Ken Newquist's Blog at Lafayette College
Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice plays with the concepts of gender and identity with the framework of a conventional space opera. The main character is an “ancillary” — essentially a human being who’s consciousness has been overridden an artificial intelligence. That intelligence once controlled an entire starship and dozens of such ancillaries, and over the course … Read more
The Bowl of Heaven is a “tremendous object in space” novel, similar in scope to Niven’s original Ringworld books. Like Ringworld, it involves a massive construct — in this case a hemisphere — that has several million times the surface area of earth. A crew of human explorers comes across the hemisphere and sends an away mission to investigate. … Read more
I was itching for some good science fiction, and decided to check out a few of the older novels by one of my favorite authors, Vernor Vinge. The Peace War takes place in a future in which Earth’s nation states and their associated military-industrial complexes have been smashed by an organization known as the Peace … Read more
Jack Campbell’s The Lost Fleet: Victorious is a worthwhile, if somewhat disappointing end to the series. Having demolished most of the Syndic fleet, Black Jack Geary returns to his enemy’s home system for one final battle. Unfortunately, there’s not much to the fight — having gutted the Syndics in his earlier encounters, there’s only a … Read more
I keep meaning to read the Halo universe books, particularly the original trilogy of books recounting the events of the first video game. It’s a compelling universe that’s only just barely been touched by the video games, and I’d love to delve deeper. When Amazon.com and Macmillan went to war over ebooks, and all of the … Read more