Tower of Glass by Robert Silverberg

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

 Excellent read. It has hints of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? there are androids in this society, along with a fascinating central character developing an interesting philosophy around the nature of life and some obscure motivations to communicate with the stars. That said, this novel is very different from Do Androids…? in almost every other respect. 

It is very well written, with two or three interwoven subplots that gradually come together to form a layered, thematic narrative. At its heart, the novel is concerned with what it means to be human, while also exploring religion, the morality of slavery, family, and the complexities of human relationships. 

I picked this up expecting a message-from-the-stars/first-contact story. While those themes are present, they remain in the background. At first, I thought that might be a problem, but Silverberg’s much more character-driven story in the foreground was so compelling that I simply couldn’t stop reading. Recommend.

Engines of God by Jack McDevitt

🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳 Great fun. Fast read (528 pages!). Gripping story. The kind of writing that sticks you to the book and does not allow you to move until you have finished the chapter, or the book. This is the perfect book to get anyone out of a reading slump. Not that I was on a reading slump but it renewed my inspiration and hunger for more SF. 

Now, this is not a masterwork of SF literature. It isn't very profound on its exploration of philosophical themes or anything like that. But it deals with some interesting topics such as ancient, alien civilisations, space archaeology, and alien languages, which I found fascinating. 

Recommend.

Another End by Vincent King

👍👍👍👍👍 It was the first paragraph of the blurb, along with the weird cover art, that convinced me to pick up this book and give it a read. I’m very glad I did. 

I love stories that stretch across space and time, stories so vast that they seem to reach all the way to the edges of the universe. This novel is exactly that kind of story. 

It follows one human protagonist and an AI/probe/starship as they travel, and travel… and travel, searching for life. But after hundreds of thousands of years, they still haven’t found any. 

The atmosphere Vincent King creates is absolutely perfect. There’s a profound sense of solitude, frustration, claustrophobia, and resignation. A feeling of having wasted a life, or perhaps hundreds of lives. The pilot and the probe continue to wander the universe, driven by their original directives, long after those directives have ceased to make any real sense. This is the first part of the novel, and I loved the bleak, existential mood of it. 

Then the second part takes a complete 180 degree turn and goes completely mad. 

A new character appears and causes all sorts of trouble. I won’t say more because of spoilers, but suffice it to say that this is one of the weirdest and maddest characters I’ve come across in a novel. 

Strange, bleak, enormous, and completely bizarre in the best possible way. Read it.

The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth

⭐️⭐️⭐️ This book was published in 1952. It’s a short book at just 186 pages, but not a quick read. 

The story follows an advertising executive who is tasked with creating a marketing campaign to convince people to emigrate to Venus. Obviously, we know Venus is an uninhabitable hellscape, but in this world, nobody seems to know that. 

The executive comes from a wealthy, privileged class, while the people he is trying to persuade to move to Venus are at the very bottom of society. He knows very little about them and is genuinely surprised when things don’t go according to plan. As the story progresses, he is forced to confront the reality of his “customers” and, ultimately, the world outside his privileged bubble. 

What I found less appealing was that the focus wasn’t really Venus, but Earth and its political and social situation. The novel explores themes such as consumerism, corporate power and advertising. To be honest, these aren’t my favourite subjects to read about, which is probably why I had to make a bit of an effort to finish it.

hat I enjoyed, though, was the protagonist’s struggle and the realisation he came to. He became more human and, as a result, less annoying. I also found the ending a bit surprising. Not a happy ending but satisfying. A redemption of sorts.

Eden by Stanisław Lem

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨️ Lem is a great writer. Not only are the plots and characters interesting, but his novels are also packed with so much food for thought. People often say that one of Lem’s main concerns is the nature of knowledge, and the search for it, and if you read this book with that in mind, there’s a lot to take away. 

Eden reminded me of The Invincible (by Lem too), in that both stories involve a spaceship landing/crashing on a strange planet and trying to understand what they encounter. But in both cases, the characters inevitably try to make sense of the unknown through their own human paradigms and assumptions, which is precisely where things become so interesting.

Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Nice, quick read. As far as I understand, it's one of the foundational Generation Ship stories. First published as 2 short stories in the 1940s, it was published as a novel in 1963. 

I found myself quite immersed in the world of the book. A world where people have forgotten where they came from and where they are going. Society has decayed and become stratified into upper and lower classes. Although the novel depicts events in the future, I often had the impression that I was reading about 19th-century people. At times, I found myself imagining the generation ship as an old fashioned pirate ship. The problem with this was I had to make an effort to believe they were travelling in deep space. 

Anyways, I recommend this novel as a window into how the concept of generation ships has developed and changed over the decades.

The Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke

🤎🤎🤎💕 This isn’t one of Clarke’s masterpieces, but it was gripping and fun to read. I really enjoyed the plot: a writer travelling to Mars, what he learns on the journey to the Red Planet, and what he discovers once he gets there. I found the characters human and believable, capable of developing relationships and empathy—up to a certain extent, obviously. There is science and technology, which are fun to read about. Like using Typewriter and paper on the spaceship. This isn’t a novel of big ideas. Actually, I didn’t find the big reveal, mindblowing or a "big reveal" at all. It was an enjoyable and engaging read. Recommend.