My Review of The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a complex book ,and while it has its problems, it is one everyone should put on their “must read” list. It is one of a number of works in her Hainish Cycle, and it tells the story of a diplomat sent from the Ekumen (a loose confederation of worlds) to the planet Gethen (also called Winter) with the mission of convincing them to join the Ekumen. But his mission is very difficult because the culture of Gethen is unlike anything he has every seen. The people there are ambisexual, which means they can at different times be male or female. The essence of the novel is the developing relationship between Genly Ai, the Ekumen diplomat, and Estraven, a Gethenian politician who trusts him, and through their developing relationship we see how the culture and society of Gethen function.

This book was one of the first books in the genre of feminist science fiction, and kicked off quite a debate. One part of that is that while gender is so central to the novel, the two main characters, Ai and Estraven, are both male. Nonetheless, it is one the great works of science fiction and won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards. In 1987 Locus ranked it second, after only Dune, among science fiction novels.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | Comments Off on My Review of The Left Hand of Darkness

My Review of The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It scarcely seems necessary to do a review of this work, it is so well known, and recently turned into a movie series to boot. It is the Platonic ideal of the epic high fantasy genre, and at the heart of Tolkien’s work through his life. The first effort in this fantasy world was the children’s book The Hobbit, but as it was successful Tolkien’s publisher wanted more, and Tolkien obliged. Originally it was intended that the The Lord of the Rings would be the first volume, with the Silmarillion as volume 2, but the publisher decided to break it into three volumes (though each of those three has two parts, so one could as well call it a six-volume work). The overall summary is that the dark lord Sauron created Rings of Power: Three for Elves, 7 for Dwarves, and 9 for Men. Then he created the One ring to rule the others and to corrupt them. He loses this ring in a battle and is trying to get it back, and if he does his power will corrupt all of Middle Earth. The only way to stop him is to destroy the ring, and that can only be done in the fires of Mount Doom where it was originally forged. So a mixed group of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and Men, plus the wizard Gandalf, set out to do just that. The work is about all of the adventures they have along the way.

The themes embedded in this work display the discomfort Tolkien had with the modern world, and much of that derives from his experience of World War I. Because of the subsequent World War II and the Cold War, the first World War has faded in the minds of many people. But it was a particularly searing experience to those who lived through it. For example, if you look at the total number of Americans killed in Vietnam over the entire course of the war, that is less than half of the number killed on both sides in just 6-day Battle of the Marne in 1914. Human life was of no account in this war, and the butchery was staggering. It was the modern industrial war, and even the killing was industrialized.. Tolkien displays in The Lord of the Rings a deep disdain for industrialization. And as is the case with so much fantasy, class structure is implicitly important, and some races are irredeemably evil. But it has won many awards, and in 2003 the BBC named it Britain’s best novel of all time. Virtually all high fantasy traces its roots to Tolkien.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | Comments Off on My Review of The Lord of the Rings

My Review of

I, Robot

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The first thing to get out of the way is the movie starring Will Smith. Basically someone negotiated the rights to use Asimov’s title, threw out all of his content, and made the movie they had already decided they wanted to make. (This is very similar to the movie Starship Troopers which shares a title and a couple of character names with Heinlein’s novel, and nothing else. It would be better if they would just make their own damn movies, but at least some writers got paid, which I am always in favor of. I know a few writers. ).

This book is a collection of short stories originally written for the pulps in the 1940s. At the time, Asimov was always looking for story ideas, and had just read a book also called I, Robot by Eando Binder, and it helped spark an interest. He also has talked about how so many stories about robots took the view that they would turn into killers and would endanger us all. (Very similar to the breathless alarmism over Artificial Intelligence we see currently.) Asimov thought that was not the way things would work, so he wrote stories in which he introduced the Three Laws of Robotics:

First Law
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

These have entered the science fiction world as shared culture by now. And what they allowed Asimov to do was look for ways in which things might still go wrong, and then have his characters try to figure it all out. He later took his robots and the Three Laws into some Science Fiction/Mystery novels: The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, and The Robots of Dawn.

BTW, the real company U.S. Robotics took its name from the company in these stories. The real company is known primarily for making modems.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | Comments Off on My Review of

My Review of Schneier on Security

Schneier on Security

Schneier on Security by Bruce Schneier

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Bruce Schneier is one the experts on computer security, and I have followed him with pleasure and learned a lot. He has a very practical approach to understanding what works and what does not work in this area, and this book is a collection of his short writings from a variety of places: His blog (Cryptogram), Wired, CNet, IEEE Security & Privacy, Communications of the ACM, etc. These are brief and to the point, most of the articles being a couple of pages long. Most of the articles were written in the early 2000s, but I don’t think they are out-of-date at all because they are about how to think about security, not about the technical issues. He also provides a lengthy References section in the back in case you want to go deeper into any of the events he discusses.

Because these are bite-sized articles, this would actually be the perfect “Bathroom Reader” for the security geek in your life.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | Comments Off on My Review of Schneier on Security

My Review of Fer-de-Lance

Fer-de-Lance (Nero Wolfe, #1)

Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is where it all started, the very first of the Nero Wolfe novels (referred to as The Corpus by dedicated fans). Most of the characters we come to know and love are here at the beginning: Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, Fritz Brenner, Saul Panzer, and so on. But they are not quite fully inked in yet. Wolfe is more loquacious than he will be in the future, and Archie has a lot of rough edges, including the use of racial slurs. But the standard elements are here. Wolfe has an ability to question people at great length and pull out clues you wouldn’t expect, he never leaves the house, he drinks beer, he is a gourmet with a chef on staff, and he grows orchids. Archie has a perfect memory for conversations that he can repeat verbatim, which is useful for Wolfe since he never goes out himself. And Archie can somehow get anyone Wolfe wants to interview to come to the Brownstone house.

The mystery involves a possible connection between a missing Italian metal worker and the death of a college President on the gold course. It is a perfectly good mystery, but the real attraction is the characters. The residents of the Brownstone house are what keeps bringing us back.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | Comments Off on My Review of Fer-de-Lance

My Review of The Cuckoo’s Egg

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage

The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the kind of book that will appeal to computer nerds, and perhaps no one else, but since I am a computer nerd I quite enjoyed it. It is a true story involving computer hacking, and one of the earliest ones. The protagonist of this story is Clifford Stoll, who was trained as an astronomer but was managing computers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. One day he asked to look into a $.75 discrepancy in the billing for the computer accounts. With a magnificent obsession he tears into it, and eventually traces everything to a Soviet spy operating out of West Germany. Along the way Stoll has to deal with various agencies that don’t really know what to do about this, and wonder if it as even anything they should worry about. After all, a 75 cent accounting error is not a big deal. But when it is clear that a foreign agent is looking for information about the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars), it is time to take action.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | Comments Off on My Review of The Cuckoo’s Egg

My Review of The Gods Themselves

The Gods Themselves

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a great novel by Asimov, and it won both Hugo and Nebula awards. It was also Asimov’s favorite of his Science Fiction novels.

The book is made of up three different sections. In the first section, a new power source is discovered that works by exchanging material with another parallel universe. At first, it seems miraculous, but eventually a few people realize it might actually destroy us. But try to get people to give up cheap, limitless energy! By exchanging messages with the other parallel universe, the earth scientist who understands the danger tries to get the people in the parallel universe to stop the exchange.

The second section takes place in the parallel universe, and here Asimov was truly creative. The race he comes up with has three sexes, and he works out how they relate to each other in producing offspring.

The final section is back in our universe, where a solution is finally found.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | Comments Off on My Review of The Gods Themselves

My Review of The End of Eternity

The End of Eternity

The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


At one time Isaac Asimov wrote novels that were not connected to a series, and this is one of them, though later in life he tied it into his Foundation/Robots universe. This is a good enough novel and Asimov is a good writer, but this is not the best thing he ever wrote, even though it was on the short-list for a Hugo. Most of the novel is about a group of people in an organization called Eternity that have time travel technology. They have taken it upon themselves to preserve the safety of their timelines by making “reality changes”. But the protagonist, Andrew Harlan, is eventually placed in a position where he needs to decide if this is such a good idea. He has fallen in love with a woman from the “hidden centuries” who tells him that in every time line where Eternity has smoothed things, the human race dies out, but when there is no Eternity, the human race dominates the galaxy.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | Comments Off on My Review of The End of Eternity

My Review of Dragonriders of Pern

The Dragonriders of Pern: Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon (Pern: The Dragonriders of Pern)

The Dragonriders of Pern: Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This collected volume contains the first three of the Pern novels, and its a great way to get into this highly regarded series. It appears to be high fantasy when you start, but as the series goes on the Science Fiction aspects become clearer.

Dragonflight:

This is the first novel in a classic series, and various books in the series have own a bucketful of awards. This novel reads like a fantasy, and you think that is what it all is about until later in the series when it becomes a science fiction theme. Dragons in this case are winged beasts who can breathe fire and burn the “thread”, a deadly enemy that periodically falls from the sky. Lessa, a young lady, has certain mental powers that she puts to work getting revenge on the people who invaded her family’s domain, and tries to use those powers on the Dragonriders when they come around. This brings her to their attention, and she become a Dragonrider herself. While I like it a lot (and so do many others when you look at the awards McCaffrey earned), I would not recommend it to someone who does not enjoy fantasy. The science fiction aspects do not come out until later in the series.

Dragonquest:

The Science Fiction aspects begin to peek though here in the second novel of the series. But the main focus is on conflict between the Oldtimers, the Dragonriders who were brought forward in time to help deal with the threat from the thread, and the contemporary Dragonriders. So it is mostly a generational conflict, but it does help move the story along. The science fiction aspect enters when they consider the possibility of trying to eliminate the thread at its source, which is another planet in the solar system.

The White Dragon:

This is the third novel in the Dragonriders of Pern series, and it was nominated for a Hugo award and placed third in the Locus award for Best Novel. Back in the first novel, Dragonflight, Lessa was fighting against the people who took over her family’s domain. But as a consequence of that fight, a young man named Jaxom becomes the Lord Holder of that domain (called Ruatha Hold). Normally a Lord Holder would stick to administering their domain and stay out of the affairs of dragons and their riders, but he manages to impress (i.e. bond with) a very unusual white dragon who has an ability to always navigate through time.





View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | Comments Off on My Review of Dragonriders of Pern

My Review of Lord of Light

Lord of Light

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a fantastic book by a fantastic writer, and won both the Hugo and the Nebula when it was published. The opener is classic:

“His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god.”

The setting is a planet settled by people from the Star of India who find themselves on a planet with hostile natives, and in order to survive use a variety of technologies to essentially re-engineer themselves. They create a sort of Hindu-related society, with former crew from the ship on the top of the caste system as “gods”. Sam becomes opposed to this system, and introduces Buddhism as part of his long-range plan to overthrow the “gods”.

This is hugely atmospheric and should be on anyone’s “must read” list.



View all my reviews

 Save as PDF
Share
Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | Comments Off on My Review of Lord of Light