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.

The Listeners by James Gunn

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I loved this book! A Message from Space novel and a classic from 1972. 

Obviously, the story follows a group of scientists, primarily the protagonist Robert MacDonald, as they detect a signal coming from Capella, attempt to decipher it, and eventually uncover the message and its effects on both the scientists and humanity more broadly. 

The novel has a dual emphasis: on the message itself and the situation we can infer exists in the alien world, but also on the philosophical and psychological implications for humanity. At times, Gunn effectively places the two worlds side by side. Two sister worlds separated by light years, vastly different from one another yet strangely similar at the same time. Considering that earth had been broadcasting tv/radio signals for decades (thats how they know about us!) we can take both "messages" (alien and earth's) as cultural imprints and archaeological records from both sides. 

I liked Gunn's writing. It's definitely a product of its time in places, but it never felt stiff or difficult to read. There was some character development, and I particularly appreciated the attention given to the social and political consequences of the discovery. It made the novel feel like more than simply a story about making contact with an alien civilisation; it was also an exploration of what that contact might reveal about ourselves. Recommend.

To your scattered bodies go by Philip José Farmer

⭐️⭐️⭐️ I loved the premise. The opening and ending are good, but the middle section dragged. The beginning is full of intriguing science fiction mystery. You can't help but wonder whether these people are on another planet, living in a habitat, trapped in a simulation, or existing in another dimension. The novel builds the expectation that these mysteries will be gradually and satisfyingly revealed. Instead, the story spends most of its time following the characters as they attempt to organise themselves and survive in what feels like a Paleolithic world. I found most of the cast, including the protagonist, Sir Richard Burton, fairly uninteresting. The book doesn't offer meaningful clues about where they are or why they're there until the final quarter, and even then I didn't find the revelations especially science fictional. I didn't dislike the book, but I found it a rather dull reading experience overall. I was hoping for much more science fiction and much less survival.