Darwin's Children comes to continue the story from Darwin's Radio.

My general feeling is that this is not a very good book or series. The basic ideas that started it are interesting, although pretty hard to advocate to a scientist, certainly interesting from a literary point of view, giving multiple opportunities for tension, drama, unexpected, etc. Unfortunately, Greg Bear failed to capitalise those ideas, writing a book that has only a few characters that kind of stumble upon the most important clues for the book subject; it all happens in the USA, with almost no regard to what could or would have happened elsewhere. In a time of a great crisis, the international situation is put on hold, like every nation would take a time-out and ignore its neighbours. And the style is really not touching any emotional chord whatsoever.

Let me summarize: the sudden leap in human evolution is treated by the politicians as a disease, the new species being imprisoned in what could only be described as concentration camps. The entire U.S. democracy and freedom collapses like a giant soap bubble, while the fear of every child bearing family transcends to racism and fascism in no time. The few enlightened people that understand what is going on and try to protect the evolved offspring are also persecuted and surveillanced.

So here we have the eternal American obsession with children in distress and terrified families combined with concentration camps for some of their children, racism and civil disobedience, a newly discovered and frightening evolutionary mechanism, cutting edge genetics and archaeology. This could have been a fantastic story! But no, what came out was an impersonal account of hard to believe actions or feelings coming from emotionally stunted characters. And what was worse is that whenever the tension grew and there was a hint of a great thing happening, the author would make a sudden leap in time, after all had already happened, without describing much anyway.

Also, Darwin's Children is the last book of the series, while the story (as far as I am concerned) stopped halfway through, with no reasonable conclusion. Bottom line: not worth the time.

I remember reading Greg Bear books a while ago and thinking they were really cool. The coolness, of course, came from his hard sci-fi style, mixing good ideas with believable science. Now, after about a decade I suppose, I've decided to read another of his books and here is my review.

Darwin's Radio starts a little like Village of the Damned, but without the extraterrestrial origin, continues a bit like The Stand, without the religious mambo-jumbo, and ends in waiting for Darwin's Children, the next book in the series. The plot is about a major and sudden evolution of the species, without the X-Men powers.

My personal feel was that the writing is less than I wanted. The book seems shallow and uninteresting after reading Peter F. Hamilton. While the science is interesting, it also makes huge leaps of faith and I wouldn't put it behind Bear to end the story with a good versus evil battle. Was I too young to appreciate good writing, starved as I was of anything interesting in my life? Or is this book not so hot?

I will certainly read the next volumes, but I am a bit disappointed. I feel like I am watching a play after seeing a real good movie.

He did it again! Or would it be better for me to say he has done it afore, as I am kind of moving backwards in the Peter F. Hamilton writings? Night's Dawn is a huge book, about 9Mb of pure text, divided into three parts purely out of paper formatting reasons, I am sure. So far, this is the best thing he has written, at least in my opinion.

Maybe the guy is the kind of writer who writes his best work first, then tries unsuccessfully to follow up. Not that any of his followups could be called a failure, it's just that Night's Dawn is really cool! I mean who can seriously deal with possession, necromancy, devil worship, witch hunting, vampires, werewolves, ghosts and demons, all in a future world in which humanity has conquered space an tries to attack the situation with science and rationality? Seriously! If this guy would have written the Bible, there would be no Muslims! (Ron Hubbard, eat your heart out!)

There isn't much else I can say. I certainly cannot summarize a book that spreads over about a dozen inhabited planets, all with their own history, socio-economic situations described and own characters to add plot (real plot) to the story. Right now I am terrified. I need to find the Greg Mandel trilogy, which is the last of the Hamilton big stories, and there are only two outcomes: a) I hate it, which would have wasted my time and trust in humanity; b) I love it, and then I go into withdrawal waiting for the last two volumes of the Void trilogy and whatever else he brilliantly writes in the future.

Bottom line: if you like Sci-Fi, you need to read this. Hamilton and the ReSharper guys are the only people I ever felt the need to send money to in order to apologize for my shameless Internet piracy.

Links:
Peter Hamilton's official site
Wikipedia's entry on the Night's Dawn trilogy
Peter F. Hamilton's entry in Wikipedia.

This book is written by a guy that made a small company dedicated to programming with free tools. Thus, it tries to show how to debug ASP.Net assuming that you come from an ASP background and that you don't have Visual Studio .Net. So I don't think I have to tell you how much useless information there is in there. It even covers programmatic code tracing.

That doesn't mean it is a bad book, just useless for me. If you expect some wonderful debugging frameworks or code structure that would allow you to easily debug your applications, then this book is not for you. Not to mention that at the time it was written, Visual Studio 2005 was not out yet.

Bottom line: just a hands on approach and some Google when you meet problems will solve any problems that are solved by this book.

Dan Dobos is a Romanian writer and so I find it difficult to bad mouth his work. He also had bad luck with this one, as I'd just found one of the better writers of sci-fi and read a few of his books before trying to (re)read The Abbey.

Bottom line, The Abbey tries to be a Romanian Dune, with some Christian theology thrown about, a planet controlling the resources of the entire human dominion, people with heightened intelligence, instincts, subtle two way dialogs and verbal manipulations, etc. It fails. The characters are inconsistent, obvious, their best attempts at charade are ludicrous, their motivations are inedible, the whole human galactic evolution completely unbelievable. The writing style is also very shallow, made only of dialogue and inner thoughts, with little detail of what is actually going on.

Although I admire the attempt, the basic ideas and the fact that he got published in a country where people rarely buy books and if they do they don't buy Romanian authors, this series is a failure. Better luck next time.

Enough said, I started reading anything this guy wrote. I've found Fallen Dragon, a single book this time, but filled with ideas that obviously grew into the Commonwealth Saga. With this earlier novel I did find Hamilton's Achilles heal, the one thing that bothered me in his books more than the slight over detailing of everything: the characters have no freedom.

Let me expand on that. When you write something, you have the characters in your head, fighting and shouting to let them free to do what they want. If you do that before they are fully matured, they break havoc with your writing, even considering you have the skill. However, when you force them to do your bidding like slaves, you also damage your story, because they lose credibility and consistency.

In this book more than others, the characters were forced to do something that they should never have done. A soldier looses his squad to a bunch of idealistic galactic eco terrorists, but eventually joins their ranks. That is just not possible. I was wriggling in bed, waiting for the moment the hero would remove his mask and kill that brain damaged bitch. He did no such thing, just letting his mates die for no reason. Thinking back, the same happened with Judas Unchained, when all characters willingly marched against an alien that was clearly lacking any resources and just trying to escape in a wild wild west kind of quest "let's all personally go and kill the bad guy".

Back to Fallen Dragon, it is an interesting story, with some moral teachings as well as a delicate temporal paradox, but it's not comparable with Hamilton's latest books.

After finishing the Commonwealth Saga, by the same author, I started reading the next series: The Void Trilogy. As in the aforementioned saga, the story does not end in any way at the end of the first book, you have to read all three books to reach the end, which effectively makes this another huge monolithic story, not a series or saga.

Set in an even more technological advanced future, but in the same Commonwealth universe, it depicts the interactions between a powerful pseudo-religious void worshipers, ANA (a quantum artificial intelligence where people download when the are tired of living and the next evolutionary phase of the SI) and its competing factions, the different alien races and the void, which is a dark impregnable sphere in the middle of the galaxy that only some psychic humans seem to penetrate.

The style is the same, the writing as almost flawless as before. I do think that P.F. Hamilton is one of the greatest sci-fi writers I've read, up there with Tolkien and Herbert.

I have seen the movie on TV a while ago, but didn't catch the start, so I never knew what the name was. Finally, someone in a Romanian book club found the translated print here and reminded me of it and told me that it was based on a book. I've decided to read it in its native language, a bit scared that I would understand nothing of it, but the French is pretty easy to understand. Maybe because the author is Belgian :)

The story of Fear and Trembling is about a Belgian girl, born in Japan (just like the author), employed in a big Japanese corporation as a translator. Due to her inability to understand the local customs and the irrational feelings of her employers, she is demoted time after time until she ends up replacing toilet paper in the water closets.

The book itself is not meant as a comedy. The main character sees everything with a stoic detachment, analysing both her feelings and the feelings of others, trying to make sense of a world that she can't seem to fit in. It made me understand more than ever the illusory nature of reality. Both her and the Japanese were occupying the same space and time, were observing the same events, but their realities were completely different. That clash of incongruous realities is the core of this small novel.

A bit too French for my taste, not in the language, but in the endless repetitions of metaphoric interpretations of the same event, that overwording of inner thoughts that makes French writing sound pompous. However, I did enjoy the book, I recommend it to anyone wanting a light and distracting reading.

This is a funny little story about a bunch of low end kids finding a way of letting everyone build whatever electronic device they want for almost free. The lead character is a broker, getting more and more terrified about how this simple thing destroys markets and the capitalist economy. In the end, he is to be replaced by electronic neural networks that perform flawlessly.

It seems Peter Hamilton has some issues with capitalism as there are always some characters criticising it in his books. However, in this particular story, the ending can be only one, where humans are completely replaced by the low cost electronics. It does not destroy communism, it replaces humanity.

My guess is that this is bound to happen sooner or later. Already software glitches are more frequent than hardware ones. When is someone going to realize that we, humans, have the worst hardware possible, even by biological standards. And we're only getting fatter, slower and less efficient by the day. Would I mind being replaced by a race of star faring robotic human replicas? No way.

I've just finished reading the book and, while it was the usual easy read, it wasn't as much fun as I expected it to be. The two deaths in the book that were announced so dramatically are actually four, but none of the people that have actually mattered in the story. Their deaths are also irrelevant to the plot.

You see, the entire attraction of Harry Potter, for me, was the many possibilities opened by the magical universe in the books. But really, after the first and second book, there was no novelty, only the drama of Voldemort and the condescending moral crap that was always thrown in the face of the curious reader, the kind of reader that goes "what if..." whenever a new spell is described or some principle of magic is explained.

Bottom line: Harry and the kids wonder in fear and confusion the whole book, only to discover that it all was some kind of master plan and to luckily (or randomly) escape death. The passion killer ending chapter, where Harry is a father of three is not that great either.

I will be watching the 5th Potter movie someday soon, but I believe I will do it for the special effects only. Come to think of it, I can hardly remember what happened in book 5 anyway. Just as the books, only the first two films are worth anything.

This Hamilton guy is a serious writer, dude! Just having finished the first volume of this story, Pandora's Star, I was blogging desperately about how the scifi writer manages a huge book, with many characters and with colliding story arches. Now, I have finished the second and last part, Judas Unchained, which I personally think is not so good as the first, but still a damn solid scifi.

I did find myself feeling a bit of pleasure seeing how the author fails to escape cliche in the end of the story and the story lines just become accelerated and the actors predictable. But after writing this humongous book, I guess the inner emotions could not be stilled anymore and the ending had to lose some cohesion.

Bottom line: a very good book, one that shows how stories should be written: with a considerate, serious, prolonged effort to give the tale logic as well as create emotion in the soul of the reader. I would have gone for a different ending, but hey, I don't write anymore, I have no right to complain!

Funny enough, I was considering starting writing again. I even had this story in my head and I was considering the three parts it must have, maybe even three books. But how will I ever write three books, with my notorious impatience and lack of interest for details?

And then I've stumbled upon this book, Pandora's Star. Just the first part of a larger, two books, story, it amounted to 2Mb of text. That's like four slim books or two large ones. The author didn't even bother making the first part stand alone, I mean it is not a book that you can read and know it's over, but it can still be continued. It just stops in mid story and you have to read the other book (Judas Unleashed) to understand anything. So what this actually is... is a single story that has the size of about five normal sized novels.

The plot is also interesting, with many distinct arches that touch occasionally within a coherent world. Placed somewhere in the 24Th century, the human kind has spread to hundreds of worlds using artificial wormholes and has found the secret of rejuvenation. More than this, electronic implants make death obsolete, as anyone can be cloned and their memory restored even if their body is destroyed. So everything is nice and beautiful until they find a Hive-type alien who considers any other species a threat to be eliminated and the peace loving Commonwealth must now do battle with an expanding mind with no conscience, limits or the concept of pain.

I've just started Judas Unleashed, but my reading will probably be slower this time around. A very nice book, a bit humbling for any aspiring writer, it will hopefully end at least as well as it started.

I really enjoyed the Warcraft and Starcraft ministories in the game and I was happy to hear that books have been written that take place in those parallel worlds. One of these is Starcraft Uprising.

I am disapointed to say that the book sucks. It is like a fast forward screenwrite test, with ideas that are both boring and badly conceived. The entire book can be read online, but I've lost the link, but I tell you this: it is not worth it. And the action takes place just after humans discover the Zerg, but have no idea what they are, a prequel to the Starcraft storyline.

I have finally finished reading this book. I've tried reading it in Italian together with English, but after a while I've only read the Italian version. My first impression was that publicists do more than just print books. There were several passages that were missing from the English translation, for example. I also felt that they were related in that they were more aggressive against the idea of the Church. Although I can't say for sure.

I also had difficulty reading the book after seeing the movie. I've heard a lot of people describing the movie as a pale imitation of the book. Bullshit! The movie was great: the adaptation, the casting, the music, the directing. The only thing lacking from the movie was the political dimension, the battle between religious factions and the description of the political situation of the time. Which is a lot, but is not really relevant to the idea of the book.

So, if you have seen the movie, you might find it difficult to read the book. If you haven't yet, I suggest you read the book and certainly watch the movie afterwards. There is a certain magic when Sean Connery's accent overlaps with Ennio Morricone's music :)

Anyway, the book describes not only the murders and the process of finding the killer, but also a world where books are copied by hand by people who can speak Latin and Greek, but not the vernacular, the language of the people, then they are hidden in great libraries with access restricted by religion. A time where the inquisition's main purpose is to get rid of troublesome Christian cults with their own interpretation of religion, gathering momentum and followers just like a political party would. A world where the Pope and the Emperor have great powers and fight each other using any means necessary. A period when the universities are slowly replacing the abbeys as places of learning.

All in all it is a good book. I don't think the Italian language brought a lot more to the book. I was quite satisfied with the English translation and there isn't much word play in the original text. There are some passages where the author seems unable to stop listing items, making them tedious, but overall the style is easy to follow and the logic good. The end moral is that the pursuit of knowledge is more important that the knowledge itself and that evil lurks even in the most holly of hearts.

Space Mowgli is a short novel that describes, much like Solaris, the first contact with an alien race. There is a twist, though, as the alien is a human kid, modified to survive on a planet by unknown beings with unimaginable power.

You can immediately separate Russian scifi from American scifi.
The Russian space exploration expeditions are mostly civilian, led by the smartest and more rational scientist around, acting as the brain of the expedition; the characters are unique and react unpredictably, led by their own feelings or beliefs; their biggest problems are bureaucratic or social and mostly internal in the group.
In contrast, American scifi usually deals with military expeditions led by a charismatic or at least authoritative figure, acting as the heart of the expedition; the characters usually act within a strict set of rules which, if they chose to bend, they do as a group rather than as individuals, their greatest issues being external or technical.
I personally prefer the Russian version.

This particular book explores the way humans understand their own humanity, rather than a true interaction with an alien race. The aliens are there, but they choose not to be characters in the story. Each human character has their own view of things and of how things should go on. Reading the book, one is forced to evaluate humanity together with the crew of the expedition and the ending becomes irrelevant. The inner exploration of the reader himself becomes the story.

Bottom line: nice and introverted. Easy to read and rather short. Lacking a conclusion because their is no need for one. The Strugatski brothers considered this story the closest to their hearts.