Archive for the ‘Reviews of books’ Category
The Dark Forest
{4.5/5} “Once the Wallfacer mission and identity were granted, they could not be refused or abandoned. This impossibility was not due to any individual’s coercion but because cold logic, as determined by the project’s very nature, meant that once someone became a Wallfacer, an invisible and impenetrable screen was immediately thrown up between them and […]
The Three-Body Problem
{5/5} “But I can sense the plan, a very comprehensive, intricate plan: damage scientific research installations, kill scientists, drive scientists like you crazy and make you commit suicide — but the main goal is to misdirect your thoughts until you’re even more foolish than ordinary people.” The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, published in 2006 […]
The Compass of the Soul
{4.5/5} “How consensus was reached is unknown, but somehow it was eventually accepted that the catastrophe would result from the arts or their practice. How else could they have arrived at the decision to erase the arts from this world? To hide their last vestiges for the good of the earth, perhaps for the good […]
Beneath the Vaulted Hills
{4.5/5} “Do you ever feel that we are at an end of a chapter of history, Mr. Flattery, and that the world as it existed before was so much more alive with marvels? I almost feel this stranger was left from that period. Like lizards are the tiny remnants of the great beasts that disappeared.” […]
Star Trek: The Amazing Stories
{5/5} “It is not possible for me to be with you today to honor my father. I am far away on a mission to promote galactic peace. My mission honors my father’s memory. Sarek and I often did not agree. Everyone knows that. And yet… he is the reason I am where I am today.” […]
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds V
{5/5} “Within the confines of the library, the cadets were polished, serious, stiff. Outside, in the fresh air, amid the profusion of color, with the soft green grass beneath them, they were seedlings reaching for the sun. With their guards down and their minds open, they were flowers ready to blossom.” (from “Efflorescence”) Star Trek: […]
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within
{4.5/5} “Our species — no, forgive me, our cultures — aren’t the same at all. Quelin fear outsiders because we use them as scapegoats for the things we fear about ourselves. We bar cultural exchange because change frightens us. Whereas your people… You fear outsiders because they gave you no choice in the change they […]
Black Wine
{4.5/5} “I cannot keep thinking in the language of cruelty in which I was born… But here in the mountains they have names for the things I want to become: happy, secure, gentle, kind, good. I will will learn the subtle words, the nuances of meaning, and I will be able to think thoughts I […]
Memory Wire
{4.5/5} “I think they simply wanted to make us whole… to cure what they saw as our tragic failure. Failure of memory. Which is failure of conscience. They were surprised, I would guess, by our capacity for aggression. For ruthlessness, for inflicting pain. Conscience is memory… and the stones would restore it.” Memory Wire by […]
New Suns
{5/5} “A country that has reached the age of wisdom would stop building monuments to the warmongers of its history, but rather erect them for its peacemakers, those who saved lives by preventing the course of events from descending into a time of sword and fire.” (from “The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations”) New Suns: Original […]