Category Archives: Books

In The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972), a poor colony world is haunted by rumors of a vanished aboriginal race. The status of the natives forms a thematic link between the three novellas in the volume, and is framed by … Continue reading →

From WolfeWiki: Nadan Jafferzadeh, a rich Iranian tourist, has disappeared after a week visiting America (which has been reduced to a poor third-world country). The only clue to what has happened to him is his travel journal. But can it … Continue reading →

Consider Phlebas (1987) was the first of Iain Banks’s “Culture” books, which are about a universe largely dominated by the eponymous machine-run socialist utopia. Life in the Culture is portrayed as essentially a permanent, floating grad student party in the … Continue reading →

Norstrilia, by Cordwainer Smith. As ’60s SF, Norstrilia was pretty good — very funny, some clever ideas, surprising financial sophistication. I think of it as an alternate take on Dune — like Dune, it focuses on the lives of an … Continue reading →

Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation, by Cherian George. George’s book is a collection of essays about Singapore politics in the ’90s, a period when the “old guard” PAP leadership was withdrawing from public view to make an orderly transition to new … Continue reading →

The book of the short sun is a three-volume saga by Gene Wolfe. Beware minor spoilers. It’s amazing. Like the Book of the New Sun, it is a story that transforms itself in the telling — what happens later on … Continue reading →

. . . and maybe something else; it’s been a long time since my last update. I still haven’t finished The Glass Bead Game, though. I recommend The Ask.

I had so many thoughts about this . . . but now I’m just tired and burnt out and want to make a note that I read it before I forget.

Possibly some other stuff. Since I’ve started working, though, I’ve had less time to read and less time to write / think about books. Shame.

Yeah, I do this sometimes, I postpone my books updates because I can’t think of anything to say about what I’ve read. It usually winds up like this too: instead of thinking of more to say, I just forget the … Continue reading →