OPENING LINES:
I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. First I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.
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In Old Man’s War, we learn that Earth has a surplus of senior citizens and a shortage of soldiers to fight all the hostile alien races trying to chase us out of space and back to our own ball of mud. The solution that the Colonial Defense Force (CDF) has come up with is to convince aging Earthers to join the army. Their minds are transferred to new bodies pumped full of genetic enhancements and handy technology, and they are sent off to war. Scalzi takes us along with recruit John Perry as he leaves everything he knows behind to fight the CDF’s wars; going through basic training, fighting his first battles, and even a little romance. The author has admitted to playing on the pattern laid down by Robert Heinlein, but he managed to go beyond that inspiration to develop a new space opera universe where he has set multiple bestselling novels. This is a story that packs a lot of action and excitement, but also manages to subtly explore issues of aging, loss, humanity and the futility of war.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Old Man’s War
GREAT LINES:
Yet though the bridge might last still for many years, the rust would eat deeper and deeper. The earthquake would shake the foundations, and then on some stormy day a span would go down. Like the man, so the creation of man would not last forever.
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A young man, Ish, is a graduate student at Berkeley who goes on a camping trip. On this outing he is bitten by a rattlesnake and forced to doctor the wound himself. When he recovers he walks down the mountain and finds that the people of the world have been wiped out by disease. He adopts a dog and takes up residence in his parents’ empty house. On outings he does encounter some survivors but they seem to either be living in the past or have mental problems. In his solitude he drives to New York City and back. Again the people he meets are not those with whom he wants to share his life. Then one evening he sees fireplace smoke coming from West Berkeley. What happens when Ish discovers other people he can form a tribe with gives this early post-apocalyptic story its most human elements. And as an added bonus the descriptions of the landscapes are truly amazing. I cannot get them out of my head!
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Earth Abides
OPENING LINES:
Death Smiled at her, and kissed her gently on the cheek. He had nice eyes.
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Where can you be sure to find the strongest, most independent heroines? ROMANCE FICTION! It’s not just lovey-dovey these days. Not only can you find historical and sexy from mild to hot, but add paranormal, fantasy, science fiction, and crime to the mix, too. A great place to start reading romance is J.D. Robb’s “In Death” series set 50 years in the future. The series features New York Police Detective Eve Dallas: sleek, thoughtful, dedicated, and able to throw a right hook with the best of them. First try “Origin in Death”, immensely imaginative with wonderful quirky characters, some wild action and very clever twists. And amidst the legalized sexual companions, android servants, futurist technology and steamy nights you just might find an ethical and feminist message. Romance…who knew?
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Origin in Death
GREAT LINES:
I have lived in Middle-earth, and so have you; and it matters to us, or you would not be reading this book, and I would not be writing this essay. All these years since Tolkien died, and yet he still reveals the world, the wide and wild world, to us.
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Even if you haven’t read what the BBC called “the most popular work of fiction of the 20th century”, this book of short essays by fantasy and science fiction writers helps to explain the power of a work of fiction to change a person’s life. The offerings range from humorous (a woman named Galadriel in a power suit) to profound (the author’s musings on immortality upon the birth of his son), to thoughtful (a woman sees a blossom in the Alps, and is reminded of elanor, the tiny but significant flower of Galadriel’s garden) with plenty of wonderfully dated memories of 1960’s afternoons in paperback book stores. These are meditations not just on Middle Earth but reflections on mortality, friendship, love, virtue, war, loyalty, power, good and evil, and duty. Nor are they literary essays, but personal accounts from successful authors musing on their very first reading of the Lord of the Rings, and how it changed their lives and writing. A “comfort” read for Tolkien fans, who will then be inspired to take another trip to Middle Earth themselves.
Check the BPL Catalog for this title: Meditations on Middle Earth
GREAT LINE:
Pete usually used his own door except when he could bully me into opening a people door for him, which he preferred.
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Dan Davis is on the verge of amazing riches when he successfully invents a household robot. But he is betrayed by his business partner and fiancee and his company is sold to a big corporation. He does get some money out of the deal and Dan uses that money to put himself into suspended animation. When he wakes up he finds that his money and his stocks are gone. Luckily in the time he has been asleep time travel has become possible. Now he needs to go back in time to set things right. There are many complications and plot twists as Dan works to be reunited with his soul mate and recover his fortune. At the same time Dan is trying to be reunited with his cat Pete. Pete is one of the great characters in this book and the title references him. When Pete finds that there is snow out of one door he asks Dan to open all of the other doors in the house to see if they might be a door into summer. Not only is this a charming bit of the story, it is also a good analogy for the novel’s plot as Dan keeps looking for a way into a sunnier situation.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Door Into Summer
GREAT LINE:
“If there is hope… it lies in the proles.”
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This is the story of the life of Winston Smith, a middle class intellectual worker living in Oceania, one of the world’s three superpowers at war. As it turns out, there has always been war everlasting between these superpowers. Winston’s job is to do the work of revising history, as ordered by his superiors in the “Inner Party.” People and events are fabricated and can vanish from history, and even the names of the enemy changes. Discovering the true purpose of everlasting war and manipulation of history leads Winston and the reader to the climax of this gripping and profoundly disturbing touchstone of a novel.
It is very tempting to draw comparisons to the social conditions of the current world. Themes of nationalism, class warfare, ubiquitous surveillance, and an overworked, distracted lower class ring true today. Orwell’s sensational writing is juicy and compelling reading and, like other works of great fiction, contains a seed of truth and a warning for all peoples of civilization.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: 1984
GREAT LINES:
If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or (c) recognize God? A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God…and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine.
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When the novel opens, we meet Father Emilio Sandoz, sole survivor of a failed Jesuit mission to Alpha Centauri. That’s right. Priests in Space. Using a dual narrative structure in alternating chapters, we go back to learn how this bizarre mission came to be, while in the “present” we follow the efforts of Emelio’s religious superiors to find out what happened to the broken man. And Emelio is broken, in both mind, faith and body. There are terrible rumors about what happened to him on the alien planet they visited, but Emelio is too traumatized to explain the mission’s colossal failure. Watching the efforts of this broken priest to come to grips with his experiences is a grueling thing to read. But knowing the end somehow does not detract from the other narrative, which is how it began and unfolded. It seems that a signal is picked up at a remote radio observatory in Puerto Rico; a signal that sounds like singing. But it is singing that could not possibly be from earth. The technician who discovered the signal is friends with Father Emelio Sandoz, a parish priest working in the slums of Puerto Rico. Emelio, the technician Jimmy, and a handful of other vividly drawn and achingly real characters end up signing on to be the ones to find out where the signal is coming from. This is a novel that deals with issues of religion, but rather than being preachy, it is a fascinating look how other people use faith to try and understand their experiences. Religion and science fiction could be a tough sell on their own, much less in the ingenious combo you get here. But Russell uses the formal framework of religion to tap into the truer issue of what it means to have faith, and the science fiction framework to examine what it means to be human. I’ve read this book twice, and both times it made me cry, but left me immensely satisfied.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Sparrow
GREAT LINES:
Was this the answer? After all, an illusion, no matter how convincing, remained nothing more than an illusion. At least objectively. But subjectively, – Quite the opposite entirely.
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Philip K. Dick’s collection of short stories muses on alternative realities centered on one bizarre concept each. All of the stories in this collection are a bit of mind-bending fun! The collection’s namesake is first. It takes the idea that a certain kind of person can accurately predict crimes that happen in the future. But what happens when the chief of the department is implicated? The next two stories pretend that technology creates the ability to modify human memories and are about what impact it would have on an individual or a company. They are fun explorations of the concept of memory and impact of our choices on our future, whether we remember them or not. The first, “”We can remember it for you Wholesale”" is the basis for the Arnold Shwarzenegger sci-fi action movie “”Total Recall”". (The story is nothing like the movie, though, so is not spoiled at all by it.) And the last is “Paycheck.” In it, Dick shows how a bag of junk can be more valuable than a pile of money to a man who has lost his memory. I really enjoyed this story because of its message about perspective.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Minority Report