"Saga of the Seven Suns: Metal Swarm" by Kevin J. Anderson
© Brilliance Audio Unabridged
Science of Sci-Fi
By: Pat FerraraDate: Monday, December 10, 2007
Though largely neglected in the past, the link between science fiction and technological development is an important one; one that spurs scientific discovery and connects the world of grounded truth with the realm of infinite possibility. The pulp magazines of SF’s formative youth were once scoffed at and dismissed as having no educational value, yet those of us who fell in love with sci-fi always knew that the genre was more than just another medium of fictional stories.
G’day Maniac readers and welcome to this week’s edition of the Buzz. As the holiday season rapidly approaches the big genre publishers are pumpin’ the brakes on their release schedules to avoid over saturating the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror book markets. Nonetheless we’ve got a few worthwhile releases coming out this week including two scholarly works from Macmillan press.
Adam Roberts’ The History of Science Fiction and Mark Brake & Neil Hook’s Different Engines both take a much-needed look at the science fiction genre’s origins, development, and relationship with factual science. Anyone who’s a true fan of SF will know that it’s difficult to put the relationship between science fiction and science into words. Whenever I try to support a questionable SF work or explain Star Trek’s merits to the scientific community I always feel like I’m on the defensive. I’ll be that guy in a movie theatre responding to others’ sneers of ridicule with a “You know that could actually happen.”
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a nerd; I like going to space conventions, reading Stephen Hawking, and treasuring my signed copy of Dr. Robert Zubrin’s Mars Direct. But that doesn’t change my staunch belief in science fiction. SF, regardless of its medium, is much more than just mindless entertainment. Since its origins in Ancient Greece and adolescent development in the middle ages, science fiction has been exciting the imaginations of millions.
Books like Gibson’s Neuromancer and Asimov’s Foundation series sparked my personal interest in science and technology and more or less decided my post high school career. I can’t imagine where I’d be without my favorite SF books, let alone where the genre itself would be without Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, or H.G. Wells.
Different Engines, debuting tomorrow in hardback, goes so far as to say that science fiction is an “arbiter of progress” and has emerged as a mode of thinking “complementary to the scientific method.” And who’s to say they’re wrong? Science may rely on cold hard facts, but it’s the limitless bounds of the imagination that connects the dots, that extrapolates meaning and sees the bigger picture. The human imagination is just as important to science as a control group is to the scientific method, and what better place to test hypotheses and break the laws of nature than in the mind’s eye.
As philosopher Giordano Bruno proudly proclaimed in the 16th Century, "I cleave the heavens, and soar to the infinite. What others see from afar, I leave far behind me." Long live SF!
New in Hardcover:
Different Engines: How Science Drives Fiction and Fiction Drives Science, Mark Brake & Neil Hook (Macmillan)
Since its emergence in the seventeenth century, science fiction has been a sustained, coherent and subversive check on the promises and pitfalls of science. In their turn, invention and discovery have forced fiction writers to confront the nature and limits of reality. Different Engines explores how this fascinating symbiosis shapes what we see, do, and dream. From Johannes Kepler's Somnium to Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, science fiction has emerged as a mode of thinking, complementary to the scientific method. Science fiction's field of interest is the gap between the new worlds uncovered by experimentation and exploration, and the fantastic worlds of the imagination. Its proponents find drama in the tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Its readers, many of them scientists and politicians, find inspiration in the contrast between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Brake and Hook's Different Engines is a unique, provocative and compelling account of science fiction as the arbiter of progress.
The Sorcerer’s Plague, David B. Coe (Tor Books)
David B. Coe enthralled readers and critics with his Winds of the Forelands, an epic fantasy full of political intrigue, complex characters, and magical conspiracy. Now he takes the hero of that series to new adventures across the sea on a journey to the Southlands. Grinsa, who nearly single-handedly won the war of the Forelands, has been banished because he is a Weaver, a Qirsi who can wield many magics. He and his family seek only peace and a place to settle down. But even on the distant southern continent, they can’t escape the tension between his magical folk and the non-magical Eandi. Instead of peace, they find a war-ravaged land awash in racial tension and clan conflicts. Worse yet, his own people try to harness his great power and destroy his family. Amid the high tension of clan rivalry comes a plague that preys on Qirsi power across the Southlands with deadly results. When the disease is linked to an itinerant woman peddling baskets, one old man takes it upon himself to find answers in the secrets of her veiled past. With wonderfully creative magic, dark secrets, and engaging characters faced with a world of trouble, Coe deftly weaves an epic tapestry that launches a richly-entertaining new saga in an unknown land. Book one of the Blood of the Southlands series.
Planet Narnia, Michael Ward (Oxford University Press)
Over the years, scholars have labored to show that C. S. Lewis's famed Chronicles of Narnia have an underlying symbolic coherence, pointing to such possible unifying themes as the seven sacraments, the seven deadly sins, and the seven books of Spenser's Faerie Queene. None of these explanations has won general acceptance and the nature of Narnia's symbolism has remained a puzzle. Michael Ward has finally solved the mystery. In Planet Narnia, he argues convincingly that medieval cosmology, a subject which fascinated Lewis throughout his life, provides the imaginative key to the seven novels. Drawing on the whole range of Lewis's writings (including previously unpublished drafts of the Chronicles), Ward shows that the Narnia stories were designed to express the characteristics of the seven medieval planets--the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn--planets which Lewis described as "spiritual symbols of permanent value" and "especially worthwhile in our own generation." Using these seven symbols, Lewis secretly constructed the Chronicles so that the story-line in each book, countless points of ornamental detail, and, most important, the portrayal of the Christ-figure of Aslan, all serve to communicate the governing planetary personality. For instance, in The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader," the sun is the prevailing planetary spirit: magical water turns things to gold, the solar metal; Aslan is seen flying in a sunbeam; and the sun's rising place is actually identified as the destination of the plot: "the very eastern end of the world." Planet Narnia is a ground-breaking study that will provoke a major reassessment not only of the Chronicles, but of Lewis's whole literary and theological outlook, revealing him to be a much subtler writer and thinker than has previously been recognized.
Lightning, Dean R. Koontz (Thorndike Press)
A storm struck on the night Laura Shane was born, and there was a strangeness about the weather that people would remember for years. But even more mysterious was the blond-haired stranger who appeared out of nowhere - the man who saved Laura from a fatal delivery. Years later - another bolt of lightning - and the stranger returned, again to save Laura from tragedy. Was he the guardian angel he seemed? The devil in disguise? Or the master of a haunting destiny beyond time and space? Bestselling author Dean Koontz presents his most brilliantly thrilling novel of suspense. A thundering masterpiece of the imagination…
The Web and the Stars, Brian Herbert (Five Star)
In The Web and the Stars, the second volume of The Timeweb Chronicles, the multiplanet Human empire of merchant princes is engaged in an ongoing war against the Mutatis, a dangerous race of shapeshifters. Noah has put a defensive plan into effect to prevent the Mutati Kingdom from using a doomsday weapon to blow up Human-controlled planets. But despite his altruistic efforts, Noah has made dangerous enemies of his own kind…
New in Paperback:
Soldier of Sidon, Gene Wolfe (Tor Books)
Latro forgets everything when he sleeps. Writing down his experiences every day and reading his journal anew each morning gives him a poignantly tenuous hold on himself, but his story's hold on readers is powerful indeed. The two previous novels, combined in Latro in the Mist (Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete) are generally considered classics of contemporary fantasy. Latro now finds himself in Egypt, a land of singing girls, of spiteful and conniving deities. Without his memory, he is unsure of everything, except for his desire to be free of the curse that causes him to forget.
The Leopard Mask, Kaoru Kurimoto (Vertical Books)
In a single day and night of fierce fighting, the Archduchy of Mongaul destroys the gleaming kingdom of Parros. Her surviving twin heirs, Remus and Rinda, flee into the dangerous forests of Roodwood, where the dead walk at night. Their salvation arrives in the form of a mysterious creature with a man’s body and a leopard’s head that has just emerged from a deep sleep and remembers only its name . . . Guin! Book one of the Guin Saga, translated by Alexander O. Smith and Elye J. Alexander.
The History of Science Fiction, Adam Roberts (Palgrave Macmillan)
The first comprehensive critical history of SF for thirty years, this book traces the origin and development of science fiction from Ancient Greece, via its rebirth in the seventeenth-century, up to the present day. It covers both literary SF and cinema / TV. The History of Science Fiction argues that, even today, this flourishing cultural idiom is shaped by the forces that determined its rise to prominence in the 1600s: the dialogue between Protestant and Catholic worldviews, the emerging technologies of the industrial age, and the cultural anxieties and excitements of a rapidly changing world. Now available in paperback, it will be of interest to all students, researchers and fans of SF.
Warcraft: War of the Ancients, Richard A. Knaak (Pocket Books)
Months have passed since the cataclysmic Battle of Mount Hyjal, which put an end to the Burning Legion's invasion. Most Legion forces on Azeroth have been slain or driven into hiding. Yet now a mysterious energy rift in the mountains of Kalimdor propels three heroes to the distant past: the dragon mage Krasus, the human wizard Rhonin, and the weathered orc veteran Broxigar. It is a time long before orcs, humans, or even high elves roamed the world. A time that marks the Legion's first invasion of Azeroth, brought about by Queen Azshara and other night elf nobles. A time when the Dragon Aspects are at the height of their power -- unaware that one of their own will soon turn on the world he was charged to protect.
Star Trek Corps of Engineers: Creative Couplings, David Mack (Star Trek Books)
These are the voyages of the U.S.S. da Vinci. Their mission: to solve the problems of the galaxy, one disaster at a time. Starfleet veteran Captain David Gold, along with his crack Starfleet Corps of Engineers team led by former Starship Enterprise™ engineer Commander Sonya Gomez, travel throughout the Federation and beyond to fix the unfixable, repair the irreparable, and solve the unsolvable. The S.C.E.'s missions don't always go as planned -- repairing the weather grid on the resort planet Risa turns into a deadly first contact, constructing an industrial complex on a nonaligned world leads to some startling revelations about the financier behind it, diverting a runaway ship could spell death for the crew the da Vinci didn't even know was there, and a planet in a box proves a more valuable prize than anyone could have imagined -- but their greatest challenge comes much closer to home... Captain Gold's granddaughter Esther is marrying Khor, son of Lantar, a Klingon politician. Now Gold faces what may be the greatest challenge of his career: officiating the first-ever Klingon-Jewish wedding!
Blue Devil Island, Stephen Mark Rainey (Wheeler Publishing)
Autumn, 1943: The beginning of the American offensive against the Japanese in the South Pacific. Just west of the Solomon Islands lies a remote, desert island called Conquest, where the U.S. Navy stations a new fighting squadron, led by Lieutenant Commander Drew McLachlan, an ace pilot and veteran of the Battle of Coral Sea. With his group of air warriors, who call themselves the Blue Devils, McLachlan soars into frequent combat with the Japanese, inflicting serious casualties upon the enemy. However, on the squadron's island home, signs appear that it may not be entirely alone, for in nearby volcanic caves, McLachlan finds evidence of habitation by unknown natives—natives that resemble no known living race, and that may yet exist in the mysterious subterranean catacombs. As the tension on the island mounts, McLachlan is forced to fight on two fronts: against their known enemy, the Japanese, and an unknown, predatory force that leaves mutilated victims as the only evidence of its presence. As the Solomons campaign enters into its final skirmishes, the Japanese at last turn their attention to Conquest Island. In the final conflict, the Blue Devils find themselves the target of an overwhelming assault by the desperate Imperial Japanese forces—and McLachlan must face the reality that the key to his men’s survival lies deep in the dark and deadly caves of Conquest Island itself.
New in Audiobook:
Saga of the Seven Suns: Metal Swarm, Kevin J. Anderson (Brilliance Audio Unabridged)
For years, the alien Klikiss robots have pretended to be humanity’s friends, but their seeming “help” allowed them to plant an insidious Trojan Horse throughout the Earth Defense Forces. Now, in the aftermath of a devastating war, swarms of ancient black robots built by the lost insectoid Klikiss race continue their depredations on helpless worlds with stolen and heavily armed Earth battleships. Among the humans, the Hansas’ brutal Chairman struggles to crush any resistance even as King Peter breaks away to form his own new Confederation among the colonies who have declared their independence. And meanwhile, the original, voracious Klikiss race, long thought to be extinct, has returned, intent on conquering their former worlds and willing to annihilate anyone in the way. Narrated by David Colacci.
Alright Maniac readers that’ll do it for this week’s edition of the Buzz. Check back next Monday for all the latest info on current sci fi, fantasy, and horror releases. Questions or comments? Hit me up at Pferrara.mania@gmail.com.
For those who have never read the series....it did take me awhile to get into the first book because Anderson had to set up the entire universe and introduce a ton of characters, but once you know who's who, it really gets a lot more entertaining. These books are definitely well written.