Recent Books

Eon by Greg Bear: A cold war inspired epic in which humans, exploring a vast asteroid sized ship from the future in orbit around earth, get trapped there when the Russia and the US launch all their nukes at each other and destroy the planet in the process. The book is long, very heavy on techno babble, and often a chore to read. I did finish it, but it felt forced at times.

Eternity by Greg Bear: The sequel to Eon, in which man has a permanent settlement on the asteroid ship, but now has to deal with some ancient enemies of mankind. Like Eon, it is gripping and brilliant at times, but inter sped with just enough technobabble to make finishing feel more like a job than a treat.

ueen of Angels by Greg Bear: Why yes, I am on a Greg Bear kick right now. Used paperbacks are a wonderful thing :) I made it about 100 pages into this and just quit. The story didn't grab me, and stylistically I found it difficult to read.

Slant by Greg Bear: Set in the same universe as Queen of Angels, this is sort of a who-done-it in a future US where just about everybody is happy due to manipulation via nanotech, and everybody is connected to a super high bandwidth Internet full of, well, mostly porn it seems.(Certainly a plausible future!) However, under the surface, problems persist. Fairly fast paced and often tense, this was a pretty good read.

The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi: This was a great book. Set in a future when the US Marines are basically clones, fighting wars out in space. It's space opera, but it's space opera with soul. His blog is very good too. .