Physics of the Impossible

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel is an account by Michio Kaku of the different technologies that may or may not be possible given today's understanding of the laws of the universe. Kaku divides the ideas into three categories: things that are possible with today's knowledge but require more technology; things that science does not rule out but there's no known way to accomplish them; and things that physics says is impossible.

Kaku starts with ideas such as force fields and invisibility, which he says are possible impossibles. Force fields use basic magnetism as it is understood. An invisibility cloak could use metamaterials--substances with properties that affect how light works. Other ideas such as telepathy are an extension of technologies currently under study today. Mental images can be read from the brain with smaller and smaller resolution, and there is technology to send signals to the brain.

I was impressed with the fundamentals of science and presented in the book. Kaku gives an accurate and informative analysis of artificial intelligence and the possibilities it holds. There is a lot more to the science but his overview is pretty solid. He does end up pretty optimistic and, I believe, gives too little attention to the difficulties involved.

The next class of impossibilities are those that would require a new understanding of physics. He includes faster than light travel and time travel, both of which would require understanding the shape of the universe and the nature of existence. He gives a pretty good analysis of string theory and quantum mechanics and the extent of our knowledge of reality.

The only truly impossible ideas are precognition and perpetual motion machines. Kaku describes many hoaxes and frauds that claim to defeat the second law of thermodynamics. Overall I was impressed with the science background presented to explain the reasoning for each classification. Kaku selects some fun fantastic technologies and explores the scientific possibilities that would enable them. B+

Litany of the Long Sun

Litany of the Long Sun is the first half of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. It takes place in an artificial habitat in the distant future. Though the world is technologically advanced, the people who live in it do not know how it works and live a primitive existence. The story displays a blend of religion and strange technology.

The main character is Patera Silk, an augur (oracle) for a small manteion (temple) in a poor district. At the start of the story, Silk receives a revelation that he believes is from one of his gods. When Silk discovers that his manteion has been purchased by a crime boss named Blood due to unpaid taxes, he hatches a plan to sneak into the man's villa and force him to give it back. While inside, he runs into a strange woman named Mucor and a woman named Hyacinth working there as an escort. Silk falls and hurts his ankle and gets captured by Blood and his henchmen. Blood makes an agreement to sell back the manteion to Silk for a large sum of money, which Silk doesn't have. But before he leaves, a doctor named Crane fixes his ankle and sneaks him a weapon.

Silk makes plans to use the weapon to steal the large sum of money. He is so obsessed and committed to this goal that he barely thinks about the moral questions, only that he has to fulfill his duty to his gods. The next day Silk visits a brothel where one of the women has died. He discovers that another woman there is a spy and deduces that she works for Dr. Crane. As the first half ends, Silk performs an exorcism for the dead woman and a goddess manifests at the ceremony.

At the start of the second half, Silk officiates the dead woman's funeral and a vision manifests on the screen of the manteion, the first in decades. Then he realizes that Chenille, Dr. Crane's spy, has been possessed by a goddess. This possession is some sort of advanced technological ability, and the goddess is apparently an artificial intelligence. Now Silk hatches a plot to blackmail Dr. Crane, but to do this they need to travel to the nearby lake and fine the ruling council.

Here the story gets more interesting as Silk start to uncover a plot and learn more about Dr. Crane. Silk stumbles into a series of secret tunnels under the lake and the city. He discovers a chamber full of people who have been asleep for centuries. When one of the sleeping women wakes, he realizes she has been possessed by Mucor and exorcises her. Silk learns about the history of the habitat and his own gods, though he has trouble reconciling what he learns with his beliefs.

The strange things Silk sees and learns make the second part of the book more compelling. The first half is a bit slow, what with Silk's single-minded focus on Blood and his crazy scheme to compel Blood to give his manteion back. With the second half, forces become apparent such as the missing calde (ruler) of the city, the mysterious council, the goddess who possesses Chenille. Religion comes into play as Silk gains popularity with the populace (due to his visions and the appearance of the goddess) and this becomes a threat to the government. The reference to the story of Christ becomes apparent to me when Silk has a vision that includes seeing a man nailed to . Though Silk is a religious man who only wants the best for his people and doesn't care about the government, his popularity makes him dangerous and a target for the those who fear him. The end is a cliffhanger, to be completed in the next book, as Silk is captured by one faction vying for power. B+

Rule 34

Rule 34 is a science fiction novel by Charles Stross that takes place in the near future. The use of 3D printers has become popular, and there is a dark underworld market of unlicensed or illegal blueprints for obscene or immoral creations. Liz is a detective with the Edinburgh police in charge of a task force that monitors the Internet for fantasies that cross the line into forbidden acts. Police work is aided by constant monitoring, a smart online repository for data called CopSpace, and semi-intelligent bots that can do minor police processing. Liz is called to check on a suspicious death and quickly determines that it must be a homicide. The man was found in the bathroom with an enema machine that malfunctioned and somehow poisoned him.

Anwar is a Muslim ex-con trying to make a living in Edinburgh to support his wife and kids. Unfortunately due to his conviction he is prevented from doing any computer work online. He meets with his friend called the Gnome, who gets him involved in a questionable position as an honorary consul for a breakway republic in central Asia. The Gnome insists that there is an angle where they will be able to profit from his position, but the only activity Anwar finds is a case of bread mix that might be used to turn into an illegal industrial product with the right secret ingredient and process. Anwar is a type common to crime novels; he is a common criminal who aspires to the big time, but he is really more of a mark than a con man. Whatever scam he gets involved in ends up getting the better of him.

One mysterious character is referred to as the Toymaker; he uses the alias John Christie, which happens to be the name of a long-dead serial killer. Christie is a sociopath with paranoid delusions that barely kept at bay by the medication he takes. He arrives in Edinburgh to set up a local franchise of the sort of business that Liz would be interested in investigating. However he is stymied by the fact that the first potential business associate he goes to meet is the man who was killed by his enema machine, and the second woman he visits is dead and shrink-wrapped to a mattress full of outdated banknotes. Christie has to manage to not cross the line into insanity while dealing with these setbacks.

Liz finds another suspicious death in Germany that she thinks may be related, and soon many other deaths come to light in the same time frame that are all connected by the fact that home appliance software has malfunctioned in a very specific way. The question comes up of whether these deaths, assuming they are indeed all connected and directed, have behind them a human directing them or an AI. Computer systems have become very sophisticated, though they have only so far only excelled at specific tasks such as driving a car or recognizing a human face.

What's most interesting about this novel is the fast-paced, dense language that Stross uses. There is a bit of Scottish dialect, and I was afraid it was going to be distracted, but thankfully he finds the right balance. The language is full of in-jokes and references that many readers may not appreciate, but I think Stross really knows his audience and hits the right notes. I think I got about 99% of the references, and the important stuff is explained. There are several lines of the plot going, including the central Asian republic's plot to double-cross the investment bankers intending to short its bonds; Liz's ex-lover Dorothy arriving in town to do an audit; and Anwar's job checking out malware for his brother-in-law. There's enough going that you can't tell which is driving the plot and which is just an interesting tangent. In the end, most of it manages to pull together and make sense, though the ending feels just a bit rushed. It's still a fun ride. B+

Home Fires

Home Fires is the latest science fiction novel by Gene Wolfe. It is the story of Skip and Chelle, a couple who have been separated while Chelle was deployed to a distant war. The months that Chelle as been away has been years for Skip, so he is an middle aged man while she is still a young woman. He has been working hard to build a law practice; she has been fighting and comes back changed, though it isn't apparent at first how changed she is.

Skip decides to take Chelle on a cruise to celebrate her return, but he also brings her a different present. He contracts through a company to provide a replica of Chelle's mother, Vanessa, who had passed away while Chelle was deployed. Vanessa's personality was saved before she died, and her memories have been implanted in another woman who volunteered her body. This introduces the theme of identity and the question of who owns a life, the mind or the body.

The cruise goes badly when hijackers take over the ship. Skip, Chelle, and Vanessa return from a late excursion to find the hijackers in control, and through Chelle's battle skills manage to fight some of them off. The ensuing chapters are their attempts to outmaneuver or negotiate with the hijackers. The back and forth of the control of the ship plays into the ideas of two different minds in control of a body. Which is the true owner? Skip helps the captain and crew regain control of the ship, and we learn more about Chelle and her past.

The story is told alternating between third person chapters and reflections by Skip. Much of the action unfolds indirectly as Skip and others try to solve the puzzles of Virginia and Chelle. In a way it is reminiscent of Wolfe's epistolary novel The Sorcerer's House. There is even a helper character in the handless beggar Achille who barely speaks English, a correlate to some of Wolfe's non-human helper characters. Yet the mystery feels far away and vague, and barely coalesces into something the reader can identify with. The direct action of the hijacking never feels as interesting as the background stories of Chelle and Virginia, however the other stories never come to the foreground. While this novel is not as exciting as some of Wolfe's others, it still has an interesting concept that is executed well. B

Surface Detail

Iain M. Banks has created an advanced galactic society in his Culture novels. The latest in the series is Surface Detail, and it deals with a fascinating concept as well as exciting action. In the Culture, death is merely an inconvenience. There is technology to transfer one's consciousness into machinery where one can interact in any conceivable virtual world. Consciousness can even be transferred back into a living body if one wishes, essentially bestowing a sort of immortality. This is not entirely novel in a science fiction setting, but Banks adds a twist: some societies decide to put the consciousness of their dead criminals in a virtual Hell. In these virtual worlds, torment is continuous, and virtual death only buys a short reprieve. There is eternal war in the hells.

The Culture is officially against the hell worlds but does not interfere in the matters of fellow socieites. Yet there is a war going on between the pro-Hell and anti-Hell factions, with the fate of the Hells in the balance. This war is entirely virtual, but one side has decided to break the rules and take the war into the Real.

The story starts when Lededje Y'breq, a sex slave in the Sichult society, is murdered by her owner. She wakes up in a virtual worlds light years away and is told that she had a brain implant that transmitted her consciousness to a distant ship at her death. Lededje requests a new body and transport back to her home world. The AI Mind that controls the ship acquiesces but, knowing she seeks revenge, insists that she take a drone to protect her--and keep her from harming anyone. Yet Lededje contacts the advanced warship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints and its avatar to arrange for separate transport without a chaperone.

Like most of Banks's novels, this one contains AI Minds that are both powerful and entertaining. The Falling Outside is a ship with powerful technology and a flair for the dramatic. Indeed, the AI characters are often more interesting than the humn or alien characters. The ship and Lededje are close to another situation that is brewing: forces in the war over the Hells have arranged to use a large array of manufacturing facilities orbiting a gas giant to build millions of warships. And in order to provide a distraction, there is an outbreak of smatter, a sort of advanced nanobots or gray goo.

There are many other characters involved. There is a Queitus operative (a division in charge of the officially "dead" in the virutal world) who may or may not be working for Special Circumstances, the Culture's version of the CIA. There's Veppers, Lededje's owner who is the richest man in the system and a complete sociopath. Vatueil is an AI entity fighting in the war of the Hells, but on which side is a bit of a mystery. Then there are the grand locations: the huge ship that Lededje wakes up on, containing millions of people, the gas giant and its many facilities, an ancient space station that used to be the home of a vanquished species, now home to a mad AI.

My only complaint is that with all the strands in the story, not al come together. I was left wondering what happened to the smatter outbreak, or the ancient AI in the space station. But the main characters have good storylines and the plot comes to a satisfying conclusion. During all the fun, the reader is presented with questions of morality and mortality: when individuals can exist forever, what kind of fate is truly just? A-

The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife is a fantasy novel by Audrey Niffenegger in which the main character has a genetic condition that forces him to randomly pop back and forth in time. Only his body travels, leaving Henry De Tamble at the mercy of the elements and other people. But the time traveling is just a device to provide conflict in the relationship between Heny and his wife Clare, and suggest a metaphor for the distance between them.

Henry first meets Clare when he is 28 and she is 20, yet she has known him her whole life. Older versions of Henry have traveled to visit her since she was a little girl, so she is accustomed to his condition. But she must get used to him leaving her a spontaneous times instead of arriving at predestined times. The novel is filled with amusing and suspenseful scenes when Henry travels at inoppurtune times. The story is great as fantasy or science fiction, throwing the main characters into strange and exciting situations.

But the story also works on another level. Henry's disappearances make him an imperfect boyfriend or husband. His previous relationship was a spectacular failure due to Henry's behavior, not only his time traveling but his general unreliability. With Henry jumping back in time, we see his literal and metaphorical failings juxtaposed. The time travel is another dimension of Henry's problems with women.

The title says the story is not about Henry but about Clare. Growing up, Henry is the ideal boyfriend to Clare. She can imagine a bright future with him. When she finally meets him in the present everything is fine at first, but eventually she becomes dismayed at the reality of his condition. She worries every time he disappears. At the same time, she knows that he will return, for he has visited her from the future. That is, until later in the story, when the visits get fewer and the disappearances become more harrowing. Clare knows that each time Henry leaves it could be for the last time. The jumps become more dangerous, like when Henry appears inside a metal cage inside the library where he works. The cage haunts Henry because he know he will not be able to get out of it.

The book works on all its levels. It is a touching romance, a science fiction thriller, and literary blend of the two. The story moves from fresh novelty, to troubled middle, to a troubled end. It becomes more more haunting as the end nears, Henry's jumps become more dire, and his health degrades. But we have glimpses of the Clare's future to see some hope. A-

The Windup Girl

Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl is set in a dystopian future where genetic engineers are constantly fighting to create foods resistant to diseases that have contaminated the food supply. The Thai refer to the Western peddlars of the latest gene-spliced disease-resistant products as the calorie men, a reference to what is the critical resource in civilization. It is a post-carbon world, where elevators work by groups of ballast men run up the stairs to provide counterweight. Large levees around Bangkok keep the rising sea at bay. The value of life is low.

Anderson Lake is the representative of a calorie company in Thailand. He has taken over a factory building kink springs, a sort of mechanical energy storage device. But that is just a cover: his long term goal is to gain access to the country's seed supply so they can duplicate it. Thailand is run by two competing factions: the Trade Ministry, which promotes imports and foriegn investment, and the Environment Ministry, which controls import to prevent the next disease from ruining all the local crops.

Lake is intrigued when he is at a friend's club and meets Emiko, the title character, who is a Japanese manufactured person. She is designed to have tiny pores for smooth skin, which means she is ill-suited to the hot Thai climate. She is also designed to be subservient and is the perfect servant or prostitute. Not only does she not have any rights, but if the Environment Ministry captures her they would seize her as illegal biological material and mulch her. Lake finds himself becoming attached to Emiko and promises to help her get to a safe haven for windup people.

Lake is helped by his Chinese assistant Hock Seng, but who is secretly plotting to steal the plans for the kink springs and sell them to the biggest gangster in town. Lake also has associates with whom he connives to bring about political instability to further their plans. One of the biggest wild cards is Jaidee, a fervent Environment Ministry officer known as the Tiger. When the Tiger oversteps his bounds and burns entire shipments, it starts a cascade of events that threatens to bring down the Environment Ministry and propel Lake and his associates to a grand success, if they can survive the violence and disease outbreak.

The story is captivating and the language is vivid. There are all sorts of fascinating things about the world that get let out in bits. Megodonts used to provide power, zeppelins used to travel. The characters are well drawn with definite pasts and conflicting goals. Each character has a different view of the strange world and affects the plot in his or her own way. This is a story of personal tragedy, sacrifice, intrigue, and biology, with a bit of violence and sex thrown in. I found it moderately entertaining. B

The Algebraist

In The Algebraist, Iain M. Banks creates an imaginative future where the galaxy's civilizations are connected via wormholes. The society of the galaxy is billions of years old, having had several iterations of government and cycles of growth and stagnation. As the story starts, a small section of the galaxy consisting of several hundred worlds has been cut off from the rest of civilization for hundreds of years, the Cluster Epiphany Five Disconnect. The E-5 Disconnect has been taken over by a man intent on total domination and control of as much of civilization as he can.

The central character is Fassin Taak, member of a family of Seers in a system called Ulubis. The Seers spend time in gas giants interacting with the ancient species called Dwellers, large round beings who are as engimatic and long-lived as they are large and powerful. The Dwellers can change their time perception, slowing down to experience years as days. Taak has spent decades studying with the Dwellers in the gas giant Nasqueron, slowing to their time scale. One day he is summoned to a giant meeting with the military and political leaders of the system and the galactic government, the Mercatoria. Ulubis has been totally disconnect from the rest of the galaxy since its wormhole was destroyed over a century earlier. But they have received a message, in the form of a banned AI, warning them of imminent danger from the E-5 Disconnect. Moreover, the threat is due to knowledge that Taak gained in one of his visits with the Dwellers.

Taak had received a volume of knowledge from a Dweller friend, and when other academics finally decoded, translated, and understood it, it was discovered to contain dangerous knowledge. It referred to an ancient and secret system of wormholes controlled by the Dwellers, and a secret algebra to convert the list to its current coordinates.

This top secret information turns Taak's life upside down. Preliminary attacks are made on the Ulubis systems, including Taak's home. He is required to revisit his Dweller friends but barely survives entering the atmosphere. He discovers that the friend who gave him the secret volume is dead, or perhaps not. Taak finds himself at a Dweller regatta near a formal war, when all hell breaks loose after the military's spy systems discover him speaking of the secret volume and attempt to intervene. The Dwellers send a large ship called a planet protector, previously only a rumor, to destory the offending ships.

Taak's journey sends him to a lost library, riding on a Dweller spaceship, encountering secret AI's, and visiting faraway worlds. He interacts with ancient Dwellers, commando units, and strange aliens. The suspense builds as the Disconnect forces close in on the Ulubis system with thousands of war ships at near light speed. The counterattack is coming but months behind. Taak is conflicted because he has no love for the Mercatoria and its AI-hating philosphy, but the Disconnect and their allies are a serious threat to his home. The Dwellers and the AI's are enigmatic and entertaining, and the plot is full of surprises. A-

Steampunk

Steampunk is a collection of short stories in the steampunk subgenre of science fiction. Steampunk mixes Victorian elements with technology from the era that is extrapolated to futuristic powers.

An excellent example of the genre is the story "The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down: a Dime Novel" by Joe R. Lansdale. It features four men piloting a giant metal man into the wilderness to destroy a powerful vampire like creature called the Dark Rider. The Dark Rider is the traveler from H. G. Wells' story The Time Machine. The story is just a little dark and a little humorous, and full of gritty action.

In a different style, Ted Chiang's "Seventy-Two Letters" is about an alternate reality where instead of DNA biology works through homunculi, miniature representations of beings. The main character is trained in the science or art of creating Hebrew letters to animate golems. He learns that a secret society has learned how to adapt the numerology to living tissue. The story mixes two fantastic elements to create a fascinating world. The story deals with interesting ethical dilemmas due to the technological possibilities.

Paul Di Filippo's story "Victoria" presents an amusing juxtaposition: the virgin queen supplanted by her namesake as a sex-crazed human created from a newt. As the story unfolds, the characters visit the seediest parts of England. It's a story about morality and society as much as technology, and it is a fun story to read.

Other fun and playful stories include "Minutes of the Last Meeting" by Stepan Chapman, which describes an attack on the czar Nicholas and his AI intelligence service. Also there is Jay Lake's "The God-Clown is Near" about the creation of a golem with a moral intelligence. The book includes an overview of the genre and descriptions of noteworthy stories, movies, and comic books. It is a fun read. A-

Hull Zero Three

Hull Zero Three is a hard science fiction novel by Greg Bear. The story brings to life a classic science fiction concept: a large ship with slow acceleration moving toward a distant star. The ship in this case is composed of three hulls connected to a huge comet that provides fuel. The ship contains biological systems advanced enough to generate a vast assortment of creatures from its genetic Catalog, from astrogators to ship's engineers to biologists to cleaners to trackers. The humanoids and other creatures are implanted with memories for their jobs.

The story is from the first person point of view of a human who finds himself waking up in a birthing chamber and forced to run to chase heat and escape the cleaners that intend to take him to the recycling chamber. He is led by a young girl who has memories of the Ship and the Mother implanted in her. The man, who comes to be known as the Teacher, finds that Ship is not hospitable for his kind, though there are other creations who can move about easily and survive the harsh environments. Gradually the Teacher and the girl meet others who are trying to make sense of the Ship. They use their combined memories to try to figure out why the ships systems are not working properly and the cleaners are trying to kill them.

The mystery slowly comes together as they discuss their memories and observe the workings of the ship and the space outside. They find that their hull is damaged and another is nearly destroyed, apparently from the blast of a recent supernova. There is some sort of struggle between the ship's systems, the woman known as Mother, and the people who are a part of Destination Guidance. Destination Guidance was supposed to select an appropriate target and fade away to die, but something has gone wrong with their decision.

The descriptions of the ship and its systems are a central part of the story. It is a massive achievement of human design. The ship feels like it has its own life, its own desires. The goals of the hidden players in the story are carried out by the humans and other creatures that they have created on the ship. The Teacher and his friends have to come to grips with the fact that their memories are false and incomplete. They must figure out how to trust each other and themselves. The story is the mystery of the ship's systems, the people who control them, and the decision that led to the whole situation. B+

The Dragons of Babel

Michael Swanwick is always an exciting author to read. His stories are exciting and different and he is not afraid to shake things up, even half way through a novel. In The Dragons of Babel, Swanwick takes a fantastic short story and expands the central character into a more interesting protagonist as he explores the wider world.

The main character is Will le Fey, and the opening story is about how a war dragon is shot down and drags itself to Will's village, then proceeds to take control of the population. Through the dragon's powers, it forces the villagers to do its bidding. It selects Will as its lieutenant, inserting its mind into his. Will finds himself trapped, forced to do the dragon's bidding. The villagers turn against him, even though they know that they are all doing what they must to stay alive. Will is even forced to crucify his best friend. Finally Will runs away from the dragon and forces himself to stay away until he breaks the control. With some of the tricks he has learned from the dragon he destroys it, yet a piece of its mind stays in him.

Will is forced to leave the village since nobody there wants to see him anymore. The war drives him, yet he helps a young girl named Esme and they stick together. Esme is an old woman full of luck and made younger, but cursed to forget her past. In a refugee camp they find a friend in Nat, a carefree elf who is a two bit magician and con man. Nat gets them into Babel but they get chased by the authorities due to forged paperwork.

Here the story makes a complete change as Will descends into the underworld of Babel. He must draw on the powers of the dragon to defeat a challenger. He becomes second in command to an elf who wants to create an army of underworlders to rise up and fight for their place in Babel proper. Yet when the final moment comes, the whole army disappears and Will realizes that everything has been an illusion created by the elf.

When Will gets above ground, he finds Nat and Esme and they start a large con. It involves a dubious ring, a fancy party, and rumors of a lost prince's return. However, it appears that while the underworld plot appeared real but was all an illusion, the plot for the throne of Babel appears illusion but may actually be real. The final hectic pages involve chases and intrigues, as well as a large variety of creatures.

Swanwick is very inventive. In addition to the quickly changing plot, the story is filled with fascinating characters. There's the vixen who helps Nat with his cons, the toad who is stuck in a crack but keeps growing and now runs a bar that surrounds her, the lively elf who Will falls in love with, the police elf who keeps chasing after Will. Then there is the voice of Will's best friend that comes back to haunt him, or help him. And of course the dragon is still there, giving him strength but threatening to take over and destroy everything. Will's mission of vengeance against Babel takes a new turn as he comes closer and closer to the power of the city. The story is a growing up tale of a young man but also a story of the city itself, how it lives and projects power, how decadent is has become in the absence of its king. There is a deep mythology and the city feels broader than any of the individual parts. The city has its own life, and Will comes to understand it even as he understand himself. A-

The Engineer Reconditioned

The Engineer Reconditioned is a collection of short fiction by Neal Asher, the author of The Skinner. Most of the stories are set in his Polity universe, with several set on the world of the Owner. One story takes place in the universe of his book Cowl. The collection is a fun visit to these other stories.

The centerpiece is the novella called "The Engineer". In it, the crew of the science vessel Schrödinger's Box comes across a mysterious metal sphere drifting through space. They thaw out the contents to find a small creature that immediately starts building things out of its environment. The creations become so complex that they can emulate a small human. Meanwhile, the outlaws of the galaxy learn of this discovery and seek to destroy it lest it become a powerful weapon in the Polity's hands. There is a bit of politics and social commentary, but the action is the substance of the story. My only complaint is that compared to The Skinner, the AI characters are dull and flat. Otherwise, it is a fun story.

Two characters from The Skinner make appearances. In "Snairls", Janer takes his hive-mind companions on a large air snail. In "Spatterjay", we see Erlin the first time she comes to the planet and meets Ambel and his crew. The action is a little fast here and there's not much time for character development. However you can see it's a good seed for the full story.

The Owner world is a place where there is a dispassionate and invisible ruler of a planet with few rules: stay inside the marked areas and no population over two billion. In "Proctors", the action follows a scientist and law enforcement as they seek to find a visitor from another planet who has been abducted by men who don't believe that the Owner exists and want to make their own rules. In "The Owner", a family is on the run for disobeying a religious stricture but find the Owner themselves. Both these stories show societies developing differently under the same basic rules.

Asher takes on religion in two very different stories. In "The Thrake", a missionary comes to a planet to determine if a new humanoid species is sentient, only to get a nasty surprise about the nature of sentience. In the final story, "Gurnard", the religion is based on the life cycle of a parasite. The story got more interesting as I understood the circumstances. The parasite has a complex life cycle involving compelling animals to take actions that further the parasite's needs. Part of the life cycle concerns the rites of a religious order. The story follows a man named Beck as he is compelled to return to a church in order to carry a dying fish to its birth waters.

All of the stories here have a good mix of science and action. Asher never fails to provide a good story based on interesting scientific ideas. A-

The Skinner

The Skinner is one of those books that is so different from anything else that it blows you away. Neal Asher is also the author of Cowl, which I read back in 2008. The style and action are similar in The Skinner, though the story and characters are totally different.

The novel's setting is the distant future on the ocean planet Spatterjay. Arriving on the planet is Sable Keech, a dead monitor (marshal or police officer) who is determined to bring justice to the last surviving member of gang of slavers. Keech is kept "alive" by cyber technology and preservative fluid flowing through his body. He is joined by Janer, a man in the employ of a was hive mind, bringing two wasps with him. They join up with Erlin, a woman returning to the planet after a long absence to seek her lover Ambel.

The life on Spatterjay has special longevity due to the virus that keeps creatures alive. Once infected, humans--known as Hoopers--become immune to most forms of death and live long lives. Wounds that would kill a normal human heal quickly on Hoopers. This is especially true of the Old Captains, who have been around for seven hundred years since the war that ended the slave trade. Long life gives the Old Captains skin that immediately closes over wounds, and also a wise perspective on life. The Hoopers live on the edge of Polity civilization, enjoying protection but largely living free.

The harsh life in the ocean is echoed in the vicious actions by some of the characters. The creatures continually feed on each other; anyone falling in the water soon finds himself covered in leeches. Some of the Hoopers can pull plugs of skin out of the leeches' mouths and push them back into the holes in their skin, though the skin of the Old Captains closes up too fast for that. As the reader learns over the course of the novel, the slave traders also used their human cattle cruelly. When one of the other slavers returns to the planet to kill Keech, she treats everyone as mere tools to her satisfaction.

Pain is an element in Hooper life. With the ability to survive great wounds, they still stuffer great pain. Part of what bring Erlin back to Spatterjay is to find a reason to keep going after three hundred years. The pain is a reminder for some that they are still alive.

In addition to the exciting setting of the planet, the characters are fun and well-drawn. Of course there is Keech, somewhat of an enigma but familiar as a determined lawman. The Old Captains and other Hoopers are all lively and full of spunk. They do not always have the same agenda, but they stick together. Aside from the living and undead characters, the AI characters are central to the story. The Warden is the
benevolent ruler of Spatterjay and its moon, controlling everything that enters and leaves the system. Sniper, one of its primary subminds, is an upgraded war drone with its own sense of humor and goals.

The virus brings to the story the theme of death and rebirth. In addition to Keech, Hoopers can be eaten by leeches but still return to life as long as enough of their nervous system survives. The title character is the old Hooper leader in the slave trade whose existence is somewhere between life and death, humanity and pure hunger. Asher does a great job of tying these elements together. Another slave trader is kept in stasis between sleep and wakening.

The entire book is filled with action from start to finish. It also has a good bit of humor with it. The back story gets filled in gradually, and we learn about all the characters' history as the plot progresses. Even with all the Hoopers, AI and aliens, there are no extra characters, no loose ends. Everything comes together in a satisfying finish--not an easy task with this many plot threads. The action is exciting without being overdone, and the characters all feel real. This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. A

The God Engines

The God Engines is a science fiction novella by John Scalzi. The main character is Ean Tephe, captain of a starship with a god as its source of power. The society is ruled by a theocracy and uses the captured enemy gods of its Lord to power its technology. Tephe's counterpart is the religious leader on board his ship, Priest Andso. Tephe and Andso are occasionally at odds as they vie for power, but it is Tephe who is assigned a special task to convert the people of newly found planet.

As the story unfolds the faith of Tephe and Andso are tested. Tephe must figure out what he believes, for his faith has implications on the structure of their society and the life of everyone aboard his ship. The climax is a distillation of the conflicts of faith as it is tried by reason. At the crucial moment, he must make a decision based on conflicting lines of thought.

The story is largely driven by dialogue and the inner thoughts of the protagonist. I felt like there was room for more detail on the society, the ship, and the people; however it works well as it is. The style is sparse yet the plot is gripping. The end provides a set of intriguing twists that keep the reader pulled in. B

The Minority Report and other stories

Philip K. Dick had a wonderful talent for taking a great philosophical idea and turning it into a fun story. Most of his stories that I've read deal with a single protagonist struggling against a powerful force. Nearly all have the protagonist making a discovery that makes him question the nature of reality. Along with this is a healthy dose of paranoia.

In "The Minority Report" the main character is Anderton, the creator and manager of the Precrime unit, a police unit that catches murderers before they commit their crime. He is stuck in a quandary when the system reveal his name as the next murderer. He first suspects his new assistant, then his wife. His whole worldview comes into question, since his career is founded on the accuracy of the Precrime unit, which has eradicated murder in the society. One way he can make sense of the situation is to actually kill the victim, who is the alternate manager of the Army side of Precrime. He comes to realize that the three versions of the report include three different realities, each one responding to his awareness of the previous.

"We Can Remember it for You Wholesale" has a protagonist who decides to have memories of a trip to Mars implanted instead of an actual trip. When the facility starts the process, they find that Quail already has memories of a trip to Mars. Though they try to send him away, he returns and demands his money back. Quail struggles to make sense of the two sets of memories in his mind. Is he an office clerk who fantasizes about Mars, or a secret agent who has been a spy there? The end is different from the movie, but with an interesting twist.

"Paycheck" concerns an engineer named Jennings who finishes a contract with a secretive company and has his memory of his last eighteen months erased. Unlike Quail, Jennings has no memory of his work, but when he is detained by the state's secret police, he discovers that the seven trinkets he decided to receive in lieu of his pay help him to escape and find out more about the secretive company. In "Second Variety", a long war between North America and Russia is left to the killer robots that the Americans have created. Major Hendricks discovers that the robots have evolved to a point where they can mimic humans, and are not only targeting the Russians. These two stories have interesting premises but lack the philosophical punch of the first two. The concepts drive interesting and action-filled plots. Jennings in "Paycheck" is fighting against a secretive company and a powerful state; Quail is battling for his memory and identity as part of his fight against the powerful spy agency. Dick excels and making fun stories that make the reader think. One finds oneself questioning reality along with the characters. A-

Childhood's End

Childhood's End is a short science fiction novel written by Arthur C. Clarke and published in 1953. Reading this book is an experience in history as well as fiction. The story is a snapshot of ideas of what the future would look like from the fifties. Adding to the experience is that realization about a third of the way through that I had read it before.

In the first part of the story aliens come to Earth in vast spaceships and enforce peace among humanity with mysterious powers. The Overlords, as they are referred to by humans, are very secretive and only communicate directly with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Stormgren. I found the widespread acceptance of this policy--that of imperial power or even slave master--to be a bit unbelievable, especially given the paranoia rampant today. There is a minority of people who are against the Overlords but they are gently neutralized. In general the people of the world are pleased with the outbreak of peace.

Part two takes place fifty years later, when the Overlords have established widespread peace and harmony and finally reveal themselves. The fact that they look like the devil is explained as a function of racial memory and the fluid nature of time. A couple, George and Jean, are at a party with an Overlord where there is a seance. Strange answers come out, including an apparently accurate answer to the question of the Overlords' home plant. Jan Rodricks, the man who asks the question, figures out a way to stow away aboard an Overlord starship and becomes the first person to leave the solar system. This section introduces the concept of parapsychology which is an important theme in the last section. It becomes apparent that there is something extra going on with the human race that the Overlords are not talking about. While the Overlords are mysterious, humanity becomes complacent.

In the third part, George and Jean's children start to change. It begins with nightmares and proceeds to telekinesis. The Overlords reveal that while they themselves are seen as powerful beings, they serve a much more powerful being. Humanity is being groomed for something higher. The end, while extraordinary bordering on the unbelievable, is quite astounding. The story is a fine piece of science fiction from a time of classic sf. The characters are mostly pretty thin and largely serve the purpose of the plot. But there is a grand sense of wonder, from the first appearance of the alien ships to the tour of an alien world that Jan Rodricks gets. The concept of humanity being transformed is an intriguing one. It brings out a sense of wonder as well as a sense of quiet loss. It's quite an achievement. B+

McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales is an anthology of short stories published in 2003. The stories are somewhat thrilling but of mixed quality. They have elements of alternative history, science fiction, and westerns.

One of the highlights is Elmore Leonard's "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman". The story follows the title character in two episodes: the first when he witnesses a mobster kill a police officer, and then when years later when he sets a trap for the mobster and gets the drop on him. The main character is a tough young man who becomes a capable and crafty lawman.

Another interesting tale is Glen David Gold's "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter". It is about the death of a circus elephant, and the history of one of the clowns that may have been involved with the elephant for years. The story is a tragedy with a strange twist. I enjoyed reading "Catskin" by Kelly Link, even when I realized I had read it once in another anthology. It is a very weird tale of fantasy, in which a murdered witch's cat leads the witch's surviving son on a mission of vengeance. The story is full of transformations and strange powers.

Neil Gaiman's "Closing Time" is a gem of a story, told inside a framing story by someone at an English club. The narrator tells of an eerie old house and the spooky woods, where three boys end up getting lost. It evokes the dark side of childhood, when mysteries are everywhere and dark things are just around the corner. Michael Moorcock's "The Case of the Nazi Canary" is a fun alternate history story concerning Adolph Hitler and the death of his niece in 1931. Another fun tale was Michael Chabon's "The Martian Agent, a Planetary Romance". It's another alternate history story in a Wild West where Queen Victoria still rules and General Custer is a rebel fighting for freedom. It follows two sons of one of Custer's rebels as they escape and are caught and try to survive in a tough group home.

Some of these stories were fun and imaginative, with interesting historical twists. The characters are strong and well-drawn, within the confines of a short story. But some of the stories fell a little flat. I was a bit disappointed in the stories by Stephen King and Michael Crichton's stories. Other stories were adequate but hardly what I'd call thrilling. They certainly had a fantastic or strange setting but the story didn't quite come together. The stories cover a wide range of settings, moods, and characters. B-

The Best of Gene Wolfe

The Best of Gene Wolfe is a retrospective of Wolfe's short stories going back to 1970. Wolfe is a great writer of science fiction and fantasy, and can create fascinating short stories as well as novels.

The collection starts with "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories," a whimsical story about a boy and his mother and his fantasies coming to life. A follow up is "The Death of Dr. Island", a bittersweet story about a boy on an island of land in a sea inside a space sphere. Nicholas is a mental patient taken to the island as a last ditch effort to make him better. However he must interact with two other patients there. The island speaks to him in the whispers of the plants and the ocean. He learns a painful lesson when one of his companions gets better at the expense of the other. The story is enchanting and moving.

"The Fifth Head of Cerberus" is a somewhat dark story about a boy and his brother raised in a mysterious mansion on a colonized world. The boy has a sinister relationship with his father, who calls him forth each night to speak a stream of consciousness until he passes out. Slowly he comes to a realization of his true identity. The tale evokes questions of personhood and determining one's fate.

Most of Wolfe's characters find an inner strength. They are typically young men or boys thrown into an awkward position and forced to change. An example is the protagonist of "The Eyeflash Miracles", a blind boy in an future world who has vivid dreams where he can see. The dreams become more real as the story progresses. He must fight both in real life and his dreams to survive.

One different protagonist is the title character of "Forlesen", who wakes up one morning with a wife and children and a job he knows nothing about. He stumbles through the day trying to fake everything and ends up in a coffin when he comes home from work. To me it is an allegory about stumbling through life.

There are other small gems in the book, such as "The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton", a story of deception and intrigue. Or "Straw", about medieval warriors in a hot air balloon. All of the stories are fanciful and intriguing. Wolfe is a great writer, and this volume is a great collection of stories. I find the fantasy in his stories very alluring. A-

The Sirens of Titan

It is a strange feeling reading a book and slowly discovering that you have read it before. I thought I had read Kurt Vonnegut Jr's The Sirens of Titan, but I couldn't remember any details about it. So I recently picked it up from the library. About a quarter of the way through I recognized a section. It described how Malachi Constant's father made his money in the stock market by picking up a Gideon's Bible in his hotel room and picking consecutive pairs of letters and finding a stock symbol with those letters. As I continued, the rest of the story fell into place.

Malachi Constant is a playboy billionaire, the richest man on Earth. He believes that he has been blessed by fortune. He is invited to the mansion of Winston Niles Rumfoord, a man who became stuck in a space phenomenon so that he appears on different planets with different periods. He meets with Constant and tells him some of his future (Rumfoord being somewhat unstuck in time, much like Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five). Among the things he says is that Constant will marry and breed with Rumfoord's wife Beatrice on Mars. After this, both Beatrice and Constant try to do everything they can to avoid going to Mars. However, they are both "recruited" by Martian agents and taken to Mars where their memories are wiped.

On Mars, Constant is known as Unk, and older soldier who is an enlisted man. The Martian army is preparing to invade Earth. The army is controlled not by a conventional chain of command but by secret agents planted among the enlisted men and lower level officers. These agents use mind control devices to force them to do their bidding. This is quite an inventive scenario that turns military organization on its head, though there doesn't seem to be a point to it all. Unk is forced to strangle his best friend in front of the entire army, though he doesn't remember anything. His friend manages to whisper something to him before dying, and Unk tracks down a letter that he had written to himself about stuff that he remembered before getting his memory wiped again and again. Here he finds that he has a wife and son on Mars who don't know him.

The Martian invasion of Earth, run by Rumfoord, is a failure, as designed. He intends the Martians to be slaughtered so that he can bring a new religion to Earth. Unk (Constant) and his secret commander Boaz travel to Mercury due to Rumfoord's programming of their ship. My favorite line from the book is about why the ships have two buttons instead of one: "The off button was connected to nothing. It was installed at the insistence of Martian mental-health experts, who said that human beings were always happier with machinery they thought they could turn off." Boaz and Unk are stranded on Mercury until they can figure out how to get their ship out of the caverns. The native species of Mercury, harmoniums, are thin kite-like creatures who are attracted to the blissful frequencies around them.

Back on Earth, Rumfoord has founded the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, a religion that has become the major religion of the world. Its main tenet is that everything that happens in the universe is due to chance. However, Rumfoord undercuts his message by controlling events on Mars and Earth, especially the life of Malachi Constant. Rumfoord, with his knowledge of the future, is able to shape events away from pure randomness. Unk returns to Earth as the fulfiller of Rumfoord's prophecy, the last straggler from the Martian Army. In front of a huge crowd, Rumfoord reveals him to be the conceited playboy billionaire Malachi Constant. In shame, Constant gets in a space ship with his wife and son to go to Titan, where they live the rest of their lives (except for Constant's last moments when he dies on Earth).

Rumfoord's meddling in Constant's life is echoed in the meddling of human history by the people of Salo, the alien robot stranded on Titan. Salo's home world has been sending signals to Earth for millennia in order to get a single small, seemingly insignificant spare part to his ship. So despite human history having a single goal, the events of a single human's life are capricious. This part is reminiscent of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's series, where the whole point of the Earth is to provide a single question to the answer of life. However, here the purpose is much more ridiculous and pointless.

Vonnegut writes with his usual wit. His writing is wry and ironic. Ruthless, he builds up characters only to tear them down. The characters are largely there to illustrate his theme of humans being at the whims of fate. I can detect themes and a style in this story that he will build on in Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five. As an earlier work of his, published in 1959, it doesn't feel quite as big a novel. It's still enjoyable, and fun and easy to read. B