#RRSciFiMonth Review Bites

Sci-Fi November is a month-long blog event hosted by Rinn Reads and Over The Effing Rainbow this year, created to celebrate everything amazing about science fiction! From TV shows to movies, books to comics, and everything else in between, it is intended to help science fiction lovers share their love and passion for this genre and its many, many fandoms.

Nexus by Ramez Naam

Nexus is an experimental nano-drug that can connect people telepathically. Kade Lane and his friends have taken Nexus to the next level thanks to their neuro-scientific research, but this has made them targets of both their own government, as well as those who are equally interested in Nexus’ potential, for good or ill. The obvious moral conflict takes an interesting turn thanks to all of the different perspectives that are offered, including that of Buddhists monks whose peaceful, practical view on Nexus is far from naive and idealistic. It is a far more well-rounded view than Kade’s, unsurprisingly, but there is also merit in all the other views presented, which is really the strength of this book. The characters are memorable, the action interesting, and the interactions powerful, but it’s the moral and philosophical questions that it keeps asking that made it a truly compelling read.

Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein

While I didn’t care much for Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, I loved his Stranger in a Strange Land . This book falls somewhere in the middle of the two. Now that I have read three of his works, I have to express my appreciation for their variety. Science fiction can take so many forms, with the most obvious and in your face being the space opera, or the more actual scientific stuff, such as Jurassic Park, which I don’t always understand, but I do respect. What I really like about Heinlein’s books is how his worlds and the alien involvement feels so natural. In this case, a down and out actor is hired to take on the role of a significant politician, which he does with great skill. This is truly the performance of his life because both his life, the politician, and the world depend on it. I’m not a fan of politics in my fiction, but sometimes, it can be fun, as it was here. There was some annoying sexism to deal with, as is to be expected of the time, but it was not nearly as prevalent and frustrating as it was in Stranger in a Strange Land, which I still loved in spite of that. The technology is also amusing, looking at it from our 2015 perspective, but the rest of the science fiction certainly stands the test of time.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

It turns out, this book is secretly a story about love and about friendship, with a whole lot of alien guts and rituals and brutal soldier deaths in between.

In our distant future, life does not end with death. It ends with war. Citizens of Earth are welcome to register themselves with the Colonial Defense Force, which they will join when they are 75 years old–hence the title. But this isn’t about old men literally fighting in a war. Well, it is, but there’s a whole process that involves turning old people into young people with 75 years worth of knowledge and experience in their heads. How this works, John Perry doesn’t know, but we get to go along with him on a journey that begins at his wife’s grave.

If you’ve ever seen Scalzi interacting on social media, then you will not be surprised by the writing, which is filled with snark, wit, and self-deprecation (though with less ALL CAPS than Scalzi’s Twitter feed).

The story is much like any other soldier goes to boot camp, then heads out to face the brutality of war, with the interesting twist being the “old” part. This, combined with Scalzi’s casual, colloquial style, makes for a pleasantly quaint read, despite the seriousness of war and death.