Archive for the ‘Reviews of books’ Category
Fugitive Telemetry
{4.5/5} “It’s usually easy to make friends with low-level bot pilots, but this one had been coded to be adversarial, directed to operated in stealth mode, and was wary of incursion attempts. It tried to alert its onboard SecSystem, but a the old saying (which I just made up) goes, if you can ping the […]
Network Effect
{4.5/5} “If you put everything that had happened to me on a scale of awfulness and assigned exact values to each incident (which I had done once, it’s in my archive somewhere) dealing with corporates who exploited failed colonies, and probably went through SecUnits as fast a Amena did fried vegetable crunchy things, was in […]
Exit Strategy
{5/5} “I knew interpreting the emotional subtext in the speech and appearance of real humans was completely different from interpreting it in shows and serials… But the interpretation I wanted to make of Bharadwaj’s vid statement was that Mensah was being held by GrayCris, who had threatened her life if Preservation didn’t make a formal […]
Rogue Protocol
{5/5} “I considered telling Miki that I was here to collect data on possible alien remnant violations by GrayCris… But if Miki told Abene, she would ask how it knew, and I knew Miki would tell her about me. It wouldn’t lie to a direct question. Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present […]
Artificial Condition
{5/5} “I told myself I still looked like a SecUnit without armor, hopelessly exposed, but the truth was I did look more human. And now I knew why I hadn’t wanted to do this. It would make it harder for me to pretend not to be a person.” Artificial Condition by Martha Wells, published in […]
All Systems Red
{5/5} “So I’m awkward with actual humans. It’s not paranoia about my hacked governor module, and it’s not them; it’s me. I know I’m a horrifying murderbot, and they know it, and it makes both of us nervous, which makes me even more nervous. Also, if I’m not in the armor then it’s because I’m […]
Star Trek: The Next Generation — Kahless
{4.5/5} “Kahless no longer fomented rebellion for Morath’s sake alone. Now he did it for himself as well — and for Kellein. He had discovered it was the only thing that made his heart stop hurting for her, the only balm that worked for him. Had he been the one to die instead of Kellein, […]
Galaxias
{4.5/5} “‘My head is spinning. So what you’re saying is that an alien cannon, hidden on the Moon, spat a gob of water at alien planets that didn’t even exist last month.’ ‘I know,’ Mel said, sounding unhappy. ‘On any other day, in any other year, that might seem strange.’” Galaxias by Stephen Baxter, published […]
Obscura
{5/5} “‘Whoever’s doing this doesn’t want us here, doesn’t want us finding out what’s wrong with shifting. That’s why they killed Tinsel. He had the authority to shut this all down.’ ‘Because whoever it is knows the truth.’” Obscura by Joe Hart, published in 2018 Gillian’s husband Kent died of a new disease, Losian’s, that […]
The Life Impossible
{4.5/5} “The willingness to be confused, I now realise, is a prerequisite for a good life. Wanting things to be simple can become a kind of prison, it really can, because you end up staying trapped inside how you want things to be rather than embracing how they could be. You end up closed. You […]