The Ultimate Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by THE Douglas Adams

ONE OF MY FAVORITE NOVELS OF ALL TIME.

Let me start off by saying how much I love the way Douglas Adams writes. I love this book because it's a story a man, Arthur Dent and his average life, but told through the voice of the guide and how the universe is always bigger than him and there's always more facts that we realize.

I actually first was exposed to the BBC Radio Show before I read the book, which really reinforced the voices through out the book and the adventures Arther the average Englishman goes to small planets and deals with things and the guidebook narrates. Though, I must say Arthur is one of my favorite characters, I really enjoy Marvin the Paranoid Android always depressed and wallowing in his misery of his advanced knowledge and no one to relate to, completely bored with life and never put to his full potencial. The first series is my favorite, of the end of the earth, where Arther slowly comes to the realization that he is the last human alive after the Earth is destroyed for an intergalactic highway.

This book is remarkable and so much fun to read, I will read this again and again.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Novel!

This story begins with the fall of civilization by something mysterious. Snowman (Oryx), a hermit resides near a group of human-like creatures known as Crankers take council in Snowman.

We slowly learn what actually happened, with flashbacks of Jimmy, who's Snowman when he was a boy. Jimmy and Crake his friend play games that are really out there and watch live executions and other obscene things.

As Snowman shifts between decades, we slowly get to piece together what had taken place and how everything fell apart so quickly. Also why he's left alone with the Childe of Crake and faces Crake's high tech bubble dome, and where he finds how the world came to grief.

Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler

Yeah, Alien Story! Though not a classic one...

Lilith's Brood was fun. A story about the human race being saved from itself by an alien species. This species revered life unlike the humans. The Oankali as they were called were nothing like the humans, and with that in mind they thought leaving them be would be a bad idea and that they would attempt to end themselves through fighting and war. So they stayed and lived and worked together. This is all told through Lilith Iyapo, a woman who tries to help the other humans escape. The Oakali, stay for another reason as well, because they genetically manipulate themselves to to maximum efficiency. Though this leads them to a dead-end of the evolutionary scale. So they in turn want to breed with the humans in order to keep existing. I only read the first of the series, "Dawn", but from what I gathered it was not a classic tale of alien invasion. There was mutual means, but things go wrong as always.

Really fun read overall.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Oh man, a near-future America with a taste of Cyberpunk

Snow crash is the mysterious new computer virus that seems to infect hacker's brains. This book was clever with the main character named Hiro Protagonist, which I feel was a filler name that just stuck.

Stephenson really liked to dig into the details. His details are all highly creative yet put in a very familiar place. The only thing that was really losing me is a backstory. I felt like it just kinda jumped into it. I felt this was a great world that he created but as far as the ending goes, I felt it went to quick. The pacing was all over the place. Over all this was a flawed but very entertaining cyberpunk story. It was a fun read, but something I probably wouldn't pick up again.

Though you can't really go wrong with a good Cyberpunk story with it's ballsy approaches to life.

Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

Babel-17 was a really great science fiction story, and one by the science fiction legends. The premise of this book is fantastic can't really go wrong with interstellar war. with the classic Alliance and the Invaders as the opposing force. Babel-17 is the Invader's new big bad weapon. Which really plays off of the Babel story in the bible, where the weapon is a language but acts like a computer virus that makes you think they way it wants you to think causing mayhem and sabotage. Rydra Wong with her unrealistic power of language osmosis, was a bit strange. But I went with it for the sake of the book.

Overall really fun read, and felt like a real classic science fiction story with some reinforced play on religious ideals.

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

I've always liked Sanderson's writing especially in the Mistborn series. Warbreaker was a great follow. The tail of a a woman named Siri who is sent to be the faceless God King's wife. I thought the character development was great as well as the elaborate world that he put you in.

Gods amongst men. I really, really enjoyed the thought of the "returned" the fact that Lightsong in particular was one of these living god's. I really felt that all the elaborate ideals that he established are logical and not really too out there. The God King as well, is not one I would want to cross. The ridicule that Siri had to go through that she was not allowed to look him in the eye and had to submit to him and to his will.

Over all really fun read.

The one factor that I didn't realize till later that this was his unedited book. I really like that he went "balls to the wall" with the thought of pushing out progress work to promote his published work.

BloodChild by Octavia E. Butler

Questions that arose:

1. -I was really curious to what these characters were? They kept that pretty vague, hard to picture what they were with their limbs and eggs.

2. - How were they different than the human they were cutting up?

3. - What the preserve was like? What was the land/environment like?

4. - Was the author trying to convoy spider like features, with the multiple limbs?

5. - Also, what was with the yellow eyes?

6. - Why was their a rifle? Why was it so important? The characters didn't seem like they needed weapons, being that they had claws, etc.

7. - What was the relation between the parasitic creature and the eggs?

8. - Did the human's have the eggs that the other creatures need?

9. - Where the humans just hosts for these creatures?

10. Did the eggs have special attributes? There was talk about them having some sort of healing ability.

After looking at the picture of the author. It did raise some questions for me:

Well honestly, in my head, with how dark this story was, I figured it was a short pale man who sat in front of his computer screen. I feel it bring up more questions for me as far as, why she would bring this up, what she was really basing this off of, as far as inspiration goes. I feel that it does change the perception of the actual story, cause I feel like she might have more of a culture reference that maybe I'm lacking. But I'm curious to what it is.