I Wake from a Dream of a Drowned Star City is a short story (novella? Fragment?) byS.P. Somtow, which is a pseudonym for the magnificentSomtow Sucharitkul; award-winning Author, Musician, and famous Conductor/Composer. This is a book published by Axolotl Press (their 24th publication out of 26 overall…), it came as 75 bound in leather, 300 Hardbacks, and 525 Trade Paperbacks; all of which signed by the author. A bit of a rarity, really, although it’s definitely findable (and obtainable) on the internet, if not terribly well known.
Dreambreak. The easternmost point of the world. Just shy of the drowned star city. Where the human dream is shattered. Dreambreak.
Here's another old review, this time for Cosmonaut Keep, the first book in Ken MacLeod’s Engines of Light series: Given that I recently managed to buy not one, but two copies of this book I thought I’d better give one of them a spin… what I found is that it is an excellent book, and was nominated for a Hugo Award for good reason (no, it couldn’t win, not against American Gods!). Recommended – and I’m now after the other two books in the Trilogy. One copy only, though.
Ken MacLeod provides us with skilled storytelling on a grand scale. This book has two, at least in this book, only loosely connected strands. One of them is classic Space Opera: We find Gregor Cairns, a marine (exo)biologist conducting his research in the town of Kyovic, on the planet of Mingulay. The colony has regressed a lot, at least technologically, and can neither reach nor fly the spaceship, the ‘Bright Star’, which orbits their world. The story kicks off when another spaceship, carrying (human) traders from another star system visits Mingulay. The star ship, like all of them, are being flown by Kraken, whilst the gravity skiffs used, you guessed it, in gravity, are being piloted by Saurs (as the name suggests). Gregor, a direct descendant of the original ‘Navigator’, and part of the current ‘Cosmonaut Cadre’, gets tangled up in a (not very bizarre, but very adolescent) love triangle between one of the trader girls, and his lab assistant, Elizabeth Harkness.
Crossing the Line is the 2nd book in Karen Traviss’ Wess’har Wars series, starting with City of Pearl, and running to 6 books at the end (there were 4 when this review was written - don't get confused with some of the references to future work). I can strongly recommend the entire series – classic SF with multiple story-threads, interesting philosophical questions, engaging characters, and humans (or, rather, humanity…) as (one of) the baddies, for once.
Shan Frankland, infected (joined?) with the c’naatat symbiont and showing Wess’har and Bezeri genetic influences, is spending her time with Aran in Constantine, the religious settlement on the 2nd planet circling Cavanagh’s Star (CS2 in military lingo, Bezer’ej to the local alien residents). She is summoned (by a detachment of Wess’har soldiers looking ‘like paramilitary seahorses’ – what an image!) to the city of F’nar on Weser’ej – away from her fellow (to a degree) humans, to live her life and destiny with the powers that be, and that have granted her protection from the humans in the spaceship Actaeon circling the planet. She now learns about the Wess’har society, and she has to work on what she will become, where she will fit in, and what this means to her and to Aran, her fellow Wess’har c’naatat soldier: Normality. She was twenty-five light-years from home, playing house with an invulnerable alien war criminal and carrying a bizarre parasite that tinkered with her genome when the fancy took it. Just over a year ago she’d packed a bag and set off for a few days’ duty at Mars Orbital, expecting to be home by the end of the week, her biggest worry being that the supermarkets would deliver early and forget to reset her security alarm. And now she would never go home again. Normality.
The Kingdom Beyond the Waves is the 2nd instalment (4th one - Secrets of the Fire Sea - recently came out, the 5th - Jack Cloudie - is coming next year) in Stephen Hunt's Jackals/Jackelian series. The book picks up a few years after the end of its precursor, The Court of the Air. And whilst it should be able to stand on its own I would recommend you read the first book in the series before you tackle this one, it will give you a much better understanding of the environment the events in the story unfold it; and background on at least some of the characters. Oh, and it's a quite enjoyable tale, too.
The main thread (there are many others) in the book follows Amelia Harsh, Professor of Archaeology who has just lost her job at the last University willing to take her on. The reason? Her unwavering belief in (and active research into) Camlantis (the reference is transparent enough not to require explanation - ?), a historical if considered mythical country with a high (some people claim perfect) civilization, without hunger, crime, violence, inequality etc. Camlantis vanished when it was overrun by the Black Oil Horde, and nobody knows where the remains are (a floating island in the sky, as mythology claims?), or how they created their society; and official doctrine has it that they never existed anyway...
New York Magazine has a series of six alternate history shorts called 'Memories of the Gore Administration', looking back at the ten-year history of Presidents Al Gore and Mitt Romney.
George W. Bush, meanwhile, is in rehab.
Six episodes with five writers - what I've read of it so far was fun.
I Wake from a Dream of a Drowned Star City
Crossing the Line
The Kingdom Beyond the Waves
