Friday
Oh dear, Oh dear. Going by the reviews blurbed on the cover of the book, this was considered at one point to be Heinlein's last great book.
For the record this book is a big old pile of manure that I couldn't wait to be done with.
Friday is a 'combat courier', the kind you turn to when your delivery must absolutely get through. She's also an artificial artefact, a genetically manipulated superhuman in a world where prejudice is rife and her kind have no rights.
The book follows her on a couple of missions and through an incident called 'Red Thursday'. It also follows her obsessive need for family and love through several groups of people.
Friday is a typical late Heinlein character - practically flawless and her main flaw is in her total humility.
Unfortunately she's just not a very sympathetic character and Heinlein's quirks have gotten real old by this point in his career.
If I hadn't already read 'I Will Fear No Evil' and 'To Sail Beyond The Sunset' I would have classed this as his worst book.
It's such a pity that so many of the genuinely great science fiction authors started produced self-indulgent crap the second they're successful enough to overrule their editor.
The only reason to read this is for Heinlein completism or for an idea of the influences behind Charles Stross' upcoming Saturn's Children..
Unknown Pleasures
Part of Continuum's 33 and 1/3 series of short books that examine recordings by beloved artists over the years.
This one looks at the rise of Joy Division at the making of their classic debut album, Unknown Pleasures.
Given the brevity of the book it cannot compete with works like "Touching From a Distance" or celebrate the myth to the extent that Twenty-Four Hour Party People did.
It's a basic, functional little volume.
It's worth picking up cheap if you particularly love Joy Division.
JPod
Supposedly an update of the classic Microserfs for the Google generation this is instead a cynical, heartless mess of a novel.
Centred around a group of workers at a faceless games company in Vancouver, the book riffs off on the personal neuroses and bizarre acts of these people and their families.
As always Coupland's prose is superbly readable and some of it is very funny, but the story is stupid, the characters are deeply unlikeable and he fills about a third of the book with concrete text or lists of prime numbers, digits of pi, and other pointless lists. It worked when used sparingly and within context in microserfs - in this novel it makes a slight tale seem more of a rip-off.
If you read Microserfs and wanted more or you just love Coupland's work, then read this book, but be prepared to be disappointed. Otherwise, avoid it.
Under Old Earth and Other Explorations
This collection, as with the majority of Cordwainer Smith's work, is set among the worlds of the Instrumentality - his vision of far future humanity. Smith was primarily a short story writer - only writing one novel - and this book contains some of his finest work.
For much of this collection I found it a chore to finish the stories.
Smith had some fantastic ideas, with some very astute insights into the future of humanity, the milieu is superbly realised with every nuance thought through, but his writing can be as dry and unexciting as cold toast.
(As an aside Smith's real name was Paul Linebarger, and he was a professor of Asiatic Studies and an expert on psychological warfare. I suppose I could blame his writing style on this background, but I'm clueless when it comes to literary theory)
Highlight for me would be the story of the deposed ruler, who instead of coming back to his kingdom with an army, sneaks in and saves his people by subtly altering the mind of the dictator who replaced him.
This is worth a quick read if you have a keen interest in the past giants of science fiction, or if you are particularly keen on short
story collections. It really wasn?t my kind of thing.
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