This review for King’s Test will have a few spoilers for The Lost King. If you haven’t read The Lost King yet, stop now and check out that review, which is pretty much spoiler free.

I hope that if you’ve read my review of The Lost King and picked up the book, you heeded my advice by getting a copy of King’s Sacrifice before finishing. Margaret Weis begins the next book in this series by picking up immediately where she left off. The battle with the Corasian fleet (an alien race from another galaxy) is still raging on. The Phoenix, Sagan’s flagship (compare this to Vader’s Executor) has sustained heavy damage. Just before the battle, Lord Sagan entered into a temporary alliance with a group of mercenaries led by John Dixter to help face the Corasian invasion. Now that Sagan sees victory in sight, he’s ordered the crew of the Defiant to eliminate the mercenaries.

Dion has stolen Lord Sagan’s experimental Scimitar “space plane”* to try and save his friend General Dixter. (*Weis seems to make a point to refer to the ships as planes, maybe to set herself apart from typical science fiction terminology.) Dion doesn’t know it, but Sagan allowed him to steal the plane as part of a test, not of Dion, but that of God. Sagan is determined that Dion could not possibly succeed without God’s intervention. This makes sense, because Dion was just rescued after being captured by the Corasians. Dion didn’t fare so well in battle. One thing that I think Sagan has going for him is that his faith isn’t completely blind. In his opinion, if it is God’s will for Dion to rule as King, then God will ensure Dion’s survival.

Sagan explains this plan to Maigrey, the only other surviving Guardian. She was one of the only surviving Gurardians that refused to join Sagan in is coup to remove the last king in the line of the Blood Royal. Their relationship is rather complicated. As children, they discovered they were mind-linked, a rare phenomenon that occurred only between very few of the Blood Royal. She was Sagan’s second in command. It was somehow broken when Sagan struck down Maigrey in the king’s palace.

Following Sagan killing Platus, the Guardian responsible for hiding and raising Dion, the mind link with Maigrey was somehow reforged. Sagan tracked Maigrey down and brought her aboard the Phoenix to be executed for her betrayal the night of the coup. She challenged him to a bloodsword duel that Sagan could not refuse without losing the respect of his men. It was during the peak of this duel that Sagain and Maigrey both were mentally assaulted with a painful shared premonition of the coming Corasian attack. I was a bit thrown off by how quick they were to stop the fight and agreed to take on the Corasians together.

Dion’s true test, owning up to the title of the book, comes much later. Weis broke this book up into five sections, the previous book only had two. The third part chronicles “The Betrayal,” which I was glad to see finally explained. There is a lot of character development for Sagan and also some more background on the reasoning behind the coup. Weis also introduces a new villain, the last of the Order of Dark Lightning, capable of mind control. This new guy reminded me a little of Darth Sidious, however he is more comfortable hiding in the shadows.

Overall, The Lost King is a solid sequel. It is at least as good or better than the first book. There is quite a bit more character development for Dion, Sagan, and Maigrey. My favorite character so far is XJ, Tusk’s eccentric and obnoxious flight computer. One thing I’d like to point out about these books so far is that the chapters are relatively short and to the point. I normally read on my lunch break and really hate having to cut a chapter short. I found that I could easily find a stopping point when I wanted.

I’ve said here many times that Isaac Asimov is my favorite author. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I read “The Last Question,” Asimov’s favorite short story written by himself. Last night I stumbled across a story called “The Last Answer.” At first I thought, “hey, I’ve read this before,” then did a double-take. It was “Answer,” not “Question.” This story focused on the afterlife instead of entropy. They are both good stories, however I agree with Asimov in his opinion that “The Last Question” is better. I highly suggest reading them both, but I’m not sure what order to recommend. I’ll list the links in order of publication, so you decide. Read both stories before looking at the comments on either one, because they are filled with spoilers.

“The Last Question” – Isaac Asimov (1956)

“The Last Answer” – Isaac Asimov (1980)

I am always open to suggestions when it comes to discovering new authors. By new, I mean to me, not new to writing. For example, I discovered Isaac Asimov a few years after his death, when he had already written over 400 books. Recently, one of my friends suggested I read the Star of the Guardians series by Margaret Weis. He had read it a long time ago, but was rereading the series again. I figured if it was good enough for him to read twice, I should give it a try. Weis offers an eloquent introduction to the series by first clarifying the genre her books fall into. Many fantasy readers might recognize her name as a co-author of many of the Dragonlance books.

If Fantasy is a romance of our dreams, then Galactic Fantasy is a romance of our future
…
Galactic Fantasy is certainly not science-fiction. Sci-fi often deals with the romance of plastic and chrysteel; our love and worship of technology.
…
I believe that man will reach the stars. When he does, the ‘science’ of how our spaceship gets from place to place will ultimately be less important than how we, as people, act when we get there. Galactic Fantasy explores how we deal with our own fears, ambitions and passions as we soar among the heavens—not the technicalities of getting there.

It is my understanding that George Lucas did not intend to write hard science fiction, but rather Galacitc Fantasy in Weis’s terms. Another word that has been used to describe Star Wars is “Space Opera.” I think either of these would be suitable descriptions.

Why do I mention Star Wars? As the first few chapters unfolded, I noticed quite a few familiar themes. I detected obvious influences from Star Wars and Dune very early on. For example, the Guardians seemed to be very similar to Jedi. They are an elite group, loyal to protecting their leaders. Their weapon, for example, is the bloodsword.  There is selective breeding for the “Blood Royal” kind of like in Dune, however it is combined with genetic research and with a slightly different goal. There are a few others that I won’t mention because I consider them to be spoilers.

I was delighted to discover that these were just loose similarities, because I was starting to worry that this was just a mash-up of other ideas that I have seen before. Rather than searching for the one perfect being, the breeding’s goal is to strengthen the blood line of all that rule the galaxy. The bloodsword, unlike the lightsaber, can only be safely wielded by a Guardian. Using it drains the Guardian’s energy, but also contains a fast acting virus that to which only Guardians are genetically immune.

Each chapter begins with a quote from another piece of literature that alludes to the events that immediately follow. This reminded me a bit of how Neal Stephenson did something similar in The Diamond Age. A big difference is that Stephenson gave a more literal summary using the character names and direct plot summaries. I like Weis’s method better, because quotes from other stories leaves a little more to the imagination.

As for plot, the story begins with Lord Sagan arriving at the interrogation/torture room of a recently captured Guardian, one of the last of his kind. Sagan ultimately learns the location of a boy he has been searching for. The setting switches over to across the galaxy to a desert planet and Weis introduces Tusk, the son of a fallen Guardian. He was sent to this planet by his father and given the task of waiting and be ready to assist when the time comes. What time? Why? These he was not sure of until a mysterious man approaches him to enlist his help in smuggling a boy offworld to safety. From there on, the action keeps up and stays steady until the end of the book.

The boy’s name is Dion, and he seems to me much like Luke Skywalker. They are both spirited away from a desert planet and eventually learn they have a destined for things far greater than they could have ever imagined. This was another point where I was worried I was just reading a rehash of so many other stories that I’ve already known from the past. To my relief, Dion’s development is vastly different than Luke’s. Both of them are a bit whiny at first, but Dion seemed to snap out of it faster than Luke.

Weis pulled me into the story rather easily. She started out with some familiar themes, then expanded on them with unique twists of her own. I can honestly say that any Star Wars fan should easily become a fan of this book after just a few chapters. I really enjoyed the pace of the book, vivid descriptions, and the good mix of dialogue and action. Character development is also done quite well. I can’t explain exactly why, but at one point I got goosebumps during a particularly exciting scene. I think that speaks well for the writing and Weis’s ability to get me emotionally attached to the characters. The ending of the book makes it painfully obvious that this is just part of a series. I highly recommend securing a copy of the second book before you are done with the first.

I just got a Stumble to Pharyngula’s science blog that has a link to a YouTube video of Isaac Asimov. He is speaking about what he thought the top science story of 1988 was. I like running across videos of him speaking because it is nice to put a voice and face to my favorite author. The video goes out of sync about half way through unfortunately. Check it out!

Via Pharyngula

Black Market memories is a story about a settlement many light years away from Earth named Jamestown. The residents can be individuals that had crippled bodies of some sort, then were given the opportunity to be “free” in a Stellar Unit (SU). The brain is scanned over a period of time then digitized and placed into a mechanical body. I would not classify these as cyborgs, but essentially AI that controls a ship of sorts. Some use the settlements as a base for research trips to find new worlds.

The story begins without any of the background I have described. My initial assumption was that these Stellars were humans in ships. The first few chapters were confusing without this background. It was obvious that the misdirection was intentional, but it didn’t sit well with me. Anyway, the opening chapters cover a kidnapping of an SU on her way back from a research mission. After this, Schramm gives us some background on two SU candidates and how they ended up in Jamestown. One was destined for a life of crime, the other to enforce the law.

The book’s title is derived from a limitation of the brain scanning process in creating a Stellar. The resulting AI has all of the existing memories and emotions of the original host. The problem is that they cannot experience new emotions. It seems to me that the title should have been Black Market Emotions, because it is obvious that the AI can create and store new memories, just not emotions. The Stellar can play back old memories and subsequently experience the emotions that happened at the time. The problem is that this gets old after a few thousand times.

For some reason, although the citizens of Jamestown are essentially AIs, Simgames are illegal. This is where the kidnapping comes in. To fuel an underground Simgame, Stellars are ambushed and captured for their memories. Emotion hungry subscribers for this underground game are addicted to this new source of memories/emotions.

This is where I have some serious problems with the story. Throughout the novel, characters are continually expressing emotions. They use words like fear, terror, love in conversation. Then later on they talk about longing to be able to feel emotion. Toward the end, I learn that Stellars can become suicidal due to emotional deprivation. That reasoning just doesn’t make sense. This book felt to me like it wanted to be a mystery. The conspiracy behind the Simgame was a mystery to the characters, but nothing was hidden from the reader.

Schramm has obviously spent a lot of time creating the various technologies that enabled the settlement of Jamestown. One thing I found interesting was Schramm’s use of CPU clock cycle rates for the Stellar Units. For humans in space travel, the problem is that it takes a long time to travel, so usually they are put into hypersleep of some sort. The SUs slow the CPU clock down so they don’t have to twiddle their thumbs while on a several hundred year trip. Arden, the law enforcement character, discovers that his SU is capable of much higher clock rates than anyone else. He can act much faster, giving him the advantage during his investigation.

For more information on David A. Schramm and his new book, please visit http://www.blackmarketmemories.com/

This book was my first experience with writing by Kurt Vonnegut. His writing, at least in this book, is very original and unconventional. The “Timequake” according to the dust jacket is an event where on February 13th, 2001, everyone is thrust back to February 17th, 1991. Vonnegut treats this as a contraction of the Universe, not simply time travel in the traditional sense. In many time travel stories, the characters look for ways “to put right what once went wrong,” a la Quantum Leap. Vonnegut doesn’t give the characters in this story that opportunity. Everyone is forced to live their lives on autopilot, doing the exact same things they did before, but with the knowledge of what was to come.

I found this angle quite troubling at first, because how boring would it be to have to live almost 10 years all over again without free will? Vonnegut does quite a bit with it by adding a few more twists. In the prologue, he explains that one of the main characters, Kilgore Trout, is his alter ego. Apparently, this character shows up quite a bit in his writing, however in this book, Vonnegut is a character as well. To top it off, the book supposedly started out as a first draft that was scrapped then rewritten to be finished in the final form. I’m not certain if that really happened, or was just part of the book. Confusing right? He covers this in the prologue under the guise of explanation, but looking back I think it was just a successful attempt to keep me off balance.

The final part of the book is about what happens when free will kicks back in. Can you imagine being a puppet with yourself as the puppet master suddenly able to do whatever you want? Kilgore Trout is one of the few, if not only, people that can cope with the situation. Most people freeze up, not able to decide what to do next. So that is the basic plot of the book, all laid out on the dust jacket and the first couple pages that make up the prologue. What is the point of reading it then? For me, the story really didn’t seem to be the focus of this book. It was just a framework for Vonnegut to use as a way to talk about random topics ranging from why semicolons suck, how electronic books don’t measure up to physical ones, or why Chicago is better than New York.

A lot of these observations are just thrown in randomly, confirming my belief that Vonnegut’s goal is to keep the reader off balance. For example, chapter 43 begins with this:

Question: What is the white stuff in bird poop?
Answer: That is bird poop, too.

With himself as a character, the lines between fiction and real life were sufficiently blurred. I really didn’t know much about Vonnegut, so I found myself looking researching at random points to see what was fiction or what was real. The other characters were interesting as well, but I found myself fascinated by how Vonnegut used Trout poke fun at himself. I didn’t realize until writing this review that this was actually the last fiction novel written by Vonnegut. I’m not sure that was the best way to get exposed to a new author, but I’m definitely interested in reading more by him, so it worked out for the best after all. I enjoyed this book, and would highly recommend it. If you’ve never read anything by Vonnegut, it wouldn’t hurt to start with this one.

If I remember correctly, I saw Contact (the movie) in the theater when it came out. I enjoyed it and always wondered how it compared to the book. It turned out that my future wife owned the book, but I didn’t get around reading it until now. Of course movies rarely ever measure up to the novels they are based on, and this was no exception. Don’t get me wrong, the movie was good, however it just scratched upon the surface of what the novel contains.

The main character, Ellie, is a radio astronomer that eventually becomes part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). One night the project stumbles upon an unmistakably non-random signal. Initially, it just seems to be that the signal is just a repeating list of prime numbers. Upon closer inspection, scientists uncover many layers to the signal by calculating wave modulation and other ways that I don’t remember. Anyway, the movie skips over many of the steps leading up to the discovery that the message really contains instructions to make something.

One of the more interesting themes is the selfishness of the U.S. government. The officials are worried that other countries might gain some type of military advantage if they build this “Machine” first. The scientists already determined early one that decoding the message was impossible without worldwide cooperation due to the origin of the signal and rotation of the Earth. The government hesitantly cooperated with the “Machine Counsel” in piecing the message together, but they wanted to keep the nature of the message secret as long as possible.

One interesting thing to me about reading Science Fiction is how often new ideas become a reality. In this story, a man named Sol Hadden developed a technology called Adnix. This chip would mute the sound on the TV when commercials appeared. It detected the increase in volume that many advertisers built into their ads. This book came out in 1985, and I’ve looked around to see if such a thing was in use back then, but haven’t been able to. I know for a fact that today there are software programs that can detect and automatically remove commercials from recorded TV. Sagan might not have been the first person to think of this, but he was definitely ahead of his time.

I thoroughly enjoyed Contact, and don’t think that the book was spoiled for me by seeing the movie first. Carl Sagan did a good job of walking me through all sorts of mathematical and scientific concepts some of which include black holes, relativity, number theory, pattern recognition, and cryptography. He also eloquently addresses some of the economic, political, religious ramifications of the worldwide goal to make the Machine. Sagan is an excellent writer, and I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.

A while back a co-worker of mine gave me A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller. It sat on a shelf for a few years until I recently got around to reading it. I didn’t really know much about the book when it was given to me, but since then I’ve seen it on a few “Best of SF” book lists. It also won the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. There are three parts to the book, each taking place a few hundred years apart.

The setting of the first part takes begins in the 26th century. At some unspecified time in the past, the world all but destroyed in a global nuclear war. Almost all the secrets of modern technology were lost in what would later be described as a purge. The mob of humans left alive banded together to destroy all knowledge that could lead to another nuclear war. There were book burnings and hangings of scientists. The story follows group of monks that have built an abbey in the desert to house the Memorabilia as they refer to books, technical manuals, and other bits of information that are uncovered over time. Their patron is a man by the name of Leibowitz, who was hung during the purge just after the first nuclear war.

The book opens with Brother Francis out in the desert on a vigil of solitude for Lent. He encounters a wanderer that through some odd circumstances leads to the discovery of a fallout shelter. He finds a box full of items, two of which are what appear to be a grocery list and an electrical schematic. Francis excited because he suspects the box belonged to Liebowitz. Once the abbot heard of the events, he was more interested in the pilgrim. Rumors take off, and eventually people claim that the wanderer was actually Leibowitz. I kept looking forward to finding out what was actually in the fallout shelter, but that mystery was basically shoved into the background.

Miller instead focuses on the politics of how New Rome scrutinizes the account of Francis and the “Wanderer.” I was a bit disturbed by the cruelty of the abbot and inquisitor. Francis is eventually deemed credible, but not before quite an ordeal. The rest of this first part follows Francis in his appointment to the copy room and eventual creation of an artwork based on a “Circuit Diagram by Leibowitz.”

The second part starts at year 3174 with the scientific community gaining some momentum. A few new discoveries have taken place, and word of the cache of documents at the abbey of Leibowitz catches the attention of one of the best scientists. He puts in a request to have a good portion of the Memorabilia sent to New Rome for examination, but the reigning abbot refuses on grounds of keeping the records safe.

The third part is starts at year 3781 with humanity having many space colonies. They rediscovered nuclear power, and with that nuclear weapons. The threat of nuclear war is very strong. The order of monks is prepared to send the good portion of the Memorabilia away from Earth if war breaks out, because New Rome is certain the next war will utterly destroy the world. War does resurface, and the abbey becomes the focal point of a humanitarian effort for fallout victims.

Most of this last section is a commentary on euthanasia. The current abbot learns that one of the aid workers might hand out “red tickets,” government sanctioned approval euthanasia. They are good for entrance to a mercy camp for those deemed to be the worst cases. Otherwise, they are doomed to suffer a horrible and painful death by radiation sickness. The abbot makes the worker promise not to hand one out or else he will not allow the aid workers to use the abbey. Of course the worker breaks his promise and the abbot flips out when he sees a mother and daughter walking away with red ticket. It becomes his mission to convince the mother not to take the child to the camp. Eventually she does goes anyway, but not without a strong fight by the abbot.

As a science fiction novel, I found this book to be a disappointment. There were some minor elements of SF, but mostly the focus was on church policies and political struggles. I had a very hard time relating to the main characters, because I couldn’t understand why anyone would put up with such torture. I don’t see why serving a higher power needs to involve so much pain and suffering. Overall, the book was quite a bit depressing and frustrating. I kept wanting it to get better, but it never did.

Nobody is sure when exactly Isaac Asimov was born due to poor record keeping. January 2nd, 1920 was the day Isaac Asimov decided to celebrate his birthday. Along with creating the Three Laws of Robotics, Asimov also unintentionally coined the term robotics. It was first used in print when his short story “Liar!” was published in 1941. He was constantly writing in just about every area of literature. I have primarily read his Science Fiction, but he has done textbooks, humor, mystery, non-fiction, and more.

My first exposure to Asimov’s writing was when my father gave me an old worn out copy of I, Robot. I tucked the book away for a few years and eventually got around to reading it. I was so enthralled with the robots that I eventually read every robot book by him and other authors. This naturally led me to read the Foundation series which I also enjoyed, but I’ve always preferred the robot series. The Robot and Foundation books make up the biggest reading project I have ever completed. Aside from those, I’ve read a bit of his autobiography and plan on sampling some of his other writing in the near future.

By the time I discovered Asimov, he had already died. I wonder how much more he could have written had he not contracted HIV from a blood transfusion he received during heart surgery. He died of myocardial and renal complications on April 6, 1992, but the true cause of his death wasn’t publicized due to the stigma of HIV/AIDS at the time. His work has greatly influenced my love of Science Fiction, and for that I am thankful.

For more information on the life of Isaac Asimov, please visit the official Wikipedia post

One thing I like to do before I review a book is to look up some Wiki pages and other reviews to get a feel for how others reacted to the book. First of all, the Wikipedia entry for this book was no help at all, so much so that I’m considering updating it myself. I’m glad I took some notes while I was reading. I ran across some very harsh reviews on Amazon that had I read beforehand, I might not have picked up this book. Quite a few of the die-hard fans said to read just the first third of the book and stop. After that point, many of the reviewers pointed out that it is fairly obvious that Lindskold deviated from Zelazny’s quick and witty formula.

I, however, loved Donnerjack. It is probably one of my favorite reads in the past few years. About seven years or so ago I enjoyed reading The Great Book of Amber by Zelazny. It was also one of my first exposures to fantasy along with the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. Later on I went on to read Lord of Light, also by Zelazny, which I also loved. I’ve also read This Immortal and finally Lord Demon, which is the other book of Zelany’s that Lindskold helped finish. Lord Demon was good, so I didn’t think twice before grabbing Donnerjack. I’ve also not read any Zelazny in the past 3-4 years, so I can’t say I was as aware of the change in writing style as others were. With that said, there was definitely a noticeable difference between Part I and Part II. Thinking back, I would almost say that they could have been split into two different books.

Anyway, I can best describe this book was a very intriguing blend of Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Cyberpunk themes. Since I’ve read all three of these genres recently, this was a very satisfying experience. I need to start out by giving a little background:

Verité (real world): This is much like our world today, with the exception that tourism has almost entirely shifted to visits to Virtù rather than actual physical destination. A decent percentage of jobs revolve around the maintenance of virtual businesses that are needed inside of Virtù.

Virtù (virtual reality): Picture Virtù as a massive World of Warcraft server, but infinitely more complex. The main difference is that this world wasn’t programmed in detail by humans. From what I gather, the groundwork was a vast network of interconnected systems, which at one point “crashed” in what was called the Genesis Scramble. This is essentially the Big Bang but in electronic form. Out of this massive crash and subsequent reorganization, several hierarchies of AI developed.

People interface with Virtù through intricate VR seats equipped with force fields for bio-feedback, feed tubes for nutrition, allowing visits of weeks or more. Think of these stations like the battery pods in The Matrix, but much more comfortable and people actually choose to use them. People can have avatars that look like themselves, or choose from just about any combination of features imaginable.

The main character for the first part of the book is John D’Arcy Donnerjack, one of three pioneers of Virtu. He fell in love with an AI named Aradys that eventually died. AI in Virtù have life cycles, much like real people. They can reproduce and fall in love. Everything that dies in Virtù is destined for the Deep Fields, ruled by Death. Donnerjack travels to Deep Fields to bargain with Death for the return of his beloved Aradys. Donnerjack agrees to design a master palace for Death, and his first born child. Assuming that reproduction with an AI is impossible, Donnerjack doesn’t consider the implications of the last part of the bargain.

This is where the fantasy part comes in. Death reassembles Ayradys from her fragmented code, but she doesn’t appear to remember fully what she once was. Death instructs Donnerjack to take her along a path that at the end will make her whole again. Somehow when they make it to the end, they cross into Verité, and she is transformed into a real person. They don’t consider that they could possible reproduce, and eventually Ayradys becomes pregnant with a sun. Donnerjack then sets out to protect his son from Death.

The bulk of the novel focuses on Donnerjack’s son. Given the circumstances of his conception, he has a very important role to play. The events I’ve described so far are mostly laid out on the back flap summary. I really can’t go into much more detail without spoiling the plot of the book. This was definitely a page turner for me. I normally just read my books on my lunch breaks, but toward the end I had to take this one home to finish up over the weekend. I highly recommend this book to anyone that has interest in Sci-Fi, Fantasy, or Cyberpunk. If you like more than one of those genres, you’d most definitely be in for a treat.