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GMRC Review: The Computer Connection by Alfred Bester
Guest Blogger, Allie McCarn, reviews science fiction and fantasy books on her blog Tethyan Books. She has contributed many great book reviews to WWEnd and has generously volunteered to write some periodic reviews for our blog.
The Computer Connection by Alfred Bester
Published: Berkley/Putnam, 1975
Awards Nominated: Hugo, Nebula, and Locus SF Awards
The Book:
”There is a Group of eccentric immortals, who have all come into being after a shocking near-death experience. Some of them are actual historical celebrities, but others simply take on names that best describe their interests. Guig’s name comes from the “Grand Guignol”, and he earned it through his obsession with recruiting new immortals. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to orchestrate an experience of horrific near-death followed by a miraculous save, so all his attempts have ended in failure. Mostly, he just kills people in terrible ways—but with the best of intentions.
Guig has his sights set on a new recruit, a genius Cherokee scientist named Sequoya Guess. The conversion marks Guig’s first success, but then something unexpected happens. Guess has mysteriously formed a connection with a supercomputer known as the Extro. Guess may want to further his research and make life better for humankind, but the Extro has more homicidal intentions. Guig and his Group must face the terrible truth—if Guess can’t control the Extro, they may have to kill a man they think of as a brother.” ~Allie
This is my September novel for the Grand Master Reading Challenge. I picked this novel because I am generally a fan of Alfred Bester. He is a skilled wordsmith, and everything he writes seems to be brimming with energy and enthusiasm. While The Computer Connection was as ridiculous and energetic as usual, I don’t think it is one of his best novels. For any newcomers to Bester’s work, I would recommend starting with some of his more well-known novels, such as The Demolished Man or The Stars My Destination.
GMRC Review: Stepsons of Terra by Robert Silverberg
Chris Uhl (chuhl) can’t remember a time when he wasn’t a science fiction fan. He has a B.A. in Classics from Vassar College and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a teacher, a legal assistant, a college development officer, a salesman, and a film extra. Chris may be the only WWEnd reviewer who has no blog. This is his third GMRC review to feature in the WWEnd blog.
Stepsons of Terra is the story of Baird Ewing, a man on a mission to save his planet. His homeworld, a distant colony of Earth, lies in the path of implacable alien invaders. He travels to Earth, the first of his people to do so in 500 years, to get help, but he is shocked to find that Earthmen are not the resourceful supermen he was expecting. Instead they are weak, decadent and about to succumb to invasion themselves at the hands of the Sirians.
Like one of Alfred Hitchcock’s heroes, Ewing runs afoul of the Sirians, who refuse to believe the simple truth that he has come to enlist Earth’s help. They jump to the wrong conclusion and assume that Ewing has come to lead a revolution to save Earth so they harass, kidnap, and torture him.
In his introduction, Silverberg says that this novel, his sixth, is the first one in which “I was a trifle less flamboyant about making use of the pulp-magazine clichés [such as] feudal overlords swaggering about the stars. Rather, I would write a straightforward science fiction novel, strongly plotted but not unduly weighted towards breathless adventure.”
GMRC Review: Ring Around the Sun by Clifford D. Simak
Scott Lazerus came to Worlds Without End looking for a good list of books. He found David Pringle’s Best 100 Science Fiction Novels to his liking and is currently working his way through the list. He has posted a bunch of reviews for WWEnd including several for the GMRC. Be sure to check out Scott’s excellent blog series Forays into Fantasy too!
Clifford D. Simak’s stories embody contradictions. Like Ray Bradbury, his writing looks back longingly to an idyllic rural Midwestern childhood. As John Clute and David Pringle put it in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Simak “reigned as the finest pastoral elegist of his genre” from the Golden Age through the 1980s. Unlike Bradbury, though, Simak stuck with science fiction, rather than drifting into realism, and his books have always struck me as a strange combination of futuristic SF ideas and a criticism of the technological, social and economic trends that make the manifestation of those ideas possible. The main theme of Ring Around the Sun (1953), one of his most acclaimed novels, and the one that may come closest to crystallizing the themes that run throughout his career, is that humanity’s biological and social evolution hasn’t kept up with its technological capabilities, resulting in the inevitability that humanity will destroy itself.
In 1987, Earth is still threatened by Cold War superpower rivalries, with war seemingly always around the corner, while the ennui of modern life has led people to retreat into a movement called Pretentionism. Clubs have formed in which people get together to share their hobby of historical role-playing, retreating into an imagined past that implies a psychological rejection of the contemporary world. Jay Vickers is an introverted writer who disdains the Pretentionists, but realizes that his own retreat from the world into writing is just another symptom of the same social malaise.
Grand Master Reading Challenge August Review Winner: Allie McCarn
The August GMRC Review Poll is now closed and the winner is Allie McCarn (Allie) for her review of Man Plus by Frederik Pohl. Allie won the April contest for To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer.
The August review poll was a close one with 3 members sitting on 10 votes: Allie, Emil and CharlesDee. This was the first time we had a tie at the end of voting so we needed a tie breaker. Enter jynnantonnyx. I told him of the problem and he said “Hey, I forgot to vote.” and voilà, we had our tie breaker.
Allie will receive a T-shirt, a GMRC button and a set of commemorative WWEnd Hugo Award bookmarks as well as her choice of book from the WWEnd bookshelf. All runners-up will be getting a button and a set of bookmarks for their efforts.
The GMRC just keeps on truckin’! We’ve got 166 participants who have logged 603 books read and submitted 184 reviews. Many thanks to all involved!
GMRC Review: A for Anything by Damon Knight
Guest Blogger and WWEnd Member, Charles Dee Mitchell, has contributed a great many book reviews to WWEnd including his blog series Philip K. Dickathon and The Horror! The Horror! He can also be found on his own blog www.potatoweather.blogspot.com. This is Dee’s seventh GMRC review to feature in our blog.
Since January, I have read a novel a month by one of the winners of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, given by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. I thought I was about time to read a novel by the man himself. (Knight won the award in 1994. He was a founder of the SFWA and the award was named for him after his death in 2002.) Although several of the Grand Masters I have read I have been reading for the first time this year, Knight is perhaps the one I knew the least about. I would be hard pressed to name any of his books. Even though I worked around used books for thirty years, I cannot picture any of his covers or remember that he ever merited his own shelf. Somewhere along the way I picked up the fact that he wrote the short story “To Serve Man,” which became a classic Twilight Zone episode. (Don’t get on that ship! The book… the book… it’s a cookbook!) And so I picked up A for Anything with no expectations.
Perhaps I should not have read his first novel, although I am inclined to start at the first with an author. But I have to say this is the most peculiar book I have read in some time, and not in a particularly good way. Here’s what happens in the first three chapters.
GMRC Review: Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey
Guest Blogger and WWEnd member, valashain, reviews science fiction and fantasy books on his blog Val’s Random Comments which we featured in a previous post: Five SF/F Book Blogs Worth Reading. Val has posted many great reviews to WWEnd and this is his ninth for the GMRC. Be sure to visit his site and let him know you found him here.
As I’ve noted before, the Damon Knight memorial Grand Master Award is seriously short on female authors. Only four out of the twenty-eight winners are women. Since one of my objectives for this year is to read more work written by women I am going to try to read all four for this challenge. I read Forerunner by Andre Norton and The Wind’s Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin earlier this year. Next up is Anne McCaffrey, who was honoured with this award in 2005. Picking a book was a bit of a problem. McCaffrey is best known for her Pern novels, of which I have read exactly one: Dragonflight, published in 1968. I didn’t like it very much. I’m sure it was sensational at the time but forty years on, it seemed like a pretty mediocre novel to me. An Australian friend of mine is a bit better acquainted with McCaffrey’s oeuvre and she suggested I try Dragonsdawn (1988). Chronologically it is the first of the Pern novels (there are a few shorter pieces in the same era or even set before the novel) but McCaffrey wrote it some twenty years after Dragonflight. I must say, the fact that she had a bunch of novels under her belt by this time shows in the writing.
After a long journey though interstellar space, three ships full of colonists arrive in the Rukbat system where they intend to colonize the third planet. When they bought into the expedition, they knew it would be a one way trip. The ships are nearly out of fuel, they will be cannibalized to provide the colony with materials. Pern, as the third planet is referred to, is a remote place, far away from the busy shipping lanes of the galaxy and has only been surveyed briefly. The planet has developed its own ecology but is without sentient life. There is every possibility to create an utopian society, away from the wars and conflicts of the more densely populated regions of space. The colony is developing rapidly with only minor squabbles along the way when the colonists become aware of a major threat to their existence. Threadfall. Their rapidly declining technological resources will not be enough to save them. Other, more radical options will have to be considered.
WWEnd Grand Master Reading Challenge: August Review Poll
Here, at last, is the GMRC review poll for August! (Worldcon has thrown a monkey wrentch into just about everything here on WWEnd so we’re a bit behind on the GMRC and all over the site for that matter.) We featured 7 reviews in the blog last month, including 2 reviews each by 2 different reviewers, and it’s time to read the reviews and cast your vote for the best.
Remember, you don’t have to be a GMRC participant to vote so head on over to the forum and cast your vote now. Since we’re getting a late start we’ll leave the poll open until September 20th.
- Man Plus by Frederik Pohl – (allie)
- The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov – (jfrantz)
- Suldrun’s Garden by Jack Vance – (allie)
- Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein – (CharlesDee)
- The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance – (Emil)
- White Mars by Brian Aldiss – (valashain)
- Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke – (jfrantz)
Winner will receive the following:
- GMRC T-shirt – your choice of colors so long as it’s black
- GMRC button – you can never have too much flair
- Set of WWEnd Hugo Award bookmarks – These are the new ones for the 2012 Hugo and ChiCon 7.
- Book of your choice from the WWEnd bookshelf – the winner will get a list of a dozen titles to pick from
- Everlasting Glory – So you’ll have that goin’ for ya. Which is nice.
Runners-up will get a GMRC button and a set of bookmarks.
Here are the updated stats from RhondaK101.
Authors with the most books read:
- Isaac Asimov (45)
- Arthur C. Clarke (40)
- Robert A. Heinlein (40)
- Joe Haldeman (33)
Authors with the most different titles read:
- Robert Silverberg (16)
- Isaac Asimov (15)
- Robert A. Heinlein (15)
Books most frequently read (10 or more reads):
- Joe Haldeman, The Forever War (19)
- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (17)
- Frederik Pohl, Gateway (13)
- Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama (11)
GMRC Review: The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson
Chris Uhl (chuhl) can’t remember a time when he wasn’t a science fiction fan. He has a B.A. in Classics from Vassar College and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a teacher, a legal assistant, a college development officer, a salesman, and a film extra. Chris may be the only WWEnd reviewer who has no blog. This is his first GMRC review to feature in the WWEnd blog.
I’m a big fan of space opera, but I’ve never read E. E. “Doc” Smith or Jack Williamson because I’ve always heard that, although their importance in the genre’s history is undeniable, their prose style is an ordeal for modern readers. So I took advantage of the GMRC to try Williamson’s The Legion of Space.
Yes, the prose does tend towards the purple end of the spectrum. It’s formal and intense and rather melodramatic by our standards. But if you‘re willing to give it a chance, you find yourself in the hands of an author who’s clearly having fun trying to dazzle and horrify you with the wonders and terrors that our heroes face in their quest to save the solar system from destruction. It’s like when someone tells you a ghost story around a fire. You can roll your eyes and hang on tight to your disbelief and sneer, or you can get into the spirit of the occasion and have fun with it. If you meet him halfway, Williamson’s writing can be very vivid and suspenseful and powerful.
For example, here’s an excerpt in which our four heroes, having crash-landed on a hostile planet, find themselves adrift on a log that isn’t as safe as it first appeared. At the other end of the log they see a slimy creature that looks like “a gigantic amoeba”:
GMRC Review: Man Plus by Frederik Pohl
Guest Blogger, Allie McCarn, reviews science fiction and fantasy books on her blog Tethyan Books. She has contributed many great book reviews to WWEnd and has generously volunteered to write some periodic reviews for our blog.
Editor’s note: This review was submitted in July but there was a mix-up and we missed posting it in the blog for the GMRC.
Man Plus by Frederik Pohl
Published : Random House, 1976
Awards Won : 1976 Nebula Award
Awards Nominated: Hugo, John W. Campbell, and Locus SF Awards
The Book:
“In the not-too-distant future, a desperate war for natural resources threatens to bring civilization to a crashing halt. Nuclear warships from around the globe begin positioning themselves as the American government works feverishly to complete a massive project to colonize Mars.
Former astronaut Roger Torraway has agreed to be transformed by the latest advances in biological and cybernetic science into something new, a being that can survive the rigors of Mars before it is terraformed. Becoming Man Plus will allow him to be the linchpin in opening the new Martian frontier…but not without challenging his humanity as no man has ever been challenged before.” ~barnesandnoble.com
Man Plus is my July book for WWEnd’s Grand MasterReading Challenge. Frederik Pohl is not a completely new author to me, as I have read and loved his novel Gateway. Man Plus has some interesting ideas, but it did not replace Gateway as my favorite Pohl novel to date.
GMRC Review: The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
Jeremy Frantz (jfrantz) reviews SF/F books on his blog The Hugo Endurance Project where he has given himself just 64 weeks to read every Hugo Award winner. This is his eighth GMRC review to feature in the blog and the second one this month.
Separated into three different but parallel stories, The Gods Themselves begins when scientists have discovered a way to exchange energy with another universe, the para-universe. Things get dicey when what is at first possibly the single greatest scientific achievement in history, threatens to become a horror story as it is understood that not only the two universes exchanging energy, but also physical laws which could result in our sun going nova.
Eternal contemporaneity
Published in ’72, winner in ’73, this is another title that it seems difficult to separate from the public scientific discourse of its time. The early 70’s marked the passage of some of the most monumental environmental protection regulations in American history. I saw The Gods Themselves very clearly drawing on the experience of environmental and consumer protection messages being hashed out on the national political stage. But before I’ve got you thinking this is a book about vast conspiracies and coordinated cover-ups, rest assured Asimov elevates his discussion to broader epistemological concerns and again draws on the sentiment of the times as he pulls in questions that, given the 1962 publishing of Thomas Kuhn’s, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, spoke to the very heart of the philosophy of science in his day.
