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Recursion occurs when a thing is defined in terms of itself or of its type. --Wikipedia
I first heard about this book on NPR and was intrigued enough to immediately put it on my holds list. You can find out more about how to make your own holds list here. Let me just say that this book did not disappoint!
What if a machine could tell you how to be happy? What if your results could be manipulated? What if you had to do something illegal, immoral, or unethical to achieve happiness? These are a few of the questions posed in the speculative fiction novel Tell the Machine Goodnight, by Katie Williams. Set in 2035, our protagonist Pearl works for a Facebook or Google-like tech organization, Apricity, whose name means "the warmth of the sun during winter". Businesses include Apricty readings as a benefit.
If you don't know the basics of the British television series Doctor Who, here we go: a mysterious, eccentric, very long-lived, alien scientist known only as "the Doctor" travels through time and space in a ship that looks like a 1960s British police call box on the outside and is much, much bigger and more futuristic on the inside.
The action is intense and the storyline is fast-paced; there is always something going on. The setting in intergalactic space and the unforgettable characters make for a perfect storm of events that draws you in deeper the more you read. The writing style is beautiful and the slang feels so natural it's like the culmination of 7 people's autobiographies thrown backward in time.
The most compelling aspect of the book is the mystery behind Aurora's newfound powers, and the fact that even she doesn't know what is going on. I really fell in deep after they started planning to break into...
Whoa! Now here's an exercise in extended metaphor. Andrews has taken an idea that could have been a simple allegory and turned it into a fully developed novel. Imagine, if you will, an alternate reality in which physical size is literally determined by wealth. A standard person is middlescale. The middlerich are those larger than that up two doublescale and the middlepoor extend to halfscale. Smaller than that are the littlepoors: quarterscale, eighthscale, and tenthscale--about the size of a rat. The bigrich just get bigger and bigger to hundreds of feet tall.
There is a lot of music in the world. But have you ever thought about the music that is set in space? Here are a few space concept albums that fit perfectly into our summer reading theme, A Universe of Stories.
The sixth anthology of short graphic novels, Flight Vol. 6 was a beautiful read. I found out about the series from a coworker who is well-versed in the graphic novel genre. Since all the books are anthologies, I did not feel the need to read the series in order. Furthermore, the sixth book was the only one available at my location, so it made my choice easy! For someone that has trouble reading graphic novels, this collection of short stories was perfect.
The Illuminae Files Trilogy is like no trilogy you've experienced before. Stylistically it stands apart as the story unfolds via a dossier of compiled e-mails, video recordings, military documents, interviews, maps and medical reports that all combine to make for a heady mix of intrigue, political drama, romance, and space opera. In Illuminae, the first in the trilogy, Kady Grant's colony, Kerenza, is attacked by an unknown enemy.
Cyborg Cinderella, android friends and an evil space queen? I was hesitant to read this book because I do not enjoy the original Cinderella story. However, after having Cinder on my list for years, I finally downloaded the audio version narrated by Rebecca Soler and became entranced. While some plot points are a bit predictable, this futuristic-steampunky twist on the Cinderella story we all know is fantastic. As a character, Cinder is humorous and resourceful despite dealing with her awful stepmother and stepsister.
Good Morning, Midnight is an atmospheric story told from the perspective of two flawed characters who have struggled with or avoided human connection most of their lives. From a remote arctic research station to the vast openness of space, the settings evoke a feeling of stillness and quiet that, as I sat reading, had the effect of blocking out the world around me.
