Whatta Fiasco

This book has already been widely noted as having one of the most failingest of covers in recent memory. When grownups decide not to buy a book because they’d be embarrassed to be seen reading it in public even though it’s written by a geeky smarty pants like Charlie Stross? That’s a fail. On the other hand, the book is so chock full of sexed up robots that you have to admire it for being reasonably truthful in advertising. But I’d have been tempted to use the cover to make a nod toward Stanislaw Lem by using an image more in the style of Daniel Mroz. But that’s just me.

What you may not have heard is that this book commits one of the most egregious and writerly puns in science fiction this year. I am not even kidding. This was snorting coffee out my nose and getting stared at in a restaurant level punning. (Luckily I wasn’t actually drinking my coffee at just that moment so I only got stared at for laughing out loud.) Plus, it’s a fun story.

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I’m impressed. And entertained. And even though my eldest god kid I only five (and a half) I may have to squirrel a copy of this away to slip under her nose when she’s a little older. Come to think of it, this may be an excellent excuse to start reading more high quality YA fiction. Anyhow, bravo, Scalzi. Nicely done.

[powells]

It’s reasonably well written, and it has interesting characters and a rich world, but the fact that it’s written as a romance is highly distracting and making it much less likely that I’ll track down the rest of the story. It’s a good book, but it’s only a cousin to the book I wanted to read.

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Hooray for hard sf, particularly when the characters are more interesting than the science geeky bits, and the science geeky bits are pretty neat. If you’re feeling lots in all the math without numbers, read the afterword first. It will get you oriented enough to be able to enjoy the story bits. But if you like hard sf I expect you’ll be even happier reading linearly. Cool stuff.
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Audrey Tatou as beautiful as ever, but Chiwetel Ejiofor as a Nigerian emigrant is even better. Disturbing and satisfying. It may not make your best of list, but it’s a good little film.

Another well-written popular evolutionary biology, this time by an actual scientist. His prose is a smidgen less polished than Carl Zimmer’s, but the geeky detail level is comparable. And the anecdotes are great. It’s a great bit of escapist nonfiction and is deservedly ending up on a lot of end of year lists. Very enjoyable. But I’ve read enough books in this genre that I feel like I need similar books with the geek level dialed up a few more notches.

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Last night I went to see the KC Lyric Opera’s production of Handel’s Julius Caesar. Baroque opera? Yes! And through a fluke, the set was the one used when Beverly Sills sang the role of Cleopatra. And both Julius Caesar and Ptolemy are sung by counter tenors. Favorite non musical bits include a great slow motion battle scene, great sexy staging, and some fake nipplage that worked so well in profile (even from the second row) that I thought they might have gone for actual bare breasts again. But no. Still, nicely done. It turns out this is the first baroque opera the Lyric has staged in its fifty years of existence. I hope they do some more.

If you aren’t willing to read feminist science fiction, then this might be a pass for you. And if you’re looking for a feminist science fiction where the feminine is the answer to all of society’s problems, this might not be a comfortable book for you either. (In fact, this just isn’t a comfortable book.) Weirdly, this first book in the cycle feels a little dated. It really does feel like an extrapolation from the mid 1980s, but I’m having trouble quite putting my finger on why. In that, and in several other ways, it makes an interesting counterpoint to Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue books.

This is very much the first book in a longer story, so I’m holding my judgement in check until I’ve read the rest of it.

[powells]

Another tale from the author of the delightful book, The Rabbi’s Cat. Disturbing, abrasive, touching, and it made me laugh out loud, no cute abbreviations needed. And there are two more volumes to this story which I must now track down. Such fun. And do read the end notes.

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I’ve very much enjoyed the Vlad Taltos novels, and this one was entertaining, but it’s not my favorite of the group. And like all the Vlad novels, this one can be read as a stand alone, but it’s the last one I would recommend picking up as your introduction. This book reads more as a minor interlude in the story. Still, it’s a good read with a gorgeous cover, and there’s more Vlad on the way.

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