Neal Stephenson’s third novel, Snow Crash made him a writer to read. An often hilarious successor to the cyberpunk novels of the 1980s, it finally receives its Bureau review.
Category Archives: Books
Humane Society: Stories about Tragedy and Golf
–A good book, maybe, but is it genre?
–Well, there’s a ghost in one story and a dream-vision in another.
–Do you know this guy? Did you get a free copy to review? What’s the deal here?
–Look, just bear with me on this one….
Jack Chalker Seriously Ill
Here’s a chance where we can actually do something before it’s too late.
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The Confusion
This volume contains two novels, Bonanza and Juncto, that take place concurrently during the span 1689-1702. Rather than present one, then the other… I have interleaved sections of one with sections of the other so that the two stories move forward in synchrony. It is hoped that being thus con-fused shall render them less confusing to the Reader.
–Neal Stephenson.
Maybe. Then again, maybe not.
–The Timeshredder
Free eBooks all month
eReader.com is giving away free eBooks every day this month. Logistically, it’s a sale of $0, so you’ll need to create an account to take advantage of the deal. This also includes submitting a credit card number, which I’m told is used as part of the eBook encryption to discourage file sharing. Still, free books are free books. The promo is here.
Book Review – “Flatlander”
Today, more Larry Niven. Tomorrow, Smallville.
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Book Review – “World of Ptavvs”
In another short break from the Halloween schedule,
we’ve got some Larry Niven.
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Book Review – “Tales of Known Space”
I was planning on two more reviews today
(Futurama: Vol. 1 and Supreme Power Vol.
2: Power and Principalities), but that’s a lot
of articles for a Sunday. I think those will be
written, but not posted until later this week.
Book Review – “Hawkes Harbor”
Want a break from the Halloween movie reviews? How
about a vampire novel review?
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Iron Council
Its headlamps were eyes now, predictably, bristling with thick wire lashes, its cowcatcher a jawful of protruding teeth. The hug tusks of wilderness animals were strapped and bolted to them. The front nub of its chimney wore a huge welded nose, the smokestack ajut from it in nonsense anatomy. Sharpened girders gave it horns. And behind that enormous unwieldy face the engine was crowded with trophies and totems. The skulls and chitin headcases of a menagerie glared dead ferocity from its flanks: toothy and agape, flat, eyeless, horned, lamprey-mouthed with cilia-teeth, bone-ridged, shockingly human, intricate. Where they had them the trophies’ skins were tanned, drabbed by preservation, bones and teeth mazed with cracks and discoloured by smoke. The befaced engine wore dead like a raucous hunter god.
(339)
Imagine science and technology came to Middle-Earth. Now imagine that in place of hobbits, orcs, elves, and ents, you have steam-cyborgs, amphibious vodyanoi, insect-headed khepri, vegetable cactacae, ab-dead vampires, and a hundred other races. In place of epic heroism, imagine people so morally murky that Sauron would walk away from the worst of them in disgust. Mix SF, fantasy, steampunk, and maritime epic, people the result with psychologically complex (and complexed) characters, and have a gifted writer tell the tale. The world is Bas-Lag, created by China Mieville. He introduced it in Perdido Street Station and revisited it in The Scar, both extraordinary books by an extraordinary literary talent.
In 2004 he published his third and most political Bas-Lag novel, Iron Council.