Dune (Frank Herbert) - Think LoTR scale epic storytelling, but sci fi. I love this one. You'll probably get hooked and want to read the sequels, but the first is by far the best. The 2nd and 3rd are worth it, but I found 4/5/6 pretty disappointing (especially 6). The film is terrible (and has Sting in it).
There is another miniseries of films. They were alright and made it a lot easier to keep to the story rather than having one large movie.
Anyhew...
Reading is a good way to pass the time.
So far, I have read 3 and a half books this year.
"JPod", by Douglas Copeland, is an amusing read. It's about a group of programmers for a games company who constantly get derailed from creating a good game by upper management people with issues. Somewhere along the way, the central character gets involved in a people smuggling ring among other things.
Random beyond belief, but I recommend it for those with a somewhat odd sense of humour. It is self-referential too (or at least with respect to the author, who makes several interesting appearances in the book).
"Nova War", by Gary Gibson, is the second part of a Sci-Fi trilogy. I didn't realise it was the second part until after purchase (I thought it was the first part
)... so the start was a bit of a muddle for me. The early and mid sections are a little slow, but it probably makes much more sense if you read the original book and the pace livens up in the final half of the book. It's set in the deep future. Humans and numerous other races are under the protection and authority of "The Shoal", an aquatic race that managed Faster than Light technology by way of ancient alien findings. In the previous book, I think, the main characters managed to send a star in to supernova... and this has massive implications in a galactic conflict between the Shoal and another species called the Emissaries.
The various alien species dealt with within the book are pretty good, from the Aquatic members of The Shoal, to the insanely violent and physically powerful Emissaries, to the Dragonfly-esque Bandanti. The politics and intrigue of the various races also work well together.
I probably should start the first book before giving a recommendation, but I think that it would be an ok series to read for short periods of time. Some intriguing SciFi thoughts contained within.
"Version 43", by Philip Palmer, is another SciFi future book.
In the future, there is a form of teleportation that is colloquially known as "The 50-50". It gets this name because that is roughly the chance you have of surviving the teleportation process. People will sometimes choose this option over incarceration or the death penalty and will get teleported to another human inhabited planet. This leads to planets being populated largely by criminals. This story is set on one such planet.
You follow the "life" of Cyborg Cop Version 43 as he tries to unravel a particularly heinous murder, whereby several people have had their bodies merged into one. Shady deals, corruption and downright nasty things are regular parts of daily life on the planet and it is the task of the Cop to try to fix the problems. As the Cyborg dies, you get Version 44 and so on, and in each version the mystery and the plot thickens.
There is a secondary story that is sometimes switched to, and that is of a planet of Hive Mind sand rats that moves forth in to space to eliminate all humans.
Unsurprisingly, these two stories intertwine in the end.
Equally unsurprisingly, given how much I have written about it, this is my favourite book so far this year and may even end up being my personal book of the year. It starts almost as sci-fi dark humour and ends up being a kind of cyberpunk mystery... but awesome. The Hive Rats, in particular, are great fun for both comedic, political and scientific interest. The Cyborg Cop, and its various stories are also good. Each time the Cop is "respawned", it analyses what happened in the previous version's life and comes to interesting conclusions about how they acted. It then goes about things in an entirely different manner. It occasionally has the feel of how a heavily cybernetically augmented person in Inquisitor or Necromunda would be like.
I recommend it for anyone who has an inkling of interest in any of the above. Top Marks for Uniqueness and Good Story Telling.
The book I am currently reading is John Connolly's "Every Dead Thing". It's a thriller detective mystery. The central character has just lost his wife and daughter to a particularly gruesome serial killer. He, of course, also happens to be a detective. He works on a seemingly separate disappearance case and tries to keep himself mentally together in the process.
I... am ambivalent to this one. There's certainly potential, and I happen to like this sort of thing, but somehow it does not quite work together and I am not really sure why. The pages are descriptive, and quite well done... but the scenes somehow do not mesh well together at times. Things seem to happen a little
ad hoc and the occasional
deus ex machina occurs.
This is the first book of a series and I am uncertain of whether I will continue to read some more of the series.
Advice on what to do if you start to crave human flesh:
- Start gnawing on your arm and see if it is delicious.
- Visit your local university and join practical Anatomy Lab classes. Hide in the room and resist the temptation to eat the bodies whilst there are people around. Feast when everyone has gone. Wait until more people come back and infect them. Spread the plague.
- Ensure that Zombie Fever does not reach me.
