Ken Newquist's Blog at Lafayette College
The last book on my 2014 summer reading list, and the one I didn’t get to finish. Consider Phlebas is the first novel in Banks’ Culture series of novels. It’s a morally ambiguous space opera in which its namesake civilization — the Culture — is a post-scarcity, trans-human, machine intelligence-led empire. Daniel Landau, a CLAMP colleague at Reed College, … Read more
Humanity has made it to the stars, but only by hitching a ride with the fish-like Shoal aliens, who have a monopoloy on faster-than-light travel. The first book was filled with ancient mysteries, post-human monstrocities, and a touch of FTL battles. The second dealt with the theft of an FTL starship and the efforts to … Read more
Book 2 of the Fall Revolution by Ken MacLeod revels in political discourse and post-human speculation as it bounces between a far future with robust artificial intelligence, cloning, planetary colonization and the more mundane world of Scotland, circa 1975.
The first book on my summer reading list is Words of Radiance, the sequel to Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. It’s an epic fantasy novel set in the world of Roshar, a planet ravaged by mystical storms, whose people were abandoned by their arcane defenders generations ago. Now a terrible danger — The Last Desolation — threats the … Read more
A Darkling Sea by James Cambias is a story of first contact between humanity and a seemingly primitive race of intelligent crustaceans living in the world ocean of a Europa-like moon. Europa’s fascinated me ever since I read 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke, and that fascination as only grown as we’ve learned more … Read more
I’ve been on a military sf/space opera jag for a while, so I decided to try something new. The Creative Fire focuses on a young woman named Ruby and her tightly-regimented life onboard a generational starship. It’s inspired by the life of Eva Perón. It’s apparently a quasi-YA scifi novel somewhat reminiscent of the The Hunger Games. I think it’ll … Read more
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is an homage to videogames and 1980s pop culture, set in a dystopian cyberpunk future. The audio book is read by Wil Wheaton.
Book 3 of the of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series finds the protagonists Vin and Eland deal with an evil they inadvertently unleashed upon the world. Mistborn’s notable for its unique magic system, in which “Allomancers” ingest, and then “burn” metals in order to use telekinetic and empathic powers. The Hero of Ages is part of … Read more
Kylara Vatta’s dreams of a brilliant military career were ruined by one well-intentioned wrong decision; instead she goes to work for her family’s shipping company. Her first mission: captain a ship destined for the scrapyard. Of course, it’s not that easy as Vatta decides to try and turn a profit of her own using the … Read more