Cannonball Read 16

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“Peterson remembered with a smile that the US Department of the Interior had made a thorough prediction of trends in 1937, and had missed atomic energy, computers, radar, antibiotics, and World War II. Yet they all kept on, with this simple-minded linear extrapolation that was, despite a bank of computers to refine the numbers, still merely a new way to be stupid in an expensive fashion.”

Timescape by Gregory Benford

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The world is dying and some some scientists make a literal last ditch effort to send a message back in time in an attempt to avert the present day ecological crisis. We follow both the present day scientists in their attempts to save the world, and the scientists in the past as they try to decode the strange interference that seems to be coming from nowhere. I had such good luck reading classic sf in 2020, but in 2021 and now 2022 my choices have […]

My general feelings for this book can be summed up as UGHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1) by Kim Stanley Robinson

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I think I am allergic to Kim Stanley Robinson. Loved the idea behind this book, extremely disliked the execution. I tried reading 2312 years back, and similarly, any cool tingly science feelings I got from that book (which if I’m remembering right, starts with a moving, mechanized city on Mercury) was completely murdered by the boring as hell characters and lack of emotional through-line. I just remember the boredom with that one, but here I was not only bored but frustrated and annoyed by KSR’s attempt […]

Thank.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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This review is brought to you in three levels, according to your tolerance for spoilers. I would like to state, for the record, I think anyone reading this review who hasn’t read the book should go in knowing as little as possible. If you think that’s just a swell idea, please remain at review level one, no spoilers: only the info you can find on the dust jacket. Level two will have some basic premise spoilers, and I’ll go into a little detail about the […]

What It Is to Be Human

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

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I’m going to assume that the reader of this review has already read the first two books in Chambers’ Wayfarer series (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit). While there’s nothing specifically barring you from starting with this book, you’ll get a much better idea of the larger world if you start at the beginning. Well, I did it. I finished the series, despite really not wanting to. I hear that a new book is possibly on the way […]

A place to belong

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

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You guys, these books. I really, really liked The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. It made me deliriously happy with the intricate character profiles, the worldbuilding, the way I felt like I was among friends almost from the start of the story. I didn’t want to leave the Wayfarer. And I knew the second book — this book — was going to do that, leave the Wayfarer, and journey off with Pepper and Blue to Port Coriol. And I’d met them already and […]

“The totality of human endeavor is nothing when set against the stars.”

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch

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I’ll come across book recommendations from a variety of sources. Lots of times I’ll have read about them on my own, or found my way to them via other authors that I already like. Sometimes somebody I know will recommend something that I will actually read. Occasionally I’ll wander around one of my local libraries in a familiar section and find something decent that way. Lately I’ve stumbled on a few through YouTubers or podcasters I like, and this was one of those. The Gone […]



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