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Ian Brown started reading A World on the Wing by Scott Weidensaul

Scott Weidensaul: A World on the Wing (Paperback, 2022, W. W. Norton & Company)

A World on the Wing by Scott Weidensaul

Ian Brown reviewed The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz

Annalee Newitz: The Terraformers (Hardcover, 2023, Tor Books)

From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration …

.@annaleen@wandering.shop's epic tale of #enshittification on a geologic time scale.

4 stars

A really wonderful take on colonization and identity. Fast paced and full of some truly original takes on technology and the balances (and imbalances) of power resulting from the dynamics of capitalism in a seemingly post-scarcity era.

Who owns the land? What is intelligence and what rights (if any) does intelligence deserve? What if naked mole rats could talk and what if Miyazaki's catbus was part of an anarchist collective that lived under an active volcano?

These and many other questions are wrestled with in the this light and heavy sci-fi gem.

Ian Brown reviewed The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz

From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration …

.@annaleen@wandering.shop's epic tale of #enshittification on a geologic time scale.

4 stars

A really wonderful take on colonization and identity. Fast paced and full of some truly original takes on technology and the balances (and imbalances) of power resulting from the dynamics of capitalism in a seemingly post-scarcity era.

Who owns the land? What is intelligence and what rights (if any) does intelligence deserve? What if naked mole rats could talk and what if Miyazaki's catbus was part of an anarchist collective that lived under an active volcano?

These and many other questions are wrestled with in the this light and heavy sci-fi gem.

Ian Brown finished reading The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz

The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz

From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future.

Destry's life …

Ian Brown started reading The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz

From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration …

SCIFI FTW

Ian Brown reviewed Shift by Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey, Hugh Howey (duplicate): Shift (Paperback, 2016, John Joseph Adams/Mariner Books)

Shift happens.

4 stars

Content warning Mild ones, really, but maybe read the book first.

Not quite as compelling as the first, but man, still a mind-bender. Mild spoiler here is it does travel into the past. One of the things that makes "Wool" so good is it is entirely in the future. That provides the prose some latitude and that can help make or break a book when it starts to get into the awkward drama around social mechanics and institutions we are already familiar with. Anyway, before you read this write down the Silo numbers from wool, and the names of the key characters. Also don't look up anything online because spoilers abound.

Ian Brown reviewed The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

John Scalzi: The Kaiju Preservation Society (Paperback, 2023, Tor Books)

I needed that!

5 stars

Holy smokes! This was such a fun read by @scalzi@mastodon.social. Funny as hell, and with barely any tears. Maybe even no tears if you are a desiccated and empty shell like so many of us these days. Anyway, this book is brain-floss perfection, full of laughs and wit. The auther, per the note at the end, wrote this in 2021 after COVID and January 6th and writer's block and at least one existential crisis. Coincidentally I read this book after a week of the family and I, hundreds of miles from home and alledgedly on vacation, dealing with our second trip through COVID. I'd also just ripped through the first two books of Hugh Howey's "Silo" series ("Wool" & "Shift") while in the grips of the virus. Those are pretty heavy reads, and a mild fever only added to the emotional weight. This book was the perfect antidote to …

Holy smokes! This was such a fun read by @scalzi@mastodon.social. Funny as hell, and with barely any tears. Maybe even no tears if you are a desiccated and empty shell like so many of us these days. Anyway, this book is brain-floss perfection, full of laughs and wit. The auther, per the note at the end, wrote this in 2021 after COVID and January 6th and writer's block and at least one existential crisis. Coincidentally I read this book after a week of the family and I, hundreds of miles from home and alledgedly on vacation, dealing with our second trip through COVID. I'd also just ripped through the first two books of Hugh Howey's "Silo" series ("Wool" & "Shift") while in the grips of the virus. Those are pretty heavy reads, and a mild fever only added to the emotional weight. This book was the perfect antidote to wherever the fuck my head was at after all of that, and a great way to use one of the few remaining days of our "vacation". Anyway, what I am trying to say is that this a wonderfully written, fast-moving, fun-as-heck rip of a read.

Ian Brown finished reading The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Ian Brown started reading The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Figured I need a break from the Wool/Silo universe for a day or two.

Ian Brown finished reading Shift by Hugh Howey

Shift by Hugh Howey, Hugh Howey (duplicate)

Ian Brown started reading Shift by Hugh Howey

Here we go!

Ian Brown reviewed Wool by Hugh Howey (duplicate)

Hugh Howey (duplicate): Wool (2020, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company)

They live beneath the earth in a prison of their own making. There is a …

Wool? More like w00t! amirite?

5 stars

Man, what a trip.

No spoilers, but in the Sci-Fi spectrum of humanity coming together in the face of apocalypse or everyone fro themselves (with Rebecca Solnit's "A Paradise Built in Hell" on one end, and parts of Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" or the edges of John Wyndham's works) "Wool" is decidedly on the sharp stick-end end of that scale.

Anyway, wonderfully paced, and great world-building. Excited for the next books in the trilogy!