Isaac Asimov’s Robot City Book 5: Refuge by Rob Chilson

When I was looking for what to spend some of my first Audible credits on, The Martian by Andy Weir stood out. This still ranks at the top of roughly 15 audiobooks I’ve listened to for two reasons. First, the story and writing was engaging. This was “hardest” sci-fi I’ve read so far. There is a lot of math, chemistry, physics, and botany (yes botany). I’m sure that many people would be put off by such dry and detailed descriptions, but that leads me to my second point. The performance of the narrator, R.C. Bray, was superb. He made the “hard science” interesting and entertaining. His voice strikes me as a perfect fit for the main character, Mark Watney. Do yourself a favor and listen to the 5 minute sample on Audible and judge for yourself. While the book focuses on his Watney’s mission log, R.C. Bray does voices for other characters in NASA back on Earth. The voices are OK, nothing but nothing spectacular. I can’t say there is anything wrong, but there are other narrators with a stronger skill for differing character voices. (more…)

I recently started using Overdrive, a digital library site that my local library participates in. I stumbled across Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction. A Princess of Mars was just the first of dozens of stories, novellas, and novels strung together with commentary on Science Fiction as a genre. I thought it would be interesting to branch out to some older stuff that I normally have not had a chance to get to.

A Princess of Mars was originally published in 1912 in All-Story Magazine under the title “Under the Moons of Mars” by Normal Bean. The story begins with the narrator explaining that he is relaying a manuscript given to him in book form. He goes over a brief biography of the main character, John Carter, known as Captain Jack Carter of Virginia — an American Civil War veteran. John finished the manuscript the shortly before his death in 1886. The manuscript begins normal enough, talking about how John and one of his friends were prospecting for gold out West. They found a good spot, and the friend was going to head back to get proper papers for staking the claim. John happens to notice three dots in the distance in the direction his friend departed, and after investigating is convinced that Apache Indians are pursuing his friend. Not much of a spoiler, but here it goes — he tries to save his friend and fails, then finds himself chased into a cave. This is where the story takes a turn toward science fiction. After a brief series of events that I won’t get into, John finds himself in some type of out of body experience then wakes up on Mars. (more…)

William Gibson is credited with starting the cyberpunk genre when he wrote Neuromancer. I’ve had this book on my mental list of books to read for many years now, but hadn’t managed to squeeze it into my reading schedule until now. I’m a bit disappointed that it took me so long to get to, because it was a very enjoyable read.

The setting of Neuromancer is kind of a dirty futuristic world where the line between man and machine has been blurred. Almost everyone has some type of enhancement ranging from boosted reflexes to special chips that let another person experience all of someone else’s senses. Hackers are referred to as “Cowboys,” who jack into the matrix which is a graphical representation of the electronic world. This matrix is much different than that of the 1999 movie The Matrix in that it is not a copy of the real world. I can best describe as a hallucination that represents the underlying systems that are all connected together. Many of the information systems are protected by AI of varying degrees of complexity. (more…)