Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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It walks, talks, learns, and wants to take over the world

How to Train Your Evil Robot, by Joy McCullough and Eduardo Medeiros

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I would have liked a smidgen more technical information in the book, How to Train Your Evil Robot, but overall this is a fun read about AI or of course, artificial intelligence, but the way it is presented mostly allows for the amount we are given to lead to an understanding of what AI is and what it can do. I read via an online reader copy, therefore I could see the graphic novel format, but am also assuming it might be a bit of […]

A Theory of Dinniman Sucess

Operation: Bounce House by Matt Dinniman

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I have read 7 of the 8 currently available Dungeon Crawl Carl books so far, but it took me until Operation: Bounce House to figure out how to describe what I’ve read of Matt Dinniman in terms of genre. Operation Bounce House is not part of the Carl series; it’s a stand-alone, with different cast and different universe, but also some distinct similarities including genre and general tone. The premise is still conventional sci-fi: human colonists of New Sonora are mostly farmers who, with the […]

Not-so-distant future

Identical by Leah Hayes

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Sometimes I read a book that makes me both love and hate it simultaneously. It is an emotional book that can make me ill. It is something that I both understand on a miniscule level and one where I can not understand it at all. Identical by Leah Hayes (read via an online reader, due mid September 2026) is one of those books. All my love goes to the minimal illustrations, as the story is too sad and thoughtful to think about. Things are artistic, […]

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 […]

In case you were wondering, there aren’t really any werewolves in this book.

The Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simak

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Quite an interesting little book. And charming, in the way that a lot of 1960s/70s sci-fi is charming—I love the way that people thought the future might be (in this case, a world government, smart houses that take care of humans and that can fly), and also in this case, Simak’s imagination doesn’t really gel with science as we know it. But if you suspend your disbelief, you get a weird little book about a man found frozen in space who turns out to have […]

The Murderbot Diaries – the novellas and the short stories. Some were re-reads, some were new to me

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy by Martha Wells

Rogue Protocol by Matha Wells

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory by Martha Wells

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

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My original reviews and ratings for the first four novellas can be found here. CBR17 Bingo: Favourite (goes for the whole series, and the protagonist) All Systems Red Nowhere Book Bingo 25: First in a series   It’s been five years since I first read The Murderbot Diaries, and it was interesting to revisit the original novella. This was selected as the January selection for my real-life book club (with the option to read the other three if people had time). While a lot of the members really enjoyed […]



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