Here are the books rated A+, the books rated A, the books rated B, and the books that are NOT recommended.
| Name |
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Notes |
NOTE – the most recent books I have read are listed near the top of each section below. |
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| The Humans
by Matt Haig |
A- | This is a “light and fluffy” story of an alien sent to Earth to stop humanity’s progress. Someone has proved the Riemann hypothesis, which will allow Great Things for Earth.
To stop this, the alien has to kill anyone who knows that the Riemann Hypothesis has been solved. But the alien eventually learns that humans aren’t really All That Bad. |
| Martian Time-Slip
by Philip K Dick |
A- | This is a story about life after we colonize Mars. There are natives (Bleekmen) with mysterious abilities, who are treated as indigenous tribes. Mars is not a friendly place – too hot and dry, and water is scarce. American capitalism is in full swing, including shady real estate deals.The time-slip refers to an interesting idea. The autistic brain may have difficulty communicating due to an deranged sense of time. People are working on a device to bridge that gap, and enable easier communication.This is a fairly complicated story, and it definitely kept me interested. |
| Austral
by Paul McAuley |
A- | This is a novel about a future earth which has been adversely affected by climate change. The main character is named Austral, and she has been genetically engineered to easily live in the cold temperatures. There are many others like her, and they are referred to as ‘huskies’. But they are looked down on by typical humans. The main story is about her attempt escape prison and get a normal life. But there are bad guys everywhere, and corrupt politicians too, all trying to control her. She has a very complicated family backstory as well.
I felt like this was kinda interesting, but really lightweight compared to his other work. |
| The Dervish House
by Ian McDonald ISBN 978-1-616-14204-9 |
A- | As with most of Ian McDonald’s other books, this is very detailed, and succeeds in transporting you to the locale (Istanbul, Turkey).I found the story quite enjoyable, and intricately plotted. It makes more sense if you know a bit about the geography and history of Istanbul.It was good, but not quite his best work. Some of the final resolution seems a bit TOO easy. |
| Little Brother
by Cory Doctorow ISBN 978-0-765-31985-2 |
A- | This is a “young adult” novel. In this alternate future, everyone is subject to heightened surveillance. The police are much like the Gestapo, and the TSA has become a little too powerful. The novel focuses on the plight of a teenager who is wrongly accused of being a terrorist (along with MANY others). He is computer-savvy, and figures out a way to use his Xbox to create a secure network to communicate over the internet without having his communication intercepted by the bad guys. In spite of the “young adult” orientation, this is a pretty interesting read. |
| Watermind
by M.M. Buckner ISBN 978-0-7653-2024-7 |
A- | This novel is about what could happen if we continue to dump toxins into lakes and rivers. this is written like a murder mystery thriller. There is lots of action, with constant changing viewpoints between multiple characters. It is interesting, and moves very quickly.
I found this really easy read. Maybe a bit too easy – many of the chapters are only two pages long. In the end, I really enjoyed it. |
| The Broken Land
by Ian McDonald ISBN 0-553-37054-5 |
A- | As with most of Ian McDonald’s other books, this is very detailed, and succeeds in transporting you to a different world. Not exactly sure where to (this time) – might be a far future India.
This was written in 1992, and somewhat comparable to Desolation Road. It is a bit TOO dense for my taste, compared to his more modern work. in spite of that quibble, it was quite an interesting read. |
| Cowboy Angels
by Paul McAuley ISBN 978-0-575-08223-6 |
A- | This novel is about parallel universes, and some “special agents” who try to keep things under control – the Cowboy Angels of the title. It is essentially a murder mystery, and was pretty interesting, up to a point. I felt a bit disappointed in the resolution of this book. In addition, it did not have the breadth of vision of McAuley’s other works. |
| The Wreck of the River of Stars
by Michael Flynn ISBN 978-0-7653-4033-7 |
A- | This is novel is primarily about people and their motivations. It is not typical of the type of science fiction I like to read. In spite of that, I loved this book because it is SO well written. The novel discusses the lives, thoughts and motivations of fifteen people on the starship “The River of Stars”. It is told in first person plural, which is a challenge to read. With that many characters, it can be hard to keep the relationships straight.My level of interest in this book was very high in the middle – but it definitely went down towards the end. I just got bored with the endless internal dialogs of the various characters. |
| Singularity’s Ring
by Paul Melko ISBN 978-0-7653-5702-1 |
A- | This is a “young adult” novel. In this alternate future, groups of children are genetically altered to become a composite individual. A typical pod may consist of three to five individuals. Each individual has different skills, and the pod communicates via pheromones.
The novel focuses on the pod as they train to become pilot of a starship. One of the key ideas is that “accidents happen”, and the story focuses on changes that occur within a pod to adapt to the death of any individual member. This novel tries to cover a bit too much ground. At times, there are fast paced action sequences, mixed in with some slow stretches of time. All in all, it was an interesting read. I enjoyed the entire concept of the “pod composite”. |
| The Holy Machine
by Chris Beckett ISBN 978-0-8439-6204-8 |
A- | This is about a dystopia where the internet has migrated to become a full scale alternate reality. In some countries, households employed robots, and in other countries they were outlawed. Some robots start becoming self-aware, and this book traces some of this process for one particular robot. I felt the book lost steam towards the end but it was still an interesting read. |
| The Android’s Dream
by John Scalzi ISBN 978-0-7653-4828-9 |
A- | This is something completely different than Scalzi’s series of novels that started with Old Man’s War. This is set in a slightly less hostile universe, and has a nice humorous touch. The focus of the novel is diplomacy between Earth and aliens, and trying to prevent the aliens from enslaving the human race. As usual, the real danger is not the aliens – it is the humans who sympathize with the aliens! Scalzi has quite a few interesting ideas here, but this is mostly just for fun. |
| Zoe’s tale
by John Scalzi ISBN 978-0-7653-5619-2 |
A- | This is something quite similar to Scalzi’s The Last Colony. This is essentially the same story, but told from the point of view of his daughter Zoe. I found it fairly well written, and a bit more interesting than The Last Colony. |
| The Last Colony
by John Scalzi ISBN 978-0-765-31697-4 |
A- | This is something quite similar to Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and Ghost Brigades. This is designed to be the last in this series of books. It seemed a bit less interesting than the prior two books |
| The God Engines
by John Scalzi ISBN 978-1-59606-2299-3 |
A- | This is something completely different than Scalzi’s other novels. This is a very short novel about a universe where Gods really are the engines for space ships.
There are some really interesting ideas here, but it develops rather slowly. I was actually disappointed when I got to the end – it felt a bit anti-climactic. |
| GlassHouse
by Charles Stross ISBN 978-0-441-01508-5 |
A- | Charles Stross is one of my favorites. This novel is rather hard to describe. It takes place in a far flung future, after there have been various cyber wars. Different segments of the population have become isolated in various ways – geographically, philosophically and morally.
People have the ability to forget their past completely, restart new lives, change their physical appearance and their sex. In order to escape their past misdeeds, the main character joins an experiment where a bunch of people live in a society with strongly enforced rules. Of course, the people running the experiment do NOT have their I found this an interesting read, but time seemed to drag by slowly. I really did want to know how everything tied together, and I was satisfied with the wrap-up at the end. |
| The SFWA European Hall of Fame
edited by James Morrow and Kathryn Morrow ISBN 0-7653-1537-8 |
A- | This is a collection of stories written by European authors, which have been translated into English. I was not too impressed by this collection. I enjoyed about 1/3 of the stories. The rest simply did not seem to say much – as if something had been lost in translation. |
| Excession
by Ian M. Banks ISBN 0-553-57537-6 |
A- |
This novel is not as good as others by this author. There are two parts to this story, one of which concerns a diplomat in Special Circumstances. This part of the novel is well done. The other part involves numerous conversations between multiple AIs who inhabit various spacecraft. I found this part of the story rather confusing, and eventually, too tedious. |
| Hominids
by Robert J. Sawyer ISBN 978-0-765-34500-4 |
A- | This is the first part of a trilogy … yes, I usually avoid reading the beginning of ANY trilogy, because I am easily disappointed. But this is an interesting story, with just a few major characters. I really enjoyed the detailed discussion / analysis of the society of the Hominids. |
| The Ghost Brigades
by John Scalzi ISBN 978-0-7653-5406-8 |
A- | This is John Scalzi’s sequel to Old Man’s War. Of course it is set in the same alternate universe as the prior novel. Most of this one revolves around a traitor working with an alien race against the humans.
There are two main characters here: Janet Sagan is a veteran CDF soldier, and a member of the Ghost Brigades. She is responsible for helping Jared Dirac (a new CDF recruit) find and defeat the traitor. The writing for about the first 50 pages of this book lacks the deft touch that Scalzi has – it seems as if someone else wrote it! Overall, this book was well written, but a bit less impressive than the first book. |
| Approaching Omega
by Eric Brown ISBN 1-903889-98-7 |
A- | This is a novella (117 small pages) based on a familiar plot idea. A few thousand brave humans set out on a 1,500 year journey to find a new habitable planet. But something goes wrong …Yes, it is a bit too familiar. It is fairly well done, and an entertaining read. |
| Lady of Mazes
by Karl Schroeder ISBN 0-765-35078-5 |
A–
|
This starts off with a bang, and instantly immerses you in a world of multiple parallel civilizations. You may find it quite challenging to wrap your head around everything that happens in the first few chapters.
This book is chock full of really BIG ideas. I did not find it as compelling as his other work. The story slowed down a lot in the middle, but it did improve towards the end. |
| Fledgling
by Octavia Butler ISBN 1-58322-690-7 |
A- | This is an interesting vampire story. This time around, the human hosts derive pleasure from the vampires, as well as improved health and increased life span.
I felt the story could have been better. It seems overly constrained since the entire story takes place within two weeks. |
| Neutrino Drag
by Paul di Filippo ISBN 1-56858-300-1 |
A– | This is a collection of humorous short stories. Some of them are sexy too. I liked quite a few of them, but some of them were too silly for me. |
| Ancient Shores
by Jack McDevitt ISBN 0-06-105426-7 |
A- | This is a story about several alien artifacts that are unearthed. The majority of the story consists of unearthing and then analyzing one artifact. I was disappointed that, after such a long buildup, so little actually happened in the novel |
| State of Fear
by Michael Crichton ISBN 0-7394–5453-6 |
A- | This is a fast paced story about global warming. Yes, that is an oxymoron!
It is a very quick read, and educational as well. The footnotes and references in the book are authentic. Michael Crichton is one of my favorite authors. |
| As She Climbed Across the Table
by Jonathan Lethem ISBN 0-375-70012-9 |
A–
|
A story about the lover of a physicist. The physicist falls in love with “Lack”, which is a void created by a physics experiment.
This book has a very whimsical style, with some well drawn characters. This is even more “far out” than some of Lethem’s other books! |
| Iron Council
by China Miéville ISBN 0–345–46402–8 |
A– | This is the author’s third novel set on a world with multiple races. The good news is that it is NOT a trilogy – you can read this without having read the earlier two novels.
This is a less complex story than Perdido Street Station. The character development and writing are both quite well done. I found the conclusion to be a bit illogical, but it was still a fascinating |
| Digital Fortress
by Dan Brown ISBN 0-312-99542-3 |
A– | This is the first novel he wrote, before he became famous for The Da Vinci Code, and Angels and Demons. The story is about data encryption, cryptographers and the NSA. The Digital Fortress refers to an unbreakable encryption scheme. I found this an interesting (and quick) read. The characters are quite entertaining. |
| Shadow Hunter
by Will Baker ISBN 0-671-79046-3 |
A- | This could have been at the top of this list. The character development is excellent, and the book develops some fascinating ideas. The reason it got a slightly lower rating is that the conclusion is unsatisfying. But the first 300+ pages are top rate! |