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dustydigger
Posted 2014-05-04 4:25 AM (#7508 - in reply to #6198)
Subject: Re: The Pick and Mix Challenge.		Quote Reply



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Location: UK		oops,I am far behind in adding my reads for all the various challengesetc.Health problems family obligations and preparations for visitors from America in June have made reading and reviewing a bit sidelined.
12. Isaac Asimov - Pebble in the Sky.Asimov's first full length novel was a light pleasant read.A middle aged tailor is accidentally transported to the future after a nucluar catastrophe of some sort has ruined most of the earth,many have fled to be second class citizens in a galactic empire,and earth people are despised by the galaxy and in turn the religious fanatics ruling their people are devising a plan to infect the galaxy with a deadly plague to which earthmen are immune..It was fun to see an unheroic older man as a protacgonist.Enough plot twists and descriptions of a future society to make for a light fun read.Oh,and for once the hero doesnt understand the greatly changed language at all,and has to learn it over quite a long period. I am often annoyed about how the language problems are glossed over in many books.Big exception of course is C J Cherryh's Foreigner series,where the language problems are the basis of the plot!
13. Robert A Heinlein - The Door into Summer.One of my fave Heinleins,with a typically resourceful ebullient hero,a brilliant inventor whose business partner and his avaricious fiance cheat him out of his business and bundle him off in a cryogenic facility,where he awakes decades later and finally locates someone who can send him back in time to see what has happened to his patents and his nasty backstabbing friends.Cue an amusing and hectic time travel sequence to put things right. There is a super cat in the book,Pete,who punishes the nasty pair for mistreating his owner(servant?) in a priceless and hilarious part of the book.Highly recommended.
14. Michael Bishop - Transfigurations.The Hugo- and Nebula-nominated novella "Death and Designation Among the Asadi" forms the first part of Transfigurations, the notes and journal of an anthropologist studying the mysterious hominid Asadi on a strange planet. The story continues when his daughter comes to investigates his disappearance. We join in with the characters as they speculate on the Asadi,creating and abandoning hypotheses in a way that seems very credible in the story as they learn more about these weird creatures. A dense,even dry book,but continually fascinating,and the last section of the book provides us with surprising answers to all our questions,incidentally turning from an anthropological investigation to a horror novel.I had inevitable comparisons to make with parts of Simmons Hyperion,a synthesis of horror and anthropology.I wonder if Simmons read this and was influenced.Complex,original and mesmerising, Transfigurations was nominated for the British Science Fiction Association Award in 1980.Read for my Masterworks challenge.Excellent

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