I first read Dan Simmons‘s Hyperion in the early 1990s – the Hyperion Cantos is quite famous and I would occasionally see Hyperion listed in Amazon recommendations and ‘top’ lists (see the ISFDB Top 100 Lists and Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books from npr books (note that you may get some amusement out of searching for the npr list since it was very successful in generating commentary…) – but I really never felt any urge to pick it up again… My mistake! I recently read Hyperion (again) and The Fall of Hyperion and these are amazing – interesting format, great universe, interesting issues of faith and god, time travel, sentient AIs, space battles, politics… Classic! I wonder about younger me’s taste in books…

While reading these books I thought a lot about the amount of violence in the science fiction books that I have read… I suppose that there is some amount of violence in nearly every book I have read – but the scale of death that science fiction has imagined for the future seems… excessive? depressing? Certainly at least thought worthy…

Rating: 5 of 5
First Read: Hyperion – Early 1990s; Fall of Hyperion – February, 2012

Hyperion
Fall of Hyperion

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I don’t usually pay much attention to Amazon’s recommendations – but after finishing 1Q84 I wanted something new and, for whatever reason, the Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey jumped out at me on Amazon’s list.

Wool takes place in a bleak future where the characters live in self sufficient underground silos with only a vague understanding of the past or the world outside. I suppose that is a fairly ‘standard’ science fiction scenario – but what makes this book great are the details! I was delighted as the plot/world/characters went in directions that I would not of guessed and I was hooked after only a few pages!

Rating: 4 of 5
First Read Date: April 2012

Wool Omnibus (Wool 1-5)

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I am sad to say that the first time I saw Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear (official site) on Amazon I skipped over it because of the rating – in retrospect a somewhat sad reminder to myself about the value of ratings… Thankfully on the Potpourri of Science Fiction Literature blog I came across a review of Hull Zero Three that immediately made me add it to my reading list!

To describe the setting – a star ship hundreds of years into a colonization mission – or the plot – awakening without memory in the depths of a mysterious ship – might be a good teaser for the book, but the real reason to read the book is the main character’s dilemma/puzzle/problem of who he is. Awakening without a complete memory is really the least of his problems – who are you if you were thrust out into space hundreds of years ago, engineered/created many times over by a star ship and given incomplete memories that you never lived? Quite an interesting question I think…

Part of me wanted the book to be longer to allow for the characters to develop and adventure more – but I appreciate that the length allows for quite a few ideas without endless rumination, perhaps the better choice.

Rating: 4 of 5
First Read Date: November 2011

Hull Zero Three

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I don’t have a good enough memory or record of what I was reading in the late 1990s or early 2000s to know if this is the truth – but the way I remember it is that after a lull where I had trouble finding any science fiction I was interested in reading I came across Alastair Reynolds’s (official site and blog) Revelation Space and that was the start of renewed love for science fiction!

If you like ‘hard’ science fiction everything in the Revelation Space Universe that I have read is – in my opinion – worth reading (maybe even worth reading more than once…). However, I am pretty much a complete ‘fan’ of this series and it would be absurd to actually trust my opinion – so I guess you should just start reading!

I would consider the books below the ‘core’ novels – I would recommend reading these first and ‘in-order’:

Revelation Space – Amazon
Chasm City – Amazon
Redemption Ark – Amazon
Absolution Gap – Amazon

I think the books/stories below are better read after you have read some of the ‘core’ novels above:

The Prefect – Amazon
Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days – Amazon
Galactic North – Amazon

Rating: 5 of 5
First Read Date: Starting early 2000s (most books after Revelation Space just after the US release)

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I don’t remember seeing Sea of Glass, by Barry B. Longyear, on ‘top’ science fiction lists – or stumbling across it in website recommendations; but I do remember this novel from reading it in (about…) 1990. What I remember is the brutality, terror and a dystopian future world on the brink of war.

The novel follows the life of Thomas Windom – the strange years trapped inside his parent’s home hiding from a population control program designed by a computer in charge of half the world, brutal years at a camp for illegal children, hopeful years on the run, puzzling years linked into the computer as a legal citizen employed by the government and years supporting the system that was (at least partly) responsible for his earliest agonies.

The brutal computer manipulated dystopian future is what I remember from reading it 20 years ago. When rereading it recently I was much more engaged by the issues of faith and fate that the novel explores.

I am not sure why in the past twenty years I did not stumble on and reread this book, it is too good to be absent from top/’best of’ lists! What good luck to have found it again!

Rating: 4 of 5
First Read Date: 1990 (about), reread October, 2011

Amazon – Sea of Glass

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Cyberpunk! James Strickland delivers the classic elements in Looking Glass – a future United States now carved into different countries, powerful corporations, cyber space, techy jargon, decks, jacking in and action! The strength of this novel is not in offering something insightful and new – but rather in being an intelligent and fascinating recombination of science fiction/cyber punk ideas. If you are a fan of William Gibson‘s Sprawl Trilogy it is safe to say that this is a great read for the atmosphere and the action. A good diversion from the text book I am reading for my current class…

Rating: 3 of 5
First Read Date: September 2011

Looking Glass

Note that in James Strickland’s comment on this post (below) he points out that there is another book in the same world: Irreconcilable Differences – which has now been added to my reading list…

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