Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Sunday September 02 2018, @09:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the In-just-over-three-months-it-would-be...-Mars-Ho-Ho-Ho! dept.

Want to read some books? Many of our users have shown interest in having a book club. Now it's finally time to kick it off.

Your soytyrant has pre-selected the first three books so that you have more time to read them, should you choose to do so:

September: Mars, Ho! by Stephen McGrew
October: Foundation by Isaac Asimov
November: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin.

The plan is to read a book, and discuss it on the 1st of the following month. Suggestions for new books (of any genres, not just "science fiction") will also be collected at the same time. You can start listing some of your suggestions right now in this comment section. We'll pick up to eight of them and run a poll on September 15th to decide the book for December. And so on.

The first book is Mars, Ho! by Stephen McGrew, one of our more literary users (not to be confused with Mars Ho! by Jennifer Willis). The book is available for free on McGrew's website, although there are some purchasing options available if you want to support him. From the description:

Captain John Knolls thinks he's just been given the best assignment of his career -- ferrying two hundred prostitutes to Mars. He doesn't know that they're all addicted to a drug that causes them to commit extreme, deadly violence when they are experiencing withdrawal or that he'll face more pirates than anyone had ever seen before. Or that he'd fall in love. A humorous science fiction space novel, a horror story, a love story, a pirate story, a tale of corporate bureaucracy and incompetence.

All book club posts will be in the Community Reviews nexus, which is linked to on the site's sidebar. You'll likely want to click on that link once the posts fall off the main page.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Sunday September 02 2018, @09:00PM (5 children)

    by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 02 2018, @09:00PM (#729638) Journal

    Was trying to decide how to laze the day away anyhow :-)

    Easy read. Somewhere between youth sci-fi and more serious stuff; story elements tend to be caricatures, but once i started it I read it straight through. If you go in expecting Foundation or Dune you'll be disappointed, if you go in with HOs in SPAAAAAaaace! You'll be pleasantly surprised.

    Downloaded from the author's website, but went and bought the kindle edition after to toss a few nickels the author's way.

    --
    В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 04 2018, @03:05AM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 04 2018, @03:05AM (#730097) Journal
    For me, a lot of the book was extraneous. Lamp shading the number of times the narrator used the john, watched ancient movies from our time, or putting out real fires still didn't make those passages go by faster, though I did appreciate McGrew's warning. OTOH, I read it cover to cover. So I managed to survive.

    A lot of the book just seemed to be commentary on the present, such as robot coffee, bureaucracy crossed with engineering, and the profoundly ineffectual way Earth authorities dealt with space pirates. And it was kind of silly how one of the characters kept telling another to "read the book" without hinting why (just show the gory film contained therein and all would be explained). That other character was far from a book worm and predictably kept not reading the book.

    Hate to say it, but it just didn't feel very sci fi, though I liked that it didn't fall into the trap of explaining everything. It did have something of a retro feel to it, and reminded me some of the Asimov or Heinlein young adult stuff dealing with Martian colonization and the like.
    • (Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Saturday September 15 2018, @08:19PM

      by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 15 2018, @08:19PM (#735397) Journal

      Agreed, the "read the book" bit was over the top obvious where it was going. I assumed it was intended to add a bit of suspense.

      The overpowered nature of The Incredible Hos was also beyond my disbelief suspension threshold, 1) I presume that murderous space pirates would have been armed and armored to some extent, even if expecting a minimally crewed vessel. Even if they didn't just vent the ship, there should have been casualties. 2) Why did the hos suddenly have no interest in killing each other?

      Yes it definitely felt young adult in nature.

      It could easily have been set on a ship on the ocean, or secluded research station, but those aspects did work with a Mars trip better I think.

      --
      В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @11:26AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @11:26AM (#730688)

    Easy? You're kidding, right? How did you get through the first 20 pages? It's a real slog.
    I almost gave up after being told the plot twice, once in the first chapter and again immediately after. Seriously? Do we have to tell the reader twice what will happen in the book?
    I am almost tempted to rewrite this without the crap just to see if it makes for a decent story.
    Up to page 32. Forcing myself to read this.

    • (Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Saturday September 15 2018, @07:58PM (1 child)

      by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 15 2018, @07:58PM (#735394) Journal

      "I almost gave up after being told the plot twice, once in the first chapter and again immediately after. Seriously? Do we have to tell the reader twice what will happen in the book?"

        - I avoided spoilers until it was time to talk btw.

      Yes - I was really expecting the "foreshadowing" to cover up some sort of major twist that never really materialized. Part of what was interesting was waiting for the twist :-\

      --
      В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 16 2018, @09:34AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 16 2018, @09:34AM (#735596)

        How do you keep an idiot in suspense?