Still working my way through the stack of books I read this summer, in order to give brief reviews...
Tales from the Detroit Tigers Dugout by Jack Ebling. This is a book detailing the 2006 Detroit Tigers AL championship season - with plenty of anecdotes about the managers and players. It also has a decade by decade history (more than a hundred years) of the team and its greatest and/or most colorful players. Did you know that Ty Cobb once had an unassisted double play from the outfield? Neither did I, until I read this book.
Glasshouse by Charles Stross was one of this year's Hugo nominees for best science fiction novel. I try to read the nominated novels each year, and I approached this one with trepidation, as I strongly disliked last year's nominated novel by Stross, Accellerando. I was very relieved that this one was much better - particularly that it did not have a graphic and disturbing rape scene and subsequent long term romantic and disturbing relationship between the rapist and the rapee. This one borders on cyberpunk, a genre I tend to dislike, but it was still fairly enjoyable.
Sometime in the far future, following a time of war, Robin wakes up in a clinic with most of his memories missing, and soon finds out that people are trying to kill him - probably for something his earlier self knew. Trying to find a good hiding place, Robin volunteers to be art of a unique experiment that will isolate him from society at large. The experiment randomly assigns new identities to the volunteers and has them live in a primitive culture (in this case - one a lot like ours). But Robin does not realize that his hiding place will be a trap which will put him at the mercy of the experimenters, his fellow volunteers - and his own unhealthy mind...
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge is another of this year's Hugo nominees - the winner, in fact, though it was the one I liked third best out of the five. I thought that this one was a lot of fun - but lacking in depth. In the near future, they have discovered a way to bring back Alzheimer's patients to full health - but then the former patients have to go back to high school to get the remedial high tech skills to be able to function in society.
Robert Gu, a former world class poet, is one of those former patients. While he was renowned for his poetry, he was a complete creep to his family, to say the least - emotional abusive and a first class arrogant jerk. But now he has to start over, with less than the skills of a high school student. And then he gets sucked into a conspiracy involving UCSD and the high tech labs associated with it - by a mysterious being named Rabbit.
Will Robert ever be able to be a poet again? Will the challenges Robert faces turn him into a nicer, better person? Is Rabbit the avatar of a real person, or is Rabbit an artificial intelligence, a sort of God for a new culture and new society?
Fast paced, fun, and fluffy...
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