{"id":619,"date":"2012-12-19T21:44:43","date_gmt":"2012-12-19T13:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/?p=619"},"modified":"2012-12-19T21:44:43","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T13:44:43","slug":"books-surfing-samurai-robots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/?p=619","title":{"rendered":"Books – Surfing Samurai Robots"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I lived in St Andrews, qidane<\/a> and tobyaw<\/a> gave me a birthday present of a pile of cheap SF. It was a fun present including various decent books (and a number not so decent) that I’d probably never have tried otherwise. One of them was the second book in a trilogy<\/a> and being the way I am I tracked down number one first. I’m glad I did, and I later got the third in the series <\/a>as well.<\/p>\n

These are really fun little SF detective books. They’re very lighthearted, riffing heavily on surf culture, Raymod Chandler (and detective noir generally) with a healthy dollop of Dimension of Miracles.<\/p>\n

Aliens on the planet T’toom pick up earth radio broadcasts and a young Toomler called Zoot becomes somewhat obsessed with the early radio adaptations of Chandler’s work and decides to head to Earth to become a PI. Landing in Malibu he is befriended by some surfers (mostly teens\/twenties with one older guy).\u00a0 Being basically humanoid, he manages to pass with various tales about toxic waste nose drops and too many drugs.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile his new friends have a classic confrontation with beach bikers resulting in a bet about a surfing competition (surfing in this world is done using telepresece robots, not directly). The surfer’s bots get wrecked, all the parts and replacements are unavailable, and there are various other complications running around.<\/p>\n

An engaging story that trips along with a cracking pace, wonderful dry wit, hard boiled dialogue. I particualrly like Mel Gilden’s wonderful in-your-face punning names for characters like Whipper Will, Knighten Daise (and his daughter Stormy) and the like.<\/p>\n

These have dated well and exist in a sort of timeless parallel timeline with advanced robots but 80s sensibilities. Strongly recommended for comic relief from life’s vicissitudes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I lived in St Andrews, qidane and tobyaw gave me a birthday present of a pile of cheap SF. It was a fun present including various decent books (and a number not so decent) that I’d probably never have tried otherwise. One of them was the second book in a trilogy and being the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,19,17,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sf-books","category-sf","category-books-sf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":623,"href":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions\/623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}