Reviews and Comments

The first half-century of Mars colonization told from the perspective of a half dozen members of the first 100 colonists, each representing a faction or a school of thought. One there because they get off on hard work, one there for a personal political legacy, another there to make money for the capitalists, one for preservation & research, one for terraforming as fast as possible, one to create a new society, one who spearheads a Mars for Mars colonists movement…

Too dry and long for me to really enjoy it.

Military S.F. in the Captive's War universe. Standard unit-bonds-and-drops-to-a-planet with the James S.A. Corey voice.

There's an extended argument between characters at this point about whether the scientist-colonists of Mars should follow the hierarchy devised by their governments (the US and Russia) or start fresh.

It occurs to me there's a ton of research into organizational structures, and the closest Robinson comes to including it is a reference to having psychologists evaluate people prior to allowing them to join the mission, and include the head psych on the mission. The managers in charge on board, Maya & Frank, aren't organizational experts. As a manager by trade, not having this expertise on board seems like an oversight.

story about a young man who gets stuck in an ancient wood as it's protector in tree form. if you like faeries and dryads and stories about them, this may be for you. like stories about gods, it's not my thing.

Have set Libby to notify me when the library has copies.

Paleobotanist Kirk Johnson and artists Ray Troll take an epic road trip through fossil beds & museums of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah and New Mexico, describing & drawing the flora, fauna & geology of the lands that were buried under the Great Plains and then uplifted back into surface proximity by the Rocky Mountains. Troll's artwork steals the show. If you've seen his shirts you now the distinctive style. Sadly, either I got a bit inured or the book just tails off a bit toward the end, where it feels more like a mad dash to get back to Denver on time than the more thoughtful gee-whiz exploration that it starts off as. This is the recently published second edition, and a lot of the narrative has been updated to reflect happenings since the original publication in 2007.

Finished creating a list for all the works cited in Reactor Magazine's article "Reviewers’ Choice: The Best Books of 2024". There's a lot of really interesting looking books mentioned there. This is the last book from that.

The list can be found on SFBA.club. If you follow me, your bookwyrm instance should have the list as well. I made sure all the books on the SFBA.club version have high-res covers and descriptions, but other instances will only pick that up if they didn't already have a copy of the book listed. (There's two short stories without covers.)

John Ferguson is a minister in the Free Church of Scotland as it is trying to establish itself. With no parish to support him, he takes a job for an estate landlord to "clear" or remove the last remaining tenant on a remote island owned by the estate. Although conflicted, he really needs the money. Shortly after arriving, he falls off a cliff and is rescued by Ivar, the tenant he is supposed to evict.

A really well-written story of a relationship between John and Ivar. You get a bit of the history of the Scottish Free Church, a bit of the history of the Highland Clearances, a few moral dilemmas deftly handled, some feminism appropriate for the time, and North Sea adventures. I suspect this is quite good as a read, but it's amazing narrated by Russ Bain with a Scottish accent, a bit over 3 hours in length.

Clare Fergusson gets embroiled in a series of gay-bashing crimes in Miller's Kill. Spencer-Fleming captures how liberal uncomfortableness with homosexuality contributes homophobia even when they think they are supportive. But the gay-bashing is too obviously calculated and the ultimate motivation is economic. It's a too-fantastic of a scheme. As a police procedural, the story doesn't hold together well either due to how involved Russ Van Alstyne (the Miller's Kill police chief) allows Clare Fergusson to be. He can bring in professionals, but allows a hard-charging Fergusson to drive the investigation, even when he says it's a bad idea.

Humanity invents a way of traveling at near light speed by encoding people as energy and reconstituting them at the destination. So one traveler sneaks an engagement ring onto his body when he is scanned, because his ex-wife will also be one of the people sent to the stars. I didn't understand why, but the original encoded group is then sent on to further destinations, giving the main character even more chances at a do-over.

The story does understand just how wrong-headed the attempt at a do-over is.

Like this review which I just boosted, I found some really good stuff. In addition to the articles mentioned in the linked review, I thought chapter 27 (EXCERPT FROM “MOVING BEYOND CRITIQUE”) was good because it looked at how one TJ project worked from the inside, and highlighted how messy that project was structurally. A lot of the items got hand-wavery in their discussion of what the issues could be; that one was very specific.

Reach decides to hitchhike to the Canadian border, where he befriends a pair of hikers who've decided to trek across the border via a wilderness path. Reacher is about to head on when the military arrives and seals off the trail, but our hikers have already snuck in. Will the government track down the hikers? Will Reacher help them? Do the hikers have an ulterior motive and has the governent laid a clever trap for them?

Maaaaayyyybe.