BooksOfTheMoon

Major Operation

By James White

Rating: 3 stars

This is a series of linked novellas/short stories in the Sector General universe about staff at the hospital space station Sector 12 General Hospital (Sector General for short) and the weird and wonderful cases they deal with, from all the different life forms that make up members of the Galactic Federation, and beyond. I always enjoy the Sector General books which are that rarest of things: pacifist space opera. No matter what the shape or physiological classification of the creature that comes through the airlock, the first instinct of the doctors (of all shapes and sizes) is to treat it. This makes for a refreshing change, and a very starting point for dealing with a situation.

The focus of this book involves first contact with a particularly odd planet — christened “Meatball” due to the fact that its surface seems to be entirely covered with living material of some kind — and the various patients that come from there, leading up to the biggest, and very possibly strangest, patient that Sector General has ever had to deal with.

The various alien races that populate the book (and others of the series) are quite fascinating, and White has obviously put in effort to make his aliens truly alien, and not just humanoids with lumpy foreheads. While perhaps not quite up to the standards of its predecessor, Star Surgeon, this is still a very entertaining read.

Book details

ISBN: 9780345242297
Publisher: Ballantine
Year of publication: 1971

Doctor Who: Castrovalva

By Christopher H. Bidmead

Rating: 3 stars

A very lightweight novelisation of the Fifth Doctor’s first story. Sometimes these novelisations can add some depth to a TV story but this was a fairly slight reproduction that added little. A fun enough way to while away a train journey though.

Book details

ISBN: 9780426193265
Publisher: Target Books; W.H. Allen & Co. Ltd.
Year of publication: 1983

Long After Midnight

By Ray Bradbury

Rating: 5 stars

This collection is a mix of SF and non-genre stories that blend together remarkably well in that way that only Bradbury can do. There’s no real theme to the collection, although three of the stories are about other writers (a parrot that could recite Hemmingway; an android of GB Shaw; and a time-travelling Thomas Wolfe). Several of the stories are also about growing old and moving on, and one or two of these had me close to tears.

Favourites include One Timeless Spring which offers an alternative viewpoint on growing up; The Messiah, about a priest on Mars who receives a visitation; A Story of Love, telling of a love that can’t be; The Better Part of Wisdom in which a dying man goes to visit his relatives and the conversation he has with his grandson; and Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You!, following a Catholic priest and one of his flock in the confessional.

Honestly, I could probably go on and name almost every story in the collection, but then I find Bradbury’s short stories almost uniformly entrancing.

Book details

ISBN: 9780553108828
Publisher: Bantam Science Fiction
Year of publication: 1976

Memoirs Of A Dutiful Daughter

By Simone de Beauvoir

Rating: 4 stars

The first volume of Beauvoir’s autobiography spans her early life until her graduation from the Sorbonne. She goes into a lot of detail and puts us into her head very well, although part of this is the head of a teenage girl which was sometimes teeth-grinding. From very early on, Beauvoir is shown to be a very intelligent person with a tendency to analyse everything around her and she is very good at also showing us the sort of world she grew up and and the mindset of her class and her attempts to rebel against that.

Although she goes into detail for large parts of her life, she fails to do so for a part in her late teens when she starts seriously rebelling against society, drinking and associating with dodgy characters. But it seems to me that that she failed to go into the reasons for that in the same meticulous detail as as she covered the rest of her early life.

Definitely worth reading if you’re interested in Beauvoir’s philosophy and why she wrote and thought what she did.

Book details

ISBN: 9780140087550
Publisher: Penguin
Year of publication: 1958

Agatha Heterodyne and the Monster Engine (Girl Genius, #3)

By Phil Foglio

Rating: 4 stars

Volume three of the ongoing webcomic Girl Genius, this volume introduces us to the revenants, and the hive that go on to become a recurring threat in the story and Agatha starts to come to terms with the fact that she is as Spark (and acquires a talking cat).

I’ve been reading Girl Genius for a while now but it’s nice to go back and start again, and read it in a much more compressed format, rather than three pages a week. It makes it much easier to follow the story and remember the characters, not to mention flick back if you forget any of them. I enjoy this sort of mad scientist steampunk and the art is fantastic. Great fun, if quite short.

Book details

ISBN: 9781890856328
Publisher: Airship Entertainment
Year of publication: 2004

Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City (Girl Genius, #2)

By Phil Foglio

Rating: 4 stars

Volume two of the ongoing webcomic Girl Genius, this volume introduces us to the giant airship Castle Wulfenbach and a whole bunch of new characters as Agatha tries to understand this new world that she’s been forcibly introduced to.

I’ve been reading Girl Genius for a while now but it’s nice to go back and start again, and read it in a much more compressed format, rather than three pages a week. It makes it much easier to follow the story and remember the characters, not to mention flick back if you forget any of them. I enjoy this sort of mad scientist steampunk and the art is fantastic. Great fun, if quite short.

Book details

ISBN: 9781890856304
Publisher: Studio Foglio
Year of publication: 2001

Girl Genius Volume 1: Agatha Heterodyne and the Bettleburg Clank SC (Color Edition)

By Phil Foglio

Rating: 4 stars

Volume one of the ongoing webcomic Girl Genius, this volume gives us the background to this steampunk world of mad scientists (‘Sparks’) and their minions and introduces us to Agatha Clay, the girl genius of the title as she discovers her own talents.

I’ve been reading Girl Genius for a while now but it’s nice to go back and start again, and read it in a much more compressed format, rather than three pages a week. It makes it much easier to follow the story and remember the characters, not to mention flick back if you forget any of them. I enjoy this sort of mad scientist steampunk and the art is fantastic (and volume one, originally in black and white, has been re-issued in full colour too!). Great fun, if quite short.

Book details

ISBN: 9781890856502
Publisher: Studio Foglio
Year of publication: 2002

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