"Grown Men (HardCell #1)" by Damon Suede, 2011

"Grown Men (HardCell #1)" by Damon Suede, 2011

Unexpectedly good right from the start-- builds in intensity, and leaves with a satisfying ending.

This book came to me through the Los Angeles Public Library book recommendation engine; which I generally ignore. However, the book cover piqued my interest and after noticing the length of the book, I decided to give it a try; being that it is science fiction and all.

The premise of space pioneering and terraforming driven by corporate profit isn't a new concept in science fiction, which the author did a splendid job employing with his fictional HardCell Corporation. The predicament that allowed the relationship to grow Ox and Runt and the twists in circumstance were, for me, surprisingly original, if not deliciously bent and twisted.

Runt (Runnan) is colonist terraforming a planetoid owned by HardCell Corporation. His clone-wife died upon entering the atmosphere, leaving him alone to do the work of two people and falling severely behind schedule.  After two (2) lonely years, Hardcell Corporation sent him a big strong, but mute, muscular male companion to assist with the required work and put his farm back on track.

Ox, Runt's new male companion is genetically engineered to be strong, muscular, and give-off pheromones that him desirable to all sexes. With Runt completely alone for two years without a wife to tend to his "male" needs, resisting Ox's male wiles takes all of Runt's efforts and creativeness, but eventually succumbing in the end.

I think if you enjoy science fiction with a little romance tinged with a light mystery with hyper-masculine dom/sub homo-erotic grown men doing NSFW stuff, then read this book. It's short enough to get through an afternoon or, if you prefer, evening.

Here is a list of places/sites where you can read the book for free.


My Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5 stars) - I really liked it.




Description as found on Goodreads.com:

Every future has dirty roots.

Author: Damon Suede

Marooned in the galactic backwaters of the HardCell company, colonist Runt struggles to eke out an existence on a newly-terraformed tropical planetoid. Since his clone-wife died on entry, he’s been doing the work of two on his failing protein farm. Overworked and undersized, Runt’s dwindling hope of earning corporate citizenship has turned to fear of violent “retirement.”

When an overdue crate of provisions crashes on his beach, Runt searches frantically for a replacement wife among the tools and food. Instead he gets Ox, a mute hulk who seems more like a corporate assassin than a simple offworld farmer.

Shackwacky and near-starving, Runt has no choice but to work with his silent partner despite his mounting paranoia and the unsettling appeal of Ox’s genetically altered pheromones. Ox plays the part of the gentle giant well, but Runt’s still not convinced he hasn’t arrived with murder in mind.
Between brutal desire and the seeds of a relationship, Runt’s fears and Ox’s inhuman past collide on a fertile world where hope and love just might have room to grow. 

"Starters (Starters #1)" by Lissa Price, 2012

"Starters (Starters #1)" by Lissa Price, 2012

Fast-paced, near-futuristic, and inventive with twists-- "Starters" is a good mystery story that unfolds in a science-fiction dystopic society.

In a future not far off, everyone between the age of twenty (20) and sixty (60) is wiped out during the Spore War. Through the establishment Prime Destinations, seniors above sixty (60), also known as Enders, can rent the bodies of Starters, anyone under the age of twenty (20). Through this service, the renter can live their lives in younger bodies, experiencing life anew, for an agreed period of time.

Our heroine Callie Woodland is smart, caring, and an unclaimed minor who lives like a fugitive. To make money to care for her younger brother, she agrees to rent her body out to an Ender through Prime Destinations and quickly finds herself in the midst of a body snatching mystery and a murder conspiracy.

Though this novel is classified as Young Adult (YA), I found it quite enjoyable. Others have compared this book to "Hunger Games" and "Divergent" series".  I, however, think it's original, with a clever premise, and a fun mystery-adventure ride.


My Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5 stars) - I really liked it.

"Armada" by Ernest Cline, 2015

"Armada" by Ernest Cline, 2015

Dull, predictable, and imitative-- I couldn't wait long enough to turn the page. Not because I was at the edge of my seat with action and thrills, but because I just wanted it over.

Zack, our hero, is a high school student who is one of the best players in the world at space shoot-em-up game called Armada. A spaceship lands on the school lawn and enlists Zack to fight aliens.

The twists are trite and predictable; the action sequences were pedantic at parts, and parts of the ending well, corny.

The author's "secret sauce", according to the interview he gave with the Verge, is "pop-culture" references.  Though the book's the plot resembles the plot of the movie "The Last Starfighter" or the book "Ender's Game", it's all the references to our pop-culture that sets it apart.


★★☆☆☆ (2 out of 5 stars) - It was ok.

Book description as found on goodreads.com:

Zack Lightman has spent his life dreaming. Dreaming that the real world could be a little more like the countless science-fiction books, movies, and videogames he’s spent his life consuming. Dreaming that one day, some fantastic, world-altering event will shatter the monotony of his humdrum existence and whisk him off on some grand space-faring adventure.

But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little escapism, right? After all, Zack tells himself, he knows the difference between fantasy and reality. He knows that here in the real world, aimless teenage gamers with anger issues don’t get chosen to save the universe.

And then he sees the flying saucer.

Even stranger, the alien ship he’s staring at is straight out of the videogame he plays every night, a hugely popular online flight simulator called Armada—in which gamers just happen to be protecting the earth from alien invaders.

No, Zack hasn’t lost his mind. As impossible as it seems, what he’s seeing is all too real. And his skills—as well as those of millions of gamers across the world—are going to be needed to save the earth from what’s about to befall it.

It’s Zack’s chance, at last, to play the hero. But even through the terror and exhilaration, he can’t help thinking back to all those science-fiction stories he grew up with, and wondering: Doesn’t something about this scenario seem a little…familiar?

"The Status Civilization" by Robert Sheckley, 1960

"The Status Civilization" by Robert Sheckley, 1960

Robert Sheckley deftly manipulates — in a mere (but dense) 127 pages — a plot straight from the pulps involving prison planets and gladiatorial fights against terrifying robots into a scathing and artfully constructed work of satire.

Due to the almost novella length of The Status Civilization do not expect any unnecessary declamations on technology or the nature of the world or government or endless interior character monologues for Sheckley clearly prefers — and revels in — the shorter form.

Told with energy and wit The Status Civilization (1960) is a fast and enjoyable read.  Highly recommended for all fans of 50s/early 60s science fiction dystopia (you get two dystopic worlds in this novel)  — especially of the satirical bent.

You may read this book free now online via ProjectGutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20919

My Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5 stars) - I really liked it.


Book Description found on book jacket:

Will Barrent had no memory of his crime . . . but he found himself shipped across space to a brutal prison-planet. On Omega, his only chance to advance himself -- and stay alive -- is to commit an endless series of violent crimes. The average inmate's life expectancy from time of arrival is three years. Can Barrett survive, escape, and return to Earth to clear his name?

Plot Summary as found on wikipedia.org:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Status_Civilization

Fear the Sky (Fear Saga #1), by Stephen Moss, 2014

Fear the Sky (Fear Saga #1), by Stephen Moss, 2014

Riveting, gripping and just absolutely brilliant!

Easily classifiable as an action and thriller story, this book is definitely hard science fiction at heart. And what a fantastic job the author does and hitting all the genre points.

The story starts with a slowness that is crafted to lull you into a false sense security and hints at a larger impending doom looming in the sky and the invasion headed to Earth. Although there are quite a bit of members, the cast of characters is slowly introduced;  along with their brief backstory that helps make them memorable when they appear later in the book.

The book is a bit long and could have easily been two separate novels. The first half of the book spends a lot of time building a cat-and-mouse spy-style thriller and ending it with awesome fight sequences and close quarter hand-to-hand combats.

The second half of the book seems to have a shift of characters and a new focus. While the storyline is not quite as tight as the first half of the book, it does fit congruously to the overall story arc of the book as ties off some of the loose ends.

My favorite characters:

Lana Wilson (female alien robot, total-bitch princess from alien world)
Ayala (female Mossad intelligence/counter-intelligence agent)
Shaheem (male alien robot, turns into a double agent)
John Hunt (male alien robot, double agent)
Neal (human scientist)
Lori West (human scientist)

I would have rated the book five (5) stars, but I feel some portions of the second half of the book falters a bit.

My Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.5 out of 5 stars) - I really really liked it.



Book Description by Author:

In eleven years time, a million members of an alien race will arrive at Earth. Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships’ huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space.

These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out.

Their technology is vastly superior to ours, and they know they cannot possibly lose the coming conflict. But they, like us, have found no answer to the destructive force of the atom, and they have no intention of facing the onslaught of our primitive nuclear arsenal, or the devastation it would wreak on the planet they crave.

So they have flung out an advanced party in front of them, hidden within one of the countless asteroids randomly roaming the void.

They do not want us, they want our planet. Their Agents are arriving.

"We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1923

"We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1923

"And I hope we win. More than that; I am certain we shall
win. For Reason must prevail."

It's been a couple of years since hearing of this book's existence and I finally managed to get a copy online in PDF format. Here is the link: https://ilfyn.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/yevgeny-zamyatin-we.pdf

We was written about 1923 and is a science-fiction fantasy dealing with the 26th century A.D. The book was originally refused publication in Russia for the grounds that it was ideologically undesirable or incompatible with Russia's political landscape at the time. Eventually, a manuscript of the book made it out of Russia and translated versions began to appear in various languages.

One of the first noticeable things about this book is that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World must have been influenced by this book; both books deal with the rebellion of the primitive human spirit against a rationalized, mechanized, painless world, etc.

The other noticeable item about this book it shares the same plot of George Orwell's novel 1984. It should be no surprise being that Orwell review We for Tribune in 1946; three years before he published Nineteen Eighty-Four. In his review, he called Zamyatin's book an influence on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, though Huxley always denied anything of the sort. "It is in effect a study of the Machine," Orwell wrote of We, "the genie that man has thoughtlessly let out of its bottle and cannot put back again. This is a book to look out for when an English version appears." He seems to have taken his own advice.

This was tough book to get into.  The book was not written with expert control in an accessible style about a world recognizably our own so I found myself going over some sections several times over for fear of missing something.

Perhaps We deserves more recognition than it has had given the idea that it is the granddaddy of all science-fiction dystopian novels.



★★☆☆☆ (2 out of 5 stars) - It was ok.



_________________
The summary as found on
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/We

We takes place in the far-future One State, a totalitarian society one thousand years after a cataclysm which killed the majority of the world's population. It is told from the point of view of D-503, an engineer and mathematician. Through his journal, initially undertaken in response to the State order to create writings glorifying their society, we learn about the totalitarian One State and the secret rebellion plotting to take it down.

Kustodiev_Zamyatin

As the Builder of the Integral, the massive spaceship intended to conquer and subjugate alien societies under the totalitarian and mathematically perfect rule of the One State, D-503 is an esteemed member of the One State. He is initially completely subsumed in the ideology of the One State, and thrills in the uniformity and emotionless repetition of the life in the Metropolis. His only regret is that his hairy, atavistic arms remind him of humanity's more primitive roots. In the One State, such physical characteristics appear to be one of the few remaining ties to the life of the people who lived before the One State, the "Ancients." The One State's citizens are shielded from nature inside the Green Wall and privacy - except for during State-sanctioned "sex visits" - is a thing of the past. D-503's regular companions include his lover O-90, who laments being too short to be allowed children, and his friend R-13, a State poet and also O-90's lover.

D-503's blissfully regulated world is shaken when he meets I-330, a femme fatale whom he finds simultaneously repulsive and irresistible. I-330's influence over D-503's life increases as she takes him to the Ancient House, gradually reveals her use of illicit substances such as alcohol and tobacco, and tells D-503 that she can have a corrupt doctor excuse him from work. D-503 is horrified, but finds himself incapable of turning I-330 over to the authorities.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

D-503 becomes increasingly smitten and begins to have dreams at night, a crime in the One State. Upon visiting a doctor, he is told that his affliction is that he has developed a "soul." I-330 ultimately reveals the existence of human beings living beyond the Green Wall and of the MEPHI, an underground resistance movement whose aim is to destroy the Green Wall and the totalitarian One State government. D-503 increasingly questions the mathematical perfection and soullessness of the One State. After he fulfills O-90's request for an illegal pregnancy, he has I-330 smuggle her beyond the wall.

The rebels spark a revolution, destroying parts of the Green Wall and allowing birds to re-enter the
city. D-503 is arrested and his imagination removed using x-rays, after which he tells the Benefactor and Guardianship Agency all that he knows about MEPHI. I-330 is brought before D-503 and the Benefactor and tortured for information; she gives none, which perplexes D-503. The novel ends with D-503 saying that all MEPHI agents in captivity will be executed. The battle for the city goes on, but D-503 is confident that the One State will win, "Because reason should win" (Zamyatin 203).