Things I've noticed: I need to read some recent Science Fiction

Today I finished reading the 1969 novel Bug Jack Barron byNorman Spinrad (I'll do the review on Monday) and was happy to find an afterward written by Michael Moorcock. As I worked my way through his five page essay on the book, he mentioned a large number of popular science fiction books written in the late sixties, and I realized that over the last couple of years I had read 95% of them.

This isn't actually a problem as the late '60s had all sorts of great Science Fiction being published. It's just that as I was congratulating myself for being so familiar with the books written in the decade before I was born I realized that with the exception of books written by the authors I follow and a couple recent Hugo winners suggested to me by my BFF Mike, I haven't really read any of the great science fiction that has been published in the last ten years.

In a way I feel like the music lover in 1969 who says "I'm a huge folk and rock music lover, and am totally familiar with all the classics of yesteryear; no I didn't go see that Woodstock thing earlier this year, even though it was playing just down the road, but let me tell you all the great things that were happening fifteen years ago."

Okay, not exactly like that, as '50s rock and roll (like '60s Science Fiction) is definitely some of the best, but mostly I mean that I need to get into some stuff that is still available in regular bookstores.

So I guess I'm going to try to swap out every month - first a science fiction classic, then something written after my youngest daughter was born (1997), and hopefully this will get me a little more balance in my reading.

Book Review: The Gods Themselves

As a fan of Science Ficiton, I've tried to make sure I've read the classics; Bradbury, Clarke, and Dick were all heavily featured in my reading habits as a young man, but I have to admit, aside from a few short stories, I had never read any Isaac Asimov before this week.

Before giving my review of the 1972 novel The Gods Themselves, here's what I knew about Asimov before reading the book.

1) Asimov created the three laws of robotics

2) His stories were behind the films Bicentennial Man and I, Robot

3) His Foundation series is a must read for Classic SF fans

My BFF Mike had read the book, but was pretty underwhelmed, although he freely admits to preferring Heinlein and Niven when it comes to classic SF.

For me, the book, separated into three parts looks at a suspiciously-perfect energy source which has recently arrived on a future Earth. We view the new device and it's potential problem from three different sources, one Earth-based, one Moon-based, and one based in another dimension from the point of view of three separate but connected creatures.

I loved how the structure of the story follows the structure of the alien creatures (three parts giving a whole picture) and was happy to see that for a Hard-SF book it looked at a lot of the reasons behind why different scientists acted the way they did.

A fun read, and honestly, a pretty decent introduction to Asimov.