Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir, 2021)

Book club selection per Lon, session held March 22.

Entertaining yes.

I generally struggle to find much value in science fiction but liked this well enough.

Kind of fun to muse about what alien life might be like - common building block roots? Evolution dictated by planet’s environment? This book shows a version where the aliens are similar to humans (other than what the environment required). This part was interesting to me.

Otherwise so much like the Martian - which isn’t a terrible thing - sciency problems keep cropping up, sciency solutions are come up by our hero, no matter what.  Rocky as an ongoing “deus ex machina” - plot device to surmount the insurmountable.

The “save the planet” rhetoric got tiresome.  Not plausible that the various nations would work together like this.

I rather liked the ending.  Made sense that he would settle there, didn’t see a teaching job coming.

Kind of surprised at the overt Roman Catholicism with the “Hail Mary” name, I thought that was out of fashion.

Even better - perhaps my favorite touch - the archangel Gabriel’s full greeting is “Hail Mary full of grace” - think of the hero’s name.

Quick read, just fine. Movie coming out. 

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Robert A. Heinlein, 1966)

(388 pages)

This ended up being an enjoyable read.

Residents of the Moon (called "Luna") mostly arrive via transport (think England -> Australia) or are descended from transportees; they work to supply grain to Earth; many freedoms as a practical matter but things are controlled by a Warden.  Lots of discussion of the way family structures evolved on the Moon.

Protagonist (Mannie) is a computer technician who services the main computer on the Moon; he decides to start "talking" to this computer ("Mike") and it turns out they strike up a friendship.  Mannie kind of accidentally gets tied up in a revolutionary plot (with Wyoming and the Professor), he successfully enlists Mike to help.

Some of this is interesting from the perspective of current AI discussions - how far can a computer go, how to set it up to perform this level of functionality, etc.

The revolution part was kind of annoying in that it sounds pretty much Leninist - the masses of the Moon's population viewed as not slightly interested in a revolt, they needed to be coaxed into action by better-knowing elites who manipulated them in the direction desired by the elites, constantly lying, propaganda etc. The justification for revolution is that the Moon's resources will be exhausted in a few decades under the system imposed from Earth. So that makes the actions of the elite revolutionaries feel less evil.

And fortunately in this case the revolutionary elites were made up of just a few folks who could have been philosopher-kings.

Story construction is pretty interesting throughout; the things the revolutionaries accomplish seem implausible but that's fine in service of a story; and they had Mike!

I liked the finish, how things ended up with Mike.

Starship Troopers (Robert A. Heinlein, 1959)

This was a fun read.

Johnny Rico decides to join the mobile infantry; war breaks out - interstellar stuff - primary enemy is a group of Bugs - spider-like, large, operate through central brains.

Setting is earth a long time after the order known in the 20th century had fallen apart. By necessity and happenstance rather than design - groups of military veterans started running things in an effort to restore order.  And this worked fairly well - under the new system, only veterans were allowed to vote.  So it continued.

There isn't much fighting/action in the book - good passages at beginning and end.

Interesting musings about how to raise children, how to govern society, preparing folks to fight in the military as constructed in those days.  Boot camp, officer candidate school. Author seemed to know a lot about this world and thought highly of it.

Some of the passages about societal breakdown sounded familiar. 

Dune (Frank Herbert, 1965)

(494 pages)

This volume included the entire trilogy (the three books flowing from one to the next without interruption).

I found this pretty much a joy to read.  Imaginative is an understatement.  So much detail - the reader can almost believe in the existence of these imagined places.

Leaving home planet - green - for the desert planet of Arrakis (known as Dune).  Under iffy circumstances.

Desert dwellers (Fremen) at the margins of society on Arrakis.  Their religious beliefs, extending all the way to a well-watered paradise.  Their technology for preserving water (all the way to stillsuits).  Dealing with sandworms.  And the spice.  

The Duke and his consort, Lady Jessica (Bene Gesserit); their son Paul (Maud'Dib)).

Baron Harkonnen and his son (Feyd-Rautha).

Stilgar - Fremen leader.  His daughter - Chani.

The Emperor and his Sardaukar.

Smugglers.  Henchmen or brave fighters (helping bad guys or good guys, respectively).

And plenty of other characters.

I haven't checked how this ties into the Star Wars movies - but there's a lot of overlap.  Which of course is just fine.  Book form is quite excellent, and plenty of good spots in the movies as well.

Foundation Trilogy (Isaac Asimov, 1951, 1952, 1953)

(607 pages)

The three books:  Foundation; Foundation and Empire; Second Foundation.

Famous, pioneering work of science fiction.  Entirely unknown to me prior to this read.

By coincidence I read it at an ideal time - right after finishing Gibbon's Decline and Fall - Asimov supposedly had just read Gibbon and modeled lots of the story after it.  Which is evident - imperial decline; generals rising through the ranks (with accompanying dynamics).  Bureaucracies.  Periphery weakening (though lacking external stimuli like Huns (since this Empire controlled the entire galaxy, while Rome didn't control the entire earth)).

Swashbuckling traders, some with souped-up starships, snappy dialogue, can-do attitude . . . hmm that sounds pretty familiar also.

Seldon Plan - story builds around this, and it works.  Too much Hayek exposure makes me way skeptical of grand plans, but I do like how this one is explained as being built around mass movements over time.

As the plot plays out over several centuries (and the author is releasing the three volumes over a few years), there are lots of characters to figure out and track.  That prevents much character development in individual cases - but again, doesn't feel like a problem.

The Mule plays a huge role starting with the second volume.  Only two female characters of particular note (maybe three), they do end up with important roles.

Fun read for me; I never seek out science fiction.  Paul Jr. recommendation.

Nexus (Ramez Naam, 2012)

(464 pages)

Book club selection (via Lon; session held 28 April 2019).

This wasn't one of my favorite books - lots of action, but rather in an "I (the author) am hoping for a movie deal" sort of way; characters not very credible (though that might be chalked up to the strange drugs they take?)

The book does cause one to think, if just a bit, about how far and how fast we might go in terms of enhancing human intelligence, permitting folks to share their thoughts, etc.

I'm no expert but I think current experiences with "driverless" cars indicates that in our lifetimes, we won't come anywhere near the technologies described in this book.

Author confuses what I consider intellectual horsepower -  compute power - with wisdom.  Folks like Kade, Samantha, the Chinese post-human - had they lived a lot?  read a lot?  learned a lot?  developed judgment and experience to go along with compute power?  Somehow they're supposed to exercise all this power wisely?

Lots of blather about the ecstasy of sharing another's thoughts - what's that about?  Why is it so great?  No real limits on sharing here - yet people have forever exposed themselves gradually to others, for good reason, and often call a halt.  Understanding is a lengthy process. Somehow these wonder drugs are supposed to short-circuit what humans have evolved in terms of communication, and this is great?

I'd say the drones were the coolest tech in the book.

Naivete of the lead characters re dangerous uses of the "nexus 5" drug was unbelievable.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick (1968)

Book club selection (via PJr; session held November 13, 2016).

Author is consistently creative, ahead of his time.  This book - primarily about exploring the line between humans and high-functioning androids - seems quite timely almost 50 years after being written.

Protagonist is a bounty hunter - paid to "retire" renegade androids who are increasingly difficult to distinguish from humans in post-nuclear war San Francisco and environs.  Android manufacturing company based in Seattle (Rachel's company).

Chickenheads - Isadore.  Kipple.  Earth in decline; efforts to move folks to Mars, including offering a high-end android to each re-settler, delivered on arrival.  But Mars apparently no utopia; renegade androids escape from there.

Empathy as a defining human characteristic - efforts to construct empathy-based tests to weed out hidden androids.  Reminds of a Turing test.

Quite a few threads that were hard to follow, at least for me - Mercerism; the obsession with animals (real or "electric"); the Penfield device; Buster Friendly; androids establish an alternative police station (but to what end?)

Rachel and the live goat.

Interesting idea - that these androids are built from a cellular material that lasts no more than four years - perhaps that's for the best if androids are prone to becoming unreliable.

Ready Player One (Ernest Cline, 2011)

Book club selection (via Lon; session held August 28, 2016).

Gamers in dystopian future compete for stupendous prize to be awarded to winner of virtual reality contest left behind upon death of eccentric creator of "OASIS" - which is a virtual world where unhappy folk (i.e. most people at that time) prefer to escape whenever possible.   Protagonist is pretty much a trailer park loser from busted family; he works to win the contest along with other outcast-types in competition against lavishly funded (and evil, naturally) corporate forces.  Creator of the game was obsessed with 1980s pop culture, so the book is riddled with these references (which worked just fine).

Original (or so it seemed to me - a nonreader in this genre).  I enjoyed the story line, and it definitely tugged me along.  Kind of a morality play; felt like a 30's movie in some ways.

So I liked it . . . I liked how the lines between the "real" and "simulated" worlds were blurred.  Also a situation where magic and super powers somehow make sense.

Some aspects I didn't like as much:

For one thing - and I realize they need to sell books - why is the future always a dystopian hell in these books??  In reality, everything is constantly getting better!  Yet here comes the same tired concepts of rampant pollution, overpopulation, food supply issues, blah blah.

Evil corporations - unoriginal.  Media portrayal affects voter perception, unfortunately.  Discussed at length in this book, for example.

Og - blatant deus es machina.  Similarity to "Oz" probably not a coincidence.

Downtrodden protagonist faces long odds; romance; check-the-box diversity; etc.

A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr., 1960) (take 3)

Book club selection (via PJr).

Re-read for "book club".  I like it better each time.

Earlier (and very brief) discussion can be found here.

Some related thoughts (from 1976) can be found here.

A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr., 1960)

I first had read this as part of a college course reading list, I believe it was an international relations course.

The story is set in an abbey in the southwestern United States. An order of monks seeks to preserve knowledge following a nuclear holocaust. The story is divided into three parts separated over thousands of years, as mankind gradually recovers knowledge and technology (with attendant challenges).

I like the book a lot. I remember sections quite vividly, for example the very last words of part I, and the too-accurate voicing of government-speak in Part III.

I read that the book has never been out of print since its initial print run. And that the author participated in bombing runs over Monte Cassino in World War II, which gave him the idea of monks preserving knowledge in the wake of destruction. It really works well.

Compare against this book, also very effective and containing many similar strands.