Goodreads page My rating: 5 out of 5 My review: The world had never ceased to change, but it would also never change for anyone. I got to this book through reading Ken Liu’s translation of Three Body Problem (one of my favourite sci-fi series). He has done similar great work translating this story. The story reminded me of William Gibson writing in many ways (especially Neuromancer storyline), but sprinkled with Chinese culture. …
Goodreads page My rating: 3 out of 5 My review: Widely considered a classic of sci-fi, this book as been in my “to-do” shelf for a long time. I finally got to it now, and I have mixed feelings. The idea itself is interesting enough, all the interesting tidbits of trivia about a future world, aliens, fall of some distant civilization interesting. But somehow I am missing a bigger picture or a story line. …
Goodreads page My rating: 4 out of 5 My review: The shortest route to courage is absolute ignorance. Quite different read from the Hyperion saga itself. Not quite as complex, but still fun action read written from two alternative perspectives - the hunter and the hunted. What happens when an empire spanning many worlds collapses one day to the next? What or who will fill the void? And what would they do to keep their newfound power? …
Goodreads page My rating: 4 out of 5 My review: A very enjoyable action-packed read. What more is there to tell? If you like a combination of smart moves, surprise turns of events and people being chased from one place to another while improvising solutions… this is the book for you.
Goodreads page My rating: 5 out of 5 My review: Start of the Three Body Problem was quite unexpected - Chinese cultural revolution certainly did not seem like a likely start of a sci-fi novel to me. Bit by bit however, Liu Cixin built a world very much like ours, but with quite a different future. There’s the whole section dedicated to the Three-Body game within the book itself and I actually found it quite fun as well. …
Goodreads page My rating: 5 out of 5 My review: This really was an EPIC adventure. What would humanity do when faced with impossible odds of annihilation? According to Stephenson we’d see the best and the worst of humanity over the course of thousands of years while the survivors figured out a way to keep going. I like that Seveneves addresses some of the basics - what would we eat in space? …
Goodreads page My rating: 4 out of 5 My review: While it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book much, I just couldn’t bring myself to believe in such a reality. Maybe I wasn’t completely sold on the hypnopaedic idea of teaching people to like what they do. And the idea of idealized Alfa++ humanity being possible is even more ridiculous. The story about cyprus experiment reminded me of an older idea - all jobs, no matter how physical, dirty or menial are needed for society to work. …
Goodreads page My rating: 5 out of 5 My review: Snow Crash reminded me of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum at once. It’s simpler than both in the language department (which means it’s readable on first try for me) but much more complex and structured in many other ways. I have so many notes and clipping from it…each second sentence is a gem of potentially real historical information. …
Goodreads page My rating: 3 out of 5 My review: This has been a fairly short but fun read and a new take on aliens coming to earth. What if they truly are benevolent and our main character is a game designer and retro-gamer-reviewer. The game reviews actually have a part to play in the story (but not too much). There is a little bit of adventuring, but this is mostly (to me) an interesting thought about how would/could society deal with a drastic change of knowing there there are many other intelligent life forms in the universe and what the impact would be on culture (for better or worse). …
Goodreads page My rating: 3 out of 5 My review: It is quite obvious from the beginning that Foundation was conceived as several short stories and later turned into a book. However there is a common theme in all of those stories: Averting impeding catastrophe for a newly formed colony of Galactic Empire - Foundation. A colony whose creator, Hari Seldon is a psychohistorian - a statistician that can predict changes in societies of large scale. …