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Bella and Svetlana have both struggled hard to break into leadership positions in DeepShaft, an interstellar mining company that pushes comets to mining platforms back near Earth.  Bella is the second in command of the Rockhopper, and Sveta is one of the chief engineers.  Both women are the best of friends.

While conducting an operation on the edge of the solar system, however, Janus, one of the moons of Saturn, breaks out of its orbit and quickly accelerates out towards Spica, a distant star.  As the ice falls away from the small moon, observers realize that Janus is actually some kind of alien spacecraft.  Due to its unusually high rate of acceleration, nobody at Earth can scramble a mission fast enough to intercept the alien structure.  Only the Rockhopper stands a chance of intercepting the craft.

As if the dangers and unknowns of making first contact with an alien race were not enough, this surprise mission comes at a very difficult time for the crew.  The captain, Jim Christholm, has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and command falls to Bella.  A ruthless company auditor shadows Bella, seeking to undermine her authority and discredit her through playing dirty in company politics.  When Sveta discovers a corporate cover-up that may cost everyone their lives, Bella has to make some difficult leadership decisions that may threaten their friendship.  And when they do reach the alien structure, rifts arise among the crew, raising the chances of mutiny and even murder.

Pushing Ice is a recent novel, published in 2005.  I’ve heard a lot of good things about Alastair Reynolds, both from my roommates and from friends last year in English 318.  My roommate Colby said that one of Reynold’s books gave him nightmares when he was reading it out in a cabin in the woods.  After reading Pushing Ice, I can definitely say that Reynolds can put together some gripping, thrilling, page turning stories.

I enjoyed Pushing Ice quite a bit, but I think that the first half was considerably better than the second half.  It took me a while to figure out all the characters, but when I did, I was immediately drawn to them and their conflicts with each other. Like Crichton, Reynolds can write some truly dispicable corporate bad guys–the kind of people you just want to meet in real life and beat the crap out of them.  Slimeballs.

He also writes some very interesting, complex, and believable protagonists.  The thing that hooked me, that made me stay up late reading hundreds of pages at a time, was the conflict between the characters.  He created some people that I really came to care about, and a disastrous character conflict that I had to see resolved.

The first half of the book is set in a rich, complex, and highly believable near-future universe.  The Rockhopper was a fascinating spaceship, and the dynamics of the crew were also believable and interesting.  The political situation back on Earth, the company politics of DeepShaft, and everything else all rang true.  I could feel like I was actually there, and that really drew me in.

Around the middle of the second half, however, things started to break down a little.  Once the aliens made their appearance and the humans started coming into contact with alien technologies, I felt that the believability started to fall apart–not because I have to have an explanation for everything, but because it felt that Reynolds started doing some handwaving.  He’d throw in new alien cultures and technologies so quickly that I started to lose a handle on what was going on.  I found it harder to believe that I was actually there because the “there” was changing so much.

Also, I feel that towards the very end, he started to rely too much on cheap cliches.  Some of the alien cultures, especially in the last hundred pages, sounded like something out of Ascendency or Star Control II. What began as a compelling, believable story of human-alien contact became another cliche space opera where all the alien civilizations were too monolithic, too similar in terms of technological capabilities, too human-like in their underlying worldviews and interactions with each other, and too…stereotypically alien.  Too shallow, not enough depth.

I don’t think this is due to a lack of skill on Reynold’s part, however–probably more a lack of time.  I think he spent so much time on the first half of the book that he was rushed during the second half.  He’s definitely a very powerful, very capable writer of science fiction.  I would like to try out his other works–the ones that he’s better known for.  And, despite my misgivings about the book, I would still recommend it to friends of mine who love good science fiction.

Ok, so it’s 1:40 am right now and I have to be up at 7:00, so this is going to be short.

Yesterday was the release party for Brandon Sanderson’s newest book, Hero of Ages.  I had to go to work from three to four, but while walking through the bookstore on my way there, I saw a handful of cosplaying fans sitting merrily in a short line (maybe five or ten people) in front of the table covered in Brandon’s books.   I thought to myself, Ok, I don’t have to worry too much about the line being that long when I get off at 4:00.

Well, I arrived, and the line had already snaked its way around a couple of bookshelves.  That was ok, though.  I expected a wait.  Sat down in my spot and read a little from Tales from the Thousand and One Nights.

Fantasy fans can be really interesting, quirky people.  There was this girl in line just a few spaces ahead of me who talked the whole time about just about anything fantasy related.  It was really funny and entertaining.  The conversation in that part of the line was really interesting and engaging, even for those of us who were just listening in.  One of the people behind me mentioned later, “you can tell she’ll be a writer because of the way she talks.”

The guy behind me struck up a conversation by asking what I was reading (I had also pulled out the Qur’an to get some reading in for my history class), and I found out that he’d come all the way from his work in Salt Lake to get the book.  That was surprising, considering that he hadn’t even read Mistborn 1 yet.

Neither had the guy right in front of me.  He was an energetic freshman who pulled out his computer and wrote in his fantasy novel for a while.  I gave him the Quark writing group email (quarkwritinggroup@gmail.com, if you happen to be an interested BYU student) and we spent a good long time talking about various sci fi and fantasy books that we had read.

Brandon showed up, and the line started moving.  It was pretty slow, but that was ok because we’d all prettymuch broken the ice and were chatting it up the whole way there.  I saw a bunch of random people I knew, which was really fun. “Fantasy brings us together!”

So then, I got there at the desk where Brandon was signing the books.  He looked a little stressed up there, but he also seemed to be having a good time.  I wanted to know if he’d recognize me from his class last year–after all, he’s a busy man, especially now with Mistborn 3, Alcatraz 3, and the final Wheel of Time book.

But he did!  He saw my name on the sticky note and said “Joe!  How’s it going?” We chatted for a bit, and he asked how my novel was coming along!  I said it was coming along well, that it had been rejected once and he was like “yeah, of course that’s going to happen,” so I said I was working on it, as well as a new one, and that I was looking forward to his class in the winter.

He signed my book “For Joe–keep writing!” I was number 79.  Took a picture with him, and now it’s my Facebook profile picture.  It’ll be up there for a while!

Senior Angelo Osic is a doctor in one of the refugee flooded neighborhoods of Panama.  The United Socialist States of South America has launched a new war in its efforts to reshape the human race into something purer, but all of that is far away from the life Angelo lives–until an emaciated woman with a bloody stump at the end of her arm shows up and demands him to grow her a new one.

Events rapidly spin out of his control, and Angelo flees on the first spaceship leaving earth–a mercenary transport taking hundreds of superhuman warriors to fight in a bloody planet-wide war among Japanese colonists.  As he tries desperately to evade socialist assassins, he makes friends among the mercenaries on the spaceship–as well as deadly enemies.  In the eerily realistic virtual reality world of the training simulators, Angelo dies a hundred times and slowly becomes desensitized to killing.

As the ship reaches its final destination–a world awash in a genocidal bloodbath–and Angelo’s enemies finally start to catch up with him, how will he maintain his humanity?  Will he ever be able to feel love and compassion again–or will he become the monster he fears the world is making him?

This book is violent.  It is violent and gritty. Rape, murder, assassination, brutal disfiguration and torture, graphic battle scenes and massive acts of genocide–it’s all in there. That said, the book is not about the violence–it’s about moral dilemmas, how we respond to injustice, and how we can maintain our humanity in the face of the most horrific evil this world can see.

Unlike a lot of cyberpunk, Angelo wants to be good–he desperately wants to be an upright, moral person–but time and again he finds himself in situations where he cannot avoid getting his hands bloody, sometimes up to his elbows.  How he responds to this evil, and how he endures it without becoming evil himself, is where the story has its meat.

On My Way to Paradise is a book that makes you think, and after you put it down, you can’t put it out of your mind.  It’s a book that has the power to change your life and how you see the world.

I found it by listening to it as a free audiobook on a podcast that podfaded shortly after, so I only caught the first seven chapters.  For the next year and a half, the story haunted me–I could not forget about it, or about the dilemmas and issues it raised.  I hunted all the bookstores for it, but sadly it’s been out of print for over a decade.  When I finally did find out that Pioneer Book had a copy in their warehouse, I ordered it and finished it a week or two later.  If I regret anything, it’s that I didn’t order it sooner.

This is honestly one of the best books I’ve read.  It is a masterpiece.  I’ve rarely read anything so real and down to earth, anything that resonates as truth so deeply.  It’s definitely not for everybody, but this book is incredible.  I’ve rarely read anythings so powerful–or so meaningful.

They came completely unexpected. Hundreds of silver spaceships, hovering above all the capitols and major population centers of the Earth. For nearly a week, as thousands rioted in the streets below, they sat there, waiting. And then came the voice of Karellen, chief of the overlords, viceroy of Earth, heralding a new, planet-wide administration that was destined to end war, poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance, and fear. But as the generations pass and a new breed of humanity arises–one that has known no suffering, no danger, no religion but science, and no creative drive beyond sheer curiosity–mankind is about to discover that their welfare is not the overlords’ primary goal. Humanity’s time in the universe is about to come to an end–and a new, alien beginning.

I read this book in three days, but if I didn’t have any distractions or obligations, I could probably have read it in less than half a day. It’s very short–Clarke doesn’t take time to develop characters, describe the setting, give long info dumps, or show off his prosaic skills. He doesn’t even get into detailed explanations of how everything that happens happens. He waves his hand and gives us the broadest possible sweep of human civilization as mankind finally transcends human existence.

Partially because of the broad brush which Clarke uses to paint his picture, I found myself second guessing him at several turns. I was very skeptical of Clarke’s premises and conclusions, and found it very difficult to believe this story at several points. Believability of the aliens was not nearly so much an issue for me as was believability of humanity.

For example, when the overlords bring out a device that allows people to view any scene from any moment in the past, the world’s religious traditions are exposed and within a generation nobody in the world is religious. That’s not how religious experience works, though. Even if all of the religions in the world were hoaxes–which I’m perfectly willing to allow for the sake of a story–many, if not most of the adherents would continue to hold onto their beliefs, if only for no other reason than to hold onto something. There would be a lot more chaos and upheaval, and religion would stay with us in one form or another, if for no other reason than we as humans are religious creatures. It’s in our nature, whether or not any of the world’s religions are true. Clarke seems to demonstrate an ignorance of this as he paints the future with his broad brush.

A lot of other elements were missing in this book, such as character development, development of the setting, a strong buildup of tension, etc etc. However, as hard, classic sci fi, Childhood’s End doesn’t necessarily need those things to be an accomplished work within its genre. Hard sci fi–especially 50s and 60s sci fi–is all about grand, transcendent concepts, and here Childhood’s End succeeds, especially towards the end. When I finished the story and found out humanity’s final destiny, I was left with a sense of overwhelming awe at the grand cosmic scope of the story’s final message, much as I was with 2001: A Space Odyssey. You really feel, by the end, that you’re staring the incomprehensibly infinite right in the face. Good, hard sci fi will do that to you, and it’s wonderful.

I think this story did what Clarke set out for it to do, despite some of the conceptual spottiness that irked me in the beginning and the middle. The ending was solid, and did an excellent job showing what it means to transcend humanity. If you’re looking for a good story, this book probably will frustrate you, but if you’re interested in dreaming about man’s destiny among the stars, this book will give you that sense of awe and wonder that only classic science fiction can.