Started: June 12
Finished: June 17
Pages: 287
Do you like your fiction "meta"? Adventures in time and space with Max Merriwell may take the "meta" cake. Pat Murphy was so dedicated to telling this story of fiction, reality, fictional reality and quantum possibility that she wrote two other novels under pseudonyms (There and Back Again "by Max Merriwell", and Wild Angel "by Mary Maxwell") to support it! Or at least she tried: apparently her publishers insisted that those two books appear under her own name. But the earlier novels get their "proper" attribution in Adventures, and Murphy gets her revenge: Adventures features two characters named "Pat Murphy", neither of whom is a self-portrait.
That gives you a flavour of the book, as does the fact that both Max Merriwell and Mary Maxwell both appear as characters, and Susan, a character in Adventures, reads both There and Back Again and Wild Angel during the course of the novel.
Whew. That was sufficiently self-referential that it was difficult to express clearly. I'm sure that Murphy had even greater difficulties keeping it all clear in the novel itself. But she manages: the book comes across as a romp.
Pat Murphy's day job is as a science writer at the Exploratorium. She's written a Nebula-award winning novel (Falling Woman), and is also notable as one of founders of the James Tiptree, Jr award for fiction. If this novel is any indication, she is also likely to be a lot of fun at a party. Or maybe not: maybe we should imagine her as a dour recluse, to make her as unlike as possible to her fiction. I suspect she'd enjoy that.
Thursday 18 June 2015
Thursday 4 June 2015
D.A. by Connie Willis
Started: 1 June 2015
Finished: 1 June 2015
Pages: 76
D.A. is a YA novelette.
It was way too tempting to describe the book this way: first of all for the acronymitis (too many years in high tech have made me far too susceptible), and for the excuse to use jargon.
For the benefit of those not familiar with SF fiction prize categories, I didn't make up "novelette". Novelettes are works of fiction between 30-70 pages long. Novellas are their slightly longer siblings, ranging from 70-160 pages. Technically, D.A. may count as a Young Adult novella rather than a novelette, but I'd have to do a word count to be sure as D.A. does include pictures.
Now that I have that out of the way, what did I make of D.A.?
D.A. tells the story of a teenager who gets accepted into the insanely elite and competitive Space Academy....even though she didn't apply. "Why would I apply?" she asks. "I've told you a hundred times that I don't want to go into space. I want to go to UCLA."
How is it? I think it would be great for a young teenager /tween who had some interest in science fiction. It's light, it's fun, and it was written by Connie Willis, who has 11 Hugo awards and 7 Nebula awards proving that she knows how to write. For an adult, it's a perfectly acceptable brief entertainment. After all, when's the last time you read a book with pictures?
Finished: 1 June 2015
Pages: 76
D.A. is a YA novelette.
It was way too tempting to describe the book this way: first of all for the acronymitis (too many years in high tech have made me far too susceptible), and for the excuse to use jargon.
For the benefit of those not familiar with SF fiction prize categories, I didn't make up "novelette". Novelettes are works of fiction between 30-70 pages long. Novellas are their slightly longer siblings, ranging from 70-160 pages. Technically, D.A. may count as a Young Adult novella rather than a novelette, but I'd have to do a word count to be sure as D.A. does include pictures.
Now that I have that out of the way, what did I make of D.A.?
D.A. tells the story of a teenager who gets accepted into the insanely elite and competitive Space Academy....even though she didn't apply. "Why would I apply?" she asks. "I've told you a hundred times that I don't want to go into space. I want to go to UCLA."
How is it? I think it would be great for a young teenager /tween who had some interest in science fiction. It's light, it's fun, and it was written by Connie Willis, who has 11 Hugo awards and 7 Nebula awards proving that she knows how to write. For an adult, it's a perfectly acceptable brief entertainment. After all, when's the last time you read a book with pictures?
Monday 1 June 2015
Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik
Started: 15 April
Finished: 24 May
Pages: 252
Being interrupted is bad. This isn't a long book, and it isn't a difficult book. But for one reason or another my reading of it was interrupted a couple of times. With a novel, that can mean feeling like I've wandered back into a conversation with strangers. With a nonfiction book it just means a curiously disrupted perception of the the book's contents.
So, apologies to the book, and its author. It deserved better.
Stuff Matters belongs to the now-venerable tradition of nonfiction works begun by Much Depends on Dinner back in 1986. The author begins with a simple everyday artefact -- in this case, a photo of himself sitting on a roof patio -- and devotes a chapter to exploring the history, sociology, and science of items within that artefact. Mark Miodownik is a materials scientist, so his focus is on exploring the materials that make up everyday objects: things like paper, concrete, chocolate, and china.
Stuff Matters won the 2014 Winton Prize for Science Books. The judges said "This brilliantly written book is a fresh take on material science that makes even the most everyday stuff exciting and interesting. It demonstrates just how creative and ingenious the human mind can be in its ability to incorporate them into our lives.” Personally, I think the primary reason Miodownik won, and the primary virtue of the book is how imaginative he is. Each material he discusses is treated in a different way. For example, he wrote a film script for the "plastic" chapter.
The only "but" to this book is that if you have a science background, you might find the contents a little bit basic. Not that the science is less than rigourous--I definitely learned things--but that as a science reader you may have encountered some of the contents before in different contexts. But hey, I picked up fun facts that I was able to insert into conversation twice within a couple of weeks. And the book is entertaining and engaging, and might just get you interested in the science of the "stuff" that surrounds us all.
Finished: 24 May
Pages: 252
Being interrupted is bad. This isn't a long book, and it isn't a difficult book. But for one reason or another my reading of it was interrupted a couple of times. With a novel, that can mean feeling like I've wandered back into a conversation with strangers. With a nonfiction book it just means a curiously disrupted perception of the the book's contents.
So, apologies to the book, and its author. It deserved better.
Stuff Matters belongs to the now-venerable tradition of nonfiction works begun by Much Depends on Dinner back in 1986. The author begins with a simple everyday artefact -- in this case, a photo of himself sitting on a roof patio -- and devotes a chapter to exploring the history, sociology, and science of items within that artefact. Mark Miodownik is a materials scientist, so his focus is on exploring the materials that make up everyday objects: things like paper, concrete, chocolate, and china.
Stuff Matters won the 2014 Winton Prize for Science Books. The judges said "This brilliantly written book is a fresh take on material science that makes even the most everyday stuff exciting and interesting. It demonstrates just how creative and ingenious the human mind can be in its ability to incorporate them into our lives.” Personally, I think the primary reason Miodownik won, and the primary virtue of the book is how imaginative he is. Each material he discusses is treated in a different way. For example, he wrote a film script for the "plastic" chapter.
The only "but" to this book is that if you have a science background, you might find the contents a little bit basic. Not that the science is less than rigourous--I definitely learned things--but that as a science reader you may have encountered some of the contents before in different contexts. But hey, I picked up fun facts that I was able to insert into conversation twice within a couple of weeks. And the book is entertaining and engaging, and might just get you interested in the science of the "stuff" that surrounds us all.
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