Colonization: Second Contact

Harry Turtledove 

Book 1 of the Colonization Series

This is an alternate history / sci fi book. Set in the 1960's, we find an earth that followed history as we know it until the middle of World War II. This war was interrupted by the invasion of an alien species. In the current telling, the second wave of the alien invasion is beginning with the arrival of the colonization fleet which includes about 100 million settlers. The political scene includes the world powers of the U.S., USSR and Nazi Germany. Japan and England are secondary powers. China is rising and the alien race controls the entire southern hemisphere. The number of characters and concurrent storylines in this book are more than the average book, but this allows for telling a broad story and develops intrigue for how all the lines will connect. Here are the major characters:

• U.S. Rocket pilot
• German rocket pilot
• Polish Jewish resistance leader
• Russian Jewish intelligence
• Palestinian Jewish doctor
• USSR General Secretary (Stalin's successor)
• U.S. Alien liason expert
• Chinese communist leader
• U.S. Drug smuggler
• French drug smuggler
• English Jewish radar technician
• Alien Fleetlord
• Alien Shiplord (defected)
• Alien human liason expert
• Human girl raised as alien from birth

As we jump from story to story, we get a picture of a strange and complex world. The fact that the aliens are primarily different from humans in terms of the length of their civilized history (>100,000 years vs. <10,000 years) provides an opportunity to think about how decisions in human history have been made and how they often have unintended consequences. I love alternate history and this is a fascinating approach. Looking forward to Book 2 (Colonization: Down to Earth)

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I am Number Four

Pittacus Lore

Book 1 of the Lorien Legacies series

I first learned of this series by watching the film by the same name (which I liked by the way). It didn't get great reviews and didn't make any money, so we probably won't see the sequels. As always, the book allows us to go deeper and get more detail. The story places 9 young aliens on earth along with their 9 mentors. These 18 are refugees from the planet Lorian, which was conquered and destroyed by aliens from the planet Mogadore. Upon leaving Lorian, the 9 Guarde were protected with a spell that only allowed them to be killed in order. The book opens with Number 3 being found and killed by the Mogadorians and we follow Number 4 for the remainder of the story. We get a little bit of a love interest, we get so wacky alien, conspiracy nuts, and generic teen/high school drama. The emphasis here is to set up the story of these 9 young aliens as living in secret until their powers develop (as some sort of alien puberty). Once the Legacies develop, the guarde can join together to defeat the Modadorians and begin repopulation of Lorian. As a book that stands on its own, only moderately good. As the first book for a series, the series has promise. Will let you know with future installments.

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Next up: The Power of Six (Book 2 of the Lorien Legacies series)

The Blue Zone

Andrew Gross

Witness protection and the Colombian drug cartel. What Gross does well here is develops a story with family connections that continue to unfold throughout the book. Revelations are not particularly groundshaking or shocking, but are pleasing twists that cause the reader to reinterpret the last 100 pages in light of their new information. This is fun... for an airplane book.

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Chasing Fire

Nora Roberts

I guess I need a category for "Airplane book". We get the inside story on a smoke jumping unit out of Montana for a summer season. So it is fascinating to learn a bit about how that process works. Of course, we also get love, murder, sabotage and more love. Interesting, and a quick read. Not prize winning.

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The Mission Song: A Novel

John le Carre

It has been some time since I have read a book in the first person, so it took a bit of getting used to. For some reason I had a hard time taking this seriously since it read as a diary/journal. Or at least that is how I was reading it. The protagonist is Bruno Salvador, an English citizen whose mother was Congolese. Having been raised for part of his life in Africa, his identity is just as mixed as his genes. Bruno is a contract interpreter for the British government, using his talents to help with decoding the many dialects and local varieties of language from sub-Saharan Africa. When he gets a special assignment to interpret some high level, secret meetings, Bruno jumps at the chance. What he finds is that he is attending negotiations that will affect the future of his native Congo. What he realizes is that the neutrality required by his profession is not necessarily something that his personal ethics allow. Of course this leads to trouble and angst. An interesting look at what is probably the reality of how nation affecting negotiations happen and how corporations and money are the essential driving force. Otherwise, not really a great book.

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Artifact

Gregory Benford

This is exactly what I was hoping Solar would be. A political thriller with a strong sci-fi base. Benford provided two strong protagonists, archeologist Claire (junior professor out of BU and expert on ancient Greece) and mathematical physicst John (post-doc at MIT). Claire discovers a strange cube at her dig in Greece and brings in John to help with metallurgical analysis. By time they realize that this is a strange artifact in many ways, they get thrown out of the country due to Grecian political instability. But neither can let this go and they continue to pursue the strangeness. What I like is that the science the is used to explain much of the strangeness is itself quite strange (as most quantum mechanics is) and yet Benford provides a very good laymens description so that the story does not get bogged down in science. And yet gives enough to make everything probable and engaging. Basically a lot of fun, and if books are supposed to be entertainment, this one gets high marks.

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Animal Farm

George Orwell

Another in the series of books that everyone else read in High School. A group of farm animals on an English farm (the Manor Farm) initiate a coup, kicking out the human owner and running the farm themselves as a collective. Over time, heirarchies develop and memories are adjusted in this new animal society that has been created. Very clever, very biting comentary on the development and existence of the Stalin (Napolean) regime. Insightful (although not pleasant) perspective on how malleable a population of people can be. This is short enough that I think it would be fun to write the same premise, with the revolution being based on the Solidarity movement in Poland, or anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, or the Arab Spring. What insightful commentary would envisioning each of these revolutions as an action of animals setting up their society for themselves for the first time offer us.

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