Cynical Monkey

I have been reading my way through the Hugo award winning novels for the past 3 years. Cyteen was a novel I was always apprehensive about reading because of its length. After reading Downbelow Station and encountering Cherryh’s writing style I became even more concerned. Cyteen was everything I feared but it was also something more than I expected.

Cherryh’s writing style makes me angry, there is something about the way she mutilates a sentence that makes no sense to me. I don’t understand how a decent editor could overlook the low quality of this writing. Two quick examples, “You or I don’t have to have done anything.”, “They’re not a hell of a lot careful.” Although these sentences are not completely devoid of meaning they both really break my flow when I’m reading. To compound the prose problem, the novel was long and drawn out with many undeveloped and unnecessary side plots and confusing details that didn’t seem to contribute to the story.

Cyteen’s story was a very slow starter for me. I was more than 300 pages into reading it before I felt consistently motivated to pick the book up, but after that I was seldom without the novel. I thought that although the book made a decent political thriller it fell a bit short in the science fiction category. I don’t understand why tt took a setting at a distant star system 300 years in the future to conceive of a political thriller based around cloning. Why go so far when all you need is Earth 10 years from now, and then you would have a story with much more urgent and relevant underpinnings.

In the end I was quite captivated by the story, the way it build slowly and never slows until it all resolves in the final few paragraphs was truly enjoyable story telling. Adding up all of it flaws and flourishes I give it a decent 3/5.

Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge was my first enjoyable space-opera this year. Fire Upon the Deep first made it on my reading list by way of it’s Hugo status. I have a goal of reading all the Hugo award novels. Among the Hugos winners I have read it stood out near the top of the space-opera sub-genre. I found the story really drew me in and it never felt tedious.

“Zones of thought” was a very novel concept. The idea of separate cosmic layers with different physical properties is at once both fantastic, and oddly plausible. I really like the way “zones of thought” acts as a plot device for exploring omnipotence in a finite universe, and the idea of entities operating at a level of complexity that is physically beyond our level of understanding. It’s kind of like Pointland, Flatland, Spaceland (Flatland 1884) are all adjacent and one simply has to travel a bit to observe radical changes in the physicality of the universe.

I also like the Tines alien race. It was the first instance of a collaborative intelligence that I can remember encountering in my reading. I would expect a Professor of computer science to envisage a sentient intelligence that operated in such a decentralized way.  I really see potential to develop this concept more in future novels set in the universe.

Overall this book was a 4.5/5. A very enjoyable read that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys good space-opera type science fiction. I’m really looking forward to reading more of Vinge’s work.

I have been considering creating a blog for a while. Actually this is my third attempt (some of my old posts are below), but I would like to think that it is my first serious attempt.

So why am I writing to you my hypothetical reader? I’m certain that I don’t have too many interesting things to say. I know that making this admission may sound a bit defeatist. My main goal is not to impress but to experiment with the blogging medium and to practice writing with an audience in mind. You might call it exercise for my writing skills.

I will try to write regularly about topics that interest me. I’m hoping that I will be able to post at least once a week. Currently my interests include software development, running, science fiction, and food. I’m sure I will concentrate on many other topics as well.

If you do take the time to read my blog, thank you and don’t hesitate to comment or get in touch.