Ben Bova (1932–2020)

What a disappointing book! I've never read anything by Ben Bova, but have heard a lot about him, so was really looking forward to this. While I wasn't expecting brilliant prose, what I encountered was shockingly poor. The premise is really interesting, which leaves me even more frustrated with the novel's problems, including: sexist depictions and narrative treatment of all the female characters; racist descriptions of non-European/North American characters; an irritating, repetitive, clumsily expressed obsession with age on the part of the protagonist; incessant, duplicative conflicts and arguments, as though the characters had forgotten each of the many prior instances of the exact same conversation and the resultant realizations; and last, but definitely not least, the most ill-informed presentation of "scientists" that I've ever encountered--this group makes the Scooby-Doo Gang seem like highly trained experts.… (lisätietoja)

My only interest in this anthology was to read A Slow Unfurling of Truth by Aliette de Bodard, so please read the following review with that in mind.

As far as i'm aware this is only currently available in the anthology Carbide Tipped Pens, which, for some reason unbeknownst to me, isn't available on Kindle: yes folks, it appears that the Luddites are at it again attempting their very worse to ruin life for us technologically advanced hominyds who read ebooks and love trees.   But, not to be outdone, i suggest that maybe you could get imaginative with your technologically advanced minds and dream up ways of how you may wish to obtain a copy to read.

And that was my first usage of "unbeknownst" on this website.   A lovely old word.   Some words are just too good to let fade away.

Oh yeah, it's supposed to be a review of the story, i know, i'm getting to it, but you can't get to the story until you actually have a copy to read so that had to be dealt with first.

So once again we're back with the Galactics and the Rongs and now instead of downloading/uploading dead people into V-Space they now seem to be able to take dead people and upload/download/re-sleeve them into new bodies.   Think Altered Carbon kind of thing but i've no idea how it's being done in Aliette's universe as that bit's not explained.

The problem with re-sleeving people is that after a period of time, especially if you lost touch with them, you may not be able to tell who a person was or wasn't.   This whole thing would obviously lead to whole new areas of crime with re-sleeved people claiming to be people who they aren't and claiming things to which they aren't entitled.   This then leads to a whole new occupation, that of people who ascertain the validity of re-sleeved people.

And so, that's where we are with A Slow Unfurling of Truth.   A Galactic has turned up claiming to be someone and it's very important that the Rong know if it's true or not, enter the Authenticators, a human and mindship pair working together to unfurl the truth.

I really enjoyed the re-sleeving and V-Space aspects of the Altered Carbon books, and it's great to re-encounter this kind of thing being written by other writers, especially writers as good as Aliette is.   So yeah, would love to read a whole lot more of this re-sleeving V-Space stuff from Aliette in the future -- she's certainly created a big enough universe to shove a ton more stories into.

So onwards, onwards we read, and next up will be The Frost on Jade Buds.… (lisätietoja)