The Fifth Science

By -

 The Fifth Science, by Exurb1a

 This one kid at work has been telling me about the books he's reading, which is fun.  He said he really likes this author (who seems to live in Bulgaria and is also a YouTuber sometimes), and the ebook was cheap, so I thought I'd give it a go....

Here we have a set of 12 short stories, set from the beginning of the Aerth Empire (that is, humans) until after the fall of said empire.  They don't have continuing characters or planets, anything like that, but are vignettes from various points in time and place, often thousands of years apart.  From these stories we get glimpses of the Empire, the development of truly intelligent machines and the splitting of humans into myriads of different societies, and the eventual development of the fifth science: the ability to make ordinary matter intelligent.  Humans inject stars with intelligence, and what will happen then? 

Since human history, on the whole, tends to be on the brutal side, these stories are not always cheery.  Humans gonna human, whether we live in nomadic tribes, highly complex scientific societies, or on ocean worlds with biological manipulation.  I appreciated that this writer didn't try to make our future especially nice, because we aren't.

I really quite liked these.  They had some great ideas, were well-written, and made for good bedtime reading.  I'm going to try some more of this Exurb1a guy.  Definitely worth a read, especially if you like far-future SF.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

Summerbook #9: The Deorhord

By -
Image
The Deorhord: An Old English Bestiary, by Hana Videen This followup to The Wordhord was a lovely read.  Videen uses her wordhord format to write a bestiary, explaining how medieval people loved to used animals as examples of Christian ideas.   Plus I always enjoy learning about Old English words, because they are often cognate with both modern English and with Danish.  Deor (animal), which in English evolved into deer , is also related to Danish dyr  (animal). Videen has sections of everyday animals, 'wonder' animals (such as elephants), creatures that especially symbolized good and evil, and just plain mysteries.  The good animals are the lion, deer, phoenix, and panther, and the evil ones are the whale, snake, dragon, and wolf.  The mysteries are usually taken from Alexander the Great's writings about his conquest of India; one sounds kind of like a crocodile, except that it has a head like the moon and also crocodiles were well-known.  Another...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more