STN SciFi Book for Feb. is The Light of Other Days

[sodapop6620]

5  The Light of Other Days
1  The Half-Made World
6  Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse)
3  The Fountains of Paradise
4  Neuromancer
2  Bad Science

[CLAY]

I'll join. First time reader.

In that case you might want to start with  this:


 

On a serious note- welcome!  

[Rincewind]

It is time to cast your vote.  Voting will close the morning of the 25th.

Voting closed.  Looks like we have a winner.  

[sodapop6620]

Good thing you are paying attention. I will change the title when I get home.

[sodapop6620]

Updated.

[Rincewind]

I downloaded this one on iBooks and I'm liking it so far.  

The new iBooks is also a refreshing format after reading many books through the Kindle app.

[Rincewind]

Anyone else reading this month's selection?  

I'm at about 40% through it and I'm finding it pretty darn fascinating.  

[Dan K]

I read it.  Interesting book.  A bit scattered, tried to cover a few too many things at once at the expense of following up with the characters, but pretty good.  I was hoping to get back to the russian rocket scientist in the first chapter, but he had no part in the book whatsoever...liked it - just a little disjointed.  Cool concepts throughout.

Do we avoid spoilers?

First time I read a book recommended by you lot.

- Dan

[squeezer]

Do we avoid spoilers?

For the first half of the month, we avoid them. For the last half of the month, free discussion -- spoilers okay.  You're good.

[coho]

Anyone else reading this month's selection?  

I'm at about 40% through it and I'm finding it pretty darn fascinating.  

I've been a little willy-nilly of late, so I'm only about a quarter of the way in. I'm liking it so far, though I've also been working on two other books so my progress has been slow.

[Dan K]

I can't do multiple books at a time...either I like it and will read it or I give it up.

This one started strong, got too big for itself, lost some of the character development at the expense of the concepts of "the joined" and evolution and space and creation of life and you get the idea.  Just tried to tackle too much.  Had a lot to work with, and I enjoyed it, but it wasn't really well put together.  Maybe released before it was totally finished?

Needed some editing.

- Dan

[Rincewind]

I'm on Chapter 24.  I plan to finish the book this weekend then share my thoughts.

I can see what Dan says about there being almost too many ideas in the book, for instance making it all on the backdrop of apocalyptic fears.  But maybe these ideas will tie together in the end.  The advancement of the worm cam tech is happening at a pretty unbelievable rate.

[Rincewind]

I finished the book.  I liked it.  It seemed typical for Aurthur C Clarke in that it was stuffed with quite a lot of novel future type ideas and had some soap like stories.  I could also feel the Stephen Baxter contribution in that it had the far- spanning, mind expanding notions of time and space, like he showed in his Manifold series.

I found this critical write-up online -
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/otherdays.htm - which indicates that this book is a contemporary remakes of a previous novel from the 1960s.  In that version the instrument for past viewing was "slow glass" instead of wormhole cameras.

To me one of the main themes was transcending.  Humans having to transcend their sense of privacy initially.  As well people were forced to transcend some of their historical myths.

But also life was shown as transcending itself.  This was most clear in the backward story line as David looked very deep into the primordial past seeing the rhythms of growth and destruction.  It was interesting that despite following what seemed a fairly scientific meta history, Clarke and Baxter thought it fit to include a previous intelligent earth creatures who safeguarded the evolution of life in the face of a previous apocalypse.

It was also about transcending individuality as the wormhole technology became integrated into life's evolution.  I was happy to see Telihard de Chardin brought up with his idea of the noosphere.  It was a techo-evolution of mind and life, and one in which the authors saw a miraculous future afterlife for all humans through the miracle of science instead of metaphysics.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD