| Sci-fi Book Club

Read the Book... Or Wait for the Movie?

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games Tonight my husband and I went to the bookstore to hang out, something we do at least once a week. Tonight our table in the cafe was right next to a table stacked at least two feet high with Hunger Games books -- I guess they are expecting a lot of sales, with the movie coming out next month!

Every few minutes, some teenager or young woman would walk by, usually with a companion, and gush over the books. We heard lots of "I'm so excited!" and "Have you read this yet?"

But... no one ever walked away with a copy of the book. Read more about Read the Book... Or Wait for the Movie?

Science Fiction in 100 Years

Sometimes I can't help but wonder how science fiction will look in 100 or 200 hundred years. If you look at science fiction stories from the past, much of their inventions have actually happened.

Sure, we're not all tripping around the centuries in an H.G. Wells Time Machine, but the Nautilus is sure looks like a modern day submarine. We are able to communicate from long distances using our computers and have millions of books and other information at our finger tips. Read more about Science Fiction in 100 Years

Which is more entertaining Science Fiction or Science Fact?

When I was in college, I had a professor who enjoyed science fiction, but had a problem with some of the liberties taken by authors. If you are going to be a science fiction writer, then you need to have at least a basic understanding of science, but the whole point is fiction.

If you actually saw how scientific advances are made, then it would bore you to tears. Writers created an idea called suspension of disbelief. It's where you are willing to overlook some scientific improprieties for the sake of a good story.

I admit that when I began my study of physics, I loved the romantic view of it. It was the Star Trek version I loved and not so much the actual math of it. Real science is made up of complex equations and experiments are much more about slow advancement and repetition than anything else. In science fiction books, advances happen quickly and go from the lab to real world in record time. Read more about Which is more entertaining Science Fiction or Science Fact?

WOOL, Hugh Howey

Possibly the best self-published book I have read to date

I realize that in my last review I came across as a bit of a hater regarding self-published works and internet fiction. But I'm not, I really am not. As proof of which I offer up this review of WOOL, which is a self-published science fiction novelette.

You would think that there would be few entities in the world as feeble, as unable to fight for their survival, as a self-published science fiction novelette. And for the most part, you would be right. But oddly, WOOL has bubbled up to the top of the stack.

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Monster Island, David Wellington

It's the first draft of a really great novel

I'm a big fan of the Zombie Apocalypse. Or rather, I'm a big fan of watching or reading about the Zombie Apocalypse from the cozy comforts of my own, non-zombified home. Most of the zombie stuff has been in movie format, so I was pretty excited to learn about a new-to-me zombie book.

Monster Island began life as a serialized novel on the internet. It then made the leap to publication, surely one of the few such online novels to do so. As such, I'm sure it has given new hope to millions of not-traditionally-published authors. But having consumed more than my fair share of serialized, podcasted, and otherwise internet-only fiction, I was able to see the flaws inherent in the medium all too clearly.

Just Another YA Dystopian Novel?

Matched by Ally Condie

Matched Dystopian novels are popular in the YA genre -- and some of my favorites fall into this category. Delirium, which I read last year, was my favorite book of the year, and probably ranks pretty high in my list of all-time favorites, too. The Giver, of course, is a memorable classic of this genre. Others come to mind: The House of the Scorpion, for instance, and the more recent Hunger Games.

Matched falls into this category, and is in fact much like Delirium. There are some significant differences, though.

Like most dystopian novels, the world Cassia lives in restricts individuals' choices -- the government chooses your job, where you live, whom you marry. But unlike Delirium, where the focus was on eliminating emotions, especially love, and unlike The Hunger Games, where bloody gladiator-style battles were used to control the less fortunate, the dystopian society in Matched uses statistics and logic to make the optimal choices for everyone, even to predict what color of dress a 17-year-old girl might choose to wear to the biggest event of her life. Read more about Just Another YA Dystopian Novel?

Alice in Deadland

There are a lot of zombie books out there these days, but few of them are set in a science fiction setting. For many of is purists, that's a good thing, but Alice in Deadland melds the two genre's together perfectly.

The story takes place after the fall of civilization and the creation of a wasteland called The Deadlands. The few humans that are left must fight for for survival against the “biters,” zombie-like creatures that live underground. Alice is a young girl that has grown up in The Deadlands and knows her way around a gun and knife.

She follows a biter down a hole one day to find their headquarters and begins and exciting adventure where she discovers the truth about humanities downfall and her part in the future of the biters and humanity. As you might guess, there are many parallels between Alice in Wonderland and Alice in Deadland, but it's not a take on the old tale like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It's a tale that fan stand on its own two feet and is actually quite fun and exciting. Read more about Alice in Deadland

Yet Another YA Dystopian Novel...

Matched by Ally Condie

Matched falls into this category, and is in fact much like Delirium. There are some significant differences, though. Read more about Yet Another YA Dystopian Novel...

Fringe May Be No More

Fringe has become a cult hit with tons of fan fiction and supporters rallying behind it through the years. It's a high production value show and with mediocre rating, and Fox may be tempted to cut the purse strings and make this its final season.

Fringe has struggled for years and has been under the threat of cancellation before only to be saved from the fire at the last minute. The network has openly admitted that it's losing money on the show, but in the past the DVR and Hulu percentages have been high enough to keep giving it a chance. Those days may be over.

While nothing has been made official, even the cast have hinted that they think the show may not make it past this season. I think everyone is trying to stay positive, but unless people start tuning in on Fridays, it's not going to be on for much longer. The sad thing is that it may take a while for the network to make the final decision and writers will be force to either scramble to put together some type of series finale or simply leave it as a cliffhanger and keep fans of the show wondering what ever happened to Peter, Walter and Olivia. Read more about Fringe May Be No More

World War Z

Max Brooks' masterpiece of the Zombie Apocalypse

I seem to be working my way backwards through the canon of zombie literature. I started with Zone One: A Novel, which I loved beyond reason. A friend, hearing how much I loved Zone One, loaned me his copy of World War Z a few weeks ago. I have been picking it up and nibbling on it ever since; it is a book which lends itself well to being read in bite-sized pieces. (Heh.)

If you crave a longer, meatier narrative, then World War Z is not the book for you. Its story is told in fractured pieces, a pastiche which creates, layer upon layer, the story of the global zombie apocalypse. As each puzzle piece is added, you begin to make connections between the bits, which forms a truly massive meta-narrative of the spread of "African rabies" (as the plague was briefly code named).

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