I got a Kindle for Christmas and it has definitely allowed me to do more reading. I've read a few things since I received it, most notably Alice in Deadland by Mainak Dhar, a short called My Seinfeld Year by the character actor Fred Stoller, and The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I'm currently reading A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, though I admit I'm reading it because that Disney John Carter movie looks pretty fun.

Alice in Deadland is definitely guilty of the whole "kids as adults" thing but she does live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The Forever War was fantastic, sort of a Starship Troopers meets Vietnam War which resonates with today's wars.

I also got a Kindle for xmas and downloaded both of these books (great minds?).

Got one chapter into Alice and Deadland, thought it was pretty interesting, but put it aside for now.

Agreed --Forever War is fantastic. I've been looking for a used paperback locally for a very long time, so this was one of the first Kindle titles I picked up. I have since picked up a paperback of Forever Peace, and was a little disappointed to find that it's not a direct sequel to the first novel.

If you're into the post-apocalyptic genre, I highly recommend that you check out the following in the Kindle store. Most of these titles are cheap or free.

The Old Man And The Wasteland by Nick Cole
The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster
The Scarlet Plague by London, Jack
Earth Abides by George Stewart

Well, yeah, but I also find it a little grating when it's something that obviously just wouldn't work, even in young adult/kidfic, and particularly in the realm of SF. Like a kid who happens to stumble upon some big conspiracy and is thrust into danger while attempting to deal with it/expose it, okay, sure sounds like great fun. But a kid becoming an expert card counter and breaking the bank at Vegas, you'd BETTER have a good explanation for why they're allowed in there underage. (And, apropos of nothing, this example reminded me of a children's book I haven't read in many years, "No Coins, Please", in which, among other business ventures, an enterprising kid did something very similar... though in his case, it was through an elaborate disguise as a very old man, if I recall.)

But that said, I actually enjoy teenfic now and then.



Enjoyed them both, but a bit mutedly, partly because my own disappointed expectations.

Spin State I chose specifically because the author came up in a topic on another SF author (Charlie Stross's) about women SF authors, because she was given as an example of one of the few women writing hard SF (in part because they're steered away from it, and in this case, heartily disguised while doing so... not only is there a male-sounding name, but there was no photo and everything about the author in the book, while never outright lying, seemed to be carefully avoiding the use of gendered pronouns that might 'give away the game'.).

Anyway, it was a good book, and I liked in particular the main AI character (Artificial Intelligence being one of my favorite subthemes in SF), however, it didn't quite meet my definitions of 'hard SF'... too much felt like 'woo-woo' science, mysticism taken seriously (some of which does crop up in classic hard SF, but I expect more from it now), and scientific plot-Macguffins with properties that seemed pretty much just to service the plot and allow the 'struggling frontier mining town with people who work in appalling conditions, only in the FUTURE!' setting to work, rather than because there was any scientific basis. That kind of thing I'd gloss over in normal SF, but when I'm expecting hard SF, I want it hard. So, I was disappointed, being in a harder-SF mood when I read it, and that probably hurt my enjoyment of the book.

Cetaganda is part of Bujold's 'Miles Vorkosigan' series, a light SF/adventure series with an appealing main character that I've liked before, and I did like it, but at the same time it was a bit forgettable, and I kind of think I may be done with the series, not out of anger but just because I think I've read enough... I'm not eager enough for more that I can see myself buying it again when I could be reading something new. Maybe if I'm really in a dry spot (or maybe it's just a mood that will fade in time, could be).



Well? How was this one? Considering it's one of the ones I'm thinking of picking up myself..

The direct sequel is called "Forever Free", but be warned... it's one of THOSE sequels. You know, the ones that make most people I've heard who read it wish he hadn't bothered at all, and I kind of agree. Not outrageously bad, but very not-needed.

I liked Forever Peace much more than Forever Free.



My own favorites in the genre... (no idea on Kindle-availabilty)

Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank
The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham
I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson (ignore the movie)

And, although it's not strictly post-apocalyptic, "Marooned in Realtime" by Vernor VInge has a few post-apocalyptic elements coexisting with high-tech SF elements. The setting is a world in which the entirety of the human race has mysteriously vanished, except for scattered survivors from various decades before the event who skipped over it as a result of a very common technology called 'bobbling' which essentially sends them forward in time (to the outside world, surrounded by a completely impenetrable bubble, in which no time passes inside)... they weren't deliberately avoiding the disappearance of humanity, they just wanted to jump in the future or were shanghaied there and found everybody gone. It's a sequel to another novel, The Peace War (in which the spoilered technology is part of the arsenal of a totalitarian government... the spoiler is more a spoiler for the first book, not the sequel, and the first book is not as good and only very indirectly connected to the first through the technology and one or two characters, and I think anything you'd need to know is well-enough explained that you can skip the first book entirely). Though it's really more of a novel murder mystery.

Since last time, I finished

• Gentlemen and Players : A Novel by Joanne Harris
• An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage
• Triangle : The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle

Now that sounds like a plausible reason for a kid character to be in an adult role (disaster getting in the way of parents staying alive, foster care systems working, etc.).


More good points! Good explanations exist but the author better actually include one of those!

Also, I just thought of a 3rd angle: older kid characters thrust into danger after lying about their ages in order to enlist. I knew someone who did that IRL but I didn't realize it's also a fiction plot possibility until just now, go figure.


Reading your post here is how I found out the author is female. Note to self: make fewer default assumptions about names!



Yeah, I did gloss over that stuff, being in a mood for normal SF when I read it.


That's actually how I felt about it too, except I hadn't read as much Vork before.


Do you like alternate history? Time travel? Pending-apocalyptic settings? Non-stereotypical romance? Un-stilted characterization?


I second the I Am Legend nomination! As for the rest, I haven't even tried them.

Hmm...for more apocalyptic, post-, post-quasi-, and quasi-post- recommendations...

• the Edda of Burdens trilogy by Elizabeth Bear: All the Windwracked Stars, By the Mountain Bound, and The Sea Thy Mistress
• Deep Time : How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia (nonfiction, and not about an apocalypse but if you're trying to leave a message for people surviving after one...) by Gregory Benford
• The Postman by David Brin
• World War Z : An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
• Daybreakers (2009)
  
• After Man : A Zoography of the Future (a field guide to what could run around 50 million years after we stop) by Dougal Dixon
• From the Ashes : A Speculative Graphic Memoir by Bob Fingerman
• Metro 2033 (МЕТРО 2033 in the original Russian, and anyone know when МЕТРО 2034 will be out in English translation?) written by Dmitry Glukhovsky first before the video game version was made
• Aftertime (post-apocalyptic mayhem from Luna [Harlequin's romance SF/fantasy imprint] instead of Baen or Del Rey or another usual suspect) by Sophie Littlefield who has written the sequels Rebirth and Horizon and the side story "Survivors" all of which I haven't read yet
• the Greatwinter trilogy by Sean McMullen: Souls in the Great Machine, The Miocene Arrow, and Eyes of the Calculor
• Orchid #1-4 (the rest isn't out yet) written by Tom Morello and drawn by Scott Hepburn
• Futureland : Nine Stories of an Imminent World by Walter Mosley
• The Lord of the Sands of Time (see above) by Ogawa Issui
• Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor (very good and fantasy set after a nuclear war)
• Time's Child by Rebecca Ore
• A Problem from Hell : America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power (sadly nonfiction, and I can list several more books along these lines of apocalyptic...)
• Alpha Girl #1 (the rest isn't out yet) by Jeff Roenning and Jean-Paul Bonjour
• Sewer, Gas and Electric : The Public Works Trilogy : A Novel by Matt Ruff
• The Last Human : A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans (nonfiction) by G.J. Sawyer and Viktor Deak
• the video for "21st Century Girl" by Willow Smith (looks to me like it's supposed to be science fiction: Smith's character gets brought back to life after a long time being dead (she's wearing the jewely that older lady at the beginning put around those bones) and dying in the mid-late 2000s (the kids' clothes aren't trendy or classic now and weren't in the previous decade but we don't know what'll be trendy in the 2050s, 2080s, etc.) while the video's "present" is a post-apocalyptic setting centuries later than the 21st)
  
• Vamped : A Novel by David Sosnowski
• the epilogue of An Edible History of Humanity (nonfiction, and the epilogue's about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault) by Tom Standage
• Saturn's Children : A Space Opera by Charles Stross
• Basara (バサラ in the original Japanese) by Tamura Yumi
• Y : The Last Man written by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Pia Guerra
• Vegetable Pasta Upon The Throne of the Apocalypse by Vegan Black Metal Chef
  
• In the Mothers' Land (a.k.a. The Maerlande Chronicles, Chroniques du pays des mères : Roman in the original French, and it has student loans surviving two apocalypses) by Élisabeth Vonarburg
• The World Without Us (nonfiction) by Alan Weisman
• Monster Island : A Zombie Novel and its sequel Monster Planet : A Zombie Novel by David Wellington
• Zone One : A Novel by Colson Whitehead

I'll second the recommendation for Alas, Babylon.

And, WOW, I just finished The Chrysalids. I'd never heard of Wyndham before reading this book. He created such an interesting world and group of characters, and the end was just screaming for a sequel. I've now got my eye on a few of his other books. Thanks for the recommendation.

Since last time, I finished A Time of Gifts : On Foot to Constantinople : From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Meanwhile, speaking of post-apocalyptic recommendations, I just spotted this:

Has anyone here read the actual book (it's already out in the UK)?

Yeah, I'd also assumed the author was male when I first noticed the book in used bookstores. It was always on my 'maybe try someday, but not today' list, odd that I



Yeah, I don't get that. Would kids really care? Some of the earliest YA books I can remember reading were the Isis series by Monica Hughes, and I don't recall ever even thinking "a woman wrote this" as... well, anything at all more worthy of notice than "the girl on the cover is wearing red". (But then, my parents are both military, I probably grew up with less defined standards of there being 'boy stuff' and 'girl stuff')

That said, J.K. Rowling probably works on a pure marketing level beyond that... Whether she was Joanne Rowling or Joe Rowling, it's not all that an impressive name, but it seems like initials always grab extra brain-attention, and so are therefore more distinctive and memorable. Look at J.R.R. Tolkien!


I'm assuming you're saying it has all those things? Because otherwise that's an awful tease.

I like the first four, but the last? No thank you. I like my characterizations like I like my clowns... extremely stilted!

... no, wait, it turns out I don't like either of those things to be stilted. Or even like clowns at all.

Sounds good, anyway, I'll probably check it out sooner or later, maybe a little sooner rather than later.



Should have included WWZ. Liked Postman, as I recall, but I think I like the idea of it more than the book/movie itself.


Read and liked... not sure if you're aware, but one of Stross' next novels is a sequel, entitled Neptune's Brood, due in 2013. Or rather, set in the same universe, 5000 years later, although Freya from SC apparently won't be in it and I'm not sure if there are any DIRECT connections. Described as





Never heard of these people.



Never got around to reading the book, but I always loved watching the two-different popular-science programs released at almost exactly the same time that apparently totally ripped him off to explore the same subject. There's just something about the idea of the world just going on after we've left it that is incredibly compelling to me.

Anyway, what I've read recently:

Finished:
Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks
The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman
A Thousand Words For Stranger by Julie E. Czernada

Currently reading:
City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear
Century Rain, by Alastair Reynolds

Right now I'm in the middle of The Geography of Nowhere : The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler. Since last time, I finished

• Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
• Between the Woods and the Water : On Foot to Constantinople : From the Middle Danube to the Iron Gates by Patrick Leigh Fermor
• Polar Obsession by Paul Nicklen

Your parents did good. Maybe someone at that publisher was thinking of some other boys whose parents would go "that's too sissy for you!!!"?


Oh yes it does have all those things.


Speaking of mermaids, also check out Nalo Hopkinson's The New Moon's Arms in which the mermaids are way closer to both human and marine mammal anatomy than in Disney's The Little Mermaid.


OK, got another one for the list:

BTW, it's also why trying to not pump extra greenhouse gases isn't really about "saving the Earth," it's about saving our own asses.


How were these?

Probably, although I also can't really recall it coming up much among childhood friends and such, either. Now that I think about it, when I was 11-14ish, my friends and I were all big into the Dragonlance series of novels (extruded fantasy products), written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (Tracy actually being a guy, but you wouldn't necessarily know it at first glance at the title), and I don't recall anyone ever making any kind of comment about the gender of the writers, or their identity in general (aside from a general acknowledgement that the tie-in novels written by others weren't 'as good' as the main cycle ones written by Weis and Hickman)... and that includes the time I loaned one to the 'cool kid'/'semi-bully' in the class because he needed a book for reading time. (He didn't read it and lost it, but he never made any comment about it being written by a girl, and if anybody would have, I would have figured it would be him).

I'm sure there are plenty of parents (or kids) who make an issue of it, but I was lucky enough not to really be exposed. Sometimes I wonder if it's sort of a phantom bogeyman of marketing more than a real phenomenon... they're worried that it MIGHT cost money, and since everybody else does it they must have a good reason, so just to be safe, they keep doing it.


[/quote]

Well, Surface Detail I did like a lot, but I felt it wasted a little bit of the concept of "War against Virtual Hells"... finally, a major conflict worthy of the Culture, but, I don't know, it didn't all hang together like I'd like or resolve with the force that I was hoping. Still, as usual for Banks, plenty of cool ideas and fun-to-read explorations of what living in a super-tech future might be like, and probably in my top 3-5 for Culture stories.

The Child Garden is one of those ones where I'm not sure I'd say I liked it, but I'm glad I read it. It's a style issue, mostly, there were plenty of times I thought to myself "You know, I'd really love to read a novel that explored many of these ideas and themes in a different style". There were times where I was bored and just skimming, times where the non-linearity and semi-satirical absurdist tone especially got to me, but also times where I genuinely felt for the characters and their plight. I might give this one another try some day after having let some of the ideas sink in a little better, maybe I can appreciate some of the stylistic aspects I didn't care for so much.

"A Thousand Words for Stranger" I'd put in the "It's fine, I guess" category. Mildly entertaining yarn, a bit wishy-washy (in terms of characters deciding one thing, then going back on it, then going back on that, and it feeling mostly like it's done to eat up time), I'd probably read the sequels, eventually, except it's heavily involved with an idea that, it turns out (and I think it was just reading the book that made me discover it), is on my "I'm done with this" list. That's my list of concepts/tropes that although there's nothing really fundamentally wrong with, I used to love them so much that I must have overdosed, and now I just can't seem to work up virtually ANY interest in a book that heavily deals with them unless I'm sure right off the bat they're doing it in a novel way.
That's Space Opera, combined with aliens with PSI-POWERS! (Psi-Powers themselves are still on the enjoyment-table, but something about the combination now disinterests me, at least when it's a focus). Also on that list are vampires, thanks to overdosing on vampire fiction as a kid, culminating in Buffy (which remains one of my favorite shows, but it shattered my interest for anything ELSE with vampires).