The Crucible of Empire by Eric Flint and K.D. Wentworth

The Crucible of Empire by Eric Flint and K.D. Wentworth

This is the sequel to The Course of Empire. During The Course of Empire, the Jao conquered earth. Partly this was because of human disunity. Now, the Jao have drafted humanity into fighting their ancient enemies the Ekhat. They have adapted both human and Jao technology to create a massive new spaceship the size of an aircraft carrier, the Lexington.

This story is partially about how technology changes when two cultures meet to make something far more deadly than the single culture can produce by itself. The Lexington with its combined kinetic and energy weapon technology, energy shielding and heavy armored plate easily destroys the Ekhat ships.

In The Crucible of Empire, the new human Jao alliance have to rescue a third alien race, the Lleix from the Ekhat. I liked how the different aliens were described with their strengths and weaknesses. The Lleix had a very interesting artistic flair to them. The Jao and the Lleix were described as being very different.

This book does an excellent job of worldbuilding and describing how alien worlds interact. It also does not assume human superiority which is refreshing. Humans are not the center of the universe. I am looking forward to the next book in the series. I hope they add a few more alien cultures to the mix.

Daily Thoughts 3/28/2010

Fox Writing With A Quill Pen, J. Mason, 1852

Daily Thoughts 3/28/2010

I went to Barnes and Noble this morning. I looked at an advertisement for a Nook. It asks if you would like to carry Barnes and Noble in your hand wherever you want to go. I am looking forward to when there are less dedicated ebook machines. I would like to be able to download from whichever bookstore I want. I think a laptop would be the best choice for me because I think you can download the Kindle software to a laptop as well as the Nook software and other bookstore sites.

There were a few interesting books worth looking at. I do not order a whole lot of science fiction and fantasy series books. I am thinking of getting a few World of Warcraft paperbacks, as well as a few paperbacks from the Forgotten Realms series and the Warhammer 40,000 series. I also saw a few novel that seemed interesting, Frank Delaney, Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show as well as a new humorous fantasy book by A. Lee Martinez, Divine Misfortune.

I read another science fiction book today, The Crucible of Empire by Eric Flint and K.D. Wentworth. It is a military science fiction novel. What is different about this story is that humans have been conquered by an alien race, the Jao. However, they are not enslaved. Earth has become a kind of partner in a larger interstellar war against an aggressive species called the Ehkat. This is the second book in a series started with The Course of Empire. There is another humanoid species added to the story in this novel, the Lleix who convinced the Jao to separate from the Ehkat. I am finding it quite entertaining.

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Slow Train To Arcturus-- Eric Flint and Dave Freer (Science Fiction)

Slow Train To Arcturus-- Eric Flint and Dave Freer (Science Fiction)

Slow Train To Arcturus by Eric Flint and Dave Freer is a novel of a generation ship.

Earth Sysgov decides they no longer want various malcontents and the best way to get them to go away is to build a generation ship and send them on their way. Each utopian group is sealed into its own habitat ball. The ship is accelerated on its way on a permanent journey to the stars. The ship looks like a string of attached balls.

The alien Miran spot the ship and they send explorers. What ensues is a comedy of social mores and errors. The best and worst characteristics of humanity are commented on. The Miran are portrayed as a relatively rational group of bipedal aliens. They start as males and slowly change into sessile females as they age.

As expected, the first thing that happens when the aliens visit the ship is that the humans in one of the habitats attempt to kill them. The habitat they first enter is full of violent extremists. Several of the aliens die, but one of them escapes.

The story of the book is told from an alien named Kretz who is struggling to survive. He makes a journey through the ship and encounters various human groups, biblical luddites, a tribe from the amazon, extreme sports enthusiasts who have learned how to fly, a matriarchal society where men are genetically engineered to be smaller and weaker than women, and a utopian workers paradise with a "great leader" that is having population problems.

Kretz acquires various human helpers on his journey get back to his ship. I don't want to give away too much about the story so I will just say they are misfits which don't quite fit in their respective societies. The story has an ending that is different than expected.

The story is hard science fiction. Dave Freer is a biologist, and Eric Flint is a historian. This makes for an interesting style of writing. I really liked Dave Freer's earlier series, Rats, Bats, and Vats and The Rats, Bats, and the Ugly. It was fun to read. Slow Train to Arcturus has a quirky kind of humor to it. The ship is falling to pieces in many places and the humans because they are isolated in their own little utopias don't quite know how to fix things. Because Kretz and the people who travel with him combine different kinds of knowledge, they can outsmart the people in each habitat.

There is some fighting, but nothing gratuitously violent. The characters use their brains. I liked the story. It makes for an excellent adventure yarn. It is also a new take on the generation ship story.

Good Morning

David Tenniers (1645-1650) Stilleben. I rather like the globe in the background.

Good Morning

This morning my alarm clock did not go off so I ended up rushing to work and barely making it on time. It has been a rush, rush morning. Mostly, I have been taking care of the small details. Filling out forms for supplies, sick leave slips, and other miscellaneous things like redoing the central floor book display for the subject, the election.

I also spent a little bit more time looking for phone numbers for agencies that help the disadvantaged. Many of them are not listed in the yellow pages. They often require a certain level of confidentiality, so it is not always easy finding things like residential drug treatment facilities, homeless shelters, shelters for homeless families, and housing assistance agencies.

Anyways, two new books came in for me to read this morning, Thomas L. Friedman Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Why We Need A Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, and Eric Flint and Dave Freer, Slow Train To Arcturus. I rather like Dave Freer's writing; it is humorous science fiction and fantasy. His official site is http://www.doctormonkey.com/ . I rather liked his science fiction novel, Rats, Bats, and Vats.

As always, I spent a bit more time ordering career and industrial books. I was looking at Worldcat using my New York Public Library Card. I have library cards for Westchester, Queens, and New York Public Library. I use all of them regularly.

This evening I read some more of Slow Train to Arcturus on the train home. It has a nice surprise ending which makes the book different than what I expected. I won't give it away.

I just caught up with reading a bit of Twitter. DCagle on Twitter had a nice gallery of politcal cartoons for the week. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27362174/displaymode/1107/s/2/ Sometimes it is good to take a break for a laugh now and then.

Good Morning

A good place to find crap, old books, old comic books, and kitsch.

Good Morning

This morning, I entered a contest to win a Neil Gaiman poster. There is going to be a new book out about Neil Gaiman, Prince of Stories The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman by
Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, and Stephen R. Bissette published by St. Martin's. This is a link to the contest. http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780312387655&m_type=4&m_contentid=8573

For a little more science fiction, I put Eric Flint and Dave Freer's Slow Train to Arcturus on hold. One of the nice things about Baen, is that they put up the first eight or so chapters of a new book for free on the web to see if you like it for most of their new books. Not the whole book, but enough to make you interested. http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416555854/1416555854.htm?blurb

I read Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now, the graphic novel. I had read most all of the short stories turned into graphic novels previously so there was really only one surprise.

I really loved the story Craphound with art by Paul Pope. It has an absolutely wonderful quality to it. An alien visits earth to collect junk. The alien understands flea markets, but wants to understand the essence of human nostalgia. He travels around with his human companion and collects junk, cowboy and indian outfits, ten gallon hats, old magazines and nostalgia. The aliens even trade technology for junk. I like Cory Doctorow's one page summary about why he wrote the story, it is almost as good as the story. The idea of Cory Doctorow being nostalgic over glow in the dark disney cards and victorian watches is neat.

This is a link to the free online version of the story:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17026/17026.txt

I think I am going to read Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution- and How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman. This book is currently #1 on the Business New York Times list, and #3 on the general New York Times list. This has been one of the themes for my blogs for a long time. Take the time and learn about clean technology if you can.

This afternoon, I spent some time watching the new version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Tim Burton. I don't think it is as good as the old version starring Gene Wilder. I think it was still very entertaining and Johnny Depp did a good job. My favorite part of the movie is the Squirrel Room. I rather like the idea of trained squirrels able to separate the good nuts from the bad. This one part was better than the old movie. The rest was not as good. The childrens book by Roald Dahl of course is far better.

Sometimes when you read enough of an authors novels, you begin to recognize a pattern in their work. I found A Nameless Witch to be essentially a plot variation on Too Many Curses. Both are quest novels where the main character must ultimately defeat a great wizard. They have a number of quests to fill to reach that goal. I enjoyed the novel, but it was not different enough from A. Lee Martinez's other novels to say it was better or worse than The Automatic Detective or Gil's All Fright Diner. They are all enjoyable, entertaining and funny. It was another novel which I just sort of passed through on to my next read.

The only really good thing I can say about A Nameless Witch was the unique set of characters, a white knight, a demon duck, a beautiful undead witch, a troll, an animated broom, a villainous sorcerer, and a mystical fox.