Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

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I Did Not Finish at 37 percent. Sigh. I don’t know. I either love John Scalzi or am totally baffled at what he is trying to do and find myself getting irritated. I was always wary of space operas, but for the most part really enjoy them now due to The Murderbot series. And I did love the first book in Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. But it’s been hit or miss with me the past few years because it seems to me most of his books are just […]

Please Search Hand-Pulled Noodles Near Me

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

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After the ghost kitchen they worked at is shut down, a group of robots decide to start up their own restaurant serving hand-pulled noodles, but anti-robot prejudice threatens their success. Immediately after reading this book, I looked up the nearest place I could get my hands on hand-pulled noodles, so in that regard this has been an absolute success. I have never had them before but I am somehow craving them anyway. I picked up this book because it’s been so highly recommended on Cannonball […]

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 […]

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. […]



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