Doctor Who and the Android Invasion - Terrance Dicks

If you are not from the Planet Ming Mong, then here's a run down on Dr. Who:

He is an alien. He's a renegade bad boy Timelord from the planet Gallifrey, who has a soft spot for the human race and spends a lot of his time rescuing them. He can regenerate himself, and each reincarnation has its own personality traits & quirks. (Tom Baker by far and away was one of the best and best loved as the fourth incarnation. David Tennant is pretty popular too, he played the Tenth Doctor.) He travels through space and time in his space/time machine, the TARDIS = Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. He carries a sonic screwdriver. This incarnation's personality is "partial to tea and muffins", wears a long dramatic scarf and an overcoat with lots of pockets, has a robotic dog named K-9, and breaks the ice with complete strangers by offering them Jelly Babies.

This story is classic Tom Baker/Fourth Incarnation. I must have watched this one on VHS a hundred times as a kid. Heh heh, and an adult. I finished reading this back in November; incidentally the same day the Bear and I went down to the county courthouse in hoodies and got married. Yep, I was reading Doctor Who on my wedding day. Typical of the Doctor, this adventure starts out by a chance encounter. He is taking his companion Sarah back to the real Earth and when the TARDIS malfunctions slightly, they accidentally stumble into a hostile "aliens using androids" take-over attempt of the Earth by the Kraals where he goes head to head with the Chief Scientist of the Kraal Expedition, the Doctor and Sarah are both put in a bunch of sticky situations that they have to get out of by quick thinking, there are creepy androids, scary militant aliens, and the wonderful & clever Fourth Doctor...love everything about this story! If you are a Who fan, this is a classic you must sample. If you're not a Who fan, it means you haven't met the Doctor yet and you need to.

Eight Stories from the Rest of the Robots - Isaac Asimov

Couldn't find a picture of this edition's cover on the net. And for some reason that I haven't been able to fix, this is the best I can do with my scanner right now. Grrr.

This collection of robot stories from Asimov was really enjoyable and scored me a trip to Uranus on the Mind Voyages challenge when I finished it early last month. The stories are:

Robot AL-76 Goes Astray
First Law
Victory Unintentional
Let's Get Together
Satisfaction Guaranteed
Risk
Lenny
Galley Slave

This was the first I'd heard of Dr. Susan Calvin the roboticist, who I'm still not sure I liked or not. I did like how Asimov's style questions the boundaries of human and robot; you get a good look at his robots' "human" sides.

I think my favorite short of this collection was Victory Unintentional. A group of robots are sent to Jupiter to observe the Jovians, who are hostile to humankind but so far not technologically advanced enough to threaten them. And the robots have distinctive personalities and qualities that help tell the story. It's simple, but effective story telling: the Jovians observe the robots performing any number of feats that an actual human would be incapable of and are duly impressed, thinking that they are observing examples of human capabilities. It's not until the end of the story that the robots understand they have probably quelled interstellar war, simply by being themselves.

Very entertaining and insightful writing. Asimov fan? Add this to your list of must reads.

Shadow of the Hegemon - Orson Scott Card

I swiped this copy from my brother when I was visiting in Ohio back in the middle of November. I enjoyed this read, but it wasn't without its flaws. The story stumbled a bit with keeping my attention; sometimes what kept me reading was the fact that I'd read the previous Ender books and was already caught up in some of the characters. I wouldn't recommend this being the first Ender book you read, it will be hard to understand or stick with. The story follows the events that take place after Ender's War, after the Battle School students return to earth and world war seems imminent. The character development is impressive, Bean and Petra especially. And the ending is satisfying. If you are a fan of Card and the Ender stories, you will enjoy this book.

The Telling - Ursula K. Le Guin

I read The Left Hand of Darkness years ago and loved it very much. I really don't know what my excuse is for not reading more of Le Guin sooner! (Although I have read and love the short story Catwings and had read A Wizard of Earthsea before.) As I said in my review for the Earthsea trilogy, she is the master world builder. I borrowed my mom's copy and read this Locus Award winning novel while staying at my folks' farm last month.

The Telling is set in the Hainish Cycle. Sutty is an earthling and an observer for the Ekumen (like Genly Ai on Gethen in The Left Hand of Darkness), staying on the planet Aka. The society there is run by the Corporation, currently in "The Time of Cleansing", and systematically destroying all knowledge, writing, and practices of the planet's past. Anyone caught using the old ways is "re-educated". Sutty digs carefully but deeply into the culture she's observing, starting out in Dovza City and traveling to Okzat-Ozkat, far up in the mountains. What she finds there can only be described as the truth.

I LOVE Le Guin's style! The people of her stories are fictional but live in perfectly crafted, realistic, complicated societies. There is no window she doesn't look through in her writing; there are anthropological, historical, ecological and environmental themes going on, and like in The Left Hand of Darkness, she addresses sex and sexuality. She takes relevant swings at our own contemporary culture with the Dovza people's favorite morning drink 'akakafi', which can be purchased at the Corporation brand 'Starbrew's'. And on page 127, Le Guin made my day with the phrase, "a world of words". Darned if I can remember the exact sentence, but that's what I get for taking so long to write about it, rats. I can't recommend this author's writing enough. If only the people making decisions like this were required to read these books, I think the world would be a very different place.

The Face of the Waters - Robert Silverberg

I found a copy of this novel on my mom's bookshelf while I was visiting Ohio last month, and thought it sounded like a great Jupiter Voyage. I'm also including this one in the Speculative Fiction Challenge. (The only other Silverberg I've ever read is The Ugly Little Boy, originally a sci-fi short by Asimov, and I really enjoyed it.)

It was interesting to go from reading about the water world of Le Guin's Earthsea to Silverberg's planet, Hydros. Like Le Guin's world, Hydros has not yet been fully explored by the human population and communication between islands is primitive. Except in Silverberg's story, the humans are not originally native to the planet. Earth was destroyed generations before. Hydros was originally used as a penal colony and there is no way to leave the planet once you arrive; the native race called the Gillies or Dwellers have forbidden the building of spaceports, and the "islands" that the humans live on with the Gillies are artificial and constructed of organic materials. Having been warned once already by the native race not to abuse the natural environment, one island of humans is banished for killing local wildlife (sentient creatures called "divers"), and given one month to pack up and get out. The long and short of the plot is that they have nowhere to go but through the Empty Sea and into uncharted territory to face the Face. I think Silverberg is excellent at bringing out his characters' attributes and flaws, making them very relatable. The main character, Valben Lawler, is struggling to define his humanity as a human who was born on Hydros and will never leave it, and dreams about Earth and will never see it. When you're putting yourself in his shoes as you read this story, you can sympathize with him every step of the way.

The Earthsea Trilogy - Ursula K. Le Guin

Before Harry Potter and Hogwarts, there was Ged and Roke Island. I read this for a Neptune Voyage on the Mind Voyages challenge, and am also counting this as fantasy fiction for the Speculative Fiction Challenge. The Earthsea Trilogy is made up of the three small novels: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore. I got very attached to the recurring character, Ged/Sparrowhawk, who travels the world in his boat Lookfar. The three novels are three major quests that Ged, a mage, completes at different stages of his life, while helping others and facing his fears. The planet is Earthsea, a world made up of islands, mountains, sea voyages, magic, dragons, and various human cultures. I love this author. She is a master of world building. In the past year, I've reread The Left Hand of Darkness, another great read of hers. I give each book five out of five stars.