Ruabon (SF) - Karl Drinkwater ****

Karl Drinkwater has been busy adding novellas to his Lost Solace series to fill in different aspects of the story. This contribution works well - it has all the elements that make it a useful addition. Firstly, it ties strongly into the main series novels in a very clever way. Secondly, it's pretty well all action. There can be a danger with backstory-type novellas that they meander rather than carry a narrative thrust, but that's not the case here. And finally, there's a strong thread of AI, which is so central to the Lost Solace series.

The central character here, Ruabon, is a cadet in a system relatively recently absorbed into the overarching society that features in this series. In a classic SF move (see, for example, the recent novel Artifact Space, where a midshipman briefly has to take charge of a massive starship), the cadet ends up calling the shots when things get really difficult.

There are some clever twists in Ruabon which would be too much of a spoiler to give away, making it an engaging experience. Although technically these novellas work as standalone stories, it would be very sensible to read at least one of the main novels before getting onto this piece of writing.

I'll be honest, I wasn't thrilled with the ending, which seemed a little rushed - but it was still an excellent addition to Drinkwater's well-paced world building.

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Luna: Moon Rising (SF) - Ian McDonald ****

I'm not the natural audience for this book. Game of Thrones l eaves me cold - and it's hard not to feel the influence of GoT (and a whole lot of Dune ) underneath a veneer of science fiction and the trappings of a South American drug cartel in the cod-medieval family power battles and chivalric details. There are even dragons (of a sort). I'd be really sad if the future did involve this sort of throwback feudalism. However, remarkably, despite this I found Luna: Moon Rising kept me engaged. The fact is that Ian McDonald can put together a good plot with intricate machinations, which is enough to carry the reader through what can be a bewildering collection of characters. The two page scene-setter saying who did what to whom at the start was useful, but I could have done with family trees for the main family as I was constantly forgetting who was who - especially easy as McDonald endows many families with characters with the same first initial (e.g. Ariel and Al...

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here. We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...

Search This Blog