Here’s the next part of the batch of brief reviews of SF novels that I began last week. I’m now thinking, though, that with more substantial books like this one I’ll just cover one book per post — back to my usual pattern of classic reviews here on this blog, if not like the detailed walkthroughs I did for a while, and for Black Gate. So here are my comments about Keyes; Clarke and Butler to come.
Some more SF history, here in drafty first draft; first written last October, cleaned up a bit here. My target for essays like these are the very casual consumers of science fiction books and movies, and even some sophisticated current readers who have no clear idea about the genre’s past. (This isn’t so much as a draft, come to think of it, but more of a background summary.)
Is there a limitation to human intelligence and understanding of reality, bound by our tendency to believe magical things for the sake of tribal unity? And how do people understand reality when governments seeking to maintain power are in control of the news?
Having given up on visiting movie theaters any time in the near future, we’ve been catching up on Oscar Best Picture nominees in the past couple weeks via Amazon Prime, at $19.99 a movie. Weekend before last, Belfast; yesterday, Licorice Pizza.
Today’s walk was along another one of those several peninsulas that stick out into the Bay from the Berkeley shoreline, this one the southernmost, technically in Emeryville (famous for being the location of Pixar).
As I mentioned early last week, I think I’ll start posting short reviews, or impressions, of recent SF novels I’ve read, every month or two, in groups. This is supposedly a blog mostly about science fiction, after all! These won’t be traditional reviews, nor will they be the annotated “walkthrough” reviews I was doing for Black Gate for a while (see list here). I’ll talk about each book’s context as much as its plot, and discuss what insights I can take from each book as much as evaluating whether I think it was a “good” book or not. And I’ll feel free to dismiss some books in a line or two.
It’s been a couple days since President Biden’s State of the Union address — in which he spoke forcefully about many things, but avoided topics that would strain attention spans, e.g. climate change — and I’ve been fascinated since then by the Republican response and comments about it. I remember watching that response, from Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, and thinking, no the folks who want to take America back in time are *you* guys, the Republicans. I even said it out loud.
Subtitled: The Science of Parallel Universes—and Its Implications. Published Aug. 1997 by Allen Lane, Penguin Press. 390pp, of which 24pp are bibliography and index.
Here is a book that took me a year and a half to read, but was worth the trip. Continue reading
LQCs: Narratives and Reality, about San Francisco, Convoluted Conspiracy Theories, and the Invasion of Ukraine
How narratives overtake reality.
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