a-cubed.info

Sorry for the flood of posts. I’m trying to catch up on my book blogging for the year as work winds down a bit, so I can try and manage the task I set myself at the start of reviewing all the books I’ve read.

This is the sequel to Heavy Time and features many of the same characters. It follows them as they reform their group, brought together to try and fly the prototype of the advanced attack ships carried by the carriers of the Earth Fleet. A familiar name from earlier written later-in-internal-chronology book Downbelow Station turns up: Jurgen Graff. The main storyline is just as engaging for me as Heavy Time, with a(n attempted) murder mystery, political shenanigans, interpersonal relationship conflicts and philosophy of sociology all joining the mix. The only weakness to my mind is that there are some continuity issues with the Fleet information from Downbelow Station with regards to Mallory’s status as third-most-senior of the Fleet Captains, despite Keu and Kreshov being listed here as senior in the nascent fleet and still in command at the time of Downbelow Station.

This neepery aside, this is another cracking book, with brilliant pacing and excellent characterisation and plotting.

This is the earliest book (in internal chronology) so far that Cherryh has written in her Alliance/Union (aka Merchanter) future history. Together with its immediate sequel (post to come soon as this is a catch-up post) it’s also the primary “Earth” sub-sequence. This one is set in the asteroid belt where independent miners compete with corporation-run (i.e. corporation-screwed) miners and others to identify rocks worth mining for their metal content. The demand for the contents at this point is principally to provide the raw materials for the carrier fleet which plays such a crucial part in events yet to come, but which those familiar with this universe of course know about. This is an interesting explication of a political situation which has been described from afar (both in time and space) in her earlier books. It’s also about her trademark alienated character coming to terms with their alien surroundings. In this case it’s the character of Decker coming to terms with the loss of his partner, the utter injustice of the situation (he knew it was unjust, he just didn’t realise quite how blatant it was) and his own mental imbalance brought on by the loss of his original partner. It’s a really nice near-space piece, that explores the possible consequences of a solar system partially settled by heavy corporate interests, who’ve gradually chipped away at human rights, to the extent that even paper is banned.

This is one of my favourites of Cherryh’s, mostly due to the wonderful characterisations. The speech patterns of each character is built up with great precision and, along with another of her trademarks (the over-the-shoulder third person view) one really gets to know and care about these characters. The eight deadly words are nowhere in sight here, for me at least.

The third and so far as I know final Zoot Marlowe book starts once more with his return to his home planet. THis time his grandfather persuades him to bring him along for the ride, giving him an even harder time explaining their physical form. But this being a timeless California 80s, the only people who really look deeply into it don’t take it any further. In this installment we meet Whipper Will’s father Iron (middle name Duke), his landlord Max Toodemax and re-encounter Mr Knighten Daise (transformed from his lobster incarnation to a camel this time).

Whipper’s father’s android business, currently producing Melt-O-Mobiles which get extruded by a dispenser and dissolve into smoke instead of requiring to be parked, has some difficulty with their superhero Androids going stale and he wants Whipper back working for him. Connected or not, someone kidnaps Whipper and Zoot’s surfer friends, Whipper’s girlfriend and Zoot’s grandfather Zamp. Zoot follows the trail with his hard-boiled wit and his idekick Surfing Samurai Robot duck sidekick Bill. The fun lasts all the way through the trilogy and I’d be happy if there were more to discover.

So, as mentioned in the review of Surfing Samurai Robots, I was given this book by some friends and tracked down the first one to read in order. Returning to T’toom, Zoot Marlowe finds even his newfound fame on his home planet isn’t enough for him and that trouble being his business, he needs Earth trouble to make his life complete, so he heads bck to Malibu. His arrival coincides with the appearance on the beach of what looks to be a large top hat, following which one of his friends is turned into a stage magician with real magic tricks (indistinguishable from the science of an advanced race, as he hangs a lampshade on).

Once again running into some cracking characters with names like Medium Rare, the Surfing Samurai Robot spritualist (who has had visions of T’toom), Busy Backson and her brother Gone Out, Zoot has a wonderfully surreal adventure that tears along with wit, verve and hard boiled monologuing.

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 way I am I tracked down number one first. I’m glad I did, and I later got the third in the series as well.

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.

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).  Being basically humanoid, he manages to pass with various tales about toxic waste nose drops and too many drugs.

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.

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.

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.

This was  re-read, after I’d read the Science in the City trilogy (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting). The first thing that struck me was the repeat of characters between this and both Escape from Kathmandu and the Science in the City trilogy. In fact, this is in some ways a dry run for the trilogy. The politics and the science fit right together, but it’s not quite like the trilogy is a sequel. It’s clear that Robinson made good use of his time at the US Antarctic base as a writer-in-residence. I don’t know all that much about extreme survival, but all the details hang together very well and it has a lot of verisimilitude at the very least. It’s a bit eco-utopian, but then that’s of course one of his ongoing themes.

He’s written better, but there’s lots worse out there.

Robin McKinley does the modern vampire in this one. Neil Gaiman describes it on the cover as “pretty much perfect”. I had this recommended somewhere a few months ago – I can’t remember where now – and since I’d liked McKinley’s Damar books, I decided I’d give it a go. It’s pretty good, but I don’t agree with Gaiman on its perfection. Certainly it’s a cut above most of this sub-genre (and I don’t just mean Twilight and other such teen wangst). In setup I was rather reminded of Kim Harrison’s Hollows. This is a non-masquerade supernatural world, where the beasties have come out if not into the daylight then at least into knowledge. There’s been war – the Voodoo Wars – and humanity has been significantly reduced in size. There are magic users, part-demons, weres (not just wolves, but all sorts of other changelings as well) and vampires. Vamps are regarded as the worst of the bad bunch and most of them, particularly the antagonist of this story, are pretty nasty pieces of work. Mostly people don’t survive an encounter with a vampire, they just tend to die.

This novel has two great things about it. The characterisations of all the major and most of the minor characters is brilliant (it’s one of McKinley’s strengths as a writer). Her take on the “good vampire” is also much better than most and works at the character level. However, the weakness of this book lies in the backdrop. It’s very detailed but it’s all two dimensional. It just doesn’t quite seem to work when one thinks about it. Characters in the defence force against supernatural wrongdoing fear that in 100 ears people will be ruled by vampires completely. There was huge attrition in the Voodoo Wars. None of this seems to really work, though, if one thinks about it a lot. This was published in 2002, so probably written a year or a couple earlier and there’s an Internet-equivalent in there with some interesting elements, though it seems quite dated and text-oriented, a bit like A Fire Upon the Deep, so maybe it was written even earlier than that. Anyway, what troubles me about this is that if many of the big cities have been de-populated, then how has advanced civilisation survived as well as it has? THe “New Arcadia” medium sized city is one of the larger ones left, we’re told, though we’re not actually told where it is, beyond it being the US. It’s somewhere with deciduous trees and real seasons including winter, not just climate, but it could be New England, Pacific NorthWest, Great Lakes. There’s a distinct lack of locality to it which distracted me rather.

I think this would have made a great few books gradually exploring this world in more detail and explaining just how it came about, and how close it went to the lights going out, how they were and are kept on and what the danger is short, medium and long term from vampires and other “Others”. But McKinley doesn’t seem to write series, only one-offs (plus the odd related book).

Still, very recommended for those who like the vampires but not the fang-fucker sub-genre. See also, Charlie Stross‘ forthcoming The Rhesus Chart for his take on vamps.

So for only the second time since late August I managed to swim today. Travel, colds, Colitis and diarrhea have interfered with all my efforts to get back to swimming since Worldcon except for one day (I came down ill the following day and haven’t been up to it until today). Having been out of it for so long I took it easy and only did 30 lengths, with a break after each ten. Excluding the breaks I was just over 18 minutes for the 30 lengths, though, which is a pretty good time considering I’m still not feeling like I’m 100% and that it’s been close on four months since I last swam. I wasn’t exhausted afterwards, either, which is good. It means I didn’t overdo it.

I think I’m not going to try to get back to every day from this point, but I would like to make it three times a week for the long haul.

The third Peter Grant urban fantasy detective novel by Ben Aaronovich. It’s quite good, but not quite up to the excellence of the first two (Rivers of London and Moon Over Soho). This time Peter is seconded to an almost normal murder enquiry, with just a hint of weirdness. The weirdness escalates slowly through the case, to the dismay of the murder investigation team. There’s a sub-plot following up on the ongoing story arc about illicit magicians and there’s nice character follow-on with Peter and new recruit to the team Lesley. Another of Peter’s many relatives is introduced as a probable ongoing character (a mouthy thirteen year old cousin). As the name suggests this novel dives into the London Tube system, lovingly used by many for supernatural fictive inspiration before by the likes of Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere, soon to be revamped as a radio play by BBC Radio 4/Extra). It’s a decent read but just felt slightly thin compared to the previous two. The plot plods along ((pun intended) as a more-or-less normal murder enquiry, just with added magic. It’s all a little bit mundane. Still a cut above many in this oeuvre, but I hope Aaronovich can raise his game back up to the first two in the future.

Despite their own advertising claims and hype, Apple did not invent the personal media player, the smartphone or the tablet computer. However, their second or third generation mass-market devices in these areas have clearly captured the market at a crucial time becoming the single largest provider of such devices and relgating their competitors to mostly fighting amongst themselves for second place. While Android devices outsell iPhones by more than 3:1 no single manufacturer was able to beat Apple for sales until Samsung pulled out of the Android pack in 2012. By this time, however, the name of the game was iSomething. Ask a teenager what type of mobile they have and they’ll often say an iPhone, even if it’s Android device. Similarly iPod and iPad have become the standard term for media players and tablets. With the release of the iPad mini, even mid-sized tablets no longer seem distinct from the fruity products.

This all seems good for the Cupertino mothership, with brand recognition supporting their product with much higher product margins than anyone else (Samsung sells more but makes less), while their tied-in software and content distribution system also buoys up their profits more than in the more open Android marketplaces.

But this is a double-edged sword as at least two companies have learned before: Kleenex and Hoover. They became so ubiquitous and their products so associated with the product class that they effectively lost much of their trademark protection due to genericisation. Google made a strong effort to prevent this, although both the OED and Miriam-Websters include the verb “to google” as a synonym for searching the Web, particularly but not solely with the Google search engine.

I am hearing a lot of usage of iPhone, iPod and iPad to refer to smartphones, media players and tablets, particularly at places like airports where we’re told to take our iPads out of bags and iPods/iPhones out of pockets for security screening, and on planes where we’re told to switch off our iPods/iPhones and iPads for take-off and landing, and only use our iPhones in airplane mode while in-flight.

While it may seem a boon to their current business model to be the poster-child of the current generation, becoming too generic can lose your edge in law and undermine your position in the market as the brand people will pay more for (which seems to be and remain the core of Apple’s approach [pun intended]).