UBIK

Philip K Dick

Sometimes sci-fi writing provides insight to a particular social issue or gives a futurist glimpse into how our world could possibly develop. Other times it takes a scientific phenomena and just writes a story, without agenda. This book is the latter. We start out learning about a world where some people have special talents (seeing the future, changing probabilities, etc.) and others have the ability to interrupt these talents. So of course, we are introduced to two different talent agencies, one offering these talents for hire, and the other offering 'talent shielding'. In typical PKD fashion, things aren't always what they seem and trying to figure out what really is going on is half the fun. And we are treated to a little bit of a vision of this future world where everything in monetized, including your front door and morning coffee machine (no cash, your door won't open to let you out). I am a bit surprised that this hasn't been made into a film, as it seems like it could be lots of fun.
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Getting To Know You

David Marusek

This guy is a genius. Loved his Counting Heads novel and this current selection of short stories includes several that were the basis for that novel. So we are seeing integrated nano-tech, corporate clones and ubiquitous surveillance. We also get a couple of soft scifi stories, of which my favorite is Yurek Rutz. In particular, I appreciated in the authors introduction the acknowledgement that it is difficult to both write short form as well as to read it (you must get the entire world defined within a couple pages) and his brief background about when and why he wrote each story.
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J

Howard Jacobson

I usually enjoy novels that have won a prize. This was a Man Booker finalist, so I had hopes. While the details are never spelled out, it is essentially the story of life in a rural European town some years after World War II. The result of the war is unclear, but the effect is the suppression of Jews and Jewishness along with the Balkanization of all ethnic groups. So every little small town is an isolationist, homogenous group. Add to this mix a Jewish protagonist, and a mysterious Jewish underground working to insure the continuation of the Jewish line without upsetting the repressive/precarious balance of the status quo.  I can see how this is potentially interesting, but I was not engaged by the writing. The story was too cliche and did not provide any new insight to a post war mentality in Europe. I expect that by creating this alternate history fictional word, Jacobson will be presenting me with an intellectually stimulating point of view or new way of thinking about the specific Jewish trauma in the post war environment or the general cultural/sociological trends that lead to isolation and eventually genocide for any minority. I got neither.
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A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle

Nice short fantasy tale. Kids Charles Wallace and Meg are pulled into a universal battle of good v. evil. They get to travel (with the help of some mysterious beings) to other planets, battle great minds telepathically, meet flying centaurs, and have a generally non-childlike adventure. This reads very much like C.S. Lewis Narnia series as an explicit Christian morality tale and is not subtle with its message. But it is easy to read and fun and I remember why I liked it as a kid.
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Time Warped

Claudia Hammond

A non-fiction look at the neuro, psycho, and socio-logical underpinnings for time perception. I will admit that I only read about the first third, was moderately interested and never picked it up again. Not engaging in that it struck me as not particularly ground breaking. Note that this is based only on a first-third reading, so...
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Decoded

Mai Jia

Rong is a young boy with autism and a proclivity for math. His mentor pushes him to challenge himself in problem solving and patterns and the regularity of the problems becomes a comfortable/safe place to retreat. When he is recruited into a special military unit charged with codes and code breaking, Rong is finally at home. But when he finds himself entering into an addictive battle to break some unbreakable codes and simultaneously maintain his humanity, finding balance is not easy. It seems Jia's aim is to open a new window into a life as an autistic man. Unfortunately, the actual novel is not as engaging as this treatment sounds like it could be. I have not read enough translated works to be familiar with the feel of a translation, but my "feel" on this one is that something is lost in the translation.
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Geek Love

Katherine Dunn

A family of carnival sideshow freaks is the center of this novel. The father is apparently an amateur experimental geneticist who used radiation, chemicals and any other mutagen he could think of on each of his children when they were in utero to create the next big sideshow sensation. I am not sure if the voyeuristic nature of looking in on the family was supposed to be appealing or if trying to see the humanity in the "freaks" was the point. I was not particularly interested in the former and the later was not compelling storytelling.
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