2014 books: 48-51

[the_siobhan]

Looks like I'm going to beat last year's record after all.


    

Cuckoo's Egg by C.J. Cherryh A damaged human space ship unexpectedly encounters a race called the Shonunin near their home planet. First Contact goes very badly. The less technologically advanced race wins through force of numbers but the cost is huge; it takes two years and they lose countless of their own people taking that single ship. They know the ship sent a message home before it was captured, a message that will take light years to arrive. In this story the aliens are the humans and the Shonunin are the ones who have to figure out what to do about the approaching threat. What they do is clone the DNA from one of the humans and raise a human child to be their future ambassador. This scares the crap out of a lot of people. The human boy reaches adulthood knowing he is different, but not why. His guardian works to give him a place in Shonunin society that will give him the ability to be both safe and self-sufficient while knowing that he cannot predict how his charge will turn out.

It occurs to me that almost all Cherryh's books I have read are in some way about about alienation and displacement. This book was a particular favourite of mine and I was very pleased that it lost nothing in re-reading it.


    

The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert The experiment of the title is the creation of an overpopulated city on a world so poisonous that food can only be produced in hydroponic factories. Fifteen generations of fierce competition for scarce resources has resulted in hyper-violent society and an entire culture of people so dangerous the experimenters are afraid to let them out. The story has two threads, the events on Dosadi and the political maneuvering that happens before and after. The first part I found really fascinating. The courtroom drama less so.

At some point I'm going to find Dune in one of the piles. I'm trying to decide if that will end up being a good thing or a bad thing.

    

Critical Mass by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth I have no idea where this came from. It has $2 scribbled on the inside cover so I assume from a second hand store. Kornbluth and Pohl wrote a number of books together and after Kornbluth died in 1953 his widow gave Pohl all his manuscripts and notes. Pohl finished them and the result is this collection of short stories, published nine years later. None of the stories are very long and the book as a whole is a quick read. They're pretty dated, obviously, and none of them really struck me as highly memorable. Into the library.

    

Soul Catcher by Frank Herbert This book still has the Guelph Public Library stamp on it, so it's a safe bet that I picked it up at one of their discard tables. This book is unusual for Herbert in that it's not an SF setting. The lead character is a member of the Quileute tribe. His sister was recently gang-raped and subsequently committed suicide. He goes on a vision quest that leads him to the plan to sacrifice an innocent in retribution for the innocents that lost their lives to the invasion of North America by Europeans. He kidnaps a 13 year-old boy who is the son of politician and the bulk of the book is about their experiences together in the Washington forests. First things first, I really like the story. I think it is really well written. Wikipedia reports that the ending is unpopular, but I love it.

However, Herbert fucks up in a major way by making it about people who actually exist. Making a bunch of shit up and attributing it to somebody else's culture is a dick move. The story would have been just as good if he had stuck it on another planet, created a background history that mirrors what happened to Native Americans and then he could have his characters do anything he wanted.

It feels like I've been reading a lot of SF lately, I think I'm going to branch out a bit with my next few books.