The SciFiMonth Challenge for 2023 is being hosted by A Dance With Books, BookForager, Dear Geek Place and There’s Always Room For One More.
I’ve read only a handful of science fiction books till date, so I was very wary of signing up. But oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Here’s a list of scifi books languishing on my TBR pile since… forever… but maybe I can at least chomp off one of them by end of November!
November seems to be SciFi Reading Month. So for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl, I’m sharing a list of top 10 scifi books from my TBR pile (not book quotes). I’d planned to work on my science fiction reading muscle this year, and who knows? Still have 2 more months for end of 2021, you know.
I’m taking inspiration from the prompts for SciFiMonth 2021 challenge hosted by Imyril and Dear Geek Place, particularly the Book Bingo.
Mahit is deputed as ambassador from the tiny Lsel Station to the mighty Teixcalaanli Empire when her predecessor, Yskandr, dies in mysterious circumstances. More curious still is the fact that Lsel Station possesses a secret and unique technology: the imago machine. Imago is essentially a bio-chip that carries the endocrine memory of a person, and can be embedded and integrated into the brain of another person. (Phew, hope I got the description right!)
The trouble just keeps on piling up from there. Mahit finds that Yskandr’s imago in her brain has been sabotaged! Also, it seems imago technology isn’t so hush-hush after all — and several people are fighting over it… And the city where Mahit has been posted is an AI hive-mind which is malfunctioning… Oh, and there are new monstrous aliens at the gate…
//Who drew the patterns of the stars, if not a god? Who designed the marvellous cycle of cloud and rain and river, if not a god? Who made you— and you— and you too— if not some god whose name we have forgotten?//
The Alleluia Files by Sharon Shinn is the third book in her Samaria series. It can be read as a standalone, as long as you have some background information of the past centuries on Samaria (which I am happy to provide below).
We find ourselves on a different planet, where the Samarians, Edori and Jacobites co-exist. Samarians worship the God known as Jovah. When they ‘sing’ to Jovah, Jovah instantly (and I do mean instantly) sends help within the hour, in the form of rain, medicines and grain.
The Edori are nomads and sailors who believe that somewhere out there is a supreme universal being, but they’re not sure whether that being is Jovah or not. And then there are the Jacobites, bitter agnostics, who claim that Jovah is not a God — instead, Jovah is a machine!
Book: Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance (Series: Vorkosigan Saga)
Published: November 2012 (Baen Books)
Audiobook Narrator: Grover Gardner (Blackstone Audio)
Genre/ Trope: Space Opera, Humor, Meet the Family
Rating: 9 of 10 / Highly Recommended
A perfect feel-good read for a lazy summer afternoon! I was chortling my way through this book about Captain Ivan Vorpatril, a rather laidback bureaucrat in the intergalactic Barrayaran Empire. The good news is that the book can be read as a standalone, and is a very good gateway into science fiction.
Ivan Vorpatril is the scion of a powerful political family in Barrayar, but he isn’t very ambitious. He would just rather stick on at his comfortable government job and enjoy his bachelor’s life. His meddlesome cousin Byerly asks him for a favor to check-in on two immigrant women living under fake identities — and poor Ivan can say goodbye to his uneventful life!
Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.
Matthew Ten, Verse Twenty-Nine
I read some time back, but I am reviewing it here only now. The book raises some uncomfortable questions about our perception of and our (according to the book, unfounded) expectations from God. Mary Russell does a spectacular job of blending science and religion in this book. For both agnostics and believers alike, this is a story that will send you reeling.
The Sparrow is set in the future, and revolves around Emilio Sandoz. Emilio is a devout Jesuit priest and a good man whose friends love him. Sandoz’s biggest strengths are his self-awareness, and his faith in God which can move mountains. But that faith is about to be tested.
This is the final month for the Japanese Literature Reading Challenge, so I really had to hurry up with this one. I had two main recommendations for this month: Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa, and an anthology of Japanese Haiku poetry compiled by Yamamoto and Addiss. And although not “literature”, also the superbly mind-bending scifi anime, Paprika.
Kindred by Octavia Butler was published in 1979 and is my second book for the Vintage Science Fiction Month (not a reading challenge) of January 2021. I chose to go with the graphic novel version from Damian Duffy (adaptation) and John Jennings (illustration).
is not “comfort read”. It’s not the book to choose when you’re down with pandemic fatigue. But it IS a science fiction classic that is a must-read for understanding the issues of race and slavery in Antebellum South.
