Connie Williams best known stories focus on Time Travelling historians from the late 21st century in her novels and short stories. While she has written other works, mostly her stories are soft science fiction that all follow a group of late Oxford historians who travel back in time to England disguised as contemporary people.
She has a simple set of rules in place that govern her universe. Deadlines: You can't be alive at the same time twice. No altering past events: her time machine won't even send you back if you will alter major events or else it will send you back hours or days later. This is called slippage and also works to send you to a slightly different time if someone could see you arrive. You can't go to "divergent points" such as triggers for wars or other decisive events in history, where even a small action could have major consequences that history couldn't correct. You can't take things or people back with you, especially if that would alter history. You have to travel through "drop sites", which are certain specific locations where you can time travel and no one will notice you coming or going.
She is one of my favorite current writers and she tends to focus a lot more on plot, dialog, characters, and setting than most other science fiction writers. She does a lot of detailed historical research before writing these stories and the science fiction details are mainly there to advance the usually fairly complex plot. For the most part her books are fairly cheerful and fun (except for the end of Doomsday Book) even when she focuses on fairly serious matters like World War II.
Doomsday Book
This is the darkest and most depressing of her four historian novels, though the first two thirds are not particularly dark. A historian named Kivrin travels back to oxford in 1320, but unknowingly arrives several decades after that. There are two parallel plots involving disease, one a modern deadly strain of influenza that has infected both Kivrin and the technician who sent her back in time and another one with an outbreak of the plague in the 14th century that happens towards the end of the book. Kivrin becomes delusional from the influenza when she arrives in the past and can't remember her drop site, while the local contemporaries think she is a runaway nun since she can do things like read and write. She becomes stranded in the past since the future time influenza outbreak means no one can come and rescue her for fear of spreading the disease. Soon after becoming stranded the black death arrives in her village and wipes out the local population while she can do nothing to stop it.
Doomsday Book won both the Nebula and Hugo awards for best novel and was nominated for other awards. It is fairly dramatic and presents a interesting description of 14th century English life. It has several memorable characters and the disease story lines in particular are extremely tense. Like some of her other work she includes some religious symbolism in her work, particularly when dealing with the priest of the local church.
For the most part its very appropriate for teenage and above audience and will appeal to people interested in the middle ages and history. The only possibly disturbing parts of the book are the vivid descriptions of the plagues the infect the various characters.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Elizabeth Moon
Elizabeth Moon has a great name for a science fiction/fantasy writer and has written more than 2 dozen novels so far, both the science fiction and fantasy genres. I have only read one of them so far, but she has several that have been nominated for major awards before. She is best known for her military science fiction.
Remnant Population
This is the only one of her books that I have read yet and it had a very interesting premise. It was nominated for a Hugo the year it came out.
An old woman named Ofelia has spent most of her life in a colony on another supposedly uninhabited planet that has just been deemed a failure and is to be abandoned. Her age is not given, but it is implied she probably at least in her late 60's and came from a poor and uneducated background. The people of the colony will be relocated to a new world, but she doesn't want to leave her home so she hides when the ship comes to take them away and they don't really care enough to look for her. She likes living on her own and hears on the radio when a new colonizing group is attacked and destroyed as it lands on another part of her planet. No one had seen any evidence of intelligent life on her planet before and eventually she befriends several members of the bird like species that soon come to investigate her home. She has to protect them from possible revenge by
This was a very unique book in that it is mainly a character study of a very average person who then gets thrust into a position of first contact with an alien species. Ofelia is old and tired and doesn't want to move or restart her life. The colony gardens and supplies can take care of her and keep her busy, but she finds new meaning in her life when she has to get used to having all these very curious aliens who suddenly invade her hermetic living space. She has to learn to communicate with them and then has to reintegrate into human society when people come back to her planet and serves as a go between and peacemaker for humans and the aliens.
All around a very pleasant read and unique take on a story that has been done many times before with stories like Avatar (which came out a decade after this book) and Dances With Wolves since it is not resolved with violence and the natives are not shown as superior nor the colonizers as evil. Its appropriate for even early teens who I think will be able to relate to Ofelia just fine.
The Speed of Dark
I haven't got around to reading this yet, but it is generally considered one of her better novels and won a Nebula award. It is about an autistic programmer who is under pressure to accept a cure for his autism. It is supposedly another good character study and deals with ethical and identity issues.
Remnant Population
This is the only one of her books that I have read yet and it had a very interesting premise. It was nominated for a Hugo the year it came out.
An old woman named Ofelia has spent most of her life in a colony on another supposedly uninhabited planet that has just been deemed a failure and is to be abandoned. Her age is not given, but it is implied she probably at least in her late 60's and came from a poor and uneducated background. The people of the colony will be relocated to a new world, but she doesn't want to leave her home so she hides when the ship comes to take them away and they don't really care enough to look for her. She likes living on her own and hears on the radio when a new colonizing group is attacked and destroyed as it lands on another part of her planet. No one had seen any evidence of intelligent life on her planet before and eventually she befriends several members of the bird like species that soon come to investigate her home. She has to protect them from possible revenge by
This was a very unique book in that it is mainly a character study of a very average person who then gets thrust into a position of first contact with an alien species. Ofelia is old and tired and doesn't want to move or restart her life. The colony gardens and supplies can take care of her and keep her busy, but she finds new meaning in her life when she has to get used to having all these very curious aliens who suddenly invade her hermetic living space. She has to learn to communicate with them and then has to reintegrate into human society when people come back to her planet and serves as a go between and peacemaker for humans and the aliens.
All around a very pleasant read and unique take on a story that has been done many times before with stories like Avatar (which came out a decade after this book) and Dances With Wolves since it is not resolved with violence and the natives are not shown as superior nor the colonizers as evil. Its appropriate for even early teens who I think will be able to relate to Ofelia just fine.
The Speed of Dark
I haven't got around to reading this yet, but it is generally considered one of her better novels and won a Nebula award. It is about an autistic programmer who is under pressure to accept a cure for his autism. It is supposedly another good character study and deals with ethical and identity issues.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
H.G. Wells Part 2
Invisible Man
His fifth novel is another morality story involving a different mad scientist. Plot is simple: scientist develops an process to make himself invisible and uses it on himself, but can't reverse it. It has an interesting flash back narrative, where the scientist Griffin starts out invisible and covered in bandages and has to befriend someone after his invisibility is exposed to people in an inn and enlists the help of someone named Marvel. Griffin also finds a former colleague named Kemp and recounts his story to him, but he has already turned to a life of crime and terror at this point and Kemp becomes his main target.
Having the protagonist also be an somewhat interesting, but generally unsympathetic villain is an interesting take that not many authors have tried before. Partly the invisibility drove Griffin to his crimes since he could no longer live a normal life, but for the most part he seems like more of an arrogant jerk who was looking for an excuse to go bad. The fact that the invisibility is permanent is a interesting variation compared to most fictional invisibility that came later, which normally is easier to control in most later fiction. Griffin's character is also a good contrast to Kemp who is willing to sacrifice himself to stop Griffin terrorism even though none of this is Kemp's fault. The novel also ends on a nice twist leaving the reader to wonder what the future consequences of this technology will be.
The novel has aged fairly well since it is mainly character and moral dilemma/temptation driven. Its appropriate to teen readers and above and is probably his most generally accessible work out of these four novels.
War of the Worlds
His sixth and most famous novel (thanks in part to Orson Welles' famous radio play), this is an example of the invasion literature that was popular in England at the time with space aliens substituting for the usual German invaders. Explosions are seen on Mars and soon after "meteors" land in England. They contain tripod shaped alien machines that make quick work of the British military through heat rays and black smoke weapons. The second half of the book deals with the aftermath with the martians collecting people with the tentacles and draining them of their blood for nourishment. Eventually the main character gives up hope, when he realizes they have all died from bacteria.
It was considered a bit brutal at the time in its depictions of violence, but its fairly tame by today's standards. Its main problem is that it has been copied so much that it doesn't feel very fresh anymore and the ending is too much of a dues ex machina ending for most readers. The martians are unstoppable for almost the entire book and then they just drop dead. If you don't mind that, its still an entertaining read.
All four of these have been turned into feature films and have had many imitators in books and film. All of them are appropriate for early teen readers, though the language may take a bit of getting used to unless they have read other Victorian era books beforehand.
His fifth novel is another morality story involving a different mad scientist. Plot is simple: scientist develops an process to make himself invisible and uses it on himself, but can't reverse it. It has an interesting flash back narrative, where the scientist Griffin starts out invisible and covered in bandages and has to befriend someone after his invisibility is exposed to people in an inn and enlists the help of someone named Marvel. Griffin also finds a former colleague named Kemp and recounts his story to him, but he has already turned to a life of crime and terror at this point and Kemp becomes his main target.
Having the protagonist also be an somewhat interesting, but generally unsympathetic villain is an interesting take that not many authors have tried before. Partly the invisibility drove Griffin to his crimes since he could no longer live a normal life, but for the most part he seems like more of an arrogant jerk who was looking for an excuse to go bad. The fact that the invisibility is permanent is a interesting variation compared to most fictional invisibility that came later, which normally is easier to control in most later fiction. Griffin's character is also a good contrast to Kemp who is willing to sacrifice himself to stop Griffin terrorism even though none of this is Kemp's fault. The novel also ends on a nice twist leaving the reader to wonder what the future consequences of this technology will be.
The novel has aged fairly well since it is mainly character and moral dilemma/temptation driven. Its appropriate to teen readers and above and is probably his most generally accessible work out of these four novels.
War of the Worlds
His sixth and most famous novel (thanks in part to Orson Welles' famous radio play), this is an example of the invasion literature that was popular in England at the time with space aliens substituting for the usual German invaders. Explosions are seen on Mars and soon after "meteors" land in England. They contain tripod shaped alien machines that make quick work of the British military through heat rays and black smoke weapons. The second half of the book deals with the aftermath with the martians collecting people with the tentacles and draining them of their blood for nourishment. Eventually the main character gives up hope, when he realizes they have all died from bacteria.
It was considered a bit brutal at the time in its depictions of violence, but its fairly tame by today's standards. Its main problem is that it has been copied so much that it doesn't feel very fresh anymore and the ending is too much of a dues ex machina ending for most readers. The martians are unstoppable for almost the entire book and then they just drop dead. If you don't mind that, its still an entertaining read.
All four of these have been turned into feature films and have had many imitators in books and film. All of them are appropriate for early teen readers, though the language may take a bit of getting used to unless they have read other Victorian era books beforehand.
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