"Animal Farm" is the best by far of all twentieth-century political allegories. Its account of a group of barnyard animals who revolt against their vicious human master, only to submit to a tyranny established by their own kind, can fairly be said to have become a universal drama. Orwell is one of the very few modern satirists comparable to Jonathan Swift in power, artistry, and moral authority; in animal farm his prose and the logic of his dark comedy brilliantly highlight his stark message. Taking as his starting point the betrayed promise of the Russian Revolution, Orwell lays out a vision that, in its bitter wisdom, gives us the clearest understanding we possess of the possible consequences of our social and political acts.

I have read this book at least four times and am still amused and enthralled by its content. My favorite line is: "All animals are equal, but pigs are more equal."

This was a 2 hour quick read and I can say that it was 2 hours well enjoyed. Everything is a metephor for politics and it was by far one of the best books I've read. A story that couldn't have made things more clearer then it did.

A scary (fictional) portrait of the future. One of my favorites when I was in middle school because of the ending.

I love books about the future that make you think, not fantasy but a forseeable reality. The Giver is a wonderful title, easy to read but no easy to forget. All of Lois Lowry's stuff is awesome.

Powerful the first, second, third, fourty five millionth time it's read. i always know what's coming, but am never failed to be floored by it.

This book would make a good discussion book. Set in the future, children are selected for their careers early in life. A secret the adults keep from the children is finally discovered by the one child and changes their view of the seemingly smooth existence of their community.

Everyone should read this book. It's such a quick, fun read, but includes SO much social commentary and really makes you think. Absolutely love it.

The Giver by Lois Lowry a children’s SF for 8-12 year olds written in 1993 is part of a loose set trilogy set in the same imagined world but not necessarily with the same characters. It deals with a world where your life is one of conformity and happiness. The short novel honestly faces why a society such as this would arise with its benefits and essential failure explored. The core of that failure is that…grief is the price you pay for love. Without sadness, can love and laughter really exist?

We discover a community of unlimited happiness and good manners set in a green and pleasant paradise of high but largely hidden technology. In this world, only 50 children per community are born from genetically approved placements in birth mothers. Regulations define your clothes, toys and your role in society from your first year. From eight you have to volunteer for a range of community duties so that your life long occupation from twelve can start. We join Jonas as the ceremony for 12’s is near for the allotment of his calling. Much to his and the communities shock he is not allotted a job but is selected to be the Receiver. In learning what this is, he discovers the hidden pain and dark side of unlimited happiness. This sets off a chain of events as Jonas discovers what being released really means. He faces what growing up means, and consequences whose meaning you have to decide.

The book has over 3000 ratings on Amazon.com alone so we are talking popular and critical success (it won the Newbury Medal- the USA children’s literature award). Even so, it is banned in several USA State’s School and Library systems because of the dark emotional issues dealt with. Surprisingly doesn’t to have attracted the same attention in the UK. If you or your children have not read it then you have missed a classic. But if you have read it then you know why it’s enjoyable and highly recommended!

This used to be my favorite book of all time. It is such an easy read but contains so many different meanings and codes that you don't fully appreciate or understand until you are older. This is another timeless classic by Lowrey that will forever be on school summer reading lists. The innovative storyline really requires the reader to think past the novelty of a colorful vibrant world and try to picture a futuristic society where freedom and independence, the same values that this country has prided itself on for hundreds of years, are completely thrown out the window. We can only wonder if Lowrey's representation of the future is an accurate description, or just a dream she may have had one night.

I really wasn't sure about the premise of this book. Some guy "predicts" the future, and makes a ton of money telling people what the next big thing is. When he denounces his job, everyone loves him all the more.
This book made me think of Absurdistan, or Boomsday, or any one of a number of books that are about spin and the absurdity of how society works.
This book was pretty cutting about the spin the government needs and what it's wiling to do to get it. It's absurd and predictable, but entertaining and I like the jabs at American culture. A bit too much whining.

My favorite dystopia. The personal perspective

Very interesting look at the future. Though for the most part the future pictured here is somber, there does seem to be a little hope, too.

BLURB
Brave New World is the story of a world that has come to be after the "nine years war." In this world, individuality is no longer welcomed. Humans are no longer born in the traditional sense of the world. They are grown. Mankind has been reduced down to genetic manipulation and is created on an assembly line.

Mankind comes in various ranks. There are the best of the best, golden and chiseled, and there are the worst of the worst, the fetuses who are injected with alcohol while they are growing. Whether the best or the worst, each person serves a very specific function to the new society. God has become nothing but a myth that society mocks and laugh at. God has, in fact, become replaced with the term "Ford".

What a terrifying glimpse into the future...more frigtening by the fact that when compared to its contemporaries: it's positiviely optimistic in outlook. What a bleak and yet staggaringly realistic glimpse into a world of plastic surgury and reccreational drugs. Fascinating, and more relevant now than when it was written!

This is a fascinating and odd book. The unnamed narrator is a disillusioned modern writer who answers a personal ad ("Teacher seeks pupil. . . . Apply in person.") and thereby meets a wise, learned gorilla named Ishmael that can communicate telepathically. The author never really explains why this can happen. The bulk of the book consists entirely of philosophical dialogues between gorilla and man. Through Ishmael, Quinn offers a wide-ranging if highly general examination of the history of our civilization, illuminating the assumptions and philosophies at the heart of many global problems. Despite some gross oversimplifications, Quinn's ideas are fairly convincing; it's hard not to agree that unrestrained population growth and an obsession with conquest and control of the environment are among the key issues of our times. Quinn also traces these problems back to the agricultural revolution and offers a provocative rereading of the biblical stories of Genesis. Though hardly any plot to speak of lies behind this long dialogue, and solutions are never addressed, Quinn's smooth style and his intriguing proposals should hold the attention of readers interested in the daunting dilemmas that beset our planet.

Read for summer 2007 class. A bit too "over the top" evolutionary-psycho babble. Still, it made me think and for that I enjoyed it.

Talking genius gorilla trys to save humanity by teaching a man about mankind's downfall.

I'm finding that I'm gravitating toward certain authors consistently in my reading based upon my personal opinion of their particular strengths. For alternate history with a subtle sense of humor and a broad cast of realistic characters, Harry Turtledove is my favorite with Eric Flint a close second. For straight -on action and adventure combined with highly detailed research, S. M. Stirling is tops. For old-fashioned space opera, David Weber's Honor Harrington series wins out. And for hardcore, realistic science fiction, I enjoy Ben Bova.

Bova is a genuine futurist; those who are familiar with his work with the old Omni magazine will know him as someone with a sharp, perceptive eye into the future. All of his future predictions are based upon extrapolation from current trends. And it's not just technology--the whole social landscape, from politics to corporate governance to religion, gets treated with the same insight. Bova amongst modern writers is as close to the Dean himself, Robert Heinlein, as anyone I've found--but better in that his characters are more realistic. They're competent but they aren't supermen. They can be hurt. And that's the thrust of this story.

Mance Bracknell is a promising young engineer who's just completed his dream project: a space elevator designed to reduce the cost of getting to orbit down to pennies per kilogram. He's also just proposed to his fiancee and is riding high in general. But his dreams--and his life--come apart at the seams when the project is sabotaged, resulting in millions of deaths. His closest friend (and romantic rival) takes the the opportunity to steal his fiancee, and his spiritual advisor is operating under another agenda entirely. Behind all of these is a larger plot, involving a major corporation that will stop at nothing to ensure its competitive edge. Bracknell is framed and exiled, and after happening into a huge fortune plots a grand scheme for revenge that will not only undo those who've hurt him but burn a hole into his own soul in the end.

Got all that? High school kids take note - this is the basic book report for The Count of Monte Cristo, transposed into Bova's setting and characters.

That right there is my biggest disappointment. An author of Bova's stature doesn't need to lift from anything else, let alone one of the greatest and most recognizeable pieces of historical fiction ever written. Even if you've never read Alexandre Dumas' novel, there are a number of movie versions that have been released over the years, as recently as six years ago. I will give Bova credit, however, for an original ending: in the end, Bracknell is able to forgive one of his targets (even attempting to reverse the effects of his revenge) and helps another find his way to redemption. As in Monte Cristo, the third target commits suicide but all evidence suggests that he probably wasn't much of a loss anyway.

But in the end the plot takes away from the setting itself: Bova's fascinating late 21st/early 22nd century Solar System where the rival Masterson and Yamagata Corporations at once partner and contend for control of resources and people from Mercury to Saturn, and where wars are fought in the Asteroid Belt. Nanotechnology reigns supreme and creates engineering and medical miracles everywhere but on Earth, where the Luddite New Morality tries to suppress any form of knowledge or technology that appears to oppose its particular form of religious bigotry. And life is found everywhere--silicon snakes with sulfur blood on Venus; not only microbes but ruins of temples and villages on Mars; and serpents swimming in the seas of Jupiter that may be as intelligent as humans. Even the rings of Saturn themselves are alive. This is the Future History that Robert Heinlein would have built if he'd been born 25 years later (as Bova was).


Mercury is the title of the book but not really a huge part of it: most of the action takes place on Earth, the Moon (known as Selene after the name taken by its independent government) and the Asteroid Belt. Mercury itself is the site where revenge is executed, the site where the Yamagata Corporation is building solar power satellites ostensibly to supply cheap power to Earth but in reality to build a laser-powered solar sail for a voyage to Alpha Centauri. More focus on that, and less on the revenge plot, would have been an awesome story!

Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed the character study. Bova took Dumas' idea and gave it an interesting twist. But I would have enjoyed a book twice as long that explored more of Mercury itself (as do Bova's other planet-titled books). Mercury is the least explored of the major planets (the Mariner 10 mission in 1975 was only able to map a third of the planet and the MESSENGER mission is currently en route) which probably limits the amout of data he could have used, but an author of Ben Bova's stature and insight could have made some credible inferences. Contrast Monte Cristo, where the culture, politics and intrigue of Napoleonic France were a central part of the book. It is a novel about France as much as it is about revenge. I really didn't mind the revenge story but I was really looking forward to a story about Mercury as well--even if the specifics may well need to be revised in about eight years.


This was a pretty good book, but based upon the author's ability and his previous track record with this series, I expected much more.

This was not an easy book to read. In fact, structurally it may be the most difficult book I've attempted to review here. Dan Simmons, notable for his Hyperion Cantos (and specifically Hyperion, winner of the 1990 Hugo Award) is known for long, complex sagas involving themes drawn from disparate sources throughout literature. His best stories take more than one book to complete, and Ilium is no exception: I plan to read the sequel/conclusion, Olympos, as soon as I get some other reading I need to do out of the way.

Basically, if you want it, you've got it in Ilium: in addition to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (for that matter, the whole of classical Greek drama and literature) you've also got William Shakespeare (specifically The Tempest and the sonnets), Marcel Proust, Edgar Rice Burroughs (via John Carter of Mars), H. G. Wells (via The Time Machine, First Men In The Moon and possibly The Island of Dr. Moreau), Buck Rogers, some Jewish tradition, and a touch of H.P. Lovecraft for good measure. Simmons in his introduction describes the book as being similar to his childhood experience of mixing and matching toy soldiers from different eras to create elaborate battles. He does exactly this, figuratively and literally, in Ilium.

The story is set in the 40th century, when 'old-style' humans have become decadent and lost all contact with human culture and history under the influence of modified 'post-humans' who've set themselves up as reimaginings of the ancient Greek gods. Appropriately, they live on Mt. Olympos--Olympos Mons, a volcano the size of France on Mars, the highest peak in the solar system. The post-humans have not only set up shop on Olympos but also terraformed Mars. Either on Mars itself, or traveling through time to Earth, the post-humans busy themselves observing the Trojan War in 1200 BC (or a recreation thereof). To aid them they've resurrected classical scholars from throughout history. One such scholar, Thomas Hockenberry, lived during our time and becomes embroiled in a plot by Aphrodite to assassinate Athena. He does find time to get lucky with Helen of Troy along the way, so at least he's got some fringe benefits to his job.

Meanwhile, a group of moravecs--sentient robots--working on the moons of Jupiter discover that the post-humans' activities threaten the fabric of spacetime itself, and seek to locate and destroy the source of the activity in order to safeguard life throughout the solar system. In their spare time, the moravecs study what they term 'Lost Age' culture: the whole of human history, art, and literature up to at least the 26th century when a not-completely-specified disaster overcame humanity and set the stage for the setting we see now.

A group of old-style humans becomes involved via the services of Savi, a woman who's lived for 1400 years and is the sole source of any meaningful knowledge of human culture. Initially out of curiosity, and then after Savi's urging, the old-style humans (including the only man left on Earth who can read) start to seek out the truth behind the culture the post-humans have imposed upon them.

But wait...there's more! Along with the Greeks and Trojans, bio-engineered Greek gods, resurrected historians, androids, Eloi, Morlocks, and the Wandering Jew are Little Green Men (who are called as such in the book), Native Americans, anime-style combat mecha, Lovecraftian Elder Beings, and lots and lots of references to Proust and Shakespeare. Oh, and did I mention the dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts that have been reintroduced to Earth's ecosystem?

For those not well-versed in literature, the first three-quarters of this book could get intimidating. I'm very familiar with the Greek classics, somewhat familiar with Shakespeare (The Tempest is not one of the plays I've had any contact with) and not familiar at all with Proust (whom I actively avoided thanks to a literature instructor whose moods were as black as her clothes--although Simmons may have redeemed Proust for me here). I found it a challenge to wade through the references and some of the deeper literary discussion that fuels most of the first half of the book, so a reader whose familiarity isn't as great may have more difficulty. These sections do have bearing on the larger story, so they shouldn't be neglected by the reader. Just have patience and all the cool stuff with androids and nuclear weapons will show up in due course.

The moravecs are easily the most relateable of the characters, showing more depth of emotion and humanity than most of the human characters (with the possible exception of the Greeks and Trojans, who are played pretty much as they were depicted by Homer). Orphu and Mahnmut argue, bicker, have raging disagreements, and are together for each other through all circumstances. They as far as I'm concerned are the true heroes of the story. They're the ones who recognize the threat and take action, sacrificing everything in order to safeguard others. Hockenberry gets annoying and takes actions (e.g., his trysts with Helen) that actually jeopardize both his stated and unstated missions out of pure selfishness. The old-style humans are thoroughly irritating in their ignorance and childishness, although at least two of them manage to show greater initiative and awareness toward the end. It says a lot that, at the end of history, the one man who can change these children in adult bodies into true men and women turns out to be one of the greatest heroes from history's beginning.

Simmons as I said before is incapable of finishing a story in one volume. He takes 570 pages just to set up the conflict he really wants to show (and which he apparently shows in Olympos). I'd read both of these together if you're up to the challenge. It's worth the patience, but patience it will demand.

It is a time in the future in which 76% of Americans have implants in their brains called “feeds.” These feeds are much like the internet—they provide virtually instant access to information, entertainment, and communication. Those without access to the feed are severely handicapped in society. A man who protests the feed damages the feeds of Titus and his friends. This damage causes Titus to consider the consequences of feeds for the first time. His girlfriend Violet is unable to recover from the damage.
I loved this book—it started out funny (the opening line: “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.”) and progressed to genuine poignancy (an advertisement translated into a death knell “Everything must go.”). I had some difficulty with the language at first, it is breezy and conversational—a style I often find exasperating—but even this was an effective device showing that the shorthand of the feed (read internet) causes a breakdown in complex communication.

I picked this one up because it's a classic and I'd never read it. It started off a bit slow, and I had trouble getting into it, but once it got going it was pretty good. It nicely sidestepped all of the paradox problems of time travel (running into yourself, etc) by just not encountering them. Light and fun.

BLURB
When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year 802,701 AD, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment and peace.

Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realises that this beautiful people are simply remnants of a once-great culture now weak and childishly afraid of the dark.

They have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race descended from humanity the sinister Morlocks. And when the scientist's time machine vanishes, it becomes clear he must search these tunnels, if he is ever to return to his own era.

Once I decided that I liked Scifi as a genra, I sat down and began with the classics. This book was one of my favourites - the whole lonely idea of time travel is forever romantised in my mind...

Hard to get into.