Read the Lilith's Brood series over the last week. Great, very different sci-fi take on alien 'invasion'. It left me with some questions but I'll never get the answers since the author is dead. It probably would have benefited from a better editor, but it was a good series overall. Grade B+ Amazon is developing a pilot for a show based on the books, which could be interesting.
Murderbot Diaries Series by Martha Wells. Good pulpy science fiction series that is very easy to read about a security cyborg who is very uncomfortable around people and hates his stupid job. Not groundbreaking or particularly novel, but very easy to read for long periods - would be good on a flight or while waiting for jury duty when you need to kill time if you like Science Fiction. I empathise with the Murderbot.
Just finished The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Just haunting. I'm actually going to meet my goal of at least 52 books this year. I'm at 37 now.
I read about this one and am interested. I see that there's only one full book with more coming. Are the forthcoming books part of a series or is each story self-contained?
Each story is self contained, but should definitely be read in order. They call them "novellettes" but they seem like normal, (if slightly short) novels.
Finished up Hemingway's Boat last week, one of the better biographies I've read. not just about the boat
This kills me cause when I read it years ago It was Xenogenisis I love Octavia. . . but IMO it is pretty obvious did not like humans very much LOL Rocket River
Marketing. I like reading authors that don’t fit the genre norm, like Cixin Liu, author of The Three Body Problem. It gives me a nice jarring look at the world from a place outside of my regular groove. That’s what I want in fiction - something different. So with Butler you have a black lesbian who grew up during the civil rights protest era. It informed a lot of her art. I appreciate that. I didn’t even realize that the main character, Lilith, was black until halfway through the book. When I read about Butler after reading the first book, some pieces slid into place on the how/why the book was written the way it was. She rejected modern western societal norms. She was ahead of her time with gender identity. If she were alive today she may have gone by different pronouns. I found it all refreshing. And that was before I found out this series was from the 1980’s. It’s aged well, maybe because the science is vague in the book. You just sort of accept that it’s possible.
Agreed She was quite visionary I learned that vague science is better than overly detailed and eventually proven wrong science She is also a proponent of the benelovent alien theory Rocket River
Interesting that you would mention that because Liu, who I mentioned, writes the opposite- that any aliens we encounter would eradicate us on sight because we would eventually become competitors. On another note, the aliens in Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood are probably the most feasible alien aliens I've ever read from a hard sci-fi perspective. I won't spoil the books but from a scientific perspective, an utterly alien extraterrestrial race wouldn't be able to survive on Earth without equipment or some sort of genetic reengineering.
Started reading short stories from Laird Barron. He writes Lovecraftian/Cosmic horror, and was an influence for Nic Pizzolatto's first season of True Detective. So far, it's pretty hard boiled stuff with cosmic horror thrown in. If you've read Lovecraft and you've read pulpy type fiction, that's what you get. His prose is fantastic and it keeps me hooked. I tend to go down the rabbit hole with authors and consume them all so I can see reading all of his stuff unless I get burned out on the darker tone. Three of the stories are here if you'd like to check them out.
