Howdy,
In between working on the Dreaded Synopsis, the Diabolical Query Letter, and finishing off the Arduous Edit, I’ve managed to read some pretty interesting books.
If you’ve read anything I’ve said about Chuck’s work before you’ll know I have somewhat of a love/hate thing going on with his writing. I have to say, his present-tense narrative is freaking awesome in Zeroes, the story of a ragtag group of hackers “recruited” by the government for a mission that is strictly off the books. I read this book very quickly over spring break while riding on airplanes and watching the kids play on the beach. It’s a great airplane/beach read – thrilling enough to keep me turning the pages and the story, while full of twists and turns, was easy enough to follow even while becoming distracted at regular intervals. My one criticism is that I don’t know that the climax lives up to the whizzbang buildup just before it. Anyway, I have to say hands down this is the best Chuck Wendig novel I have read to date. It makes me want to read Invasive.
This is a fascinating book if a little depressing. I haven’t read the precursor Sapiens, but after reading Homo Deus, I’m putting Sapiens on my reading list. Harari’s thesis is that humans need something to believe in order to organize on a massive scale. In the past, this was religion, think Catholicism. Now, it’s humanism. In Homo Deus, Harari speculates on what might be humanity’s next great organizing belief. There is definitely the seeds for numerous speculative short stories and outright novels in this book.
This is all about brain surgery – or, at least, trying to keep one’s humanity as a brain surgeon who your patients see as either as a god or a demon depending on the outcomes of their operations. Absolutely fascinating.
DEPRESSING. No two ways about it, this book is a downer. Sometimes it feels like a laundry list of all the terrible things that could happen given global warming. Having said that, it is exactly the kind of book I’ve been looking for, which is to say, it is an excellent summary of all the horrors that could await humanity in the next 50 to 150 years. Definitely worth reading if you want to consider climatic change and adaptation to that change in your science fiction. Just be warned…this book is bleak.
Until next time…