark

Digital to Analogue — Alastair Reynolds

By 5t4n5

Digital to Analogue -- Alastair ReynoldsYou’ll find this in the collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories, and the anthology In Dreams.

A rather different take on why the dance music craze spread like wildfire in the 90’s.   As someone who was totally into the London acid techno scene in the 90’s this was right up my alley.

A fun little short with a nice touch of nostalgia for some of us.

Next up in the Alastair Reynolds timeline is Byrd Land Six.

Alastair’s Page

#scifi #alastairreynolds

Tokyo Ueno Station — Miri Yu

By 5t4n5

Tokyo Ueno Station -- Miri YuThis is quite a strange story, in that our protagonist/narrator, Kazu, is dead.   Before Kazu died, he was homeless and living in a cardboard and tarpaulin hut in Ueno Park, right next to Tokyo Ueno Station.

All too often we are shown the shiny-shiny capitalist face of Tokyo that those in power wish us to see, the Olympics, etc., but never do we see, or hear, those who are cast aside, unwanted and unneeded by a system that some just can’t keep up with.   Tokyo Ueno Station is their story, told by a ghost of one of the many people that society has no place for any more.

I know it sounds all rather depressing, but i didn’t find it so because it’s a view of Tokyo that is told in such a unique and interesting way, keeping our attention when most writers would have lost it, making us realise, consider and re-revaluate.   How many homeless people die on the streets every year and no one ever gets to hear their story, or realise the truth as to why they were homeless in the first place, this book makes you think about those things: they are important.

It’s certainly a fact in the UK, where i live, that the government deliberately maintains a homeless population in order to keep the threat in front of people of what will happen to them if they don’t comply with society’s demands.   I presume this is the same in Japan:   “Do you want to end up like them, Salaryman?   Well you’d best work hard, do lots of overtime, and do as you’re told — or else you’ll be living in Ueno Park too!”

Yu’s Page

#japan #miriyu

Nunivak Snowflakes — Alastair Reynolds

By 5t4n5

Nunivak Snowflakes -- Alastair ReynoldsYou’ll find this in the anthology, Deep Navigation.

Messages from the future found inside fish falling from the sky landing in front of the person the message was meant for.

Basically, someone from the future is being naughty and messing with the past in an indigenous community in Alaska.

Other than The Big Hello, of which i have no idea when published, this is Alastair’s first published story.   So it’s very early Alastair Reynolds, so don’t be expecting Revelation Space or anything like it.

But it’s a reasonable, quirky, little read that’ll keep you happily ensconced in you favourite reading pit for a while.

Alastair’s Page

#scifi #alastairreynolds