Downbelow Station

Downbelow Station featured an incredibly well-built future universe, ripe with intrigue. I found the pacing to be excellent throughout--even the opening chapter, which, despite reading like a history book, was fascinating in its innovative take on the economics of humankind's expansion. I loved the emphasis on realism throughout the setting. While there were a few key technological marvels, like jump drives, there were limitations as well. Sensors, for example, became ineffective at high speeds, making ship-to-ship combat reminiscent of scenes from submarine novels as crew struggled to find the location of other vessels. Ship-based gravity still depended on centrifugal motion (no mass effect technology here!), and disruptions to course or rotation were physically jarring to crews. Similarly, while much of the book focused on life on a space station, the major challenges were often very basic: food, water, shelter, and the dangers of riots and anarchy.

Generally, it was just a great book. The characters were vivid and deep. The story was full of unexpected twists and turns, and yet managed to avoid even a hint of contrivance, at least in my view. The writing style was a bit harsh and conversational, and leaned heavily on sentence fragments for drama. Furthermore, the author doesn't always spell out the characters' intentions. Usually, this was done to positive effect, but sometimes it resulted in confusing passages. The overall narrative was just so compelling, though, that moments like this were short-lived and quickly forgotten.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Wade Watts lives with his aunt in a trailer stack on the outskirts of a US metropolis in 2044.  Both of his parents are dead, and his aunt hates him.  She only allows him in her trailer because she gets his food vouchers.  During the day, however, Wade is someone else.  He attends high school in a virtual reality online world known as OASIS, which he interfaces using a visor and a pair of haptic gloves provided by his charter high school program.  Wade does well in school, and yet his primary focus is on something else.  The creator of OASIS, James Halliday, began a contest at the time of his death.  Whoever is the first to find an easter egg within the immense OASIS universe will inherit his preposterous fortune. To find it, contestants will have to be versed in Halliday's personal interests, which revolve around 80's pop-culture, and especially nerd-culture: video games, movies, books, music, TV series, anime, cartoons, dnd, and japanese monster flicks.  Wade has spent the past several years as a "gunter," an easter egg hunter, and has immersed himself in that universe.  And, with a few lucky breaks, he might just be about to make a breakthrough.

The concept of the virtual world of OASIS is well-realized in this book.  Against the backdrop of a dystopian future United States, it makes sense that so many people would opt to instead find release from their bleak world by logging into a virtual universe with nearly endless new places to explore. But the heart of this book is how its characters make use of OASIS to revel in and experience the rich array of 80's culture that is infused into the novel.  It was a walk back down the memories of my childhood. Ferris Buhler. Goonies. Joust. Zork. Rush. Lord of the Rings. All of it is described and delivered with so much zeal by the author that you can tell how much he loves that source material.

If that weren't enough to compel the narrative forward, the book becomes even more of a page-turner as the stakes get higher. Along the way, we see Wade's character develop and mature, along with several of his closer friends and companions that he meets while pursuing Halladay's quests.  It's a fun, wild adventure, and at the same time a very satisfying trip down memory lane.  One of my favorite books of the past several years.

Review: The Martian by Andy Wier

In the not-so-distant future, Mark Watney was one of a crew of six astronauts to land on Mars in the Ares 3 mission.  But just as their mission began, tragedy struck: a dangerous storm came upon their landing site and caused the team to abort their mission and flee the planet.  While the crew evacuated to the launch vehicle, Mark was struck by debris, launching him far from his companions, knocking him unconscious, destroying his biomonitor.  After a desperate, fruitless search, his crew was forced to presume him dead and leave the planet without him.  Despite all odds, however, Watney survived and made it back to the Hab.  The only problem was that he was stranded on a desolate, inhospitable planet with a finite supply of food and no way of communicating with with Earth.

So begins The Martian, a fantastic survival story by Andy Weir.  Much of the story is told through first-person logs that Mark uses to document his step-wise puzzle through each problem.  The tremendous appeal of this book, beyond the thrilling survival story, is that Mark makes use of a lot of real-life science in this tale.  His food problem comes down to a strict issue of calories: he has vitamins and protein tablets, but how can he produce the precise number of calories he needs in time to be rescued 4 years later during the next Ares mission?  Traveling to the next Ares site becomes a problem of power: how can he maintain his life support system and still have enough energy to power the rover using his solar cells?  If that doesn't sound like gripping reading, perhaps that's the genius of this book: despite its sometimes technical nature, its pacing, humor, surprises, and quality writing make it a gripping tale that kept me up many nights far past a reasonable bedtime.

Like many people picking up the book now, I read this after having watched the superb movie last year.  The movie is extremely true to the book in many parts, even down to extended stretches of the dialog.  But in other places, the movie deviates substantially from the book.  While I was initially concerned that reading it would be too much of a rehash of the movie, it quickly became clear that there was a lot more in this book to sink my teeth into.  And even those parts that do match up to the movie are just so thrilling that they still will keep you up late reading.

The movie was the best film I'd seen in years.  This book is right up there with it.  Highly recommended.