Adrift on the Sea of Rains is the first Novella in Ian Sales' Apollo Quartet, and was originally published in 2012. The second book in the series – The Eye With Which the Universe Beholds Itself - is also languishing on my reading pile (hopefully not much longer), whilst the 3rd book, titled Then Will the Great Ocean Wash Deep Above, is scheduled to come out late in 2013.
Ian Sales is a British writer, editor, blogger, and now publisher. Adrift on the Sea of Rains was the first book published on his own Whippleshield Books imprint (he is expanding beyond his own writing now, so this is definitely not a vanity setup). Adrift on the Sea of Rains won a BSFA Awards in the short fiction category – to my knowledge the first self-published book to win that award.
The premise of the book is simple, and stark. The USA have continued with the Apollo Programme past Apollo 16, and now have both a Space Station in LEO (“Freedom”) as well as a small moon base (“Falcon”) in Rima Hadley, Mare Imbrium (literally “Sea of Rains”, thus the title); the landing area of Apollo 15. The Cold War, meanwhile, has escalated past anything we have seen in our history. Whilst Colonel Vance Peterson is Commanding Officer of Falcon Base, it has actually led to open, nuclear warfare, thus stranding the men on Falcon Station on the Moon. At the point where we join the story they have lived like this for over a year, but only have supplies for four months left.
Allen Steele is an American Journalist and SF Writer, his website lists 19 Novels, 3 Novellas, and 5 Collections, which is an impressive list in itself. He also sits on the Board of Advisors for the Space Frontier Foundation and for the SFWA; and he has testified before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives, in hearings regarding space exploration in the 21st century.
Allen Steele is the winner of 3 Hugos, amongst other awards; including the Locus Award for Best First Novel which he won for the book at hand, Orbital Decay.
This, his first published novel, is the initial in a series of ebooks by Open Road Integrated Media who are re-publishing his back catalogue in electronic format. Allen Steele's latest book, V-S Day, is out in February 2014.
The story kicks off with Sam Sloane, former Computer Centre manager on Olympus Station and failed SF author, sitting on the moon after having had an accident, and, whilst waiting for death or rescue (the latter being rather unlikely) deciding to dictate the story of how he ended up on the Moon to his tape recorder:
So, to pass the time until my oxygen or suit batteries peter out, I'll tell you a story
Chris Beckett is a British University Lecturer and SF Author, with, as this is written, 3 Novels and 2 short story collections to his name, plus a number of (non-fiction) text books.
Dark Eden is the 1st book in the series of the same name, a sequel (Gela's Ring) is being published in instalments in Aethernet; I presume this will also be available as a single volume at some point.
The book was nominated for the BSFA award, and has won the Arthur C. Clarke award. Having said this, I have to tell you that I don't always agree with awards... A lot of people really like the book (thus the award, and a slew of hugely positive reviews) – for me it did not work. Thus Dark Eden presented me with a challenge – how do you write about a book which you think it well written, but didn't work for you at all as a story? I'm still not sure...
The story plays on a rogue planet (ie a wanderer, not in a solar system), where the 6th generation descendants of two lost space explorers are living their tribal, stone-age lives, counting their time in 'wombtimes' (except for the eldest ones, who still talk about 'years' – a pointless concept on a world without a sun!), living off the animals and plants in their isolated valley, and waiting for the Landing Veekle, which will have called for help with the RayedYo, so that they will be rescued and taken to the place where there is light in the sky (if you spot a religious reference here then you're absolutely correct).
As of November 17 we have lost another of the great writers of the 20th (and the 21st, as it stands) Century, and, to my knowledge, the only SF writer (although her scope was much, much wider than that) who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Her writing included Speculative Fiction (or, as she called it, Space Fiction) in a number of approaches and settings, including the clearly SF Shikasta series, the final installment in the Children of Violence sequence (The Four-Gated City), or the magnificently titled Briefing for a Descent into Hell.
There are obituaries in many places, of course, but you might start with the BBC, the Guardian, or the New Yorker.
Some pieces published clearly show that, even in death, she was a divisive and uncompromising presence. We need more of those, not fewer...
Reviews of some of her books (I'm not even through with her Shikasta series yet) can be found here.
River of Gods by Ian McDonald is a book I read, firstly, ways too late; and secondly out of sequence: whilst it is not exactly part of a series it comes with a series of short stories, published after the book, and collated in a separate volume titled Cyberabad Days. Which I read first...
Though, I’m not sure this was all that wrong. Cyberabad Days introduces a lot of the setting, tech, and societal structures and changes which River of Gods plays within/against, without being directly connected to the actual story told in the novel. I guess this actually helped me to get into the story being told much easier, with easier access to concepts and less recourse to the helpful glossary of Hindu terms at the back of the book.
So, a simple message up front: I can recommend that you read both. And I can recommend that you read Cyberabad Days first – it definitely worked for me!
New Varanasi runs into Old Kashi in a series of discontinuities and juxtapositions. Streets begin in one millennium and end in another. Vertiginous corporate spires lean over shambles of alleys and wooden houses unchanged in four centuries. Metro viaducts and elevated expressways squeeze past the sandstone linga of decaying temples.
River of Gods plays in a near-future India, set in the late 2040s. India has fallen apart into a number of independent states; the focus is on three of those, aligned along the Ganges: Awadh, Bharat (main setting), and Bengal. The monsoon has failed to arrive for 3 years in a row now, water is scarce and getting scarcer, and Awadh has built a damn upriver to their own benefit, which, for reasons obvious, turns in a major political sticking point. Meanwhile the Bengalis are pulling a major iceberg into the Bay of Bengal, in an attempt to engineer a reversal in the local climate…
Adrift on the Sea of Rains
River of Gods
