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eor1. Barack Obama "Dreams from My Father"
The first two sections of this book felt kind of wandering and not cohesive. That may have been intentional because he was talking about not fitting in and finding his place. I really enjoyed the 3rd section of the book which talked about his first visit to Kenya and his family there.
2. Kim Stanley Robinson "Red Mars"
"Red Mars" was one of those books which I had heard of, but never got around to reading. I didn't know what to expect because I had intentionally avoided spoilers and summaries. But since this book is quite old, I'm not going to worry about spoilers here. This is an incredibly ambitious book. It covers geology, economic theory, psychology, sociology, political theory, and run of the mill sci-fi technological extrapolation. And it tries to do so while having a plot. That's a lot to ask of any book. It would have taken a miracle to pull it off and miracles are hard to come by. The characters reactions and sociology felt like something an author writing in the '50's would have come up with when trying to show the year 2000. The book was published in the early 90's, but doesn't acknowledge the impacts of HIV, long term birth control, or anything non-heteronormative, let alone project into further social change. In order to have the plot move along correctly, we need lots of science, but then we have to ignore critical things like meteor showers and the importance of earth's magnetic field. But we'll bring those things into play when they are needed, please ignore them at all other times. And two critical points which break the whole suspension of disbelief come into play: In a tech level with the ability to build machines to terraform Mars why can't earth be so terraformed? And in a society where one person can program machines to build hundreds of miles of pipeline (in days) and robots that can make robots, a handful of partisans could have overwhelmed a force with interplanetary supply lines easily.
As either a utopian or dystopian novel, this could have been much shorter. There were lots of descriptions that reminded me of John Carter, albeit more based in astronomy than fantasy. So do I think it was worth it? Not really.
The first two sections of this book felt kind of wandering and not cohesive. That may have been intentional because he was talking about not fitting in and finding his place. I really enjoyed the 3rd section of the book which talked about his first visit to Kenya and his family there.
2. Kim Stanley Robinson "Red Mars"
"Red Mars" was one of those books which I had heard of, but never got around to reading. I didn't know what to expect because I had intentionally avoided spoilers and summaries. But since this book is quite old, I'm not going to worry about spoilers here. This is an incredibly ambitious book. It covers geology, economic theory, psychology, sociology, political theory, and run of the mill sci-fi technological extrapolation. And it tries to do so while having a plot. That's a lot to ask of any book. It would have taken a miracle to pull it off and miracles are hard to come by. The characters reactions and sociology felt like something an author writing in the '50's would have come up with when trying to show the year 2000. The book was published in the early 90's, but doesn't acknowledge the impacts of HIV, long term birth control, or anything non-heteronormative, let alone project into further social change. In order to have the plot move along correctly, we need lots of science, but then we have to ignore critical things like meteor showers and the importance of earth's magnetic field. But we'll bring those things into play when they are needed, please ignore them at all other times. And two critical points which break the whole suspension of disbelief come into play: In a tech level with the ability to build machines to terraform Mars why can't earth be so terraformed? And in a society where one person can program machines to build hundreds of miles of pipeline (in days) and robots that can make robots, a handful of partisans could have overwhelmed a force with interplanetary supply lines easily.
As either a utopian or dystopian novel, this could have been much shorter. There were lots of descriptions that reminded me of John Carter, albeit more based in astronomy than fantasy. So do I think it was worth it? Not really.
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Date: 2024-01-29 07:22 am (UTC)If you wanted to see how he goes with similar themes (space travel again, but this time in a generation ship) but 23 more years of writing and researching experience under his belt, Aurora was really good and is also shorter and stand-alone. If you don't want to at all, though, that's understandable.
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Date: 2024-02-01 12:55 am (UTC)