What’s the best thing that can come from a debilitating illness that renders your body useless? The internet, of course, and a bit of sci-fi neural networking voo-dooery. Which brings us to our story and a future where people are “locked” in by Haden’s syndrome. While most people affected by this illness just experience flu-like symptoms, a small percentage of those afflicted suffer complete physical, but not mental, paralysis. Technology has allowed these individuals, known as “Hadens”, to live productive lives via brain downloads (or […]
“My job is to be your loyal opposition.”
The progression of the Old Man’s War series has been pretty clever. On its face, the series is a story about humans in space fighting against the aliens who want to kill us. From the beginning, we suspected it couldn’t possibly be so simple, but while the first two books were tasked with introducing readers to the expanded universe, including the political and military branches that oversee and enforce human space activity, they only included speculation on the other races’ intentions toward humanity. Finally, in […]
John Scalzi is good to me
My reading pace this year has slowed down seemingly tremendously, though in actuality probably not that much. The consequence of this is that my first temptation is, when I do have a spare moment to read, to only read books that I suspect I’ll race through quickly so I can get that quick high off finishing a story. That impulse has led me to put off reading the Old Man’s War series, despite it sitting near the top of my TBR for the last three […]
“In other words, crew deaths are a feature, not a bug.”
I am so behind on my reviews! I’m going to try to post the 7 (!!) that I owe at some point today — wish me luck! Starting with Redshirts: A Novel with 3 Codas. 5 stars for the novel itself. About 1.5 stars for the totally unnecessary codas. “God is a hack,” he said. “He’s a writer on an awful science fiction television show, and He can’t plot His way out of a box. How do you have faith when you know that?” Set in […]
Wrestling with Religion and the nature of God
I really don’t know where to begin with this novella. It’s a very thought provoking read but I’m just not sure I enjoyed it. I will say, I do think it’s probably one of John Scalzi’s better works, but I also don’t think that fans of his novels would enjoy it. I also can’t decide between three or four stars. I think writing wise, it probably deserves 4-5 stars, as I said I think it’s probably the best book Scalzi has written. However on a […]
Where is my mind?
Look at me, trying new things! Based on a great review from ChainedVase https://cannonballread.com/2016/02/sci-fic-mystery-yes-please/, I went a bit outside of my rut and tried some sci-fi. What a great read! In Scalzi’s very creative and fleshed-out world a widespread virus has resulted in millions of people being struck with Haden’s Syndrome, named for the first lady who was one of the early public victims. Haden’s sufferers (called Hadens) are “locked in” to their bodies with full mental capacity and no voluntary nervous system. Due to years of […]