Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“Gully Foyle is my name, and Terra is my nation. Deep space is my dwelling place, and death’s my destination.”

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

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I did a little mini-binge of classic sf books at the end of February, and this one (which I’ve owned in audio for ages) was the first up. It’s also the one I’m the least sure about. The Stars My Destination is considered one of the most important works of sf, and Bester is nearly always mentioned in talks about the masters of the genre. This was the first book I’ve read by him, and his most well-known (although his other well-known book, The Demolished […]

Tenser, said the Tensor. Tenser, said the Tensor. Tension, apprehension, And dissension have begun.

The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

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This is the first novel to ever win the Hugo  Award, and if you’ve read The Stars My Destination, you won’t be surprised to find out that this book is kind of insane, amazingly inventive, kind of hard to read and follow, and seemingly way ahead of its time. It’s possible that this book won the Hugo because it’s ahead of its time or the publication of this novel and its winning the Hugo sort of ushered in a new time. But this belies the […]

Good, but not great

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I am so, so behind in my reviews, having read The Demolished Man easily over a month ago, so I’m raiding my increasingly decrepit memory bank for this review.  I used to read a lot of science fiction but have tended more towards the historical/fantasy over the past few years. When the sci-fi itch returned I thought I’d head for the man who gave me one of my favourite reads in years…The Demolished Man is good, but doesn’t stand anywhere near equal with The Stars […]

You pigs, you. You rut like pigs, is all. You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies. Got a genius in you and think crazies. Got a heart in you and feel empties. All a you.

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So there’s this kind of reverse engineering you can do with some music. It might be entirely bullshit, but it’s fun. What you do is take a band you like and trace back their entire career to a single influential song by a sort of demi-god of music that came before them. In some case, it might even be a single not, moment, riff, whatever. So mine: No Quarter by Led Zeppelin explains the entire career of Tool. Others might be: Run run run by […]



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