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Two recommendations for things on the web:
My sister's stories. I think I like her writing better than my own; it's rich in detail, sight and sound and scent. I'm not totally sure what's going on in the sf one, but I like it best except for its unfinishedness. She's not, however, much like her narrators at the present time; her regular blog is a very different animal from her story blog.
Death Gets a Website. Quite charming, done by the student of a friend of mine. My favorite is Death May Already Be a Winner.
Steven-Elliot Altman, Deprivers: What if a new mutation appeared, one that made the victim into a sort of sensory deprivation machine, temporarily or permanently suppressing the senses of anyone the victim touched? Some Deprivers affect sight, others hearing, smell, balance, or even pain. Deprivers begins with Robert Luxley, who's made his affliction into a useful tool in his assassin's career. Luxley has no idea that others like him exist, until he comes home from a job to find a young girl waiting for him, who tells him about Sensory Deprivation Syndrome and the government plot to control and perhaps destroy all Deprivers. It goes from there. The premise is intriguing, though the execution suffers from some minor infelicities like weird POV twitches. The biggest flaw is that the first half of the book is one story while the second is really a series of related short stories, another character's adventures in Deprivation. If that's okay with you, this will probably entertain you. There's also either a hugely dropped ball plotwise (a character who violates the basic pseudoscientific constraints of the premise), or a poor setup for a sequel. Still, it was diverting. The pace is brisk, and fans of the X-Men might enjoy a world of Rogues.
Scott Mackay, The Meek: Thirty years ago, the violent assaults of genetically altered humans known as orphans drove humanity off of the asteroid Ceres. But decades of living on lower-gravity asteroids have caused disease in most of the humans living off Earth, and they want Ceres back. The engineering team dispatched to ensure that the bio-bombed Ceres can be refitted for human habitation discovers that the orphans aren't quite as dead as everyone assumed. I don't quite know why I disliked this book so much; I was told so much about the characters that I didn't really know them even though I could recite their descriptions and formative emotional traumas. Bad things kept happening – if I'd been into the story, there could have been a lot of tension, as in a horror movie when you're waiting for the next bad thing to happen, but instead it was just dreary. Also, I just didn't get a big chunk of the premise, which was that the genetic engineers vastly increased the orphans' suspicion and aggressiveness to help them survive under extreme environmental conditions. If anything, every-man-for-himself individualism is less helpful under extreme conditions than in Paradise, and it's not as if humans really needed a boost in aggression anyway. I recommend a pass.
Robert A. Heinlein, Space Cadet: Ah, St. Agnes book sale, your wonders are never-ending. This 1948 book is one of Heinlein's less interesting juveniles, which was probably more exciting when everyone was dreaming of what it would be like once humanity got into space, always assuming we'd stay there. The other thing the book, set in the 2060s, makes clear is that Heinlein, while assuming that whites and blacks would get along as fellow members of the Solar Patrol, had not a clue about the change in women's roles that was about to transform the country. There's a feminine voice as the cadets check in, a kind minister's wife, and a girlfriend who's better off left behind, as well as a fainting, uncomprehending mother, and here I have given you the entire characterization of human females. It really makes me wonder what today's science fiction is getting wrong about the society of 50 years from now.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Extremes: This book is set in Rusch's "Retrieval Artist" universe, in which humans have entered galactic society only by agreeing to follow alien laws when off Earth, which too often condemn humans (or their children) to death or fates worse than. Instead of subjecting themselves to alien justice, some human criminals Disappear. Retrieval Artists find the Disappeared, but not to help aliens – they help the people left behind. The story begins with a lunar marathon and a suspicious corpse. The cops (one now an ex-cop) from The Disappeared return, each investigating different angles. Was the victim a Disappeared? Or is there something worse going on? The pace is brisk, and the characters are recognizably tired, pissed off, hopeful and otherwise human.
My sister's stories. I think I like her writing better than my own; it's rich in detail, sight and sound and scent. I'm not totally sure what's going on in the sf one, but I like it best except for its unfinishedness. She's not, however, much like her narrators at the present time; her regular blog is a very different animal from her story blog.
Death Gets a Website. Quite charming, done by the student of a friend of mine. My favorite is Death May Already Be a Winner.
Steven-Elliot Altman, Deprivers: What if a new mutation appeared, one that made the victim into a sort of sensory deprivation machine, temporarily or permanently suppressing the senses of anyone the victim touched? Some Deprivers affect sight, others hearing, smell, balance, or even pain. Deprivers begins with Robert Luxley, who's made his affliction into a useful tool in his assassin's career. Luxley has no idea that others like him exist, until he comes home from a job to find a young girl waiting for him, who tells him about Sensory Deprivation Syndrome and the government plot to control and perhaps destroy all Deprivers. It goes from there. The premise is intriguing, though the execution suffers from some minor infelicities like weird POV twitches. The biggest flaw is that the first half of the book is one story while the second is really a series of related short stories, another character's adventures in Deprivation. If that's okay with you, this will probably entertain you. There's also either a hugely dropped ball plotwise (a character who violates the basic pseudoscientific constraints of the premise), or a poor setup for a sequel. Still, it was diverting. The pace is brisk, and fans of the X-Men might enjoy a world of Rogues.
Scott Mackay, The Meek: Thirty years ago, the violent assaults of genetically altered humans known as orphans drove humanity off of the asteroid Ceres. But decades of living on lower-gravity asteroids have caused disease in most of the humans living off Earth, and they want Ceres back. The engineering team dispatched to ensure that the bio-bombed Ceres can be refitted for human habitation discovers that the orphans aren't quite as dead as everyone assumed. I don't quite know why I disliked this book so much; I was told so much about the characters that I didn't really know them even though I could recite their descriptions and formative emotional traumas. Bad things kept happening – if I'd been into the story, there could have been a lot of tension, as in a horror movie when you're waiting for the next bad thing to happen, but instead it was just dreary. Also, I just didn't get a big chunk of the premise, which was that the genetic engineers vastly increased the orphans' suspicion and aggressiveness to help them survive under extreme environmental conditions. If anything, every-man-for-himself individualism is less helpful under extreme conditions than in Paradise, and it's not as if humans really needed a boost in aggression anyway. I recommend a pass.
Robert A. Heinlein, Space Cadet: Ah, St. Agnes book sale, your wonders are never-ending. This 1948 book is one of Heinlein's less interesting juveniles, which was probably more exciting when everyone was dreaming of what it would be like once humanity got into space, always assuming we'd stay there. The other thing the book, set in the 2060s, makes clear is that Heinlein, while assuming that whites and blacks would get along as fellow members of the Solar Patrol, had not a clue about the change in women's roles that was about to transform the country. There's a feminine voice as the cadets check in, a kind minister's wife, and a girlfriend who's better off left behind, as well as a fainting, uncomprehending mother, and here I have given you the entire characterization of human females. It really makes me wonder what today's science fiction is getting wrong about the society of 50 years from now.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Extremes: This book is set in Rusch's "Retrieval Artist" universe, in which humans have entered galactic society only by agreeing to follow alien laws when off Earth, which too often condemn humans (or their children) to death or fates worse than. Instead of subjecting themselves to alien justice, some human criminals Disappear. Retrieval Artists find the Disappeared, but not to help aliens – they help the people left behind. The story begins with a lunar marathon and a suspicious corpse. The cops (one now an ex-cop) from The Disappeared return, each investigating different angles. Was the victim a Disappeared? Or is there something worse going on? The pace is brisk, and the characters are recognizably tired, pissed off, hopeful and otherwise human.
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