After reading Lauren Beukes debut novel Zoo City(my review), I decided to move onto her second novel Moxyland. The book is very different and it threw me a bit. Where Zoo City had a mystery plot as the main thread connecting the book together, Moxyland is more of a mish-mash of scenes containing the four main characters. I’m not sure I liked the book as much, so let’s delve in and figure out why.
Category Archives: science fiction
Everything You Need To Know About Babylon 5
IO9 has a great article for those of you who are interested in getting into Babylon 5. The article goes over the main characters, storylines and essential episodes. I loved seasons 2-4 (1 had some issues and the 5 was hurt due to questions about whether or not it was coming back). Hopefully I’ll be able to review the series at some point, but if you’re interested, go check out the article.
2011 Philip K. Dick Award Nominees
Locus has announced the 2011 Philip K. Dick Award Nominees.
- The Company Man, Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
- Deadline, Mira Grant (Orbit)
- The Other, Matthew Hughes (Underland)
- A Soldier’s Duty, Jean Johnson (Ace)
- The Postmortal, Drew Magary (Penguin)
- After the Apocalypse, Maureen F. McHugh (Small Beer)
- The Samuel Petrovich Trilogy, Simon Morden (Orbit)
I haven’t read any of these, so I’m curious about which ones I should try first.
Star Wars Live Action TV Show
Lucasfilms Producer Rick McCallum has started talking about the live action Star Wars TV show, tentatively named Star Wars: Underground. It’s a look at the underside of the Star Wars galaxy.
He confirmed earlier reports that the action will take place in the 20-year gap between the end of “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” and the beginning of “Episode IV: A New Hope.”
Set in the early years of the fledgling rebellion against the Galactic Empire the series will focus on the bounty hunters, criminals and gangs in the seamy side of the “Star Wars” universe. Confirming what George Lucas told reporters last year, McCallum revealed that producers already have 50 “incredible” one-hour scripts waiting to be filmed. He described them as “dark, complex and adult.”
Sounds interesting and hopefully it will be better than the prequels.
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
I’ve been hearing great things about Lauren Beukes, so I decided to grab her two novels. The first one I read was Zoo City and can see why everyone was raving about it. Her work is original and, being set in Africa, a much different setting than most other science fiction. The setting alone would make the book an interesting read, but Beukes’ writing makes the novel well worth reading. So, let’s step into Zoo City and see what’s going on.
Best Book/Comics of 2011
Ground Rules first. This is a list of the best books that I read for the first time in 2011. The book/comics didn’t have to be published in 2011. And this is the best books/comics I read this year in no particular order
- Alison’s Bechdel Fun Home – Alison Bechdel is the creator of the comic Dykes to Watch Out For and the originator of the Bechdel Test for movies. This book is her memoir about coming out of the closet and her issues with her father (and his issues as well). Wonderfully told in a circular way, it must be read. My review.
- David Small Stitches
– A family doesn’t deal with issues, psychological and physical and a small by is left with stitches that the family cannot hide. A wonderful look at a dysfunctional family. My review.
- GRRM A Dance with Dragons – After years of ignoring them, I finally caught up with The Song of Ice and Fire in time for GRRM’s latest masterpiece. A huge cast of characters deal with issues on an epic scale. This is a series everyone should be reading. My review.
- Adam Levin The Instructions – A huge book covering a four days in the life of a small boy who may (or may not) be the messiah. This is a wonderfully told tale, but it isn’t for everyone. My review.
- Junot Diaz The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – A look at a boy who is so tied up in science fiction/fantasy that he cannot have the life he really wants despite the efforts of everyone around him. My review.
- Neal Stephenson REAMDE – Stephenson goes back to his Stephen Bury days to give us a modern day thriller with video games and technology and geography thrown in as sidelines. There’s been a lot of disappointment from some quarters, but it is still a great Stephenson book. My review.
This post is part of the thread: BestOf – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.
Three Inches – A Failed Pilot Review
With little to no promotion and pretty much no information about it, Syfy threw up a pilot for the show Three Inches. The show was originally ordered in early 2010, but it seemed to languish in development hell for awhile. Then, when Syfy moved forward with Alphas, they decided to see if they could make Three Inches seem more different. That failed and the show was shut down. But in the dead of winter, in the dead time between Christmas and New Years, Syfy decided to throw the pilot on. I happened to run across it on the channel guide and decided it was worth a watch. And it’s probably good it didn’t move forward. Read on to see why.
The Immorality Engine by George Mann
While I got tired of Mann’s Ghost series with a steampunk superhero, his Newbury and Hobbes series of steampunk detectives is still going strong with the latest episode The Immorality Engine. The title is a play on words with an engine being used immoral purposes that could also be used for immortality. And we get some nice development in the relationships between Newbury, Hobbes and Bainbridge. So let’s see what happens in this latest book.
The Adjustment Bureau movie review
As a huge Philip K Dick fan, I love to see that his stories are being spread out to a wider audience by making them into movies. But I am somewhat conflicted since most of the movies are mediocre at best. The latest movie to make its way to my HBO subscription is The Adjustment Bureau. Based off a short story from Philip K Dick about a man who accidentally gets a peek behind the scenes of life, the movie pleasantly kept a lot of the same basic ideas with only a change in theme. Dick’s story (“The Adjustment Team”) is about reality (as a lot of his stories are) while the movie is more about predestination. Let’s take a look at the movie. (Warning: Spoilers ahoy).
Zone One by Colson Whitehead
We’re in interesting time in the genre universe. Mainstream writers are dropping in and writing genre books and some are even staying around and playing in the genre universe for awhile. The latest to jump in is Colson Whitehead with his post-apocalyptic zombie novel, Zone One. One of the advantages of literary writers playing in genre writing is that we can get more well-written genre books. The disadvantage is when they try to write it in a literary style that really doesn’t work well with the subject matter. Whitehead’s novel leans more to the disadvantage side. Let’s check it out to see what doesn’t work.