Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Big Damn Robot Heroes, Sir

Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill

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I don’t compare things to Firefly lightly, especially when they’re not set in space. But darned if this book didn’t give Firefly vibes the whole time “Rusty Robot Face” by Anonymous Account is licensed under CC BY 2.0 . Exhibit A: The War, by which I mean the war between robots and humanity that so many folks worry about. The robots win, but robot utopia doesn’t last very long. Our heroine, Brittle, was in The War, and flashes back on it often; even though she was on the […]

Prince? Assassin? Both?

The Boy Wonder by Juni Ba, Chris O'Halloran, Aditya Bidikar

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When I learned that Dick Grayson was only one of several Robins I was probably in my thirties. How could this be? I mean Bruce Wayne stayed the same, why didn’t Robin? Did he really need to be Nightwing? Red Hood? Red Robin? What does this prove?  Honestly, I don’t know if it has to prove anything, but in Juni Ba, Chris O’Halloran, Aditya Bidikar (and others) The Boy Wonder they collected some of the stories that focus on the newest addition the SuperHero of […]

Three sci-fi books making me think about robots and AI

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

Rose/House by Arkady Martine

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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The end of January to the very beginning of March has had the good fortune to have three excellent books looking at robots, AI, sentience, autonomy, finding meaning, and limitations on the flawed way humanity has programmed robots/AI.  While setting up this post, I just realized all the author’s first name start with A.  Huh, kind of interesting. First up was a novella by Annalee Newitz, Automatic Noodle.  This is the most fun and lighthearted of the bunch.  It is the year 2064, a few years […]

The Obelisk Gate: Things get worse before they get better (I hope)

The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

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Possible spoilers for The Fifth Season – Proceed with awareness. The Obelisk Gate is the second book in the Broken Earth Trilogy. In this installment, we follow two main stories – Essun and Nassun after each has arrived at a new, but separate, comm and the years that follow. Nassun is Essun’s daughter. Nassun had been taken by her father, Jija, after he murdered her little brother, Uche. We heard of them in the first book, but we officially meet them as they travel south […]

They did the monster mash

Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove

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I kept looking at this one last year since it would come up on various lists and then finally picked up a copy. It also ended up being announced as the February choice for the Buffering podcast book club which worked out perfect – always great when book club just helps you prioritize a book you already have. This novel was just pulpy, campy fun, combining classic horror creatures with AIs (the good fictional kind that make you discover things about humanity) and space travel. […]

Surprisingly, her utter lack of brains or personality is not her “Defect”

Conform by Ariel Sullivan

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Oh my god, this book. There are so many ways someone could have taken this premise and done something with it but it would have required some world building that makes sense. Or a protagonist that isn’t a wet blanket but also the most special girl to ever live. Supposedly Emeline is 27 but I would have just as easily believed she was a pod person created the day before the book started. This is a society built on class and eugenics. The very top […]



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